At 12.50 I got home to find still larger crowds of Americans at the Embassy—orderly and polite, but deep anxiety was on every face; all realized the issue before them. At three o’clock I heard that we would be leaving about seven. So many people were coming in that I had no time to separate my things from the Embassy things, nor even to make any selections. Berthe was occupied in throwing various articles into open trunks and valises, some of value, some without. I don’t think she lost a pin. I didn’t get even to my big writing-desk, where I had sat for seven months. You can imagine all the things that were left there, the accumulations of these historic months. All my bibelots were left about the salon, the mantas and serapes, the signed photographs that have accompanied me for years, my beautiful old frames. But in the face of the national catastrophe, and the leaving of our people to God knows what, I seemed to lose all sense of personal possession or to feel that objects could have a value.
We have just passed Paso del Macho. Many people, motley groups, were standing near the train, crying “Viva la Independencia de Mexico!” Rowan says he wants to hear more “Mueran los Gringos!” We are about forty-five kilometers from Vera Cruz, and the heat, after the plateau, seems intense; though it is not disagreeable to feel the dissolving détente of the skin and nerves after the dry tenseness of many months at eight thousand feet.
Soledad, 1.15.
A blaze of heat, merciless, white. We find Mexican rifles stacked at intervals along the station platforms, and there are groups of young voluntarios looking proudly at their first guns or drawing long, cruel knives from their belts. Some are eating small, green limes, not nourishing at best, slashing at them with their machetes. The lack of a commissariat is what prevents the Mexican army from being in any way efficient. (Think of the full stomachs and comfortably shod feet of our men.) Flatcars with cannon and automobiles are on the sidings. General Gustavo Maass, whom I have not seen since our trip to Vera Cruz in January, is here in command. He will not prove efficient—a blue-eyed Mexican, wearing his sandy-gray hair in a German brush effect, can’t be.
4 o’clock.
We have passed Tejería, the last Mexican station; the sand-hills and spires of Vera Cruz will soon be distinguishable. I have just looked out the window, my eyes dim with tears. Far up the broken track the blessed white flag of truce can be seen approaching—our people, our men, coming for their own. Admiral Fletcher evidently got the telegram. Am writing these words on the bottom of a little bonbon-box, which afterward I will tuck into my hand-bag. Oh, the burning dreariness of this land! The hot, dry inhospitality of it! The Mexican officers of our escort are passing and repassing my door, with troubled, anxious, hot faces. It is a bitter pill, but I see no use in trying to sugar-coat it by conversation. They know my heart is heavy, too.
Later, on the margin of a page of the “Mexican Herald.”
Nelson has gone with the Mexican officers up the track to meet our men, and all are getting out of the train, standing in the rank, stiff grass by the track. God made the heaven and the earth....