  Honduras, by Harry A. Franck #2 in our series by Harry A. Franck Title: Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond Author: Harry A. Franck Edition: 10 Language: English This eBook was produced by Jim O'Connor, Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team TRAMPING THROUGH MEXICO, GUATEMALA AND HONDURASBeing the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond By Harry A. Franck Author Of Illustrated With Photographs By The Author To The Mexican Peon With Sincerest Wishes For His Ultimate Emancipation FOREWORDThis simple story of a journey southward grew up of itself. Planning a comprehensive exploration of South America, I concluded to reach that continent by some less monotonous route than the steamship's track; and herewith is presented the unadorned narrative of what I saw on the way,—the day-by-day experiences in rambling over bad roads and into worse lodging-places that infallibly befall all who venture afield south of the Rio Grande. The present account joins up with that of five months on the Canal Zone, already published, clearing the stage for a larger forthcoming volume on South America giving the concrete results of four unbroken years of Latin-American travel. Harry A. Franck. TABLE OF CONTENTSI INTO THE COOLER SOUTHII TRAMPING THE BYWAYSIII IN A MEXICAN MINEIV ROUND ABOUT LAKE CHAPALAV ON THE TRAIL IN MICHOACÁNVI TENOCHTITLAN OF TO-DAYVII TROPICAL MEXICOVIII HURRYING THROUGH GUATEMALAIX THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HONDURASX THE CITY OF THE SILVER HILLSLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONSA street of Puebla, Mexico, and the Soledad Church. The first glimpse of Mexico. Looking across the Rio Grande at Laredo. A corner of Monterey from my hotel window. A peon restaurant in the market-place of San LuÍs PotosÍ. A market woman of San LuÍs PotosÍ. Some sold potatoes no larger than nuts. A policeman and an arriero. The former home, in Dolores Hidalgo, of the Mexican "Father of his Rancho del CapulÍn, where I ended the first day of tramping in Mexico. View of the city of Guanajuato. Fellow-roadsters in Mexico. Some of the pigeon-holes of Guanajuato's cemetery. A pulque street-stand and one of its clients. Prisoners washing in the patio of the former "AlÓndiga". Drilling with compressed-air drills in a mine "heading". As each car passed I snatched a sample of its ore. Working a "heading" by hand. Peon miners being searched for stolen ore as they leave the mine. Bricks of gold and silver ready for shipment. Each is worth something like $1250. In a natural amphitheater of Guanajuato the American miners of the region gather on Sundays for a game of baseball. Some of the peons under my charge about to leave the mine. The easiest way to carry a knapsack—on a peon's back. The ore thieves of Peregrina being led away to prison. One of Mexico's countless "armies". Vendors of strawberries at the station of Irapuato. The wall of Guadalajara penitentiary against which prisoners are shot. The liver-shaking stagecoach from Atequisa to Chapala. Lake Chapala from the estate of Ribero Castellanos. The head farmer of the estate under an aged fig-tree. A Mexican village. Making glazed floor tiles on a Mexican estate. Vast seas of Indian corn stretch to pine-clad hills, while around them are guard-shacks at frequent intervals. Interior of a Mexican hut at cooking time. Fall plowing near Patzcuaro. Modern transportation along the ancient highway from Tzintzuntzan, the former Tarascan capital. In the church of ancient Tzintzuntzan is a "Descent from the Cross" ascribed to Titian. Indians waiting outside the door of the priest's house in Tzintzuntzan. A corner of Morelia, capital of MichoacÁn, and its ancient aqueduct. The spot and hour in which Maximilian was shot, with the chapel since erected by Austria. The market of Tlaxcala, the ancient inhabitants of which aided Cortez in the conquest of Mexico. A rural of the state of Tlaxcala on guard before a barracks. A part of Puebla, looking toward the peak of Orizaba. Popocatepetl and the artificial hill of Cholula on which the Aztecs had a famous temple, overthrown by Cortez. A typical Mexican of the lowlands of Tehuantepec. A typical Mexican boy of the highlands. Looking down on Maltrata as the train begins its descent. A residence of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. On the banks of the Coatzacoalcos, Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Women of Tehuantepec in the market-place. On the hillside above Tehuantepec are dwellings partly dug out of the cliffs. A rear-view of the remarkable head-dress of the women of Tehuantepec, and one of their decorated bowls. A woman of northern Guatemala. A station of the "Pan-American" south of Tehuantepec. An Indian boy of Guatemala on his way home from market. Three "gringoes" on the tramp from the Mexican boundary to the railway of Guatemala. Inside the race-track at Guatemala City is a relief map of the entire country. One of the jungle-hidden ruins of QuiraguÁ. The last house in Guatemala, near the boundary of Honduras. A woman shelling corn for my first meal in Honduras. A vista of Honduras from a hillside, to which I climbed after losing the trail. A resident of Santa Rosa, victim of the hook-worm. The chief monument of the ruins of CopÁn. I topped a ridge and caught sight at last of Santa Rosa, first town of any size in Honduras. Soldiers of Santa Rosa eating in the market-place. Christmas dinner on the road in Honduras. Several times I met the families of soldiers tramping northward with all their possessions. A fellow-roadster behind one of my cigars. An arriero carrying a bundle of Santa Rosa cigars on his own back as he drives his similarly laden animals. The great military force of Esperanza compelled to draw up and face my camera. The prisoners in their chains form an interested audience across the street. Honduras, the Land of Great Depths. A corner of Tegucigalpa. The "West Pointers" of Honduras in their barracks, a part of the national palace. View of Tegucigalpa from the top of Picacho. Repairing the highway from Tegucigalpa to the Coast. A family of Honduras. Approaching Sabana Grande, the first night's stop on the tramp to the coast. A beef just butchered and hung out in the sun. A dwelling on the hot lands of the Coast, and its scantily clad inhabitants. Along the Pasoreal River. The mozo pauses for a drink on the trail. One way of transporting merchandise from the coast to Tegucigalpa. The other way of bringing goods up to the capital. The garrison of Amapala. Marooned "gringoes" waiting with what patience possible at the "Hotel Unloading cattle in the harbor of Amapala. The steamer arrives at last that is to carry us south to Panama. We lose no time in being rowed out to her. MAPThe Author's Itinerary CHAPTER IINTO THE COOLER SOUTHYou are really in Mexico before you get there. Laredo is a purely—though not pure—Mexican town with a slight American tinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly about trying to sell sticks of candy and the like from boards carried on their heads. There are not a dozen shops where the clerks speak even good pidgin English, most signs are in Spanish, the lists of voters on the walls are chiefly of Iberian origin, the very county officers from sheriff down—or up—are names the average American could not pronounce, and the saunterer in the streets may pass hours without hearing a word of English. Even the post-office employees speak Spanish by preference and I could not do the simplest business without resorting to that tongue. I am fond of Spanish, but I do not relish being forced to use it in my own country. On Laredo's rare breeze rides enough dust to build a new world. Every street is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds of the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat—"Cincinnati Slim" put it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where the freight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets full this'll do fine for an annex." Luckily my window in the ruin that masqueraded as a hotel faced such wind as existed. The only person I saw in that institution during twenty-four hours there was a little Mexican boy with a hand-broom, which he evidently carried as an ornament or a sign of office. It seemed a pity not to let Mexico have the dust-laden, sweltering place if they want it so badly. I had not intended to lug into Mexico such a load as I did. But