IV
On to Mexico City
Mexico City, Mexico,
November 18th.
He llegado en esta ciudad, hoy, cerca las ocho de la mañana! The moment we crossed the Rio Grande we changed instantly from American twentieth century civilization to mediæval Latin-Indian. The Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo, the buildings, the women, the men, the boys, the donkeys, all were different. I felt as though I had waked up in another world. As we approached the station of the Mexican city, I noticed an old man riding upon his donkey. His saddle was fastened over the hips just above the beast’s tail, his feet trailed upon the ground. He sat there with immense dignity and self-possession, viewing with curiosity the gringos, who had come down from the land of the distant North. He silently watched us for some moments and then rode solemnly away, while I wondered by what hand of Providence it was he did not slide off behind.
From Nuevo Laredo to Monterey, which we reached at half past ten P. M., was all one flat mesquit and cactus-covered plain; sand, mesquit and cactus; cactus, sand and mesquit, mile after mile, till darkness fell upon us, when we could see no more. Monterey is the center of Mexico’s steel and iron industries, of large tobacco manufactories, of extensive breweries. It is the chief manufacturing city of modern Mexico. Our stay was brief, and I caught only a glimpse of a cloaked and high-sombreroed crowd, hurrying beneath the glare of electric lamps, and then we passed on toward the great interior plateau of the Mexican Highlands.
During the night it grew cold. I awoke shivering and called for blankets. In San Antonio the morning had been warm and, all day, south to Laredo and on to Monterey, the heat had been oppressive. It was cold when I left Kanawha, but the chilly air had not followed me beyond New Orleans, and I had there packed into my trunk all my warm clothing and checked it through to Mexico. Passing westward through Louisiana and Texas, the mild air was delightful and I was comfortable in my thinnest summer garments. Thus dreaming of orange groves and sunny tropics I fell asleep. Now I was shivering with a deadly chill, and the thin keen air cut like a scimiter. I pulled on my overcoat, which I fortunately still had with me, and slept fitfully till the day.
We crossed, during the night, the first great mountain range which shuts out the inland plateau of central Mexico from the lowland plains stretching eastward toward the Gulf and into Texas. We climbed many thousands of feet to Saltillo, where the mercury almost registered frost. Now we were descending the inner slopes of the barrier mountains, passing near the battle field of Buena Vista, where Zachary Taylor smote Santa Anna and his dark-skinned horde, and gained the fame which made him President of the United States. We were entering that vast desolate inland plain which stretches so many hundreds of miles south to Acambaro, where we should begin to climb again yet higher ranges, crossing them at last—at an altitude of eleven thousand feet,—before we should finally descend into the high cool valley of Anahuac to the City of Mexico.
About nine o’clock, we drew up at a wayside station for breakfast (almuerzo). If I had known it, I might have obtained my desayuno coffee and roll at an earlier hour upon the train. We were now upon a wide-stretching sandy level. A cold mist hung over us. The scorching sun was trying to penetrate this barrier. A band of Indians wrapped to their eyes in brilliant colored blankets of native make (zerapes), their high-peaked sombreros pulled over their eyes, with folded arms, silent as statues, stood watching us. I deliberately took their photograph. They did not smile or move. A group of Indian women sitting on the ground near these men were not so placid. They regarded the kodak as an evil mystery and hid their faces in their rebozos when I pointed my lens at them. The strange instrument smacked of witchcraft, and they would none of it. With rebozos still drawn, they got upon their feet and fled.