[Mexico is made up of two distinctively different regions; one, the central plateau, temperate in climate, and marked by a great dearth of rainfall; the other, the lowland areas between the plateau and the bordering oceans, tropical in climate and productions, and luxuriant from abundant rains. Dr. Oswald, in the following selection, leads us through the Valley of Oaxaca, a section of this Tierra Caliente, or warm country, and makes us familiar with its interesting vegetable and animal productions and its scenic features.]
We had a glimpse of the sun before we finished our short breakfast, and when we plunged into the maze of the forest the occasional vistas through the leafy vault revealed larger and larger patches of bright blue sky. Our so-called road, however, was worse than anything I had ever seen or heard of Flemish or South Louisiana synonymes of that word,—miry lagoons and spongy mud as black and as sticky as pitch. I followed at the heels of my carrier, who preferred the lagoons and seemed to find the shallow places by a sort of instinct, and the Switzer managed to propel his heavy boots through the toughest quagmire; but his boy, after losing his shoes five or six times, slung them across his shoulder and splashed on barefoot. We kept through a comparatively open forest of cottonwood- and tulip-trees, with a dense jungle on our right-hand side, while on our left the land sloped towards the bottom of the Rio Verde, which is here about five hundred paces wide, and during the rainy season fills its muddy banks to the brink. These lower coast forests abound in gigantic trees, whose fruits are only accessible to the winged and four-handed denizens of the forest, but farther up the river-shores are lined for miles with a dense growth of wild-growing plantains, of which the natives distinguish four varieties under as many different names. The fruit of the largest, the cuernavacas (“cow-horns”), attains a weight of seven pounds, and resembles in shape the crooked pod of the tamarind rather than the cucumber-shaped little bananas which reach our Northern markets. They ripen very slowly, and often rot on the tree before they become eatable, but the Mexicans cure them over a slow fire of embers and green brushwood, after which their taste can hardly be distinguished from that of the finest yellow bananas. Palm-trees mingle here with the massive stems of the cottonwoods, talipot-palms, and the Palma prieta, whose nut might become a profitable article of export, having a close resemblance to a filbert. The plum-clusters of the mango can only be reached by a bold climber, as the trunk rises like a mast, often perfectly free from branches for eighty or ninety feet, and the chief beneficiaries of this region are still the macaws and squirrel-monkeys; but farther up Pomona becomes more condescending, and the ancient Gymnosophists, whose religion restricted true believers to a diet of wild-growing tree-fruits, would have found their fittest home in the terrace-land between the lower twenty miles of the Rio Verde and the foot-hills of the Sierra de San Miguel.
Plum-bearing bushes abound from June to September with red, yellow, and wax-colored fruit; the morus, or wild mulberry-tree, literally covers the ground with its dark, honey-sweet berries; the crown of the pino-palm is loaded with grape-like clusters, which, struck by a cudgel, discharge a shower of rich acorn-shaped nuts; guavas, alligator-pears, mamayos, chirimoyas, and wild oranges display flowers and fruit at the same time, and under the alternate influence of heat and moisture produce their perennial crops with unfailing regularity; the algarobe (Mimosa siliqua), a species of mezquite not larger than an apple-tree, yields half a ton of the edible pods known as carob-beans or St. John’s bread; the figs of the gigantic banyan-tree furnish an aromatic syrup; the trunks of the Robinia viridis exude an edible gum; and from the vine-tangle forming the vault of the forest hang the bunches and clusters of forty or fifty varieties of wild grapes, many of them superior to our scuppernongs and catawbas, while the amber-colored Uva real rivals the flavor of the finest Damascene raisin-grapes. A forced march of ten hours through fens and silent virgin woods brought us at last to the hummock region; the plain swelled into mounds, and the currents of the sluggish bayous became more perceptible. The higher levels showed vestiges of cultivation; we crossed dykes and ditches, a neglected fence here and there, and where the larger trees had been felled grapes and liana figs covered even the bushes and hedges in incredible profusion. A troop of capuchin monkeys leaped from a low mango-tree, and two stumbling youngsters who brought up the rear in the scramble for the high timber would have tempted us to a chase if we had not been anxious to reach less malarious quarters before night. The neighborhood of the great swamps still betrayed itself by that peculiar miasmatic odor which emanates from stagnant pools and decaying vegetable matter, and in the recesses of the forest fluttered the slate-colored swamp-moth, the ominous harbinger of the mosquito. The tipulary pests were getting ready for action; their skirmishers, the sancudos and Moscas negras, had already opened the campaign, and became sensible as well as audible in spite of the rapidity of our march. One of the twilight species, the Mosca delgada, a straw-colored little midge, bites like a fire-ant,—a mischievous and, it seems, unpractical freak of nature, since the superfluous virulence of its sting must certainly interfere with the business facilities of a suctorial insect.
