CORDOVA AND THE PEAK OF ORIZABA. STATE OF VERA CRUZ.
Vol. I. To face p. 132.
The Mexican native miner is, in his way, expert and active, and with rude appliances performs marvels in the work of ore extraction. Halt a moment by yonder pit in the rocky slope. Look down: a notched pole descends, upon which you would hesitate to venture, giving access to the workings beneath. Yet, in a moment, perhaps, a peon, bearing on his back an enormous load of rock in a hide or sack, will ascend from the bowels of the earth, panting and groaning—we shall hear the noise of his breathing before we see him. He will cast his load at our feet, and from it will roll the gleaming quartz and pyrites, with perhaps the red of the rosicler, or rich oxide ore of silver, or the yellow ochres of the decomposed gold-bearing sulphides, more readily prepared by Nature for treatment and winning of the yellow metal. Or he may bear it to the stream-bed, there to treat it in some primitive stone mill.
Otherwise we may visit huge modern mills where hundreds of stamps are clanging and engines are winding and furnaces are burning, for a host of these exist throughout the land, though disorder and revolution may have suspended their operations.
Many curious products of the vegetable world attract our eyes. Behold yonder stupendous cactus-trees—the organo cactus, whose symmetrical spiny branches like a giant candelabrum, weighing perhaps tons, with their mass of sappy foliage, arise from a single stem, which could be brought down by a stroke of a machete, or wood-knife—that formidable implement or weapon (made perhaps in Birmingham) which the Mexican peon loves to wield or use. Look at the marvellous giant leaves of the juicy maguey, or agave, as long as a man, and see the peon insert his siphon to the heart of the plant to draw forth its sap, which he blows into the goatskin on his back, and from which he will presently make his pulque. This plant, the great American aloe, comes into flower and dies in a few years. It exhausts itself in flowering. In England we call it the century plant, for the exotic lingers long in the unfavourable climate, and with difficulty puts forth its blossoms at all. There, too, are hedges and circas of prickly-pear, or nopal, which yield the delicious wild fig—the cactus familiar to the traveller in the Holy Land and Syria, whence it was taken from Mexico.
In the coastal lands, as before remarked, the feathery coconut-palm waves over the villages, and the elegant leaves of the banana form refreshing groves, and the cacao yields its stores of chocolate. Lovers of this sweetmeat might hear the name of Mexico in gratitude indeed, for is not the very name and product of Aztec origin—the chocolatl of the early folk here? In the tropic forests and plantations the beautiful rubber, the Castilloa elastica-tree, rears its stately foliage, and here, again, are we not indebted to Mexico? Remember it, ye lovers of lawn tennis. For when the early Spaniards arrived they found the Mexicans playing tennis, with balls of rubber, in those curious courts whose ruins still remain in the jungles of Yucatan.
Again, yonder flies the wild turkey. Was he not the progenitor of that noble bird which comes upon our Christmas tables? Here, too, is the zenzontl; or mocking-bird, and a host of gorgeous winged creatures besides.
Through many a desert range and over many a chain of hills, violet in the distance, alluring and remote; past many a sacred well or hill marked by a cross, hard by the paths worn by the generations of bare or sandalled feet we may pass; and here, perchance, by some spring stands a startled native maid, her olla, or great water-pitcher, on her shoulder—stands in classic but unwitting pose. Or through the heat a mounted vaquero rides upon his attenuated mule or horse—for the equine race works hard and eats little here, but bit, spur and the bridle are his till the day he leaves his bones upon the trail—and, "Buenos dias, señor," with doffed hat the horseman gives us as he passes, with ever-ready Mexican courtesy to the foreigner; or he did so until of recent times, when, for reasons we need not here dilate upon, the foreigner has come to be regarded with anything but friendship.
There was always a charm about this old land of Mexico; there still is, despite its recent turbulent history. Small wonder that foreigners in increasing numbers loved to make their life in its quaint towns, to take up land and industry within it.