A Journey in Southeastern Mexico

by Henry Howard Harper

After clearing a piece of land for corn the natives will plant it for a couple of years, then abandon it to the weeds and brush for awhile. They then clear another piece, and in two or three years the abandoned piece is covered with a growth of brush sufficiently heavy so that when cut and burned the fire destroys such seeds as have found their way into the piece. After land here has been planted for a few years it becomes so foul with weeds that it would be impossible for a man with a hoe to keep them down on more than an acre. It is surprising how rapidly and thickly they grow. The story of the southern gentleman who said that in his country the pumpkin vines grew so fast that they wore the little pumpkins out dragging them over the ground would seem like a plausible truth when compared with what might be said of rapid growth in Mexican vegetation. They say that the custom of wearing machetes at all times is really a necessity, as when a man goes to the field in the morning there is no knowing but that it may rain and the weeds grow up and smother him before he can get back home. I am, however, a little skeptical on this point.

A serious difficulty which has to be reckoned with in Mexico is the utter disregard that many of the natives have for the property rights of others. Pigs, chickens, calves, and even grown cattle, are constantly disappearing as quietly and effectually as though the earth had opened in the night and swallowed them. One evening a native came in from a distance of twelve miles to purchase six cents' worth of mangos, and being otherwise unencumbered in returning home he took along a calf which he picked up as he passed the outer gate. At another time when the cane mill was started in the morning, it was discovered that a large wrench, weighing probably twenty pounds, was missing. There being no other mill of similar construction in the community, it was inconceivable that anyone could have had any use for the wrench. The foreman called the men all together and told them of the disappearance. He discharged the whole force of more than a hundred men, and said there would be no more work until the wrench was returned. Next morning it was found in its accustomed place at the mill, and every man was there ready to go to work.

Shortly after buying the ranch I was spending the night there, and went out to hunt deer by means of a jack,—a small lamp with a reflector, carried on top of the head, and fastened around the hatband. Assuming that the reader may not have had any experience in this lonesome sport, I would explain that on a dark night the light from the jack being cast into the eyes of an animal in the foreground produces a reflection in the distance resembling a coal of fire. If the wind is favorable, one can approach to within thirty to fifty yards of a deer, which will stand intently gazing at the light. The light blinds the eye of the animal so that the person beneath cannot be seen even at a distance of twenty feet. The hunter can determine how near he is to the game only by the distance that appears to separate the eyes. For instance, at 125 to 150 yards the eyes of a deer will shine in the darkness as one bright coal of fire, and as one approaches nearer they slowly separate until at fifty to sixty paces they appear to be three or four inches apart, depending upon the size of the animal. It is then time to fire. It is always best to proceed against the wind, if there is any, otherwise the deer will scent your presence. The eye of a calf or burro will shine much the same as that of a deer, and one must be cautious when hunting in a pasture. I took my shotgun with a few shells loaded with buckshot, and passing through the canefield came to a clearing about half a mile from the house. As I approached the opening I sighted a pair of eyes slowly moving towards me along the edge of a thicket next the clearing, apparently at a distance of about seventy-five yards. I knew it was not a deer, because that animal will always stand still as soon as it sights a lamp. It was too large for a cat, and did not follow the customary actions of a dog; but what it was I couldn't imagine. The two enormous eyes came nearer and nearer, moving to first one side and then the other, the animal appearing to be unaware of my presence. When it approached to within perhaps fifty yards of where I stood, I thought it was time to shoot, and so cocking both hammers of my gun I blazed away, intending to fire only one barrel and keep the other for an emergency. In my excitement I must have pulled both triggers, as both cartridges went off with a terrific bang. The recoil sent me sprawling on my back in the brush, the gun jumping completely out of my hands and landing several feet distant. The light was extinguished by the fall, and I lay there in utter blackness. When I fired, the animal lunged into the thicket with a crash, and in the confusion of my own affairs immediately following, I heard no more sounds. I discovered that I had thoughtlessly come away without a match, and being unfamiliar with the territory, had no idea in which direction the house stood. Groping around in the dark I finally located the gun and struck back into the brush in what I supposed to be the direction I came. Presently I ran into a dense jungle of terrible nettles, which the natives call mala mujer (bad woman). They are covered with needlelike thorns and their sting is extremely painful and annoying. I was also covered with wood-ticks, which added appreciably to my misery. It was cloudy and the night was as dark as death. Realizing that I was on the wrong route it seemed necessary to spend the night there, but I could neither sit nor stand with comfort amid the nettles. After proceeding five or six hundred yards through these miserable prickly objects (which in height ranged from two to thirty feet, thus pricking and stinging me from my face to my knees) I suddenly plunged headlong over a steep embankment into the water, when I became aware that I had reached the river; but whether I was above or below the house (which stands back about a thousand yards from the river) I couldn't tell. After groping my way along under the river bank for nearly half a mile, during the space of which I again fell in twice, I concluded that with my customary luck I was headed the wrong way, and so retraced my steps and proceeded along down the river for nearly a mile, when I came to a landing-place. Leaving the river I went in the opposite direction a short distance, and soon bumped into some sort of a habitation. After feeling my way more than half-way around the hut and locating an aperture (the door) I hallooed at the top of my voice four or five times, and receiving no response I ventured in only to find the place vacant. Returning to the open I manœuvred around until I found another hut, where I proceeded to howl until the natives woke up. I couldn't imagine how I was to make myself understood, as of course they could not understand a word of English. The man struck a match and seeing me standing in the door with a gun in my hand, and with my face all scratched and swollen to distortion from my explorations in the nettle patch, both he and his wife took fright and jumping through an opening on the opposite side of the room disappeared in the darkness, leaving me in sole possession of the place. After groping around the room in vain search of a match, and falling over about everything in the place, I returned to the open air. Meantime the clouds had begun to break away and I could see the dim outline of a large building a short distance beyond, which proved to be the sugar-mill. I was now able to get my bearings, and discovered that the hut from which the two people had fled was one of a number of a similar kind which belonged to the place and which were provided free for the workmen and their families that they might be kept conveniently at hand at all times. I was not long in finding the main road leading to the house, and when I arrived there everybody was asleep. After fumbling around all over the place in the dark I found a match and discovered that it was twenty-five minutes of three. Thus ended my first deer-hunt in Mexico. In the morning I noticed the zopilotes (vultures) hovering over the field in the direction I had taken the night before, and upon going to the spot I found an enormous full-grown jaguar lying dead about ten feet from the edge of the clearing. Several shot had penetrated his head and body, and luckily, one entering his neck had passed under the shoulder-blade and through the heart. The natives said it was the only jaguar that had been seen in that locality for years, and it was the only one I saw during the whole of my travels in Mexico.

