About four o'clock, when we were driving to the landing, the town began to wake up. There was much coming and going of a many-colored population, with the dark note dominating, and much whistling and humming, and many knowing-looking, pretty, flashing-eyed, very young girls were walking about. We had been refreshed with one of the national beverages—shredded pineapple in powdered ice—most delicious, before leaving the Legation. It helped us over the blaze of water to the Monterey.
After getting back I walked about the deck, watching the beautiful little harbor filled with all sorts and conditions of ships, hailing from the four winds of the earth. The Kronprinzessin Cecilie, with the new German minister to Mexico aboard, was just going out of the harbor, and I was shown where they were busy dredging for the Maine. A part of her historic form was to be seen and "gave to think."
About six o'clock fiery clouds began to pile themselves up in the heavens with a lavishness I am unaccustomed to. One could not tell where the sun was actually setting. The whole horizon was red and pink and saffron and vermilion, and the rose-tinted Cabaña fortress and Morro Castle cut sharply into it. The waters of the harbor slowly became a magnificent purple, and as the ships began to hang their masthead lights, and the throb of coming night was over everything, we steamed out. For long after we could see the jeweled lights of the lovely isle. So far, so good.
We have a day at Progreso, and we are planning to go ashore to visit Mérida, the famous old capital of Yucatan, and evidently most interesting. The accounts in Terry's Guide are quite alluring. It was founded on the remains of the ancient Mayan city, and has a celebrated cathedral built by one of the men who came over with Cortés, and still filled with good old things. The description of Montejo's house, with its door flanked on each side by the stone figure of a Spanish knight with his feet on the head of a Mayan Indian, shows what that conqueror thought of the situation.
Captain Smith, very rotund and quite blasé about the thrills of passengers, who has not been ashore at Mérida for three decades, though he passes by many times a year, recommended us to stay on the boat, saying Mérida was always "hotter than Tophet," too hot to see anything. "I know," he added. "I have seen 'them' go and seen 'them' return."
Some spectacled German travelers quite enlivened the deck to-day. When they first hove in sight I thought they were professors or scientific men of some sort, each having a large, flat valise under his arm. The valises, according to the modest yet piercing glance I cast, proved, however, to be filled with underpinnings for the female form divine, that they are going to introduce into Yucatan—coarse embroidery and lace-trimmed articles, with machine-stitching you could see the length of the deck, and both men simply dripped with samples. Dots, stripes, and checks, with the prices attached, seemed to be their whole existence.
Awhile ago, however, the largest and most florid one leaned against the railing under the warm starry sky, as we steamed through a phosphorescent sea, and sang Walther's "Preislied" in a beautiful tenor voice, with the purest, smoothest phrasing. The other, regretting at intervals that he had not brought his geige with him, hummed a delightful second part to Wie ist es möglich dann dass ich dich lassen kann. It was all as natural as breathing, and as close.
May 4th.
Between Progreso and Vera Cruz.
The voyage is drawing to an end. A peace which doesn't pass understanding has fallen on my part of the ship as the Mérida family and their rainbow luggage were taken off to the sound of the shrieks of the parrot, the screams of the family, and endless running back to get things.
We did not go ashore, after all, as we had planned. From the direction of Mérida came a strange heat enveloping like a garment, a heat unknown to me, and a dazzling glaze of light, which seemed to bore holes through the eyes. Later on at sunset, red as blood, there was a spongy crimson ambiency about each figure on deck.