We hope the Louisiana went to Tuxpan last night, and that she will shell out the rebels there who are in full enjoyment of destruction of life and property. It would give them all a salutary scare. There are huge English oil interests there. The owners are all worried about their property and generally a bit fretful at the uncertainty. Will we protect their interests or will we allow them to? Our government gave warning that it would not consider concessions granted during the Huerta régime as binding on the Mexicans. It makes one rub one’s eyes.
Later.
Things Mexican seem approaching their inevitable end. At three o’clock to-day N. showed Rabago the telegram from Washington about the probable breaking off of diplomatic relations. He turned pale and said he would arrange an interview with the President for six o’clock. At six o’clock N., accompanied by Mr. Lind, presented himself at the Palace. Neither President nor secretary was there. Rabago finally telephoned from some unknown place that he was looking for Huerta, but could not find him. Some one suggested that he might at that time be closeted with the only “foreigners” he considered really worth knowing—Hennessy and Martell.
Mr. Lind came for a moment to the drawing-room to tell me that he leaves to-night at 8.15. He thinks we will be following him before Saturday—this being Wednesday. The continual sparring for time on the part of the government and a persistently invisible President have got on his nerves. He hopes, by his sudden departure, to bring things to a climax, but climaxes, as we of the north understand them, are hard to bring about in Latin America. The one thing not wanted is definite action. Mr. Lind said, in a convincing manner, as he departed, that he would arrange for rooms for us in Vera Cruz. He knows it is N.’s right to conduct any business connected with the breaking off of relations, which he seems sure will be decided on at Washington, and he realizes that N. has borne the heat and burden of the Mexican day. He seems more understanding of us than of the situation, alas! I said Godspeed to him with tears in my eyes. Vague fears of impending calamity press upon me. How is this mysterious and extraordinary people fitted to meet the impending catastrophe—this burning of the forest to get the tiger?
An American citizen, Krauss, has been put without trial in the Prison of Santiago, where he has come down with pneumonia. N. has sent a doctor to him with d’Antin, who has been for years legal adviser and translator to the Embassy, and is almost, if not quite, a Mexican. They found the American in a long, narrow corridor, with eighty or ninety persons lying or sitting about; there was scarcely stepping-room, and the air was horrible; there were few peons among the prisoners, who were mostly men of education—political suspects. One aspect of a dictatorship!
Garza de la Cadena, the man I wrote you about (who seized the priest at the altar and threw him into the street in Gomez Palacio), was shot yesterday, by his own rebels, for some treachery—a well-deserved fate. He was taken out at dawn near Parral, placed against an adobe wall, and riddled with bullets.
This morning I was reading of the breaking off of our relations with Spain in 1898. Most interesting, and possibly to the point. History has a way of repeating itself with changes of names only. I wonder will the day come when N.’s name and Algara’s figure as did General Woodford’s and Polo de Bernabé’s? Various horrors take place here, but no one fact, it seems to me, can equal the dwindling of the population of the “green isle of Cuba” (indescribably beautiful as one steams along its shores), which dropped from 1,600,000 to 1,000,000 in ten months—mostly through hunger. Mothers died with babes at their breasts; weak, tottering children dug the graves of their parents. Good God! How could it ever have happened so near to us? However, they are all safe—“con Dios.”
Now we take a hurried dinner, at which Mr. Lind, Captain B., and Ensign H. had been expected, and then N. goes “big-game hunting” again. It bids fair to be a busy night.
V
Uncertain days—The friendly offices of diplomats—A side-light on executions—Mexican street cries—Garza Aldape resigns—First official Reception at Chapultepec Castle—The jewels of Cortés.