it was a Jewish holiday, and the pawnshops were closed. As I passed the lodge on the north end of the bridge over the languid, brown Rio Grande it was a genuine American voice that snapped: "Heh! A nickel!" Just beyond, but thirty-six minutes earlier, the Mexican official stopped me with far more courtesy, and peered down into the corners of my battered "telescope" without disturbing the contents. "Monterey?" he asked. "SÍ, seÑor." "No revÓlver?" he queried suspiciously. "No, seÑor," I answered, keeping the coat on my arm unostentatiously over my hip pocket. It wasn't a revolver; it was an automatic. The man who baedekerized Mexico says Nuevo Laredo is not the place to judge that country. I was glad to hear it. Its imitation of a street-car, eight feet long, was manned by two tawny children without uniforms, nor any great amount of substitute for them, who smoked cigarettes incessantly as we crawled dustily through the baked-mud hamlet to the decrepit shed that announced itself the station of the National Railways of Mexico. It was closed, of course. I waited an hour or more before two officials resplendent in uniforms drifted in to take up the waiting where I had left off. But it was a real train that pulled in toward three, from far-off St. Louis, even if it had hooked on behind a second-class car with long wooden benches. For an hour we rambled across just such land as southern Texas, endless flat sand scattered with chaparral, mesquite, and cactus; nowhere a sign of life, but for fences of one or two barb-wires on crooked sticks—not even bird life. The wind, strong and incessant as at sea, sounded as mournful through the thorny mesquite bushes as in our Northern winters, even though here it brought relief rather than suffering. The sunshine was unbrokenly glorious. Benches of stained wood in two-inch strips ran the entire length of our car, made in Indiana. In the center were ten double back-to-back seats of the same material. The conductor was American, but as in Texas he seemed to have little to do except to keep the train moving. The auditor, brakeman, and train-boy were Mexicans, in similar uniforms, but of thinner physique and more brown of color. The former spoke fluent English. The engineer was American and the fireman a Negro. Far ahead, on either side, hazy high mountains appeared, as at sea. By the time we halted at Lampazos, fine serrated ranges stood not far distant on either hand. From the east came a never-ceasing wind, stronger than that of the train, laden with a fine sand that crept in everywhere. Mexican costumes had appeared at the very edge of the border; now there were even a few police under enormous hats, with tight trousers and short jackets showing a huge revolver at the hip. Toward evening things grew somewhat greener. A tree six to twelve feet high, without branches, or sometimes with several trunk-like ones, growing larger from bottom to top and ending in a bristling bunch of leaves, became common. The mountains on both sides showed fantastic peaks and ridges, changing often in aspect; some, thousands of feet high with flat tableland tops, others in strange forms the imagination could animate into all manner of creatures. A goatherd, wild, tawny, bearded, dressed in sun-faded sheepskin, was seen now and then tending his flock of little white goats in the sand and cactus. This was said to be the rainy season in northern Mexico. What must it be in the dry? Toward five the sun set long before sunset, so high was the mountain wall on our right. The sand-storm had died down, and the sand gave way to rocks. The moon, almost full, already smiled down upon us over the wall on the left. We continued along the plain between the ranges, which later receded into the distance, as if retiring for the night. Flat, mud-colored, Palestinian adobe huts stood here and there in the moonlight among patches of a sort of palm bush. Monterey proved quite a city. Yet how the ways of the Spaniard appeared even here! Close as it is to the United States, with many American residents and much "americanizado," according to the Mexican, the city is in architecture, arrangement, customs, just what it would be a hundred miles from Madrid; almost every little detail of life is that of Spain, with scarcely enough difference to suggest another country, to say nothing of another hemisphere. England brings to her colonies some of her home customs, but not an iota of what Spain does to the lands she has conquered. The hiding of wealth behind a miserable facade is almost as universal in Mexico of the twentieth century as in Morocco of the fourth. The narrow streets of Monterey have totally inadequate sidewalks on which two pedestrians pass, if at all, with the rubbing of shoulders. Outwardly the long vista of bare house fronts that toe them on either side are dreary and poor, every window barred as those of a prison. Yet in them sat well-dressed seÑoritas waiting for the lovers who "play the bear" to late hours of the night, and over their shoulders the passerby caught many a glimpse of richly furnished rooms and flowery patios beyond. The river Catalina was drier than even the Manzanares, its rocky bed, wide enough to hold the upper Connecticut, entirely taken up by mule and donkey paths and set with the cloth booths of fruit sellers. As one moves south it grows cooler, and Monterey, fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, was not so weighty in its heat as Laredo and southern Texas. But, on the other hand, being surrounded on most sides by mountains, it had less breeze, and the coatless freedom of Texas was here looked down upon. During the hours about noonday the sun seemed to strike physically on the head and back whoever stepped out into it, and the smallest fleck of white cloud gave great and instant relief. From ten to four, more or less, the city was strangely quiet, as if more than half asleep, or away on a vacation, and over it hung that indefinable scent peculiar to Arab and Spanish countries. Compared with Spain, however, its night life and movement was slight. Convicts in perpendicularly striped blue and white pajamas worked in the streets. That is, they moved once every twenty minutes or so, usually to roll a cigarette. They were without shackles, but several guards in brown uniforms and broad felt hats, armed with thick-set muskets, their chests criss-crossed with belts of long rifle cartridges, lolled in the shade of every near-by street corner. The prisoners laughed and chatted like men perfectly contented with their lot, and moved about with great freedom. One came a block to ask me the time, and loafed there some fifteen minutes before returning to his "labor." Mexico is strikingly faithful to its native dress. Barely across the Rio Grande the traveler sees at once hundreds of costumes which in any American city would draw on all the boy population as surely as the Piper of Hamelin. First and foremost comes always the enormous hat, commonly of thick felt with decorative tape, the crown at least a foot high, the brim surely three feet in diameter even when turned up sufficient to hold a half gallon of water. That of the peon is of straw; he too wears the skintight trousers, and goes barefoot but for a flat leather sandal held by a thong between the big toe and the rest. In details and color every dress was as varied and individual as the shades of complexion. My hotel room had a fine outlook to summer-blue mountains, but was blessed with neither mirror, towel, nor water. I descended to the alleyway between "dining-room" and barnyard, where I had seen the general washbasin, but found the landlady seated on the kitchen floor shelling into it peas for our almuerzo. This and the evening comida were always identically the same. A cheerful but slatternly Indian woman set before me a thin soup containing a piece of squash and a square of boiled beef, and eight hot corn tortillas of the size and shape of our pancakes, or gkebis, the Arab bread, which it outdid in toughness and total absence of taste. Next followed a plate of rice with peppers, a plate of tripe less tough than it should have been, and a plate of brown beans which was known by the name of chile con carne, but in which I never succeeded in finding anything carnal. Every meal ended with a cup of the blackest coffee. Out at the end of calle B a well-worn rocky path leads up to a ruined chapel on the summit of a hill, the famous Obispado from which the city was