In connection with the making of the "cut" and the canals winding through and between the lakes are ancient, sad tales of forced Indian labor, drivings, exposures, and deaths; a sort of mita where each had to lend not only a hand, but often give a life. In the old days the viceroys made annual visits to Huehuetoca, lasting several days, conducted with regal splendor.
Nature seemed inconceivably gentle and beautiful there, with its vistas of translucent hills, all gradations of green and gray and blue softly rolling, meeting the eye and falling away. The volcanoes were of clearest white in the pure air, and the shining valley was a gem set within it all. We stopped by a delightful old bridge with its battered viceregal coat of arms, a relic of the ancient post-road to Zacatecas, over which a silver stream flowed into the Casa de Moneda (Mint) in Mexico City, to flow again in shining piastres across the ocean to Spain.
I suppose I will be sorry I didn't examine the "cut" a little more carefully, but the day was such a flood of soft light that details were quite swept away, so tant pis for Huehuetoca. As it was, we didn't get back to town till nearly three o'clock, when we repaired to the Automobile Club where "Martinis," sandwiches and fruits, partaken of on the veranda, restored us, and we started out again to San Angel.
A perfect afternoon, no sign of rain, and anything as opaque as a house seemed unspeakably repugnant to our souls. At San Angel we wandered about in a deserted garden-like orchard. Roses, heliotrope, and lilies mingled with fig, quince, apricot, peach, apple, and pear trees, and soft crumbling pink walls inclosed them all. Beyond were more beautiful blue hills linked to those of the morning, and now swimming in the afternoon haze the volcanoes towering above in a splendor of mother-of-pearl.
These old Mexican gardens are beautiful beyond words, but I think one must feel the magic of them in the flesh—not out of it—to know the full enchantment. Later we went into the inn, once a great monastery, now transformed into a "hotel with all modern conveniences," as the prospectus says, and where, for a moment, I thought of going when we first arrived.
Some of its ancient beauty is left; old chests and ecclesiastical chairs, and long, carved refectory tables fill the corridors, and pictures of saints and priors hang on the thick walls. There is a charming patio surrounded by cloisters, where monks once walked, saying their breviaries and their beads, and where now tables are placed from which tourists renew and strengthen the flesh.
Above is a terrace bounded by a lacy, intertwining design of grayish-pink balcony. In the center of the court is an oval double-basined fountain, with a little palm planted in the middle of the top one, and water-lilies in the lower one. Masses of crimson rambler were in their last luxuriance, and shining lemon and orange trees, with fruit thick upon them, grew in the little flower-beds. There is a large, new, glass-inclosed room where the proprietor, quite a character, likes to have his patrons go. A corner of the old refectory was sacrificed to do this modernizing, but we had the tea served at a table in the patio, and watched the patch of blue sky get pink and the colors of the flowers darken. When we finally turned homeward in an indigo-colored world it was to find the volcanoes like two great flaming torches, casting strange lights upon the dark-blue earth over which we sped. Nothing but night could have induced us to leave the beauty of it all for brick-and-plaster man-made dwellings.
June 27th.
Professor Mark Baldwin and Mr. Butler came for lunch—and very pleasant. The application of the American mentality to the elusive Mexican equation is always a more or less stimulating process, and one generally feels comfortably, somewhat smugly, superior in spite of the fact that one never gets beyond the X. Professor Baldwin sent me his book, The Individual and Society, made up of lectures given at the university here, and dedicated to Ezechiel Chavez, Sub-Secretary of Public Instruction. It is most interesting and I am posting it with this.
June 29th.
Peter and Paul's Day. After which our beloved friend used to leave Rome.