Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond (2024)

This eBook was produced by Jim O'Connor, Charles Aldarondo,

Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond

By Harry A. Franck

Author Of
"A Vagabond Journey Around The World,"
"Zone Policeman 88,"
etc.

Illustrated With Photographs By The Author

To The Mexican Peon With Sincerest Wishes For His Ultimate Emancipation

FOREWORD

This simple story of a journey southward grew up of itself. Planning acomprehensive exploration of South America, I concluded to reach thatcontinent by some less monotonous route than the steamship's track; andherewith is presented the unadorned narrative of what I saw on theway,—the day-by-day experiences in rambling over bad roads and intoworse lodging-places that infallibly befall all who venture afield southof the Rio Grande. The present account joins up with that of five monthson the Canal Zone, already published, clearing the stage for a largerforthcoming volume on South America giving the concrete results of fourunbroken years of Latin-American travel.

Harry A. Franck.
New York, May, 1916.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I INTO THE COOLER SOUTH

II TRAMPING THE BYWAYS

III IN A MEXICAN MINE

IV ROUND ABOUT LAKE CHAPALA

V ON THE TRAIL IN MICHOACÁN

VI TENOCHTITLAN OF TO-DAY

VII TROPICAL MEXICO

VIII HURRYING THROUGH GUATEMALA

IX THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HONDURAS

X THE CITY OF THE SILVER HILLS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A 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
Country".

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 somethinglike $1250.

In a natural amphitheater of Guanajuato the American miners of theregion 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 themare 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, theformer 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 sinceerected by Austria.

The market of Tlaxcala, the ancient inhabitants of which aided Cortez inthe 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 hada 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 thecliffs.

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 railwayof Guatemala.

Inside the race-track at Guatemala City is a relief map of the entirecountry.

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 thetrail.

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 ofany 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 alltheir possessions.

A fellow-roadster behind one of my cigars.

An arriero carrying a bundle of Santa Rosa cigars on his own back as hedrives his similarly laden animals.

The great military force of Esperanza compelled to draw up and face mycamera.

The prisoners in their chains form an interested audience across thestreet.

Honduras, the Land of Great Depths.

A corner of Tegucigalpa.

The "West Pointers" of Honduras in their barracks, a part of thenational 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 thecoast.

A beef just butchered and hung out in the sun.

A dwelling on the hot lands of the Coast, and its scantily cladinhabitants.

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
Morazán," Amapala.

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.

MAP

The Author's Itinerary

CHAPTER I

INTO THE COOLER SOUTH

You are really in Mexico before you get there. Laredo is apurely—though not pure—Mexican town with a slight Americantinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly about trying to sellsticks of candy and the like from boards carried on their heads. Thereare 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 chieflyof Iberian origin, the very county officers from sheriff down—orup—are names the average American could not pronounce, and thesaunterer in the streets may pass hours without hearing a word ofEnglish. Even the post-office employees speak Spanish by preference andI 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 myown country.

On Laredo's rare breeze rides enough dust to build a new world. Everystreet is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds ofthe inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat—"Cincinnati Slim" putit in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where thefreight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets fullthis'll do fine for an annex."

Luckily my window in the ruin that masqueraded as a hotel faced suchwind as existed. The only person I saw in that institution duringtwenty-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 seemeda pity not to let Mexico have the dust-laden, sweltering place if theywant it so badly.

I had not intended to lug into Mexico such a load as I did. But it was aJewish holiday, and the pawnshops were closed. As I passed the lodge onthe north end of the bridge over the languid, brown Rio Grande it was agenuine American voice that snapped: "Heh! A nickel!"

Just beyond, but thirty-six minutes earlier, the Mexican officialstopped me with far more courtesy, and peered down into the corners ofmy 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 unostentatiouslyover my hip pocket. It wasn't a revolver; it was an automatic.

The man who baedekerized Mexico says Nuevo Laredo is not the place tojudge that country. I was glad to hear it. Its imitation of astreet-car, eight feet long, was manned by two tawny children withoutuniforms, nor any great amount of substitute for them, who smokedcigarettes incessantly as we crawled dustily through the baked-mudhamlet to the decrepit shed that announced itself the station of theNational Railways of Mexico. It was closed, of course. I waited an houror more before two officials resplendent in uniforms drifted in to takeup the waiting where I had left off. But it was a real train that pulledin toward three, from far-off St. Louis, even if it had hooked on behinda second-class car with long wooden benches.

For an hour we rambled across just such land as southern Texas, endlessflat sand scattered with chaparral, mesquite, and cactus; nowhere a signof life, but for fences of one or two barb-wires on crooked sticks—noteven bird life. The wind, strong and incessant as at sea, sounded asmournful through the thorny mesquite bushes as in our Northern winters,even though here it brought relief rather than suffering. The sunshinewas unbrokenly glorious.

Benches of stained wood in two-inch strips ran the entire length of ourcar, made in Indiana. In the center were ten double back-to-back seatsof the same material. The conductor was American, but as in Texas heseemed to have little to do except to keep the train moving. Theauditor, brakeman, and train-boy were Mexicans, in similar uniforms, butof thinner physique and more brown of color. The former spoke fluentEnglish. The engineer was American and the fireman a Negro.

Far ahead, on either side, hazy high mountains appeared, as at sea. Bythe time we halted at Lampazos, fine serrated ranges stood not fardistant on either hand. From the east came a never-ceasing wind,stronger than that of the train, laden with a fine sand that crept ineverywhere. Mexican costumes had appeared at the very edge of theborder; now there were even a few police under enormous hats, with tighttrousers and short jackets showing a huge revolver at the hip. Towardevening things grew somewhat greener. A tree six to twelve feet high,without branches, or sometimes with several trunk-like ones, growinglarger from bottom to top and ending in a bristling bunch of leaves,became common. The mountains on both sides showed fantastic peaks andridges, changing often in aspect; some, thousands of feet high with flattableland tops, others in strange forms the imagination could animateinto all manner of creatures.

A goatherd, wild, tawny, bearded, dressed in sun-faded sheepskin, wasseen now and then tending his flock of little white goats in the sandand 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 mountainwall on our right. The sand-storm had died down, and the sand gave wayto rocks. The moon, almost full, already smiled down upon us over thewall on the left. We continued along the plain between the ranges, whichlater receded into the distance, as if retiring for the night. Flat,mud-colored, Palestinian adobe huts stood here and there in themoonlight among patches of a sort of palm bush.

Monterey proved quite a city. Yet how the ways of the Spaniard appearedeven here! Close as it is to the United States, with many Americanresidents and much "americanizado," according to the Mexican, the cityis in architecture, arrangement, customs, just what it would be ahundred miles from Madrid; almost every little detail of life is that ofSpain, with scarcely enough difference to suggest another country, tosay nothing of another hemisphere. England brings to her colonies someof her home customs, but not an iota of what Spain does to the lands shehas conquered. The hiding of wealth behind a miserable facade is almostas universal in Mexico of the twentieth century as in Morocco of thefourth. The narrow streets of Monterey have totally inadequate sidewalkson which two pedestrians pass, if at all, with the rubbing ofshoulders. Outwardly the long vista of bare house fronts that toe themon either side are dreary and poor, every window barred as those of aprison. Yet in them sat well-dressed señoritas waiting for the loverswho "play the bear" to late hours of the night, and over their shouldersthe passerby caught many a glimpse of richly furnished rooms and flowerypatios 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 anddonkey paths and set with the cloth booths of fruit sellers. As onemoves south it grows cooler, and Monterey, fifteen hundred feet abovesea-level, was not so weighty in its heat as Laredo and southernTexas. But, on the other hand, being surrounded on most sides bymountains, it had less breeze, and the coatless freedom of Texas washere looked down upon. During the hours about noonday the sun seemed tostrike physically on the head and back whoever stepped out into it, andthe smallest fleck of white cloud gave great and instant relief. Fromten to four, more or less, the city was strangely quiet, as if more thanhalf asleep, or away on a vacation, and over it hung that indefinablescent 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 thestreets. That is, they moved once every twenty minutes or so, usuallyto roll a cigarette. They were without shackles, but several guards inbrown uniforms and broad felt hats, armed with thick-set muskets, theirchests criss-crossed with belts of long rifle cartridges, lolled in theshade of every near-by street corner. The prisoners laughed and chattedlike men perfectly contented with their lot, and moved about with greatfreedom. One came a block to ask me the time, and loafed there somefifteen minutes before returning to his "labor."

Mexico is strikingly faithful to its native dress. Barely across theRio Grande the traveler sees at once hundreds of costumes which in anyAmerican city would draw on all the boy population as surely as thePiper of Hamelin. First and foremost comes always the enormous hat,commonly of thick felt with decorative tape, the crown at least a foothigh, the brim surely three feet in diameter even when turned upsufficient to hold a half gallon of water. That of the peon is ofstraw; he too wears the skintight trousers, and goes barefoot but for aflat leather sandal held by a thong between the big toe and the rest. Indetails and color every dress was as varied and individual as the shadesof complexion.

My hotel room had a fine outlook to summer-blue mountains, but wasblessed with neither mirror, towel, nor water. I descended to thealleyway between "dining-room" and barnyard, where I had seen thegeneral washbasin, but found the landlady seated on the kitchen floorshelling into it peas for our almuerzo. This and the eveningcomida were always identically the same. A cheerful butslatternly Indian woman set before me a thin soup containing a piece ofsquash and a square of boiled beef, and eight hot corn tortillas of thesize and shape of our pancakes, or gkebis, the Arab bread, whichit outdid in toughness and total absence of taste. Next followed aplate of rice with peppers, a plate of tripe less tough than it shouldhave been, and a plate of brown beans which was known by the name ofchile con carne, but in which I never succeeded in findinganything 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 ruinedchapel on the summit of a hill, the famous Obispado from which the citywas shelled and taken by the Americans in 1847. Below, Monterey liesflat, with many low trees peering above the whitish houses, all set in aperfectly level plain giving a great sense of roominess, as if it couldeasily hold ten such cities. At the foot of the hill, some three hundredfeet high, is an unoccupied space. Then the city begins, leisurely atfirst, with few houses and many gardens and trees, thickening fartheron. All about are mountains. The Silla (Saddle), a sharp rugged heightbacking the city on the right, has a notch in it much like the seat of aTexas saddle; to the far left are fantastic sharp peaks, and across theplain a ragged range perhaps fifteen miles distant shuts off the view.Behind the chapel stand Los Dientes, a teeth or saw-like rangeresembling that behind Leceo in Italy. Only a young beggar and hisfemale mate occupied the ruined chapel, built, like the town, of whitishstone that is soft when dug but hardens upon exposure to the air. Theycooked on the littered floor of one of the dozen rooms, and all thewalls of the chamber under the great dome were set with pegs for birds,absent now, but which had carpeted the floor with proof of theirfrequent presence.

At five the sun set over the city, so high is the Dientes range, but forsome time still threw a soft light on the farther plain and hills.Compared with our own land there is something profoundly peaceful inthis climate and surroundings. Now the sunshine slipped up off thefarther ranges, showing only on the light band of clouds high above thefarther horizon, and a pale-faced moon began to brighten, heralding abrilliant evening.

Fertile plains of corn stretched south of the city, but already dry, andsoon giving way to mesquite and dust again. Mountains never ceased, andlay fantastically heaped up on every side. We rose ever higher, thoughthe train kept a moderate speed. At one station the bleating of a greattruckload of kids, their legs tied, heaped one above the other, wasstartlingly like the crying of babies. We steamed upward through anarrow pass, the mountains crowding closer on either hand and seeming togrow lower as we rose higher among them. The landscape became lessarid, half green, with little or no cactus, and the breeze cooledsteadily. Saltillo at last, five thousand feet up, was above the reachof oppressive summer and for perhaps the first time since leavingChicago I did not suffer from the heat. It was almost a pleasure tosplash through the little puddles in its poorly paved streets. Itsplazas were completely roofed with trees, the view down any of itsstreets was enticing, and the little cubes of houses were painted allpossible colors without any color scheme whatever. Here I saw the firstpulquerías, much like cheap saloons in appearance, with swingingdoors, sometimes a pool table, and a bartender of the customaryI-tell-yer-I'm-tough physiognomy. Huge earthen jars of the fermentedcactus juice stood behind the bar, much like milk in appearance, and wasserved in glazed pots, size to order. In Mexico pulquería standsfor saloon and peluquería for barber-shop, resulting now and thenin sad mistakes by wandering Yankees innocent of Spanish.

There were a hundred adult passengers by actual count, to say nothing ofbabies and unassorted bundles, in the second-class car that carried meon south into the night. Every type of Mexican was represented, fromwhite, soft, city-bred specimens to sturdy countrymen so brown as to bealmost black. A few men were in "European" garb. Most of them weredressed á la peón, very tight trousers fitting like longleggings, collarless shirts of all known colors, a gay faja orcloth belt, sometimes a coat—always stopping at the waist. Then last,but never least, the marvelous hat. Two peons trying to get through thesame door at once was a sight not soon to be forgotten. There were feltand straw hats of every possible grade and every shade and color exceptred, wound with a rich band about the crown and another around thebrim. Those of straw were of every imaginable weave, some of rattan,like baskets or veranda furniture. The Mexican male seems to be able toendure 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 seveneights of his impressiveness. The women, with only a black sort of thinshawl over their heads, were eminently inconspicuous in the forest ofhatted men.

Mournfully out of the black drizzling night about the station came thedismal wails of hawkers at their little stands dim-lighted by palelanterns; "Anda pulque!" Within the car was more politeness—orperhaps, more exactly, more unconscious consideration for others—thannorth of the Rio Grande. There were many women among us, yet all thenight through there was not a suggestion of indecency orannoyance. Indian blood largely predominated, hardy, muscular,bright-eyed fellows, yet in conduct all were caballeros. Near mesat a family of three. The father, perhaps twenty, was strikinglyhandsome in his burnished copper skin, his heavy black hair, four orfive inches long, hanging down in "bangs" below his hat. The mother waseven younger, yet the child was already some two years old, thechubbiest, brightest-eyed bundle of humanity imaginable. In their fightfor a seat the man shouted to the wife to hand him the child. He caughtit by one hand and swung it high over two seats and across the car, yetit never ceased smiling. The care this untutored fellow took to givewife and child as much comfort as possible was superior to that many a"civilized" man would have shown all night under the samecirc*mstances. Splendid teeth were universal among the peons. There wasno chewing of tobacco, but much spitting by both sexes. A delicate,child-like young woman drew out a bottle and swallowed whole glassfulsof what I took to be milk, until the scent of pulque, the nativebeverage, suddenly reached my nostrils.

The fat brown auditor addressed señora, the peon's wife, with thehighest respect, even if he insisted on doing his duty to the extent ofpushing aside the skirts of the women to peer under the long woodenbench for passengers. A dispute soon arose. Fare was demanded of aragged peon for the child of three under his arm. The peon shook hishead, smiling. The auditor's voice grew louder. Still the father smiledsilently. The ticket collector stepped back into the first-class car andreturned with the train guard, a boyish-looking fellow in peon garb fromhat to legging trousers, with a brilliant red tie, two belts of enormouscartridges about his waist, in his hand a short ugly rifle, and aharmless smile on his face. There was something fascinating about thestocky little fellow with his half-embarrassed grin. One felt that ofhimself he would do no man hurt, yet that a curt order would cause himto send one of those long steel-jacketed bullets through a man and intothe mountain side beyond. Luckily he got no such orders. The auditorpointed out the malefactor, who lost no time in paying the child'shalf-fare.

This all-night trip must be done sooner or later by all who enter Mexicoby way of Laredo, for the St. Louis-Mexico City Limited with itssleeping-car behind and a few scattered Americans in first-class is theonly 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 toset out after a hearty meal with a lunch under his arm, so in theswelter of Texas I had felt it foolish to be lugging a bundle of heavyclothing. By midnight I began to credit myself with foresight. Thewindows were closed, yet the land of yesterday seemed far behindindeed. I wrapped my heavy coat about me. Toward four we crossed theTropic of Cancer into the Torrid Zone, without a jolt, and I dug out mygray sweater and regretted I had abandoned the old blue one in an emptybox-car. Twice I think I drowsed four minutes with head and elbow on mybundle, but except for two or three women who jack-knifed on the longbench no one found room to lie down during the long night.

From daylight on I stood in the vestibule and watched the drab landscapehurry steadily past. No mountains were in sight now because we were ontop of them. Yet no one would have suspected from the appearance of thecountry that we were considerably more than a mile above sea-level. Theflat land looked not greatly different from that of the day before. Thecactus was higher; some of the "organ" variety, many of the "Spanishbayonet" species, lance-like stalks eight to ten feet high. The rest wasbare ground with scattered mesquite bushes. Had I not known the altitudeI might have attributed the slight light-headedness to a sleeplessnight.

Certainly a hundred ragged cargadores, hotel runners, and boyseager to carry my bundle attacked me during my escape from the stationof San Luis Potosi at seven, and there were easily that many carriageswaiting, without a dozen to take them. The writer of Mexico's Baedekerspeaks of the city as well-to-do. Either it has vastly changed in a fewyears or he wrote it up by absent treatment. Hardly a town of Indiaexceeds it in picturesque poverty. Such a surging of pauperous humanity,dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the WesternHemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is no cure for man's ills. Thechief center was the swarming market. Picture a dense mob of severalthousand men and boys, gaunt, weather-beaten, their tight trouserscollections of rents and patchwork in many colors, sandals of a softpiece of leather showing a foot cracked, blackened, tough as a hoof, asincrusted with filth as a dead foot picked up on a garbage heap, thetoes always squirting with mud, the feet not merely never washed but thesandal never removed until it wears off and drops of its self. Abovethis a collarless shirt, blouse or short jacket, ragged, patched, ofmany faded colors, yet still showing half the body. Then a dull,uncomplaining, take-things-as-they-come face, unwashed, nevershaved—the pure Indian grows a sort of dark down on his cheeks and thepoint of the chin, the half-breeds a slight beard—all topped by theenormous hat, never missing, though often full of holes, black withdirt, weather-beaten beyond expression.

Then there were fully as many women and girls, even less fortunate, forthey had not even sandals, but splashed along barefoot among the smallcold cobblestones. Their dress seemed gleaned from a rag-heap and theirheads were bare, their black hair combed or plastered flat. Children ofboth sexes were exact miniatures of their elders. All these wretcheswere here to sell. Yet what was for sale could easily have been tendedby twenty persons. Instead, every man, woman, and child had his ownstand, or bit of cloth or cobblestone on which to spread a few scanty,bedraggled wares. Such a mass of silly, useless, pathetic articles, toyjars, old bottles, anything that could be found in all the dump-heaps ofChristendom. The covered market housed only a very small percentage ofthe whole. There was a constant, multicolored going and coming, withmany laden asses and miserable, gaunt creatures bent nearly double underenormous loads on head or shoulders. Every radiating narrow mud-drippingstreet for a quarter-mile was covered in all but the slight passagewayin the center with these displays. Bedraggled women sat on the cobbleswith aprons spread out and on them little piles of six nuts each, soldat a centavo. There were peanuts, narrow strips of cocoanut, plantains,bananas short and fat, sickly little apples, dwarf peaches, small wildgrapes, oranges green in color, potatoes often no larger than marbles,as if the possessor could not wait until they grew up before diggingthem; cactus leaves, the spines shaved off, cut up into tiny squares toserve as food; bundles of larger cactus spines brought in by hobblingold women or on dismal asses and sold as fuel, aguacates, knownto us as "alligator pears" and tasting to the uninitiated likeaxle-grease; pomegranates, pecans, cheeses flat and white, every speciesof basket and earthen jar from two-inch size up, turnips, some cut intwo for those who could not afford a whole one; onions, flat slabs ofbrown, muddy-looking soap, rice, every species of frijole, orbean, shelled corn for tortillas, tomatoes—tomate coloradito,though many were tiny and green as if also prematurely gathered—peppersred and green, green-corn with most of the kernels blue, lettuce,radishes, cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, melons of every size exceptlarge, string-beans, six-inch cones of the muddiest of sugar, the firstrough product of the crushers wound in swamp grass and which prospectivepurchasers handled over and over, testing them now and then by bitingoff a small corner, though there was no apparent difference; sausageswith links of marble size, everything in the way of meat, tossed aboutin the dirt, swarming with flies, handled, smelled, cut into tiny bitsfor purchasers; even strips of intestines, the jaw-bone of a sheep withbarely the smell of meat on it; all had value to this gaunt community,nothing was too green, or old, or rotten to be offered forsale. Chickens with legs tied lay on the ground or were carried aboutfrom day to day until purchasers of such expensive luxuriesappeared. There were many men with a little glass box full of squares ofsweets like "fudge," selling at a half-cent each; every possible odd andend of the shops was there; old women humped over their meager wares,smoking cigarettes, offered for sale the scraps of calico left over fromthe cutting of a gown, six-inch triangles of no fathomable use topurchasers. There were entire blocks selling only long strips of leatherfor the making of sandals. Many a vendor had all the earmarks ofleprosy. There were easily five thousand of them, besides another marketon the other side of the town, for this poverty-stricken city of somefifty thousand inhabitants. The swarming stretched a half mile away inmany a radiating street, and scores whose entire stock could not beworth fifteen cents sat all day without selling more than half of it. Anold woman stopped to pick up four grains of corn and greedily tuckedthem away in the rags that covered her emaciated frame. Now and then abetter-dressed potosino passed, making purchases, a peon, male orfemale, slinking along behind with a basket; for it is a horrible breachof etiquette for a ten-dollar-a-month Mexican to be publicly seencarrying anything.

One wondered why there was not general suicide in such a community ofunmitigated misery. Why did they not spring upon me and snatch the purseI displayed or die in the attempt? How did they resist eating up theirown wares? It seemed strange that these sunken-chested, hobbling, halt,shuffling, shivering, starved creatures should still fight on forlife. Why did they not suddenly rise and sack the city? No wonder thoseare ripe for revolution whose condition cannot be made worse.

Policemen in sandals and dark-blue shoddy cap and cloak looked littleless miserable than the peons. All about the covered market were peonrestaurants, a ragged strip of canvas as roof, under it an ancientwooden table and two benches. Unwashed Indian women cooked in severalopen earthen bowls the favorite Mexican dishes,—frijoles (a stewof brown beans), chile con carne, rice, stews of stray scraps of meatand the leavings of the butcher-shops. These were dished up in brownglazed jars and eaten with strips of tortilla folded between thefingers, as the Arab eats with gkebis. Indeed there were manythings reminiscent of the markets and streets of Damascus, more customssimilar 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 notan unpleasant word, not a jest at my expense, almost no evidence ofanti-foreign feeling, which seems not indigenous to the peon, butimplanted in him by those of ulterior motives. Nor did they once askalms or attempt to push misery forward. The least charitable would bestrongly tempted to succor any one of the throng individually, but herea hundred dollars in American money divided into Mexican centavos wouldhardly 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 witha strip of old carpet. These they wound about their bodies, folding themacross the chest, the arms hugged together inside in such a way as tobring a corner across the mouth and nose, leaving their pipe-stem legsbelow, and wandered thus dismally about in the frequent spurts of coldrain. Now and then a lowest of the low passed in the cast-off remnantsof "European" clothes, which were evidently considered far inferior topeon garb, however bedraggled. Bare or sandaled feet seemed imperviousto cold, again like the Arab, as was also this fear of the raw air andhalf covering of the face that gave a Mohammedan touch, especially tothe women. To me the atmosphere was no different than late October inthe States. The peons evidently never shaved, though there were manymiserable little barber-shops. On the farther outskirts of the hawkerswere long rows of shanties, shacks made of everything under the sun,flattened tin cans, scraps of rubbish, two sticks holding up a couple ofragged bags under which huddled old women with scraps of cactus andbundles of tiny fa*gots.

Scattered through the throng were several "readers." One half-Indianwoman I passed many times was reading incessantly, with the speed of aFrenchman, from printed strips of cheap colored paper which she offeredfor sale at a cent each. They were political in nature, often in verse,insulting in treatment, and mixed with a crass obscenity at which thedismal multitude laughed bestially. Three musicians, one with a rudeharp, a boy striking a triangle steel, sang mournful dirges similar tothose of Andalusia. The peons listened to both music and readingmotionless, with expressionless faces, with never a "move on" from thepoliceman, who seemed the least obstrusive of mortals.

San Luís Potosí has many large rich churches, misery and pseudo-religionbeing common joint-legacies of Spanish rule. Small chance thesecreatures would have of feeling at home in a place so different fromtheir earthly surroundings as the Christian heaven. The thump of churchbells, some with the voice of battered old tin pans, broke outfrequently. Now and then one of these dregs of humanity crept intochurch for a nap, but the huge edifices showed no other sign ofusefulness. On the whole there was little appearance of "religion." Afew women were seen in the churches, a book-seller sold no novels andlittle literature but "mucho de religión," but the great majority gaveno outward sign of belonging to any faith. Priests were not often seenin the streets. Mexican law forbids them to wear a distinctive costume,hence they dressed in black derbies, Episcopal neckbands, and blackcapes to the ankles. Not distinctive indeed! No one could have guessedwhat they were! One might have fancied them prize-fighters on the wayfrom training quarters to bathroom.

There is comparative splendor also in San Luís, as one may see by peepsinto the lighted houses at night, but it is shut in tight as if fearfulof the poor breaking in. As in so many Spanish countries, wealth shrinksout of sight and misery openly parades itself.

Out across the railroad, where hundreds of ragged boys were ridingfreight cars back and forth in front of the station, the land lay flatas a table, some cactus here and there, but apparently fertile, withneither sod to break nor clearing necessary. Yet nowhere, even on theedge of the starving city, was there a sign of cultivation. We of theNorth were perhaps more kind to the Indian in killing him off.

CHAPTER II

TRAMPING THE BYWAYS

Heavy weather still hung over the land to the southward. Indian corn,dry and shriveled, was sometimes shocked as in the States. The firstfield of maguey appeared, planted in long rows, barely a foot high, butdue in a year or two to produce pulque, the Mexican scourge, because ofits cheapness, stupefying the poorer classes. When fresh, it is said tobe beneficial in kidney troubles and other ailments, but soon becomesover-fermented in the pulquerías of the cities and more harmful than astronger liquor.

Within the car was an American of fifty, thin and drawn, with huddledshoulders, who had been beaten by rebel forces in Zacatecas and robbedof his worldly wealth of $13,000 hidden in vain in his socks. Numbers ofUnited States box-cars jolted across the country end to end withMexican; the "B. & O." behind the "Norte de Méjico," the "N. Y. C.,"followed by the "Central Mejicano." Long broad stretches of plain, withcactus and mesquite, spread to low mountains blue with cold morningmist, all but their base hung with fog. Beyond Jesús María, which is asample of the station names, peons lived in bedraggled tents along theway, and the corn was even drier. The world seemed threatening to dry upentirely. At Cartagena there began veritable forests of cactus trees,and a wild scrub resembling the olive. Thousands of tunas, thered fruit of the cactus, dotted the ground along the way. The sunsizzled its way through the heavy sky as we climbed the flank of a rockyrange, the vast half-forested plain to the east sinking lower and loweras we rose. Then came broken country with many muddy streams. It wasthe altitude perhaps that caused the patent feeling of exhilaration, asmuch as the near prospect of taking again to the open road.

As the "garrotero" ("twister," or "choker" as the brakeman is called inMexico) announced Dolores Hidalgo, I slipped four cartridges into myautomatic. The roadways of Mexico offered unknown possibilities. Asix-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 probablyled to the invisible town. A half-mile lay behind me before I met thefirst man. He was riding an ass, but when I gave him "Buenos días," hereplied with a whining: "Una limosnita! A little alms, for the love ofGod." He wore a rosary about his neck and a huge cross on hischest. When I ignored his plea he rode on mumbling. The savage bellow ofa bull not far off suggested a new possible danger on the road in thisunfenced and almost treeless country. More men passed on asses, mules,and horses, but none afoot. Finally over the brown rise appeared DoloresHidalgo; two enormous churches and an otherwise small town in atree-touched valley. The central plaza, with many trees and hedgestrimmed in the form of animals, had in its center the statue of thepriest Hidalgo y Costilla, the "father of Mexican independence." A blockaway, packed with pictures and wreathes and with much of the oldfurniture as he left it, was the house in which he had lived before hestarted the activities that ended in the loss of his head.

Well fortified at the excellent hotel, I struck out past the patriotpriest's house over an arched bridge into the open country. As in anyunknown land, the beginning of tramping was not without a certain mildmisgiving. The "road" was only a trail and soon lost itself. A boyspeaking good Spanish walked a long mile to set me right, and valued hisservices at a centavo. A half-cent seemed to be the fixed fee foranything among these country people. A peon carrying a load ofdeep-green alfalfa demanded as much for the privilege of photographinghim when he was "not dressed up." He showed no sign whatever ofgratitude when I doubled it and added a cigarette.

The bright sun had now turned the day to early June. The so-called roadwas a well-trodden sandy path between high cactus hedges over rollingcountry. An hour out, the last look back on Dolores Hidalgo showed alsomile upon mile of rolling plain to far, far blue sierras, all in allperhaps a hundred square miles visible. There were many travelers,chiefly on foot and carrying bundles on their heads. The greeting ofthese was "Adiós," while the better-to-do class on horse or mule backused the customary "Buenas tardes!" Thirst grew, but though the countrywas broken, with many wash-outs cutting deep across the trail, thestreams were all muddy. Now and then a tuna on the cactus hedges wasred ripe enough to be worth picking and, though full of seeds, was atleast wet. It was harder to handle than a porcupine, and commonly leftthe fingers full of spines. Two men passed, offering dulces, aspecies of native candy, for sale. I declined. "Muy bien, give us acigarette." I declined again, being low in stock. "Very well, adiós,señor," they replied in the apathetic way of their race, as if it werequite as satisfactory to them to get nothing as what they asked.

The Rancho del Capulin, where night overtook me, was a hamlet of eightor ten houses, some mere stacks of thatch, out of the smoky doorway ofwhich, three feet high, peered the half-naked inmates; others of adobe,large bricks of mud and chopped straw, which could be picked to pieceswith the fingers.

From one of the kennels a woman called out to know if I would eat. Iasked if she could give lodging also and she referred me to her husbandinside. I stopped to peer in through the doorway and he answered therewas 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, lyingand squatted about the earth floor dipping their fingers into bowls ofsteaming food, left not a square foot unoccupied. He advised me to go"beg license" of the "señora" of the house farther on, a low adobebuilding 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 earthfloor covered with excrement, human and otherwise. I returned to peerinto the mat-roofed yard with piles of corn-stalks and un-threshedbeans, and met the man of the house just arriving with his labor-wornburros. He was a sinewy peasant of about fifty, dressed like all countrypeons in shirt and tight trousers of thinnest white cotton, showing hisbrown skin here and there. As he hesitated to give me answer, the wifemade frantic signs to him from behind the door, of which the cracks wereinches 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 unthreshedbeans. The woman brought me a mat three feet long, evidently destinedto be my bed. I was really in the family barnyard, with no end walls,chickens overhead and the burros beyond. The rain took to drippingthrough the mat roof, and as I turned back toward the first hut for thepromised frijoles and tortillas the woman called to me to say she alsocould furnish me supper.

The main room of the house was about ten by ten, with mud walls fivefeet high, a pitched roof of some sort of grass with several holes init. In the center of the room was a fireplace three feet high and foursquare, with several steaming glazed pots over a fire of encinalfa*gots. The walls were black with soot of the smoke that partly wanderedout of an irregular hole in the farther end of the room. Theeight-year-old son of the family was eating corn-stalks with greatgusto, tearing off the rind with his teeth and chewing the stalk asothers do sugar-cane. I handed him a loaf of potosino bread and heanswered a perfunctory "Gracias," but neither he nor any of the familyshowed any evidence of gratitude as he wolfed it. The man complainedthat all the corn had dried up for lack of rain. The woman set before mea bowl of "sopita," with tortillas, white cheese, and boiled wholepeppers. A penniless peon traveler begged a cigarette and half mymorning loaf, and went out into the night and rain to sleep in the"chapel," as the mud cave across the way was called. There severaltravelers had settled down for the night. A girl of seventeen or sosplashed across from it to beg "a jar of water for a poor prostitute,"apparently announcing her calling merely as a curious bit ofinformation.

The family took at last to eating and kept it up a full hour, meanwhilediscussing me thoroughly. Like most untutored races, they fancied Icould not understand their ordinary tones. When they wished to addressme they merely spoke louder. It is remarkable how Spain has imposed herlanguage on even these wild, illiterate Indians as England has not evenupon her colonies. As the rain continued to pour, I was to sleep in thekitchen. Drunken peons were shouting outside and the family seemed muchfrightened, keeping absolute silence. The four by two door with itssix-inch cracks was blocked with a heavy pole, the family retired to theother room, and I stretched out in the darkness on the unsteady woodenbench, a foot wide, my head on my knapsack. I was soon glad of having asweater, but that failed to cover my legs, and I slept virtually not atall through a night at least four months long, punctuated by muchhowling of dogs.

It was still pitch dark when the "senora" entered, to spend a long timegetting a fire started with wet fa*gots. Then she began makingatole. Taking shelled corn from an earthen jar, she sprinkled itin the hallow of a stone and crushed it with much labor. This was putinto water, strained through a sieve, then thrown into a kettle ofboiling water. It was much toil for little food. Already she had laboreda full hour. I asked for coffee, and she answered she had none but wouldbuy some when the "store" opened. It grew broad daylight before thishappened and I accepted atole. It was hot, but as tasteless as might bethe water from boiled corn-stalks. There had been much discussion,supposedly unknown to me, the night before as to how much they daredcharge me. The bill was finally set at twelve centavos (six cents),eight for supper, three for lodging, and one for breakfast. It wasevidently highly exorbitant, for the family expressed to each othertheir 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 twentypounds each. Wild rocky hillsides alternated with breathlessclimbs. Many cattle were scattered far and wide over the mountains, butthere was no cultivation. I passed an occasional rancho,villages of six or seven adobe or thatch huts, with sometimes a ruinedbrick chapel. Flowers bloomed thickly, morning glories, geraniums,masses of a dark purple blossom. The "road" was either a mud-hole or asharp path of jagged rolling stones in a barren, rocky, tumbledcountry. Eleven found me entering another rancho in a wild valley. Myattempts to buy food were several times answered with, "Más arribita"—"A little higher up." I came at last to the "restaurant." It was acobble-stone hut hung on a sharp hillside, with a hole two feet squareopening on the road. Two men in gay sarapes, with guns and belts of hugecartridges, reached it at the same time, and we squatted together on theground at an angle of the wall below the window and ate with muchexchange of banter the food poked out to us. The two had come thatmorning from Guanajuato, whither I was bound, and were headed forDolores. It was the first time I had any certain information as to thedistance before me, which had been variously reported at from five toforty leagues. We ate two bowls of frijoles each, and many tortillas andchiles. 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 wasno danger to travelers even in these wild parts. The peons I met wereastonishingly incurious, barely appearing to notice my existence. Someaddressed me as "jefe" (chief), suggesting the existence of mines in thevicinity. If I drew them into conversation they answered merely inmonosyllables: "Sí, señor." "No, jefe." Not a word of Indian dialecthad I heard since entering the country. Two hours above the restaurant avast prospect of winding, tumbled, rocky valley and mountain piled uponmountain beyond opened out. From the summit, surely nine thousand feetup, began the rocky descent to the town of Santa Rosa, broken by shortclimbs and troublesome with rocks. I overtook many donkeys loaded withcrates of cactus fruit, railroad ties, and the like, and finally atthree came out in sight of the famous mining city of Guanajuato.

It would take the pen of a master to paint the blue labyrinth ofmountains heaped up on all sides and beyond the long, winding city inthe narrow gorge far below, up out of which came with each puff of windthe muffled sound of stamp-mills and smelters. As I sat, the howling ofthree drunken peons drifted up from the road below. When they reachedme, one of them, past forty, thrust his unwashed, pulque-perfumed faceinto mine and demanded a cigarette. When I declined, he continued to begin a threatening manner. Meanwhile the drunkest of the three, a youth ofperhaps seventeen, large and muscular, an evil gleam in his eye, edgedhis way up to me with one arm behind him and added his demands to thatof the other. I suddenly pulled the hidden hand into sight and found init a sharp broken piece of rock weighing some ten pounds. Havingknocked this out of his grasp, I laid my automatic across my knees andthe more sober pair dragged the belligerent youth on up the mountaintrail.

For an hour the way wound down by steep, horribly cobbled descents, thenbetween mud and stone huts, and finally down a more level and widercobbled street along which were the rails of a mule tramway. The narrowcity wound for miles along the bottom of a deep gully, gay everywherewith perennial flowers. The main avenue ran like a stream along thebottom, and he who lost himself in the stair-like side streets had onlyto follow downward to find it again as surely as a tributary its mainriver. Masses of rocky mountains were piled up on all sides.

The climate of Guanajuato is unsurpassed. Brilliant sunshine floodeddays like our early June, in which one must hurry to sweat in the noontime, while two blankets made comfortable covering at night. This istrue of not only one season but the year around, during which thethermometer does not vary ten degrees. July is coldest and a fireplacenot uncomfortable in the evening. An American resident who went home toone of the States bordering on Canada for his vacation sat wiping thesweat out of his eyes there, when one of his untraveled countrymenobserved:

"You must feel very much at home in this heat after nine years in
Mexico."

Whereupon the sufferer arose in disgust, packed his bag, and sped southto mosquitoless coolness.

