This morning we started out in good season for a Sabbath run, shaking the election dust from our feet, or rather wheels, skimming out through the shining city, which yesterday afternoon had had what may be its last good bath till next June.
We went out the broad Tlalpan road, black with motors full of golfers, and when we got to a place called Tepepa began the magic ascent of the Ajusco hills between us and Cuernavaca, with a continual looking back. For at our feet was spread the lovely "vale of Anahuac," like some kingdom laid out in a great chart of emerald, turquoise, and jasper.
An unexpected rain-cloud was threatening from over the western hills, and across the valley columns of light and shade continually passed and repassed. Every dome and spire of the city shone, but the hill of Chapultepec was black, distinct, and solitary, only the castle a white point. At one moment we found ourselves hanging over the lovely lake of Xochimilco, with its green, lush, sweet-water shores, and the verdant band of the lake of Chalco showed itself separated from the barren white tequesquite shores of Lake Texcoco only by a narrow strip of roadway.
The two Peñones and the hill of Guadalupe were sometimes dark and sometimes shining, and a far-off fringe of sapphire hills marked the valley's end. It was "Jerusalem the Golden," well worth sighing for.
At a place called Topilejo we found a church on a hillock by the side of the road, its large atrium up a row of grassy steps, entered by an old carved archway. Looking through it, we saw a strange sort of festival going on, having a decided Moorish touch.
What seemed to be kings were seated in a row of rush-bottomed stools. Gaudy crowns of gilded cardboard, or something stiff and glittering, crowned them, and about them were flung twisted capes, like the Arab burnoose, with the hood falling back. The play was proceeding con mucha calma except for a large Indian, evidently "stage manager," who was trying to bring about some sort of dénouement. Behind was the open church door. It was about twelve o'clock, and the last Mass had been said. A melancholy chanting proceeded from some Indians, their hands tied together, who stood in front of the "kings." It was all strange and unexpected on those heights.
The village on the other side of the road was in the sneezing and coughing throes of one of the bronchial epidemics so common in cold or damp weather in the hills. The children were scarcely covered; I can't bear to think of all the little brown backs and thighs in these cold waves. A dreadful, unrestrained-appearing person, in a battered hat and warm red zarape, looking as if he might have been the "father" of the village, towered above them all, everything about him bespeaking pulque. We decided that "song" was what he had given up.
Silent Indians, carboneros, inhabit these parts, and their fires could be seen high up on the wooded mountainsides. They were coming and going, bent, and almost hidden under great sacks of charcoal. We sped on till we got to a place called La Cima, the highest point, whence I wanted to make a dash for Cuernavaca, in spite of brigands, but the gentlemen and the chauffeur decided against it. Here was a huge stone cross, La Cruz del Marqués; solitary and moss-grown, it still stands, marking the boundary of lands once granted to Cortés by the crown, where he passed on the venturesome march to Mexico City from Cuernavaca.
I indulged my passion for Cortés by walking around the historic cross and picking an unfamiliar scarlet flower, while the men worried about Zapata and his brigand host, to whom these hills belong in 1911.
After some parleying we turned back. But beyond the hills lay the Hot Country, full to the south, its mysterious valleys filled with gorgeous blossoms, where vanilla, myrtle, jalap, cocoa, and smilax grow. Four hours down would have brought us into the fullness of its beauty, to lovely Cuernavaca, once the haunt of kings and emperors, where Cortés pondered on the insecurity of princely favor and planned his expedition to the Mar del Sur.[16] Now it is the capital of Zapata, and shunned since a few months by anybody with anything on his person or anything negotiable in the shape of worldly station. A great bore. My sentiments were all for pressing on with the added thrill of danger.