On the docks so near, but apparently so far, is lying or sitting a dark-faced, peaked-hatted, white-trousered race with one tall, white-skinned, white-clad figure standing out—our consul, evidently come to meet us. Captain Smith told me that in the old days navigators got into Vera Cruz by the picturesque means of steering so that the tower of the Church of San Francisco covered the tower of the cathedral.
I was standing by him (it was his ninety-ninth entrance into Vera Cruz harbor) just as we passed the lone palms on the flat, sandy island, and he heaved a sigh of relief. In addition to the sandy islands and the lonely palms were blackened ribs of various ships that did not get into port. These things and the blur of heat confusing the outlines of the city into a mass of white, pink, and green, with a hint of a lustrous mountain form on a far horizon, are what I see as we sit here ready to step ashore into the unknown.
Mexico City, May 6th, noon.
Hôtel de Genève, a stone's-throw from the Embassy.
We got in early, at 7.30, and I did not feel, driving through the broad streets with their wash of Indian color, as one often does entering strange cities in the early morning: "Why, oh, why have I come? What am I doing here?"
There seemed abundant justification, if one could only get at it; some personal pointing of the finger of a generally impersonal fate. It's all very strange to both the psychical and physical being. N. went early to present himself to the ambassador. We had purposely not telegraphed our arrival. Elim is out with Gabrielle, and I am rather limp and listless after the sleepless night, which was an unforgetable rising up, up, up, with a ringing in the ears, through an exotic, potential sort of darkness.
My last word was from the boat, posted at the consulate. Mr. Canada, our calm, sensible, silver-haired, blue-eyed consul, welcomed us at Vera Cruz, piloted us quickly through the furnace of the customs, across an equally hot interval of sand and cobblestone to the dim, cool consulate, where a strong, unexpected breeze was blowing in at the sea-windows.
Then ensued a great telegraphing to and fro to know if the line, the only one rumored to be intact to Mexico City, were really open and safe. Other encouraging rumors, such as the cutting of the water and light supplies of Mexico City by the revolutionaries, were rife. But, not fancying a marooning in Vera Cruz, we decided "If it were done, 'twere well 'twere done quickly."
Half an hour before the train started, with babe, baggage, and maid safely on board, we took a little turn about the streets. A blessed blue darkness was falling, all that glaze of heat was gone, and the note of color proved to be little low, pink houses with a great deal of green shutter and balcony. We went as far as the Plaza, drawn by the sound of some really snappy music. Indians, mantilla-covered, white-clad women, little children in various stages of undress, and a foreigner or two smoking, were sitting or walking about in the palm-planted square, and under some arcades people were eating and drinking. The domed and belfried cathedral was only a dark mass against the sky, but all the same I deeply knew that it was the tropics, the Spanish tropics. Thus has many a one debarked in a tropical port, and there is nothing at all extraordinary about it, except one's own feeling.
As the train moved out of the station every man had his revolver or his rifle ready at hand, and there was a great wiping and clicking and loading going on. The colored porter and a young man reading the Literary Digest gave, however, home notes of security.
It wasn't one of those nights when you "lie down to pleasant dreams." As I put my head out of the window at one of the dark stops the scent of some sickeningly sweet unknown flower fell like a veil over my face. There was a hollow sound of the testing of the wheels. Torches and lanterns cut the darkness, so that I got suggestions of unfamiliar silhouettes, as a peaked hat or a flap of a cape or a bayonet caught the light. Soldiers were guarding the bridges and trestle-works, which seemed endless.