On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

by William Seymour Edwards

December 6th.

We were up before the day, our horses and mules having been fed with grain a little after midnight. Thus the food is digested before the journey of the day is begun. It was dazzling starlight with a gleaming streak of white moon. Our two pack beasts had been loaded, we had breakfasted and were in the saddles a little after four. A keen wind which cut like a knife-edge blew steadily down from the highlands behind us. I had kept on my warm clothes of the night. We traveled rapidly by the brilliant starlight and passing down the aroyo along which we camped, turned down the San Pedro River toward the south. We crossed the stream frequently, traveling in single file. By seven o’clock the sun was peering over the hills and I began to shed my clothes. By half past eight I retained only my thinnest underwear, my pajama coat, my linen trousers and slippers. By ten o’clock the sun was scorching, our great Mexican sombreros alone saving us from its fierce rays. Our way lay for twenty miles almost due south down the valley of the San Pedro, then turning to our left, we followed a slightly-traveled trail, crossing a succession of low hills, until after four long hours we came to immense plains or llanos stretching flat as a table for twenty miles toward the Balsas River. The streams were dry, the leaves were falling from shrubs and trees. It was the dry season. Mesquit and cactus and mimosa were the only vegetation, except the blistered stalks of the sun-dried grasses. No water was visible anywhere. The ground was parched and cracked. A light breeze which followed us all day and a few highflying clouds, which now and then hid the sun, alone saved us from being almost broiled alive. The watch in my pocket became burning hot, I could scarcely hold it in my hand; the metal buttons on my clothes almost burned themselves loose; only the dryness of the atmosphere made it possible to have made this journey during the day.

THE LLANOS. HAWK POISED UPON AN ORGAN CACTUS

The great llanos, stretching south and southwest, were crossed by many well-beaten trails, where the horses and cattle, which roam here in thousands, have worn the paths they take to reach the distant water. It is said that these animals, which wander at large, have schooled themselves to cross the wide plains beneath the stars in the cool of the night.

We reached the mines of El Puerto about half past one o’clock, crossing the plain for several hours toward the mountain on whose side the mines are perched. The only living things we met upon these llanos were the jack rabbits and an occasional roadrunner, which birds were very tame. Although his rabbitship has attained a reputation for lightning leg-velocity upon the sagebrush plains of our own far-west, yet surely his Mexican cousin has him outclassed. A vaquero, followed by a couple of lean and seasoned hounds, had met us on the borders of the llanos and kept with us almost across the plain. The dogs, despite the fact that they must well have known the power of the jack rabbit, would often come upon one crouched in the grass, and so nearly within their reach that they quite forgot their lessons of the past, and started full cry upon his trail. It was almost laughable to see the hounds’ despair, so quickly did the rabbits shoot out of sight, quite beyond all dog power to keep the pace. The pair would regularly return with their tails between their legs, the picture of disorganized defeat.

We have climbed three hundred feet up the side of the mountain to a group of open sheds, thatched with palm leaves, while above us volcanic rock masses tower more than two thousand feet. Across the river Balsas, apparently rising from the water’s edge, are the tremendous heights of the Cordillera, lifting themselves twelve to thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.

The Mina el Puerto is an ancient mine, now nearly exhausted; for it has been worked almost two hundred years, all through a single doorway cut into the rock, barred by a great wooden door, fastened by a ponderous lock with a ponderous iron key. Each morning, for many decades, the owner has taken the key from his belt, unlocked the big door and sent fifteen to twenty naked Indians down the “chicken ladders” four hundred feet into the hot mines below. There is no ventilation, there are no pumps, there is no other way to go in or out. Two or three hours is the longest time a man can work at the bottom of this hole; when the Indian can stand it no longer he climbs up bringing on his back the ore which he has been able to dislodge, or a bag of water, if any shall have leaked in. By three or four o’clock in the afternoon, those who went down have all come out again. The ore they have dug is thrown upon a pile beneath the palm-thatched roof; the owner of the mines then locks the door. When the ore pile has been reduced to powder by the hammering of many dusky hands, it is concentrated in the wooden troughs, washed with water from the river Balsas, three miles away, brought up in bullskin sacks upon the backs of mules; and when a sufficient number of two-hundred-pound bags of concentrated ore have been accumulated, forty or fifty mules are tied together neck to tail, loaded with the bags and driven almost one hundred miles up to the plateau. These ores have always been particularly rich, the gold and silver in them having been sufficient to pay the cost of transportation to and charges of the smelter, leaving the copper for net profit.

The Mexican owners have lived well from the fortune of their mines. In fact, to them copper ore in the ground has been equivalent of cash in the bank. When they have wanted money they have dug into their ore bed. They generally smelted it themselves in crude clay furnaces, using charcoal burned near at hand. What of gold and silver there might be was also run into the copper bars and the bars were currency. A pile of bars meant rollicking jaunts and roystering junkets. The family and friends, the servants and retainers were gathered together, muskets and swords, horns and mandolins were assembled, horses and pack animals were loaded and bestridden, and a tour of the surrounding countryside was made. Bullfights, cockfights, balls and fandangoes were gloriously enjoyed, duels were fought, hearts were stormed and the copper ingots were blown in even to the last ounce. Then the company would return, the fast-locked door would again be opened and a new supply of copper extracted from the mine. Like princes lived these Señores de las Minas, so long as the earth yielded up her hidden treasure.