In the same quarter of the town, where this local industry is carried on, are many goitrous persons. The disease seems to be confined to the one district, but there perhaps one-half the people have it, most of them to but a slight degree. Occasionally the swelling is notable, and in the families affected we find, as usual, deaf-mutism.
HOUSES AT URUAPAN
On the morning of New Year's day, we left for Capacuaro and Cheran. As we rode out from the city, we were more than ever impressed with its verdant beauty and picturesqueness. The road to Capacuaro was unexpectedly level and good, and we reached the town, which is purely indian, by nine o'clock. Women, almost without exception, wore the native dress. Goitres were common, and some, among the men, were really enormous. Riding through the long town, we drew up before the house of the jefe de policia (chief of police), and summoned the village officials. On their appearance we found that all but the jefe himself, were drunk, the secretario in particular being almost useless. When we handed him the letter from the prefecto he was quite unable to make aught of its grandiloquence. Having looked it through in a dazed way, he declared that we were "gringos," "like the one who was here last year" (presumably Lumholtz). With some severity, I told him he did wrong to call visitors to the town by the opprobrious name of gringos, and ordered him to read the letter and make known its contents to the jefe. He made another effort and then helplessly said—"Who can make anything of such a letter? It is in their idioma." Sternly pointing to the signature I said—"The letter is from your prefecto and written in his idioma; you see the firma." Helplessly shaking his head, he said, "Oh, yes, the firma is that of Silvano Martinez, but the letter is in your idioma." Seeing that he was of no earthly use, I took the letter from him, and, turning to the crowd which had gathered, rebuked them for their drunkenness, asserting that it was disgraceful for a whole town government to be intoxicated at the same time; that some one ought always to be sober enough to attend to business; that we had been insulted by being called gringos, and that our order had not been read to them because the secretario was too drunk to do his business; that there were two ways of dealing with such town governments, and that, unless something was done promptly, we would see how they would like to go back with us to Uruapan, whence we had come. The jefe, who was really not drunk, thereupon begged to know what we desired, and the drunken secretario was somewhat frightened; the remainder of the official body expressed a wish to do only what we wanted. I then read the prefecto's letter in my best manner and added that we had come to Capacuaro only at the desire of the governor himself, to visit their mogote, and that we ought to wait no longer for guidance. At once all was commotion and bustle. Bidding the disgraced secretario go to his house and stay there, the jefe de policia summoned the rest of his company about him, seized his staff of office, buckled on his great machete, and took the lead; three policemen, with their machetes, followed; two others, unarmed, followed, and, with this escort, we started to hunt our ruins on the mountain. They proved to be two heaps of rubbish, from constructions of stone. Had we had time for serious investigation they might have proved of interest; as it was, we spent but a few minutes in their inspection, and then, bidding our drunken escort good-bye, we continued our journey. We had planned to go first to Nehuatzen, thence to Parracho, and, after visiting Cheran, back again to Nehuatzen. At the mogote, however, we were already near the Parracho highway and at once struck into it. Our journey led through forests, chiefly of pine, with open glades, at intervals; on many of the trees we saw great bunches of a parasite that bore honeysuckle-like, yellow flowers. Parracho we found lying at the base of mountains at the very end of a long stretch of level. It is an unattractive town, our only reason for visiting which was to see something of the manufacture of its famous rebozos, which differ from others in the wide border of white and azure blue silk, which is attached to a netted foundation to form decorative patterns, representing birds and animals, or geometric figures. The work is curious, and I am inclined to see in it a surviving imitation of the ancient feather-work for which the ancient Tarascans were famous. From Parracho our road led through Aranza to Cheran. Just beyond Aranza we passed over the astonishing wash from some summer torrent. During the wet season a single rain may fill the gorges, sheet the mountain slopes with water, tear great trees from their hold, break off mighty rock fragments and carry them onward, like wooden blocks, with hundreds of tons of finer gravel. At this season there was not a sign of water; not a trickling thread was visible in any of the gorges; but from their now dried mouths there spread fan-shaped deposits many rods in length and breadth, containing quantities of blocks of rock that measured from four to ten feet in diameter, trunks of trees up to two feet in thickness, all in the greatest confusion and at places completely covering our road to a depth of several feet. We could trace the tailing out of the fans of deposit, from their thicker, heavier part at the base of the torrent, to their margin on the plain; from heavy rock masses weighing tons, through smaller masses, into sand and gravel.
The way to Cheran seemed endless, but at last we reached that interesting, great indian town, when the afternoon was nearly spent. It was the New Year, and the street celebration of los negritos (the negroes—or the little negroes) was in progress. As we rode through the streets, however, we attracted much attention and the performance was neglected. We rode directly to the town-house, entered and asked for the presidente. He was slow in appearing and long before he arrived scores of people were crowding around the doors and windows to see us and know our business. When he arrived, we greeted him in a most friendly way and told him that we had come for the skulls. He looked aghast. "The skulls, what skulls, sir?" "The skulls the prefecto ordered you to dig for us." By this time, the crowd outside, which had increased with every minute, showed uneasiness. The presidente declared he knew nothing of any skulls. After we had explained the matter more fully, he assured us that no messenger had come from the prefecto; this, which at first we thought to be a lie, was no doubt true. He was plainly scared. He begged us to be careful lest the people, who were ignorant, should overhear us. He told us that a year before Don Carlos (Lumholtz) had been there; that he, too, had wanted skulls, and that the town officials had given him permission to dig some from the graveyard; that this caused so much excitement and so many threats that the permission had to be revoked. He feared the people had already heard our wishes and were even then in an ugly mood—a thing which seemed likely from an inspection of the faces in the doorway and windows. He said, however, that Don Carlos afterward secured some skulls from an ancient burial-place not distant from the village, and, if we pleased to wait in Cheran through the morrow, as it was now too late, five in the evening, to do aught, he would gladly show us the burial place of the ancients, where no doubt abundant skulls could be secured. Not yet certain that the man was telling truth, we spoke to him severely, saying that we should report him to the governor for not having obeyed the order of the prefecto. At the same time we demanded an official document signed by himself as presidente, and by the secretario, and duly sealed, stating that no messenger had come to him from the prefecto. To our surprise this document was promptly furnished, good evidence that the prefecto had played us false, only pretending to despatch the messenger whom we had seen started.
With profuse apologies and expressions of regret from the officials, we left Cheran, hurrying on to Nehuatzen for the night. Our chief reason for doing so was that everyone who knew of our intention to visit Cheran had shaken their heads, remarking "Ah! there the nights are always cold." Certainly, if it is colder there than at Nehuatzen, we would prefer the frigid zone outright. Nehuatzen is famous as the town where the canoes for Lake Patzcuaro are made. We had difficulty in securing food and a place to sleep. The room in which we were expected to slumber was hung with an extensive wardrobe of female garments. These we added to the blankets we carried with us, but suffered all night long from the penetrating cold. The two indian boys, who accompanied us as guides and carriers, slept in the corridor outside our door and when day broke they were so cramped and numbed and stiff with cold, that they lighted matches and thrust their cold hands into the flames, before they could move their finger-joints. We had planned to leave at five, but it was too cold to ride until the sun should be an hour high, so finally we left at seven. There was heavy frost on everything; curved frost crystals protruded from the soil, and we broke ice a half inch thick in water-troughs, unfinished canoes, by the roadside.
For ten hours we rode, without even stopping for lunch, through Sabina and Pichataro, San Juan Tumbio and Ajuno, back to comfortable Patzcuaro.