shelled and taken by the Americans in 1847. Below, Monterey lies flat, with many low trees peering above the whitish houses, all set in a perfectly level plain giving a great sense of roominess, as if it could easily hold ten such cities. At the foot of the hill, some three hundred feet high, is an unoccupied space. Then the city begins, leisurely at first, with few houses and many gardens and trees, thickening farther on. All about are mountains. The Silla (Saddle), a sharp rugged height backing the city on the right, has a notch in it much like the seat of a Texas saddle; to the far left are fantastic sharp peaks, and across the plain a ragged range perhaps fifteen miles distant shuts off the view. Behind the chapel stand Los Dientes, a teeth or saw-like range resembling that behind Leceo in Italy. Only a young beggar and his female mate occupied the ruined chapel, built, like the town, of whitish stone that is soft when dug but hardens upon exposure to the air. They cooked on the littered floor of one of the dozen rooms, and all the walls of the chamber under the great dome were set with pegs for birds, absent now, but which had carpeted the floor with proof of their frequent presence. At five the sun set over the city, so high is the Dientes range, but for some time still threw a soft light on the farther plain and hills. Compared with our own land there is something profoundly peaceful in this climate and surroundings. Now the sunshine slipped up off the farther ranges, showing only on the light band of clouds high above the farther horizon, and a pale-faced moon began to brighten, heralding a brilliant evening. Fertile plains of corn stretched south of the city, but already dry, and soon giving way to mesquite and dust again. Mountains never ceased, and lay fantastically heaped up on every side. We rose ever higher, though the train kept a moderate speed. At one station the bleating of a great truckload of kids, their legs tied, heaped one above the other, was startlingly like the crying of babies. We steamed upward through a narrow pass, the mountains crowding closer on either hand and seeming to grow lower as we rose higher among them. The landscape became less arid, half green, with little or no cactus, and the breeze cooled steadily. Saltillo at last, five thousand feet up, was above the reach of oppressive summer and for perhaps the first time since leaving Chicago I did not suffer from the heat. It was almost a pleasure to splash through the little puddles in its poorly paved streets. Its plazas were completely roofed with trees, the view down any of its streets was enticing, and the little cubes of houses were painted all possible colors without any color scheme whatever. Here I saw the first pulquerÍas, much like cheap saloons in appearance, with swinging doors, sometimes a pool table, and a bartender of the customary I-tell-yer-I'm-tough physiognomy. Huge earthen jars of the fermented cactus juice stood behind the bar, much like milk in appearance, and was served in glazed pots, size to order. In Mexico pulquerÍa stands for saloon and peluquerÍa for barber-shop, resulting now and then in sad mistakes by wandering Yankees innocent of Spanish. There were a hundred adult passengers by actual count, to say nothing of babies and unassorted bundles, in the second-class car that carried me on south into the night. Every type of Mexican was represented, from white, soft, city-bred specimens to sturdy countrymen so brown as to be almost black. A few men were in "European" garb. Most of them were dressed Á la peÓn, very tight trousers fitting like long leggings, collarless shirts of all known colors, a gay faja or cloth belt, sometimes a coat—always stopping at the waist. Then last, but never least, the marvelous hat. Two peons trying to get through the same door at once was a sight not soon to be forgotten. There were felt and straw hats of every possible grade and every shade and color except red, wound with a rich band about the crown and another around the brim. Those of straw were of every imaginable weave, some of rattan, like baskets or veranda furniture. The Mexican male seems to be able to endure sameness of costume below it, but unless his hat is individual, life is a drab blank to him. With his hat off the peon loses seven eights of his impressiveness. The women, with only a black sort of thin shawl over their heads, were eminently inconspicuous in the forest of hatted men. Mournfully out of the black drizzling night about the station came the dismal wails of hawkers at their little stands dim-lighted by pale lanterns; "Anda pulque!" Within the car was more politeness—or perhaps, more exactly, more unconscious consideration for others—than north of the Rio Grande. There were many women among us, yet all the night through there was not a suggestion of indecency or annoyance. Indian blood largely predominated, hardy, muscular, bright-eyed fellows, yet in conduct all were caballeros. Near me sat a family of three. The father, perhaps twenty, was strikingly handsome in his burnished copper skin, his heavy black hair, four or five inches long, hanging down in "bangs" below his hat. The mother was even younger, yet the child was already some two years old, the chubbiest, brightest-eyed bundle of humanity imaginable. In their fight for a seat the man shouted to the wife to hand him the child. He caught it by one hand and swung it high over two seats and across the car, yet it never ceased smiling. The care this untutored fellow took to give wife and child as much comfort as possible was superior to that many a "civilized" man would have shown all night under the same circumstances. Splendid teeth were universal among the peons. There was no chewing of tobacco, but much spitting by both sexes. A delicate, child-like young woman drew out a bottle and swallowed whole glassfuls of what I took to be milk, until the scent of pulque, the native beverage, suddenly reached my nostrils. The fat brown auditor addressed seÑora, the peon's wife, with the highest respect, even if he insisted on doing his duty to the extent of pushing aside the skirts of the women to peer under the long wooden bench for passengers. A dispute soon arose. Fare was demanded of a ragged peon for the child of three under his arm. The peon shook his head, smiling. The auditor's voice grew louder. Still the father smiled silently. The ticket collector stepped back into the first-class car and returned with the train guard, a boyish-looking fellow in peon garb from hat to legging trousers, with a brilliant red tie, two belts of enormous cartridges about his waist, in his hand a short ugly rifle, and a harmless smile on his face. There was something fascinating about the stocky little fellow with his half-embarrassed grin. One felt that of himself he would do no man hurt, yet that a curt order would cause him to send one of those long steel-jacketed bullets through a man and into the mountain side beyond. Luckily he got no such orders. The auditor pointed out the malefactor, who lost no time in paying the child's half-fare. This all-night trip must be done sooner or later by all who enter Mexico by way of Laredo, for the St. Louis-Mexico City Limited with its sleeping-car behind and a few scattered Americans in first-class is the only one that covers this section. Residents of Vanegas, for example, who wish to travel south must be at the station at three in the morning. Most of the night the train toiled painfully upward. As a man scorns to set out after a hearty meal with a lunch under his arm, so in the swelter of Texas I had felt it foolish to be lugging a bundle of heavy clothing. By midnight I began to credit myself with foresight. The windows were closed, yet the land of yesterday seemed far behind indeed. I wrapped my heavy coat about me. Toward four we crossed the Tropic of Cancer into the Torrid Zone, without a jolt, and I dug out my gray sweater and regretted I had abandoned the old blue one in an empty box-car. Twice I think I drowsed four minutes with head and elbow on my bundle, but except for two or three women who jack-knifed on the long bench no one found room to lie down during the long night. From daylight on I stood in the vestibule and watched the drab landscape hurry steadily past. No mountains were in sight now because we were on top of them. Yet no one would have suspected from the appearance of the country that we were considerably more than a mile