The train, for instance, stops at a lonely station in a vast dun-colored plain, planted everywhere in straight, never-ending lines of maguey. At the foot of the bare mountains in the distance, and seen through a faint haze of dust, is the high white inclosure around the buildings of an hacienda with the tiled dome and towers of its private church glittering in the sunlight. Two antique, high-hung carriages with dusty leather curtains, each drawn by a pair of mules, are at one side of the station, and standing near by a neat mozo, with a smart straw sombrero (a Mexican hat, more than other hats takes on something of the nature of its owner), and a narrowly folded red sarape reposing—Heaven knows how; I can’t carry one that way—on his left shoulder, is holding three saddle horses. The antique carriages—they look as if they dated from the time of Maximilian, and probably do—have brought the hacendado, his imposing wife, two babies, three older children, a nurse for each baby, and two dressy, hatless young ladies, from the house to the train. One of the horses was ridden by a mozo who is to accompany the family on its travels (he, however, goes second class), the second brought the mozo who is to lead back the horse of the first, while the third—a finer animal who objects to trains and whose head has been left tightly checked for the benefit of the passengers—carried a slender young man, presumably the son, who has come to see the others off. Mamma is not yet middle-aged, but her figure—her waist line—is but a reminiscence; has passed in fact into Mexican history. She wears a heavy brown woolen skirt (the thermometer stands at about 92°), a rebozo twisted around her arms and across her back as if she were a lady Laocoon, and a shirt waist of white cashmere covered with large crimson polka dots; the kind of material that makes one feel as if a very methodical person had had the nose-bleed. Papa has on skin-tight trousers of shepherd’s plaid, a “boiled” shirt with a turned-over collar (clean—but they wilted on the drive), a plain black jacket that extends only a few inches below his belt, a flowing silk necktie of the peculiarly beautiful shade of scarlet one usually sees in the neckties of rurales, a small but businesslike revolver in a holster at his hip, and a shaggy, gray beaver sombrero embroidered around the brim in gold and silver flowers, weighing about two pounds and costing at least seventy-five or a hundred pesos. The older children—little girls—and the two dressy, hatless young ladies are in what might be called the Franco-Mexican style of traveling costume; thin summer dresses of bright pink and yellow and blue and white materials made with many little tucks and frills and ruffles, and adorned with narrow bands of coarse white lace applied in a rather irrelevant fashion with here and there a knot of soiled white satin ribbon. Besides a goodly number of venerable valises they have brought with them the usual collection of cardboard hat boxes and tenates (a kind of flexible basket without handles, made of matting). Some of their effects are informally wrapped in bath towels of pleasing hues. It takes much time, a whirlwind of talk and all the remaining space in the car, to stow away everybody and everything; then as the train moves from the station there is a shrill chorus of good-bys and a prolonged wiggling of fingers through the windows at the son on the platform.
As it is only two o’clock in the afternoon, they undoubtedly were fortified by an elaborate midday meal about an hour and a half before, but at the next station oranges are offered for sale, so papa through the window buys a dozen oranges and everybody, maids and all—except the youngest baby—eats one. A few stations farther on we pass through a kind of an oasis where flowers are grown for the market. Short sections of the trunk of a banana tree, hollowed out, stopped at both ends and filled with gardenias, are held up to the window. Everyone exclaims, “Oh qué bonitas!” and as they have more things now than they can take care of, mamma buys one of them and, after a short mental struggle, the elder of the dressy young ladies buys another.
