I left London in July, and, after halting in Canada and the United States, landed in Mexico on November 1st, 1900, and returned to England in April, 1901. Between those dates I had travelled some twenty-five thousand miles, had spent thirty-nine nights in moving trains, and many more in private Pullman-cars in railway sidings. I had lived a life of luxury and ease and had roughed it to nigh unendurable straits. Besides which I was constantly sending home articles to the English Press.
It was a several months’ journey from Liverpool to Quebec, through Canada to Niagara, then to New York, Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia; and onward, onward to Mexico. Before leaving America, however, I turned aside when I found myself only fifty miles from Galveston, which, about ten weeks previously, had been visited by its historic and terrible storm. Heart-rending were the sights that met my eyes and the tales that were poured into my ears. Eight thousand people had perished in that terrible hurricane, their bodies were even then being cremated on the shore. Rows of small houses literally stood on their heads, while on the beach pianos, tramcars, saucepans, sewing-machines, baths, and perambulators lay in wild confusion.
Resuming my journey I soon passed the Mexican frontier, and there had my first experience in ranch life; there, too, a “norther,” or dust-storm, made me long for the comparative comfort of a London fog. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, were all choked with hard, sharp, cutting sandy dust. My raven locks were grey and no longer suitable for exhibition in the shop in Regent Street. Next came another long railway journey to Mexico City, with the President of the line in his private train, with various entertainments on the way, including a bull-fight and a cock-fight, and much interested amusement at the customs of the people. Mexico City was reached just in time for me to see the celebrations of the Feast Day of the Lady of Guadaloupe, the patron saint of Mexico. It was a wonderful sight, and the story reminded me of Lourdes, though it is of much earlier origin and the pilgrimage of far greater magnitude.
The welcome tendered to me in the capital was delightful.
The Christmas customs were, of course, of great interest; Madame Diaz, the wife of that great President, invited me to her posada. A most enjoyable and novel evening. One of my most valued treasures is the little bonbonnière she gave me on that occasion.
Many varied experiences followed; rides lasting two or three weeks through that marvellous country to see old Aztec ruins; life at tobacco, sugar, tea, or coffee haciendas; to say nothing of the national customs, traditions, and superstitions on every side. The President gave me a guard of forty rurales (soldiers), and, as the opportunity of penetrating remote parts was great, twenty-two gentlemen of all nationalities, from Cabinet Ministers to clerks, joined us. We were sixty-three all told, and, though I rode astride like a man, I was the only woman.
Perhaps the most thrilling and exciting moment on my various travels was that spent on a trolley-car in Southern Mexico. Along those distant tracks barely two or three trains pass in a day, and hundreds, aye, thousands, of miles of railway have to be kept in repair. It is usual for the engineers to run along the line in a little open wagon, known as a trolley-car, which is worked by hand by four or six men, and covers the ground at a good pace. It can stop at any moment, and be lifted bodily off the line should a train require to pass.
Naturally, one sees the scenery magnificently from a car of this kind, for there is nothing before one. I was sitting in front with an engineer on each side of me. We had just come through one of the most magnificent passes in the world of engineering, and had, indeed, at that moment crossed a bridge, a slender, fragile thing. Some two or three hundred feet below it the water gurgled in a rushing stream. Parrots shrieked overhead, terrapins floated on the water, and monkeys swung from tree to tree. There was a precipice on one side, a high, rocky hill on the other, and just room for this mountainous line to crawl round the rocks.
We were all telling stories and chatting cheerfully: the next thing I knew was that the man on my right seized me by the neck, as if he suddenly wished to strangle me, and somehow he and I fell together a tangled mass down the side of the precipice.