The evening air is indescribable; all nature's changes of strikingbeauty; and the setting sun throwing its last rays on the Bufa, thesalient points of that and the other peaks purple with light, with thevalleys 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-inchcobbles, the sidewalks two feet wide, leaving one pedestrian to jump offit each time two met. A diminutive streetcar drawn by mules withjingling bells passed now and then. Peons swarmed here also, but therewas by no means the abject poverty of San Luis Potosi, and Americansseemed in considerable favor, as their mines in the vicinity give thetown its livelihood. I was seeking the famous old "Alóndiga," but thepoliceman I asked began looking at the names of the shops along the wayas if he fancied it some tobacco booth. I tried again by designating itas "la cárcel." He still shook his head sadly. But when I described itas the place where Father Hidalgo's head hung on a hook for thirteenyears, a great light broke suddenly upon him and he at once abandonedhis beat and led me several blocks, refusing to be shaken off. What Ifirst took for extreme courtesy, however, turned out to be merely thequest of tips, an activity in which the police of most Mexican citiesare scarcely outdone by the waiters along Broadway.

The ancient building was outwardly plain and nearly square, more massivethan the rest of the city. High up on each of its corners under therusted hooks were the names of the four early opponents of Spanish rulewhose heads had once hung there. Inside the corridor stood the statue ofthe peon who is said to have reached and fired the building under coverof the huge slab of stone on his back. When I had waited a while in theanteroom, the jefe político, the supreme commander of the cityappointed by the governor of the State, appeared, the entire roomful ofofficials and visitors dropping their cigarettes and rising to greet himwith bared heads. He gave me permission to enter, and thepresidente, a podgy second jailor, took me in charge as the irondoor opened to let me in. The walls once red with the blood of Spaniardsslaughtered by the forces of the priest of Dolores had lost that tint inthe century since passed, and were smeared with nothing more startlingthan a certain lack of cleanliness. The immense, three-story, stonebuilding of colonial days enclosed a vast patio in which prisonersseemed to enjoy complete freedom, lying about the yard in the brilliantsunshine, playing cards, or washing themselves and their scanty clothingin the huge stone fountain in the center. The so-called cells in whichthey were shut up in groups during the night were large chambers thatonce housed the colonial government. By day many of them work at weavinghats, baskets, brushes, and the like, to sell for their own benefit,thus being able to order food from outside and avoid the mess brought inbarrels at two and seven of each afternoon for those dependent ongovernment rations. Now and then a wife or feminine friend of one ofthe prisoners appeared at the grating with a basket of food. Several ofthe inmates were called one by one to the crack of an iron door in thewall to hear the sentence the judge had chosen to impose upon them inthe quiet of his own home; for public jury trial is not customary inSpanish America.

In the fine gallery around the patio, in the second-story, we werejoined by an American from Colorado, charged with killing a Mexican, butwho seemed little worried with his present condition or doubtful of hisultimate release. From the flat roof, large enough for a schoolplayground, there spread out a splendid view of all the city and itssurrounding mountains. There were, all told, some five hundredprisoners. A room opening on the patio served as a school for convicts,where a man well advanced in years, bewhiskered and of a decidedlypedagogical cast of countenance in spite of his part Indian blood, saton his back, peering dreamily through his glasses at the seventy or morepupils, chiefly between the ages of fifteen and twenty, who drowsedbefore him.

There is a no less fine view from the hill behind, on which sits thePanteon, or city cemetery. It is a rectangular place enclosing perhapsthree 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 nichestwo feet square into what from the outside looks to be merely theenclosing wall. Here, in more exact order than prevails in life, thedead of Guanajuato are filed in series, each designated by anumber. Series six was new and not yet half occupied. A funeral ends bythrusting the coffin into its appointed pigeonhole, which the Indianemployees brick up and face with cement, in which while still soft thename of the defunct and other information is commonly rudely scratchedwith a stick, often with amateur spelling. Here and there is one inEnglish:—"My Father's Servant—H. B." Some have marble headpieces withengraved names, and perhaps a third of the niches bear the information"En Perpetuidad," indicating that the rent has been paid up untiljudgment day. The majority of the corpses, however, are dragged outafter one to five years and dumped in the common bone-yard, as in allSpanish-speaking countries. The Indian attendants were even then openingseveral in an older series and tossing skulls and bones about amidfacetious banter. The lower four rows can be reached readily, but not afew suffer the pain of being "skied," where only those who chance toglance upward will notice them.

There were some graves in the ground, evidently of the poorer Indianclasses. Several had been newly dug, unearthing former occupants, and agrinning skull sat awry on a heap of earth amid a few thigh bones andscattered ribs, all trodden under sandaled foot-prints. In one hole laythe thick black hair of what had once been a peon, as intact as anyactor's wig. There is some property in the soil of Guanajuato's Panteónthat 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 fourthseries of niches, where we descended a little circular ironstairway. This opened on a high vaulted corridor, six feet wide andthirty long. Along this, behind glass doors, stood some hundred more orless complete bodies shrouded in sheets. They retained, or had beenarranged, in the same form they had presented in life—peon carriersbent as if still under a heavy burden, old market women in the act ofhaggling, arrieros plodding behind their imaginary burros. Somehad their mouths wide open, as if they had been buried alive and haddied 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 placedupright here and there between the elders. Most of the corpses wore olddilapidated shoes. In the farther end of the corridor were stackedthighbones and skulls surely sufficient to fill two box-cars, all facingto the front. I asked how many deaths the collection represented, andthe director shrugged his shoulders with an indifferent "Quién sabe?" Hewho would understand the Mexican, descendant of the Aztecs, must notoverlook a certain apathetic indifference to death, and a playful mannerwith its remains.

Once on earth again, I gave the director a handful of coppers anddescended to the town, motley now with market-day. The place swarmedwith color; ragged, unwashed males and females squatted on the narrowsidewalks with fruit, sweets, gay blankets and clothing, cast-off shoesand garments, piles of new sandals, spread out in the street beforethem. Amid the babel of street cries the most persistent was"Agua-miel!"—"Honey water," as the juice of the maguey is called duringthe twelve hours before fermentation sets in. From twelve to thirty-sixhours after its drawing it is intoxicating; from then on, only fit to bethrown away. But the sour stench from each pulquería and many a passingpeon proved a forced longevity. Several lay drunk in the streets, butpassers-by stepped over or around them with the air of those who do asthey hope to be done by. Laughter was rare, the great majority beingexceedingly somber in manner. Even their songs are gloomy wails,recalling the Arabs. A few children played at "bull-fight," and here andthere two or three, thanks to the American influence, were engaged inwhat they fancied was baseball. But for the most part they were notplayful. The young of both Indians and donkeys are trained early for thelife before them. The shaggy little ass-colts follow their mothers overthe cobbled streets and along mountain trails from birth, and the peonchildren, wearing the same huge hat, gay sarape, and tight breeches astheir fathers, or the identical garb of the mothers, carry their shareof the family burden almost from infancy. Everything of whatever size orshape was carried on the backs or heads of Indians with a supportingstrap across the forehead. A peon passed bearing on his head the corpseof a baby in an open wooden coffin, scattered with flowers. Trunks offull 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 awayand two thousand feet above the city over the rockiest trails considershimself well paid at thirty cents. Six peons dog-trotted by from themunicipal slaughter-house with a steer on their backs: four carried aquarter each; one the head and skin; and the last, heart, stomach, andintestines. Horsesho*rs worked in the open streets, using whatever shoesthey had on hand without adjustment, paring down the hoofs of the animalto fit them. Here and there a policeman on his beat was languidlyoccupied in making brushes, like the prisoners of the Alóndiga, and twoI saw whiling away the time making lace! Several of them tagged myfootsteps, eager for some errand. One feels no great sense of securityin a country whose boyish, uneducated, and ragged guardians of ordercringe around like beggar boys hoping for a copper.

Saturday is beggar's day, when those who seek alms more or lesssurreptitiously during the week are permitted to pass in processionalong the shops, many of which disburse on this day a fixed sum, as highas twenty dollars, in copper centavos. Now and then the mule-cars bowledover a laden ass, which sat up calmly on its haunches, front feet in theair, until the obstruction passed. All those of Indian blood werenotable for their strong white teeth, not one of which they seem ever tolose. In the church a bit higher up several bedraggled women andpulque-besotted peons knelt before a disgusting representation of theCrucifixion. The figure had real hair, beard, eyebrows, and eveneyelashes, with several mortal wounds, barked knees and shins, half thebody smeared with red paint as blood, all in all fit only for themorgue. Farther on, drowsed the post-office, noted like all south of theRio Grande for its unreliability. Unregistered packages seldom arrive attheir destination, groceries sent from the States to American residentsare at least half eaten en route. A man of the North unacquainted withthe ways of Mexico sent unregistered a Christmas present of a dozenpairs of silk socks. The addressee inquired for them daily forweeks. Finally he wrote for a detailed description of the hectic lostproperty, and had no difficulty in recognizing at least two pairs as thebeak-nosed officials hitched up their trousers to tell him again nothingwhatever had come for him. Not long before my arrival a Mexicanmail-car had been wrecked, and between the ceiling and the outer wallwere found over forty thousand letters postal clerks had opened andthrown there.

I drifted into an "Escuela Gratuita para Niños." The heavy, barn-likedoor gave entrance to a cobbled corridor, opening on a long schoolroomwith two rows of hard wooden benches on which were seated a half hundredlittle peons aged seven to ten, all raggedly dressed in the identicalgarb, sandals and all, of their fathers in the streets, their huge strawhats covering one of the walls. The maestro, a small,down-trodden-looking Mexican, rushed to the door to bring me down to thefront and provide me with a chair. The school had been founded some sixmonths before by a woman of wealth, and offered free instruction to thesons of peons. But the Indians as always were suspicious, and for themost 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 thenhimself hastily suggested "cuentitas." The boys were quick at figures,at least in the examples the maestro chose to give them, but he declinedto show them off in writing or spelling. Several read aloud, in thatmumbled and half-pronounced manner common to Mexico, the onlyrequirement appearing to be speed. Then came a class in "HistoriaSanta," that is, various of the larger boys arose to spout at fullgallop and the distinct enunciation of an "El" train, the biblicalaccount of the creation of the world, the legends of Adam and Eve, Cainand Abel, and Noah's travels with a menagerie, all learned by rote. Theentire school then arose and bowed me out.

A visit to a mixed school, presided over by carelessly dressed maidensof uncertain age and the all-knowing glance of those who feel the worldand all its knowledge lies concentrated in the hollow of their hands,showed a quite similar method of instruction. On the wall hung a greatlithograph depicting in all its dreadful details the alleged horrors of"alcoolismo." Even the teachers rattled off their questions with anatrocious, half-enunciated pronunciation, and he must have been aSpanish scholar indeed who could have caught more than the gist of therecited answers. This indistinctness of enunciation and the Catholicsystem of learning by rote instead of permitting the development ofindividual power to think were as marked even in the colegio,corresponding roughly to our high schools. Even there the professornever commanded, "More distinctly!" but he frequently cried, "Faster!"

On the wall of this higher institution was a stern set of rules, amongwhich some of the most important were:

"Students must not smoke in the presence of professors," though this wasbut mildly observed, for when I entered the study room with the directorand his assistant, all of us smoking, the boys, averaging fifteen yearsof age, merely held their lighted cigarettes half out of sight behindthem until we passed. Another rule read: "Any student frequenting atavern, café chantant, or house of ill-fame may be expelled." He mightrun that risk in most schools, but none but the Latinized races wouldannounce the fact in plain words on the bulletin-boards. The directorcomplained that the recent revolutions had set the school far back, aseach government left it to the next to provide for such secondarynecessities.

CHAPTER III

IN A MEXICAN MINE

A classmate of my boyhood was superintendent of the group of mines roundabout Guanajuato. From among them we chose "Pingüico" for my temporaryemployment. The ride to it, 8200 feet above the sea, up along and out ofthe gully in which Guanajuato is built, and by steep rocky trailssometimes beside sheer mountain walls, opens out many a marvelous vista;but none to compare with that from the office veranda of the mineitself. Two thousand feet below lies a plain of Mexico's greattable-land, stretching forty miles or more across to where it is shutoff by an endless range of mountains, backed by chain after blue chain,each cutting the sky-line in more jagged, fantastic fashion than therest, the farther far beyond Guadalajara and surely more than a hundredmiles distant, where Mexico falls away into the Pacific. On the leftrises deep-blue into the sky the almost perfect flattened cone of a lonemountain. Brilliant yet not hot sunshine illuminated even the farhorizon, and little cloud-shadows crawled here and there across thelandscape. The rainy season had left on the plain below many shallowlakes that reflected the sun like immense mirrors. From the veranda itseemed quite flat, though in reality by no means so, and one could allbut count the windows of Silao, Irapuato, and other towns; the second,though more than twenty miles away, still in the back foreground of thepicture. Thread-like, brown trails wound away over the plain and upinto the mountains, here and there dotted by travelers crawling ant-likealong them a few inches an hour. Take the most perfect day of late Mayor early June in our North, brush off the clouds, make the air manytimes fresher and clearer, add October nights, and multiply the sumtotal by 365, and it is more easily understood why Americans who settlein the Guanajuato region so frequently remain there.

The room I shared with a mine boss was of chilly stone walls and floor,large and square, with a rug, two beds, and the bare necessities. Themine mess, run by a Chinaman, furnished meals much like those of a25-cent restaurant in Texas, at the rate of $5 a week. No Mexican waspermitted to eat with the Americans, not even with the "rough-necks."When the whistle blew at seven next morning, some forty peons, who hadstraggled one by one in the dawn to huddle up together in their redsarapes among the rocks of the drab hillside, marched past thetimekeeper, turning over their blankets at a check counter, and withtheir lunches, of the size of the round tortilla at the bottom and fourto six inches high, in their handkerchiefs, climbed into the six-foot,iron ore-bucket until it was completely roofed with their immense strawhats. Near by those of the second night-shift, homeward bound, halted,to stand one by one on a wooden block with outstretched arms to becarefully searched for stolen ore by a tried and trusted fellow-peon. Apocketful of "high-grade" might be worth several dollars. The American"jefe" sat in the hoisthouse, writing out requisitions for candles,dynamite, and kindred supplies for the "jefecitos," or straw bosses, ofthe hundred or more peons still lined up before the shaft. With the lastbatch of these in the bucket, we white men stepped upon the platformbelow it and dropped suddenly into the black depths of the earth, withnow and then a stone easily capable of cracking a skull bounding swiftlywith a hollow sound past us back and forth across the shaft.

Not infrequently in the days to come some accident to the hoist-engineabove left us to stand an hour or more packed tightly together in oursuspended four-foot space in unmitigated darkness. For this and otherreasons no peon was ever permitted to ride on the platform with anAmerican. Twelve hundred feet down we stepped out into a winding, rockgallery nearly six feet wide and high, where fourteen natives wereloading rock and mud into iron dump-cars and pushing them to a near-bychute. Even at this depth flies were thick. A facetious boss assertedthey hatched on the peons. My task here was to "sacar muestras"—"takesamples," as it was called in English. From each car as it passed Isnatched a handful of mud and small broken rock and thrust it into asack that later went to the assay office to show what grade of ore thevein was producing.

Once an hour I descended to a hole far beneath by a rope ladder, lifedepending on a spike driven in the rock above and a secure handhold, forthe handful of "pay dirt" two peons were grubbing down out of a lowerveta, a long narrow alleyway of soft earth and small stones thatstretched away into the interior of the mountain between solid walls ofrock. No inexperienced man would have supposed this mud worth more thanany other. But silver does not come out of the earth in minted dollars.

In the mine the peons wore their hats, a considerable protection againstfalling rocks, but were otherwise naked but for their sandals and anarrow strip of once white cloth between their legs, held by a stringaround the waist. Some were well-built, though all were small, and inthe concentrated patch of light the play of their muscles through thelight-brown skins was fascinating. Working thus naked seemed so muchmore dangerous; the human form appeared so much more feeble and soft,delving unclothed in the fathomless, rocky earth. Many a man was markedhere and there with long deep scars. It was noticeable how character,habits, dissipation, which show so plainly in the face, left but littlesign on the rest of the body, which remained for the most part smoothand unwrinkled.

The peons were more than careless. All day long dynamite was tossedcarelessly back and forth about me. A man broke up three or four sticksof it at a time, wrapped them in paper, and beat the mass into the formof a ball on a rock at my feet. Miners grow so accustomed to this thatthey note it, if at all, with complete indifference, often working andserenely smoking seated on several hundred pounds of explosives. Onepeon of forty in this gang had lost his entire left arm in a recentexplosion, yet he handled the dangerous stuff as carelessly as ever.Several others were mutilated in lesser degrees. They depend on charmsand prayers to their favorite saint rather than on their ownprecautions. Every few minutes the day through came the cry: "'Stápegado!" that sent us skurrying a few feet away until a dull, deafeningexplosion brought down a new section of the vein. Not long before, therehad been a cave-in just beyond where we were working, and the severalmen imprisoned there had not been rescued, so that now and then a skulland portions of skeleton came down with the rock. The peons had firstbalked at this, but the superintendent had told them the bones weremerely strange shapes of ore, ordered them to break up the skulls andthrow them in with the rest, and threatened to discharge and blackballany man who talked of the matter.

By law a Mexican injured in the mine could not be treated on the spot,but must be first carried to Guanajuato—often dying on the way—to beexamined by the police and then brought back to the mine hospital. Smallhurts were of slight importance to the peons. During my first hourbelow, a muddy rock fell down the front of a laborer, scraping the skinoff his nose, deeply scratching his chest and thighs, and causing histoes to bleed, but he merely swore a few round oaths and continued hiswork. The hospital doctors asserted that the peon has not more than onefourth the physical sensitiveness of civilized persons. Many a oneallowed a finger to be amputated without a word, and as chloroform isexpensive the surgeon often replaced it with a long draught ofmescal or tequila, the native whiskies.

Outwardly the peons were very deferential to white men. I could rarelyget a sentence from them, though they chattered much among themselves,with a constant sprinkling of obscenity. They had a complete language ofwhistles by which they warned each other of an approaching "jefe,"exchanged varied information, and even entered into discussion of thealleged characteristics of their superiors in their very presencewithout being understood by the uninitiated. Frequently, too, amid therumble of the "veta madre" pouring down her treasures, some formerBroadway favorite that had found its way gradually to the theater ofGuanajuato sounded weirdly through the gallery, as it was whistled bysome naked peon behind a loaded car. A man speaking only the pureCastilian would have had some difficulty in understanding many of themine terms. Many Indian words had crept into the common language, suchas "chiquihuite" for basket.

Some seventy-five cars passed me during the morning. Under supervisionthe peons worked at moderately good speed; indeed, they compared ratherfavorably with the rough American laborers with whom I had recentlytoiled in railroad gangs, in a stone-quarry of Oklahoma, and thecotton-fields of Texas. The endurance of these fellows living on cornand beans is remarkable; they were as superior to the Oriental coolie astheir wages to the latter's eight or ten cents a day. In this case, asthe world over, the workmen earned about what he was paid, or rathersucceeded in keeping his capacity down to the wages paid him. Manygalleries of the mine were "worked on contract," and almost all gangshad their self-chosen leader. A peon with a bit more standing in thecommunity than his fellows, wearing something or other to suggest hisauthority and higher place in the world—such perhaps as the pink shirtthe haughty "jefecito" beside me sported—appeared with twelve or moremen ready for work and was given a section and paid enough to give hismen from fifty to eighty cents a day each and have something over adollar left for himself. Miners' wages vary much throughout Mexico, fromtwelve dollars a month to two a day in places no insuperable distancesapart. Conditions also differ greatly, according to my experiencedcompatriots. The striking and booting of the workmen, common in somemines, was never permitted in "Pingüico." In Pachuca, for example, thiswas said to be the universal practice; while in the mines of Chihuahuait would have been as dangerous as to do the same thing to a stick ofdynamite. Here the peon's manner was little short of obsequiousoutwardly, yet one had the feeling that in crowds they were capable ofmaking trouble and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the regionhad despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated androbbed even of their clothing. The charming part of it all was one couldnever know which of these slinking fellows was a bandit by avocation andsaving up his unvented anger for the boss who ordered him about at hislabors.

It felt pleasant, indeed, to bask in the sun a half hour after dinnerbefore descending again. Toward five I tied and tagged the sacks ofsamples and followed them, on peon backs, to the shaft and to the worldabove with its hot and cold shower-bath, and the Chinaman's promise,thanks to the proximity of Irapuato, of "stlaybelly pie." Though theAmerican force numbered several of those fruitless individuals thatdrift in and out of all mining communities, it was on the whole ofrather high caliber. Besides "Sully the Pug," a mere human animal, hairyand muscular as a bear, and two "Texicans," as those born in the Statesof some Mexican blood and generally a touch of foreign accent arecalled, there were two engineers who lived with their "chinitas," orilliterate mestizo Mexican wives and broods of peon children downin the valley below the dump-heap. Caste lines were not lacking evenamong the Americans in the "camp," as these call Guanajuato and itsmining environs. More than one complained that those who married Mexicangirls of unsullied character and even education were rated "squaw-men"and more or less ostracized by their fellow countrymen, and especiallycountry-women, while the man who "picked up an old rounder from theStates" was looked upon as an equal. The speech of all Mexico isslovenly from the Castilian point of view. Still more so was that ofboth the peon and the Americans, who copied the untutored tongue of theformer, often ignorant of its faults, and generally not in the leastanxious to improve, nor indeed to get any other advantage from thecountry except the gold and silver they could dig out of it. Laborersand bosses commonly used "pierra" for piedra; "sa' pa' fuera" for toleave the mine, "croquesí" for I believe so, commonly ignorant even ofthe fact that this is not a single word. In the mess-hall were heardstrange mixtures of the two languages, as when a man rising to answersome call shouted over his shoulder: "Juan, deja mi pie alone!" Thanksto much peon intercourse, almost all the Americans had an unconsciouslypatronizing air even to their fellows, as many a pedagogue comes toaddress all the world in the tone of the schoolroom. The Mexican, likethe Spaniard, never laughs at the most atrocious attempts at his tongueby foreigners, and even the peons were often extremely quick-witted incatching the idea from a few mispronounced words. "The man with thehair——," I said one day, in describing a workman I wished summoned;and not for the moment recalling the Castilian for curly, I twirled myfingers in the air.

"Chino!" cried at least a half-dozen peons in the same breath.

Small wonder the Mexican considers the "gringo" rude. An American bosswould send a peon to fetch his key or cigarettes, or on some equallyimportant errand; the workman would run all the way up hill and downagain in the rarified air, removing his hat as he handed over thedesired article, and the average man from the States would not so muchas grunt his thanks.

The engineers on whom our lives depended as often as we descended intoor mounted from the mine, had concocted and posted in the engine-roomthe following "ten commandments":

"Notice To Visitors And Others

"Article 1. Be seated on the platform. It is too large for the engineeranyway.

"Art. 2. Spit on the floor. We like to clean up after you.

"Art. 3. Talk to the engineer while he is running. There is noresponsibility to his job.

"Art. 4. If the engineer does not know his business, please tell him. Hewill appreciate it.

"Art. 5. Ask him as many questions as you like. He is paid to answerthem.

"Art. 6. Please handle all the bright work. We have nothing to do butclean it.

"Art. 7. Don't spit on the ceiling. We have lost the ladder.

"Art. 8. Should the engineer look angry don't pay any attention tohim. He is harmless.

"Art. 9. If you have no cigarettes take his. They grow in his garden.

"Art. 10. If he is not entertaining, report him to the superintendentand he will be fired at once."

On the second day the scene of my operations was changed to the eighthlevel, a hundred feet below that of the first. It was a long gallerywinding away through the mountain, and connecting a mile beyond withanother shaft opening on another hill, so that the heavy air wastempered by a constant mild breeze.

Side shafts, just large enough for the ore-cars to pass, pierced farback into the mountain at frequent intervals. Back in these it wasfurnace hot. From them the day-gang took out 115 car-loads, though thechute was blocked now and then by huge rocks that must be "shot" by asmall charge of dynamite stuck on them, a new way of "shooting thechutes" that was like striking the ear-drums with a club.

The peons placed in each gallery either a cross or a lithograph of theVirgin in a shrine made of a dynamite-box, and kept at least one candlealways burning before it. In the morning it was a common sight to seeseveral appear with a bunch of fresh-picked flowers to set up before theimage. Most of the men wore a rosary or charm about the neck, which theydid not remove even when working naked, and all crossed themselves eachtime they entered the mine. Not a few chanted prayers while the cage wasdescending. As often as they passed the gallery-shrine, they left offfor an instant the vilest oaths, in which several boys from twelve tofourteen excelled, to snatch off their hats to the Virgin, theninstantly took up their cursing again. Whenever I left the mine theybegged the half-candle I had left, and set it up with the rest. Yet theyhad none of the touchiness of the Hindu about their superstitions, andshowed no resentment whatever even when a "gringo" stopped to light hiscigarette at their improvised "altars."

Trusted miners hired to search the others for stolen ore as they leavethe shaft were sometimes waylaid on the journey home and beaten almostor quite to death. Once given a position of authority, they were harsherwith their own kind than were the white men. The scarred and seared old"Pingüico" searcher, who stood at his block three times each twenty-fourhours, had already killed three men who thus attacked him. Under noprovocation whatever would the peons fight underground, but lay fortheir enemies only outside. A shift-boss in a neighboring mine remainedseven weeks below, having his food sent down to him, and continued towork daily with miners who had sworn to kill him once they caught him onearth. One of our engineers had long been accustomed at another mine tohand his revolver to the searcher when the shift appeared and to armhimself with a heavy club. One day the searcher gave the superintendenta "tip," and when the hundred or more were lined up they were suddenlycommanded to take off their huarachas. A gasp of dismay sounded,but all hastily snatched off their sandals and something like a bushelof high-grade ore in thin strips lay scattered on the ground. But a fewmornings later the searcher was found dead half way between the mine andhis home.

Some of the mines round about Guanajuato were in a most chaotic state,especially those of individual ownership. The equipment was often sopoor that fatal accidents were common, deaths even resulting from rocksfalling down the shafts. Among our engineers was one who had recentlycome from a mine where during two weeks' employment he pulled out fromone to four corpses daily, until "it got so monotonous" he resigned. Inthat same mine it was customary to lock in each shift until therelieving one arrived, and many worked four or five shifts, thirty-twoto forty hours without a moment of rest, swallowing a bit of food nowand then with a sledge in one hand. "High-graders," as ore-thieves arecalled, were numerous. The near-by "Sirena" mine was reputed to have inits personnel more men who lived by stealing ore than honestworkmen. There ran the story of a new boss in a mine so near ours thatwe could hear its blasting from our eighth level, long dull thuds thatseemed to run through the mountain like a shudder through a human body,who was making his first underground inspection when his light suddenlywent out and he felt the cold barrel of a revolver against his temple. Apeon voice sounded in the darkness close to his ear:

"No te muevas, hijo de——, si quieres vivir!"

Another light was struck and he made out some twenty peons, each with asack of "high-grade," and was warned to take his leave on thedouble-quick and not to look around on penalty of a worse fate than thatof Lot's wife.

Bandit gangs were known to live in out-of-the-way corners of severalmines, bringing their blankets and tortillas with them and making abusiness of stealing ore. Not even the most experienced mining engineercould more quickly recognize "pay dirt" than the peon population ofGuanajuato vicinity.

Though he is obsequious enough under ordinary circ*mstances, the minepeon often has a deep-rooted hatred of the American, which vents itselfchiefly in cold silence, unless opportunity makes some more effectiveway possible. Next on his black-list comes the Spaniard, who is reputeda heartless usurer who long enjoyed protection under Diaz. Third,perhaps, come the priests, though these are endured as a necessary evil,as we endure a bad government. The padre of Calderón drifted up to themine one day to pay his respects and drink the mine health in goodScotch whisky. Gradually he brought the conversation around to thequestion of disobedience among the peons, and summed up his advice tothe Americans in a vehement explosion:

"Fine them! Fine them often, and much!

"Of course," he added, as he prepared to leave, "you know that by thelaws of Mexico and the Santa Iglesia all such fines go to thechurch."

Intercourse between the mine officials and native authorities was almostalways sure to make it worth while to linger in the vicinity. Mydisrespectful fellow countrymen were much given to mixing with the mostcourteous Spanish forms of speech asides in English which it was wellthe pompous native officials did not understand. I reached the officeone day to find the chief of police just arrived to collect for hisservices in guarding the money brought out on pay-day.

"Ah, senor mio," cried the superintendent, "Y como esta usted? Lafamilia buena? Y los hijos—I'll slip the old geaser his six bones andlet him be on his way—Oh, sí, señor. Cómo no? Con muchísimo gusto—andthere goes six of our good bucks and four bits and—Pues adiós, muyseñor mio! Vaya bien!—If only you break your worthless old neck on theway home—Adiós pues!"

After the shower-bath it was as much worth while to stroll up over theridge back of the camp and watch the night settle down over thisupper-story world. Only on the coast of Cochinchina have I seen sunsetsto equal those in this altitude. Each one was different. To-night itstretched entirely across the saw-toothed summits of the western hillsin a narrow, pinkish-red streak; to-morrow the play of colors onmountains and clouds, shot blood-red, fading to saffron yellow, growingan ever-thicker gray down to the horizon, with the unrivaled blue of thesky overhead, all shifting and changing with every moment, would behopelessly beyond the power of words. Often rain was falling in a spotor two far to the west, and there the clouds were jet black. In oneplace well above the horizon was perhaps a brilliant pinkish patch ofreflected sun, and everything else an immensity of clouded sky runningfrom Confederate gray above to a blackish-blue that blended with rangeupon range to the uttermost distance.

There was always a peculiar stillness over all the scene. Groups ofsandaled mine peons wound noiselessly away, a few rods apart, alongundulating trails, the red of their sarapes and the yellow of theirimmense hats giving the predominating hue. In the vast landscape wasmuch green, though more gray of outcropping rocks. Here and there alonely telegraph wire struck off dubiously across the ruggedcountry. Rocks as large as houses hung on the great hillsides, ready toroll down and destroy at the slightest movement of the earth, likeplaythings left by careless giant children. Along some rocky path fardown in the nearer valley a small horse of the patient Mexican breed,under its picturesque, huge-hatted rider, galloped sure-footed up anddown steep faces of rock. Cargadores bent half double, with a ropeacross their brows, came straining upward to the mine. Bands of peonsreleased from their underground labors paused here and there on the wayhome to wager cigarettes on which could toss a stone nearest the nextmud puddle. Flocks of goats wandered in the growing dusk about swiftstony mountain flanks. Farther away was a rocky ridge beaten withnarrow, bare, crisscross trails, and beyond, the old Valenciana mine onthe flanks of the jagged range shutting off Dolores Hidalgo, appearingso near in this clear air of the heights that it seemed a man couldthrow a stone there; yet down in the valley between lay all Guanajuato,the invisible, and none might know how many bandits were sleeping outthe day in their lurking-places among the wild, broken valleys andgorges the view embraced. Down in its rock-tumbled valley spread thescattered town of Calderón, and the knell of its tinny old church bellscame drifting up across the divide on the sturdy evening breeze, tingedwith cold, that seemed to bring the night with it, so silently andcoolly did it settle down. The immense plain and farther mountainsremained almost visible in the starlight, in the middle distance thelamps of Silao, and near the center of the half-seen picture those ofIrapuato, while far away a faint glow in the sky marked the location ofthe city of Leon.

Excitement burst upon the mess-table one night. Rival politicians wereto contend the following Sunday for the governorship of the State, andthe "liberal" candidate had assured the peons that he would treble theirwages and force the company to give them full pay during illness, andthat those who voted for his rival were really casting ballots for "losgringos" who had stolen away their mines. All this was, of course, purecampaign bunco; as a matter of fact the lowest wages in all the mines ofMexico were in those belonging to the then "liberal" President of therepublic, and accident pay would have caused these insensible fellows todrop rocks on themselves to enjoy its benefits. For several morningsthreatening political posters had appeared on the walls of the companybuildings. But this time word came that "liberal" posters had been stuckup in the galleries of the mine itself. The boss sprang to his feet, andwithout even sending for his revolver went down into the earth. An houror more later he reappeared with the remnants of the posters. Thoughthe mine was populated with peons and there was not then anotherAmerican below ground, they watched him tear down the sheets withoutother movement than to cringe about him, each begging not to be believedguilty. Later a peon was charged with the deed and forever forbidden towork in the mines of the company. The superintendent threatened todischarge any employee who voted for the "liberal" candidate, and,though he could not of course know who did, their dread of punishment nodoubt kept many from voting at all.

Work in the mine never ceased. Even as we fell asleep the engine closeat hand panted constantly, the mild clangor of the blacksmith-shopcontinued unbroken, cars of rock were dumped every few minutes under theswarming stars, the mine pulse beat unchanging, and far down beneath ourbeds hundreds of naked peons were still tearing incessantly at the rockyentrails of the earth.

Though the mine throbbed on, I set off one sunny Sunday morning to walkto town and the weekly ball game. It was just warm enough for a summercoat, a breeze blew as at sea, an occasional telephone pole was singingas with contentment with life in this perfect climate. Groups ofbrownish-gray donkeys with loads on their backs passed me or crawledalong far-away trails, followed by men in tight white trousers, theirstriped and gay-colored sarapes about their bodies and their huge hatsatop. Over all was a Sunday stillness, broken only by the occasionalbark of a distant dog or a co*ckcrow that was almost musical as it wasborne by on the wind. Everywhere were mountains piled into thesky. Valenciana, where so many Spaniards, long since gone to whateverreward awaited them, waxed rich and built a church now golden brown withage, sat on its slope across the valley, down in which no one would haveguessed huddled a city of some 60,000 inhabitants. Much nearer and abit below drowsed the old town of Calderón, home of many of our peons, abright red blanket hung over a stone wall giving a splash of brilliancyto the vast stretch of grayish, dull-brown, and thirsty green. The roadwound slowly down and ever down, until the gullies grew warmer as therising mountains cut off the breeze and left the sun in undisputedcommand. Along the way were flowers uncountable, chiefly large, white,lily-like blossoms growing on a bush, then thick patches oforange-yellow. Horsem*n, Mexicans on burros, peon men, women, andchildren afoot were legion. There were no Americans, though I passedone huge Negro with a great black beard who gave me "Good morning" fromhis horse in the tone of a man who had not met an equal before in sometime. At length appeared the emerald-green patch of the upper Presa,with its statue of Hidalgo, and the café-au-lait pond that stores thecity's water, and over the parapet of which hung guanajuatenseswatching with wonder the rowboat of the American hospital doctor, theonly water craft the great majority of them have ever seen.

A natural amphitheater encloses the ball-ground in which were gatheredthe wives of Americans, in snowy white, to watch a game between teamsmade up chiefly of "gringoes" of the mines, my one-time classmate stillat short-stop, as in our schoolboy days, thanks to which no doubtGuanajuato held the baseball championship of Mexico. Like the Englishofficials of India, the Americans in high places here were noticeablefor their youth, and, at least here on the ball-ground, for theirdemocracy, known to all by their boyhood nicknames, yet held almost inreverence by the Mexican youths that filled in the less importantpositions. At the club after the game the champion Mexican playerdiscoursed on the certainty of ultimate American intervention andexpressed his own attitude with:

"Let it come, for I am not a politician but a baseball player."

It was election day, and I passed several doorways, among them that ofthe company stable, in which a half-dozen old fossils in their mostsolemn black garb crouched dreamily over wooden tables with registers,papers, and ink bottles before them. Now and then a frightened peonslunk up hat in hand to find whether they wished him to vote, and how,or to see if perhaps he had not voted already—by absent treatment. Themanager of one of the mines had come into the office of the jefepólitico of his district the night before and found the ballots alreadymade out for the "liberal" candidate. He tore them up and sent his ownmen to watch the election, with the result that there was a strongmajority in that precinct in favor of the candidate more pleasing to themine owners. The pulquerias and saloons of the peons had been closed,but not the clubs and resorts of the white men. In one of these I satwith the boss, watching him play a game of stud poker. A dissipatedyoung American, who smoked a cigar and a cigarette at the same time, wasmost in evidence, a half Comanche Indian of an utterly impassivecountenance did the dealing, and fortunes went up and down amid theincessant rattle of chips far into the morning. At three the boss brokeaway, nine dollars to the good, while the proprietor of the place endedwith an enormous heap of chips in front of him; another American, makingout to him a check for $90, and calling for his horse, rode back to hismine to earn it—the shoes of the horse clanking on the cobbles in thesilence of the night and passing now and then a policeman's lantern setin the middle of the street, while that official huddled in his whiteuniform in a dark corner, ostensibly keeping guard.

On another such a day I turned back about dusk up the gorge on thereturn to the mine. The upper park where the band had played earlier wasnow completely deserted. The road was nearly five miles long; the trail,sheer up the wild tumble of mountains before me, little more thantwo. This was vaguely reputed dangerous, but I was not inclined to takethe rumor seriously.

Black night fell. Soon I came upon the vanguard of the day-shift from"Pingüico," straggling down the face of the mountain, shouting andwhistling to each other in their peculiar language. Some carried torchesthat flashed along the mountain wall above me and threw long quaintshadows of the tight-trousered legs. The grade was more than forty-fivedegrees, with much slipping and sliding on unseen rocks. Two or threegroups had passed when one of the men recognized me and with a "Buenasnoches, jefe!" insisted on giving me the torch he carried, a mine candlewith a cloth wrapped around it as a protection in the strong wind. I hadsoon to cast this away, as it not only threatened to burn my hand butleft the eyes unable to pierce the surrounding wall of darkness. In thesilence of the night there came to mind the assertion of by no means ourmost timorous engineer, that he never passed over this trail after darkwithout carrying his revolver co*cked in his hand. My fellow countrymenof the region all wore huge "six-shooters" with a large belt ofcartridges always in sight, less for use than the salutary effect ofhaving them visible, in itself a real protection. Conditions in Mexicohad led me to go armed for the first time in my travels; or moreexactly, to carry one of the "vest pocket automatics" so much invogue—on advertising pages—in that season. My experienced fellowAmericans refused to regard this weapon seriously. One had made thevery fitting suggestion that each bullet should bear a tag with thedevise, "You're shot!" An aged "roughneck" of a half-century of Mexicanresidence had put it succinctly: "Yer travel scheme's all right; butI'll be —— —— if I like the gat you carry." However, such as it was,I drew it now and held it ready for whatever it might be called upon toattempt.