above sea-level. The flat land looked not greatly different from that of the day before. The cactus was higher; some of the "organ" variety, many of the "Spanish bayonet" species, lance-like stalks eight to ten feet high. The rest was bare ground with scattered mesquite bushes. Had I not known the altitude I might have attributed the slight light-headedness to a sleepless night. Certainly a hundred ragged cargadores, hotel runners, and boys eager to carry my bundle attacked me during my escape from the station of San Luis Potosi at seven, and there were easily that many carriages waiting, without a dozen to take them. The writer of Mexico's Baedeker speaks of the city as well-to-do. Either it has vastly changed in a few years or he wrote it up by absent treatment. Hardly a town of India exceeds it in picturesque poverty. Such a surging of pauperous humanity, dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is no cure for man's ills. The chief center was the swarming market. Picture a dense mob of several thousand men and boys, gaunt, weather-beaten, their tight trousers collections of rents and patchwork in many colors, sandals of a soft piece of leather showing a foot cracked, blackened, tough as a hoof, as incrusted with filth as a dead foot picked up on a garbage heap, the toes always squirting with mud, the feet not merely never washed but the sandal never removed until it wears off and drops of its self. Above this a collarless shirt, blouse or short jacket, ragged, patched, of many faded colors, yet still showing half the body. Then a dull, uncomplaining, take-things-as-they-come face, unwashed, never shaved—the pure Indian grows a sort of dark down on his cheeks and the point of the chin, the half-breeds a slight beard—all topped by the enormous hat, never missing, though often full of holes, black with dirt, weather-beaten beyond expression. Then there were fully as many women and girls, even less fortunate, for they had not even sandals, but splashed along barefoot among the small cold cobblestones. Their dress seemed gleaned from a rag-heap and their heads were bare, their black hair combed or plastered flat. Children of both sexes were exact miniatures of their elders. All these wretches were here to sell. Yet what was for sale could easily have been tended by twenty persons. Instead, every man, woman, and child had his own stand, or bit of cloth or cobblestone on which to spread a few scanty, bedraggled wares. Such a mass of silly, useless, pathetic articles, toy jars, old bottles, anything that could be found in all the dump-heaps of Christendom. The covered market housed only a very small percentage of the whole. There was a constant, multicolored going and coming, with many laden asses and miserable, gaunt creatures bent nearly double under enormous loads on head or shoulders. Every radiating narrow mud-dripping street for a quarter-mile was covered in all but the slight passageway in the center with these displays. Bedraggled women sat on the cobbles with aprons spread out and on them little piles of six nuts each, sold at a centavo. There were peanuts, narrow strips of cocoanut, plantains, bananas short and fat, sickly little apples, dwarf peaches, small wild grapes, oranges green in color, potatoes often no larger than marbles, as if the possessor could not wait until they grew up before digging them; cactus leaves, the spines shaved off, cut up into tiny squares to serve as food; bundles of larger cactus spines brought in by hobbling old women or on dismal asses and sold as fuel, aguacates, known to us as "alligator pears" and tasting to the uninitiated like axle-grease; pomegranates, pecans, cheeses flat and white, every species of basket and earthen jar from two-inch size up, turnips, some cut in two for those who could not afford a whole one; onions, flat slabs of brown, muddy-looking soap, rice, every species of frijole, or bean, shelled corn for tortillas, tomatoes—tomate coloradito, though many were tiny and green as if also prematurely gathered—peppers red and green, green-corn with most of the kernels blue, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, melons of every size except large, string-beans, six-inch cones of the muddiest of sugar, the first rough product of the crushers wound in swamp grass and which prospective purchasers handled over and over, testing them now and then by biting off a small corner, though there was no apparent difference; sausages with links of marble size, everything in the way of meat, tossed about in the dirt, swarming with flies, handled, smelled, cut into tiny bits for purchasers; even strips of intestines, the jaw-bone of a sheep with barely the smell of meat on it; all had value to this gaunt community, nothing was too green, or old, or rotten to be offered for sale. Chickens with legs tied lay on the ground or were carried about from day to day until purchasers of such expensive luxuries appeared. There were many men with a little glass box full of squares of sweets like "fudge," selling at a half-cent each; every possible odd and end of the shops was there; old women humped over their meager wares, smoking cigarettes, offered for sale the scraps of calico left over from the cutting of a gown, six-inch triangles of no fathomable use to purchasers. There were entire blocks selling only long strips of leather for the making of sandals. Many a vendor had all the earmarks of leprosy. There were easily five thousand of them, besides another market on the other side of the town, for this poverty-stricken city of some fifty thousand inhabitants. The swarming stretched a half mile away in many a radiating street, and scores whose entire stock could not be worth fifteen cents sat all day without selling more than half of it. An old woman stopped to pick up four grains of corn and greedily tucked them away in the rags that covered her emaciated frame. Now and then a better-dressed potosino passed, making purchases, a peon, male or female, slinking along behind with a basket; for it is a horrible breach of etiquette for a ten-dollar-a-month Mexican to be publicly seen carrying anything. One wondered why there was not general suicide in such a community of unmitigated misery. Why did they not spring upon me and snatch the purse I displayed or die in the attempt? How did they resist eating up their own wares? It seemed strange that these sunken-chested, hobbling, halt, shuffling, shivering, starved creatures should still fight on for life. Why did they not suddenly rise and sack the city? No wonder those are ripe for revolution whose condition cannot be made worse. Policemen in sandals and dark-blue shoddy cap and cloak looked little less miserable than the peons. All about the covered market were peon restaurants, a ragged strip of canvas as roof, under it an ancient wooden table and two benches. Unwashed Indian women cooked in several open earthen bowls the favorite Mexican dishes,—frijoles (a stew of brown beans), chile con carne, rice, stews of stray scraps of meat and the leavings of the butcher-shops. These were dished up in brown glazed jars and eaten with strips of tortilla folded between the fingers, as the Arab eats with gkebis. Indeed there were many things reminiscent of the markets and streets of Damascus, more customs similar to those of the Moor than the Spaniard could have brought over, and the brown, wrinkled old women much resembled those of Palestine, though their noses were flatter and their features heavier. Yet it was a good-natured crowd. In all my wandering in it I heard not an unpleasant word, not a jest at my expense, almost no evidence of anti-foreign feeling, which seems not indigenous to the peon, but implanted in him by those of ulterior motives. Nor did they once ask alms or attempt to push misery forward. The least charitable would be strongly tempted to succor any one of the throng individually, but here a hundred dollars in American money divided into Mexican centavos would hardly go round. Here and there were pulquerÍas full of besotted, shouting men—and who would not drink to drown such misery? There was not a male of any species but had his colored blanket, red, purple, Indian-yellow, generally with two black stripes, the poorer with a strip of old carpet. These they wound about their bodies, folding them across the chest, the arms hugged together inside in such a way as to bring a corner across the mouth and nose, leaving their pipe-stem legs