As we rise—a four per cent. grade—the fertile and beautiful valley of Anahuac, in which Mexico City is situated, spreads out before me. The big white city, its red and black-tiled roofs, its many domed and towered churches; the numerous lesser towns and villages scattering out into the bowl-like valley; the shimmering surfaces of lakes Tezcoco, Xochimilco, and Chalco, and bordering ponds; the plantations of dark maguey; the orchards of citrous fruits; the innumerable gardens, floating gardens some of them, from which are gathered the fresh vegetables daily displayed in the city’s several markets; the dark green groves of the splendid cypress of the Alameda and of Chapultepec, as well as the palace itself, perched high upon its rocky base; the circling ranges of lofty mountains, and, in the far southern distance, the mighty volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, snow-crowned and glittering with dazzling refulgence in the light of the morning sun,—all these made a picture as grand and imposing as any landscape I have seen or may ever see, and as astonishing in its contrasts of light and shadow, of green semitropical valley and icebound heights.
For several hours we crept slowly upward,—the views and vistas ever changing. Everywhere there were plantations of maguey, and everywhere at the stations Indian women were selling fresh pulque to the thirsty travelers of the train. Then, little by little, as we were lifted above the warmer airs, we came into the altitude of the oaks, extensive forests of well-grown oaks, and then yet higher we came into splendid forests of pine. The mountains now lost the smoothness of surface, which marked the lower slopes. We came into wide reaches of volcanic ash, tufa, beds of lava, all rough and sharp pointed, with deep cavernous clefts between, apparently lying just as they fell and flowed and hardened uncounted centuries ago.
Upon reaching the summit, attaining an altitude of over ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, we traversed for many miles a grassy tableland, where were herds of the long-horned cattle, and flocks of the thin-wooled sheep with their keepers. Running parallel to our track extended the ancient Royal Turnpike, built long ago by Montezuma and maintained by Cortez with the labor of his conquered Aztec slaves, and still called “El Camino Real del Rey.” On the very summit of the height of land stood the ruins of an old roadhouse and towered fortress. Here Cortez placed his soldiers, and here garrisons of troops have ever since remained to guard the public, to protect the royal mails, to preserve the dignity of the Republic, and even to-day to save the railroad trains from being held up by modern bandits as bold and merciless as their predecessors of bygone centuries. It is the tradition concerning these heights that they have always been the rendezvous of tribes and bands, whose immemorial privilege and occupation it has been to kill and rob. Gruesome are the tales to-day related of the murders and plunderings which once were of almost daily occurrence, and sometimes do yet occur along this famous road. Even now, I notice the camp of soldiers in permanent quarters beneath the shadow of the crumbling tower. Diaz, of the iron hand, takes no chances with the turbulent residents of these mountain solitudes! All along we are among the ancient lava beds, while always lifting into the deep azure sky far out to the left, glitter the snow-clad summits of Iztaccihuatl (Ista-se-wahtl) and Popocatepetl. They appeared to be close to us, and yet we never came any nearer to them,—although we steamed toward them almost half a day.
The descent was rapid—we came down nearly five thousand feet in an hour and a half—into a most lovely verdant valley, two thousand feet lower than Lake Tezcoco. Here grew great crops of sugar cane, bananas, coffee, and oranges, limes and pomegranates—a profuse verdure. The valley, from ten to twenty miles in width, stretched away in broad sweeping curves both east and west, while through it flowed the upper waters of the River Balsas. Here the river takes its rise from the fountains of the melting snowfields upon the volcano’s distant flanks. The valley is one of the most fertile and salubrious in all Mexico. Cortez seized upon it almost as soon as he had wrested Tenochtitlan from Montezuma’s grasp. What he did not take for himself, he divided out in liberal gifts among the great captains in his train, granting to them immense haciendas, farms fifty miles across, embracing lands of unbounded fertility, even then smiling beneath the care of skillful tillers of the soil. The best of these monstrous estates are still owned by families descended from the Conquestadores. The lands originally were all subject to the law of entail, and the laws are still upon the statute books. Here are famous prehistoric ruins, among them those of the ancient pyramid and temple of Xochicalco and many hieroglyphics dating back to an antiquity more remote than the memory of even the Aztec people. Here also are the caves of Cacahuamilpa, equally famous. The great ruins, lying a day’s journey from the city, I did not have a chance to see.
MY COCHA—CUERNAVACA
My glimpses of the town of Cuernavaca were but flashlight peeps. The station, where we finally arrived, after descending by a long series of zig-zags and sweeping curves, lies a good mile outside the city. Here a motley assemblage were gathered to greet our advent, an array of cochas, voitures, and cabriolets, drawn by dusty, uncurried mules and horses. Remembering my experience, when last arriving in Mexico City, I hurried to an antique vehicle, drawn by a pair of mules, and bargained with the young cochero that he should drive me to and about the city of Cuernavaca and bring me back to the station. This after some haggling, he agreed to do, all for one peso (Mexican silver dollar). I climbed into the dusty equipage. The cochero swore at his mules in sonorous Spanish, and cracking his long-lashed whip, started them on a full run down the wide camino, amidst a cloud of white dust. Thus we entered the city and thus we proceeded through streets narrow and broad, until we had traversed and circled and driven through the chiefer part of it. He never stopped his swearing, he continually cracked his whip, and the mules never slackened in their wild gallop throughout the happy hour he was in my employ. There are no sidewalks in these Spanish towns. Men and women bolted from our onward coming, children fled into open doorways, and dogs and chickens and lank hogs scattered before us as chaff before the wind. We rattled past the one-time palace of Cortez, afterward of Carlotta, Maximilian’s ill-fated mate, and now used as the State Capitol. We circled the pretty plaza with its flowers and palms and tropical gardens and splashing fountains. We viewed the monstrous cathedral, all dilapidated. We drew rein a moment before the shrine of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, kodaked it, and swung along in front of the old church of the Franciscans.
My cochero seemed to gain enthusiasm with each bounce of the cocha. He clamored continually in voluble and quite incomprehensible Indian-Spanish. The narrower and more ill-paved the street the more violently did he lash the mules like one possessed. A pair of pretty señoritas, on their balcony smiled upon me as we passed, and I kodaked them in courteous acknowledgment of their good will; we beheld where the famous baths of Cuernavaca have for centuries been taken, and I had pointed out to me the magnificent and extensive Borda Gardens, where flowers and fruits, fountains and cascades, marble basins and miniature lakes express in utter riot the prodigal and exuberant fancies of an ancient half-mad millionaire; and still proceeding, never stopping, we at last whirled back amidst even greater clouds of dust to the railway station, just in time to catch the train. Another motley throng was gathered there. Half of the town seemed to have turned out to see the other half depart. Along the platform were many Indians selling fruit and compounding those curious peppered sandwiches, which so delight the seasoned palate of the Mexican. By this time the lining of my own mouth having become somewhat inured to these fierce foods, I let an old Indian crone make for me a particular combination of bread and oil and pepper and cucumbers and highly-seasoned and minced meat, only daring to eat it, however, when I had entered my car again, so that I might be in close neighborhood to copious supplies of water. The Mexican delights in this sort of burning sustenance, and for him it can never be made too spiced and too hot. On the platform of the station there were also many Mexican ladies of quality, come to say good-bye to husbands and brothers, who were returning to the capital. None of them wore hats, but the graceful mantillas were universally in use, and, generally, the gowns were black.