A half hour of heavy climbing brought me to the summit, with a strongcool breeze and a splendid view of the spreading lights of Guanajuato inthe narrow winding gully far below. The trail wound round a peak andreached the first scattered huts of Calderón just as a number of shotssounded not far away. These increased until all the dogs for milesaround took up the hue and cry. The shots multiplied, with much shoutingand uproar, soon sounding on both sides and ahead and behind me, whilethe whistling language shrilled from every gully and hillside. Evidentlydrunken peons were harmlessly celebrating their Sunday holiday, but theshots sounded none the less weirdly out of the black night as I stumbledon over the rocky, tumbled country, for the only smooth way thereaboutswas the Milky Way faintly seen overhead. Gradually the shooting andshouting drifted behind me and died out as I surmounted the last knolland descended to bed. It was only at breakfast next morning that Ilearned I had serenely strolled through a pitched battle between banditsthat haunted the recesses of the mountains about Calderón and the townwhich, led by its jefe político, had finally won the bout with fouroutlaw corpses to its credit. It was my luck not to have even abullet-hole through my cap to prove the story. There were often two orthree such battles a week in the vicinity.

That morning I was given a new job. The boss led the way, candle inhand, a half mile back through the bowels of the mountain, winding withthe swinging of the former ore vein. This alone was enough to gethopelessly lost in, even without its many blind-alley branches. Now andthen we came upon another shaft-opening that seemed a bottomless hole afew feet in diameter in the solid rock, from far down which came up thefalsetto voices and the stinking sweat of peons, and the rap, rap ofheavy hammers on iron rock-bars. But we had only started. Far back inthe gallery we took another hoist and descended some two hundred feetmore, then wound off again through the mountain by more labyrinthianburrowings in the rock, winding, undulating passages, often so low wemust crawl on hands and knees, with no other light than the flickeringcandles half-showing shadowy forms of naked, copper-colored beings; theshadows giving them often fiendish faces and movements, until we couldeasily imagine ourselves in the realms of Dante's imagination. In timewe came to a ladder leading upward into a narrow dark hole, and when theladder ended we climbed on our bellies some forty feet higher up a ledgeof rock to another "heading." Along this we made our way anotherhundred yards or more to where a dozen naked peons were operatingcompressed-air drills, then wormed our way like snakes over theresultant debris to the present end of the passage, where more peonswere drilling by hand, one man holding a bar of iron a few feet longwhich another was striking with a five-pound sledge that luckily nevermissed its mark. This was indeed working in Mexico. It would have beendifficult to get farther into it; and a man could not but dully wonderif he would ever get out again.

We were evidently very close to the infernal regions. Here, indeed,would have been a splendid setting for an orthodox hell. Peons whoseonly garment was the size of a postcard, some even with their hats off,glistened all over their brown bodies as under a shower-bath. In fiveminutes I had sweated completely through my garments, in ten I couldwring water out of my jacket; drops fell regularly at about half-secondintervals from the end of my nose and chin. The dripping sweat formedpuddles beneath the toilers, the air was so scarce and second-hand everybreath was a deep gasp; nowhere a sign of exit, as if we had been walledup in this narrow, low-ceiled, jagged-rock passageway for all time.

My work here was to take samples from the "roof." A grinning peon whocalled himself "Bruno Básques" (Vásquez) followed me about, holding hishat under the hammer with which I chipped bits of rock from above, backand forth across the top of the tunnel, every few feet. The ore ran veryhigh in grade here, the vein being some six feet of whitish rockysubstance between sheer walls of ordinary rock. It struck one mostforcibly, this strange inquisitiveness of man that had caused him toprowl around inside the earth like a mole, looking for a peculiar kindof soil or stone which no one at first sight could have guessed was ofany particular value. The peons, smeared all over with the drippings ofcandle-grease, worked steadily for all the heat and stuffiness. Indeed,one could not but wonder at the amount of energy they sold for a day'swages; though of course their industry was partly due to my "gringo"presence. We addressed them as inferiors, in the "tu" form and with thegeneric title "hombre," or, more exactly, in the case of most of theAmerican bosses, "húm-bray." The white man who said "please" to them, oreven showed thanks in any way, such as giving them a cigarette, lostcaste in their eyes as surely as with a butler one might attempt totreat as a man. I tried it on Bruno, and he almost instantly changedfrom obsequiousness to near-insolence. When I had put him in his placeagain, he said he was glad I spoke Spanish, for so many "jefes" hadpulled his hair and ears and slapped him in the face because he did notunderstand their "strange talk." He did not mention this in any spiritof complaint, but merely as a curious fact and one of the manyvisitations fate sees fit to send those of her children unluckily bornpeons. His jet black hair was so thick that small stones not only didnot hurt his head as they fell from under my hammer, but remained buriedin his thatch, so that nearly as many samples were taken from this asfrom the roof of the passage.

Thus the sweat-dripping days passed, without a hint of what might begoing on in the world far above, amid the roar and pounding of air andhand-drills, the noisy falling of masses of rock as these broke itloose, the constant ringing of shovels, the rumble of iron ore-cars ontheir thread-like rails, cries of "'stá pegado!" quickly followed by thestunning, ear-splitting dynamite blast, screams of "No vás echar!" assome one passed beneath an opening above, of "Ahora sí!" when he was outof danger; the shrill warning whistling of the peons echoing back andforth through the galleries and labyrinthian side tunnels, as the crunchof shoes along the track announced the approach of some boss; theshouting of the peons "throwing" a loaded car along the track throughthe heavy smoke-laden air, so thick with the smell of powder and thinwith oxygen that even experienced bosses developed raging headaches, andthe Beau Brummel secretary of the company fell down once with dizzinessand went to bed after the weekly inspection.

When the first day was done I carried the ten sacks of samples—viaBruno's shoulders—through the labyrinth of corridors and shafts to beloaded on a car and pushed to the main shaft, where blew a veritablesea-breeze that gave those coming from the red-hot pockets a splendidchance for catching cold which few overlooked. In the bodega, orunderground office, I changed my dripping garments for dry ones, butwaited long for the broken-down motor to lift me again finally to pureair. In the days that followed I was advanced to the rank of car-boss inthis same level, and found enough to do and more in keeping the trickycar-men moving. A favorite ruse was to tip over a car on its way to thechute and to grunt and groan over it for a half-hour pretending to liftit back on the rails; or to tuck away far back in some abandoned "lead"the cars we needed, until I went on tours of investigation and ferretedthem out.

During the last days of October I drew my car-boss wages and set out tofollow the ore after it left the mine. From the underground chutes itwas drawn up to the surface in the iron buckets, dumped on "gridleys"(screens made of railroad rails separated a like width) after weighing,broken up and the worthless rock thrown out on the "dump," a greatartificial hill overhanging the valley below and threatening to bury thelittle native houses huddled down in it. A toy Baldwin locomotivedragged the ore trains around the hill to the noisy stamp-mill spreadingthrough another valley, with a village of adobe huts overgrown withmasses of purple flowers and at the bottom a plain of white sand wastefrom which the "values" had been extracted. The last samples I had takenassayed nine pounds of silver and 23 grams of gold to the ton. Thecarloads were dumped into bins at the top of the mill.

The nature of the country had been taken advantage of in the building,which hung twelve stories high on the steep hillside, making gravitationthe chief means of transportation during the refining process. Rockswere screened into one receptacle and broken up by hand. The finer stuffwent direct to the stamps. Stones of ordinary size were spread bymachinery on a broad leather belt that passed three peon women, whopicked out and tossed away the oreless stones. Their movements wereleisurely, but they were sharp-eyed and very few worthless bits got bythe three of them. A story below, the picked material went underdeafening stamps weighing tons and striking several blows a second,while water was turned in to soften the material. This finally ran downanother story in liquid form into huge cylinders where it was rolled androlled again and at last flowed on, smelling like mortar or wet lime,onto platforms of zinc constantly shaking as with the ague and withwater steadily flowing over them. Workmen about the last and mostconcentrated of these were locked in rooms made of chicken-wire. Below,the stuff flowed into enormous vats, like giants' washtubs, and wasstirred and watered here for several days until the "values" had settledand were drawn off at the bottom. There were three stories, or somethirty, of these immense vats. The completed process left these full ofwhite sand which a pair of peons spent several days shoveling out andcarrying down into the valley.

The "values" were next run down into smaller vats and treated with zincshavings, precipitating a 50 per cent. pure metal, black in color, whichwas put into melting-pots in a padlocked room overseen by anAmerican. Here it was cast in large brick molds, these being knocked offand the metal left to slack, after which it was melted again and finallyturned into gray-black blocks of the size and form of a paving-brick, 85per cent. pure, about as heavy as the average lady would care to lift,and worth something like $1250 each. Two or four of these were tied onthe back of a donkey and a train of them driven under guard to the townoffice, whence they were shipped to Mexico City, and finally made intothose elusive things called coins, or sundry articles for thevainglorious, shipped abroad or stolen by revolutionists. On this sameground the old colonial Spaniards used to spread the ore in a cobbledpatio, treat it with mercury, and drive mules round and round in it forweeks until they pocketed whatever was left to them after paying theking's fifth and the tithes of the church.

My rucksack on the back of a peon—and it is astonishing how much moreeasily one's possessions carry in that fashion; as if it were indeedthat automatic baggage on legs I have long contemplated inventing—I setoff to the neighboring mine of "Peregrina." As the peon was accustomedto carry anything short of a grand piano, he did not complain at thishalf-day excursion under some twenty pounds. Being drawn out, he grewquite cheery on this new fashion of carrying—"when the load is notmuch." In the cool morning air, with a wind full of ozone sweepingacross the high country, the trail lay across tumbled stretches of rockyground, range behind range of mountains beyond and a ruined stone hut orcorral here and there carrying the memory back to Palestine. For a halfhour we had Guanajuato in full sight in its narrow gully far below. Manydonkeys pattered by under their loads of encinal fa*gots, the ragged,expressionless drivers plodding silently at their heels.

Ahead grew the roar of "Peregrina's" stamp-mill, and I was soon windingthrough the gorge-hung village. According to the manager, I had chosenwell the time of my coming, for there was "something doing." We strolledabout town until he had picked up the jefe político, a handsome Mexican,built as massive as an Aztec stone idol, under a veritable haystack ofhat, who ostensibly at least was a sworn friend of the miningcompany. With him we returned to the deafening stamp-mill and brought upin the "zinc room," where the metal is cast into bricks. Here thestealing of ore by workmen is particularly prevalent, and even thesearching by the trusty at the gate not entirely effective, for even theskimming off of the scum leaves the floor scattered with chips of silverwith a high percentage of gold which even the American in charge cannotalways keep the men from concealing. Hence there occurs periodically thescene we were about to witness.

When the native workmen of the "zinc room" enter for the day, they areobliged to strip in one chamber and pass on to the next to put on theirworking clothes, reversing the process when they leave. To-day all fiveof them were herded together in one dressing-room, of which, the threeof us being admitted, the door was locked. The jefe político, as thegovernment authority of the region, set about searching them, and as hisposition depended on the good-will of the powerful mining company, itwas no perfunctory "frisking." The ragged fellows were called up one byone and ordered to strip of blouses, shirts, and trousers, and evenhuarachas, their flat leather sandals, the jefe examiningcarefully even the seams of their garments. Indeed, he even searched thehairs of their bodies for filings of "high-grade."

The men obeyed with dog-like alacrity, though three of them showed someinner emotion, whether of guilt, fear, or shame, it was hard toguess. Two had been carefully gone over without the discovery ofanything incriminating, when the jefe suddenly snatched up the hat ofthe first and found in it a knotted handkerchief containing a scrap ofpure metal some two inches long. From then on his luck increased. Thefourth man had been fidgeting about, half disrobing before the ordercame, when all at once the local authority turned and picked up a pieceof ore as large as a silver dollar, wrapped in paper, which the fellowhad surreptitiously tossed away among a bunch of mats against thewall. The jefe cuffed him soundly and ordered him to take off hisshoes—he was the only one of the five sporting that luxury—anddiscovered in the toe of one of them a still larger booty. The last ofthe group was a cheery little fellow barely four feet high, likable inspite of his ingrained lifetime lack of soap. He showed no funk, andwhen ordered to undress turned to the "gringo" manager with: "Me too,jefe?" Then he quickly stripped, proving himself not only honest butthe biggest little giant imaginable. He had a chest like a wine-barreland legs that resembled steel poles, weighed fifty-two kilos, yetaccording to the manager, of whom he was one of the trusties, frequentlycarried four-hundred-pound burdens up the long hill below the mine. Thejefe found something tied up in his old red cloth belt, but littleBarrel-chest never lost his smile, and the suspicious lump proved to bea much-folded old chromo print of some saint.

"What's he got that for?" asked the manager.

"To save him from the devil," sneered the jefe, wadding it up andtossing it back at him.

When he was dressed again the little giant was sent to town forpolicemen, a sign of confidence which seemed greatly to please him. Fora half hour we smoked and joked and discussed, like so many cattle inthe shambles, the three prisoners, two found guilty and the thirdsuspected, who stood silent and motionless against the wall. Threepolicemen in shoddy uniforms, armed with clubs and enormous revolverssticking out through their short coat-tails, at length appeared, of thesame class and seeming little less frightened than the prisoners. Theywere ordered to tie ropes about the waists of the criminals and stoodclutching these and the tails of the red sarapes, when the jefeinterrupted some anecdote to shout the Spanish version of:

"What in —— are you waiting for?"

They dodged as if he had thrown a brick, and hurried their prisonersaway to the cold, flea-ridden, stone calaboose of the town, where in allprobability they lay several months before their case was even calledup; while the manager and I ascended to his veranda and flower-grownresidence and sat down to a several course dinner served by a squad ofsolemn servants. As in many another land, it pays to be a white man inMexico.

Stealing is rarely a virtue. But it was not hard to put oneself in theplace of these wretches and catch their point of view that made suchthievery justifiable. As they saw it, these foreigners had made them godown into their own earth and dig out its treasures, paid them littlefor their labors, and searched them whenever they left that they shouldnot keep even a little bit of it for themselves. Now they had madetheir own people shut them up because they had picked up a few dollars'worth of scraps left over from the great burro-loads of which, to theirnotion, the hated "gringoes" were robbing them. Like the workingmen ofEngland, they were only "getting some of their own back." They were nodoubt more "aficionados al pulque" and gambling than to their families,but so to some extent were the "gringoes" also, and they were by nomeans the only human beings who would succumb to the same temptationunder the same circ*mstances.

The ancient "Peregrina" mine was different from "Pingüico." Here weentered by a level opening and walked down most of the two thousandfeet, much of it by narrow, slimy, slippery, stone steps, in some placesentirely worn away by the bare feet of the many generations of peonsthat as slaves to the Spaniards of colonial days used to carry the oreup on their backs from the very bottom of the mine. "Peregrina"mountain was almost another Mammoth Cave, so enormous are the cavernsthat have been "stoped out" of it in the past four centuries. In many aplace we could see even with several candles only the ground underfootand perhaps a bit of the nearest sidewall; the rest was a dank,noiseless, blank space, seeming square miles in extent. For three hourswe wandered up and down and in and out of huge unseen caves, now andthen crawling up or down three or four hundred foot "stopes" on handsand knees, by ladders, stone steps, or toe-holes in the rock. Through itall it was raining much of the time in torrents—in the mine, that is,for outside the sun was shining brightly—with mud underfoot and streamsof water running along much of the way; and, unlike the swelteringinterior of "Pingüico," there was a dank dungeon chill that reached themarrow of the bones. Even in the shafts which we descended in buckets,cold water poured down upon us, and, far from being naked, the minerswore all the clothing they possessed. Here the terror of the peons wasan old American mine-boss rated "loco" among them, who went constantlyarmed with an immense and ancient revolver, always loaded and reputed of"hair trigger," which he drew and whistled in the barrel whenever hewished to call a workman. A blaze crackling in the fireplace waspleasant during the evening in the manager's house, for "Peregrina" lieseven higher above the sea than "Pingüico"; but even here by night or daythe peons, and especially the women, went barefoot and in thinnest garb.

A native horse, none of which seem noted for their speed, carried me outto the famous old mining town of La Luz, where the Spaniards first begandigging in this region. The animal made little headway forward, butfully replaced this by the distance covered up and down. To it a trotwas evidently an endeavor to see how many times and how high it couldjump into the air from the same spot. The ancient Aztecs, seeing usadvancing upon them, would never have made the mistake of fancying manand horse parts of the same animal. Moreover, the pesky beast had anincurable predilection for treading, like a small boy "showing off," theextreme edge of pathways at times not six inches from a sheer fall offrom five hundred to a thousand feet down rock-faced precipices.

Still it was a pleasant three-hour ride in the brilliant sunshine,winding round and over the hills along pitching and tossingtrails. Peons obsequiously lifted their hats when I passed, which theydo not to a man afoot; a solemn stillness of rough-and-tumble mountainsand valleys, with deep-shadowed little gorges scolloped out of theotherwise sun-flooded landscape, broad hedges of cactus and pitchingpaths, down which the animal picked its way with ease and assurance,alternated with mighty climbs over a dozen rises, each of which Ifancied the last.

La Luz is a typical town of mountainous Mexico. A long, broken adobevillage lies scattered along a precipitous valley, scores of "roads" andtrails hedged with cactus wind and swoop and climb again away over steephills and through deep barrancos, troops of peons and donkeysenlivening them; flowers give a joyful touch, and patches of green andthe climate help to make the place reminiscent of the more thicklysettled portions of Palestine. From the town we could see plainly thecity of Leon, fourth in Mexico, and a view of the plain, less strikingthan that from "Pingüico," because of the range rising to cut it off inthe middle distance. The mountains of all this region are dotted withround, white, cement monuments, the boundary marks of different miningproperties. By Mexican law each must be visible from the adjoining two,and in this pitched and tumbled country this requires many.

Beyond the village we found, about the old Spanish workings, ancient,roofless, stone buildings with loop-holed turrets for bandits and nichesfor saints. These structures, as well as the waste dumped by theSpaniards, were being "repicked for values," and broken up and sentthrough the stamp-mill, the never-ending rumble of which soundedincessantly, like some distant water-fall; for with modern methods itpays to crush rock with even a few dollars a ton value in it, and theAmericans of to-day mine much that the Spaniards with their crudemethods cast aside or did not attempt to work. At a mine in the vicinitythe ancient stone mansion serving as residence of the superintendent wastorn down and sent through the stamping-mill, and a new one of lessvaluable rock erected. We descended 1600 feet into the mine of La Luzdown a perfectly round, stone-lined shaft in a small iron bucket held bya one-inch wire cable and entirely in charge of peons—who fortunatelyeither had nothing against us or did not dare to vent it.

CHAPTER IV

BOUND ABOUT LAKE CHAPALA

With the coming of November I left Guanajuato behind. The branch linedown to Silao was soon among broad plains of corn, without rocks evenalong the flat, ragged, country roads, bringing to mind that it was longsince I had walked on level and unobstructed ground. The crowding of thesecond-class car forced me to share a bench with a chorus girl of thecompany that had been castilianizing venerable Broadway favorites inGuanajuato's chief theater. She was about forty, looked it with compoundinterest, was graced with the form of a Panteón mummy, and a face—butsome things are too horrible even to be mentioned in print. Most of theway she wept copiously, apparently at some secret a pocket mirrorinsisted on repeating to her as often as she drew it out, and regainedher spirits only momentarily during the smoking of each of severalcigarettes. Finally she took to saying her beads in a sepulchral,moaning voice, her eyes closed, and wagging her head from side to sidein the rhythm of her professional calling, until we pulled into theone-story, adobe, checkerboard town. All the troupe except the two"stars" rode second-class, dressed much like peons, and carried theirpossessions in misshapen bundles under their arms. If the oneperformance I had seen was typical, this was far better treatment thanthey deserved.

The express from El Paso and the North set me down in the early night atIrapuato, out of the darkness of which bobbed up a dozen old women, men,and boys with wailing cries of "Fresas!" For this is the town ofperennial strawberries. The basket of that fruit heaped high and fully afoot in diameter which sat before me next morning as we rambled awaywestward toward Guadalajara cost cuatro reales—a quarter, and ifthe berries grew symmetrically smaller toward the bottom, an all-dayappetite by no means brought to light the tiniest. The way lay across alevel land bathed in sunshine, of extreme fertility, and watered byharnessed streams flowing down from the distant hills. All the day onehad a sense of the richness of nature, not the prodigality of thetropics to make man indolent, but just sufficient to give full rewardfor reasonable exertion. The rich, black, fenceless plains wereburnished here and there with little shallow lakes of the rainy season,and musical with wild birds of many species. Primitive well-sweepspunctuated the landscape, and now and then the church towers of someadobe village peered through the mesquite trees. In the afternoongrazing grew more frequent and herds of cattle and flocks of goatspopulated all the scene. Within the car and without, the hats of thepeons, with all their sameness, were never exactly alike. Each bore someindividuality, be it in shape, shade, material, or manner of wearing, asdistinct as among the fair sex in other lands; and that withoutresorting to decorating them with flowers, vegetables, or deadbirds. Some wore around them ribbons with huge letters proposing, "Viva——" this or that latest aspirant to the favor of the primitive-minded"pela'o," but these were always arranged in a manner to add to ratherthan detract from the artistic ensemble. Many a young woman of the sameclass was quite attractive in appearance, though thick bulky nosesrobbed all of the right to be called beautiful. They did not lose theircharms, such as they were, prematurely, as do so many races of theSouth, and the simplicity of dress and hair arrangement added much tothe pleasing general effect.

As night descended we began to pant upward through low hills, wooded,but free from the rocks and boulders of a mining region, and in thefirst darkness drew up at Guadalajara, second city of Mexico. It is aplace that adorns the earth. Jalisco State, of which this is thecapital, has been called the Andalusia of Mexico, and the city is indeeda Seville of the West, though lacking in her spontaneity of life, forthis cruder people is much more tempered with a constant fear ofbetraying their crudeness and in consequence much weighed down by"propriety." But its bright, central plaza has no equal to thenorth. Here as the band plays amid the orange trees heavy with ripeningfruit, the more haughty of the population promenade the inner square,outside which stroll the peons and "lower classes"; though only customseems responsible for the division. One misses in Mexico the genuinedemocracy of Spain. The idea of a conquered race still holds, andwhoever has a strain of white in his veins—or even in the hue of hiscollar—considers it fitting to treat the Indian mass with a cold,indifferent tone of superiority. Yet in the outer circle theunprejudiced observer found more pleasing than within. One was remindedof Mark Twain's suggestion that complexions of some color wear best intropical lands. In this, above all, the women of the rebozo were vastlysuperior to those who stepped from their carriages at about thebeginning of the third number and took to parading, the two sexes inpairs marching in opposite directions at a snail's pace. The "women ofthe people" had more sense of the fitness of things than to ape thewealthy in dress, like the corresponding class in our own land, andtheir simplicity of attire stood out in attractive contrast to the pastyfeatures and unexercised figures in "Parisian" garb of the inner circle.

Guadalajara has the requisites of a real city. Its streets are wellpaved with macadam, and it even possesses garbage wagons. Indeed, insome respects it has carried "progress" too far, as in the case of thewinking electric sign of Broadway proportions advertising acamisería—a local "shirtery," before which fascinated peons fromthe distant villages stand gazing as at one of the seven wonders of theuniverse. Beggars are few and there is none of the oppressive poverty ofother Mexican cities. This, it is agreed, is due not merely to theextreme fertility of Jalisco, but to the kindness of nature in refusingto produce the maguey in the vicinity, so that drunkenness is at itslowest Mexican ebb and the sour stink of pulque shops nowhere assailsthe nostrils. For this curse of the peon will not endure longtransportation. An abundance of cheap labor makes possible many littleconveniences unknown in more industrial lands, and the city has apeaceful, soothing air and temperature, due perhaps to its idealaltitude of six thousand feet, that makes life drift along like apleasant dream.

But its nights are hideous. The Mexican seems to relish constant uproar,and if Guadalajara is ever to be the open-air health resort for frayednerves and weakened lungs it aspires to, there must come a diligentsuppression of unnecessary noises. As the evening gathering evaporates,leaving the plaza sprinkled with a few dreamy mortals and scatteredpolicemen eating the lunch their wives bring and share with them,pandemonium seems to be released from its confinement. First these samepreservers of law and order take to blowing their hair-raising whistlesat least every ten minutes from one to another back and forth throughevery street, as if mutually to keep up their courage. Scores of thegilded youth on the way home from "playing the bear" before theirfavorite rejas join together in bands to howl into the smallhours their glee at the kindness of life, the entire stock ofstreet-cars seems to be sent out nightly on some extended excursion withorders never to let their gongs fall silent, and long before dawn eventhe few who have succeeded in falling into a doze are snatched awake byan atrocious din of church-bells sufficient in number to supply heaven,nirvana, the realm of houris, and the Irish section of purgatory, withenough left over to furnish boiling pots for the more crowded section ofthe Hereafter. Then with a dim suggestion of dawn every living dog andfighting-co*ck, of which each inhabitant appears to possess at least ascore, joins the forty thousand vendors of forty thousand differentspecies of uselessness howling in at least as many different voices andtones, each a bit louder than all the others, until even an unoccupiedwanderer concludes that sleep is an idle waste of an all too shortexistence.

I brought up a day of random wandering in state's prison. ThePenitenciaría of Guadalajara is a huge, wheel-shaped building inthe most modern style of that class of architecture. The bullet-headedyouth in soldier's uniform and the complexion of a long-undusted carpet,leaning on his musket at the entrance, made no move to halt me, and Istepped forth on a patio forested with orange trees, to find that mostof the public had preceded me, including some hundred fruit, tortilla,cigarette, and candy vendors. Here was no sign of prisoners. Iapproached another stern boy armed like a first-class cruiser in wartime and he motioned upward with his gun barrel. The dwelling of thecomandante faced the patio on the second-story corridor. His son,aged five, met me with the information:

"Papá 'stá dormido."

But he was misinformed, for when his mother introduced me into theparlor, father, in shirt-sleeves, was already rubbing the sleep out ofhis eyes and preparing to light the first after-siesta cigarette. Whenmy impressiveness had penetrated his reawakening intellect, he preparedme a document which, reduced to succinct English, amounted to thestatement that the prison and all it contained was mine for the asking.

A whiff of this sesame opened like magic the three immense iron doorsthrough anterooms in charge of trusties, in prison garb of the materialof blue overalls and caps shaped like a low fez. Inside, a "preso deconfianza" serving as turnkey led the way along a great stone corridorto a little central patio with flowers and a central fountain babblingmerrily. From this radiated fifteen other long-vaulted passages,seeming each fully a half mile in length; for with Latin love of thetheatrical the farther ends had been painted to resemble an endlessarray of cells, even the numbers being continued above the false doorsto minute infinity. Besides these imaginary ones there were some fortyreal places of confinement on each side of each corridor,three-cornered, stone rooms with a comfortable cot and noticeablecleanliness. The hundred or more convicts, wandering about or sitting inthe sun of the patio, were only locked in them by night. Whenever weentered a corridor or a room, two strokes were sounded on a bell and allarose and stood at attention until we had passed. Yet the discipline wasnot oppressive, petty matters being disregarded. The corridor of thosecondemned to be shot was closed with an iron-barred gate, but theinmates obeyed with alacrity when my guide ordered them to step forth tobe photographed.

One of the passageways led to the talleres or workshops, alsolong and vaulted and well-lighted by windows high up in the curve of thearched roof.

These showed the stone walls to be at least four feet thick, yet thefloor was of earth. On it along the walls sat men weaving straw ribbonsto be sewn into hats on the American sewing-machines beyond. In siderooms were blacksmith, carpenter, and tinsmith shops in which all workwas done by hand, the absence of machinery suggesting to the trusty incharge that Mexico is "muy pobre" as compared with other lands. Convictswere obliged to work seven hours a day. Scattered through the buildingwere several small patios with patches of sun, in which many prisonerswere engaged in making ingenious little knickknacks which they werepermitted to sell for their own benefit. The speciality of one oldfellow under life sentence was a coin purse with the slightlyincongruous device, "Viva la Independencia!"

There was a complete absence of vicious faces, at least faces more sothan those of the great mass of peons outside. I recalled the assertionsof cynical American residents that all Mexicans are criminals and thatthose in jail were only the ones who have had the misfortune to getcaught. Certainly there was nothing in their outward appearance todistinguish the inmates from any gathering of the same class beyondprison walls. Off one corridor opened the bath patio, large, and gaywith sunshine and flowers, with a large swimming pool and severalsmaller baths. The prisoners are required to bathe at least everySunday. Within the penitentiary was a garden of several acres, on thewalls above which guards patroled with loaded muskets and in whichprisoners raised every species of fruit and vegetable known in theregion. The institution indeed was fully self-supporting. The kitchenwas lined with huge vats into which bushels of beans, corn, and the likewere shoveled, and like the prison tailor, shoe, and barber shops, waskept in excellent order. Several short-time prisoners, among them manyboys, volunteered to stand in appropriate attitudes before the heavywall at the end of a three-cornered court where condemned men are shotat three paces in the dawn of many an early summer day. In one corridorthe prison band, entirely made up of prisoners, was practising, and whenI had been seated in state on a wooden bench they struck up severalAmerican favorites, ending with our national hymn, all played with themusical skill common to the Mexican Indian, even among those unable toread a note. On the whole the prison was as cheery and pleasant asfitted such an institution, except the women's ward, into which avicious-looking girl admitted me sulkily at sight of the comandante'sorder. A silent, nondescript woman of forty took me in charge with alltoo evident ill-will and marched me around the patio on which opened therooms of female inmates, while the fifty or more of them left off theircooking and washing for the male prisoners and stood at disgruntledattention in sullen silence. Their quarters were noticeably dirtier thanthose of the men. My guide took leave of me at the first of the threeiron doors, having still to postpone his exit a year or more, and theseagain, fortunately, swung on their hinges as if by magic to let passonly one of the thousand of us within.

On the mule-car that dragged and jolted us out to the "Niagara ofMexico" were three resident Germans who strove to be "simpático" to thenatives by a clumsy species of "horse play." Their asininity is worthmention only because among those laughing at their antics was a peon whohad been gashed across the hand, half-severing his wrist, yet who sat onthe back platform without even a rag around the wound, though with arope tourniquet above. Two gray and decrepit policemen rode with him andhalf way out stopped at a stone hut to arrest the perpetrator of thedeed and bring him along, wrapped in the customary red sarape andindifference.

The waterfall over a broad face of rock was pleasing but notextraordinary, and swinging on my rucksack I struck off afoot. Thelightly rolling land was very fertile, with much corn, great droves ofcattle, and many shallow lakes, its climate a pleasant cross betweenlate spring and early fall. From El Castillo the path lay along theshimmering railroad, on which I outdid the train to Atequisa station.

The orange vendors lolling here under the shade of their hats gave thedistance to Chapala as fifteen miles, and advised me to hire a horse ortake passage in the stage. This primitive bone-shaker, dark-red incolor, the body sitting on huge leather springs, was drawn by four teamsof mules in tandem, and before revolution spread over the land wascustomarily packed to the roof and high above it with excursionists toMexico's chief inland watering-place. Now it dashed back and forthalmost empty.

I preferred my own legs. A soft road led between orange-groves—at thestation were offered for sale seedless oranges compared to which thoseof California are pigmies—to the drowsing town of Atequisa. Through oneof its crumbling stone gates the way spread at large over its sandy,sun-bathed plaza, then contracted again to a winding wide trail, risingleisurely into the foothills beyond. A farmer of sixty, homeward boundto his village of Santa Cruz on a loose-eared ass, fell in with me. Helacked entirely that incommunicative manner and half-resentful air I hadso often encountered in the Mexican, and his country dialect whiled awaythe time as we followed the unfenced "road" around and slowly upwardinto hills less rugged than those about Guanajuato and thinly coveredwith coarse grass and small brush. Twenty-one years ago he had workedhere as mozo for "gringoes," my compatriots. They had offeredhim a whole peso a day if he would not get married. But "he and she bothwanted," so "qué quiera usté'"? They had started farming on a littlepiece of rocky ridge. He would point it out to me when we camenearer. By and by he had bought another piece of land for fifty pesosand then poco á poco for forty pesos some more. Then fortwenty-four pesos and fifty centavos he had bought a cow, and thevaca before long gave them a fine calf and twelvecuartillos of milk a day. So that he was able to buy anotherheifer and then an ox and finally another ox and—

Whack! It took many a thump and prod and "Bur-r-r-r-r-r-o!" to make thepretty little mouse-colored donkey he was riding keep up with me—andwhat did I think he paid for him? Eighteen pesos! Sí, señor, ní más nímenos. A bargain, eh? And for the other one at home, which is larger,only twenty-two pesos, and for the one they stole from him,fifteen pesos and a bag of corn. And once they stole all three ofthe burritos and he ran half way to Colima and had them arrestedand got the animalitos back. So that now he had two oxen—prayGod they were still safe—and two burros and three pieces of land and agood wife—only yesterday she fell down and broke her arm and he had hadto cut sticks to tie it up and she would have to work without using itfor a long time—

Whack! "Anda bur-r-r-r-r-ro!" and once he owned it he never could gethimself to sell an animalito. They were sometimes useful to plow andplant anyway, and this life of sembrar and cosechar wasjust the one for him. The cities, bah!—though he had been twice toGuadalajara and only too glad to get away again—and wasn't I tiredenough to try the burrito a while, I should find her pace smooth assitting on the ground. No? Well, at least if I got tired I could comeand spend the night in his casita, a very poor little house, tobe sure, which he had built himself long ago, soon after they weremarried, but there I would be in my own house, and his wife—or perhapsnow he himself—would ordeñar la vaca and there would be freshmilk and—

So on for some seven or eight miles. Here and there the road passedthrough an open gate as into a farmyard, though there were no adjoiningfences to mark these boundaries of some new hacienda or estate. From thehighest point there was a pretty retrospect back on Atequisa and therailroad and the broad valley almost to far-off Guadalajara, and ahead,also still far away, Lake Chapala shimmering in the earlysunset. Between lay broad, rolling land, rich with flowers andshrubbery, and with much cultivation also, one vast field of ripeningIndian corn surely four miles long and half as wide stretching like asea to its surrounding hills, about its edge the leaf and branch shacksof its guardians. Maize, too, covered all the slope down to themountain-girdled lake, and far, far away on a point of land, like Tyreout in the Mediterranean, the twin towers of the church of Chapala stoodout against the dimming lake and the blue-gray range beyond.

Two leagues off it the peasant pointed out the ridge that hid his casitaand his animalitos and his good wife—with her broken arm now—andregretting that I would not accept his poor hospitality, for I must betired, he rode away down a little barranca walled by tall bushes withbrilliant masses of purple, red, and pink flowers and so on up to thelittle patch of corn which—yes, surely, I could see a corner of it fromhere, and from it, if only I would come, I should see the broad blueview of Chapala lake, and—My road descended and went down into thenight, plentifully scattered with loose stones. Before it had grownreally dark I found myself casting a shadow ahead, and turned to find anenormous red moon gazing dreamily at me from the summit of the roadbehind. Then came the suburbs and enormous ox-carts loaded witheverything, and donkeys without number passing silent-footed in thesand, and peons, lacking entirely the half-insolence and pulque-soddenfaces of Guanajuato region, greeted me unfailingly with "Adiós" or"Buenas noches."

But once in the cobble-paved village I must pay high in the "HotelVictor"—the larger ones being closed since anarchy had confined thewealthy to their cities—for a billowy bed and a chicken centuries oldserved by waiters in evening dress and trained-monkey manners. The freeand easy old casa de asistencia of Guadalajara was far more to myliking. But at least the landlord loaned me a pair of trunks for amoonlight swim in Lake Chapala, whispering some secret to its sandybeaches in the silence of the silver-flooded night.

It is the largest lake in Mexico, second indeed only to Titicaca amongthe lofty sheets of water of the Western world. More than five thousandfeet above the sea, it is shallow and stormy as Lake Erie. Waves weredashing high at the foot of the town in the morning. Its fishermen areever fearful of its fury and go to pray for a safe return from everytrip before their patron St. Peter in the twin-spired village church uptoward which the lake was surging this morning as if in anger that thisplace of refuge should be granted its legitimate victims.

Its rage made the journey by water I had planned to Ribera Castellanosinadvisable, even had an owner of one of the little open boats of thefishermen been willing to trust himself on its treacherous bosom, and byblazing eleven I was plodding back over the road of yesterday. Theorange vendors of Atequisa gathered around me at the station, marvelingat the strength of my legs. In the train I shared a bench with adignified old Mexican of the country regions, who at length lost hisreserve sufficiently to tell me of the "muy amigo gringo" whose picturehe still had on the wall of his house since the day twenty-seven yearsago when my compatriot had stopped with him on a tour of his nativeState, carrying a small pack of merchandise which gave him the entréeinto all houses, but which he purposely held at so high a price thatnone would buy.

From Ocotlán station a broad level highway, from which a glimpse is hadof the sharp, double peak of Colima volcano, runs out to RiberaCastellanos. Sam Rogers was building a tourist hotel there. Its broadlawn sloped down to the edge of Lake Chapala, lapping at the shores likesome smaller ocean; from its verandas spread a view of sixty milesacross the Mexican Titicaca, with all vacation sports, a perennialsummer without undue heat, and such sunsets as none can describe. Thehacienda San Andrés, also American owned, embraced thousands of acres ofrich bottom land on which already many varieties of fruit were producingmarvelously, as well as several mountain peaks and a long stretch oflake front. The estate headquarters was like some modern railwayoffice, with its staff of employees. In the nearby stables horses weresaddled for us and we set off for a day's trip all within the confinesof the farm, under guidance of the bulky Mexican head overseer in allhis wealth of national garb and armament.

