INDEX


Mexico as I Saw It
By MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE
(née HARLEY)

Morning Post.—“In her new volume, Mrs. Alec Tweedie has chosen fresh subjects for her bright descriptive powers. Of the glorious amphitheatre she writes like a true artist. The public will, we believe, heartily welcome this fascinating work, which contributes to our knowledge of one of the greatest men of the day, and supplies at the same time the most agreeable reading.”

Punch.—“She ‘saw it’ under exceedingly favourable circumstances. Armed with an introduction to the President she was welcomed with more than Mexican warmth.... A born traveller, ready when occasion compelled to put up with hardships and short commons, Mrs. Alec Tweedie took cheerfully to the private cars provided for her in the railways, to the semi-official banquets, and to life in palaces. She travelled all over Mexico with her eyes, as usual, wide open.”

Sunday Sun (The book of the week).—“The reading public may congratulate itself as well as Mrs. Alec Tweedie on the happy inspiration which directed her to Mexico. For the antiquarian she contributes information both new and valuable, as she had the good fortune to be in Mexico at the time of important discoveries of Aztec remains. We owe this book much gratitude, for there is a practical and informing value in its crisp, vivid pages.... It shows to a public curiously ignorant on the subject a great country.”

Pall Mall Gazette.—“Mrs. Alec Tweedie is famous for her spirited ‘relations of journeys’ to less get-at-able resorts. Mexico will fully sustain the reputation which she acquired with ‘Through Finland in Carts.’ There is no doubt it is just such a relation of a journey as the general reader likes. It is light, it is long, it is chatty, it is informing, and is profusely illustrated with really first-rate photographs. The grave and the gay alternate in her pages, and her touch is never ponderous. There has been no better book of travel ... for a long time.”

Westminster Gazette.—“That alert and experienced traveller, Mrs. Alec Tweedie, gives a lively account of recent journeying. A good deal of historical and archæological lore finds a natural place in this variegated travel-book. Her vivid description of the Caves of Cacahuamilpa justifies her rapturous comparison of these wonders of nature with the mightiest buildings of the world.”

AMERICAN PAPERS

Philadelphia Public Ledger.—“Mrs. Alec Tweedie is one of the most vivacious, accomplished and amiable of travellers. She writes with unflagging spirit and humour, and is never weary. As a result we have a narrative of incidents and observations from day to day, intimate as a diary, full of entertainment, portraying scenes, customs and experiences of unusual interest. Mrs. Tweedie’s progress was almost royal in the hospitality and service she received from men of every rank and position. It would be difficult among the books of travel issued during the past twelve months to find one so amusing and comprehensive as this.”

Boston Transcript.—“A traveller born. Nothing worth seeing or hearing escapes her. Her first experiences of life in Mexico were on a ranche, where she had abundant opportunities of studying its various phases at her leisure.”

New York Times.—“The very name of Mexico bears with it a mysterious breeze and charm. She is happy when she deals off-hand with what her senses bring her; the ragged ugliness of the beggar, the funeral cars, the cock and bull fights, the landscapes, and the riot of tropical verdure, the sharp contrasts of society, the flood of religious superstition, and happier still when she takes up the doings of high society.”

Churchman.—“The book is an olla podrida; social studies of the aristocracy, labourers, beggars, politicians and the Indians elbow archæological investigations, and besides these are all the adventures of a venturesome traveller, told in brisk fashion with a breezy humour, with enthusiasm for her subject, and yet with a practical common sense quite as awake to the economic possibilities of Mexico in the future as to the picturesque relics of Mexico in the past.”