Our consul, Mr. Haskell, and his wife came in later to tea. Their house is on another sand-ridge. After a last pleasant chat about our affairs, their affairs, and Mexican affairs we departed for our train in a great darkness that the stars made no impression on, the wind still tearing down the sandy streets. I was sorry not to visit the breakwaters—rompeolas, they call them—but would probably have been blown overboard.
From the veranda I could see ships that had come from Morning Lands, riding at anchor, and later the sun went down in quiet majesty over the great, flat waters of the Pacific. I was so near the Atlantic that I thought of Humboldt's expression of "tearing the Isthmus apart, as the pillars of Hercules had been torn in some great act of nature," and Revillagigedo's[29] dream of a canal joining the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Mr. Buchanan said the first authentic mention of the Isthmus was in a conversation between Montezuma and Cortés, as to the source of the quantities of gold the Spaniards saw. Cortés, who was of an inquiring turn of mind at any mention of the shining stuff, sent Pizarro, and then Diego de Ordaz (he who tried to ascend Popocatepetl, and got a volcano added to his crest), to investigate, coming here himself after the rebuilding of Mexico City, en route to Honduras. He received a grant of the whole territory round about—"Las Marquesadas," as they are still called, after his title, Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca (Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca).
This morning there is still a great rattling of the windows and the doors, but not a sign of gnat or mosquito. I must arise and further investigate isthmian life. The huacamaia in the fig-tree has been making himself heard since dawn. I knew that if I did not tell you of Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz now, you would never hear, and I think what those names have meant to you during the years. It's all a memory of drifting sands, women as straight as their own palm-trees, slim, naked boys, fierce wind, and, in the harbor, the great port works, built by foreign energy and capital.
January 14th.
Going up, up, with a ringing in my ears out of the "blazing tropics" into the Tierra Templada. I am traveling with a parrot in a cage, and a nondescript little animal called, I think, a tajon, in a box with slats! After a very cursory survey last night, it seemed to belong to the 'coon family. I (who wish all animals well, but not too near) dimly apprehend the Mérida family on the "Ward Line" traveling with their parrot, when I consider that I was put onto the Pullman last night in a thick, inky, tropical darkness, with a parrot in a cage, and a tajon in a box with slats. The amiable colored porter is looking after them in the baggage-car, and the back veranda with the oleanders, beyond the dining-room, is their ultimate destination. I say nothing of the parting; Aunt L. has promised to come soon.
The glorious Pico de Orizaba has just shown its lovely white head between two dissolving blue ridges. Last night I reread Le Journal d'Amiel, which, with Monsieur Le Coq, I picked up as I was leaving the house. As up-to-date in the jungle as anything would be.
XVII
Gathering clouds—"Tajada" the common disease of republics—Reception at Chapultepec—Madero in optimistic mood—His views of Mexico's liabilities to America
January 17th.