For miles away in several directions immense fields were being plowed bydozens of ox-teams, the white garments of the drivers standing outsharply against the brown landscape. Two hours' riding around the lagoonfurnishing water for irrigation brought us to a village of some size,belonging to the estate. The wife of one of the bee-tenders emergedfrom her hut with bowls of clear rich honey and tortillas, and themanner of a serf of medieval times before her feudal lord. The beeslived in hollow logs with little thatched roofs. For several miles morethe rich bottom lands continued. Then we began to ascend through bushyfoothills, and cultivation dropped behind us, as did the massive headoverseer, whose weight threatened to break his horse's back. Well up wecame upon the "chaparral," the hacienda herdsman, tawny with sunburneven to his leather garments. He knew by name every animal under hischarge, though the owners did not even know the number they possessed. Astill steeper climb, during the last of which even the horses had to beabandoned, brought us to a hilltop overlooking the entire lake, with thevillages on its edge, and range after range of the mountains of Jaliscoand Michoacán. Our animals were more than an hour picking their waydown the stony trails between all but perpendicular cornfields, theleaves of which had been stripped off to permit the huge ear at the topthe more fully to ripen. A boulder set in motion at the top of a fieldwould have been sure death to the man or horse it struck at the bottom.

The hotel launch set me across the lake next morning. From therock-tumbled fisher-town of La Palma an arriero pointed out to me faraway across the plains of Michoacán a mountain of striking resemblanceto Mt. Tabor in Palestine, as the landmark on the slopes of which toseek that night's lodging. The treeless land of rich black loam was flatas a table, yet the trail took many a turn, now to avoid the dyke of aformer governor and Porfirio Diaz, who planned to pump dry this end ofthe lake, now for some reason only those with Mexican blood in theirveins could fathom. Peons were fishing in the irrigating ditches withmachetes, laying their huge, sluggish victims all but cut in two on thegrass behind them.

Noon brought Sahuayo, a large village in an agricultural district, inone of the huts of which ten cents produced soup, pork, frijoles,tortillas, and coffee, to say nothing of the tablecloth in honor of sounexpected a guest and a dozen oranges for the thirst beyond. The newtrail struck off across the fields almost at right angles to the onethat had brought me. I was already on the hacienda Guaracha, largest ofthe State of Michoacán, including within its holdings a dozen suchvillages as this, but the owner to whom I bore a letter lived stillleagues distant. Dwellers on the estate must labor on it when requiredor seek residence elsewhere, which means far distant. All with whom Ispoke on the subject, native or foreigners, seemed agreed that the peonprefers this plan to being thrown on his own responsibility.

The traveler could easily fancy himself in danger in this vast fencelessand defenseless space. Enormous herds were visible for miles in everydirection, bulls roamed here and there, bellowing moodily, cattle andhorses by hundreds waded and grazed in the shallow swamps across whichthe dyked path led. All the brilliant day "Mt. Tabor" stood forth inall its beauty across the plain in this clear air, and the sun broughtsweat even at more than a mile above the sea.

I was in the very heart of Birdland. These broad, table-flat stretchesof rich plateau, now half inundated, seemed some enormous outdooraviary. Every species of winged creature one had hoped ever to see evenin Zoo cages or the cases of museums seemed here to live and fly andhave its songful being. Great sluggish zopilotes of the horridvulture family strolled or circled lazily about, seeking the scent ofcarrion. Long-legged, snow-white herons stood in the marshes. Greatflocks of small black birds that could not possibly have numbered lessthan a hundred thousand each rose and fell and undulated in waves andcurtains against the background of mountains beyond, screening it as bysome great black veil. There were blood-red birds, birds blue asturquoise, some of almost lilac hue, every grassy pond was overspreadwith wild ducks so tame they seemed waiting to be picked up andcaressed, eagles showed off their spiral curves in the sky above likedaring aviators over some admiring field of spectators; everywhere thestilly hum of semi-tropical life was broken only by the countless andinimitable bird calls.

As my shadow grew ungainly, the dyked path struck across a long wetfield against the black soil of which the dozens of white-clad peonswith their mattocks gleamed like grains of rice on an ebony surface.Beyond, it entered foothills, flanked a peak, and joined a wide roadleading directly to an immense cluster of buildings among trees. The sunwas firing the western horizon. From every direction groups ofwhite-garbed peons were drawing like homing pigeons toward this centerof the visible landscape. I reached it with them and, passing throughseveral massive gates, mounted through a corral or cobbled stable yardwith many bulky, two-wheeled carts and fully two hundred mules, then upan inclined, cobbled way through a garden of flowers to the immensepillared veranda with cement floor of the owner's hacienda residence.

The building was in the form of a hollow square, enclosing a flowerypatio as large as many a town plaza. Don Diego was not at home, norindeed were any of his immediate family, who preferred the urbanpleasures of Guadalajara. The Indian door-tender brought me to "DonCarlos," a fat, cheerful man of forty in a white jacket, close-fittingtrousers, and an immense revolver attached to the left side of his broadand heavily weighted cartridge-belt. I presented my letter ofintroduction from an American friend of the owner and was soon entangledin the coils of Mexican pseudo-politeness. Don Carlos tore himselfaway from his priceless labors as manager of the hacienda and took me upon the flat roof of the two-story house, from which a fine view was hadfor miles in all directions; indeed, nearly a half of the estate couldbe seen, with its peon villages, its broad stretches of new-plowedfields, and the now smokeless chimney of the sugar mill among the trees.

The interest of the manager did not extend beyond the cut-and-driedformalities common to all Mexicans. In spite of his honeyed words, itwas evident he looked upon me as a necessary evil, purposely come to thehacienda to seek food and lodging, and to be gotten rid of as soon aspossible, compatible with the sacred Arabian rules of hospitality. I hadnot yet learned that a letter of introduction in Latin America, given onthe slightest provocation, is of just the grade of importance suchcustom would warrant. Not that Don Carlos was rude. Indeed, he stroveoutwardly to be highly simpático. But one read the insincerityunderneath by a kind of intuition, and longed for the abrupt buthonestly frank Texan.

The two front corners of the estate residence were taken up by thehacienda store and church respectively—a handy arrangement by virtue ofwhich whatever went out the pay window to the peons (and it was notmuch) came in again at one or the other of the corner doors. Adjoiningthe building and half surrounding it was an entire village, with aflowery plaza and promenades for its inhabitants. The owners of theestate were less churlishly selfish than their prototypes in our owncountry, in that they permitted the public, which is to say their ownworkmen and families, to go freely anywhere in the family residence andits patio, except into the dwelling-rooms proper.

When darkness came on we sat in the piazza garden overlooking themule-yard. The evening church service over, the estate priest came tojoin us, putting on his huge black "Texas" hat and lighting a cigaretteon the chapel threshold. He wore an innumerable series of long blackrobes, which still did not conceal the fact that the curve from chest towaist was the opposite of that common to sculptured figures, and hishand-shake was particularly soft and snaky. He quickly took charge ofthe conversation and led it into anecdotes very few of which could beset down by the writers of modern days, denied the catholic privilegesof old Boccaccio and Rabelais.

Toward eight supper was announced. But instead of the conversationalfeast amid a company of educated Mexican men and women I had pictured tomyself during the day's tramp, I was led into a bare stone room with along, white-clothed table, on a corner of which sat in solitary statetwo plates and a salt cellar. A peon waiter brought an ample, though byno means epicurean, supper, through all which Don Carlos sat smokingover his empty plate opposite me, alleging that he never ate afternoonday for dread of taking on still greater weight, and striving tokeep a well-bred false politeness in the voice in which he answered myfew questions. He had spent a year in a college of New Jersey, but hadnot even learned to pronounce the name of that State. Having pointedout to me the room I was to occupy, he excused himself for a"momentito," and I have never seen him since.

Evidently horrified at the sight of a white man, even if only a"gringo," traveling on foot, the manager had insisted on lending me ahorse and mozo to the railroad station of Moreno, fifteen miles distant,but still within the confines of the hacienda. It may be also that hegave orders to have me out of his sight before he rose. At any rate itwas barely three when a knock at the door aroused me and by four Istumbled out into the black starlit night to find saddled for me in themule-corral what might by a considerable stretch of the word be called ahorse. The mozo was well mounted, however, and the family chauffeur,carrying in one hand a basket of eggs he had been sent to fetch theestate owner in Guadalajara, rode a magnificent white animal. Withouteven the formal leave-taking cup of coffee, we set off on the road tothe eastward. For road in Mexico always read—at best a winding stretchof dried mud with narrow paths meandering through the smoother parts ofit, the whole tumbled everywhere with stones and rocks and broken byfrequent unexpected deep cracks and stony gorges. My "horse" was asstriking a caricature of that species of quadruped as could have beenfound in an all-night search in the region, which indeed there wasreason to believe had been produced in just that manner. But at least ithad the advantage of being unable to keep up with my companions, leavingme alone behind in far more pleasant company.

We wound through several long peon villages, mere grass huts on the bareearth floors of which the inhabitants lay rolled up in their blankets. Ihad not been supplied with spurs, essential to all horsemanship inMexico, and was compelled at thirty second intervals to prick up thejade between my legs with the point of a lead pencil, the only weapon athand, or be left behind entirely. As the stars dimmed and the horizonahead took on a thin gray streak, peons wrapped in their sarapes passednow and then noiselessly in their soft leather huarachas closebeside me. In huts along the way frowsy, unwashed women might be heardalready crushing in their stone mortars, under stone rolling-pins, maizefor the morning atole and tortillas, while thick smoke began to wanderlazily out from the low doorways. Swiftly it grew lighter until suddenlyan immense red sun leaped full-grown above the ragged horizon ahead,just as we sighted an isolated station building in the wilderness thatnow surrounded us on all sides.

A two-car train rambled through a light-wooded, half-mountainouscountry, stopping at every collection of huts to pick up or set down apeon or two, and drew up at length in Zamora. It was a populous,flat-roofed, ill-smelling, typical Mexican city of checkerboard pattern,on the plaza of which faced the "Hotel Morelos," formerly the "PorfirioDiaz," but with that seditious name now carefully painted over. Beingbarely a mile above sea-level, the town has a suggestion of the tropicsand the temperature of midday is distinctly noticeable.

Zamora ranks as the most fanatical spot in Michoacán, which is itselfso throttled by the church that it is known as the "estado torpe," thetorpid State. Its bishop is rated second in all Mexico only to that ofthe sacred city of Guadalupe. Here are monasteries, and monks, andnuns in seclusion, priests roam the streets in robes and vestments,form processions, and display publicly the "host" and otherparaphernalia of their faith; all of which is forbidden by the laws ofMexico. When I emerged from the hotel, every person in sight, fromnewsboys to lawyers in frock coats, was kneeling wherever he happenedto be, on his veranda, on the sidewalk, or in the middle of thestreet, his hat laid on the ground before him, facing a high churchmanin flowing robes and a "stove-pipe" hat strutting across the plazatoward the cathedral. Traveling priests wear their regalia of officeas far as Yurécuaro on the main line, changing there to civilian garb.

Nor is the power of the church here confined to things spiritual. Vastportions of the richest sections of the State are church owned, thoughostensibly property of the lawyers that control them. Holding thereins, the ecclesiastics make it impossible for companies to open upenterprises except under their tutelage. The population of the State issome eighty per cent, illiterate, yet even foreigners find it impossibleto set up schools for their own employees. The women of allclasses are almost without exception illiterate. The church refusesto educate them, and sternly forbids any one else to do so. An AmericanCatholic long resident reported even the priests ignorant beyond belief,and asserted that usury and immorality was almost universal among thechurchmen of all grades. The peasants are forced to give a tenth of allthey produce, be it only a patch of corn, to the church, which holds itsstores until prices are high, while the poverty-stricken peon must sellfor what he can get. Those married by the church are forbidden tocontract the civil ceremony, though the former is unlawful and lack ofthe latter makes their children legally illegitimate. The local form ofworship includes many of the barbaric superstitions of the Indiansgrafted on the stems of Catholicism, and weird pagan dances before thealtar are a part of many a fiesta. The town has already churchessufficient to house easily all the population, yet an immense newcathedral is building. The purpose of its erection, according to thebishop, is "for the greater glorification of God."

I spent two days with the American superintendent of "Platanal," theelectric plant run by water power a few miles out of town through fieldsof head-high maize. The night before my arrival bandits had raided theestablishment and one of them had been killed. The president of Zamorahad profusely thanked the "gringo" in charge when he presented himselfin town with the body. On pay-day the manager went and came from thebank with two immense revolvers and a loaded rifle.

The current supplied by the rapids of "Platanal" is carried onhigh-tension wires to several cities far distant, including Guanajuato,a hundred miles away. Let the dynamo here break down and the cage of"Pingüico" mine hangs suspended in its shaft and Stygian darkness fallsin the labyrinth below. In the rainy season lightning causes muchtrouble, and immense flocks of birds migrating south or north, accordingto the period of year, keep the repair gangs busy by flying against thewires and causing short circuits through their dead bodies. Woodpeckerseat away the wooden cross-pieces on the iron towers with dishearteningrapidity. The company is philanthropically inclined toward itsemployees. Even the peons are given two weeks' vacation on full pay,during which many rent a patch of land on the mountainside to plant withcorn. A savings bank system is maintained, strict sanitation is insistedupon in the houses furnished by the company, and the methods of thehaciendas of the region, of paying the peon the lowest possible wagesfor his labor and produce and selling to him at the highest possibleprices at the estate store, thereby keeping him in constant debt and aspecies of slavery, are avoided. The result is a permanent force ofhigh Mexican grade. All attempts of the company to introduce schools,however, even on its own property, have been frustrated by the powerfulchurchmen. A bright young native in the plant was an expert at figures,which he had been surreptitiously taught by his "gringo" superior, buthe could not sign his name.

CHAPTER V

ON THE TRAIL IN MICHOACÁN

My compatriot strongly opposed my plan of walking to Uruapan—at leastwithout an armed guard! The mountains were full of bandits, the TarascanIndians, living much as they did at the time of the Conquest, did noteven speak Spanish, they were unfriendly to whites, and above alldangerously superstitious on the subject of photography. There arepersons who would consider it perilous to walk the length of Broadway,and lose sight even of the added attraction of that reputed drawback.

I was off at dawn. Hundreds of Indians from the interior had slept inscattered groups all along the road to town, beside the produce they hadcome to sell on market day. For it is against the law to be found out ofdoors in Zamora after ten! My compatriot had twice fallen foul of thevigilant police there and been roundly mulcted—once the bolt of thehired carriage in which he was riding broke, the conveyance turnedturtle, mashed his foot, and covered his face with blood, and he wasimprisoned and fined for "escándalo." On another occasion he spent sometime in jail because his mozo behind him accidentally knocked over thelantern of a policeman set in the middle of the street.

But let us leave so straight-laced a spot behind. The rocky "road"could not hold to the same opinion for a hundred consecutive yards, butkept changing its mind as often as it caught sight of some new corner ofthe landscape. The Indians, who crowded the way during the first hour,were not friendly, but neither did they show any dangerous propensities,and never failed in greeting if spoken to first. There were many of themof pure aboriginal blood. The stony road climbed somewhat to gainTangantzicuaro, then stumbled across a flatter country growing morewooded to Chilota, a large town with a tiny plaza and curious,overhanging eaves, reminiscent of Japan, stretching down itschecker-board streets in all directions.

The trail, which had gone a mile or more out of its way to visit theplace, no sooner left it than it fell abruptly into the bed of what inother weather would have been a rocky mountain torrent, and set off withit in a totally new direction, as if, having fallen in with congenialcompany, it had entirely forgotten the errand on which it had first setforth. The land was fertile, with much corn. In time road and river bedparted company, though only after several attempts, like old gossips,and the former took to climbing upward through thin forests of pine inwhich the wind whispered an imitation of some distant, smallwaterfall. For some miles there were no houses. Up and down and in andout of valleys thin with pine we wandered, with now and then a roughshelter of rubbish and thatch, halting places of traveling Indians orthe guard-houses of their fields, while the sky ahead was always filledhalf-way up by peaks of many shapes wooded in every inch with brightestevergreens. Michoacán is celebrated for its forests.

The population showed no great difference from the peasants elsewhere. Iran early into their superstitions against photography, however, theirbelief, common to many uncivilized races, being that once their image isreproduced any fate that befalls it must occur to them in person. When Istepped into a field toward a man behind his wooden plow, he said in avery decided tone of voice, "No, señor, no quiero!"

"Why not?" I asked.

"Porque no quiero, señor," and he swung the sort of small adze hecarried to break up the clods of the field rather loosely and with adetermined gleam in his eye. I did not want the picture so badly as allthat.

There was no such objection in the straggling town made of thatch andrubbish I found along the way early in the afternoon. The hut I enteredfor food had an unleveled earth floor, many wide cracks in the roof, andevery inch within was black with soot of the cooking-stove—three largestones with a steaming earthen pot on them. There was carne decarnero, tortillas and water, all for five cents. The weak-kneedtable was spread with a white cloth, there were several awkward,shallow, home-made chairs, and against the wall a large primitivesideboard with glistening brown earthen pots and carefully polishedplates and bowls. When I had photographed the interior, la senora askedif I would take a second picture, and raced away to another hut. Shesoon returned with a very small and poor amateur print of two peons inSunday dress. One of them was her son, who had been killed by a fallingpine, and the simple creature fancied the magic contrivance I carriedcould turn this tiny likeness into a life-size portrait.

Beyond, were more rocks and wooded mountains, with vast seas of Indiancorn stretching to pine-clad cliffs, around the "shores" of which weredozens of make-shift shacks for the guardians against theft of thegrain. Later I passed an enormous field of maize, which more than ahundred Indians of both sexes and every age that could stand on its ownlegs were harvesting. It was a communal corn-field, of which there aremany in this region. They picked the ears from the dry stalks stillstanding and, tossing them into baskets, heaped them up in various partsof the field and at little temporary shanties a bit above the generallevel on the surrounding "coast." As I passed, the gang broke up andpeons in all colors, male, female, and in embryo, went away in alldirections like a scattering flock of birds.

Thus far there had been no suggestion of the reputed dangers of theroad. But trouble is never far off in Mexico, since the failure of itsrapidly changing governments to put down bands of marauders has givenevery rascal in the country the notion of being his own master. The sunwas just setting when, among several groups coming and going, I heardahead five peons, maudlin with mescal, singing and howling at the top oftheir voices. As they drew near, one of them said something to hiscompanions about "armas." I fancied he was expressing some idle drunkenwonder as to whether I was armed or not, and as he held a hand behindhim as if it might grasp a rock, I kept a weather eye on him as weapproached. Had the weapon I carried in sight been a huge six-shooter,even without cartridges, it would probably have been more effective thanthe toy automatic well loaded. As the group passed, howling drunkenly, averitable giant of a fellow suddenly jumped toward me with an oath. Idrew my putative weapon, and at the same moment the hand I had guessedto be full of rock appeared with an enormous revolver, shining new. Withdrunken flourishes the peon invited me to a duel. I kept himunostentatiously covered but continued serenely on my way. To haveshown fear would have been as dangerous as for a lion-tamer in the cagewith his pets. On the other hand, to have killed or seriously woundedone of the group would in all likelihood have meant at least anone-too-well-housed delay of several years in my journey, for thecourts of Mexico seldom admit pleas of provocation from a "gringo." Thegroup bawled after me and finally, when I was nearly a hundred yardsbeyond, the fellow fired four shots in my general direction. But as hisbright new weapon, like so many furnished his class by our enterprisingarms factories, was made to sell rather than to shoot, and hismarksmanship was distinctly tempered with mescal fumes, the four bulletsharmlessly kicked up the dust at some distance on as many sides of me,with danger chiefly to the several groups of frightened peasantscowering behind all the rocks and rises of ground in the vicinity.

The dangers of the road in Mexico are chiefly from peons mixed withfire-water. When he is sober, the native's attitude verges on theover-cautious. But it is a double danger to the wandering "gringo," forthe reason above mentioned, while the native who kills a foreigner notinfrequently escapes with impunity, and "gun toting" is limited nowamong all classes of the men only by the disparity between their wealthand the price of a weapon.

As I passed on over the rise of ground ahead, huddled groups of men,women, and children fell in after me as if for protection from their ownpeople. At dusk I entered Paracho with a good thirty miles behindme. It was a quaint little town in a lap of valley surrounded by pinedhills and with the overhanging Japanese eaves peculiar to the region.The inhabitants were entirely peons and Indians, none in "European"dress. The vision of being carried into the place with a few stray bitsof lead lodged in one's anatomy was not alluring, and the dark dirtylittle cárcel on the plaza looked equally uninteresting.

I turned in at the "Mesón de la Providencia." The keeper gave hisattention chiefly to his little liquor and corn shop wide-opening on thestreet. There were several large rooms above, however, facing the greatcorral where mules and asses were munching and arrieros had spread theirstraw and blankets for the night, and in at least one of them was notmerely a wooden-floored cot but two sheets to go with it. I bathed inthe tin washbasin and turned out redressed for a turn through the town.It swarmed with liquor-shops. Apparently any one with nothing else to docould set up a little drunkery or street-stand without governmentinterference. There was no pulque, the maguey being unknown to theregion, but bottled mescal and aguardiente de caña amply made up forit. It seemed uncanny that one could talk with ease to these unlettereddwellers in the wilderness in the same tongue learned in a peacefulclass-room of the far North. A towsled woman or child drifted now andthen into the mesón shop to buy a Mexican cent's worth of firewood. Thewoman who kept the shanty fonda down the street boasted of havinglived nineteen months in California in her halcyon days, but was obligedto borrow enough of me in advance to buy the ingredients of the scantysupper she finally prepared. By eight the corral was snoring witharrieros and I ascended to my substantial couch.

A wintry cold of the highlands hung over Paracho when dawn crawled in tofind me shivering under a light blanket. As I left the place behind, thesun began to peer through the crest pines of a curiously formed mountainto the east, and to rend and tear the heavy fog banks hanging over thetown and valley. Peons tight-wrapped in their blankets from eyes toknees slipped noiselessly past. There was a penetrating chill in theair, the fields were covered white with what seemed to be hoar frost,and the grassy way was wet with dew as after a heavy shower.

Within half an hour the way began to rise and soon entered an immensepine forest without a sign of habitation. Tramping was delightfulthrough what seemed a wild, untamed, and unteutonized Harz, with onlythe faint road and an occasional stump to show man had passed that waybefore. Huge birds circled majestically over the wooded hills andvalleys of which the trail caught frequent brief but wide vistas. Theroad would have just suited Hazlitt, for it never left off winding, bothin and out through the whispering forest and in and out of itself bynumberless paths, often spreading over a hundred yards of width, androlling and pitching like a ship at sea. As in most of Mexico, wheeledtraffic would here have been impossible.

By eight I could stuff my coat into my knapsack. The day's journey wasshort, and twice I lay an hour on a grassy knoll gazing at the birds andleisurely drifting clouds above and listening to the soft whispering ofthe pines. Then an unraveled trail led gradually downward, fell in witha broad sandy "road" that descended more sharply to a still swiftercobbled way, and about me grew up a land reminiscent of Ceylon, withmany frail wooden houses on either side among banana groves, fruit forsale before them, and frequent streams of clear water babbling past.But it was only half-tropical, and further down the way was lined withhuge trees resembling the elm.

Uruapan was just high enough above the real tropics to bedelightful. The attitude of its people, too, was pleasing. If notexactly friendly, they lacked that sour incommunicativeness of thehigher plateau. Very few were in modern costume and to judge from thecrowd of boys that gathered round me as I wrote my notes in a plazabench, the arrival of a white man in this largely Indian town was anevent not to be slighted. There was a general air of more satisfactionwith life in the languid country place where nature rewards all laborquickly and well, and where nearly all have gardens and orchards oftheir own to make them independent of working for others at a scantywage.

Its plaza lies a bit higher than the rest of the town, and from itstraight streets of one-story houses, all of different slope, flowgently down, to be lost a few blocks away in greenery. The roofs of tileor a long untapered shingle are not flat, as elsewhere, but with a slopefor the tropical rains. Patio life is well developed. Within the blankwalls of the central portion all the rooms open on sun-flooded, innergardens and whole orchards within which pass almost all the familyactivities, even to veranda dining-rooms in the edge of the shade. Densegroves of banana and coffee trees surround most of the uncrowded, adobedwellings. In the outskirts the houses are of wood, with sharp-peakedroofs, and little hovels of mud and rubbish loll in the dense-black coolshadows of the productive groves and of the immense trees that are afeature of the place. Flowers bloom everywhere, and all vegetation isof the deepest green. On every side the town dies away into domesticatedjungle beyond which lie such pine forests, vast corn fields, andwashed-out trails as on the way thither from Zamora.

There is not a "sight" of the slightest importance in Uruapan. But theplace itself is a sight worth long travel, with its soft climate likethe offspring of the wedded North and South, a balmy, gentle existencewhere is only occasionally felt the hard reality of life that runsbeneath, when man shows himself less kindly than nature. A man offeredto sell me for a song a tract bordering the river, with a "house" readyfor occupancy, and had the place and all that goes with it been portablewe should quickly have come to terms. For Uruapan is especially a beautyspot along the little Cupatitzio, where water clearer than that of LakeGeneva foams down through the dense vegetation and under little bridgesquaint and graceful as those of Japan.

The sanitary arrangements, of course, are Mexican. Women in bands washclothes along the shady banks, both sexes bathe their light-chocolateskins in sunny pools, there were even horses being scrubbed in thetransparent stream, and below all this others dipped their drinkingwater. Here and there the water was led off by many little channels andoverhead wooden troughs to irrigate the gardens and to run little millsand cigarette factories.

In the outskirts I passed the city slaughter-house. A low atone wallseparated from the street a large corral; with a long roof on posts, astone floor, and a rivulet of water down through it occupying the centerof the compound. The cattle, healthy, medium-sized steers worth fifteendollars a head in this section, were lassoed around the horns anddragged under the roof, where another dexterously thrown noose boundtheir feet together and threw them on the stone floor. They were neitherstruck nor stunned in any way. When they were so placed that theirthroats hung over the rivulet, a butcher made one single quick thrustwith a long knife near the collarbone and into the heart. Boys caughtthe blood in earthen bowls as it gushed forth and handed it to variouswomen hanging over the enclosing wall. The animal gave a few agonizedbellows, a few kicks, and died. Each was quickly skinned and quartered,the more unsavory portions at once peddled along the wall, andbare-headed Indians carried a bleeding quarter on their black thick hairto the hooks on either side of pack horses which boys drove off to townas they were loaded. There the population bought strips and chunks ofthe still almost palpitating meat, ran a string through an end of eachpiece, and carried it home under the glaring sun.

All this is commonplace. But the point of the scene was the quiteevident pleasure all concerned seemed to take in the unpleasantbusiness. Most of us eat meat, but we do not commonly find ourrecreation in slaughter-houses. Here whole crowds of boys, dogs, andnoisy youths ran about the stone floor, fingering the still pulsatinganimal, mimicking its dying groans amid peals of laughter, wallowing inits ebbing blood, while fully as large an assemblage of women, girls,and small children hung over the wall in a species of ecstatic glee atthe oft-repeated drama. Death, especially a bloody one, appeared toawaken a keen enjoyment, to quicken the sluggard pulse of even thisrather peaceful Tarascan tribe. One could easily fancy them watchingwith the same ebullient joy the dying struggles of helpless human beingsbutchered in the same way. The killing of the trussed and fallen animalover the rivulet recalled the cutting out of the heart of human victimson the sacrificial stones amid the plaudits of the Aztec multitude andthe division of the still quivering flesh among them, and the vulgaryoung fellows running around, knife in hand, eager for an opportunity touse them, their once white smocks smeared and spattered with blood,brought back the picture of the savage old priests of the religion ofMontezuma. The scene made more comprehensible the preconquest customsof the land, as the antithesis of the drunken and excited Indian to thealmost effeminate fear of the same being sober makes more clear thatinexplicable piece of romance, the Conquest of Mexico.

There is less evidence of "religion" in Uruapan than in Zamora. Priestswere rarely seen on the streets and the church bells were scarcelytroublesome. Peons and a few of even higher rank, however, never passedthe door of a church even at a distance without raising theirhats. Twice during the day I passed groups of women of the peon classcarrying in procession several framed chromo representations of SaintQuién Sabe, bearing in his arms an imaginary Christ child, all of themwailing and chanting a dismal dirge as they splashed along through thedust in their bare feet.

A Tragedy: As I returned in the soft air of sunset from the clear littleriver boiling over its rocks, I passed in a deep-shaded lane betweentowering banana, coffee, and larger trees about three feet of Mexican insarape and overgrown hat rooted to a certain spot and shedding copioustears, while on the ground beside him were the remnants of a glazed potand a broad patch of what had once been native firewater mingled withthe thirsty sand. Some distance on I heard a cry as of a hunted humanbeing and turned to see the pot remnants and the patch in the self-samespot, but the hat and the three feet of Mexican under it were speedingaway down the lane on wings of terror. But all in vain, for behindstalked at even greater speed a Mexican mother, gaining on him who fled,like inexorable fate, not rapidly but all too surely.

The only train out of Uruapan leaves at an unearthly hour. The sun wasjust peering over the horizon, as if reconnoitering for a safe entrance,when I fought my way into a chiefly peon crowd packed like a log-jamaround a tiny window barely waist high, behind which some unseen butplainly Mexican being sold tickets more slowly than American justice inpursuit of the wealthy. For a couple of miles the way lay across a flatrich land of cornfields, pink with cosmos flowers. Then the train beganto creak and grind upward at dog-trot pace, covering four or five timeswhat would have been the distance in a straight line and uncoveringbroad vistas of plump-formed mountains shaggy with trees, and vast,hollowed-out valleys flooded with corn. Soon there were endless pineforests on every hand, with a thick, oak-like undergrowth. A labyrinthof loops one above another brought us to Ajambarán and a bit of leveltrack, with no mountains in the landscape because we stood on the summitof them. Little Lake Zirahuén, surrounded on all sides by slopinghills, half pine, half corn, gleamed with an emerald blue. The trainhalf circled it, at a considerable distance, giving several broadvistas, each lower than the preceding, as we climbed to an animatedbox-car station higher still. From there we began to descend. Over thedivide was a decided change in the landscape; again that dry, brown,thinly vegetated country of most of the Mexican highlands. Miles beforewe reached the town of the same name, beautiful Lake Pátzcuaro burst onour sight through a break in the hills to the left, and continued togladden the eyes until we drew up at the station.

While the rest of the passengers repaired to the mule-tram, I set offafoot for the town, a steady climb of two miles by a cobbled road, upthe center of which runs a line of large stones worn flat by generationsof bare feet. The man who baedekerized Mexico says it is a "verydifficult" trip afoot. Perhaps it would be to him. From the centralline of flat stones there ran out, every yard, at right angles, lines ofstones a bit smaller, the space between being filled in with smallcobbles, with grass growing between them. The sun was powerful in thisthin atmosphere of more than seven thousand feet elevation. I was barelysettled in the hotel when the mule-tram arrived.

Patzcuaro is one of the laziest, drowsiest, most delightful pimples onthe earth to be found in a long search. It has little in common withUruapan. Here is not a suggestion of the tropics, but just a largeIndian village of mud and adobe houses and neck-breaking, cobbledstreets, a town older than time, sown on and about a hillside backed bypine-treed peaks, with several expanses of plazas, all grown to grassabove their cobbled floors, shaded by enormous ash-like trees withneither flowers, shrubs, nor fountains to detract from their atmosphereof roominess. About them run portales, arcades with pillars thatseem at least to antedate Noah, and massive stone benches green with ageand water-logged with constant shade, as are also the ancient stonesidewalks under the trees and the overhanging roofs of one-story housessupported by carved beams. Along these wanders a chiefly peonpopulation, soft-footed and silent, with a mien and manner that seems tomurmur: "If I do not do it to-day there is tomorrow, and next week, andthe week after." The place is charming; not to its inhabitants perhaps,but to us from a land where everything is distressingly new. To the manwho has anything to do or a desire to do anything, Patzcuaro would beinfernal; for him who has nothing to do but to do nothing, it isdelightful.

Those who wish may visit crooning old churches more aged than the playsof Shakespeare. Or one may climb to "Calvary." The fanaticalinhabitants, abetted by the wily priests, have named a road, "very rockyand very hilly," according to the Mexican Baedeker, leading to a knollsomewhat above the town, the "via dolorosa," and have scattered fourteenstations of plastered mud niches along the way. From the aged,half-circular, stone bench on the summit is another of the marvelousviews that abound in Mexico. It was siesta-time, and not a human beingwas in sight to break the spell. The knoll fell away in bushyprecipitousness to the plain below. As I reached the top, two trains,bound back the way I had come, left the station two miles away, onebehind the other, and for a long time both were plainly visible as theywound in and out away through the foothills, yet noiseless from here asphantoms, and no blot on the landscape, since all colors, even that of arailroad cutting, blended into the soft-brown whole.

The scene was wholly different from that about Uruapan, 1700 feetlower. There was very little green, and nothing at all of jungle; only asun-faded brown tapestry backed by a jumble of low mountains coveredwith short bristling pines. Here and there a timid, thin-blue peakpeered over a depression in the chain. A panoramic glance, starting fromthe west, showed range after range, one behind the other, to the dimmestblue distance. Swinging round the horizon, skipping the lake, the eyetook in a continuous procession of hills, more properly the upperportions of mountains, losing their trees toward the east and growingmore and more bare and reddish-brown, until it fell again on thedoddering old town napping in its hollow down the slope. Below theabrupt face of "Calvario," the plain, with a few patches of still greencorn alternating with reddish plowed fields, but for the most parthumped and bumped, light wooded with scrub pine, was sprinkled withmouse-sized cattle, distinct even to their spots and markings in thismarvelous, clear air of the highlands, lazily swinging their tails insummer contentment.

But the center of the picture, the picture, indeed, for which all therest served as frame, was Lake Pátzcuaro. It is not beautiful, butrather inviting, enticing, mysterious for its many sandy promontories,its tongues of mountains cutting off a farther arm of the lake with theold Tarascan capital, and above all for its islands. One of these isflat, running out to sand at either end, and with something of an oldtown among the trees that cover its slightly humped middle. Then thereis Xanicho, pitched high in mound-shape, suggestive of Capri, rocky,bare, reddish-brown, and about its bottom, like a narrow band on ahalf-sunken Mexican hat, a long thin town of white walls and tiled roofsvisible in all detail, a church towering above the rest to form the bowof the ribbon. It is strange how the human plant grows everywhere andanywhere, even on a patch of rock thrust forth out of the sea. A bit tothe east and farther away lies a much smaller island of similar shape,apparently uninhabited. Farther still there stands forth from the watera bare precipitous rock topped by a castle-like building suggestingChillon; and beyond and about are other islands of many shapes, but allflat and gray-green in tint, some so near shore as to blend with thepromontories and seem part of the mainland, thereby losing theirromance.

Over all the scene was a light-blue, transparent sky, flecked only witha few snow-white whisps of clouds, like bits of the ostrich plume thathung over Uruapan in the far west, and from which a soft wind tore offnow and then tiny pieces that floated slowly eastward. The same breezetempered the sunny stillness of the "Calvario," broken occasionally bythe song of a happy shepherd boy in the shrub-clad hills and themellow-voiced, decrepit, old church bells of Pátzcuaro below.

Some miles away from the town, at the far end of Lake Pátzcuaro, behindthe hills, lies the ancient Indian village of Tzintzuntzan, at the timeof the Conquest the residence of the chief of the Tarascans and ruler ofthe kingdom of Michoacán, which was not subdued until ten years afterthe fall of Mexico. I planned to visit it next day. As I strolled aroundthe unkempt plaza grande in a darkness only augmented by a few weakelectric bulbs of slight candle-power, with scores of peons, male andfemale, wrapped like half-animated mummies in their blankets, even totheir noses, I fell in with a German. He was a garrulous,self-complacent, ungraceful man of fifty, a druggist and "doctor" in asmall town far down in Oaxaca State until revolutions began, when he hadescaped in the garb of a peon, leaving most of his possessionsbehind. Now he wandered from town to town, hanging up his shingle a fewdays in each as an oculist. His hotel room was a museum. None can rivalthe wandering Teuton in the systematic collecting, at its lowestpossible cost, of everything that could by any stretch of theimagination ever be of service to a traveler. This one possessed only arucksack and a blanket-wrapped bundle, but in them he carried more thanthe average American would be caught in possession of in his ownhome. There were worn and greasy notebooks full of detailed informationof the road, the cheapest hotels of every known town of Mexico, with thelowest possible price and the idiosyncrasies of their proprietors thatmight be played upon to obtain it, the exact café where the beer glassesgrew tallest, the expenditures that might be avoided by a foresightedmanipulation; there were shoes and slippers, sleeping garments for eachdegree of temperature, a cooking outfit, a bicycle-lamp with a chimneyto read by, guns, gun-oil, gun-cleaners, flannel cloth to take the placeof socks for tramping, vaseline to rub on the same—it would be madnessto attempt a complete inventory, but he would be inventive indeed whocould name anything that Teutonic pack did not contain in someabbreviated form, purchased somewhere second hand at a fourth itsoriginal cost. The German had learned that the parish priest ofTzintzuntzan wore glasses, and we parted agreed to make the triptogether.