“How fragrant they are!” you murmur as the sweet, opaque scent of the gardenias begins to join forces with the tobacco smoke and the lingering smell of the eleven oranges. Papa, delighted, at once picks out one of the largest flowers and hands it to you across the aisle. Your thanks are profuse and there is a moment of intensely interested silence while you smell it and put it in your button-hole. Then you ask mamma what they are called in Spanish, and after she tells you—repeating the name emphatically four or five times—she asks you if they grow in your country. You reply yes, but that they are expensive—costing in midwinter sometimes as much as a dollar gold apiece. This announcement creates a tremendous sensation on the part of everyone, as mamma didn’t pay a fifth of that sum for all of them. One of the dressy young ladies says she is going to count hers to see how much they would come to in the United States in midwinter; and now the bark of conversation having been successfully launched, you sail pleasantly along in it until the next station, where one of the three little girls interrupts with the exclamation that on the platform she sees some papayas. A papaya being a bulky, heavy fruit of irregular shape and the size of a large squash, papa naturally leans out of the window and acquires two—buying the second one, he explains, in case he should be disappointed in the flavor of the first. But before the opening of the papaya you excuse yourself and go into another car, for without a plate and a knife and a spoon, a papaya, like a mango, can be successfully managed only while naked in a bath tub. After it is all over, however, you return for more talk, and for days afterwards, if your destination happens to be the same, you and papa wriggle fingers at each other from passing cabs, and you and mamma and the two dressy young ladies (who still haven’t hats) bow as old friends. But about hotels——
They are, broadly speaking, of three kinds. First, the ordinary “best hotel” and next best hotel of the place, conducted by Mexicans who have gradually made concessions to progress until their establishments are equipped with electric lights, electric bells (sometimes), sanitary plumbing, wire-spring mattresses (or whatever they are called), some comfortable chairs in either the patio or the sala, and cooks whose dishes, although native in conception, are yet conservative in the matter of chile and lard. Secondly, there is the occasional hotel kept by an American family, whose advertisements emphasize the fact that here you will enjoy the delights of “American home cooking.” And, finally, there is what is known in Mexico as a mesón: a combination of lodging house for man and stable for his horses and mules.
The ordinary best and second-best hotels in Mexican towns I have grown to regard as exceedingly creditable and satisfactory places in which to abide. They are not luxurious; tiled floors, with a strip of carpet or matting at the bedside, calcimined walls without pictures, just sufficient furniture, and high, austere ceilings, are not our idea of luxury. But as long as they preserve their distinctly Mexican characteristics they are, contrary to the conventional idea of the country, above all, clean. I have rarely been in a Mexican hotel where the chambermaids (who are usually men) did not all but drive me insane with their endless mopping and dusting and scouring and polishing of my ascetic bedroom. When, however, as sometimes happens, the proprietor of the “best” hotel becomes desirous of upholstered chairs and carpets, it is well, I think, to patronize the still Mexican second best. Few things are more lovable than carpets and upholstery worn shabby by those we care for, but nothing is more squalid and repulsive than the evidence of unknown contacts paid for by the day or week. The hotels, as a rule, are of two stories built around a tiled patio, full of flowers and plants, and open to the sky. The more expensive rooms have windows looking upon the street, and in cold or gloomy weather have the advantage of being lighter and warmer than the others. In very hot weather, however, the cheap rooms—dim, windowless, and opening only on the patio—are sometimes preferable. Prices vary slightly in different places and at different seasons, but at their highest they are never really exorbitant, outside of the Capital. Board and lodging costs anywhere from two and a half to five pesos a day, according to the situation of your room, and, unlike European hotels, this includes everything. There are none of the extra charges for light, attendance, “covers,” and so on, that in Europe so annoy the American traveler. At one hotel at Cuernavaca, during the tourist season, rooms and board are as high as six pesos a day, but this lasts only a short time, and is, after all, not so ruinous as it sounds when you think of it as three American dollars rather than six Mexican pesos. For a peso or so less you can, if you wish, take a room at a hotel without board; but unless you happen to have friends in town who keep house, and with whom you constantly lunch and dine, there is no advantage in doing so, as the best restaurant is invariably that of the best hotel. When I said that there were no restaurants in Mexico, I merely meant that while the various native fondas and cafés where meals are served are sometimes clean and adequate, they do not offer any of those attractions that in the cities of Europe, and a very few cities of the United States, tempt one from one’s ordinary existence. There is in Mexico no “restaurant life” (for want of a better term), no lavishly appointed interiors where you may go to watch well-dressed people spending a great deal of money, listening to music, and eating things they are unaccustomed to at home.