below, and wandered thus dismally about in the frequent spurts of cold rain. Now and then a lowest of the low passed in the cast-off remnants of "European" clothes, which were evidently considered far inferior to peon garb, however bedraggled. Bare or sandaled feet seemed impervious to cold, again like the Arab, as was also this fear of the raw air and half covering of the face that gave a Mohammedan touch, especially to the women. To me the atmosphere was no different than late October in the States. The peons evidently never shaved, though there were many miserable little barber-shops. On the farther outskirts of the hawkers were long rows of shanties, shacks made of everything under the sun, flattened tin cans, scraps of rubbish, two sticks holding up a couple of ragged bags under which huddled old women with scraps of cactus and bundles of tiny fagots. Scattered through the throng were several "readers." One half-Indian woman I passed many times was reading incessantly, with the speed of a Frenchman, from printed strips of cheap colored paper which she offered for sale at a cent each. They were political in nature, often in verse, insulting in treatment, and mixed with a crass obscenity at which the dismal multitude laughed bestially. Three musicians, one with a rude harp, a boy striking a triangle steel, sang mournful dirges similar to those of Andalusia. The peons listened to both music and reading motionless, with expressionless faces, with never a "move on" from the policeman, who seemed the least obstrusive of mortals. San LuÍs PotosÍ has many large rich churches, misery and pseudo-religion being common joint-legacies of Spanish rule. Small chance these creatures would have of feeling at home in a place so different from their earthly surroundings as the Christian heaven. The thump of church bells, some with the voice of battered old tin pans, broke out frequently. Now and then one of these dregs of humanity crept into church for a nap, but the huge edifices showed no other sign of usefulness. On the whole there was little appearance of "religion." A few women were seen in the churches, a book-seller sold no novels and little literature but "mucho de religiÓn," but the great majority gave no outward sign of belonging to any faith. Priests were not often seen in the streets. Mexican law forbids them to wear a distinctive costume, hence they dressed in black derbies, Episcopal neckbands, and black capes to the ankles. Not distinctive indeed! No one could have guessed what they were! One might have fancied them prize-fighters on the way from training quarters to bathroom. There is comparative splendor also in San LuÍs, as one may see by peeps into the lighted houses at night, but it is shut in tight as if fearful of the poor breaking in. As in so many Spanish countries, wealth shrinks out of sight and misery openly parades itself. Out across the railroad, where hundreds of ragged boys were riding freight cars back and forth in front of the station, the land lay flat as a table, some cactus here and there, but apparently fertile, with neither sod to break nor clearing necessary. Yet nowhere, even on the edge of the starving city, was there a sign of cultivation. We of the North were perhaps more kind to the Indian in killing him off. CHAPTER IITRAMPING THE BYWAYSHeavy weather still hung over the land to the southward. Indian corn, dry and shriveled, was sometimes shocked as in the States. The first field of maguey appeared, planted in long rows, barely a foot high, but due in a year or two to produce pulque, the Mexican scourge, because of its cheapness, stupefying the poorer classes. When fresh, it is said to be beneficial in kidney troubles and other ailments, but soon becomes over-fermented in the pulquerÍas of the cities and more harmful than a stronger liquor. Within the car was an American of fifty, thin and drawn, with huddled shoulders, who had been beaten by rebel forces in Zacatecas and robbed of his worldly wealth of $13,000 hidden in vain in his socks. Numbers of United States box-cars jolted across the country end to end with Mexican; the "B. & O." behind the "Norte de MÉjico," the "N. Y. C.," followed by the "Central Mejicano." Long broad stretches of plain, with cactus and mesquite, spread to low mountains blue with cold morning mist, all but their base hung with fog. Beyond JesÚs MarÍa, which is a sample of the station names, peons lived in bedraggled tents along the way, and the corn was even drier. The world seemed threatening to dry up entirely. At Cartagena there began veritable forests of cactus trees, and a wild scrub resembling the olive. Thousands of tunas, the red fruit of the cactus, dotted the ground along the way. The sun sizzled its way through the heavy sky as we climbed the flank of a rocky range, the vast half-forested plain to the east sinking lower and lower as we rose. Then came broken country with many muddy streams. It was the altitude perhaps that caused the patent feeling of exhilaration, as much as the near prospect of taking again to the open road. As the "garrotero" ("twister," or "choker" as the brakeman is called in Mexico) announced Dolores Hidalgo, I slipped four cartridges into my automatic. The roadways of Mexico offered unknown possibilities. A six-foot street-car drawn—when at all—by mules, stood at the station, but I struck off across the rolling country by a footpath that probably led to the invisible town. A half-mile lay behind me before I met the first man. He was riding an ass, but when I gave him "Buenos dÍas," he replied with a whining: "Una limosnita! A little alms, for the love of God." He wore a rosary about his neck and a huge cross on his chest. When I ignored his plea he rode on mumbling. The savage bellow of a bull not far off suggested a new possible danger on the road in this unfenced and almost treeless country. More men passed on asses, mules, and horses, but none afoot. Finally over the brown rise appeared Dolores Hidalgo; two enormous churches and an otherwise small town in a tree-touched valley. The central plaza, with many trees and hedges trimmed in the form of animals, had in its center the statue of the priest Hidalgo y Costilla, the "father of Mexican independence." A block away, packed with pictures and wreathes and with much of the old furniture as he left it, was the house in which he had lived before he started the activities that ended in the loss of his head. Well fortified at the excellent hotel, I struck out past the patriot priest's house over an arched bridge into the open country. As in any unknown land, the beginning of tramping was not without a certain mild misgiving. The "road" was only a trail and soon lost itself. A boy speaking good Spanish walked a long mile to set me right, and valued his services at a centavo. A half-cent seemed to be the fixed fee for anything among these country people. A peon carrying a load of deep-green alfalfa demanded as much for the privilege of photographing him when he was "not dressed up." He showed no sign whatever of gratitude when I doubled it and added a cigarette. The bright sun had now turned the day to early June. The so-called road was a well-trodden sandy path between high cactus hedges over rolling country. An hour out, the last look back on Dolores Hidalgo showed also mile upon mile of rolling plain to far, far blue sierras, all in all perhaps a hundred square miles visible. There were many travelers, chiefly on foot and carrying bundles on their heads. The greeting of these was "AdiÓs," while the better-to-do class on horse or mule back used the customary "Buenas tardes!" Thirst grew, but though the country was broken, with many wash-outs cutting deep across the trail, the streams were all muddy. Now and then a tuna on the cactus hedges was red ripe enough to be worth picking and, though full of seeds, was at least wet. It was harder to handle than a porcupine, and commonly left the fingers full of spines. Two men passed, offering dulces, a species of native candy, for sale. I declined. "Muy bien, give us a cigarette." I declined again, being low in stock. "Very well, adiÓs, seÑor," they replied in the apathetic way of their race, as if it were quite as satisfactory to them to get nothing as what they asked. The Rancho del Capulin, where night overtook me, was a hamlet of eight or ten houses, some mere stacks of thatch, out of the smoky doorway of which, three feet high, peered the half-naked