The rich bottom land along the river, wholly uncultivated, much impressed me. The soil, a black and chocolate loam, is capable of bearing any crop, and is twenty to thirty feet in thickness. There was no cultivation anywhere. These lands belong to some mighty hacienda (a hacienda contains often from one hundred thousand to two million acres) owned by some absentee haciendado. It is said to be worth about ten cents (Mexican) per acre!
The river Balsas looks as broad as Elk River in West Virginia, where it enters the Kanawha (four or five hundred feet in width). It is now the dry season, but, nevertheless, the river is swift and deep, a tide of clear blue water too swift and too deep to ford or swim. In the rainy season it must be a boisterous mighty stream, for its fall is rapid. In the dry season it is fed by the melting snow fields of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl far to the east. The stream is said to afford good fishing, and in it veritable crocodiles (Cayman) abound.
Approaching the river, we found ourselves at a primitive ferry where two wild-looking vaqueros were about to cross. Availing ourselves of this opportunity to voyage upon the Balsas—Mexico’s greatest river—we tied our horses in the shade of a friendly mimosa and climbed aboard the craft used as a ferryboat—a sharp pointed scow which is entered at the stern. The two Indian boatmen pulled each a ponderous blade, but despite their most strenuous efforts, the powerful current carried us down quite half a mile before we landed upon the farther shore—a wide bar of sand and pebbles. Our fellow passengers eyed us in suspicious silence, each holding fast his broncho lest it should jump out, their wild dark glances betokening little friendliness. Reaching the shore each silently swung into his saddle and galloped off toward the not far distant Cordillera. These silent, untamed men traverse this desolate country everywhere, keeping constant track of the thousands of cattle and horses which roam their wastes; and the Indians of Guerrero bear the name of being the most turbulent and treacherous of all Mexico.
Recrossing, we traveled for an hour through rich and uncultivated bottom lands along the river’s course, until we came to the primitive town of Churumuco, a hamlet occupied by Indians only, an Indian priest gazing out of the dilapidated church as we rode by. Here we found a fonda (inn) with ample corral. A half-caste Spanish-Indian woman, “Señora Doña Faustina,” cooked us a supper of potatoes, rice, tortillas, and chilis (peppers) stewed in cheese, substantials which were washed down with clear hot coffee. Here, in the intense heat, the burning peppers were vivifying and we ate them greedily.
We slept on native mats set on frames three feet above the adoby floor in the open patio. Pigs, cats, chickens, dogs and children scrambled beneath.
We were just rolling up in our blankets, when Doña Faustina excitedly addressed my companions, Tio and El Padre, and I gathered from her speech that chinchas, as long as your hand, had a habit of crawling along the rafters and dropping upon the unsuspecting sleeper, while, unless your shoes were hung above the floor, tiernanes (scorpions) were likely to camp in them until dislodged. I hung my slippers above the tiernanes stinging reach and lay awake apprehending the chinchas’ descent, but the fatigue and heat of the day, the soporific influences of chilis and cheese, soon wrapped me in a slumber from which only the braying of our white pack mule at last aroused me, as Izus cinched upon him the burden for another day. The night was warm and close, the first dull, heavy air I have known in Mexico. We were now actually in the Tierra Caliente—where, the saying is, “the inhabitants of Churmuco need never go to hell since they already live there.”
It was not yet three o’clock in the morning and still dark. Ros and poios and coffee were already prepared for us. “Adios, Doña Faustina!” “Adios, Señorita!” “Adios, Señores!” “Adios, adios!” and we trotted out of the corral and, turning northward, moved up a deeply-cut baranca over a more generally traveled trail than that by which we had come. The coldness of night no longer chilled us, the air was almost warm, while no sign of day made mark upon the heavens above us; the black spaces of the night were yet ablaze with great white stars. The constellations to the northward I well knew, but to the south there were many wholly new and, supremest of them all, just clinging along the gigantic mountain summits, shone the splendid constellation of the Southern Cross, my first glimpse of it. We reined in our horses, turned and watched the big lustrous stars descend and disappear behind the impenetrable curtain of the Cordillera’s towering chain.
THE LANDING, RIO DE LAS BALSAS
The Balsas River was now behind us. The baranca we ascended widened out. We were upon the well-beaten track of travel from Guerrero, and even Acapulco, to the north. Ere the sun came blazing up, we were many miles on our way. And well for us it was so, for the day’s heat has been the most terrible I have yet endured. The animals did not sweat, nor did we, the air was too dry for that, but my blood boiled, my bones baked, and my skin parched from the fierce hotness of the sun. Even the cowboys we here and there encountered sat silent in their saddles beneath the mimosa’s and mesquit’s thickest shade.