That morning it was discovered that every hut in the settlement at the mill had been vacated during the night, and there was not a piece of furniture or a native anywhere in sight; the place looked as desolate as a country-graveyard. Later in the day we found the whole crowd encamped back in the woods, and were told that during the night an Evil Spirit in the form of a white man with his face and clothes all bespattered with blood, had visited the settlement, and wielding a huge machete, also covered with blood, had threatened to kill every man, woman and child in the place. A few years prior to that an American had been foully murdered at the mill by a native, who used a machete in the operation, and this, they said, was the second time in five years that the murdered man had returned in spirit-form to wreak vengeance on the natives. It was more than three months before they could all be induced to return to the houses. I cannot imagine what sort of an apparition it was that molested them the first time. The frightened native and his wife had doubtless returned and alarmed the others with a highly exaggerated story, and gathering up their few belongings they had fled for their lives. I told the foreman the circumstances, but he strongly advised me not to attempt to undeceive them, because they had a deepseated superstition about the mill, and no amount of explanation would convince them that the place was not haunted by the spirit of the murdered man, especially as this was their second alarm.

The peon class in Mexico are exceedingly superstitious and there is scarcely an act or circumstance but what portends some evil in the mind of one or another. About the only thing about which they have no superstitious misgivings is the act of carrying off something that does not belong to them.

Late one afternoon, while on a trip out through the country, we met an American in charge of two Mexican soldiers (in citizen's dress) who were returning with him to Tuxpam. They said he was a desperate character who had broken jail while awaiting trial for murder. He was seated astride a bare-backed horse and his legs were securely leashed to the body of the animal, while his feet were tied together underneath. His arms were tied tightly behind his back, and altogether his situation seemed about as secure and uncomfortable as it could be made. He was not allowed to talk to us, but the officers talked rather freely. They said he had recently killed an officer who pursued him after breaking jail. The poor fellow looked harmless and passive, and had a kind, though expressionless, face. His eyes and cheeks were deeply sunken and he showed unmistakable evidence of long suffering. They had captured him by a stratagem, having overtaken him on the road and pretending to be amigos (friends) they offered to trade horses with him. His steed being much fatigued he eagerly grasped the opportunity to procure a fresh one, and as soon as he dismounted he was seized and overpowered. The vacant and hopeless expression of the prisoner as he sat there bound hand and foot, and unable to converse with his own countrymen was indeed pathetic, and judging by his looks we were convinced that he was not a hardened criminal. We therefore determined to look him up on our return to town and ascertain the facts. Three days later upon returning to Tuxpam we learned that soon after we passed the party the officers had camped for the night, and tying their victim to a tree had taken turns at guard duty during the night. At about three o'clock in the morning the prisoner had managed to work himself free from the bonds and while the officer on watch was starting a fire to warm the breakfast for an early morning start the prisoner pounced upon him and seizing his revolver struck him a blow on the head which laid him out. At this juncture the other officer woke up just in time to receive a bullet in his breast which despatched him to the other world. Taking one of the horses the fugitive fled, and up to the time I left Mexico he had not sent his address to the police authorities; nor did any of them appear very anxious to pursue him further. The officer who was first attacked came to his senses a little later, but he was perhaps more interested in looking to his own comfort and safety than in attempting to follow the fugitive, with the prospect of sharing the fate of his fellow-officer. We were informed that the prisoner had been a poor, hard-working, and law-abiding resident who had migrated to this country from Texas several years before, bringing with him his wife and one child. He had brought about $1,000 American money, which had been sunk in a small farm near Tuxpam where he had cast his lot, hoping to make a fortune. One night his home was invaded by a couple of drunken natives who were determined to murder the whole family on account of some imaginary grievance. In defending his family and himself he killed one of them, and wounded the other, and next day was cast into prison, where he was kept for almost two years—until his escape—without an opportunity to have his case heard. Meanwhile both his wife and child died of smallpox without being permitted to see him, and were buried without his knowledge. It was reported that after his incarceration his wife and child had moved into a hovel in town, and that when the coffin containing his child's body was borne past the jail on the shoulders of a native, en route to its last resting-place, by a most singular and unhappy coincidence he happened to be peering out through a small hole in the stone wall, and saw the procession. He is said to have remarked to another prisoner that some poor little one had been freed from the sorrows of life.

