President Juarez and his cabinet occupied a house on the Plaza—a large building constructed in the usual Mexican fashion. On announcing ourselves as a party of American citizens desirous of paying their respects to the chief of a sister republic, we were immediately ushered into a room where we found President Juarez with most of the members of his cabinet—notably his successor Señor Lerdo de Tejada, then Secretary of State, and Señor Yglésias, Secretary of the Treasury—now also named for the presidency—rather a sinecure office at the time.
We were presented in turn to the president by Señor Yglésias, the only person present attached to the president who spoke English. President Juarez spoke neither English nor French. He shook hands cordially with each of us, and expressed through Señor Yglésias the very great pleasure it gave him to receive our visit. We were sufficiently familiar with the Pueblo type to recognize Juarez immediately on entering.
President Juarez was low in stature, rather stout, but dignified, and at the same time easy in his manners. The Pueblo Indian was marked in every lineament of his face—the aquiline nose, the small bright black eyes, the straight cut mouth showing no trace of redness in the lips, the coal-black hair, the swarthy complexion. Yet he was, as it were, an Indian idealized; his forehead was high, capacious, and the light of intellectual [pg 281] cultivation illuminated his face. He was dressed in plain black.
The secretary of state, Señor Lerdo de Tejada, is evidently, judged merely from externals, a man of great intellectual ability. His skin is as white as that of the fairest daughter of the Anglo-Saxon. A forehead, so high as to seem almost a monstrosity, and of a marble whiteness, towered above a face that gleamed with the glance of the eagle.
Señor Yglésias was of a darker complexion than his colleague in the cabinet. He seemed to be in rather indifferent health. The expression of his face was remarkably gentle and pleasing. We have already said that he acted as interpreter. He spoke English with a very marked accent, but with great care and correctness. We happened to be seated next him on a sofa, President Juarez being on his right. He told us that he learned to speak English in the city of Chihuahua, and that he had never been a day in an English-speaking country.
Notwithstanding that President Juarez did not speak English, and the necessity of an interpreter naturally causes some embarrassment, yet his manners were so pleasant and affable that he placed us at our ease at once. He spoke about our war, and asked with much interest about our great military leaders, Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. He seemed to feel some sympathy with Gen. McClellan. A very pleasant half-hour was spent in conversation on these and kindred subjects. It was at length interrupted by the entrance of a péon bearing a tray with quite a generous number of bottles of champagne on it.
We were invited to partake of the Green Seal. We stood around the table, President Juarez standing at the head. Toasts were drunk to the lasting friendship of the two North American republics, to the independence of Mexico, etc. The péon, who was not a very bright specimen of his tribe, exerted himself to his utmost to open the bottles sufficiently fast. In his tremulous hurry he got within point-blank range of the president, and a peculiarly excited bottle going off prematurely, discharged about half its contents into the president's shirt-bosom. Juarez looked at the poor péon—whose swarthy face grew sickly pale, and who seemed about to sink to the ground with terror and confusion—neither in sorrow nor in anger. He took no notice whatever of the incident, but went on talking cheerfully as before. Such an accident happening to most men would have been laughable in the extreme. It did not seem to us to place Juarez in a ludicrous position at all, his self-command was so perfect, his dignity so thoroughly preserved.
After all the patriotic toasts proper to the occasion had been drunk, we took our leave. The president again shook hands with us, again expressed, through Señor Yglésias, his gratification at meeting American citizens and officers, and hoped that he should receive further visits from us.
We departed very greatly prepossessed in favor of the Mexican president. We agreed in thinking that there was a simplicity and honesty of purpose about him which made him the best man for the difficult position of chief magistrate of the struggling republic in her great hour of trial.