CHAPTER III.
Incidents of Travel.—The Great Road to the Interior.—Mexican Diligences.—The Priest was the first Passenger robbed.—The National Bridge.—A Conducta of Silver.—Our Monk visits Old Vera Cruz.—They grant to the Indians Forty Years of Indulgence in return for their Hospitality.—The Artist among Robbers.—Mexican Scholars in the United States.—Encerro.
A railroad eleven miles in length, crossing the morass, connects Vera Cruz with the great National Road to the table-land of the interior. The coach in which the journey to Mexico is made is placed on a railroad track and pushed on before a crazy locomotive, while behind the engine is a long line of freight wagons. At every cow-path that crossed our track stood a flagman waving his little red flag to the train as it passed, apparently in burlesque imitation of a regular road.
THE NATIONAL BRIDGE.
The famous National Bridge carries the National Road over the river Antigua, at the mouth of which, a little way below, Cortéz built his Vera Cruz (Villa Rica de Vera Cruz), and where he caused his vessels to be sunk before commencing his expedition to the interior. Little has ever been known in our country of that magnificent whole, of which this and other bridges of solid masonry are but parts. The National Road of Mexico was conceived and executed by a company of merchants known as the Consulado of Vera Cruz. It is about ninety miles in length, and cost $3,000,000. From Vera Cruz it runs northward, often within sight of the Gulf, till it nearly reaches the Cerro Gordo, where it turns inland, and passing upward through that celebrated gorge to Jalapa, a distance of sixty miles from Vera Cruz, and at an elevation of 4264 feet above the sea; thence, for the remaining thirty miles, it is carried over the famous mountain, Perote, to the great table-land of Mexico. It is a work of extraordinary character for the period in which it was built, and the method of its construction; and reminds the traveler of a Roman road of antiquity, though no Roman road ever passed over a mountain 10,000 feet in height. The ruin into which it has fallen in many places during the last thirty years of civil war, serves to keep up the illusion, though it falls far short of those ancient roads in the material of which it is constructed, being of small rough stones, covered over with a durable cement.
THE NATIONAL BRIDGE.
The system of stage-coaches between Vera Cruz and Mexico is as nearly perfect as any system of traveling dependent on weather can be. Comfortable hotels are established at convenient distances along the road; and if the passenger desires it, he can have endorsed upon his ticket a permission to tarry upon the road as long as he may desire. Six, and sometimes eight horses drag the coach along at a hazardous speed. Twice, out of three times that I have passed over this road, I have been overturned. Once, while riding on the top, a heavy iron axle broke like a pipe-stem, throwing me off upon the rough stones, with the additional misfortune of having a heavy Frenchman fall upon me. But no bones were broken, and I still live to tell the story.
The neighborhood of the National Bridge is a favorite haunt of the knights of the road. Though very pious in their way, they have no scruples in relieving any priest who may fall into their hands of such worldly possessions as he happens to have about him. In fact, they seem to take a special delight in plundering these holy men, giving them the precedence in relieving their wants. Out of respect to the cloth, they omit the ceremony of searching, to which the other passengers are subjected; nor do they compel him to lie down like the others. But with mock solemnity a robber approaches the sacred personage, and dropping on one knee, presents his hat for alms, which the priest understands to be a reverential mode of demanding all the valuables that he carries about him: his reverence having been disposed of, the women are searched; afterward the men, one by one, are ordered to rise up to undergo a like ceremony; and, lastly, the baggage is ransacked, and then all are suffered to go on their way in peace, if no shots have been fired from the stage. In former times the robbers used to divide their plunder with the Virgin Mary, but now things are altered; the robber takes all, and even visits the churches occasionally, not to worship, but for plunder. If two or three priests take passage in a single coach, people shake their heads and say, "That coach will certainly be robbed;" and so it often happens.
The stage ordinarily passes this bridge in the night, when there is no opportunity to look at the magnificent scenery around. I saw it once by daylight; and long shall I remember the impression produced. I lingered about the spot to the last moment that "Jim," or as he is here called "San Diego," the driver, would permit. We reluctantly took our places in the coach, and when the hostler let slip the rope that held the heads of the leaders, our eight wild horses dashed off at a furious rate over a roughly paved road, to the no small disturbance of the reflections which such a spot awakens.