Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

Midway between the coast and the mountain is the tierra templada, where the mean temperature is 68° F. The tierra fria, or cold country, is the plateau which caps the crest of the Cordilleras, so different from the mountains of the rest of the world that a carriage road was built for eight hundred miles along the crest of the mountains, without the service of an engineer.

Here the mean temperature is 63° F., and on account of the altitude rain seldom falls, and, where it does fall, the porous amygdaloid rocks absorb it so quickly that the plateau is a veritable desert, where the cactus and other thorny plants have taken possession of soil and rock alike. What adds more than anything else to its barrenness, is the utter lack of forest tree or green grass. Everywhere, for miles and miles of landscape, the eye meets only the bare rock and brown earth, with here and there the ever-present cactus and its kind.

What wonder is it that nearly all these plateau people are beggars, when the water for their very existence must be drawn from the locomotive tanks each day as the train passes? Far across the treeless plain they see the smoke of the locomotive, and from every adobe hut and straw-thatched jackal swarm the eager-eyed women, carrying the empty five-gallon cans of the Standard Oil Company, or their smaller ollas of burnt earthenware.

To supply that horde would be to disable the train, so the fireman fills a number and again mounts his engine amid the silent looks of anguish from the disappointed faces that plead more eloquently than words. Yet there are whole townships of this desert, fenced in with stone walls, and upon these haciendas the rancheros grow rich off their herds at the expense of the poor peons, and the source of their wealth is the prickly pear.

The thick, fleshy leaf is both food and water to the starving cattle. Where herds are small, the herder, with a huge knife or machete, cuts the cruel thorns from the leaves or singes them in a great bonfire; but on the vast estates the cattle must, from necessity, get their food without help. It may be curious to know how these leaves can furnish water in a country where it rarely rains. The reason is, the skin is so tough it does not lose any water by evaporation, and it is thus able to carry water a year or more without additional rain. This cactus grows to the height of fifteen feet, with innumerable branches armed with needles nearly as long as your finger, and it bears bunches of fruit about the size and shape of lemons, called tunas. This is the staff of life for the poor people on the plains, and without it, existence on the plateau, for man or beast would be impossible.

But this country was not always a desert. Before the coming of the Spaniards it was clothed in verdure, but “it was not like the plains of Old Castile,” and so the reckless gold hunter turned the beautiful plateau into a Sahara, in which the silver mines now pay from eleven to sixteen dollars a cord for wood, brought on the backs of diminutive burros, and five dollars and seventy-five cents for a hundred and fifty pounds of corn.

It is purely a lack of thrift that no effort is now made to restore the land to its original inheritance. The eucalyptus tree of California has been tried in many places and thrives well, and with proper protection would soon grow a forest. The present wood supply is the mesquite, which never grows taller than a peach tree, and the average size stick of wood it furnishes is but little larger than a beer bottle. Yet, with all its scarcity, the locomotives use it, because coal from the United States costs twenty-one dollars a ton. This wood is packed on the backs of dozens of little burros, and is carried as far as a dozen miles for delivery.

This is a land without chimneys, for two reasons: The climate is not cold enough to require fires, and if it was, the poor people would never be able to purchase wood. The little cooking that is done, is accomplished by little charcoal fires in braziers.

If all this country was a plateau, then my tale would not be told, but there can be no mountains without valleys, and it is these valleys that make Mexico one of the most delightful spots in this country. In the lovely valley of the noisy little San Juan River, rests the beautiful city of Monterey—“King Mountain.”

Situated at the foot of the Sierra Madres, surrounded by cloud-covered peaks, there seems to be not enough room for its seventy-five thousand inhabitants, as it first bursts upon the vision through the towering masts of Yucca palms. It is wedged between “La Silla,” Saddle Mountain, and “Las Mitras,” the Bishop’s Mitre; but this is only the first trick which this clear and illusive atmosphere plays upon the traveler from the lowlands.