Patzcuaro is summery enough by day, but only the hardy would dressleisurely at dawn. A fog as thick as cheese, more properly a descendedcloud, enveloped the place, a daily occurrence which the localauthorities would have you think make it unusually healthful. Anancient cobbled road leads up and over the first rise, then degeneratesto the usual Mexican camino, a trail twisting in and out along achaos of rocks and broken ground. The fog hung long with us and madeimpossible pictures of the procession of Tarascan Indians coming in fromTzintzuntzan with every species of red pottery, from cups to immensewater-jars, in great nets on the backs of horses, asses, men, andwomen. Beyond the railroad the trail picked its way, with several climbsover rocky spur-ends, along the marshy edge of the lake, which was socompletely surrounded by mud and reeds that I had to leave unfulfilledmy promised swim in it. The trip was made endless by the incessantchatter of the "doctor," who rattled on in English without a break; andwhen I switched him to German his tongue sped still faster, thoughfortunately more correctly. No wonder those become fluent linguists whocan outdistance and outendure a man in his own tongue long before theyhave begun to learn it.

Along the way we picked up any amount of shining black obsidian, some inthe form of arrow-heads and crude knives that bore out the statementthat the Indians once even shaved with them. It was nearly eleven whenwe sighted, down among the trees on the lake shore, the squat churchtower of the once capital of Michoacán. A native we spoke with referredto it as a "ciudad," but in everything but name it was a dead,mud-and-straw Indian village, all but its main street a collection ofmud, rags, pigs, and sunshine, and no evidence of what Prescottdescribes as splendid ruins. Earthquakes are not unknown, and the bellsof the church, old as the conquest of Michoacán, hang in the treesbefore it. Inside, an old woman left her sweeping to pull aside thecurtains of the reputed Titian, a "Descent from the Cross," while Iphotographed it from the pulpit, for which privilege the young peonsexton appeared in time to accept a silver coin.

The German, with whom business always took precedence over pleasure, hadgone to find the house of the priest. When I reached the door of it onthe blank main street, he was sitting on a wooden bench in the hallwaywith a dozen old women and peons. We were admitted immediately after,as befitted our high social standing. A plump little padre nearingsixty, of the general appearance of a well-stuffed grain sack draped inblack robes, but of rather impressive features—and wearingglasses—greeted us with formality. The "doctor" drew a black case fromhis pocket, went through some hocuspocus with a small mirror, and withintwo minutes, though his Spanish was little less excruciating than hisEnglish, had proved to the startled curate that the glasses he waswearing would have turned him stone-blind within a month but for therare fortune of this great Berlin specialist's desire to visit thefamous historical capital of the Tarascans. The priest smoked cigaretteafter cigarette while my companion fitted another pair of crystals andtucked the dangerous ones away in his own case—for the next victim. Hedid not even venture to haggle, but paid the two dollars demanded withthe alacrity of a man who recognizes his good fortune, and to whom amatter of a few pesos more or less is of slight importance. For werethere not a score of Indians waiting outside eager to pay as well formasses, confessions, and all the rest of his own hocuspocus? Therefollowed a social chat, well liquefied, after which we took ourceremonious leave. Once outside, I learned the distressing fact that theshape of the padre's bows had required crystals costing twelve cents,instead of the customary nine-cent ones.

The German set off in the blazing noonday at his swiftest pace. He wasobliged to be back at the hotel by three, for the dinner must be paidfor whether eaten or not. I fell behind, glad of the opportunity. Manygroups of peons were returning now, without their loads, but maudlin andnasty tempered with the mescal for which they had exchanged them. Myautomatic was within easy reach. The oculist had criticized it as fartoo small for Mexican travel. He carried himself a revolver half thesize of a rifle, and filed the ends of the bullets crosswise that theymight split and spread on entering a body. In the outskirts of Patzcuarothere came hurrying toward me a flushed and drunken peon youth with animmense rock in his hand. I reached for my weapon, but he greeted mewith a respectful "Adiós!" and hurried on. Soon he was overtaken by twomore youths and dragged back to where an older peon lay in the middle ofthe road, his head mashed with a rock until trickles of brainprotruded. The event seemed to cause little excitement. A few stood attheir doors gazing with a mild sort of interest at the corpse, whichstill lay in the road when I turned a corner above.

Mules drag the tram-car of Pátzcuaro laboriously up the three kilometersfrom the station to the main plaza, but gravitation serves for the downjourney. When enough passengers had boarded it to set it in motion, weslid with a falsetto rumble down the cobbled road, a ragged boy leaningon the brake. Beyond the main railroad track a spur ran out on alanding-stage patched together out of old boards and rubbish. Peons wereloading into an iron scow bags of cement from an American box-car farfrom home. Indians paddled about the lake in canoes of a hollowed logwith a high pointed nose, but chopped sharp off at the poop. Theirpaddles were perfectly round pieces of wood, like churn-covers, on theend of long slim handles.

We were soon off for Morelia, capital of the State, across plains ofcattle, with an occasional cut through the hills and a few brownponds. At one station we passed two carloads of soldiers,westbound. They were nearly all mere boys, as usual, and like thepolicemen and rurales of the country struck one as unwisely entrustedwith dangerous weapons. Morelia is seen afar off in the lap of a broadrolling plain, her beautiful cathedral towers high above all therest. It was brilliant noonday when I descended and walked the mile intotown.

The birthplace of José Morelos and of Yturbide, first emperor of Mexico,sits 6200 feet above the sea and claims 37,000 inhabitants. It is warmand brown with dust. Architecturally it is Mexican, with flat roofs andnone of the overhanging eaves of Pátzcuaro and Uruapan. From the"centro"—the nerve-center of the "torpid State," with two well-keptplazas, the plateresque cathedral of a pinkish stone worn faint andspotted with time, and the "seat of the powers of the State," all on thesummit of a knoll—the entire town slopes gently down and quickly fadesaway into dirty, half-cobbled suburbs, brown and treeless, overrun withragged, dust-tinted inhabitants, every street seeming to bring upagainst the low surrounding range. Its natural advantages are fullyequal to those of Guadalajara, but here pulque grows and man is moretorpid. All the place has a hopeless, or at least ambitionless, air,though in this splendid climate poverty has less tinge of misery and theappearance of a greater contentment with its lot. There is a local"poet's walk" that is not particularly poetic, a wild park beyond thatis more so, and a great aqueduct over which sprawl enormous masses ofthe beautiful purple bourgainvillea. This ancient waterway resembles,but is far less striking than that of Segovia, for it runs acrosscomparatively level ground and has only single arches of moderate heightand too polished construction, instead of the massive cyclopean work ofimmense blocks of stone without mortar of its Spanish counterpart.Views and sunsets too often tempt the traveler in Mexico, or I mightmention that from a little way out of town at the top of the road toMexico City, where the cathedral towers all but reach the crest of thebacking range, over which hung the ocher and light-pink andsaffron-yellow clouds of the dying day.

The "Hotel Soledad" asserted its selectness by the announcement: "Eneste hotel no se admiten compañías de cómicos ni toreros," but thesolitude of its wooden-floored beds at least was distinctly broken andoften. The pompous, squeeze-centavo, old landlady sat incessantly in herplace near the door between dining-room and kitchen, with a leatherhandbag from which she doled out, almost with tears, coppers for changeand the keys to the larder, to the cringing servants and conferred longwith them in whispers on how much she dared charge each guest, accordingto his appearance. But at least Mexico feeds well the traveler who istoo hungry to be particular. He who will choose his dishes leads asorry life, for the hotels are adamant in their fare and restaurants arealmost unknown, except the dozens of little outdoor ones about themarket-places where a white man would attract undue attention—ifnothing less curable—among the "pela'os" that make up 80 per cent. ofthe population.

The passengers to Acámbaro included two ladies of the fly-by-nightspecies, who whiled away a somewhat monotonous journey by discussing thedetails of their profession with the admiring train-boy and drumming uptrade in a coquettish pantomime. The junction town was in fiesta, andthe second-class car of the evening train to Celaya was literallystacked high with peons and their multifarious bundles, and from itissued a stench like unto that of a congress of polecats. I rode seatedon a brake, showers of cinders and the cold night air swirling about me,until the festive natives thinned down enough to give me admittance. Bythat time we were drawing into Celaya, also in the throes of somebombastic celebration.

Like many another Mexican city the traveler chances into when thecentral plaza is bubbling with night life, light, and music, Celayaturned out rather a disappointment in the sunny commonplace of day. Itscentral square is a little garden, but almost all the rest of the townis a monotonous waste of square, bare, one-story houses with uglyplaster facades and no roofs—at least to be seen—each differing a bitfrom its neighbor in height, like a badly drawn up company ofsoldiers. The blazing sun and thick dust characteristic of all the highcentral plateau are here in full force. Like most Spanishthings—conquests, history, buildings—it looked more striking at adistance than when examined in detail.

Celaya is far-famed for its candy. All over the republic sounds the cryof "Cajetas de Celaya!" Mexico shows a great liking for sweets; noblock is complete without its little stands or peregrinating hawkers ofall manner of temptations to the sweet-toothed, ranging from squares of"fudge" in all colors of the rainbow to barber-pole sticks a half-yardlong. The station was surrounded with soap-less old women, boys, andeven men offering for sale all sizes of the little wooden boxes of thechief local product, in appearance like axle-grease, but delicious farbeyond its looks, and with vendors of everything imaginable, to saynothing of a ragged, dirty multitude of all ages with no businessthere—nor anywhere else.

When I had spread out over two wooden seats of the big, bustling El PasoLimited I was quickly reminded of the grim, business-bent, Americanengineer in gray hair, the unlit half of a cigar clamped tightly betweenhis teeth, of whom I had caught a half-conscious glance in the cabwindow. One could literally feel his firm American hand at thethrottle as the heavy train gathered steady headway and raced away tothe eastward. Across the car sat two handsome, solidly-knit youngbull-fighters, their little rat-tail coletas peering from behindtheir square-cut hats. We sped steadily across the sun-flooded, dry,brown plateau, slightly rolling, its fields alternating between the deadtint of dry corn and newly plowed patches. Here for the first time werepulque producing fields of maguey, planted in long, straight,emerald-green rows.

As Irapuato for its strawberries, and Celaya for its sweets, soQueretaro is famed for its huge, cheap hats, of a sort of reed, largeenough to serve as umbrellas, and for its opals. From the time he stepsoff the train here until he boards it again, the traveler, especiallythe "gringo," is incessantly pestered by men and boys offering for salethese worthless bright pebbles—genuine and otherwise. Here again arethe same endless rows of one-story, stucco houses, intersecting cobbledand dust-paved streets, running to the four corners of the compass froma central plaza planted with tall, slim trees, the interwoven branchesof which almost completely shade it. The cathedral houses, among otherdisturbing, disgusting, and positively indecent representations of theCrucifixion and various martyrdoms done in the Aztec style of bloodyrealism, a life-size Cristo with masses of long real hair and apair of knee-length knit drawers for decency's sake. One might fancy theplace weighed down by a Puritan censorship. The local museum containsamong other rubbish of the past the keyhole through which Josefawhispered in 1810 the words that started the revolution against Spanishpower! Here, too, is what purports to be an authentic photograph of theexecution of Maximilian, theatrical to a Spanish degree, the threevictims standing in their places, the once "Emperor of the Mexicans"holding a large crucifix, and several of the boy soldiers who executedthem crowded eagerly into the corners of the picture. More impressive tothe incredulous is the plain, tapering, wooden coffin in which the chiefbody was placed, the bottom half covered with faded blood and on one ofthe sides the plain, dull-red imprint of a hand, as if the corpse hadmade some post-mortem effort to rise from the grave. The portrait of thetransplanted scion of Austria shows a haughty, I-am-of-superior-clayman, of a distinctly mediocre grade of intellect, with a forest of beardthat strives in vain to conceal an almost complete absence of chin.

History records that the deposed ruler reached by carriage his lastearthly scene in the early morning of June 19, 1867. I arrived as early,though afoot. It is a twenty-minute walk from the center of town acrossthe flat, fertile vega, green with gardens, to the Cerro de lasCampanas, a bare, stern, stony hill, somewhat grown with cactus bushes,maguey, and tough shrubs, rising perhaps seventy feet above the level ofthe town. It runs up gently and evenly from the south, but falls awayabruptly in a cragged, rock precipice on the side facing Querétaro,providing the only place in the vicinity where poorly aimed bulletscannot whistle away across the plain. Before them, as they faced theyouthful, brown file of soldiers in their many-patched and faded garb,the three had a comprehensive view of the town, chiefly trees andchurches sufficient to house the entire populace several timesover. Nine immense structures, each with a great dome and a tower ortwo—steeples are unknown in Mexico—stand out against the bare, brown,flat-topped range beyond that barely rises above the highest tower. Thelast scene he looked on must have struck the refuted emperor as typicalof a country he was sorry then ever to have seen, in spite of his regalcontrol of facial expression,—a hard, stony plateau, the fertility andriches of which succumb chiefly to an all-devouring priesthood. Coldlead plays too large a part in the history of Mexico, but certainly itsmost unjust verdict was not the extinction of the "divine right" in theperson of this self-styled descendant of the Cæsars at the hands of anIndian of Oaxaca. To-day a brown stone chapel, erected by Austria,stands where Maximilian fell, but the spot remains otherwise unchanged,and no doubt the fathers of these same peons who toiled now in thegardens of the vega under the morning sun lined the way through whichthe carriage bore to its American extinction a system foreign to theWestern Hemisphere.

CHAPTER VI

TENOCHTITLAN OF TO-DAY

The El Paso Limited picked me up again twenty-four hours later. BeyondQuerétaro's ungainly aqueduct spread fields of tobacco, blooming with aflower not unlike the lily; then vast, almost endless stretches of dead,dry corn up low heights on either hand, and occasional fields of magueyin soldierly files. At San Juan del Rio, famous for its lariats, a dozenmen and a woman stood in a row, some forty feet from the train, holdingcoils of woven-leather ropes of all sizes, but in glum and hopelesssilence, while a policeman paced back and forth to prevent them fromeither canvassing the train-windows or crying their wares. Evidentlysome antinuisance crusade had invaded San Juan.

Mexico is a country of such vast vistas that a man might easily be takenand executed by bandits within plain sight of his friends without theirbeing able to lend him assistance. Nowhere can one look farther and seenothing. Yet entire companies of marauders might lie in wait in the manywild rocky barrancos of this apparently level brown plain. Up and up weclimbed through a bare, stone-strewn land, touched here and there withthe green of cactus, sometimes with long vistas of maize, which herehung dead in its half-grown youth because of the failure of the summerrains. Fields of maguey continued. The air grew perceptibly cooler as wewound back and forth, always at good speed behind the American engineer,mounting to the upper plateau surrounding the capital, not throughmountains but by a vast, steadily rising world. Sometimes long,unmortared stone fences divided the landscape, more often mile afterunobstructed mile of slightly undulating brown plain, tinted here andthere by maguey, rolled by us into the north.

A special train of soldiers, with a carload of arms and munitions,passed on the way to head off the latest revolted "general." Thenewspapers of the capital appeared, some rabidly "anti-American,"stopping at nothing to stir up the excitable native against allegedsubtle plans of the nation to the north to rob them of their territoryand national existence, the more reputable ones with sane editorialsimploring all Mexicans not to make intervention "in the name of humanityand civilization" necessary. The former sold far more readily. The trainwound hither and yon, as if looking for an entrance to the valley ofMexico. Unfortunately no train on either line reaches ancient Anahuac bydaylight, and my plan to enter it afoot, perhaps by the same route asCortez, had been frustrated. A red sun was just sinking behind haggardpeaks when we reached the highest point of the line—8237 feet above thesea—with clumps and small forests of stocky oaks and half Mexicostretching out behind us, rolling brown to distant bare ranges backed byothers growing blue and purple to farthest distance. The scene had alate October aspect, and a chilling, ozone-rich wind blew. By dusk thecoat I had all but thrown away in the sweltering North was more thanneeded. We paused at San Antonio, a jumble of human kennels throwntogether of old cans, scraps of lumber, mud, stones, and cactus leaves,with huge stacks of the charcoal with the soot of which all theinhabitants were covered, even to the postmaster who came in person forthe mail sack. That week's issue of a frivolous sheet of the capitaldepicted an antonino charcoal-burner standing before his no lessunwashed wife, holding a new-born babe and crying in the slovenlydialect of the "pela'o": "Why, it is white! Woman, thou hast deceivedme!"

At dark came Tula, ancient capital of the Toltecs, after which night hidall the scene there might have been, but for glimpses by the light ofthe train of the great tajo cut through the hills to drain theancient valley of Anáhuac. On we sped through the night, which ifanything became a trifle warmer. Gradually the car crowded to whatwould have been suffocation had we not soon pulled in at Buena Vistastation, to fight our way through a howling pandemonium of touts, manyshouting English, among whom were the first Negroes I had seen inMexico.

Mexico City was a great disappointment. The hotel only a block from thecathedral and the site of the great teocalli of the Aztecs, towhich the German in Pátzcuaro had directed me, differed not even in itssmells from a Clark-street lodging-house in Chicago. The entire citywith its cheap restaurants and sour smelling pulquerias uncountable,looked and sounded like a lower eastside New York turned Spanish intongue. Even morning light discovered nothing like the charm of the restof Mexico, and though I took up new lodgings en famille in aristocraticChapultepec Avenue, with a panorama of snow-topped Popocatepetl andIxtaccihuatl, her sleeping sister, and all the range seeming a baregunshot away, the imagination was more inclined to hark back to theBowery than to the great Tenochtitlan of the days of Cortez.

In a word, the capital is much like many another modern city, somewhatbleak, cosmopolitan of population, with strong national lines ofdemarkation, and a caste system almost as fixed as that of India, butwith none of the romance the reader of Prescott, Mme. Calderón, and therest expects. Since anarchy fell upon the land, even the Sundayprocession of carriages of beauty in silks and jewels, and of rancherosprancing by in thousand-dollar hats, on silver-mounted and bejeweledsaddles, has disappeared from the life of the capital. To-day theMexican is not anxious to parade his wealth, nor even to venture it inbusiness. He is much more minded to bury it in the earth, to hide it inhis socks, to lay it up in the great republic to the north, whereneither presidents corrupt nor Zapatistas break in and steal.

By day moderate clothing was comfortable, but the night air is sharp andpenetrating, and he who is not dressed for winter will be inclined tokeep moving. Policemen and street-car employees tie a cloth acrosstheir mouths from sunset until the morning warms. Ragged peons swarm,feeding, when at all, chiefly from ambulating kitchens of as tatteredhawkers. The well-to-do Mexican, the "upper class," in general is amore churlish, impolite, irresponsible, completely inefficient fellowthan even the countryman and the peon, in whom, if anywhere within itsborders, lies the future hope of Mexico. To him outward appearance iseverything, and the capital is especially overrun with the resultanthollow baubles of humanity.

There are a few short excursions of interest about the capital. Banditshave made several of them, such as the ascent of Popocatepetl,unpopular, but a few were still within the bounds of moderate safety.Three miles away by highway or street-car looms up the church ofGuadalupe, the sacred city of Mexico. It is a pleasing little town,recalling Puree of the Juggernaut-car by its scores of little stands forthe feeding of pilgrims—at pilgrimage prices. Here are evidences of anidolatry equal to that of the Hindu. Peons knelt on the floor of thechurch, teaching their babies to cross themselves in the long intricatemanner customary in Mexico. A side room was crowded with cheap cardboardpaintings of devotees in the act of being "saved" by the Virgin ofGuadalupe—here a man lying on his back in front of a train which theVirgin in the sky above has just brought to a standstill; there a childbeing spared by her lifting the wheel of a heavy truck about to crush*t. It would be hard to imagine anything more crude either in conceptionor execution than these signs of gratitude. To judge by them the Virginwould make a dramatist of the first rank; there was not a picture inwhich the miraculous assistance came a moment too soon, never & hero ofour ancient, pre-Edison melodramas appeared more exactly "in the nick oftime." The famous portrait of the miraculous being herself, over thehigh altar, is dimly seen through thick glass. Inside the chapel underthe blue and white dome pilgrims were dipping up the "blessed" waterfrom the bubbling well and filling bottles of all possible shapes, not afew of which had originally held American and Scotch whisky, that aresold in dozens of little stands outside the temple.

These they carry home, often hundreds of miles, to "cure" the ailmentsof themselves or families, or to sell to others at monopoly prices.

Good electric cars speed across amazingly fertile bottom landscrisscrossed by macadam highways to Xochimilco. Nearing it, the ruggedfoothills of the great mountain wall shutting in the valley begin torise. We skirted Pedregal, a wilderness of lava hills serving as quarry,and drew up in the old Indian town, of a charm all its own, with itshoar and rugged old church and its houses built of upright cornstalks orreeds, with roofs of grass from the lake. Indians paddled about inclumsy, leaky boats through the canals among rich, flower-burdenedislands, once floating.

Another car runs out to Popotla along the old Aztec causeway by whichthe Spaniards retreated on that dismal night of July 2, 1520. Now thewater is gone and only a broad macadamed street remains. The spot whereAlvarado made his famous pole-vault is near the Buena Vista station, butno jumping is longer necessary—except perhaps to dodge a passingtrolley. Instead of the lake of Tenochtitlan days there is the flattestof rich valleys beyond. The "Tree of the Dismal Night," a huge cypressunder which Cortez is said to have wept as he watched the brokenremnants of his army file past, is now hardly more than an enormous,hollow, burned-out stump, with a few huge branches that make it look ata distance like a flourishing tree still in the green prime of life. Theday was rainy and a cold, raw wind blew. The better-clad classes were inovercoats, and the peons in their cotton rags wound themselves inblankets, old carpets, newspapers, anything whatever, huddling indoorways or any suggestion of shelter. Cold brings far more suffering inwarm countries than in these of real winters.

The comandante of notorious old Belén prison in the capital spokeEnglish fluently, but he did not show pleasure at my visit. Anunder-official led me to the flat roof, with a bird's-eye view of themiserable, rambling, old stone building. Its large patios were literallypacked with peon prisoners. The life within was an almost exact replicaof that on the streets of the capital, even to hawkers of sweets,fruit-vendors, and the rest, while up from them rose a decaying stenchas from the steerage quarters of old transatlantic liners. Those whochoose, work at their trade within as outside. By night the prisonersare herded together in hundreds from six to six in the wretched olddungeon-like rooms. Nothing apparently is prohibited, and prisoners mayindulge with impunity in anything from cigarettes to adultery, for whichthey can get the raw materials.

The excursion out to the Ajusco range, south of the city, was on theverge of danger. Zapata hung about Cuernavaca and marauders frequentlyapproached the very outskirts of the capital. Under our knapsacks westruck upward through the stony village where the train had set us down,and along a narrow road that soon buried itself in pine forests. Abright clear stream came tumbling sharply down, and along this weclimbed. A mile or more but we picked up at a thatched hut an Indian boyof ten as burden-bearer and guide, though we continued to carry most ofour own stuff and to trust largely to our own sense of direction. Abovecame a three-hour climb through pine-forested mountains, such as theHarz might be without the misfortune of German spick and spanness. Hewho starts at an elevation of 7500 feet and climbs 4000 upward in abrief space of time, with a burden on his back, knows he is mounting.Occasionally a dull-gray glimpse of the hazy valley of Mexico brokethrough the trees; about us was an out-of-the-way stillness, temperedonly by the sound of birds. About noon the thick forest of great pinetrees ceased as suddenly as if nature had drawn a dead-line about thebrow of the mountain. A foot above it was nothing but stunted oakgrowths and tufts of bunch-grass large as the top of a palm-tree. Onthe flat summit, with hints through the tree-tops below of the greatvale of Anáhuac, we halted to share the bulk of our burdens with theIndian boy, who had not brought his "itacate." The air was mostexhilarating and clear as glass, though there was not enough of it tokeep us from panting madly at each exertion. In the shade it was coldeven in heavy coats; but merely to step out into the sunshine was tobask like lizards.

Our "guide" lost no time in losing us, and we started at random down thesharp face of the mountain to the valley 4000 feet almost directly belowus. Suddenly a break in the trees opened out a most marvelous view ofthe entire valley of Mexico. Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl stood out asclearly under their brilliant white mantles of new-fallen snow as ifthey were not sixty but one mile away, every crack and seam fullyvisible, and the fancied likeness of the second to a sleeping woman wasfrom this point striking. The contrast was great between the dense greenof the pine forests and the velvety, brown plain with its full, shallowlakes unplumbed fathoms below. Farther down we came out on the verybreak-neck brink of a vast amphitheater of hills, with "las ventanas,"huge, sheer, rock cliffs shaped like great cathedral windows, an easystone-throw away but entirely inaccessible to any but an aviator, for anunconscionable gorge carpeted with bright green tree-tops lay between. Iproposed descending the face of the cliff below us, and led the way downa thousand feet or more, only to come to the absolutely sheer rock endof things where it would have taken half the afternoon to drop to thecarpet of forest below.

There was nothing to do but to climb out again and skirt the brink ofthe canyon. In the rare air we were certain a score of times of beingabout to drop dead from exhaustion, yet a two-minute rest always broughtfull recovery. Then came a wild scramble of an hour along sheer rocksthick-draped with moss that pealed off in square yards almost as oftenas we stepped on it, and threatened to drop us more than a half-mile tothe tree-tops below. Climbing, clinging, and circling through awilderness of undergrowth amid the vast forest of still, dense-greenpines, but with such views of the valley of Mexico and the greatsnow-clads as to reward any possible exertion, we flanked at last theentire canyon. In the forest itself every inch of ground was carpetedwith thick moss, more splendid than the weavings of any loom of man,into which the feet sank noiselessly. Everywhere the peaceful stillnesswas tempered only by a slight humming of the trees, and the songs ofmyriad birds, not a human being within screaming distance, unless somegang of bandits stalked us in the depth of the forest. More likely theywere by now sodden with the aftermath of Sunday festivities, and anywaywe were armed "hasta los dientes."

At length, as the day was nearing its close, we fell into what had oncebeen a trail. It was moss-grown and wound erratically in and out amongthe trees, but went steadily down, very level compared to the work ofthe preceding hours, yet so steep we several times spread out at fulllength to slide a rod or more. The sun was setting when we came to thebottom of "las ventanas" only a couple thousand feet from where we hadfirst caught sight of them hours before. Thereafter the trail moderatedits pace and led us to the most beautiful thing of the day, a clearice-cold stream at the bottom of the cliffs. We all but drank itdry. Then on out of the canyon and across a vast field of rye, back ofwhich the great gorge stood like some immense stadium, with stalwartathletic pines filling all the seats. This is the spot where Wallace's"Fair God" burst forth upon the valley. We descended between immensewalls of pines, half unseen in the dusk and framing a V-shaped bit ofthe vale of Anahuac, a perfect crimson fading to rose color, culminatingin the pink-tinted snow-clads above.

At dark we left the boy at his hut, on the walls of which his father hadjust hung the two deer of that day's hunt. There was no hope of catchingthe afternoon train from Cuernavaca, and we laid plans to tramp onacross the valley floor to Tizapan. But Mexican procrastinationsometimes has its virtues, and we were delighted to find the stationcrowded with those waiting for the delayed convoy that ten minutes laterwas bearing us cityward through the cool highland night.

I had hoped to walk from Mexico City to the capital of Honduras. Thatportion of the route from former Tenochtitlan to Oaxaca and the Isthmusof Tehuantepec, however, was not then a promising field for tramping byany one with any particular interest in arriving. I concluded to flankit by train. It was a chilly gray day when the little narrow-gage trainbore us close by the miraculous temple of Guadalupe, with its hilltopcemetery and stone sails, and into the vast fields of magueybeyond. Peons and donkeys without number, the former close wrapped intheir colored blankets, the latter looking as if they would like to be,enlivened the roads and trails. We skirted the shore of dull LakeTexcoco, once so much larger and even now only a few inches below thelevel of the flat plain, recalling that the Tenochtitlan of the Conquestwas an island reached only by causeways. At San Juan Teotihuacan, thefamous pyramids lost in the nebulous haze of pre-Toltec history bulkedforth from the plain and for many miles beyond. The smaller, called thatof the Moon, was a mere squat mound of earth. But the larger had latelybeen cleared off, and was now of a light cement color, rising in fourterraces with a low monument or building on the summit. It containsabout the same material as the pyramid of Cheops, but is larger at thebase and by no means so high, thereby losing something of the majesty ofits Egyptian counterpart.

A cheery sun appeared, but the air remained cool. Fields of maguey inmathematically straight lines stretched up and away out of sight overbroad rolling ridges. I had put off the experience of tasting theproduct until I should reach Apam, the center of the pulque industry. Atthat station an old woman sold me a sort of flower-pot full of the stuffat two cents. I expected to taste and throw it away. Instead there camea regret that I had not taken to it long before. It was of theconsistency and color of milk, with a suggestion of buttermilk in itstaste and fully as palatable as the latter, with no noticeable evidenceof intoxicating properties. No doubt this would come with age, as wellas the sour stink peculiar to the pulquerías of the cities.

The train made a mighty sweep to the northward to escape from thecentral valley, bringing a much closer and better view of the twosnow-clads, first on one, then on the farther side. By choice I shouldhave climbed up over the "saddle" between them, as Cortez first enteredthe realms of Montezuma. A dingy branch line bore us off across brokencountry with much corn toward Puebla. On the left was a view ofMalinche, famous in the story of the Conquest, its summit hidden inclouds. I was now in the Rhode Island of Mexico, the tiny State ofTlaxcala, the "Land of Corn," to the assistance from which Cortez oweshis fame. The ancient state capital of the same name has been slightedby the railway and only a few decrepit mule-cars connect it with theouter world. I slighted these, and leaving my possessions in the stationof Santa Ana, set off through a rolling and broken, dry and dusty, yetfertile country, with the wind rustling weirdly through the dead brownfields of corn. The inhabitants of the backward little capital were evenmore than usually indifferent to "gringoes," seldom giving me more thana glance unless I asked a question, and even leaving me to scribble mynotes in peace in a shaded plaza bench.

There is nothing but its historical memories of special interest inTlaxcala. It is a town of some 3000 inhabitants, a few hundred feethigher than Mexico City, with many ancient buildings, mostly of stone,often mere ruins, from the seams of surely half of which sprout grassand flowers, as they do between the cobbles of its streets and its largerambling plaza. I visited the old church on the site of whichChristianity—of the Spanish brand—was first preached on the Americancontinent. Here was the same Indian realism as elsewhere in therepublic. One Cristo had "blood" pouring in a veritable river from hisside, his face was completely smeared with it, his knees and shins wereskinned and barked and covered with blood, which had even dripped on histoes; the elbows and other salient points were in worse condition thanthose of a wrestler after a championship bout, and the body was tattooedwith many strange arabesques. There were other figures in almost asdistressing a state. A god only ordinarily maltreated could not excitethe pity or interest of the Mexican Indian, whose every-day life has itsown share of barked shins and painful adversities. It was amusing tofind this village, hardly larger than many a one about the home ofMexican hacendados, the capital of a State. But the squads of ruralesand uniformed police and the civil employees of Government were verysolemn with their responsibilities. I had seen it all in an hour or twoand drifted back along the five lazy miles to Santa Ana. Tlaxcala liesbetween two gaunt broken ridges, with rugged chains all about it, yetthe little State is by no means so completely fenced in by natureas the imagination that has fed on Prescott pictures.

Puebla, third city of Mexico, is even colder than the capital. Thesnow-clads of the latter look down upon it from the west, and far awayto the east stands Orizaba, highest peak of Mexico. In the haze ofsunset its great mantle of new-fallen snow stood out sharply, darkerstreaks that ran down through the lower reaches of snow dying out innothingness, as the mountain did itself, for as a matter of fact thelatter was not visible at all, but only the snow that covered its upperheights, surrounded above, below, and on all sides by the thin gray skyof evening. By night there was music in the plaza. But how can there belife and laughter where a half-dozen blankets are incapable of keepingthe promenaders comfortable? In all the frigid town there was not asingle fire, except in the little bricked holes full of charcoal overwhich the place does its cooking. Close to my hotel was the "CasaSerdan," its windows all broken and its stucco front riddled with bulletholes, for it was here that two brothers, barricading themselves againstthe government of Porfirio Diaz, spilled the first blood of the longseries of revolutions and worse that has followed. Already the name ofthe street had been changed to "Calle de los Mártires de Noviembre,1910."

It is nearly three hours' walk from the plaza of Puebla to that ofCholula, the Benares of the Aztecs, and for him who rises early it is acold one. What little romance remains would have fled had I made thetrip by mule-car. As it was, I could easily drop back mentally into thedays of the Conquest, for under the brilliant cloudless sky as Isurmounted a bit of height there lay all the historic scene beforeme—the vast dipping plain with the ancient pyramid of Cholula, toppednow by a white church with towers and dome, standing boldly forth acrossit, and beyond, yet seeming so close one half expected an avalanche oftheir snows to come down upon the town, towering Popocatepetl and hersister, every little vale and hollow of the "saddle" between clear as ata yard distance. Then to the left, Malinche and the rolling stony hillsof Tlaxcala, along which the Spaniards advanced, with the beautiful coneof Orizaba rising brilliant and clear nearly a hundred miles away. Thegreat rampart separating them from the cherished valley must havebrought bated breath even to the hardy soldiers of Cortez.

This unsurpassed view accompanied all the rest of the peaceful morningwalk. By nine I was climbing the great pyramid from the top of which theintrepid Spaniard tumbled down the ancient gods, and about whichoccurred the first of the many wholesale massacres of Indians on theAmerican continent. To-day it is merely a large hill, overgrown on allsides with grass, trees, and flowers, and with almost nothing to bearout the tradition that it was man-built. From the top spreads a scenerarely surpassed. Besides the four mountains, the ancient and moderntown of Cholula lies close below, with many another village, especiallytheir bulking churches, standing forth on all sides about the richvalley, cut up into squares and rectangles of rich-brown cornalternating with bright green, a gaunt, low, wall-like range cutting offthe entire circle of the horizon. The faint music of church bells frommany a town miles away rode by on a wind with the nip of the mountainsnows in it. But Prescott has already described the scene with afidelity that seems uncanny from one who never beheld it except in hismind's eye.

To-day the pyramid is sacred to the "Virgin of the Remedies." Gulliblepilgrims come from many leagues around to be cured of their ills, andhave left behind hundreds of doll-like figures of themselves or theailing limb or member made of candle wax that breaks to bits between thefingers. Then there are huge candles without number, martyrs andcrucifixions, with all the disgusting and bloody features of elsewhere;every kind and degree and shape and size of fetish. Cholula needs badlyanother Cortez to tumble her gods down to the plain below and drive outthe hordes of priests that sacrifice their flocks none the less surely,if less bloodily, than their Aztec predecessors.

A bright red sun came up as the train swung round to the eastward,hugging the flanks of Malinche, and rumbled away across a sandy, verydry, but fertile country, broken by huge barrancas or washouts, andoften with maguey hedges. Most of my day was given up to Mr. —— come tothink of it, I did not even get his name. He drifted into the train atthe junction and introduced himself by remarking that it was not badweather thereabouts. He was a tall, spare man of fifty, in a black suitrather disarranged and a black felt hat somewhat the worse for wear. Hecarried a huge pressed-cardboard "telescope" and wore a cane, though ithardly seemed cold enough for one. His language was that of ahalf-schooled man, with the paucity of vocabulary and the grammar of aship's captain who had left school early but had since read much andlived more. Whenever a noun failed him, which was often, he filled inthe blank with the word "proposition." Like myself, he traveledsecond-class because there was no fourth.

It may be that the biography which pieced itself unconsciously togetheras he talked needs a sprinkle of salt here and there, but it all had theearmarks of veracity. He was a Briton, once a surgeon in the Britisharmy, with the rank of captain, saw service with Roberts in Egypt, andwas with Kitchener at the relief of Khartum. Later he served in Indiawith the Scotch Grays. He looked the part, and had, moreover, the accentand scars to go with it. Glimpses through his conversation into thebackground beyond suggested he had since been in most parts of theworld. He liked Argentina best and the United States least, as a placeof residence. Practising as a physician and oculist, he had amassed amoderate fortune, all of which he had lost, together with his wife andchild, and possibly a bit of his own wits, in the flood of Monterey.Since that catastrophe he had had no other ambition than to earn enoughto drift on through life. With neither money nor instruments left, hetook to teaching English to the wealthier class of Mexicans in variousparts of the country, now in mission schools, now as private tutor. AMethodist institution in Querétaro had dispensed with his servicesbecause he protested against an order to make life unpleasant to thoseboys who did not respond with their spending money to a daily call foralms at the morning assembly. Six months ago he had drifted into alittle town near San Marcos, wearing the title of "professor," and gottogether a class of private pupils, chief among them three daughters ofa wealthy hacendado. Rebels came one day and in the exuberance thatfollows a full meal long delayed, with pulque embroidery, one of themfired two shots through the window not far from his venerable Britishhead. The "professor" picked up a two-foot mahogany ruler, marched outinto the plaza and, rapping the startled rebel over the skull, took hisrifle away from him and turned it over to the delighted jefepolítico. From then on his future seemed assured, for if the rest of thetown was poor, the hacendado's wealth was only rivaled by his daughters'longing for English.

But life is a sad proposition at best. On the Monday preceding ourmeeting the "professor" sat with his pupils in the shade of the broadhacienda veranda when he saw two priests wandering toward the house"like Jews with a pack of clothing to sell." "It's all up with theSwede," he told himself according to his own testimony. The prophecyproved only too true. The padres had come to order that the threedaughters be god-mothers to the "Cristo" (in the form of a gaudy doll)that was to be "born" in the town on Christmas eve and paraded to thecathedral of Puebla. As their ticket to heaven depended upon obedience,none of the faithful señoritas dreamed of declining the honor, eventhough it involved the expenditure of considerable of papá's good moneyand required them to spend most of the time until Christmas rehearsingfor the ceremony and "praising the glory of God" with the priests in aroom of the church, locked against worldly intruders. Naturally thisleft them no time for English. His mainstay gone, the "professor" threwup the sponge and struck out for pastures new, carrying his trunk-like"telescope" two hot and sandy leagues to catch this morning train.

