In the early gray of the July morning, with the chilling fog settling all around us, we draw our heavy wraps about us and leave with no regrets Saltillo, “The Stepping Stone.” We have indeed stepped upon the plateau, and for a hundred and fifty miles the track is as straight as a carpenter’s rule. What a monotony! Desert, yucca palms, cactus, dust. Not a living thing but cactus. No birds, no insects, no rabbits, no snakes—nothing that breathes claims this for a home. The railroad authorities did not plan this road for the beauty of its landscape, but for the economy of building. Ten thousand feet above sea-level lies the back-bone of the Cordilleras, and the plain is as level as a floor.
For twelve hundred miles a carriage can travel here without making a road, so while the journey is disappointing to the tourist, the railroad company pats itself on the back for long-headedness.
Away in the distance we see a tiny curl of white dust no larger than a man’s hand, and reaching to heaven. That is the sign of the burro pack-team bearing their bundles of fagots for the hungry maw of the locomotive. Poor little donkeys, not weighing more than three hundred pounds, without bridle or saddle or harness or halter, and without food except as they can argue with the thorns and thistles by the wayside, follow, follow forever the narrow trail to the wood-pile by the railroad track, drop their burden and return.
Surely the earth is round to the donkey. When he was no larger than a kid, he followed his mother along the same trail until he got large enough to carry a pack-saddle himself. That wearied, discouraged look he has always had, even to the twentieth generation. It is a part of his inheritance. He never had any frisky colt days in a pasture, nor did he have to “be broke” to harness when he reached the state of Coahuila and donkeyhood. In fact he was never born, but like Topsy “just growed up,” a burden-bearing burro. From the Rio Grande to Yucatan, he has gridironed the country and impressed it with his stamp. He and his companions have trailed, Indian file, loaded to the guards with silver ore, until his sharp little feet cut the trail so deep that his burden was raked off by the banks. He then started a new trail by the side of that until his little legs are out of sight in the trails cut by his feet in the solid rock; and then repeats, until you may count twenty or more little parallel gridiron paths for hundreds of miles. He has worn through solid rock in a dozen parallel paths, and only the final recorder in the burro paradise can tell how many weary journeys he had to make to write his name so well.
Neither the trolley car nor the bicycle will ever make his shadow grow less; he is a part of the country, as indispensable as water itself. While the Indians load the tender with wood, I follow the fireman and brakeman into the chaparral. They have a pail of water, a wicker basket, and a long stick with a string lasso on the end, and are hunting tarantulas. Being something of a naturalist myself, I was well acquainted with tarantulas, and I promptly told them I had not lost any tarantulas, and if they had nothing better to lose than tarantulas, they needed guardians. To those who have not a speaking acquaintance with his vitriolic majesty, I will say it is a huge hairy spider that will cover the bottom of a tea-cup, and when placed in a saucer is able to grasp the edge all round, so great is the spread of its claws. It is very vindictive and can leap up to a man’s face when making close acquaintance. In Texas I have known its bite to kill a person in twelve hours. I saw one catch a chicken under the wing, and the chicken fell within one minute.
However, I joined the hunters. We first looked for a hole in the ground, and as the hole denotes the size of the tarantula, only the larger ones were sought. When a hole about the circumference of a half dollar was found, one man guarded that with the stick and basket, while the other sought the outlet, for they always have two entrances to their homes. When it was found, the water was poured in, and out he came into the lasso placed over the other hole—and is caught dangling at the end of the stick. What is he good for? To sell. The Mexican is the greatest gambler this side of Monte Carlo. Tomorrow is the fiesta of his patron saint, and he will celebrate. As every one chooses a saint to his liking, and churches and towns do likewise—there is scarcely a day in the calendar that is not somebody’s saint day. Tomorrow he will “knock off” from work, go to the bull-ring and bet his money on the bull or the man, and whichever one gets killed, he is so much loser or winner. He goes to the cock-pit and stakes again, and a bird soon spears another through with his gaff; but a tarantula fight! Bravo! that is a sport royal. In the bull-ring, the bull sometimes gets wounded and bellows to be allowed to go home to his mother. In the cock-pit, a bird gets a gaff pinned through his upper works and decides to settle the fight by arbitration; but a tarantula, Caramba! they simply eat each other up. The only way you can lose money is that the other fellow’s cannibal will eat yours first.
The engineer blows his whistle and calls us in, and we trail again through the white dust to Catorce, a hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies, only no crow ever flies over this Sodom and Gomorrah. Catorce means fourteen, as the mines were discovered by a band of brigands numbering fourteen. You get off at the station and see nothing but a station and three or four pack trains of burros that have just brought in a load of silver. Follow their gridiron trail, and eight miles further you come to Catorce, a city of from ten to twenty thousand people, according to the output of silver, and these people have never heard the rumble of wheels. Ore was first found here in 1790, and for thirty years the silver output was over three million dollars yearly.
There are hundreds of these mines here, and the drainage tunnel of the San Augustin mine runs into the mountain more than a mile and a half and cost a million and a half dollars. Up, up you climb the rocky sides of the mountain, but there is no other way to reach Catorce, and when there, you are in one of the richest spots on earth, where the ore often assays $15,000 to the ton. The streets run forty-five degrees one way, and I suppose they ought to run the same coming back, but if you let go your hold on the street corners, you would fall out of town so fast you could not measure the angle. The only level place in town of course has a plaza and a very fine cathedral. I have made a similar statement several times, which needs no repetition. Whenever you enter a Mexican town you will always find “A very fine plaza and a very fine cathedral.” That copyright phrase will fit anywhere, with sometimes a modification of very and a change of church for cathedral.
Catorce is the last town in the temperate zone. A few miles beyond, standing solitary upon the desert like Lot’s wife in the geography, is a pyramid erected by the railroad company. It marks the exact line of the Tropic of Cancer. On the north the legend reads:—
TROPICO DE CANCER.
ZONA TEMPLADA.