inmates; others of adobe, large bricks of mud and chopped straw, which could be picked to pieces with the fingers. From one of the kennels a woman called out to know if I would eat. I asked if she could give lodging also and she referred me to her husband inside. I stopped to peer in through the doorway and he answered there was not room enough as it was, which was evident to the slowest-witted, for the family of six or eight of all ages, more or less dressed, lying and squatted about the earth floor dipping their fingers into bowls of steaming food, left not a square foot unoccupied. He advised me to go "beg license" of the "seÑora" of the house farther on, a low adobe building with wooden doors. "There is nothing but the place opposite," she answered. This was a sort of mud cave, man-made and door-less, the uneven earth floor covered with excrement, human and otherwise. I returned to peer into the mat-roofed yard with piles of corn-stalks and un-threshed beans, and met the man of the house just arriving with his labor-worn burros. He was a sinewy peasant of about fifty, dressed like all country peons in shirt and tight trousers of thinnest white cotton, showing his brown skin here and there. As he hesitated to give me answer, the wife made frantic signs to him from behind the door, of which the cracks were inches wide. He caught the hint and replied to my request for lodging: "Only if you pay me three centavos." Such exorbitance! The regulation price was perhaps one. But I yielded, for it was raining, and entered, to sit down on a heap of unthreshed beans. The woman brought me a mat three feet long, evidently destined to be my bed. I was really in the family barnyard, with no end walls, chickens overhead and the burros beyond. The rain took to dripping through the mat roof, and as I turned back toward the first hut for the promised frijoles and tortillas the woman called to me to say she also could furnish me supper. The main room of the house was about ten by ten, with mud walls five feet high, a pitched roof of some sort of grass with several holes in it. In the center of the room was a fireplace three feet high and four square, with several steaming glazed pots over a fire of encinal fagots. The walls were black with soot of the smoke that partly wandered out of an irregular hole in the farther end of the room. The eight-year-old son of the family was eating corn-stalks with great gusto, tearing off the rind with his teeth and chewing the stalk as others do sugar-cane. I handed him a loaf of potosino bread and he answered a perfunctory "Gracias," but neither he nor any of the family showed any evidence of gratitude as he wolfed it. The man complained that all the corn had dried up for lack of rain. The woman set before me a bowl of "sopita," with tortillas, white cheese, and boiled whole peppers. A penniless peon traveler begged a cigarette and half my morning loaf, and went out into the night and rain to sleep in the "chapel," as the mud cave across the way was called. There several travelers had settled down for the night. A girl of seventeen or so splashed across from it to beg "a jar of water for a poor prostitute," apparently announcing her calling merely as a curious bit of information. The family took at last to eating and kept it up a full hour, meanwhile discussing me thoroughly. Like most untutored races, they fancied I could not understand their ordinary tones. When they wished to address me they merely spoke louder. It is remarkable how Spain has imposed her language on even these wild, illiterate Indians as England has not even upon her colonies. As the rain continued to pour, I was to sleep in the kitchen. Drunken peons were shouting outside and the family seemed much frightened, keeping absolute silence. The four by two door with its six-inch cracks was blocked with a heavy pole, the family retired to the other room, and I stretched out in the darkness on the unsteady wooden bench, a foot wide, my head on my knapsack. I was soon glad of having a sweater, but that failed to cover my legs, and I slept virtually not at all through a night at least four months long, punctuated by much howling of dogs. It was still pitch dark when the "senora" entered, to spend a long time getting a fire started with wet fagots. Then she began making atole. Taking shelled corn from an earthen jar, she sprinkled it in the hallow of a stone and crushed it with much labor. This was put into water, strained through a sieve, then thrown into a kettle of boiling water. It was much toil for little food. Already she had labored a full hour. I asked for coffee, and she answered she had none but would buy some when the "store" opened. It grew broad daylight before this happened and I accepted atole. It was hot, but as tasteless as might be the water from boiled corn-stalks. There had been much discussion, supposedly unknown to me, the night before as to how much they dared charge me. The bill was finally set at twelve centavos (six cents), eight for supper, three for lodging, and one for breakfast. It was evidently highly exorbitant, for the family expressed to each other their astonishment that I paid it without protest. At the very outset there was a knee-deep river to cross, then miles of a "gumbo" mud that stuck like bad habits. My feet at times weighed twenty pounds each. Wild rocky hillsides alternated with breathless climbs. Many cattle were scattered far and wide over the mountains, but there was no cultivation. I passed an occasional rancho, villages of six or seven adobe or thatch huts, with sometimes a ruined brick chapel. Flowers bloomed thickly, morning glories, geraniums, masses of a dark purple blossom. The "road" was either a mud-hole or a sharp path of jagged rolling stones in a barren, rocky, tumbled country. Eleven found me entering another rancho in a wild valley. My attempts to buy food were several times answered with, "MÁs arribita"— "A little higher up." I came at last to the "restaurant." It was a cobble-stone hut hung on a sharp hillside, with a hole two feet square opening on the road. Two men in gay sarapes, with guns and belts of huge cartridges, reached it at the same time, and we squatted together on the ground at an angle of the wall below the window and ate with much exchange of banter the food poked out to us. The two had come that morning from Guanajuato, whither I was bound, and were headed for Dolores. It was the first time I had any certain information as to the distance before me, which had been variously reported at from five to forty leagues. We ate two bowls of frijoles each, and many tortillas and chiles. One of the men paid the entire bill of twenty-seven centavos, but accepted ten from me under protest. Beyond was a great climb along a stony, small stream up into a blackish, rocky range. The sun shone splendidly, also hotly. Apparently there was no danger to travelers even in these wild parts. The peons I met were astonishingly incurious, barely appearing to notice my existence. Some addressed me as "jefe" (chief), suggesting the existence of mines in the vicinity. If I drew them into conversation they answered merely in monosyllables: "SÍ, seÑor." "No, jefe." Not a word of Indian dialect had I heard since entering the country. Two hours above the restaurant a vast prospect of winding, tumbled, rocky valley and mountain piled upon mountain beyond opened out. From the summit, surely nine thousand feet up, began the rocky descent to the town of Santa Rosa, broken by short climbs and troublesome with rocks. I overtook many donkeys loaded with crates of cactus fruit, railroad ties, and the like, and finally at three came out in sight of the famous mining city of Guanajuato. It would take the pen of a master to paint the blue labyrinth of mountains heaped up on all sides and beyond the long, winding city in the narrow gorge far below, up out of which came with each puff of wind the muffled sound of stamp-mills and smelters. As I sat, the howling of three drunken peons drifted up from the road below. When they reached me, one of them, past forty, thrust his unwashed, pulque-perfumed face into mine and demanded a cigarette. When I declined, he continued to beg in a threatening manner. Meanwhile the drunkest of the three, a youth of perhaps seventeen, large and muscular, an evil gleam in his eye, edged his way up to me with one arm behind him and added his demands to that of the other. I suddenly pulled the hidden hand into