Tell it not in Gath, but they do say that the most beautiful women in Mexico live in Jalapa. “Bewitching, alluring are the women of Jalapa,” is what the natives mean when they say: “Las Jalapenas son halaguenas.” Perhaps this accounts for the saying that Jalapa is a part of paradise let down to earth. The prevailing type of beauty here is the blonde with blue eyes and brown hair, while elsewhere it is the brunette with black eyes and hair. After one has seen las Jalapenas halaguenas, the old churches and the musty paintings lose their interest. The old town shows its age probably more than any other in Mexico, and if these old stones could speak they might tell us of the building of Cholula. Whatever is old in Mexico is still older in Jalapa. Excursions to Coatepec and Jelotepec, about six miles away, may be made on horse-cars through tropical forests and coffee groves, and then we continue our tobogganing to Vera Cruz. On the down slide we pass Cerro Gordo, where General Scott defeated Santa Anna, April 18, 1847. He must have defeated the town too, for it is not there. A few mud huts are patriotic enough to remain and continue the name, for which they deserve much credit. Perhaps they are guarding the place to preserve Santa Anna’s wooden leg which was lost here in battle. They have not yet learned that it is in Washington City.
We finally stow away our thermometer to prevent its melting and running away. They say that straight down in the ground underneath Vera Cruz to an indefinite depth it is really hotter than Vera Cruz. Perhaps. Vera Cruz is a good place to stay away from. From May to October it is the summer residence of his majesty El Vomito Negro, a black vomit, familiarly known as Yellow Fever. This is not only his summer residence, but his permanent home, but during the winter months he is “not at home;” but May 1st., on house-cleaning day, his residence is open to all comers, be they light-weight, middle-class or sluggers. He gives all odds and guarantees a knockout in the first round or forfeit the championship.
During 1868-4 the French army planted four thousand soldiers in a little cemetery which they facetiously called “Le Jardin d’Acclimation.” The Mexicans call it “La Ciudad de los Muertos,” the City of the Dead. The population of Vera Cruz in 1869 was 13,492 and the number of deaths for the ten years ending in 1879 was 12,219. The average duration of life by these figures was eleven years! The annual deathrate is ninety per thousand population, while in the United States it is 22.28 per thousand. The safest way to see the city in the summer is to go in on the train, go out to the old castle of San Juan d’Ulloa about a mile out in the harbor, climb to the light house and take a good look, then get on the same train and get up and out, or rather out and up. The town covers about sixty acres and has no suburbs but sand and water. An avenue of palms on the main street is the principal feature. If you stay till night you will see the raven hair of the Mexican ladies sparkling with gems, but they are only fireflies or “lighting bugs.” Three or four of these tropical fireflies placed under a tumbler will give light enough to read by. They have a natural hook on their bodies, so they are fastened in the hair by this hook without pain to themselves. Our American cities are troubled about their street-cleaning department; but Vera Cruz has a street-cleaning commission that is a commission. Here they work without salary and only ask bed and board. The only other bonus they ask is that the city fine any person five dollars for killing any member of the commission; which seemed only reasonable, so the city gladly consented, and now the agreement is entirely satisfactory to employer and employee.
The city council, on the city records, calls these commissioners Zopilotes, but ordinary people just call them turkey-buzzards.$1‘Their contract calls for bed and board—or tree. They find their board in the garbage piles and refuse heaps of the streets, and their bed on the church steeples and on the city hall and on your gate post or any other soft place where it is comfortable to rest after a hard day’s work. The city has not yet appointed a commission to clean up behind the commissioners, and if I should suggest the thing to them they would misunderstand my ideas of reform, so I will leave them to their fate and the heavy death roll which they will still charge to El Vomito and exonerate the Zopilotes. Owing to an oversight in drawing up the contract, no mention was made of nesting-places for the commissioners, and so they had to make other arrangements elsewhere, but where it is the deponent sayeth not.
Their day’s work was done and we saw that all the resorters had resorted to their resorts, so we resorted to the train, unpacked our thermometer and hied us away. Vera Cruz has had a monopoly of the shipping business, but has a rival now in Tampico. When you go to Tampico, you must tar and grease your hands, face and neck, then wear a pair of leather gloves and muzzle your face with wire netting. You may keep the insects off but you will smell like a barrel of train oil. The entomologists must have got tired classifying insects and dumped all the remnants at Tampico. One sociable little fellow has a habit of crawling under your toe-nail while you sleep and digging a hole till he is out of sight and then going to sleep. He has no special reason for this except to make you cut off your toe to get him out or to make you sleep in your boots. The monkeys and parrots are very sociable too, but familiarity breeds contempt. If I must associate with monkeys I prefer those with two legs so when I abuse them they can understand my wrath.