The meals in Mexican hotels are: Breakfast, from about seven to half past nine, consisting of coffee, chocolate, or tea, and pan dulce or rolls. Eggs and meat are extra. To a few teaspoonfuls of excessively strong coffee is added a cupful of boiling milk. Mexican coffee is excellent in itself, but the native habit of overroasting it makes its flavor harsh. As milk is almost always boiled in Mexico, cream is unknown. Chocolate is good everywhere, although it is difficult at first to reconcile yourself to the custom, in some places, of flavoring it with cinnamon. Persons who like tea for breakfast, or at any time, should travel with their own.
At dinner—from noon to about half past two—you are given soup, sometimes fish, eggs always (cooked in any way you please), meat (beefsteak or roast beef), chicken (or another kind of meat), with salad if you ask for it, frijoles (a paste of black beans), a dessert (preserves of some sort, rarely pastry), fruit, and coffee. All of which sounds rather better than it ever is. The dinner is served in courses, and in some hotels you are expected to use the same knife and fork throughout. You never have any desire to eat or, after the first day or so, to try everything. The soups are well flavored and nourishing, the eggs are always fresh, the frijoles preserve a certain standard throughout the country, which you appreciate if you like frijoles, either the chicken or one of the meats is as a rule possible—and after all, soup, eggs, frijoles, another vegetable, a meat, lettuce, and fruit ought to be enough. The hard rolls you get everywhere are of good quality and well baked. Butter, fortunately, is almost nonexistent, as it is very bad. The only edible butter in Mexico is made in Kansas, and can be bought in convenient one-pound packages at the leading grocery stores in the City of Mexico, and also in some of the smaller towns. There is no objection whatever to your taking your own tea and butter, or anything else that contributes to your comfort, into the dining room of Mexican hotels. Except during the hours at which meals are served, you cannot get anything to eat. Persons who are accustomed to some form of refreshment before going to bed should keep it in their rooms.
Supper—from half past six until about nine o’clock—is, except for the omission of eggs, very much like dinner, although somewhat less elaborate in small places. (I employ the terms dinner and supper rather than luncheon and dinner, as they are the literal translations of the Spanish words comida and cena.)
“Don’t monkey with Mexican microbes! A stitch in time may save six weeks in the hospital! Let the other fellow run the risk of typhoid, if he wishes to!”—so runs, in part, the advertisement of a certain bottling company in Mexico. The fact that the advice is primarily intended to increase the sales of the firm in question does not render it the less sound. Mexicans are peculiarly ignorant of the principles of sanitation, and careless of them even when informed. Typhus, typhoid, and smallpox are prevalent in the City of Mexico all the year round, although, either through indifference or a reluctance to admit it, cases are not reported in the newspapers until the frequency of funerals begins to cast a universal gloom. Impure water may or may not have any bearing upon typhus and smallpox; upon typhoid, however, it has. In many of the smaller towns the water, brought as it is in pipes from a distance, is pure and healthful, but you cannot be sure of just what happens to it after it has arrived. It is far more prudent, unless you are keeping house and can boil water, to drink a pure, bottled mineral water. The most convenient—for the simple reason that it can be bought at almost any bar from end to end of the country—is the Tehuacan water (Agua Tehuacan) bottled at Tehuacan by several companies; the San Lorenzo, the Cruz Roja, and El Riego, the chemical analysis of all the waters being about the same. It is light, refreshing, absolutely pure, and bottled by machinery with every precaution. The water from the Cruz Roja spring, in fact, is not even exposed to the air from the time it enters a pipe underground to when it is forced, a moment later, into a bottle and sealed.
Few beds in Mexico have arrived at the sybaritic luxury of feather pillows. The national pillow is a narrow, long, unsympathetic contrivance tightly stuffed with hair, or something more unyielding. You should travel with your own pillow, and also with a blanket or a steamer rug. Also, few hotels have facilities for bathing. To take a bath, one goes out to a bathing establishment (there are always several), where hot and cold water, clean towels, and soap are plentiful and cheap. As the Anglo-Saxon cold bath has little relation to cleanliness, and is merely either an affectation on the part of persons who don’t enjoy it or a pleasant shock to the system on the part of those who do, it may be dispensed with or taken in a basin.