Wednesday, August 10, 1921.
Two days, one night and a half night getting from Mexico to Tampico. We had a “salon” and so were not too uncomfortable. Personally I rather enjoy the incident of travel and in Mexico one usually does not travel without adventure. Usually one derails. On this occasion we just stopped (with a great jerk) for a couple of hours because our engine’s piston-rod broke. It was a bleak and dusty place where maize grew and not much fun. We next stopped because an oil box was on fire, but that did not delay us greatly, finally we stopped two more hours because the train in front had derailed. We walked up the line to see what had happened, the engine was back on the rails, and a good many Indians were at work mending the track. I looked at the lines with an ignorant unprofessional eye, and then I asked questions ...: Should the wooden sleepers be rotten and splitting? Should the screws be entirely missing where two lines were riveted together? Should “pins” stick up half an inch? and then I watched the efforts of four men at the “points” trying to close the lines. They pulled at levers, and finally hammered the line into place! This Railway is owned by American shareholders, and the Mexican Government has not given it back yet, because it cannot pay the damages for the deterioration it has suffered at their hands. Meanwhile it deteriorates more every day, and I suppose each train that passes renders the track more dangerous than the last. During this interval, Dick, who found a pool in a ditch went into bathe. It was a muddy pool where cattle drink. Dick took off all his clothes and swam in it. Afterwards the sun quickly dried him and on our way back to the train we called on an Indian lady who stood at her home door. She was old. Her home was made transparently of irregular bamboo sticks, oddments of dried palmleaf and some sacking. The roof was thatched, the floor was mud. Two planks, raised each on four wooden poles with a piece of matting on the top were the beds for herself and her husband. A primitive cooker, some terra-cotta cooking utensils, and “Our Lady of Guadalupe” in one corner, were the entire contents. Whatever money they earned they spent neither on clothes nor house. Perhaps it went entirely on food. I have seen worse in Ireland. But in a country where the climate is kind (we were some considerable distance from Mexico City) a thatched roof is almost all one needs. Life under those conditions offers little, but demands less. From this place the train went rapidly down hill, winding back and forth round the mountain sides. We were in the rear coach and could see our engine going round hairpin curves, and disappearing into tunnels! The views, which were a mix up of Switzerland and Italy, excelled both. The most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Too beautiful to take in. One felt humbled and awed. At one place, as the train came round the bend of a mountain, we came in sight of a river that cascaded for about half a mile into the valley below. I exclaimed: “Why can’t one live in the beautiful spots of the Earth, instead of seeing them as one passes by?” And I decided that I would not, if I could help it, leave Mexico until I had managed somehow to return to this place to live for a month, however primitively, if it were possible to arrange it.
At all the stations where we stopped there was the ever present crowd of vendors offering excellent cold chicken, hard boiled eggs, hot fried potatoes, cakes and breads of every description, of all kinds of fruits, for almost nothing,—coffee, pulque, lemonade and beer to drink. At some of the mining stations one could buy small polished opals for a peso each (if one bargained) carved and colored walking sticks, Indian made toys and doll’s furniture. Baskets of good shape woven with colors that were a real temptation! Blind beggars played music and sang songs. At one station, a blind boy with a harp was led around by his mother (a grey-haired Indian woman of great dignity of countenance) he played and sang about 500 verses of the Peons ballad to Villa! Towards the end we all knew the chorus well enough to join in, and the train finally unable to wait any longer steamed away, leaving him still monotonously singing the ballad to Villa!
When the train stopped out in the wild country side, the track was alive with myriad butterflies of every size and color, especially brimstone ones. It looked like an allegorical picture of Spring.
We arrived in Tampico about two A.M. on the second night.
Thursday, August 11, 1921. Tampico.
When I came down to breakfast in the morning, I did not recognize the quiet empty Hotel that I had entered in the small hours of the night. The hall was thronged with white suited, sombrero’d men, gun on hip. They were every type and age. There was not a single woman in the crowd. I thought I had dropped into a film play. Looking out into the sunlit streets small buildings met my gaze, an open fronted restaurant opposite, and barber shops full of men reclining in dental chairs at the mercy seemingly of someone engaged in cutting their throats. Dick asked me nervously, “What are they doing to that poor man...?” and I explained they would do it to him some day. Everything seemed open to the street. It was hot, divinely hot. Sitting still in the shade with no exertion, one had to mop one’s forehead. For the first time in my life I am comfortably warm, and Dick half clad, and protesting against the condition of his body has nevertheless recovered his color, his appetite, and his mischievous eye. In the evening we took a tram (overcrowded with a motley collection of workers) to a place half an hour away, called “Miramar.” Here Dick and Louise bathed in the surf. I felt I had been very superior (instead of lazy) for looking on, when they came out black with the oil which floats on the water. They had to take gasoline shower at the bath house to get clean! The sunset sky was very lovely, but the little wavelets that break on the beach, instead of being ripples of foam, were heavy dark and sluggish.
I have said that everything is open to the street: I include at night a quarter of the town where ladies sit outside their open lit up doorways, displaying a big bedded small room inside. These houses are almost standardised, varying only in the manner of their lights. Some preferring pink, to the cruder unshaded electric globe. From within the dancing saloons came the sound of music. Ladies fanned themselves at the door. Some had black hair and faces powdered ashen white. But the prevalent taste seemed for auburn hair, some color, and a bright pink dress. One or two in night attire were completely and transparently silhouetted in their doorways. The streets in this district being thronged, there is perfect traffic superintendence, and the tramcar has its terminus in this very midst. Everything in this respect being made easy for the tourist.
From the first moment I felt Tampico is a town for men.
Friday, August 12, 1921. Tampico.