sight and found in it a sharp broken piece of rock weighing some ten pounds. Having knocked this out of his grasp, I laid my automatic across my knees and the more sober pair dragged the belligerent youth on up the mountain trail. For an hour the way wound down by steep, horribly cobbled descents, then between mud and stone huts, and finally down a more level and wider cobbled street along which were the rails of a mule tramway. The narrow city wound for miles along the bottom of a deep gully, gay everywhere with perennial flowers. The main avenue ran like a stream along the bottom, and he who lost himself in the stair-like side streets had only to follow downward to find it again as surely as a tributary its main river. Masses of rocky mountains were piled up on all sides. The climate of Guanajuato is unsurpassed. Brilliant sunshine flooded days like our early June, in which one must hurry to sweat in the noon time, while two blankets made comfortable covering at night. This is true of not only one season but the year around, during which the thermometer does not vary ten degrees. July is coldest and a fireplace not uncomfortable in the evening. An American resident who went home to one of the States bordering on Canada for his vacation sat wiping the sweat out of his eyes there, when one of his untraveled countrymen observed: "You must feel very much at home in this heat after nine years in Whereupon the sufferer arose in disgust, packed his bag, and sped south to mosquitoless coolness. The evening air is indescribable; all nature's changes of striking beauty; and the setting sun throwing its last rays on the Bufa, the salient points of that and the other peaks purple with light, with the valleys in deep shadow, is a sight worth tramping far to see. I drifted down along the gully next morning, following the main street, which changed direction every few yards, "paved" with three-inch cobbles, the sidewalks two feet wide, leaving one pedestrian to jump off it each time two met. A diminutive streetcar drawn by mules with jingling bells passed now and then. Peons swarmed here also, but there was by no means the abject poverty of San Luis Potosi, and Americans seemed in considerable favor, as their mines in the vicinity give the town its livelihood. I was seeking the famous old "AlÓndiga," but the policeman I asked began looking at the names of the shops along the way as if he fancied it some tobacco booth. I tried again by designating it as "la cÁrcel." He still shook his head sadly. But when I described it as the place where Father Hidalgo's head hung on a hook for thirteen years, a great light broke suddenly upon him and he at once abandoned his beat and led me several blocks, refusing to be shaken off. What I first took for extreme courtesy, however, turned out to be merely the quest of tips, an activity in which the police of most Mexican cities are scarcely outdone by the waiters along Broadway. The ancient building was outwardly plain and nearly square, more massive than the rest of the city. High up on each of its corners under the rusted hooks were the names of the four early opponents of Spanish rule whose heads had once hung there. Inside the corridor stood the statue of the peon who is said to have reached and fired the building under cover of the huge slab of stone on his back. When I had waited a while in the anteroom, the jefe polÍtico, the supreme commander of the city appointed by the governor of the State, appeared, the entire roomful of officials and visitors dropping their cigarettes and rising to greet him with bared heads. He gave me permission to enter, and the presidente, a podgy second jailor, took me in charge as the iron door opened to let me in. The walls once red with the blood of Spaniards slaughtered by the forces of the priest of Dolores had lost that tint in the century since passed, and were smeared with nothing more startling than a certain lack of cleanliness. The immense, three-story, stone building of colonial days enclosed a vast patio in which prisoners seemed to enjoy complete freedom, lying about the yard in the brilliant sunshine, playing cards, or washing themselves and their scanty clothing in the huge stone fountain in the center. The so-called cells in which they were shut up in groups during the night were large chambers that once housed the colonial government. By day many of them work at weaving hats, baskets, brushes, and the like, to sell for their own benefit, thus being able to order food from outside and avoid the mess brought in barrels at two and seven of each afternoon for those dependent on government rations. Now and then a wife or feminine friend of one of the prisoners appeared at the grating with a basket of food. Several of the inmates were called one by one to the crack of an iron door in the wall to hear the sentence the judge had chosen to impose upon them in the quiet of his own home; for public jury trial is not customary in Spanish America. In the fine gallery around the patio, in the second-story, we were joined by an American from Colorado, charged with killing a Mexican, but who seemed little worried with his present condition or doubtful of his ultimate release. From the flat roof, large enough for a school playground, there spread out a splendid view of all the city and its surrounding mountains. There were, all told, some five hundred prisoners. A room opening on the patio served as a school for convicts, where a man well advanced in years, bewhiskered and of a decidedly pedagogical cast of countenance in spite of his part Indian blood, sat on his back, peering dreamily through his glasses at the seventy or more pupils, chiefly between the ages of fifteen and twenty, who drowsed before him. There is a no less fine view from the hill behind, on which sits the Panteon, or city cemetery. It is a rectangular place enclosing perhaps three acres, and, as all Guanajuato has been buried here for centuries, considerably crowded. For this reason and from inherited Spanish custom, bodies are seldom buried, but are pigeonholed away in the deep niches two feet square into what from the outside looks to be merely the enclosing wall. Here, in more exact order than prevails in life, the dead of Guanajuato are filed in series, each designated by a number. Series six was new and not yet half occupied. A funeral ends by thrusting the coffin into its appointed pigeonhole, which the Indian employees brick up and face with cement, in which while still soft the name of the defunct and other information is commonly rudely scratched with a stick, often with amateur spelling. Here and there is one in English:—"My Father's Servant—H. B." Some have marble headpieces with engraved names, and perhaps a third of the niches bear the information "En Perpetuidad," indicating that the rent has been paid up until judgment day. The majority of the corpses, however, are dragged out after one to five years and dumped in the common bone-yard, as in all Spanish-speaking countries. The Indian attendants were even then opening several in an older series and tossing skulls and bones about amid facetious banter. The lower four rows can be reached readily, but not a few suffer the pain of being "skied," where only those who chance to glance upward will notice them. There were some graves in the ground, evidently of the poorer Indian classes. Several had been newly dug, unearthing former occupants, and a grinning skull sat awry on a heap of earth amid a few thigh bones and scattered ribs, all trodden under sandaled foot-prints. In one hole lay the thick black hair of what had once been a peon, as intact as any actor's wig. There is some property in the soil of Guanajuato's PanteÓn that preserves bodies buried in the ground without coffins, so that its "mummies" have become famous. The director attended me in person and, crossing the enclosure, opened a door in the ground near the fourth series of niches, where we descended a little circular iron stairway. This opened on a high vaulted corridor, six feet wide and thirty long. Along this, behind glass doors, stood some hundred more or less complete bodies shrouded in sheets. They retained, or had been arranged, in the same form they had presented in life—peon carriers bent as if still under a heavy burden, old market women in the act of haggling, arrieros plodding behind their imaginary burros. Some had their mouths wide open, as if they had been buried alive and had died shouting for release. One fellow stood leaning against a support, like a man joking with an elbow on the bar, a glass between his fingers, in the act of laughing uproariously. Several babies had been placed upright here and there between the elders. Most of the corpses wore old dilapidated shoes. In the farther end of the corridor were stacked thighbones and skulls surely sufficient to fill two box-cars, all facing to the front. I asked how many deaths the collection represented, and the director shrugged his shoulders with an indifferent "QuiÉn sabe?" He who would understand the Mexican, descendant of the Aztecs, must not overlook a certain apathetic indifference to death, and a playful manner with its remains. Once on earth again, I gave the director a handful of coppers and descended to the town, motley now with market-day. The place swarmed with color; ragged, unwashed males and females squatted on the narrow sidewalks with fruit, sweets, gay blankets and clothing, cast-off shoes and garments, piles of new sandals, spread out in the street before them. Amid the babel of street cries the most persistent was "Agua-miel!"