Michoacan, Mexico,
November 25th.
After the bullfight we had difficulty in finding a cocha to take us to the railway station. In fact, we could not get one. We were compelled to depend upon cargadores, who carried our trunks and bags upon their backs, while we jostled along the crowded sidewalks. And here, I might remark, that there is no such thing as a right-of-way for the footfarer on either street or sidewalk. You turn to the right or left, just as it may be most convenient and so does your neighbor. You cross a street at your peril, and you pray vigorously to the saints when you are run down.
We left Mexico City about five o’clock in the evening, taking the narrow gauge National Railway to Acambaro and Patzcuaro, where horses and a guide were to be awaiting us, and whence we would cross the highlands of the Tierra Fria and finally plunge into the remote depths of the Tierra Caliente, along the lower course of the Rio de las Balsas, where it forms the boundary line between the states of Michoacan and Guererro, on its way to the Pacific.
THE TREE WHERE CORTEZ WEPT EL NOCHE TRISTE
As we departed from the city, we passed through extensive fields of maguey, and began climbing the heavy grade which would lift us up some four thousand feet ere we should descend into the valley of Toluca, more lofty, but no less fertile than the basin of Anahuac. Before we crept up the mountain very far, darkness descended precipitately upon us, for there is no twilight in these southern latitudes.
We were at Acambaro for breakfast, and all the morning traversed a rolling, cultivated, timbered country much like the blue grass counties of Greenbrier and Monroe in West Virginia. Here we travelled through some of the loveliest landscapes in all Mexico. This is a region of temperate highlands amidst the tropics, so high in altitude lies the land,—seven to eight thousand feet above the sea. There was much grass land and there were wheat and corn fields many miles in area. Here and there crops were being gathered, and yokes of oxen were dragging wooden plows, the oxen pulling by the forehead as in France. Several successive crops a year are raised upon these lands. No other fertilization is there than the smile of God, and these crops have here been raised for a thousand years—irrigation being generally used to help out the uncertain rains. We passed vineyards, and apple and peach and apricot orchards, forests of oak and pine, several lakes, Cuitzeo and Patzcuaro, being the largest of them—lakes, twenty and thirty miles long and ten to twenty wide. Never yet has other craft than an Indian canoe traversed their light green, brackish waters.
These high upland lakes of Mexico are the resting-places of millions of ducks and other waterfowl, which come down from the far north here to spend the winter time. It is their holiday season. They do not nest or breed in Mexico. They are here as migratory winter visitors. Mexico is the picnic ground of all duckdom. On Lakes Tezcoco, Xochimilco and Chalco, near to Mexico City, the destruction of the wearied ducks is an occupation for hundreds of Indians, the birds being so tired after their long flight from sub-Arctic breeding grounds, that it is often many days before they are able to rise from the water, when once they have settled upon it. The Indians paddle among them with torches or in the moonlight, and club them to death, or gather them in with nets or even by hand, so easy a prey do they fall.
For many miles our train skirted these lovely sheets of water, and so tame were the waders and swimmers along the shores that they rarely took to flight, but swam and dove and flapped their wings and played among the sedges as though no railroad train were roaring by. Among them I looked for the splendid scarlet flamingo and roseate spoonbill, but happened to see none, although they are said often to frequent these shallow waters, but pelicans, herons and egrets I saw in thousands.