For description of Tampico see Encyclopædia Britannica. Besides the Inter-Oceanic, there is another railroad entering Vera Cruz, the British road that was thirty-five years in building and cost forty million dollars. This road leaves the plateau at Boca del Monte (mouth of the mountain) eight thousand feet above the sea, and falls four thousand feet in passing over the first twenty-five miles of circuitous track, and it falls twenty-five hundred perpendicular feet in the first twelve miles, or two hundred and eighty feet to the mile. That tired, sinking feeling is very, very present when you start down. A double engine called the “Farlie,” having two sets of driving machinery and the boiler in the center, pulls this train, and when it starts up hill it has to stop every ten miles to rest. The Britishers who built that road had faith and plenty of it. Below Orizaba, the road crosses a gorge a thousand feet deep, and was blasted from the solid rock. To do so, workmen were suspended by ropes over the cliff, and worked for hours with hammer and chisel. One piece of track clinging to the wall is not over ten rods long and required seven years to build. So costly was this road that when it was first opened in 1873 first class freight rates from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, two hundred and sixty-three miles away, were $76 a ton on freight trains and $97.77 on passenger trains.
Since Tampico is now a rival port freight is only $45 a ton and still the road hardly pays for its outlay. We soon enter the beautiful valley of La Joya (the Gem) and down, down below the clouds we pass through evergreen foliage of ferns and flowers that surpass anything in beauty ever attempted by brush and canvas; mammoth ferns and tangled vanilla vines and other parasitic vines that coil around the giant trees and strangle them to death, and then feed upon the remains. Tropical birds of all colors and migratory birds from other lands are here without number. It is here the Indian hunter pursues his vocation of killing to make the wonderful featherwork, so salable in the capital, and just here we enter the beautiful city of Orizaba, the capital of Vera Cruz.
Behind the city is the snow-capped volcano of Orizaba, eighteen thousand three hundred and fourteen feet above the sea, three miles and a half high. Violent eruptions took place here in 1545-6 but it has been on a strike ever since. Being the second highest mountain in North America, perhaps it is putting on airs. At any rate it is chilly enough now and the melting snows form innumerable cascades and waterfalls; and so the Chicmec Indians called the volcano “Ahauializapan” or “Joy in the waters,” but the Spaniards had neglected their pronunciation in their early youth and this was their Shibboleth, so they called it Orizaba and let it go at that. Earthquakes have always been a specialty with Orizaba, and the largest church has had its steeples thrown down three times, and many others have a rakish, corkscrew perpendicular, which gives the impression that they have been on a jag or are trying to imitate the leaning tower of Pisa. A river runs through the town, and runs cotton and sugar and flour mills. Orizaba is exactly of the same altitude as Jalapa and what was said of the richness and fertility of that burg is true of Orizaba. Volcanic ash is the fertilizer which needs only moisture, which is abundant. The streets are paved with lava, and there are three schools for girls and two for boys. If you like mountain climbing, plenty of blankets, two days’ provisions—and some silver—will take you to the crater of Orizaba, if your lungs can stand the rarified air.
I also ascended Orizaba, and my proxy said he could almost see into the land of the almighty dollar, the vision was so grand. I felt happy. Delightful excursions through the pretty gardens to Yngenio, the lakes and mills of Nogales, to the innumerable cascades of Rincon Grande, Tuxpango, El Bario Nuevo and Santa Ana. On the way to these, the orchids and other floral beauties just beg of you to pluck them and thus make room for their companions. Down the mountain we glide with brakes set and enter the steel laces of the spider bridge across the Metlac and hold our breath to lighten our weight to the other side. We feel much better after we are over, and just beyond in the tropical vale of Seco is Cordova, on the border of the tierra caliente and tierra templada. We are in the same belt as Jalapa and Orizaba, therefore in the heart of the coffee plantations. The principal food of the lower-class is bananas. The banana is an annual that grows about ten feet high and about a foot in diameter before the bud appears, and then from the top springs a purple bud eight or nine inches long, shaped like a large acorn. This cone hangs from a long stem upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a large cluster of young fruit. As soon as these have set, the leaf drops off and another unfolds, exposing another young brood of buds. When these set, the process is repeated until there are nine or ten circles of young bananas, and when complete the bunch has nearly a hundred bananas, and the stalk never has to be replanted. It requires less attention and produces more than any plant known.
If the coffee plant was allowed to grow with its own sweet will, it would become a tree thirty feet high, but then the berry would be hard to gather, so it is topped and pruned so as to spread laterally. The leaf is a shining evergreen, the flower is a snowy white star with the odor of jassamines, and the fruit is a bright red, turning to purple when ripe. The fruit looks much like a cherry and tastes as well, but this is not for what it is cultivated. Within the berry are two kernels or seeds with their flat sides adjoining, and enclosed in a thin pericarp. The fruit is spread in the sun to dry, and the outer surface is shriveled to a pulp, when it is removed by the hand. The pericarp or thin husk still remains, and this is removed by being broken between rollers and winnowed, and the coffee berry is ready for market. It must be shipped alone as it will absorb any and all odors with which it comes in contact, and a cup of coffee with a Limburger aroma is not a desired innovation. The Mexican prides himself on the superiority of his coffee bean, and all travelers praise the article as drunk a la Mexicana.