At Esperanza the Briton went me one better on my own custom of "livingon the country." To the enchiladas, large tortillas red withpepper-sauce and generously filled with onions, and the smallertortillas covered with scraps of meat and boiled egg which we bought ofthe old women and boys that flocked about the train, he added a liter ofpulque. Not far beyond, we reached Boca del Monte, the edge of thegreat plateau of Mexico. A wealth of scenery opened out. From the windowwas a truly bird's-eye view of the scattered town of Maltrata, more thantwo thousand feet almost directly below in the center of a rich greenvalley, about the edge of which, often on the very brink of thethick-clothed precipice, the train wound round and round behind thedouble-headed engine, traveling to every point of the compass in itsdescent. The town rose up to us at last and for the first time sincemounting to San Luís Potosí two months before, I found myself less thana mile above sea-level. Instead of the often bare, wind-swept plateau,immense weeds of the banana family grew up about us, and a beautifulwinding vale reeking with damp vegetation stretched before and behind usas we slid onward. High above all else and much farther away than itseemed, stood the majestic, snow-white peak of Orizaba. In mid-afternoonwe descended at the city of that name.

It was large, but really a village in every feature of life. Here againwere the broad eaves of one-story, tile-roofed houses, stretching wellout over the badly cobbled streets, down the center of which ran opensewers. The place was unkempt and unclean, with many evidences ofpoverty, and the air so heavy and humid that vegetation grew even on theroofs. I wandered about town with the "professor" while he "sized it up"as a possible scene of his future labors, but he did not find itpromising. By night Orizaba was still well above the tropics and thesingle blanket on the hotel cot proved far from sufficient even with itsbrilliant red hue.

CHAPTER VII

TROPICAL MEXICO

It is merely a long jump with a drop of two thousand feet from Orizabato Córdoba. But the train takes eighteen miles of winding, squirming,and tunneling to get there. On the way is some of the finest scenery inMexico. The route circles for miles the yawning edge of a valley densewith vegetation, banana and orange trees without number, with huts ofleaves and stalks tucked away among them, myriads of flowers of everyshade and color, and here and there coffee bushes festooned with theirred berries. The dew falls so heavily in this region that the rankgrowth was visibly dripping with it.

At somnolent Córdoba I left the line to Vera Cruz for that to thesouthward. The car was packed with the dirty, foul-tongued wives and thechildren and bundles of a company of soldiers recently sent against therebels of Juchitan. Ever since leaving Boca del Monte the day before Ihad been coming precipitously down out of Mexico. But there were stilldescents to be found, and the train raced swiftly without effort in andout through ever denser jungle, magnificent in colors, alive with birds,a land in each square yard of which the traveler felt a longing to pauseand dwell for a while, to swing languidly under the trees, gazing at thesnow peak of Orizaba now growing farther and farther away.

Our conveyance was a species of way-freight, which whiled away most ofthe day at a speed fittingly respectful to the scenery about us. Withevery station the population grew perceptibly more lazy. The alert,eager attitude of the plateau gave place to a languorous lethargyevident in both faces and movements. People seemed less sulky than thosehigher up, more communicative and approachable, but also, strangelyenough, less courteous, apparently from laziness, a lack of the energynecessary for living up to the rules of that Mexican virtue. Theyanswered readily enough, but abruptly and indifferently, and fellquickly into their customary somnolence. For a time we skirted the RíoBlanco, boiling away toward the sea. Oranges were so plentiful they hungrotting on the trees. The jungle was dense, though by no means so muchso as those of the Far East. On either hand were hundreds of nativeshacks,—mongrel little huts of earth floors, transparent walls of asort of corn-stalk, and a thick, top-heavy roof of jungle grass orbanana leaves, set carelessly in bits of space chopped out of therampant jungle. Now and then we passed gangs of men fighting back thevegetation that threatened to swallow up the track completely.

Beautiful palm-trees began to abound, perfectly round, slender stemssupporting hundreds of immense leaves hanging edgewise in perfect archshape, perhaps the most symmetrical of all nature's works. What isthere about the palm-tree so romantic and pleasing to the spirits? Itswhisper of perpetual summer, of perennial life, perhaps. Great lusciouspineapples sold through the windows at two or three cents each. Thepeons of this region carried a machete in a leather scabbard, but stillwore a folded blanket over one shoulder, suggesting chilly nights. Thegeneral apathy of the population began to manifest itself now in thepaucity of hawkers at the stations. On the plateau the train seldomhalted without being surrounded by a jostling crowd, fighting to selltheir meager wares; here they either lolled in the shade of their bananagroves, waiting for purchasers to come and inspect their displays offruit, or they did not even trouble to offer anything for sale. Whyshould man work when his food drops year by year into his lap withouteven replanting? Moreover, flat noses and kinky hair were growing moreand more in evidence.

Not all was jungle. As the mountains died down and faded away in thewest there opened out many broad meadows in which were countless sleekcattle tended by somnolent herdsmen on horseback. Much sugar-cane grew,lengths of which were sold to the brawling soldiers' wives and thecarload in general, which was soon reeking with the juice and chewedpulp. By afternoon jungle was a rarity and most of the country was arich sort of prairie with cattle without number, and here and there animmense tree to break the monotony. These rich bottomlands that seemedcapable of producing anything in unlimited quantities were almostentirely uncultivated. At several stations there bulked above thethrong white men in appearance like a cross between farmers andmissionaries, the older ones heavily bearded. For a time I could notcatalogue them. Then, as we pulled out of one town, two of what but fortheir color and size I should have taken for peons raced for the lastcar-step, one shouting to the other in the strongest of Hoosier accents:

"Come on, Bud, let's jemp 'er!"

Which both did, riding some sixty feet, and dropped off like men who hadat last had their one daily excitement. Inquiry proved that theybelonged to a colony of Mormons that has settled in several groups inthis region, where nature sets their creed a prolific example.

Unbroken prairies, in their tropical form, now stretched as far as theeye could reach, with just the shade of a shadowy range in the farwest. The heat had not once grown oppressive during the day.

With dusk it turned almost cold. We wound slowly on into the damp, heavynight, a faint full moon struggling to tear itself a peep-hole throughthe clouds, and finally at ten, seat-sore with fifteen hours ofslat-bench riding, pulled up at Santa Lucrecia.

It was just such a town as dozens of others we had passed that day; aplain station building surrounded unevenly by a score or so ofbanana-grove huts. Here ends the railroad southward, joining thatacross the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. From the track of the latter a woodensidewalk that rang drum-hollow under my heels led across a gully ofunknown depth in the black night to the Hotel "El Sol Mejicano,"standing-room for which had been gashed out of the jungle. It was awooden and sheet-iron building on stilts, swarming even at night withdirty children, pigs, chickens, and yellow dogs, and presided over by aglassy-eyed, slatternly woman of French antecedents, the general shapeof a wine-skin three-fourths full, and of a ghoulish instinct toward thepurses of travelers. In one end were a dozen "rooms," separated bypartitions reaching half way to the sheet-iron roof, and in the other asingle combination of grocery and general store, saloon and pool-table,assorted filth and the other attributes of outposts of civilization. Thechambers were not for rent, but only the privilege of occupying one ofthe several beds in each. These fortunately were fairly clean, with goodsprings and mosquito canopies, but with only a quilt formattress—unless it was meant for cover—a single sheet, and the usualtwo little, round, hard mountainous pillows. Otherwise the cabins werewholly unfurnished, even to windows. The train that had brought us inspent the night bucking and jolting back and forth near by; even abarefoot servant walking anywhere in the building or on the veranda setthe edifice rocking as in an earthquake; two Mexicans occupying the"room" next to my own—more properly, the one I helped occupy—bawledanecdotes and worse at the top of their voices most of the night; guestswere hawking and spitting and coughing incessantly in various parts ofthe house; at three a servant began beating on the door with somethingin the nature of a sledge-hammer to know if I wished to take the trainAtlantic-bound, and refused to accept a negative answer; my room-mateheld the world's record for snoring; at the first suggestion of dawnevery child, chicken, and assorted animal in the building and vicinityset up its greatest possible uproar; and I was half-frozen all night,even under all the clothing I possessed. Except for these fewannoyances, I slept splendidly. There was at least the satisfaction ofknowing that a traveling millionaire obliged to pass a night in SantaLucrecia would spend it no better.

Everything was dripping wet when I fled back across the aërial sidewalkto the station. It was not hot, but there was a dense, heavy atmospherein which one felt he could be as lively and industrious as elsewhere,yet found himself dragging listlessly around as thenever-do-anything-you-don't-have-to inhabitants. Even the boyish trainauditor had an irresponsible lackadaisical manner, and permitted allsorts of petty railway misdemeanors. The childishness of tropicalpeoples was evident on every hand. There was no second-class car onthis line, but one third, all but empty when we started, evidently notbecause most bought first-class tickets but because the auditor was ofthe tropics. Endless jungle covered all the visible world, with only theline of rails crowding through it. The cocoanut palms and thosetop-heavy with what looked like enormous bunches of dates soon died outas we left the vicinity of the coast. At Rincon Antonio the car filledup, and among the new-comers were many of the far-famed women ofTehuantepec. Some were of striking beauty, almost all were splendidphysical specimens and all had a charming and alluring smile. Theydressed very briefly—a gay square of cloth about their limbs,carelessly tucked in at the waist, and a sleeveless upper garment thatfailed to make connections with the lower, recalling the women ofCeylon. The absence of any other garments was all too evident. Almostall wore in their jet-black hair a few red flowers, all displayed sixinches or more of silky brown skin at the waist, and the majority worenecklaces of gold coins, generally American five and ten dollar goldpieces. To see one of them stretched out at full length on a seat,smoking a cigarette and in animated conversation with a man that fiveminutes before had been a total stranger, might have suggested a certainlooseness of character. But this was denied by their facial expression,which bore out the claim of a chance acquaintance long resident amongthem that they are very frank, "simple," and friendly, but far more aptto keep within a well-defined limit than the average of tropical women.Tehuantepec, indeed, is the land of "woman's rights." The men havingbeen largely killed off during the days of Diaz, the feminine stock isto-day the sturdier, more intelligent, and industrious, and arrogates toitself a far greater freedom than the average Mexican woman. Many ofthose in the car spoke the local Indian dialect, Zapoteca, but allseemed possessed of fluent Spanish.

Yet how different was all the carload from what we have come to consider"civilized" people. If the aim of humanity is to be happy in thepresent, then these languid, brown races are on the right track. Ifthat aim is to advance, develop, and accomplish, they must be classedwith the lower animals.

For a half hour before reaching Rincon Antonio, we had been winding witha little brawling river through a hilly gorge dense-grown withvegetation. The town was in the lull between two revolts. A bare fourdays before, a former chief and his followers had been taken by thepopulace and shot behind the water-tank beside where we paused at thestation. A week later new riots were to break out. But today the placewas sunk in its customary languor, and only a few bullet-ridden wallsand charred ruins hinted its recent history.

I had pictured the Isthmus of Tehuantepec a flat neck of land from oceanto ocean. But the imagination is a deceitful guide. Beyond the town ofthe water-tank we wormed for miles through mountains higher than theBerkshires, resembling them indeed in form and wealth of vegetation,though with a tropical tinge. The jungle, however, died out, and thetrain crawled at a snail's pace, often looping back upon itself, throughlandscapes in which the organ-cactus was most conspicuous. Even here thegreat chain known as the Rockies and the Andes, that stretches fromAlaska to Patagonia, imposes a considerable barrier between the twoseas. There was a cosmopolitan tinge to this region, and theboinas of Basques mingled with the cast-iron faces of Americansand sturdy self-possessed Negroes under broad "Texas" hats. An hourbeyond the hills, in a thick-wooded land, I dropped off at the town ofTehuantepec, an intangible place that I had some difficulty indefinitely locating in the thickening darkness.

Here was a new kind of Mexico. In many things, besides the naked, brownwaists of the women, it carried the mind back to Ceylon. There were thesame reed and thatched huts, almost all surrounded by spacious yardsfenced by corn-stalk walls through which the inmates could see easilybut be seen with difficulty. Here, too, boys went naked until theapproach of puberty; the cocoanut palms, the dense banana groves, eventhe huge earthen water-jars before the houses recalled the charming isleof the Singhalese, and if the people were less kindly to the strangerthey were much more joyful and full of laughter than the Mexican of theplateau. In this perhaps they had more in common with the Burmese. Themen, often almost white in color, wore few large hats, never oneapproaching those of the highlands. The hotter the sun, the smaller thehat, seems to be the rule in Mexico. Here it was hot, indeed; a dense,thick, tangible heat, that if it did not sap the strength suggested thehusbanding of it.

A fiesta raged on the night of my arrival. The not too musical blare ofa band drew me to a wide, inclined street paved in sand, at the blindend of which were seated five rows of women in as many gradations, andeverywhere shuttled men and boys, almost all in white trousers, with ashirt of the same color, Chinese-fashion, outside it, commonly barefootwith or without sandals. A few even wore shoes. I hesitated to join thethrong. The subconscious expectation of getting a knife or a bullet inthe back grows second nature in Mexico. Few foreigners but havecontracted the habit of stepping aside to let pass a man who hangs longat their heels. The approach of a staggering, talkative peon was alwaysan occasion for alertness, and one that came holding a hand behind himwas an object of undivided curiosity until the concealed memberappeared, clutching perhaps nothing more interesting than a cigar or abanana. Mexicans in crowds, mixed with liquor and "religion," werealways worth attention; and here was just such a mixture, for the fiestawas in honor of the Virgin, and the libations that had been poured outin her honor were generous. But the drink of Tehuantepec, whatever itmight be—for pulque is unknown in the tropics—appeared to make itsdevotees merely gay and boisterous. The adults were friendly, even to anAmerican, and the children shouted greetings to me as "Señor Gringo,"which here is merely a term of nationality and no such opprobrious titleas it has grown to be on the plateau.

A few rockets had suggested an incipient revolution while I was atsupper. Now the scene of the festivities was enlivened by four hugeset-pieces of fireworks, each with a bell-shaped base in which a mancould ensconce himself to the waist. One in the form of a duck firsttook to human legs and capered about the square while its network ofrockets, pin-wheels, sizzlers, twisters, cannon-like explosions, andjets of colored fire kept the multitude surging back and forth sometwenty minutes, to the accompaniment of maudlin laughter and the dancingand screaming of children, while the band, frankly giving up its vainattempts to produce music, gazed with all eyes and blew an unattentive,never-ending rag-time of some two strains. A monster turkey took up thecelebration where the charred and disheveled duck left off, caperingitself into blazing and uproarious oblivion. The finale consisted of twogigantic figures of a man and a woman, with a marvelous array of allpossible lights and noises that lasted a full half-hour, while the twobarefoot wearers danced back and forth bowing and careering to eachother. The aftermath ran far into the night, and brought to naught myplans to make up for the sleepless night before.

Though most of the inhabitants of Tehuantepec live on earth floors inreed and grass houses, there is scarcely a sign of sufferingpoverty. Little Spanish is heard among them, although even the childrenseem quite able to speak it. Their native Indian tongue differs from theCastilian even in cadence, so that it was easy to tell which idiom wasbeing spoken even before the words were heard. It is the chief medium ofthe swarming market in and about the black shadows of a roof onlegs. Here the frank and self-possessed women, in their brief and simpledress, were legion. Footwear is unknown to them, and the loose,two-piece, disconnected dress was augmented, if at all, with a blacklace shawl thrown over the shoulders in the, to them, chillymornings. But the most remarkable part of the costume, of decorativeproperties only, is the head-dress common to a large per cent, of thewomen in town. From the back of the otherwise bare head hangs to thewaist an intricate contrivance of lace and ruffles, snow-white andstarched stiff, the awful complications of which no mere male would beable to describe beyond the comprehensive statement that the ensemblemuch resembles a Comanche chief in full war regalia. Above this theycarry their loads on their heads in a sort of gourd bowl decorated withflowers, and walk with a sturdy self-sufficiency that makes a veranda orbridge quake under their brown-footed tread. They are lovers of color,especially here where the Pacific breezes turn the jungle to theeastward into a gaunt, sandy, brown landscape, and such combinations assoft-red skirts and sea-blue waists, or the reverse, mingle with blackshot through with long perpendicular yellow stripes. The strikingbeauties of many a traveler's hectic imagination were not in evidence.But then, it is nowhere customary to find a town's best selling sapotesand fish in the market-place, and at least the attractiveness rankedhigh compared with a similar scene in any part of the world, whilecleanliness was far more popular than in the highlands to the north.

The foreigner in Mexico is often surprised at the almost impossibilityof getting the entree into its family life. American residents of highposition are often intimate friends for years of Mexican men in theircafés and male gatherings, without ever stepping across theirthresholds. Much of the seclusion of the Moor still holds, even half aworld distant from the land of its origin. Yet his racialpseudo-courtesy leads the Mexican frequently to extend an invitationwhich only long experience teaches the stranger is a mere meaninglessformality. On the train from Córdoba I spent considerable time inconversation with a well-to-do youth of Tehuantepec, during which I wasformally invited at least a dozen times to visit him at his home. Hefailed to meet me at the rendezvous set, but was effusive when I ranacross him in the evening round of the plaza:

"Ah, amigo mío. Muy buenas noches. Como 'stá uste-e-é? So delighted! Iwas grieved beyond measure to miss you. I live in the Calle Reforma,number 83. There you have your own house. I am going there now. Do younot wish to accompany me? I have…."

"Yes, I should like to look in on you for a few moments."

"Ah, I was so sorry to miss you," he went on, standing stock still. "Imust give you my address and you must write me, and I you."

There followed an exchange of cards with great formality and manyprotestations of eternal friendship; then an effusive hand-shake and:

"Mil gracias, señor. May you have a most pleasant voyage. Thanksagain. So pleased to have met you. Adiós. May you travel well. Hastaluego. Adiós. Que le vaya bien," and with a flip of the hand and awriggling of the fingers he was gone.

That evening I returned early to the "Hotel La Perla." Its entire forcewas waiting for me. This consisted of Juan, a cheery, slight fellow in ablue undershirt and speckled cotton trousers of uncertain age, who waswaiter, chambermaid, porter, bath-boy, sweeper, general swipe, possiblycook, and in all but name proprietor; the nominal one being a sphericalnative on the down-grade of life who never moved twice in the same dayif it could be avoided, leaving the establishment to run itself, andaccepting phlegmatically what money it pleased Providence to sendhim. The force was delighted at the pleasure of having a guest to waitupon, and stood opposite me all through the meal, offering gems ofassorted wisdom intermingled with wide-ranging questions. I called foran extra blanket and turned in soon after dark. There reigned adelicious stillness that promised ample reparation for the two nightspast. Barely had I drowsed off, however, when there intruded thechattering of several men in the alleyway and yard directly outside mywindow. "They'll soon be gone," I told myself, turning over. But I wasover-optimistic. The voices increased, those of women chimingin. Louder and louder grew the uproar. Then a banjo-like instrumentstruck up, accompanying the most dismally mournful male voiceconceivable, wailing a monotonous refrain of two short lines. Thisincreased in volume until it might be heard a mile away. Male and femalechoruses joined in now and then. In the snatches between, the monotonousvoice wailed on, mingled with laughter and frequent disputes. I rose atlast to peer out the window. In the yard were perhaps a half-hundrednatives, all seated on the ground, some with their backs against thevery wall of my room, nearly all smoking, and with many pots of liquorpassing from hand to hand. Midnight struck, then one, then two; andwith every hour the riot increased. Once or twice I drifted into a shorttroubled dream, to be aroused with a start by a new burst ofpandemonium. Then gradually the sounds subsided almost entirely. Mywatch showed three o'clock. I turned over again, grateful for the fewhours left … and in that instant, without a breath of warning, thereburst out the supreme cataclysm of a band of some twenty hoarse andbattered pieces in an endless, unfathomable noise that never once pausedfor breath until daylight stole in at the window.

At "breakfast" I took Juan to task.

"Ah, señor," he smiled, "it is too bad. But yesterday a man died in thehouse next door, and his friends have come to celebrate."

"And keep the whole town awake all night?"

"Ay, senor, it is unfortunate indeed. But what would you? People willdie, you know."

Sleep is plainly not indigenous to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

From the neighboring town of Gamboa there runs southward a railway knownas the "Pan-American." Its fares are high and a freight-train behind anancient, top-heavy engine drags a single passenger-car divided into twoclasses with it on its daily journey. The ticket-agent had no change,and did not know whether the end of the line was anywhere nearGuatemala, though he was full of stories of the dangers to travelers inthat country. A languid, good-natured crowd filled the car. We are soaccustomed to think of lack of clothing as an attribute of savages thatit was little short of startling to see a young lady opposite, naked tothe waist but for a scanty and transparent suggestion of upper garment,read the morning newspaper and write a note with the savoir-faire of aParisienne in her boudoir. She wore a necklace of American five-dollargold pieces, with a pendant of twenties, the Goddess of Liberty and thedate, 1898, on the visible side, and as earrings two older coins of$2.50. Nearly every woman in the car was thus decorated to some extent,always with the medallion side most in evidence, and one could see at aglance exactly how much each was worth.

In a long day's travel we covered 112 miles. At Juchitán the passengersthinned. Much of this town had recently been destroyed in therevolution, and close to the track stood a crowded cemetery withhundreds of gorged and somnolent zopilotes, the carrion-crow ofMexico, about it. The country was a blazing dry stretch of mesquite andrare patches of forest in a sandy soil, with huts so few that the trainhalted at each of them, as if to catch its breath and wipe the sweat outof its eyes. Once, toward noon, we caught a glimpse of the Pacific. Butall the day there spread on either hand an arid region with bare rockyhills, a fine sand that drifted in the air, and little vegetation exceptthe thorny mesquite. A few herds of cattle were seen, but they were asrare as the small towns of stone huts and frontiers-man aspect. Thetrain passed the afternoon like a walker who knows he can easily reachhis night's destination, and strolled leisurely into Tonolá beforesunset.

Beyond the wild-west hotel lay a sweltering sand town of a few streetsatrociously cobbled. We had reached the land of hammocks. Not a hut didI peep into that did not have three or four swinging lazily above theuneven earth floor. In the center of the broad, unkempt expanse thatserved as plaza stood an enormous pochote, a species ofcottonwood tree, and about it drowsed a Sunday evening gathering halfseen in the dim light of lanterns on the stands of hawkers. On a darkcorner three men and a boy were playing a marimba, a frame withdried bars of wood as keys which, beaten with small wooden mallets, gaveoff a weird, half-mournful music that floated slowly away into the heavyhot night. The women seemed physically the equal of those ofTehuantepec, but their dress was quite different, a single loose whitegown cut very low at the neck and almost without sleeves. One with awhite towel on her head and hanging loosely about her shoulders lookedstartlingly like an Egyptian female figure that had stepped forth fromthe monuments of the Nile. Their brown skins were lustrous as silk,every line of their lithe bodies of a Venus-like development and theystood erect as palm-trees, or slipped by in the sand-paved night undertheir four-gallon' American oilcans of water with a silent, sylph-liketread.

The train, like an experienced tropical traveler, started at the firstpeep of dawn. Tonolá marked the beginning of a new style of landscape,heralding the woodlands of Guatemala. All was now dense and richlygreen, not exactly jungle, but with forests of huge trees, draped withclimbing vines, interlarded with vistas of fat cattle by the hundreds upto their bellies in heavy green grass, herds of which now and thenbrought us almost to a standstill by stampeding across the track. Incontrast to the day before there were many villages, a kind of crossbetween the jungle towns of Siam and the sandy hamlets of our "WildWest." A number had sawmills for the mahogany said to abound in theregion. Now and then a pretty lake alive with wild fowl appeared in aframe of green. There were many Negroes, and not a few Americans amongthe ranchers, sawmill hands and railway employees, while John Chinaman,forbidden entrance to the country to the south, as to that north of theRio Grande, put in a frequent appearance, as in all Mexico. It was alanguorous, easy-going land, where day-before-yesterday's paper wasnews. The sulky stare of the Mexican plateau had completelydisappeared, and in its place was much laughter and an unobtrusivefriendliness, and a complete lack of obsequiousness even on the part ofthe peons, who elbowed their way in and out among all classes as ifthere were no question as to the equality of all mankind. The dailyarrival of the train seemed to be the chief recreation of the populace,so that there were signs of protest if it made only a brief stop. Butthere was seldom cause for this complaint, for the swollen-headed oldengine was still capable of so much more than the schedule required thatit was forced to make a prolonged stay at almost every station to letFather Time catch up with us.

The rumor ran that those who would enter Guatemala must get permissionof its consul in Tapachula. But our own representative at that townchanced to board the train at a wayside hamlet and found the papers Icarried sufficient. Two fellow countrymen raced away into the place asthe train drew in, and returned drenched with sweat in time to continuewith our leisurely convoy. Dakin was a boyish man from the NorthernStates, and Ems a swarthy "Texican" to whom Spanish was more native thanEnglish, both wandering southward in quest of jobs, as stationary andlocomotive engineers respectively. They rode first-class, though thisdid not imply wealth, but merely that Pat Cassidy was conductor. He wasa burly, whole-hearted American, supporting an enormous, flaringmustache and, by his own admission, all the "busted" white men travelingbetween Mexico and Guatemala. While I kept the seat to which my ticketentitled me, he passed me with a look of curiosity not unmixed with ahint of scorn. When I stepped into the upholstered class to ask him aquestion he bellowed, "Si' down!" The inquiry answered, I rose to leave,only to be brought down again with a shout of, "Keep yer seat!" It is nofault of Cassidy's if a "gringo" covers the Pan-American on foot orseated with peons, or goes hungry and thirsty or tobaccoless on thejourney; and penniless strangers are not conspicuous by their absencealong this route. As a Virginia Negro at one of the stations put itsuccinctly, "If dey ain't black, dey'se white."

A jungle bewilderment of vegetation grew up about us, with richclearings for little clusters of palm-leaf huts, jungles so dense theeye could not penetrate them. Laughing women, often of strikinglyattractive features, peopled every station, perfect in form as a Greekstatue, and with complexions of burnished bronze. Everywhere wasevidence of a constant joy in life and of a placid conviction thatProvidence or some other philanthropist who had always taken care of themalways would. Teeth were not so universally splendid as on the plateau,but the luminous, snapping black eyes more than made up for this lessperfect feature.

Nightfall found us still rumbling lazily on and it was nearly an hourlater that we reached Mariscal at the end of the line, four or fivescattered buildings of which two disguised themselves under the name ofhotels. Ems and I slept—or more exactly passed the night—on cots inone of the rooms of transparent partitions, while Dakin, who refused toaccept alms for anything so useless, spread a grass mat among the dozennative women stretched out along the veranda.

CHAPTER VIII

HURRYING THROUGH GUATEMALA

The three of us were off by the time the day had definitely dawned. Emscarried a heavy suitcase, and Dakin an awkward bundle. My own modestbelongings rode more easily in a rucksack. A mile walk along an unusedrailroad, calf-high in jungle grass, brought us to a wooden bridgeacross the wide but shallow Suchiate, bounding Mexico on thesouth. Across its plank floor and beyond ran the rails of the"Pan-American," but the trains halt at Mariscal because Guatemala, ormore exactly Estrada Cabrera, does not permit them to enter his greatand sovereign republic. Our own passage looked easy, but that wasbecause of our inexperience of Central American ways. Scarcely had weset foot on the bridge when there came racing out of a palm-leaf hut onthe opposite shore three male ragamuffins in bare feet, shouting as theyran. One carried an antedeluvian, muzzle-loading musket, another anancient bayonet red with rust, and the third swung threateningly what Itook to be a stiff piece of telegraph wire.

"No se pasa!" screamed the three in chorus, spreading out in skirmishline like an army ready to oppose to the death the invasion of a hostileforce. "No one can pass the bridge!"

"But why not?" I asked.

"Because Guatemala does not allow it."

"Do you mean to say three caballeros with money and passports—and shoesare denied admittance to the great and famous Republic of Guatemala?"

"Not at all, senor, but you must come by boat. The Pope himself cannotcross this bridge."

It would have been unkind to throw them into the river, so we returnedto a cluster of huts on the Mexican bank. Before it drowsed a half-dozenancient and leaky boats. But here again were grave internationalformalities to be arranged. A Mexican official led us into one of thehuts and set down laboriously in a ledger our names, professions,bachelordoms, and a mass of even more personal information.

"You are Catholic, señor," he queried with poised pen, eying mesuspiciously.

"No, señor."

"Ah, Protestant," he observed, starting to set down that conclusion.

"Tampoco."

There came a hitch in proceedings. Plainly there was no precedent tofollow in considering the application of so non-existent a being forpermission to leave Mexico. The official smoked a cigarette pensivelyand idly turned over the leaves of the ledger.

"Será ateo," said a man behind him, swelling his chest with pride at hisextraordinary intelligence.

"That doesn't fill the bill either," I replied, "nor any other singleword I can think of."

But the space for this particular item of information was cramped. Wefinally compromised on "Sin religión," and I was allowed to leave thecountry. A boatman tugged and poled some twenty minutes before we couldscramble up the steep, jungle-grown bank beyond. At the top of it werescattered a dozen childish looking soldiers in the most unkempt anddisheveled array of rags and lack thereof a cartoonist couldpicture. They formed in a hollow square about us and steered us towardthe "comandancia," a few yards beyond. This was a thatched mud hut witha lame bench and a row of aged muskets in the shade along itswall. Another bundle of rags emerged in his most pompous, authoritativedemeanor, and ordered us to open our baggage. Merely by accident Iturned my rucksack face down on the bench, so there is no means ofknowing whether the kodak and weapon in the front pockets of it wouldhave been confiscated or held for ransom, had they been seen. I shouldbe inclined to answer in the affirmative. In the hut our passports werecarefully if unintelligently examined, and we were again fullycatalogued. Estrada Cabrera follows with great precision the movementsof foreigners within his boundaries.

In the sandy jungle town of Ayutla just beyond, two of us multiplied ourwealth many times over without the least exertion. That Dakin did notalso was only due to the unavoidable fact that he had no multiplicand toset over the multiplier. I threw down Mexican money to the value of$8.30 and had thrust upon me a massive roll of $150. The only drawbackwas that the bills had led so long and maltreated a life that their facevalue had to be accepted chiefly on faith, for a ten differed from a oneonly as one Guatemalan soldier differs from his fellows, in that eachwas much more tattered and torn than the other. After all there is adelicate courtesy in a government's supplying an illiterate populationwith illegible money; no doubt experience knows other distinguishingmarks, such as the particular breeds of microbes that is accustomed toinhabit each denomination; for even inexperience could easily recognizethat each was so infested. I mistake in saying this was the onlydrawback. There was another. The wanderer who drops into a hut for abanana and a bone-dry biscuit, washed down with a small bottle ofluke-warm fizzling water, hears with a pang akin to heart-failure alanguid murmur of "Four dollars, señor," in answer to his request forthe bill. It is not easy to get accustomed to hearing such sumsmentioned in so casual a manner.

A little narrow-gage "railway" crawls off through the jungle beyondAyutla, but the train ran on it yesterday and to-morrow. To-day therewas nothing to do but swing on our loads and strike off southward. Themorning air was fresh and the eastern jungle wall threw heavy shade fora time. But that time soon came to an end and I plodded on under a sunthat multiplied the load on my back by at least the monetary multiple ofGuatemala. Ems and Dakin quickly demonstrated a deep dislike to tropicaltramping, though both laid claim to the degree of T. T. T. conferred on"gringo" rovers in Central America. I waited for them several times invain and finally pushed on to the sweltering, heat-pulsating town ofPahapeeta, where every hut sold bottled firewater and a diminutive boxof matches cost a dollar. Grass huts tucked away in dense groves alongthe route were inhabited by all but naked brown people, kindly disposed,so it required no exertion, toward a passing stranger. Before noon thejungle opened out upon an ankle-deep sea of sand, across which I plowedunder a blazing sun that set even the bundle on my back dripping withsweat.

But at least there was a broad river on the farther side of it thatlooked inviting enough to reward a whole day of tramping. The place wascalled Vado Ancho—the "Wide Wade"; though that was no longer necessary,for the toy railroad that operated to-morrow and yesterday had brought abridge with it. I scrambled my way along the dense-grown farther bank,and found a place to descend to a big shady rock just fitted for asiesta after a swim. Barely had I begun to undress, however, when threebrown and barefoot grown-up male children, partly concealed inastounding collections of rags, two with ancient muskets and the thirdwith a stiff piece of wire, tore through the bushes and surrounded mewith menacing attitudes.

"What are you doing here?" cried the least naked.

"Why the idle curiosity?"

"You are ordered to come to the comandancia."

I scrambled back up the bank and plodded across another sand patchtoward a small collection of jungle huts, the three "soldiers" crowdingclose about me and wearing the air of brave heroes who had saved theircountry from a great conspiracy. Lazy natives lay grinning in the shadeas I passed. One of the lop-shouldered, thatched huts stood on a hillockabove the rest. When we had sweated up to this, a military order rangout in a cracked treble and some twenty brown scarecrows lined up in theshade of the eaves in a Guatemalan idea of order. About half of themheld what had once been muskets; the others were armed with what I hadhitherto taken for lengths of pilfered telegraph wire, but which now oncloser inspection proved to be ramrods. Thus each arm made only twoarmed men, whereas a bit of ingenuity might have made each serve threeor four; by dividing the stocks and barrels, for instance. Thetatterdemalion of the treble fiercely demanded my passport, while the"army" quickly degenerated into a ragged rabble loafing in the shade.

I started to lay my rucksack on the bench along the wall, but one of thefellows sprang up with a snarl and flourished his ramrodthreateningly. It was evidently a lèse militarismus worthy ofcapital punishment for a civilian to pass between a pole supporting theeaves and the mud wall of the building. I was forced to stand in theblazing sunshine and claw out my papers. They were in English, but thecaricature of an officer concealed his ignorance before his fellows bypretending to read them and at length gave me a surly permission towithdraw. No wonder Central America is a favorite locale forcomic opera librettos.

I descended again to the river for a swim, but had not yet stretched outfor a siesta when there came pushing through the undergrowth three more"soldiers," this time all armed with muskets.

"What's up now?"

"The colonel wants to see you in the comandancia."

"But I just saw your famous colonel."

"No, that was only the teniente."

When I reached the hilltop again, dripping with the heat of noonday, Iwas permitted to sit on an adobe brick in the sacred shade. The colonelwas sleeping. He recovered from that tropical ailment in time, and arumor came floating out that he was soon to honor us with hisdistinguished presence. The soldiers made frantic signs to me to riseto my feet. Like Kingslake before the Turkish pasha, I felt that thehonor of my race and my own haughty dignity were better served byinsisting on social equality even to a colonel, and stuck doggedly tothe adobe brick. The rumor proved a false alarm anyway. No doubt thegreat man had turned over in his sleep.

By and by the lieutenant came to say the commander was in his office,and led the way there. At the second door of the mud-and-straw buildinghe paused to add in an awe-struck whisper:

"Take off your hat and wait until he calls you in."

Instead I stepped toward the entrance, but the teniente snatched at theslack of my shirt with a gasp of terror:

"Por Diós! Take off your revolver! If the colonel sees it…."

I shook him off and, marching in with martial stride and a haughtycarelessness of attitude, sat down in the only chair in the room exceptthat occupied by the commander, with a hearty:

"Buenas tardes, colonel."

He was a typical guatemalteco in whole trousers and an open shirt, butof some education, for he was writing with moderate rapidity at hishomemade desk. He also wore shoes. His manner was far more reasonablethan that of his illiterate underlings, and we were soon conversingrationally. He appeared to know enough English to get the gist of mypassport, but handed it back with the information that I should haveofficial Guatemalan permission to exist within the confines of hiseighteen-for-a-dollar country.

"You carry an apparatus for the making of photographs," he wenton. "Suppose you had taken a picture of our fortress and garrison here?"

"Gar—How's that, señor?"

"It is the law of all countries, as you know, not to allow thephotographing of places of military importance. Even the English wouldarrest you if you took a picture of Gibraltar."

It was careless of me not to have noted the striking similarity of thisstronghold to that at the entrance to the Mediterranean. Both stand onhills.

"And where do I get this official permission?"

"Impossible."

"Yet necessary?"

But I still carried Mexican cigarettes, a luxury in Guatemala, so weparted friends, with the manners of a special envoy taking leave of aprime minister. The only requirement was that I should not open mykodak within sight of this hotbed of military importance. I all butmade the fatal error of passing between the sacred eave-post and thewall upon my exit, but sidestepped in time to escape unscathed, and leftthe great fortress behind and above me.

After all I had been far more fortunate than a fellow countryman I metlater, who had had a $200 camera smashed by this same ragged "garrison."

Siesta time was past and I struck on out of town. In the last hut anold woman called out to know why I had gone down to the river, andshowed some suspicion at my answer.

"There are so many countries trying to get our war plans," sheexplained.

A trail wide enough for single-wheeled vehicles crowded its way betweenjungle walls. In the breathless, blazing sunshine the sweat passedthrough my rucksack and into my formal city garments beyond, carryingthe color of the sack with it. For some time no one was abroad except adripping "gringo" and a rare cargador in barely the rags necessary toescape complete nakedness, who greeted me subserviently and gave me mostof the road. The Indians of the region were inferior in physique tothose of the Mexican plateau, ragged beyond words, and far from handsomein appearance. Their little thatched huts swarmed, however, and almostall displayed something to sell, chiefly strong native liquor in bottlesthat had seen long and varied service. There was nothing to eat butoranges green in color. The way was often strewn with hundreds of hugeorange-colored ones, but they were more sour than lemons and oftenbitter. A tropical downpour drove me once into the not too effectiveshelter of the jungle, and with sunset a drizzle set in with a promiseof increase. A woodchopper had told me I could not reach my proposeddestination that night, but I pressed forward at my best pace up hilland down through an all but continuous vegetation and surprised myselfby stumbling soon after dark upon electric-lighted Coatepeque, the firstreal town of Guatemala, and not a very real one at that.

