Tuesday, August 16, 1921. Corona Camp.
My bed facing the open window on the river, where the sun was rising, waked me at five. I got up stiffly and dressed at once. Found my host on the verandah and had a little conversation with him. He was a Swiss, and we talked French. Round his neck was a great scar. I learned afterwards that he had been hung by order of Carranza and was cut down just in time before he could die. We breakfasted at six and our host drove us to the railway station, three kilometres away, where we caught the 6:30 train full of workingmen; among whom in appearance we seemed quite in keeping. Dick was rather sleepy and said he felt sick, but otherwise showed no signs of the strain of the night before. He may have been carried at most two kilometers, for the rest of 18 he had walked it gallantly, and (after the sun had gone down) uncomplainingly. His powers of endurance before his sixth birthday made me extremely proud, and very hopeful of him.
Wednesday, August 17, 1921.
Got up at 5:30 A. M. Waked Louise and Dick, breakfasted at 6:15 and then proceeded in a car to catch the seven o’clock train. We started a little late and half way the car stopped in a perfectly deserted street. The panic and agitation in which I finally arrived at the station, to catch the only Mexico City express of the day is indescribable. My destination was not Mexico, but Micos, about ten hours away where I had contrived (as I planned) to camp by the falls. All the camp gear had gone on ahead, but waiting for me at the seven o’clock train were my four friends. Each of them director, superintendent, or some occupation of the sort in a Tampico firm. One an Irishman, one a Scotchman, one a Canadian and the other a Mexican. They were arranging for me, and organizing my camp, and joining it for a holiday. They greeted me at the station by the calming assurance that although it was seven o’clock, the train would not leave for an hour. As a matter of fact it did not start for two hours and a half. I had gotten up at five to catch a train that left at 9:30. Meanwhile we were turned out of our compartment while it was hermetically sealed and fumigated—the enforced legislation for every train from a bubonic plague district. Dick walked around in the pouring rain with a friend and bought a baby parrot without a cage. The flies were such as Tampico alone can boast. When we did start, the engine broke down six miles out. It was nightfall when we reached Micos, a primitive little country station, in the middle of a village street. Here we were met by one who had gone ahead to select our camp. He said he had not had time to get things fixed, and that meanwhile he was renting for us a house in the village. Leaving the others to go to the house I walked back along the railway line with the Irishman to view the falls, and select a site. It was not easy, as the bank goes sheer down from the railway to the falls and sheer up from the falls to the mountain top, both sides densely covered with virgin vegetation. In this place there are no roads, peasants load their donkeys and mules and drive them along the single file tracks. There are no churches. The Spaniards never penetrated into this wilderness, the blood of the people is pure undiluted Indian. The railway has brought to them whatever they know of civilization. At the top of a stony track leading down to the valley, two natives, man and wife, bade us “Buenos Noches.” We asked them where they lived. They pointed way down below to a thatched roof and in gallant native fashion “There is your house” they said to us, assuring us that if we pitched our camp there, we could get eggs, fresh milk, a child for Dick to play with, and moreover a boat to ferry the river. We took some cigarettes from them and walked back, reaching our village house after nightfall. It stood on a bank above the railway. It was, of course, unfurnished. Three beds had been put in one room for Dick, Louise and myself. The walls were of dried mud, whitewashed. The floor was of wet mud into which the legs of the bed sank unevenly. Our mosquito nets hung from a transparent ceiling of bamboo through which one could see the thatch. The next room was full of beds for our friends and across a patio, that was like the yard of a pig pen, we walked on duck boards to the kitchen and dining room. I slept with my front door wide open, the moon streaming in, the largest cockroach I have ever seen on the wall, and an upturned cube box next to me with my clock and Margaret’s photograph. The conditions were so novel and interesting that one forgot the discomfort. Every man in the next room (there was an open doorway over which I hung a sheet for privacy) snored like two men each. The village dogs held concert in the night and woke up all the cocks. Two trains came in to the station whistling and the mountains re-echoed. The insects made an unceasing sound, as of machinery, and at five the next morning I got up.
Thursday, August 18, 1921. Micos.
The village consists of a main street, mud houses, thatched roofs and three ‘open’ stores, a ‘cake shop’ and a drinking house. At the store I bought leather sandals, straw hats, scarlet neckerchief, red fringed sash, loosely woven scarlet wool material by the yard and a six shooter. While thus absorbed an Indian fell through the doorway onto the floor, drunk. His face was pathetically imbecile. He pawed the air and emitted noises and grunts like a frightened animal. The Storekeeper picked him up and led him gently out just so far as the cake store, and he tumbled headlong into that doorway.
In the mire of the street stood two immovable oxen, a burro, dogs, chickens, pigs and tied up a door was a black shiney nosed big eyed gazelle, it had been lassoed and captured in the woods.
It was a great day. The villagers were at their doors watching the packing of our stuff onto 16 mules; beds, matresses, stove, suit cases, stores. One mule gave a tremendous heave with his back and started off at full gallop down the street, scattering his pack on his way. He was caught and a red handkerchief tied over his eyes, a noose tied round his upper lip, and pulled tight, and he was repacked.
Dick rode a thin burro with a Mexican saddle and stirrups that looked like tin cans, two Indian boys accompanied him: one to pull the burro and the other to push it. With the baby parrot under my arm I walked ahead of the cavalcade for two miles along the railway track. We expected a good deal of trouble, but only one mule fell over the embankment with a bed on his back, and had to be dragged up on the end of a rope by another. How they ever did the journey down the rocky footpath through the wood into the valley without mishap is a miracle. But they fetched up at the riverside in perfect order and were there unloaded, while a bridge was being built to enable the men to carry the stuff across the rapids. This took time, but two palm tree trunks eventually spanned the rapids to a small island, and from there a dugout ferried us across to the big island, which is our camp.
At eight o’clock I went to bed dead tired, my bed was next to the tent flap, tied back so that the moon could shine in upon me, and I could look out and see the fire-flies. I fell asleep to the sound of water falls that roar like a great mill wheel on either side of the island.