—"Honey water," as the juice of the maguey is called during the twelve hours before fermentation sets in. From twelve to thirty-six hours after its drawing it is intoxicating; from then on, only fit to be thrown away. But the sour stench from each pulquerÍa and many a passing peon proved a forced longevity. Several lay drunk in the streets, but passers-by stepped over or around them with the air of those who do as they hope to be done by. Laughter was rare, the great majority being exceedingly somber in manner. Even their songs are gloomy wails, recalling the Arabs. A few children played at "bull-fight," and here and there two or three, thanks to the American influence, were engaged in what they fancied was baseball. But for the most part they were not playful. The young of both Indians and donkeys are trained early for the life before them. The shaggy little ass-colts follow their mothers over the cobbled streets and along mountain trails from birth, and the peon children, wearing the same huge hat, gay sarape, and tight breeches as their fathers, or the identical garb of the mothers, carry their share of the family burden almost from infancy. Everything of whatever size or shape was carried on the backs or heads of Indians with a supporting strap across the forehead. A peon passed bearing on his head the corpse of a baby in an open wooden coffin, scattered with flowers. Trunks of full size are transported in this way to all parts of the mountain town, and the Indian who carries the heaviest of them to a mine ten miles away and two thousand feet above the city over the rockiest trails considers himself well paid at thirty cents. Six peons dog-trotted by from the municipal slaughter-house with a steer on their backs: four carried a quarter each; one the head and skin; and the last, heart, stomach, and intestines. Horseshoers worked in the open streets, using whatever shoes they had on hand without adjustment, paring down the hoofs of the animal to fit them. Here and there a policeman on his beat was languidly occupied in making brushes, like the prisoners of the AlÓndiga, and two I saw whiling away the time making lace! Several of them tagged my footsteps, eager for some errand. One feels no great sense of security in a country whose boyish, uneducated, and ragged guardians of order cringe around like beggar boys hoping for a copper. Saturday is beggar's day, when those who seek alms more or less surreptitiously during the week are permitted to pass in procession along the shops, many of which disburse on this day a fixed sum, as high as twenty dollars, in copper centavos. Now and then the mule-cars bowled over a laden ass, which sat up calmly on its haunches, front feet in the air, until the obstruction passed. All those of Indian blood were notable for their strong white teeth, not one of which they seem ever to lose. In the church a bit higher up several bedraggled women and pulque-besotted peons knelt before a disgusting representation of the Crucifixion. The figure had real hair, beard, eyebrows, and even eyelashes, with several mortal wounds, barked knees and shins, half the body smeared with red paint as blood, all in all fit only for the morgue. Farther on, drowsed the post-office, noted like all south of the Rio Grande for its unreliability. Unregistered packages seldom arrive at their destination, groceries sent from the States to American residents are at least half eaten en route. A man of the North unacquainted with the ways of Mexico sent unregistered a Christmas present of a dozen pairs of silk socks. The addressee inquired for them daily for weeks. Finally he wrote for a detailed description of the hectic lost property, and had no difficulty in recognizing at least two pairs as the beak-nosed officials hitched up their trousers to tell him again nothing whatever had come for him. Not long before my arrival a Mexican mail-car had been wrecked, and between the ceiling and the outer wall were found over forty thousand letters postal clerks had opened and thrown there. I drifted into an "Escuela Gratuita para NiÑos." The heavy, barn-like door gave entrance to a cobbled corridor, opening on a long schoolroom with two rows of hard wooden benches on which were seated a half hundred little peons aged seven to ten, all raggedly dressed in the identical garb, sandals and all, of their fathers in the streets, their huge straw hats covering one of the walls. The maestro, a small, down-trodden-looking Mexican, rushed to the door to bring me down to the front and provide me with a chair. The school had been founded some six months before by a woman of wealth, and offered free instruction to the sons of peons. But the Indians as always were suspicious, and for the most part refused to allow their children to be taught the "witchcraft" of the white man. The teacher asked what class I cared to hear and then himself hastily suggested "cuentitas." The boys were quick at figures, at least in the examples the maestro chose to give them, but he declined to show them off in writing or spelling. Several read aloud, in that mumbled and half-pronounced manner common to Mexico, the only requirement appearing to be speed. Then came a class in "Historia Santa," that is, various of the larger boys arose to spout at full gallop and the distinct enunciation of an "El" train, the biblical account of the creation of the world, the legends of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah's travels with a menagerie, all learned by rote. The entire school then arose and bowed me out. A visit to a mixed school, presided over by carelessly dressed maidens of uncertain age and the all-knowing glance of those who feel the world and all its knowledge lies concentrated in the hollow of their hands, showed a quite similar method of instruction. On the wall hung a great lithograph depicting in all its dreadful details the alleged horrors of "alcoolismo." Even the teachers rattled off their questions with an atrocious, half-enunciated pronunciation, and he must have been a Spanish scholar indeed who could have caught more than the gist of the recited answers. This indistinctness of enunciation and the Catholic system of learning by rote instead of permitting the development of individual power to think were as marked even in the colegio, corresponding roughly to our high schools. Even there the professor never commanded, "More distinctly!" but he frequently cried, "Faster!" On the wall of this higher institution was a stern set of rules, among which some of the most important were: "Students must not smoke in the presence of professors," though this was but mildly observed, for when I entered the study room with the director and his assistant, all of us smoking, the boys, averaging fifteen years of age, merely held their lighted cigarettes half out of sight behind them until we passed. Another rule read: "Any student frequenting a tavern, cafÉ chantant, or house of ill-fame may be expelled." He might run that risk in most schools, but none but the Latinized races would announce the fact in plain words on the bulletin-boards. The director complained that the recent revolutions had set the school far back, as each government left it to the next to provide for such secondary necessities. |
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