Oaxaca is reached by the Southern Railway which starts at Puebla. This road penetrates one of the richest sections of the republic, with abundance of timber and minerals, and unlimited beds of onyx and marble. Little of this wealth is seen from the railroad, as this line follows the narrow valleys, through one cañon into another, furnishing scenery as grandly picturesque as the great passes of Colorado. The mountains in places are lifted up thousands of feet with crags and peaks which the storms have cut into fantastic shapes and whose walls drop almost perpendicularly to the water’s edge. Then again the cañon widens, and the panorama extends across the valley where gigantic rocks, stained in all colours by the oozings of the metals of the earth, form far-away pictures not unlike the battlements of an ancient fortress. The sun tinges each a different hue, with deeper tones in the near ones which fade as they approach the horizon, until all seem to blend into the intense blue of the sky.
As the train leaves the City of the Angels, just at daybreak, a wonderful panorama is opened up to view. Look in any direction, and the tiled domes of the churches rise above the plain, for each village and hacienda has its own. The forts erected on the surrounding hills which are emblematic of the force that subjugated this valley, are seen, and near them the pyramid of Cholula erected by those who were overcome. Over all tower those mighty monuments of nature, the white-capped peaks of Popocatapetl, Ixtaccihuatl, Orizaba and old Malintzi, with the morning sun reflected on their snowy heads. The road ascends and descends, and then ascends again before it takes a dip down into the tierra caliente. A number of native villages are passed but only one town of any size, Tehuacan, noted for its mineral springs. It is a pretty little city, and in the centre of a rich agricultural district. The road finally enters a wide, open country with rich valleys which extend to the hills beyond. At last, after a twelve hours’ journey, our train rolls into this occidental Eden.
More than three centuries ago a Spanish writer described Oaxaca as “not very big, yet a fair and beautiful city to behold, which standeth three-score leagues from Mexico in a pleasant valley.” It is located at the junction of three valleys and on the bank of a broad river, which meanders through a billowy sea of cornfields toward the Pacific. Whichever way the eye may turn the view is bounded by hills covered with forests. Viewed from one of these hills the city looks like a broad, flat-covered plain of stone buildings above which are seen many domes, and the whole scene has a truly oriental touch.
The people that the Spanish found in possession of these valleys were an industrious race. They had tilled the soil centuries before the Spaniards, in their lust for gold, despoiled these beautiful valleys. There is not a hollow, or knoll, where it is possible to scrape a little soil with a hoe, that has not at some time been cultivated. These early races had even constructed irrigation works which kept green their fields during the dry season. The rich basins filled with alluvium are now owned by the rich hacendados, or landowners, whose white buildings dot the landscape here and there and, with their trees, orchards and cultivated fields, lend life and colour to an otherwise dull prospect. The poor Indians are forced to work for these landlords who claim title to the land formerly owned by their ancestors, or retire to the hills where, well up toward the crests, they cultivate their little fields of corn and beans. There is one tribe of Indians that dwell in the mountains of Oaxaca who have never acknowledged either Spanish or Mexican sovereignty, and maintain their own tribal form of government. They can be seen at Oaxaca on market days.
We find Oaxaca to be a city of about thirty-three thousand people of whom three-fourths or more are Indians. It is laid out with narrow streets, down the centre of which runs a stream of water, from which rise at times odours not the most agreeable. The houses are low and one-storied, with grated windows after the style of architecture introduced by the Spaniards, and by them adopted from the Moors, who copied it from the Persians. The water supply is abundant, being brought in from the hills by an aqueduct. Fountains are located at numerous places, and a constant succession of Rebeccas with heads enveloped in their shawls, and carrying great earthen water-jars pass to and fro from them.
Oaxaca contains many fine churches of which one, Santo Domingo, has been both monastery and fortress, and has just been restored at a cost of $13,000,000 (silver) so it is claimed, making it the most costly church in Mexico, if not in North America. The gold on the walls was so heavy in former times, that the soldiers quartered here during revolutionary uprisings employed themselves in removing it. This city has been the scene of troublous times, and has been captured and re-captured by the combating forces. It has given to the country two great presidents, Juarez and Diaz, of whom it may well be proud. Of these two men, great in the annals of Mexico, the former was a full-blooded Indian, and the latter has a fair percentage of the same blood in his veins. A monument to Juarez has been erected, and some day—may it be far distant—when nature has claimed her own, this city will raise a memorial to her still greater son.
THE AQUEDUCT, OAXACA
A FOUNTAIN IN OAXACA