How any white man can survive two years' imprisonment in a Mexican jail is beyond human comprehension; in fact we were informed that it is not intended that one should. I heard it remarked that "if a prisoner has plenty of money it is worth while hearing his case, but if he is poor, what profit is there in trying him?" The judges and lawyers are not likely to go probing around the jails merely for the sake of satisfying their craving for the proper dispensation of justice. We were told by one of the oldest resident Americans that if in the defense of one's own life it becomes necessary here to take the life of another, the safest thing to do is to collect such arms, ammunition and money as may be immediately at hand and make straight through the country for the nearest boundary line, never submitting to detention until the ammunition is exhausted and life is entirely extinct. The filthiness and misery within the walls of a Mexican jail exceed the powers of human tongue to describe, and tardy justice in seeking a man out in one of these Plutonic holes is generally scheduled to arrive a day too late.

With the exception of wood-ticks, the crop that thrives best of all in this part of Mexico, all the year round, is grass. There are two notable varieties; one is known as the South American Paral grass, and the other as Guinea grass. Both are exceedingly hardy and grow to great height. The Paral grass does not make seed in Mexico, but is generated from the green plant by taking small wisps of a dozen or more pieces, doubling them two or three times, after which they are pressed into holes made in the ground with a sharp stick, much after the manner of planting corn, and in rows about the same distance apart. Three or four inches of the wisp is allowed to protrude above the ground. It is generally planted thus in the latter part of May,—though at this season the ground is very dry,—because when the rains begin everybody is so busy planting and caring for the corn-crop that everything else is dropped. As soon as seasonable weather begins the grass sprouts and sends out shoots along the ground in every direction, much like a strawberry-vine. From each joint the roots extend into the ground, and a shoot springs up. By the early fall the ground is completely covered, and by the first of January it is ready to pasture lightly. The growth is so thick and rapid that it smothers the weeds and even many of the sprouts that spring up from the stubs and stumps. I saw a small patch of this grass that had been planted early in April when the ground was so dry that it was impossible to make openings more than two or three inches deep with the sharp-pointed sticks, as the holes would fill up with the dry loose earth. This patch was planted by a native who wished to test the hardiness of the grass, and with little expectation that it would survive the scorching sun of April, May and a part of June, until rain came. It was in May that I examined this patch, and pulling up several wisps I did not find a single spear that had sprouted or appeared to have a particle of life or moisture in it. But when the rainy season commenced every hill of it sprouted and grew luxuriantly. During the rainy season in the fall it will readily take root when chopped into short pieces and scattered broadcast on the ground.

The Guinea grass is almost as hardy as the Paral, but is planted only from the seed. It grows in great clusters, often to a height of six feet, and soon covers the ground. These two grasses seem to draw a great deal of moisture from the air, and stand the dry season almost as well as the brush and trees. The cattle fatten very quickly on them and never require any grain. Beef-cattle are always in good demand at high prices, and there is no other industry so profitable here as cattle-raising.

The deadly tarantula is as common here as crickets are in the United States, but to my astonishment the natives have no fear of them, and I never heard of anyone being bitten by one of these, perhaps the most venomous of all insects. They abound in the pastures and live in holes which they dig, two to four inches in the ground. One can always tell when the tarantula is at home, for the hole is then covered with a web, while if he is out there is no web over the hole. I have dug them out by hundreds, and one forenoon I dug out and killed seventy-two, often finding two huge monsters together. They sometimes bite the cattle when feeding, and the bite is usually fatal. Their deadly enemy is the wasp (Pompilus formosus) by which they are attacked and stung to death if they venture out into the open roadway or other bare ground.