DEPARTURE OF THE DILIGENCE.
The start was made about seven o'clock in the morning, and there was a considerable crowd in the street to see them off. The arrival and departure of the diligence is an event in a Mexican town, though less so than it was before the days of the railway. It is probable that by the time this book is in the hands of the reader, the locomotive will have a finished track between Saltillo and Jaral, and the diligence will be known no more, except as a relic of past days. Those who have been jolted for hours and days in these heavily built carriages and over bad roads will give the heartiest kind of a welcome to the new order of things. The diligence will long continue on many of the side roads in Mexico, where it will not pay to build the railway, just as the stage-coach still exists in parts of the United States; but the great through routes have lost it for all time.
Immediately on their arrival at Saltillo, before going to Buena Vista, Doctor Bronson secured places for the trio in the diligence for Jaral; at the diligence offices all through Mexico, the rule of "first come first served" is followed as in a steamship or a Pullman car, and when the vehicle is full the traveller whose place is unsecured must wait for the next journey, extra carriages being very rarely put on. If the weather is good, an outside seat (el pescante) is decidedly preferable, as it affords a much better view of the scenery along the route. American tourists generally take the chances of the weather, and select outside places; but the native, who does not care for the prospect, and desires nothing beyond making the journey as speedily as possible, is quite content with the inside (el interior).
ON THE ROAD.
Mexican roads are bad, and Mexican carriages are constructed with a view to withstanding all the shaking that a rough road can give. The result is that at the end of a long journey the traveller feels very much as though he had been passed through a patent clothes-wringer or an improved threshing-machine. But no such fear troubled our friends, as the distance to Jaral was but forty-two miles, and the schedule time for the journey seven hours. The road was bad enough, it is true, but the youths heeded the advice of Doctor Bronson, and consoled themselves with the reflection that it might have been a great deal worse than it was.
They had read so much about brigandage in Mexico that the possibilities of an encounter with highwaymen naturally came into their minds. At the first opportunity they asked an American resident of Saltillo about the state of the country through which they were to pass, and the liability to an unpleasant encounter.