However, a burly American ran a hotel where the bill for supper andlodging was only $15, and if the partitions of my room were bare theywere of mahogany, as were also the springs of the bed. The pilfering ofan extra mattress softened this misfortune somewhat, and toward morningit grew cool enough to stop sweating. When I descended in the morning,Ems and Dakin were sitting over their coffee and eggs. They had paid $5each to ride in a covered bullock cart from Vado Ancho—and be churnedto a pulp.

Reunited, we pushed on in the morning shadows. Ems and Dakin dividedthe weight of the former's suitcase; but even after the "Texican" hadthrown away two heavy books on locomotive driving, both groaned undertheir loads. The sun of Guatemala does not lighten the burdens of thetrail. Ems had boarded the bullock cart the proud possessor of a bar ofsoap, but this morning he found it a powder and sprinkled it along theway. Soap is out of keeping with Guatemalan local color anyway. Denseforests continued, but here almost all had an undergrowth of coffeebushes. Some of the largest coffee fincas of Guatemala lie alongthis road, producing annually to hundreds of thousands in gold. Suchprosperity was not reflected in the population and toilers. The nativeswere ragged, but friendly, every man carrying a machete, generally in aleather scabbard, and the women almost without exception enormous loadsof fruit. They were weak, unintelligent, pimple-faced mortals, speakingan Indian dialect and using Spanish only with difficulty. Ragged Indiangirls were picking coffee here and there, even more tattered carrierslugged it in sacks and baskets to large, cement-floored spaces near theestate houses, where men shoveled the red berries over and over in thesun and old women hulled them in the shade of their huts.

Jungle trees, often immense and polished smooth as if they had beenflayed of their bark, gave us dense cool shade, scented by countlesswild flowers. But en cambio the soft dirt road climbed and wound anddescended all but incessantly, gradually working its way higher, untilwe could look out now and then over hundreds of square miles of hotcountry with barely a break in all its expanse of dense, steamingvegetation. Coffee continued, but alternated now with the slender treesof rubber plantations, with their long smooth leaves, and alreadyscarred like young warriors long inured to battle. The road was reallyonly an enlarged trail, not laid out, but following the route of thefirst Indian who picked his way over these jungled hills. Huts wereseldom lacking; poor, ragged, cheerful Indians never. In the afternoonthe trail pitched headlong down and around through a rock-spilledbarranco with two sheer walls of the densest jungle and forest shuttingit in. Where it crossed a stream, Dakin and I found a shaded, sandyhollow scooped out behind a broad flat rock in the form of a hugebathtub of water, clearer than any adjective will describe. Ems, whoseswarthy tint and strong features suggested the opposite, was the leastable to endure the hardships of the road, and lay lifeless in the shadeat every opportunity.

The road panted by a rocky zigzag up out of the ravine again and on overrough and hilly going. Here I fell into conversation with an Indianfinca laborer, a slow, patient, ox-like fellow, to whom it had plainlynever occurred to ask himself why he should live in misery and hisemployers in luxury. He spoke a slow and labored, yet considerable,Spanish, of which he was unable to pronounce the f or v; saying "pinca"for finca and "pale" for vale. Those of his class worked from five tofive shoveling coffee or carrying it, with two hours off for breakfastand almuerzo, were paid one Guatemalan dollar a day, that is, afraction over five cents in our money, and furnished two arrobas (fiftypounds) of corn and frijoles and a half-pound of salt a month. Yet thereare no more trustworthy employees than these underpaid fellows. Aspay-day approaches, one of these same ragged Indians is given a grainsack and a check for several thousand dollars gold and sent to the townwhere the finca owner does his banking, often several days' distant. Thesack half filled with the ragged bills of the Republic and theircustomary microbes, the Indian shoulders it and tramps back across thecountry to the estate, stopping at night in some wayside hut and tossingthe sack into a corner, perhaps to leave it for hours while he visitshis friends in the vicinity. Yet though both the messenger and his hostsknow the contents of his bundle, it is very rare that a single illegiblebillete disappears en route.

We plodded on into the night, but Ems could only drag at a turtle-pace,and it became evident we could not make Retalhuleu without giving himtime to recuperate. The first large hut in the scattered village ofAcintral gave us hospitality. It was earth-floored, with a few homemadechairs, and a bed with board floor. Though barely four feet wide, thiswas suggested as the resting-place of all three of us after a supper ofjet-black coffee, native bread, and cheese. Dakin and I found it morethan crowded, even after Ems had spread a petate, or grass-mat,on the ground. The room had no door, and women and girls wanderedindifferently in and out of it as we undressed, one mite of barely sixsmoking a huge black cigar in the most business-like manner. The placewas a species of saloon, like almost every hut along the road, and theshouting of the family and their thirsty townsmen seldom ceased evenmomentarily until after midnight.

Having occasion to be in Guatemala City that day, I rose at two and,swallowing a cup of black coffee and two raw eggs and paying a bill of$12, struck out to cover the two long leagues left to Retalhuleu in timeto catch the six-o'clock train. The moon on its waning quarter had justrisen, but gave little assistance during an extremely difficulttramp. All was blackest darkness except where it cast a few silverystreaks through the trees, the road a mere wild trail left by the rainyseason far rougher than any plowed field, where it would have been onlytoo easy to break a leg or sprain an ankle. Bands of dogs, barkingsavagely, dashed out upon me from almost every hut. Besides four smallrivers with little roofed bridges, there were many narrower streams ormud-holes to wade, and between them the way twisted and stumbled up anddown over innumerable hills that seemed mountains in the unfathomabledarkness. When I had slipped and sprawled some two hours, a pair ofIndians, the first to be found abroad, gave the distance as "dosleguas," in other words, the same as when I had started. I redoubled myspeed, pausing only once to call for water where a light flickered in ahut, and seemed to have won the race when at the edge of the town I cameto a river that required me to strip to the waist. As I sprinted up thehill beyond, the sound of a departing train drifted out of the darknessahead and an Indian informed me that it had been scheduled to leave atfive. Fortunately I continued, for it turned out to be a freight, andthe daily passenger left at six, so that just as the east began to turngray I was off on the long ride to the capital.

The train takes twelve hours to make this run of 129 miles by athree-foot-gage railroad, stopping at every cluster of huts along theway. The third-class coach was little more than a box-car with two roughbenches along its sides. The passengers were unprepossessing; most ofthem ragged, all of them unclean, generally with extremely bad teeth,much-pimpled faces, emaciated, and of undeveloped physique, their eyesstill possessing some of the brightness but lacking the snap and glistenof those of Tehuantepec and the plateau. Many were chrome-yellow withfever. Ragged officers of law and disorder were numerous, often in barefeet, the same listless inefficiency showing in their weak,unproductive, unshaven features. The car grew so crowded I went to siton the platform rail, as had a half-dozen already, though large signs onthe door forbade it.

It was after noon when we reached the first important town,Esquintla. Here the tropics ended and the train began to climb, soslowly we could have stepped off anywhere, the vegetation visiblychanging in character with every mile. On the now crowded platform twonatives alternately ordered American beer of the train-boy, at $5 abottle! At Palin we were assailed by tattered vendors of all manner offruit, enormous pineapples selling for sixty guatemaltecocents. Amatitlan also swarmed with hawkers, but this time of candy inthe form of animals of every known and imaginable species. Thereafter wewound round beautiful Lake Amatitlan, a dark, smooth stretch of water,swarming with fish and bottomless, according to my fellow platformers,flanked by sloping, green, shrub-clad banks that reflected themselves init. The train crossed the middle of the lake by a stone dyke and climbedhigher and ever higher, with splendid views of the perfect cone-shapedvolcanoes Agua and Panteleón that have gradually thrown themselves up tobe the highest in Guatemala and visible from almost every part of therepublic. It was growing dark when the first houses of Guatemala Cityappeared among the trees, and gradually and slowly we dragged into thestation. A bare-footed policeman on the train took the names andbiographies of all on board, as another had already done at Esquintla,and we were free to crowd out into the ragged, one-story city with itslanguid mule-cars.

In the "Hotel Colon" opposite Guatemala's chief theater and shoulderingthe president's house, which is tailor-shop and saloon below, the dailyrate was $12. The food was more than plentiful, but would have been aninsult to the stomach of a harvest-hand, the windowless room was mustyand dirty, the walls splashed, spotted, and torn, and the bed was by farthe worst I had occupied south of the Rio Grande, having not only aboard floor but a mattress that seemed to be stuffed with broken andjagged rocks. Notwithstanding all which I slept the clock round.

If there is any "sight" in Guatemala City besides its slashing sunlightand its surrounding volcanoes, and perhaps its swarms of Indianstrotting to and from the market on Sundays, it is the relief map of theentire Republic inside the race-course. This is of cement, with realwater to represent the lakes and oceans and (when it is turned on) therivers. Every town, railway, and trail of any importance is marked, anaid to the vagabond that should be required by law of every country. Onit I picked out easily the route of my further travels. The map covers aspace as large as a moderate-sized house and is seen in all its detailsfrom the two platforms above it. Its only apparent fault is that themountains and volcanoes are out of all proportion in height. Butexaggeration is a common Central-American failing.

The city is populous, chiefly with shoeless inhabitants, monotonouslyflat, few buildings for dread of earthquake being over one story, eventhe national palace and cathedral sitting low and squat. An elevation offive thousand feet gives it a pleasant June weather, but life moves witha drowsy, self-contented air. Its people are far more obliging than theaverage of Mexico and have little or none of the latter's sulkiness orhalf-insolence. Here reigns supreme Estrada Cabrera; exactly where veryfew know, for so great is his dislike to assassination that he jumpsabout incessantly from one of his one-story residences to another,perhaps, as his people assert, by underground passages, for he is seldomindeed seen in the flesh by his fond subjects. In less materialmanifestations he is omnipresent and few are the men who have longoutlived his serious displeasure. A man of modest ability but ofextremely suspicious temperament, he keeps the reins of governmentalmost entirely in his own hands, running the country as if it were hisprivate estate, which for some years past it virtually has been. It is aform of government not entirely unfitted to a people in the bulk utterlyindifferent as to who or what rules them so they are left to loaf intheir hammocks in peace, and no more capable of ruling themselves thanof lifting themselves by their non-existent boot-straps. Outwardly lifeseems to run as smoothly as elsewhere, and the casual passer-by does notto his knowledge make the acquaintance of those reputed bands ofadventurers from many climes said to carry out swiftly and efficientlyevery whispered command of Guatemala's invisible ruler.

On Sunday a bull-fight was perpetrated in the plaza de torosfacing the station. It was a dreary caricature of the royal sport ofSpain. The plaza was little more than a rounded barnyard, the four gauntand cowardly animals with blunted horns virtually lifeless, picadors andhorses were conspicuous by their absence, and the two matadors were noteven skilful butchers. A cuadrilla of women did the "Suerte deTancredo" on one another's backs—as any one else could have on his heador in a rocking-chair—and the only breath of excitement was when oneof the feminine toreras got walked on by a fear-quaking animalvainly seeking an exit. All in all it was an extremely poor newsboys'entertainment, a means of collecting admissions for the privilege ofseeing to-morrow's meat prepared, the butchers skinning and quarteringthe animals within the enclosure in full sight of the disheveledaudience.

The train mounted out of the capital with much winding, as many as threesections of track one above another at times, and, once over the range,fell in with a river on its way to the Atlantic. The country grew dryand Mexican, covered with fine white dust and grown with cactus. AtZacapa, largest town of the line, Dakin was already at work in amachine-shop on wheels in the railroad yards, and Ems was preparing totake charge of one of the locomotives. Descending with the swiftstream, we soon plunged into thickening jungle, growing even more densethan that of Tehuantepec, with trees, plants, and all the stationaryforms of nature struggling like an immense multitude fighting for life,the smaller and more agile climbing the sturdier, the weak andunassertive trampled to death underfoot on the dank, sunless ground. Wecrossed the now considerable river by a three-span bridge, and enteredthe banana country. English-speaking Negroes became numerous, and whenwe pulled in at the station of Quiraguá, the collection of bambooshanties I had expected was displaced by several new and modernbungalows on the brow of a knoll overlooking the railroad. Here was oneof the great plantations of the United Fruit Company. From the verandaof the office building broad miles of banana plants stretched away tothe southern mountains. Jamaican Negroes were chiefly engaged in thebanana culture, and those from our Southern States did the heavier androugher work. Their wages ran as high as a dollar gold a day, as againsta Guatemalan peso for the native peons of the coffee estates in othersections. Much of the work was let out on contract. There were anumber of white American employees, college-trained in some cases, andalmost all extremely youthful. The heat here was tropical and heavy, theplace being a bare three hundred feet above sea-level where evenclothing quickly molds and rots. My fellow countrymen had found the mostdangerous pastimes in this climate to be drinking liquor and eatingbananas, while the mass of employees more often came to grief in thefeuds between the various breeds of Negroes and with the natives.

In the morning a handcar provided with a seat and manned by two muscularCarib Negroes carried me away through the banana jungle by a privaterailroad. The atmosphere was thick and heavy as soured milk. Ahalf-hour between endless walls of banana plants brought me to apalm-leaf hut, from which I splashed away on foot through a riot of wetjungle to the famous ruins of Quiraguá. Archeologists had cleared aconsiderable square in the wilderness, still within the holdings of thefruit company, felling many enormous trees; but the place was alreadyhalf choked again with compact undergrowth. There were three immensestone pillars in a row, then two others leaning at precarious angles,while in and out through the adjacent jungle were scattered carvedstones in the forms of frogs and other animals, clumsily depicted, asmall calendar stone, and an immense carved rock reputed to have been aplace of sacrifice. Several artificial mounds were now mere stone hillsovergrown with militant vegetation, as were remnants of old stoneroadways. Every stone was covered with distinct but crudely carvedfigures, the most prominent being that of a king with a large Roman nosebut very little chin, wearing an intricate crown surmounted by adeath's-head, holding a scepter in one hand and in the other whatappeared to be a child spitted on a toasting fork. All was of a speciesof sandstone that has withstood the elements moderately well, especiallyif, as archeologists assert, the ruins represent a city founded somethree thousand years ago. Some of the faces, however, particularly thosetoward the east and south from which come most of the storms, were wornalmost smooth and were covered with moss and throttlingvegetation. Through it all a mist that was virtually a rain fellincessantly, and ground and jungle reeked with a clinging mud anddripping water that soaked through shoes and garments.

CHAPTER IX

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HONDURAS

The train carried me back up the river to Zacapa, desert dry andstingingly hot with noonday. Report had it that there was a good roadto Jocotán by way of Chiquimula, but the difference between a "buencamino" and a mere "road" is so slight in Central America that Iconcluded to follow the more direct trail. The next essential was tochange my wealth into Honduranean silver, chiefly in coins of onereal, corresponding in value to an American nickel; for financialtransactions were apt to be petty in the region ahead of me. In thecollection I gathered among the merchants of Zacapa were silver dollarsof Mexico, Salvador, Chile, and Peru, all of which stand on terms ofperfect equality with the peso of Honduras, worth some forty cents. Myload was heavier, as befitted an exit from even quasi-civilization. Therucksack was packed with more than fourteen pounds, not counting kodakand weapon, and for the equivalent of some thirty cents in real money Ihad acquired in the market of Guatemala City a hammock, more exactly asleeping-net, made of a species of grass by the Indians of Cobán.

Under all this I was soon panting up through the once cobbled village ofZacapa and across a rising sand-patch beyond, cheered on by the partinginformation that the last traveler to set out on this route had beenkilled a few miles from town for the $2 or so he carried. Mine would nothave been any particular burden in a level or temperate country, butthis was neither. The sun hung so close it felt like some immensered-hot ingot swinging overhead in a foundry. The road—and in CentralAmerica that word seldom represents anything better than a rocky,winding trail with rarely a level yard—sweated up and down sharpmountain faces, picking its way as best it could over a continualsuccession of steep lofty ridges. Even before I lost the railway to viewI was dripping wet from cap to shoes, drops fell constantly from the endof my nose, and my eyes stung with salt even though I plunged my faceinto every stream. My American shoes had succumbed on the tramp toRetalhuleu and the best I had been able to do in Guatemala City was tosquander $45 for a pair of native make and chop them down intoOxfords. These, soaked in the jungle of Quiraguá, now dried iron-stiffin the sun and barked my feet in various places.

I had crossed four ranges and was winding along a narrow, dense-grownvalley when night began to fall. The rumors of foul play led me to keepa hand hanging loose near my weapon, though the few natives I met seemedfriendly enough. Darkness thickened and I was planning to swing myhammock among the trees when I fell upon the hut of Coronado Cordón. Itwas a sieve-like structure of bamboo, topped by a thick palm-leaf roof,with an outdoor mud fireplace, and crowded with dogs, pigs, and roostedfowls. Coronado himself, attired in the remnants of a pair of cottontrousers, greeted me from his hammock.

"May I pass the night with you?"

"To be sure, señor. You may sleep on this bench under the roof."

But I produced my hammock and he swung it for me from two bamboo raftersof the low projecting eaves, beside his own and that of a horseman whohad also sought hospitality, where a steady breeze swept through. Hiswife squatted for an hour or more over the fireplace, and at length Isat down—on the ground—to black coffee, frijoles, tortillas, and akind of Dutch cheese.

Long before morning I was too cold, even under most of the contents ofmy pack, to sleep soundly. It was December and the days were short fortramping. This one did not begin to break until six and I had beenawake and ready since three. Coronado slept on, but his señora aroseand, covering her breasts with a small apron, took to grinding corn fortortillas. These with coffee and two eggs dropped for a moment in hotwater, after a pin-hole had been broken in each, made up my breakfast,and brought my bill up to nearly eleven cents.

I was off in the damp dawn. Any enumeration of the rocky, slippery,twisting trails by which I panted up and over perpendicular mountainridges under a burning sun without the shadow of a cloud, would bewearisome. Sweat threatened to ruin even the clothing in my bundle, itsoaked even belt and holster, rusting the weapon within it, and leavinga visible trail behind me. Once, at the careless nod of an Indian, Istrained up an all but perpendicular slope, only to have the trail endhundreds of feet above the river in a fading cow-path and leave me toclimb down again. Farther on it dodged from under my feet once more and,missing a reputed bridge, forced me to ford a chest-deep river which allbut swept me away, possessions and all, at the first attempt.

Jocotán, on the farther bank, was a lazy, sunbaked village the chiefindustry of which seemed to be swinging in hammocks, though I did manageto run to earth the luxury of a dish of tough meat. Comotán was closebeyond, then came two hours straight up to a region of pine-trees withvistas of never-ending mountains everywhere dense-forested, the fewadobe or bamboo huts tucked in among them being as identically alike asthe inhabitants. These were almost obsequious peons, wearing a sort ofwhite pajamas and moderate-sized straw hats, all strangely clean. Eachcarried a machete, generally with a curved point, and not a few hadguns. Toward evening I struck a bit of level going amid dense vegetationwithout a breath of air along the bank of a river that must be fordedlower down, which fact I took advantage of to perpetrate a generallaundering. This proved unwise, for the sun went down before thegarments had dried and left me to lug on along the stream those theunexacting customs of the country did not require me to put onwet. Every hundred yards the trail went swiftly down into the stony bedof a tributary, with or without water, and clambered breathlessly outagain. A barked heel had festered and made every other step painful.

It was more than an hour after dark that I sweated into the aldeaof Chupá, so scattered that as each hut refused me lodging I had tohobble on a considerable distance to the next. The fourth or fifthrefusal I declined to accept and swung my hammock under the eaves. Awoman was cooking on the earth floor for several peon travelers, buttreated me only with a stony silence. One of the Indians, however, whohad been a soldier and was more friendly or less suspicious of"gringoes," divided with me his single tortilla and bowl offrijoles. The family slept on dried cowskins spread on the bare earth.

Food was not to be had when I folded my hammock and pushed on atdaylight. One of a cluster of huts farther up was given over to a squadof "soldiers," garrisoning the frontier, and an officer who would haveranked as a vagabond in another country sold me three tortillas and ashellful of coffee saved from his rations. Another cluster of hutsmarked the beginning of a stiff rocky climb, beyond which I passedsomewhere in a swampy stretch of uninhabited ground the invisibleboundary and entered Honduras, the Land of Great Depths.

It was indeed. Soon a vast mountain covered with pine forest rose intothe sky ahead and two hours of unbroken climbing brought me only to therim of another great wooded valley scolloped out of the earth and downinto which I went all but headfirst into the town of Copán. Here, as Isat in a fairly easy chair in the shaded corner of a barnyard amongpigs, chickens, and turkeys while my tortillas were preparing, I got thefirst definite information as to the tramp before me. Tegucigalpa, thecapital, was said to be fifteen days distant by mule. On foot it mightprove a trifle less. But if transportation in the flesh was laboriousand slow, the ease of verbal communication partly made up for it. Atelegram to the capital cost me the sum total of one real. It shouldhave been a real and a quarter, but the telegraph operator had nochange!

Beyond the town I found with some difficulty the gate through which onemust pass to visit the ancient ruins of Copán. Once inside it, a pathled through jungle and tobacco fields and came at length to a greatartificial mound, originally built of cut-stone, but now covered withdeep grass and a splendid grove of immense trees, until in appearanceonly a natural hill remained. About the foot of this, throttled byvegetation, lay scattered a score or more of carved stones, only one ortwo of which were particularly striking. Summer solitude hovered overall the scene.

Back again on the "camino real" I found the going for once ideal. Theway lay almost level along a fairly wide strip of lush-green grass withonly a soft-footed, eight-inch path marking the route, and heavy junglegiving unbroken shade. Then came a hard climb, just when I had begun tohear the river and was laying plans for a drink and a swim, and thetrail led me far up on the grassy brow of a mountain, from which spreada vast panorama of pine-clad world. But the trails of Honduras are likespendthrift adventurers, struggling with might and main to gain anadvantage, only wantonly to throw it away again a moment later. This onepitched headlong down again, then climbed, then descended over andagain, as if setting itself some useless task for the mere pleasure ofshowing its powers of endurance. It subsided at last in the town ofSanta Rita, the comandante of which, otherwise a pleasant enough fellow,took me for a German. It served me right for not having taken the timeto shave my upper lip. He had me write my name on a slip of paper andbade me adiós with the information that if "my legs were well oiled" Icould make the hacienda Jarral by nightfall.

I set a good pace along the flat, shaded, grassy lane beside the river,promising myself a swim upon sighting my destination. But the trickytrail suddenly and unexpectedly led me far up on a mountain flank anddown into Jarral without again catching sight or sound of thestream. There were three or four palm-leaf huts and a large, longhacienda building, unspeakably dirty and dilapidated. The estateproduced coffee, heaps of which in berry and kernel stood here and therein the dusk. The owner lived elsewhere; for which no one could blamehim. I marched out along the great tile-floored veranda to mention tothe stupid mayordomo the relationship of money and food. Hereferred me to a filth-encrusted woman in the cavern-like kitchen, wherethree soiled and bedraggled babies slept on a dirtier reed mat on thefilthy earth floor, another in a hammock made of a grain sack and twopieces of rope, amid dogs, pigs, and chickens, not to mention otherunpleasantnesses, including a damp dungeon atmosphere that ought earlyto have proved fatal to the infants. When she had sulkily agreed toprepare me tortillas, I returned to ask the way to the river. Themayordomo cried out in horror at the notion of bathing at night,pointing out that there was not even a moon, and prophesying a fataloutcome of such foolhardiness and gringo eccentricity. His appearancesuggested that he had also some strong superstition against bathing byday.

I stumbled nearly a mile along to-morrow's road, stepping now and theninto ankle-deep mud puddles, before reaching the stream, but a plungeinto a stored-up pool of it was more than ample reward. "Supper" wasready upon my return, and by asking the price of it at once and catchingthe woman by surprise I was charged only a legitimate amount. When Iinquired where I might swing my hammock, the enemy of bathing pointedsilently upward at the rafters of the veranda. These were at least tenfeet above the tiled floor and I made several ineffectual efforts beforeI could reach them at all, and then only succeeded in hanging mysleeping-net so that it doubled me up like a jack-knife. Rearranging itnear the corner of the veranda, I managed with great effort to climbinto it, but to have fallen out would have been to drop either someeight feet to the stone-flagged door or twenty into the cobbled andfilthy barnyard below. The chances of this outcome were much increasedby the necessity of using a piece of old rope belonging to the hacienda,and a broken arm or leg would have been pleasant indeed here in thesqualid wilderness with at least a hundred miles of mule-trail to thenearest doctor.

Luckily I only fell asleep. Several men and dirtier boys, all in whathad once been white garments, had curled up on bundles of dirty mats andheaps of bags all over the place, and the night was a pandemonium oftheir coughing, snoring, and night-maring, mingled with the hubbub ofdogs, roosters, turkeys, cattle, and a porcine multitude that snuggledin among the human sleepers. The place was surrounded by wet, pine-cladmountains, and the damp night air drifting in upon me soon grew cold andpenetrating.

Having had time to collect her wits, the female of the dungeon chargedme a quadrupled price for a late breakfast of black coffee and pin-holedeggs, and I set off on what turned out to be a not entirely pleasantday's tramp. To begin with I had caught cold in a barked heel, causingthe cords of the leg to swell and stiffen. Next I found that therucksack had worn through where it came in contact with my back; third,the knees of the breeches I wore succumbed to the combination of sweatand the tearing of jungle grasses; fourth, the garments I carriedagainst the day I should again enter civilization were already rumpledand stained almost beyond repair; and, fifth, but by no means last, thefew American bills I carried in a secret pocket had been almost effacedby humidity and friction. Furthermore, the "road" completely surpassedall human powers of description. When it was not splitting into ahalf-dozen faint paths, any one of which was sure to fade from existenceas soon as it had succeeded in leading me astray in a panting chase upsome perpendicular slope, it was splashing through mud-holes or smallrivers. At the first stream I squandered a half-hour disrobing anddressing again, only to find that some two hundred yards farther on itswung around once more across the trail. Twice it repeated that stalepractical joke. At the fourth crossing I forestalled it by marching on,carrying all but shirt and hat,—and got only sunburn and stone-bruisesfor my foresight, for the thing disappeared entirely. Still farther on Iattempted to save time by crossing another small river by a series ofstepping-stones, reached the middle of it dry-shod, looked about for thenext step, and then carefully lay down at full length, baggage and all,in the stream as the stone turned over under my feet. But by that time Ineeded another bath.

An old woman of La Libertad, a collection of mud huts wedged into alittle plain between jungled mountain-sides, answered my hungry querywith a cheery "Cómo no!" and in due time set before me black beans andblacker coffee and a Honduranean tortilla, which are several timesthicker and heavier than those of Mexico and taste not unlike a plank ofdough.

Though often good-hearted enough, these children of the wilderness haveno more inkling of any line between dirt and cleanliness, nor any moredesire to improve their conditions, themselves, or their surroundings,which we of civilized lands think of as humanity's privilege andrequirement, than the mangy yellow curs that slink in and out betweentheir legs and among their cooking pots. I had yet to see in Honduras ahouse, a garment, a single possession, or person that was anything shortof filthy.

As I ate, a gaunt and yellow youth arrived with a rag tied about hisbrow, complaining that a fever had overtaken him on a steep mountaintrail and left him helpless for hours. I made use for the first time ofthe small medicine case I carried. Then the old woman broke in toannounce that her daughter also had fever. I found a child of tentossing on a miserable canvas cot in the mud hut before which I sat, herpulse close to the hundred mark. When I had treated her to the best ofmy ability, the mother stated that a friend in a neighboring hut hadbeen suffering for more than a week with chills and fever, but that shewas "embarrassed" and must not take anything that might bring thatcondition prematurely to a head. I prescribed not without some laymanmisgiving. Great astonishment spread throughout the hamlet when Irefused payment for my services, and the old woman not only vociferouslydeclined the coin I proffered for the food, but bade me farewell with avehement "Diós se lo pagará"—whether in Honduranean change or not shedid not specify. The majority of the inhabitants of the wilds ofHonduras live and die without any other medical attention than those ofa rare wandering charlatan or pill-peddler.

Beyond was a rising path through dense steaming jungle, soon crossed bythe ubiquitous river. Across it, near a pretty waterfall, the trailclimbed up and ever up through jungle and forest, often deep in mud andin places so steep I had to mount on all fours, slipping back at eachstep like the proverbial frog in the well. A splendid virgin forestsurrounded me, thick with undergrowth, the immense trees whisperingtogether far above. A half-hour up, the trail, all but effaced, was cutoff by a newly constructed rail fence tied together with vines runthrough holes that had been pierced in the buttresses of giants of theforest. There was no other route in sight, however, and I climbed theobstruction and sweated another half-hour upward. A vista of at leasteight heavily wooded ranges opened out behind me, not an inch of whichwas not covered with dense-green treetops. Far up near the gates ofheaven I came upon a sun-flooded sloping clearing planted with tobacco,and found a startled peon in the shade of a make-shift leaf hut. Insteadof climbing the hill by this private trail, I should immediately havecrossed the river again more than an hour below and continued on alongit!

When he had recovered from the fright caused by so unexpected anapparition, the Indian yielded up his double-bodied gourd and made noprotest when I gurgled down about half the water he had carried up themountain for his day's thirst. That at least was some reward for theuseless climb, for there is no greater physical pleasure than drinkingone's fill of clear cold water after a toilsome tropical tramp. Icrashed and slid down to the river again and picked up once more themuddy path along it between dense walls of damp jungle. It grew worseand worse, falling in with a smaller stream and leaping back and forthacross it every few yards, sometimes permitting me to dodge across likea tight-rope walker on wet mossy stones, more often delaying me toremove shoes and leggings. An hour of this and the scene changed. A vastmountain wall rose before me, and a sharp rocky trail at times likesteps cut by nature in the rock face led up and up and still foreverupward. A score of times I seemed to have reached the summit, only tofind that the trail took a new turn and, gathering up its skirts,climbed away again until all hope of its ever ceasing its sweatingascent faded away. After all it was perhaps well that only a smallportion of the climb was seen at a time; like life itself, the appallingsight of all the difficulties ahead at once might discourage the climberfrom ever undertaking the task.

It was near evening when I came out in a slight clearing on what was atlast really the summit. Vast forests of whispering pine-trees surroundedme, and before and behind lay an almost endless vista of heavily wooded,tumbled mountains, on a low one of which, near at hand but far below,could be seen the scattered village of San Augustín. There was still along hour down the opposite face of the mountain, with thinner pineforests and the red soil showing through here and there; not all downeither, for the trail had the confirmed habit of falling into bottomlesssharp gullies every few yards and struggling out again up the steepestof banks, though the privilege of thrusting my face into the clearmountain stream at the bottom of each made me pardon these monotonousvagaries. After surmounting six or eight such mountain ranges in a day,under a sun like ours of August quadrupled and some twenty pounds ofawkward baggage, without what could reasonably be called food, to saynothing of festered heels and similar petty ailments, the traveler comesgradually by nightfall to develop a desire to spend ten minutes underthe electric fans of a "Baltimore Lunch."

Yet with all its difficulties the day had been more than enjoyable,wandering through endless virgin forests swarming with strange andbeautiful forms of plant and bird life, with rarely a habitation or afellow-man to break the spell of pure, unadulterated nature. For breakit these did. As the first hut of San Augustín intruded itself in thegrowing dusk there ran unbidden through my head an ancient refrain:

"Plus je vois l'homme, plus j'aîme mon chien."

Nearer the center of the collection I paused to ask a man leaningagainst his mud doorway whether he knew any one who would give meposada. The eagerness with which he offered to do so himself gave mevisions of an exorbitant bill in the morning, but it turned out that hewas merely anxious for the "honor" of lodging a stranger. This time Islept indoors. My host himself swung my hammock from two of the beams inhis large, single-room house made of slats filled in with mud. Though aman of some education, subscriber to a newspaper of Salvador and anAmerican periodical in Spanish, and surrounded by pine forests, itseemed never to have occurred to him to try to better his lot even tothe extent of putting in a board floor. His mixture of knowledge andignorance was curious. He knew most of the biography of Edison by heart,but thought Paris the capital of the United States and the population ofthat country 700,000.

In the house the only food was tortillas, but across the "street" meatwas for sale. It proved to be tough strips a half-inch square ofsun-dried beef hanging from the rafters. I made another suggestion, butthe woman replied with a smile half of amusem*nt half of sorrow that allthe chickens had died. A few beans were found, and, as I ate, severalmen drifted into the hut and gradually and diffidently fell to askingstrange and childish questions. It is hard for those of us trained todemocracy and accustomed to intercourse only with "civilized" people torealize that a bearded man of forty, with tall and muscular frame, mayhave only an infantile grade of intelligence, following the conversationwhile it is kept on the plane of an eight-year-old intellect, butincapable of grasping any real thought, and staring with theopen-mouthed naïveté of a child.

Tobacco is grown about San Augustín, and every woman of the place rollsclumsy cigars and cigarettes as incessantly as those of other parts knitor sew. The wife and daughter of my host were so engaged when Ireturned, toiling leisurely by the light of pine splinters; for ruralHonduras has not yet reached the candle stage of progress. For ahalf-real I bought thirty cigarettes of the size of a lead-pencil, madeof the coarse leaves more fitted to cigars. The man and wife, and thechild that had been stark naked ever since my arrival, at length rolledup together on a bundle of rags on the dank earth floor, the daughter ofeighteen climbed a knotched stick into a cubbyhole under the roof, andwhen the pine splinter flickered out I was able for the first night inHonduras to get out of my knee-cramping breeches and into morecomfortable sleeping garments. The festered heel gave me considerableannoyance. A bread and milk poultice would no doubt have drawn the feverout of it, but even had any such luxury been obtainable I should haveapplied it internally. During the night I awoke times without number.Countless curs, that were to real dogs what these people are tocivilized races, howled the night hideous, as if warning the villageperiodically of some imaginary danger, suggested perhaps by the scent ofa stranger in their midst. Sometime in the small hours two youths,either drunk or enamored of the bedraggled senorita in the cubbyholeabove, struck up a mournful, endless ballad of two unvarying lines, theone barely heard, the other screeching the eternal refrain until thenight shuddered with it. All the clothing I possessed was not enough tokeep me warm both above and below.

One of the chief difficulties of the road in Honduras is theimpossibility of arousing the lazy inhabitants in time to prepare somesuggestion of breakfast at a reasonably early hour. For to set offwithout eating may be to fast all the hot and laborious day. The sun wasalready warm when I took up the task of picking my way from among themany narrow, red, labyrinthian paths that scattered over the hill onwhich San Augustín reposes and radiated into the rocky, pine-forested,tumbled mountain world surrounding it. Some one had said the trail toSanta Rosa was easy and comparatively level. But such words have strangemeanings in Honduras. Not once during the day did there appear a levelspace ten yards in length. Hour after hour a narrow path, one of a scorein which to go astray, worn in the whitish rock of a tumbled andirregular series of soft sandstone ridges with thin forests of pine orfir, clambered and sweated up and down incessantly by slopes steeperthan any stairway, until I felt like the overworked chambermaid of atall but elevator-less hotel. My foot was much swollen, and to makethings worse the region was arid and waterless. Once I came upon astraggling mud village, but though it was half-hidden by banana andorange groves, not even fruit could be bought. Yet a day or two beforesome scoundrel had passed this way eating oranges constantly andstrewing the trail with the tantalizing peelings; a methodical, selfish,bourgeois fellow, who had not had the humane carelessness to drop asingle fruit on all his gluttonous journey.

When I came at last, at the bottom of a thigh-straining descent, uponthe first stream of the day, it made up for the aridity behind, for thepath had eluded me and left me to tear through the jungle and wade aquarter mile before I picked up the trail again. Refreshed, I began atask before which I might have turned back had I seen it all at once.Four mortal waterless hours I toiled steeply upward, more than twentytimes sure I had reached the summit, only to see the trail, like somewill-o'-the-wisp, draw on ahead unattainably in a new direction. I hadcertainly ascended four thousand feet when I threw myself down at lastamong the pines of the wind-swept summit. A draught from the gourd of apassing peon gave me new life for the corresponding descent. Several ofthese fellow-roadsters now appeared, courteous fellows, often with blackmustaches and imperial à la Napoleon III, who raised their hats andgreeted me with a sing-song "Qué se vaya bien," yet seemed remarkablystupid and perhaps a trifle treacherous. At length, well on in theafternoon, the road broke through a cutting and disclosed the welcomesight of the town of Santa Rosa, its white church bulking above all elsebuilt by man; the first suggestion of civilization I had seen inHonduras.

