THE START
On the trip out we had mules. They were black and diminutive. To me a Mexican mule seems to be the Chinaman of the dumb animals. They are enduring beyond comprehension, and they have minds which are patient, yet alert and full of guile. The Mexican coacheros have their mules trained, as bankers do their depositors in our land. They back up against a wall and stand in line while one by one they are harnessed. In the early morning I liked to see the lantern-light glorify the little black creatures against the adobe wall, and hear the big coachero talk to his beasts in that easy, familiar way and with that mutual comprehension which is lost to those of the human race who have progressed beyond the natural state. This coachman was an enormous man—big, bony, and with Sullivanesque shoulders, gorilla hands, and a blue-black buccaneer beard; and but for a merry brown eye and a mouth set in perpetual readiness to grin he would have belonged to the “mild-mannered” class, to which, as a matter of fact, he did not. It is written in the lease of his land that he shall drive the Bavicora ranche coach—it’s fief-service, it’s feudal, and it carries one back. If the little mules and ponies did not stand in the exact six feet of ground where he wanted them, he grabbed hold of them and moved them over to the place without a word, and after being located they never moved until he yanked or lifted them to their place at the pole. The guards were Mexican Indians—hair cut à la Cosaques, big straw hats, serapes, and munitions of war. William, whose ancestors had emigrated from the Congo region before the war, was to cook. He was also guide, philosopher, and friend to Mr. H. and myself in this strange land, and he made all things possible by his tact and zeal in our behalf. William knows every one in the State of Chihuahua, and he is constantly telling us of the standing and glittering position of the inhabitants of the mud huts which we pass, until it sounds like that ghastly array of intelligence with which a society reporter quickens the social dead in a Sunday newspaper.
At night we stay at the different ranches, and, rolling ourselves up in our blankets, we lie down on the mud floors to sleep. It’s not so bad after one becomes used to it, albeit the skin wears off one’s femur joint. The Mexican hen is as conscientious here as elsewhere, and we eat eggs. The Mexican coffee is always excellent in quality, but the people make it up into a nerve-jerking dose, which will stand hot-water in quantities. Nearly all travellers are favorably impressed with the frejoles and tortillas of the country. The beans are good, but as old General Taylor once said, “They killed more men than did bullets in the Mexican War.” Of the tortillas I will say, as my philosophical friend, Mr. Poultney Bigelow, says of the black bread of the Russian soldier, “It’s a good strong food to march and fight on,” which can in no way be a recommendation of its palatability.
The coach starts by gray dawn, and we are aroused at an early hour. The white men take sponge-baths in a wash-basin, and the native who stands about deep in the folds of his serape fails utterly to comprehend. He evidently thinks a lot, but he doesn’t say anything. I suppose it seems like “clay-eating” or penitent mutilations to him—not exactly insanity, but a curious custom, at any rate. On the return trip we have a half-broken team of buckskin broncos, which have to be “hooked up” with great stealth. And when the coachman had climbed quietly on to the box and we were inside, the guards let go of the team, and the coachman cracked his whip, while we looked out of the window and held our breath. Then there were Horse Pyrotechniques! Ground and Lofty Tumbling! Greatest Show on Earth! for about a minute, when we made a start down the big road—or didn’t, as the case might be. After the first round we often had to get out, and, two ponies having got themselves into the same collar, we would then rearrange them for better luck next time.
MORNING TOILET
In Mexico they drive four mules abreast in the lead and two on the pole, which seems to be an excellent way. Mexican coachmen generally keep “belting” their stock and yelling “Underlay-nula!” which is both picturesque and unintelligible. Our man was, however, better educated. Forty or fifty miles is a day’s journey, but the exact distance is so dependent on the roads, the load, and the desire to “get thar” that it varies greatly.
We pass the Guerrero stage as it bowls along, and hundreds of heavy, creeking ox-carts, as they draw slowly over the yellow landscape, with their freight to and from the mines. Bunches of sorrowful burros, with corn, wood, pottery, and hay, part as we sweep along through and by them.
We have the inspiring vista of Chihuahua before us all the time. It is massive in its proportions and opalescent in color. There are torquois hills, dazzling yellow foregrounds—the palette of the “rainbow school” is everywhere. There are little mud houses, ranches, and dirty little adobe towns to pass, which you must admire, though you may not like them. Gaunt cattle wander in their search for grass and water, and women squat by the riverbed engaged in washing or filling their ollas.