[As evening descended the travellers reached a cotton plantation, and hastened to take refuge from the rising cloud of mosquitoes.]
The cotton-gin loomed at the farther end of the field, and was taken by storm over piles of muck and scattered fence-rails. Seeing no ladder, we clambered through the pivot-hole in the ceiling of a musty-smelling machine-shed, but in the open loft above we found a delicious breeze, and—St. Hubert be praised!—not a single mosquito.
The carrier threw himself upon his pack with a sigh of relief, and we squatted around the hatch to cool off before we opened our mess-bag.
From the hills on our right came the perfume of blooming tamarisks, and from the jungle below a cool lake-air; and at times strange voices of the wilderness,—the hoarse bark of a cayman, answered by the shriek of swamp-geese in the canebrakes of the Rio Verde, and in the distance now and then a queer rustling sound, like the shaking of a tree butted by some heavy animal. Bats were circling above our heads in the moonlight, and our advent seemed to have excited the curiosity of a troop of flying-squirrels, who uttered their chirping squeak now on the roof, now in the branches of a neighboring live-oak-tree.
After removing a layer of seed-cotton that might harbor scorpions or centipedes, I spread my blanket near the hatch and made myself comfortable for the night. My feet still smarted, though I had pulled off my stockings as well as my boots; yet I could not regret the hardships of a march which had brought us to such an encampment. The portador was taking his ease in the centre of the floor, where the night-wind played with his long hair, while the Swiss boy had fallen asleep on the mantle of his countryman, who was sitting in the open louvre, smoking his pipe in measureless content. The air up here was delightfully cool, and, with the buzz of the legions of Beelzebub still ringing in our ears, the sense of security itself was more than a negative comfort.
Baron Savarin, who wrote a treatise on the art of enjoying life, should have added a chapter on the happiness of contrast. A snug little cottage in a stormy November night, a shade-tree on the Llano Estacado, the silence of the Upper Alleghanies after a “revival-meeting” in the valleys, a bath in the dog-days, would rank above all the luxuries of Paris and Stamboul, if unbought enjoyments could ever become fashionable.
The moon set soon after midnight, but we managed to readjust our luggage by the light of greased paper spills, and entered the gates of the foot-hills before the watch-call of the night-hawk had been silenced by the reveille of the iris-crows. A keen land-breeze, tumbling the mists through the fens of the Tierra Caliente, gave promise of a bright day. What wonderful perfumes the morning wind brews from the atmosphere of a moist tropical forest-land!—scents that haunt the memory more persistently than the echo of a weird song. No latter-day nose could analyze these odors and trace them to their several sources; but with or without an attempt at further classification, they might be primarily divided into sweet and pungent aromatic smells, the latter prevailing in the coast jungles, the former in the mountain forests. A few of the first named—the spicy scents—are so peculiar that, once identified, they can be easily recognized: here, for instance, the effluvium of the musk lianas, whose flowers diffuse a sort of odorous diapason which predominates, even through the bouquet-medley of the South Mexican flora.