The suggestion withered upon closer examination. The place did not knowthe meaning of the word hotel, there was neither restaurant, electriclight, wheeled vehicles, nor any of the hundred and one things common tocivilized towns of like size. After long inquiry for lodging, I wasdirected to a pharmacy. The connection was not apparent until I foundthat an American doctor occupied there a tiny room made by partitioningoff with a strip of canvas stretched on a frame a part of the publichallway to the patio. He was absent on his rounds; which was fortunate,for his Cuban interpreter not merely gave me possession of the "room"and cot, but delivered to me the doctor's supper of potatoes, rice, animitation of bread, and even a piece of meat, when it arrived from amarket-place kitchen. Here I spent Sunday, with the extreme lassitudefollowing an extended tramp in the hungry wilderness. The doctor turnedup in the afternoon, an imposing monument of a man from Texas with awild tangle of dark-brown beard, and the soft eyes and gentle manners ofa girl. He had spent some months in the region, more to the advantage ofthe inhabitants than his own, for disease was far more wide spread thanwealth, and the latter was extremely elusive even where itexisted. Hookworm was the second most common ailment, with cancer andmiscarriages frequent. The entire region he had found virtually givenover to free love. The grasping priests made it all but impossible forthe poorer classes to marry, and the custom had rather died out evenamong the well-to-do. All but two families of the town acknowledgedillegitimate children, there was not a priest nor a youth of eighteenwho had not several, and more than one widow of Honduranean wealth andposition whose husband had long since died continued to add yearly tothe population. The padre of San Pedro, from whose house he had justcome, boasted of being the father of eighty children. All these thingswere common knowledge, with almost no attempt at concealment, and indeedlittle notion that there might be anything reprehensible in suchcustoms. Every one did it, why shouldn't any one? Later experienceproved these conditions, as well as nearly 90 per cent. of completeilliteracy, common to all Honduras.

The only other industry of Santa Rosa is the raising of tobacco and themaking of a tolerably good cigar, famed throughout Honduras and sellinghere twenty for a real. Every hut and almost every shop is a cigarfactory. The town is four thousand feet above sea-level, giving it adelightful, lazy, satisfied-with-life-just-as-it-is air that partlymakes up for its ignorance, disease, and unmorality. The population islargely Indian, unwashed since birth, and with huge hoof-like bare feetdevoid of sensation. There is also considerable Spanish blood, generallyadulterated, its possessors sometimes shod and wearing nearly whitecotton suits and square white straw hats. In intelligence the entireplace resembles children without a child's power of imitation. Exceptfor the snow-white church, the town is entirely one-story, with tileroofs, a ragged flowery plaza, and straight streets, sometimes cobbled,that run off down hill, for the place is built on a meadowy knoll with afine vista of hills and surrounded by an immensely rich land that wouldgrow almost anything in abundance with a minimum of cultivation.

The one way of getting an early start in Honduras is to make yourpurchases the night before and eat them raw in the morning. Christmasday had barely dawned, therefore, when I began losing my way among theundulating white rock paths beyond Santa Rosa. Such a country bringshome to man his helplessness and unimportance before untamed nature. Iwished to be in Tegucigalpa, two hundred miles away, within five days;yet all the wealth of Croesus could not have brought me there in thattime. As it was, I had broken the mule-back record, and many is theanimal that succumbs to the up and down trails of Honduras. This onemight, were such triteness permissible, have been most succinctlycharacterized by a well-known description of war. It was rougher thanany stone-quarry pitched at impossible angles, and the attraction ofgravity for my burden passed belief. To this I had been forced to addnot merely a roll of silver reales but my Christmas dinner, built upabout the nucleus of a can of what announced itself outwardly as porkand beans. Talgua, at eleven, did not seem the fitting scene for sosolemn a ceremony, and I hobbled on, first over a tumble-down stonebridge, then by a hammock-bridge to which one climbed high above theriver by a notched stick and of which two thirds of the cross-slats weremissing, while the rest cracked or broke under the 185 pounds to which Isubjected them.

I promised myself to pitch camp at the very next clear stream. But thehammock-bridge once passed there began a heart-breaking climb intobone-dry hills, rolling with broken stones, and palpitating with theheat of an unshaded tropical sun. Several times I had perished of thirstbefore I came to a small sluggish stream, only to find its water deepblue with some pollution. In the end I was forced to overlook thisdrawback and, finding a sort of natural bathtub among the blazing rocks,fell upon what after all proved to be a porkless feast. The doctor'streatment had reduced the swelling in foot and ankle, but the wounditself was more painful than ever and called for frequent soaking. Inmidafternoon I passed a second village, as somnolent as the belly-gorgedzopilotes that half-jumped, half-flew sluggishly out of the way as Iadvanced. Here was a bit of fairly flat and shaded going, with anotherprecarious hammock-bridge, then an endless woods with occasional sharpstony descents to some brawling but most welcome stream, withstepping-stones or without. Thus far I had seen barely a human being allthe day, but as the shades of evening grew I passed several groups ofarrieros who blasted my hopes of reaching Gracias that night, but whoinformed me that just beyond the "rio grande" was a casita whereI might spend the night.

It was sunset when I came to the "great river," a broad and noisy thoughonly waist-deep stream with two sheer, yet pine-clad rock cliffs morestriking than the Palisades of the Hudson. A crescent moon was peeringover them when I passed the swinging bridge swaying giddily to and frohigh above the stream, but on the steep farther bank it lighted up onlya cruel disappointment. For the "casita" was nothing but a roof onwabbly legs, a public rest-house where I might swing my hammock but gofamished to bed. I pushed on in quest of a more human habitation. The"road" consisted of a dozen paths shining white in the moonlight andweaving in and out among each other. No sign of man appeared, and myfoot protested vehemently. I concluded to be satisfied with water todrink and let hunger feed upon itself. But now it was needed, not atrickle appeared. Once I fancied I heard a stream babbling below andtore my way through the jungle down a sharp slope, but I had only caughtthe echo of the distant river. It was well on into the night when thewelcome sound again struck my ear. This time it was real, and I foughtmy way down through clutching undergrowth and stone heaps to a stream,sluggish and blue in color, but welcome for all that, to swing myhammock among stone heaps from two elastic saplings, for it was just myluck to have found the one spot in Honduras where there were no treeslarge enough to furnish shelter. Luckily nothing worse than a heavy dewfell. Now and then noisy boisterous bands of natives passed along thetrail from their Christmas festivities in the town ahead. But whereas aMexican highway at this hour would have been overrun with drunken peonsmore or less dangerous to "gringoes," drink seemed to have made thesechiefly amorous. Still I took good care to arrange myself for the nightquietly, if only to be able to sleep undisturbed. Once, somewhere in thedarkest hours, a drove of cattle stampeded down the slope near me, buteven as I reached for my weapon I found it was not the band of peonsfrom a dream of which I had awakened. The spot was some 1500 feet lowerthan Santa Rosa, but still so sharp and penetrating is the chill ofnight in this region in contrast to the blazing, sweating days that Idid not sleep a moment soundly after the first hour of evening.

An hour's walk next morning brought me to Gracias, a slovenly,nothing-to-do-but-stare hamlet of a few hundred inhabitants. After I hadeaten all the chief hut could supply, I set about looking for theshoemaker my already aged Guatemalan Oxfords needed so badly. I foundthe huts where several of them lived, but not where any of themworked. The first replied from his hammock that he was sick, the secondhad gone to Tegucigalpa, the third was "somewhere about town if you havethe patience to wait." Which I did for an hour or more, and was rewardedwith his turning up to inform me that he was not planning to begin hislabors again so soon, for only yesterday had been Christmas.

Over the first hill and river beyond, I fell in with a woman who carriedon an unbroken conversation as well as a load on her head, from the timeshe accepted the first cigar until we had waded the thigh-deep "riogrande" and climbed the rocky bank to her hut and garden. At first shehad baldly refused to allow her picture to be taken. But so weak-willedare these people of Honduras that a white man of patience can in timeforce them to do his bidding by sheer force of will, by merely lookinglong and fixedly at them. Many the "gringo" who has misused this powerin Central America. Before we reached her home she had not only posedbut insisted on my stopping to photograph her with her children "dressedup" as befitted so extraordinary an occasion. Her garden was unusuallywell supplied with fruit and vegetables, and the rice boiled in milk sheserved was the most savory dish I had tasted in Honduras. She refusedpayment, but insisted on my waiting until the muleteers she had chargedfor their less sumptuous dinner were gone, so they should not discoverher unpatriotic favoritism.

During the afternoon there was for a time almost level going, grassy andsoft, across gently dipping meadows on which I left both mule-trains andpedestrians behind. Houses were rare, and the fall of night threatenedto leave me alone among vast whining pine forests where the air wasalready chill. In the dusk, however, I came upon the hut of PabloMorales and bespoke posada. He growled a surly permission and addressedhardly a word to me for hours thereafter. The place was the most filthy,quarrelsome, pig and chicken overrun stop on the trip, and when at lastI prepared to swing my hammock inside the hut the sulky host informed methat he only permitted travelers the corredor. Two otherguests—ragged, soil-encrusted arrieros—were already housed within, butthere were at least some advantages in swinging my own net outside fromthe rafters of the eaves. Pigs jolted against me now and then and beforeI had entirely fallen asleep I was disturbed by a procession of dirtyurchins, each carrying a blazing pine stick, who came one by one to lookme over. I was just settling down again when Pablo himself appeared, anuncanny figure in the dancing light of his flaming torch. He had heardthat I could "put people on paper," and would I put his wife on paper inreturn for his kindness in giving me posada? Yes, in the morning. Whycouldn't I do it now? He seemed strangely eager, for a man accustomed toset mañana as his own time of action. His surly indifference hadchanged to an annoying solicitude, and he forced upon me first asteaming tortilla, then a native beverage, and finally came with a largecloth hammock in which I passed the night more comfortably than in myown open-work net.

In the morning heavy mountain clouds and a swirling mist madephotography impossible, but my host was not of the grade of intelligencethat made this simple explanation possible. He led the way into thewindowless hut, in a corner of which lay a woman of perhaps thirty in adog-litter of a bed enclosed by curtains hung from the rafters. Thewalls were black with coagulated smoke. The woman, yellow and emaciatedwith months of fever, groaned distressingly as the curtains were drawnaside, but her solicitous husband insisted on propping her up in bed andholding her with an arm about the shoulders while I "put them both onpaper." His purpose, it turned out, was to send the picture to theshrine of "la Virgen de los Remedios" that she might cure the groaningwife of her ailment, and he insisted that it must show "bed and all andthe color of her face" that the Virgin might know what was required ofher. I went through the motions of taking a photograph and explained aswell as was possible why it could not be delivered at once, with theadded information to soften his coming disappointment that the machinesometimes failed. The fellow merely gathered the notion that I was but asorry magician at best, who had my diabolical hocuspocus onlyimperfectly under control, and he did not entirely succeed in keepinghis sneers invisible. I offered quinine and such other medicines as wereto be found in my traveling case, but he had no faith in worldlyremedies.

By nine the day was brilliant. There was an unusual amount of levelgrassy trail, though steep slopes were not lacking. During the morning Ipassed several bands of ragged soldiers meandering northward in routorder and some distance behind them their bedraggled women and children,all afoot and carrying their entire possessions on their heads andbacks. Frequently a little wooden cross or a heap of stones showed wheresome traveler had fallen by the wayside, perhaps at the hands of hisfellow-man; for the murder rate, thanks largely to drink and vendettas,is high in Honduras. It might be less if assassins faced the deathpenalty, instead of being merely shut within prisons from which anactive man could soon dig his way to freedom with a pocket-knife, if hedid not have the patience to wait a few months until a new revolutionbrought him release or pardon.

The futility of Honduranean life was illustrated here and there. On somevast hillside capable of producing food for a multitude the eye made outa single milpa, or tiny corn-field, fenced off with huge slabs ofmahogany worth easily ten times all the corn the patch could produce ina lifetime—or rather, worth nothing whatever, for a thing is valuableonly where it is in demand. At ten I lost the way, found it again, andbegan an endless, rock-strewn climb upward through pines, tacking moretimes than I could count, each leg of the ascent a toilsome journey initself. Not the least painful of road experiences in Honduras is toreach the summit of such a range after hours of heavy labor, to takeperhaps a dozen steps along the top of the ridge, and then find thetrail pitching headlong down again into a bottomless gorge, from whichcomes up the joyous sound of a mountain stream that draws the thirstytraveler on at double speed, only to bring him at last to a rude bridgeover a precipitous, rock-sided river impossible to reach beforeattacking the next slope staring him in the face.

Luckily I foraged an imitation dinner in San Juan, a scattering of mudhuts on a broad upland plain, most of the adult inhabitants of whichwere away at some work or play in the surrounding hills. Cattle withoutnumber dotted the patches of unlevel meadows, but not a drop of milk wasto be had. Roosters would have made the night a torture, yet three eggsrewarded the canvassing of the entire hamlet. These it is always theHonduranean custom to puncture with a small hole before dropping intohot water, no doubt because there was no other way of getting theuniversal uncleanliness into them. Nor did I ever succeed in gettingthem more than half cooked. Once I offered an old woman an extra real ifshe would boil them a full three minutes without puncturing them. Sheasserted that without a hole in the end "the water could not get in tocook them," but at length solemnly promised to follow my ordersimplicitly. When the eggs reappeared they were as raw as ever, thoughsomewhat warm, and each had its little punctured hole. I took the cookto task and she assured me vociferously that "they broke themselves."Apparently there was some superstition connected with the matter whichnone dared violate. At any rate I never succeeded in being servedun-holed eggs in all rural Honduras.

Not only have these people of the wilderness next to nothing to eat, butthey are too indolent to learn to cook what they have. The thick, doughytortillas and half-boiled black beans, accompanied by black, unstrainedcoffee with dirty crude sugar and without milk, were not merelymonotonous, but would have been fatal to civilized man of sedentaryhabits. Only the constant toil and sweat, and the clear water ofmountain stream offset somewhat the evil effects under which even ahorseman would probably have succumbed. The inhabitants of theHonduranean wilds are distinctly less human in their habits than thewild men of the Malay Peninsula. For the latter at least build floorsof split bamboo above the ground. Without exaggeration the people ofthis region were more uncleanly than their gaunt and yellow curs, forthe latter carefully picked a spot to lie in while the human beingsthrew themselves down anywhere and nonchalantly motioned to a guest tosit down or drop his bundle among fresh offal. They literally neverwashed, except by accident, and handled food and filth alternately witha child-like blandness.

I was just preparing to leave San Juan when a woman came from aneighboring hut to request my assistance at a child-birth! In thisregion all "gringoes" have the reputation of being physicians, and theinhabitants will not be undeceived. I forcibly tore myself away andstruck for the surrounding wilderness.

From soon after noon until sunset I climbed incessantly among tumbledrocks without seeing a human being. A cold wind howled through a vastpine forest of the highest altitude of my Honduranean journey—more thansix thousand feet above sea-level. Night fell in wild solitude, but Icould only plod on, for to sleep out at this height would have beendangerous. Luckily a corner of moon lighted up weirdly a moderately widetrail. I had tramped an hour or more into the night when a flickeringlight ahead among the trees showed what might have been a camp ofbandits, but which proved to be only that of a group of muleteers, whohad stacked their bales of merchandise around three sides under anancient roof on poles and rolled up in their blankets close to theblazing wood fire they had built to the leeward of it.

They gave no sign of offering me place and I marched on into the howlingnight. Perhaps four miles beyond I made out a cluster of habitationspitched on the summit and slope of a hill leaning toward the trail withnothing above it on any side to break the raging wind. An uproar ofbarking dogs greeted my arrival, and it was some time before an inmateof one of the dark and silent huts summoned up courage to peer out uponme. He emerged armed with a huge stick and led the way to a miserablehovel on the hilltop, where he beat on the door and called out that an"hombrecito" sought posada. This opened at last and I entered a mudroom in one end of which a fire of sticks blazed fitfully. A woman ofperhaps forty, though appearing much older, as is the case with mostwomen of Honduras, lay on a wooden bed and a girl of ten huddled amongrags near the fire. I asked for food and the woman ordered the girl toheat me black coffee and tortillas. The child was naked to the waist,though the bitter cold wind howled with force through the hut, the wallsand especially the gables and roof of which were far from whole. Thewoman complained of great pain in her right leg, and knowing she wouldotherwise groan and howl the night through in the hope of attracting theVirgin's attention, I induced her to swallow two sedative pills. Thesmoke made me weep as I swung my hammock from two soot-blackenedrafters, but the fire soon went out and I awoke from the first dozeshivering until the hut shook. The temperature was not low compared withour northern winters, but the wind carried a penetrating chill thatreached the marrow of the bones. I rose and tried unsuccessfully torelight the fire. The half-naked girl proved more skilful and I sathuddled on a stool over the fire, alternately weeping with the smoke andall but falling into the blaze as I dozed. The pills had little effecton my hostess. I gave her three more, but her Honduranean stomach wasevidently zinc-lined and she groaned and moaned incessantly. I returnedto my hammock and spent several dream-months at the North Pole before Iwas awakened at first co*ckcrow by the old woman kneeling on the earthfloor before a lithograph of the Virgin surrounded by withered pinebranches, wailing a singsong prayer. She left off at length with theinformation that her only hope of relief was to make a pilgrimage to the"Virgen de los Remedios," and ordered the girl to prepare coffee. I paidmy bill of two reales and gave the girl one for herself, evidently thelargest sum she had ever possessed, if indeed she remained long inpossession of it after I took my hobbling and shivering departure.

A cold and wind-swept hour, all stiffly up or down, brought me toEsperanza, near which I saw the first wheeled vehicle of Honduras, acontraption of solid wooden wheels behind gaunt little oxen identicalwith those of northwest Spain even to the excruciating scream of itsgreaseless axle. In the outskirts two ragged, hoof-footed soldierssprang up from behind the bushes of a hillside and came down upon me,waving their muskets and screaming:

"A'onde va? D'onde viene? Have you a pass to go through our department?"

"Yes, from your consul in Guatemala."

They did not ask to read it, perhaps for a reason, but permitted me topass; to my relief, for the old woman had announced that smallpox wasraging in her town of Yamaranguila and its people were not allowed toenter Esperanza. This proved to be a place of considerable size, oflarge huts scattered over a broad grassy plain in a sheltered valley,with perhaps five thousand inhabitants but not a touch ofcivilization. Crowds of boys and dirty ragged soldiers followed me,grinning and throwing salacious comments as I wandered from house tohouse trying to buy food. At a corner of the plaza the comandante calledto me from his hut. I treated him with the haughty air of a superior,with frequent reference to my "orders from the government," and hequickly subsided from patronizing insolence to humility and sent asoldier to lead me to "where food is prepared for strangers." Twoancient crones, pottering about a mud stove in an open-work reed kitchenthrough which the mountain wind swept chillingly, half-cooked anenormous slab of veal, boiled a pot of the ubiquitous black coffee, andscraped together a bit of stale bread, or more exactly cake, for pandulce was the only species that the town afforded. A dish oftomatoes of the size of small cherries proved far more appetizing, afterthey had been well washed, but the astonishment with which the aged pairwatched me eat them suggested that the tradition that held this fruitpoison still reigns in Esperanza.

Back once more in the comandancia I resolved to repay the soldiersscattered about town for their insolence in the one way painful to theHonduranean—by making them exert themselves. Displaying again my"government order," I demanded a photograph of the garrison of Esperanzawith the comandante, its generals, colonels, lieutenants, and all thelesser fry at the head; and an imperative command soon brought theentire force of fifty or more hurrying barefoot and startled, theirancient muskets under their arms, from the four somnolent corners of thecity. I kept them maneuvering a half-hour or so, ostensibly forphotographic reasons, while all the populace looked on, and thereos, or department prisoners in their chains, formed a languidgroup leaning on their shovels at the edge of the plaza waiting untiltheir guards should be returned to them.

At ten I reshouldered my stuff and marched out in a still cold, cloudy,upland day, the wondering inhabitants of Esperanza staring awe-strickenafter me until I disappeared from view. A few miles out I met two pureIndians, carrying oranges in nets on their backs, the supporting strapacross their foreheads. To my question they admitted the fruit was forsale, though it is by no means uncommon in Central America forcountrymen to refuse to sell on the road produce they are carrying totown for that purpose. I asked for a real's worth. Luckily theymisunderstood, for the price was "two hands for a medio," and as it wasI had to leave lying on the grass several of the ten fine large orangesone of the aborigines had counted on his fingers and accepted atwo-and-a-half cent piece for with a "Muchas gracias, amigo." Farther onI met scores of these short, thick-set Indians, of both sexes and allages, straining along over mountain trails for forty or fifty miles fromtheir colonies to town each with at most a hundred and fifty orangesthey would there scarcely sell for so high a price.

Beyond a fordable, ice-cold stream a fairly good road changed to anatrocious mountain trail in a labyrinth of tumbled pine-clad ridges andgullies, on which I soon lost my way in a drizzling rain. The singletelegraph wire came to my rescue, jumping lightly from moss-grown stickto tall slender tree-trunk across vast chasms down into and out of whichI had to slip and slide and stumble pantingly upward in pursuit. Beforedark I was delighted to fall upon a trail again, though not with itscondition, for it was generally perpendicular and always thick withloose stones. A band of arrieros cooking their scanty supper under ashelter tent asserted there were houses some two leagues on, but forhours I hobbled over mountains of pure stone, my maltreated feet wincingat every step, without verifying the assertion. Often the descents wereso steep I had to pick each footstep carefully in the darkness, and morethan one climb required the assistance of my hands. A swift stream allbut swept me off my feet, and in the stony climb beyond I lost bothtrail and telegraph wire and, after floundering about for some time in aswamp, was forced to halt and swing my hammock between two saplingsunder enormous sheer cliffs that looked like great medieval castles inthe night, their white faces spotted by the trees that found foothold onthem. Happily I had dropped well down out of the clouds that hover aboutEsperanza and the cold mountain wind was now much tempered. The whitemountain wall rising sheer from my very hips was also somewhatsheltering, though it was easy to dream of rocks being dropped fromaloft upon me.

I had clambered a steep and rocky three hours next morning before I cameupon the first evidences of humanity, a hut on a little tableland, withall the customary appurtenances and uncleanliness. Black unstrainedcoffee and tortillas of yellow hue gradually put strength enough in mylegs to enable them to push me on through bottomless rocky barrancas,and at length, beyond the hamlet of Santa María, up one of the highestclimbs of the trip to the long crest of a ridge thick with whisperingpines and with splendid views of the "Great Depths," dense in woodland,on either side as far as the eye could reach. Muleteers passedfrequently, often carrying on their own backs a bundle of the Santa Rosacigars with which their animals were laden. Except for her soldiers,accustomed to "show off" before their fellows, every person I had met inHonduras had been kindly and courteous—if dirty—and never with a hintof coveting my meager hoard. Beggars seemed as unknown asrobbers—perhaps from lack of initiative and energy. From Esperanza on,the Indian boys I met driving mules or carrying nets of oranges allfolded their hands before them like a Buddhist at prayer when theyapproached me, but instead of mumbling some request for alms, as Iexpected, they greeted me with an almost obsequious "Adiós" and a faintsmile. How the "little red schoolhouse" is lacking in this woodedmountainland! Not merely was the immense majority entirely illiterate,but very few of them had even reached the stage of desiring to learn. Apaucity of intelligence and initiative made all intercourse monotonouslythe same. The greeting was never a hearty, individual phrase of thespeaker's own choosing, but always the invariable "Adiós, Buenos días,tardes or noche," even though I had already addressed some inquiry tothem. Replies to questions of distance were as stereotyped, with thediminutive ito beloved of the Central Americans tacked onwherever possible:

"Larguita 'stá! A la vueltita no más! Está cerquita! De día no llega! Ala tardecita llega. Ay no masito! A la oracióncita llega—"

Nothing could bring them down from these glittering generalities to adefinite statement of distance, in leagues or hours, and to reach aplace reported "Just around the little corner" was as apt to mean a halfday's tramp as that it was over the next knoll.

In the aldea of Tutule I fell in with Alberto Suaza, a pleasantappearing, all but white Honduranean, who had once been in the army andwas now returning on horseback from some government errand. The hamletslumbered on a slope of a little leaning valley backed by a woodedmountain ridge, all but a few of the inhabitants being engaged in coffeeculture in the communal tract up over the hill when we arrived. Suazapicketed his diminutive animal before the hut of a friend, in which weshared two eggs and coffee and turned in together. Unfortunately I letmy companion persuade me against my better judgment to lay aside myhammock and sleep on his "bed," a sun-dried ox-hide thrown on the earthfloor, on my side of which, "because he was more used to hard beds thanthose señores gringoes," he spread most of the colchón(mattress)—which consisted of two empty grainsacks. Either these or thepainfully thin blanket over us housed a nimble breed I had miraculouslyescaped thus far on the journey, robbing me of the much-needed sleep theincessant barking of a myriad of dogs, the itching of mosquito bites,the rhinoceros-like throat-noises of the family, and the rock hardnessof the floor would probably otherwise have pilfered. The man of thehouse had stripped stark naked and, wrapping a red blanket about him,lay down on a bare wooden bed to pass the night apparently in perfectcomfort. Soft mortals indeed are we of civilized and upholstered lands.

Suaza made no protest when I paid the bill for both, and by seven wewere off, he riding his tiny horse until we were out of sight of thetown, then dismounting to lead it the rest of the day. He had announcedhimself the possessor of an immensely rich aunt on whose hacienda weshould stop for "breakfast," and promised we should spend the nighteither in the gold mine of which she was a chief stockholder or at herhome in La Paz, which I gathered to be a great mansion filled with allthe gleanings of that lady's many trips to Europe and the States. I hadlong since learned the Latin American's love of personalexaggeration. But Suaza was above the Honduranean average; he not onlyread with comparative ease but cleaned his finger nails, and I lookedforward with some eagerness to a coming oasis of civilization in thehitherto unsoftened wilderness.

It was an ideal day for tramping, cloudy yet bright, with a strong freshwind almost too cold for sitting still and across a country green andfragrant with endless forest, and after the climb back of Tutule littlemore than rolling. It was noon before we came upon the new mud-and-tiledhouse of the cattle-tender of "dear aunty's" hacienda, and though themeal we enjoyed there was savory by Honduranean standards, it was not socompletely Parisian as I had permitted myself to anticipate. That I wasallowed to pay for it proved nothing, for the employees of the wealthyfrequently show no aversion to accepting personal favors.

Not far beyond we came out on the edge of a tableland with a splendidview of the valley of Comayagua, far below, almost dead level, some tenmiles wide and thirty long, deep green everywhere, with cloud shadowsgiving beautiful color effects across it in the jumble of greenmountains with the purple tinge of distance beyond which layTegucigalpa. At the same time there began the most laborious descent ofthe journey, an utterly dry mountain face pitched at an acute angle andmade up completely of loose rock, down which we must pick every step andoften use our hands to keep from landing with broken bones at thebottom. The new buildings of the mine were in plain sight almostdirectly below us from the beginning, yet we were a full two hours inzigzagging by short legs straight down the loose-stone slope tothem. The American manager was absent, but in the general store of thecompany I had not only the pleasure of spending an hour in the firstthoroughly clean building I had seen in Honduras, but of speakingEnglish, for the two Negro youths in charge of the place were natives ofBelize, or British Honduras, and were equally fluent in my own tongue orSpanish, while their superiority in personal condition over the nativeswas a sad commentary on the boasted advantage of the republican form ofgovernment.

The thirsty, rock-sown descent continued, bringing us at last withaching thighs to the level of the vast valley, more than four thousandfeet below the lodging-places of the few days past. Suaza mounted hishorse and prepared to enter his native La Paz in style. So often hadkingly quarters promised me by the self-styled sons of wealth in LatinAmerica gradually degenerated to the monotonous tortilla level ofgeneral conditions that I had not been able entirely to disabuse myselfof an expectation of disappointment. Sure enough, where the trail brokeup into a score of paths among mud huts and pig wallows, my companionpaused in the dark to say:

"Perhaps after all it will be better to take you right to my house forto-night. One always feels freer in one's father's house. My aunt mightbe holding some social affair, or be sick or—But we will surely call ather mansion to-morrow, and—"

"Como usted quiera?" I answered, swallowing my disappointment. At leasthis father's house should be something above the ordinary.

But to my astonishment we stopped a bit farther on in the suburbs beforeone of the most miserable mud hovels it had been my misfortune to runacross in Honduras, swarming with pigs, yellow curs, and all themultitudinous filth and disarray indigenous to the country. The coldestof welcomes greeted us, the frowsy, white-bearded father in the noisomedoorway replying to the son's query of why there was no light with acrabbed:

"If you want light why don't you come in the daytime?"

My companion told a boy of the family to go buy a candle, and hisscrawny, unkempt mother bounded out of the hut with the snarl of amiser:

"What do you want a candle for?"

The boy refused to go and Suaza tied his horse to a bush and went inquest of one himself. I mentioned supper, hinting at my willingness topay for anything that could be furnished, but to each article Isuggested came the monotonous, indifferent Honduranean answer, "No hay."After much growling and an extended quarrel with her son, the woman seton a corner of a wabbly-legged table, littered with all manner ofunsavory junk, two raw eggs, punctured and warmed, a bowl of hot waterand a stale slab of pan dulce, a cross between poor bread andworse cake. I wandered on into the town in the hope of finding someimitation of a hotel. But though the place had a population of severalthousand, it was made up exclusively of mud huts only two or three ofwhich were faintly lighted by pine-splinters. The central plaza was abarren, unlighted pasture, a hut on the corner of which was reputed tobe a shop, but when I had beaten my way into it I found nothing for saleexcept bottles of an imitation wine at monopoly prices. In my disgust Ipounded my way into every hovel that was said to be a tienda. Not anedible thing was to be found. One woman claimed to have fruit for sale,and after collecting a high price for them she went out into the patioand picked a half-dozen perfectly green oranges.

"But what do people eat and drink in La Paz? Grass and water?" Idemanded.

But the bedraggled population was not even amenable to crude sarcasm,and the only reply I got was a lazy, child-like:

"Oh, each one keeps what he needs to eat in his own house."

Here was a town of a size to have been a place of importance in otherlands, yet even the mayor lived with his pigs on an earthfloor. Statistics of population have little meaning in Honduras. Theplace recalled a cynical "gringo's" description of a similar town, "Ithas a hundred men, two hundred women, and 100,000 chuchos "—the genericterm in Central America for yellow curs of all colors. Why every familyhouses such a swarm of these miserable beasts is hard to guess. Mereapathy, no doubt, for they are never fed; nor, indeed, are the pigs thatalso overrun every household and live, like the dogs, on the offal ofthe patio or backyard that serves as place of convenience. They have atleast the doubtful virtue of partly solving the sewer problem, which isnot a problem to Honduraneans. A tortilla or other food held carelesslyis sure to be snatched by some cat, pig, or dog; a bundle left unwatchedfor a moment is certain to be rooted about the floor or deposited withfilth. These people utterly lack any notion of improvement. A child oran animal, for instance, climbs upon the table or into a dish of food.When the point is reached at which it is unavoidable, the person nearestshouts, throws whatever is handy, or kicks at the offender; but thoughthe same identical performance is repeated a score of times during asingle meal, there is never any attempt to correct the culprit, to driveit completely off, or remove the threatened dish from the danger zone. Apeople inhabiting a land that might be a garden spot of the earth driftthrough their miserable lives in identically the same fashion as theirgaunt and mangy curs.

There was a great gathering of the neighboring clans in the Suaza hutnext morning, while my companion of the day before enlarged upon what hefancied he knew about his distinguished guest. Among those who crowdedthe place were several men of education, in the Honduraneansense,—about equal to that of a poorly trained American child in thefourth grade. But there was not one of them that did not show a monkeycuriosity and irresponsibility in handling every article in my pack; mysweater—"Ay qué lindo!" my papers—"How beautiful!" an extremelyordinary shirt—"How soft and fine! How costly!" and "How much did thiscost?—and that?" Suaza displayed my medicine-case to the open-mouthedthrong—and would I give mother some pills for her colic, and would Iplease photograph each one of the family—and so on to the end ofpatience. There was no mention made of the wealthy aunt and her mansionafter the day dawned. The invitation to spend a few days, "as many asyou like," amid the luxuries of Paris and the Seven Seas had tapereddown to the warmed eggs and black coffee, the only real food I ate beingthat I had bought in a house-to-house canvass in the morning. I haddistributed pills to most of the family and several neighbors andphotographed them, at the request of the man of many promises, had paidhis bills on the road since our meeting; while I prepared my pack, herequested me to send him six prints each of the pictures, some postalsof New York, a pair of pajamas such as I carried, "and any other littlethings I might think he would like," including long weekly letters, andas I rose to take my leave and asked what I owed him, he replied with abland and magnanimous smile:

"You owe me nothing whatever, señor,—only to mamá," and dear mamácollected about what a first-class hotel would have for the same lengthof time.

CHAPTER X

THE CITY OF THE SILVER HILLS

A monotonous wide path full of loose stones led through dry, breathlessjungle across the valley floor to Comayagua. The former capital of therepublic had long held a place in my imagination, and the distant viewof it the day before from the lofty rim of the valley backed by longblue ranges of mountains had enhanced my desire to visit the place, eventhough it lay somewhat off the direct route. But romance did not longsurvive my entrance. For the most part it was merely a largercollection of huts along badly cobbled or grass-grown streets common toall "cities" of Honduras. A stub-towered, white-washed cathedral, builtby the Spaniards and still the main religious edifice of Honduras, facedthe drowsy plaza; near it were a few "houses of commerce," one-storyplaster buildings before which hung a sign with the owner's name andpossibly some hint of his business, generally that of hawking a fewbolts of cloth, straw hats, or ancient and fly-specked cheap productsfrom foreign parts. The town boasted a place that openly receivestravelers, but its two canvas cots and its rafters were already occupiedby several snobbish and gawkily dressed young natives bound from thenorth coast to the capital.

The chief of telegraphs finally led me to the new billiard-hall, where alawyer in a frock coat and the manners of a prime minister admitted hehad an empty shop in which I could swing my hammock. When he hadfinished his game, he got a massive key and a candle and led the way inperson to a small hut in a side street, the rafters uncomfortably highabove the tile floor, on which I was fortunate to have a newspaper tospread before depositing my bundle. The lawyer took leave of me withthe customary "At your orders; here you are in your own house," andmarched ministerially away with the several pompous friends who hadaccompanied him. But a few moments later, having shaken them off, hereturned to collect ten cents—one real for rent and another for thecandle. It was the first lodging I had paid since leaving GuatemalaCity. As I doubled up in my ill-hung hammock, the dull thump of adistant guitar and the explosion of a rare firecracker broke thestillness of New Year's eve, while now and then there drifted to my earsthe sound of a band in the main plaza that tortured the night atintervals into the small hours.

Comayagua by day was a lazy, silent place, chiefly barefoot, the fewpossessors of shoes being gaudily dressed young men whose homes wereearth-floored huts. The place had the familiar Central American air oftrying to live with the least possible exertion; its people were amongrel breed running all the gamut from black to near-white. There werenone of the fine physical specimens common to the highlands of Mexico,and the teeth were notably bad. A few of the soldiers, in blue-jeanuniforms with what had once been white stripes, faded straw hats, andbare feet, were mountain Indians with well-developed chests; formilitary service—of the catch-them-with-a-rope variety—is compulsoryin Honduras. But the population in general was anemic and stunted. Twoprisoners were at work in the streets; more properly they sat smokingcigarettes and putting a finger cautiously to their lips when I passedin silent request not to wake up their guard, who was sound asleep onhis back in the shade, his musket lying across his chest. The town hadone policeman, a kinky-haired youth in a white cap and a pale light graycotton uniform, who carried a black club and wore shoes! Thecartero, or mailman, was a barefoot boy in faded khaki and anancient straw hat, who wandered lazily and apparently aimlessly abouttown with the week's correspondence in hand, reading the postals andfeeling the contents of each letter with a proprietary air. The sun wasbrilliant and hot here in the valley, and there was an aridity that hadnot been suggested in the view of it from the heights above.

It was no place to spend New Year's, however, stiff and sore though Iwas from the hardships of the road, and toward lazy, silent noonday Iwandered on along the trail to the modern capital, hoping that it, atleast, might have real beds and a hotel, and perhaps even whiteinhabitants. The battered old church bells were thumping as I topped theslight rise that hid the town from view, and it was four hours laterthat I saw or heard the next human being, or any other evidence of hisexistence except a stretch of barb-wire and one lone telegraph wiresagging from one crooked stick to another. The four stony dry but flatleagues along the valley floor had brought me to San Antonio, all thepopulation of which was loafing and mildly celebrating New Year's, asthey would celebrate any other possible excuse not to work. Here Iobtained water, and new directions that led me off more toward the eastand the heaped-up mountains that lay between me and Tegucigalpa. On allsides spread a dry, bushy land, aching for cultivation. I had the goodfortune to fall in with a river so large I was able to swim threestrokes in one of its pools, and strolled with dusk into the town ofFlores on the edge of the first foothills of the ranges still to besurmounted.

Though still a lazy naked village, this one showed some hint of thefar-off approach of civilization. Animals were forbidden the house inwhich I passed the night, and its tile-floor was almost clean. Thislatter virtue was doubly pleasing, for the rafters above were so highthat even when I had tied my hammock by the very ends of the ropes Icould only climb in by mounting a chair and swinging myself up as into atrapeze; and if I must break a leg it would be some slight compensationto do so on a clean floor. How much uncleanliness this simple little30-cent net had kept me up out of since the day I bought it in GuatemalaCity!

Like many of the tasks of life, this one grew easier toward itstermination. A moderate day's walk, not without rocky climbs andbajadas, but with considerable stretches of almost level goingacross solitary wind-cooled plains, brought me to Támara. A passingcompany of soldiers had all but gutted the village larder, but at duskin the last hut I got not only food but meat, and permission to swing myhammock from the blackened rafters of the reed kitchen, over the openpots and pans. Incidentally, for the first time in Honduras prices werequadrupled in honor of my being a foreigner. Civilization indeed wasapproaching.

Half way up the wooded ridge beyond I met the sun mounting from theother side, fell in soon after with a real highway, and at eleven caughtthe first sight of Tegucigalpa, the "City of the Silver Hills," capitalof the Sovereign and Independent Republic of Honduras. It was no veryastounding sight; merely what in other lands would have been considereda large village, a chiefly one-story place with a whitewashed church,filling only a small proportion of a somewhat barren valley surroundedby high rocky and partly wooded hills. I marched down throughComayagüela in all the disreputableness of fifteen days on the trail,across the little bridge of a few arches over a shallow river which toHonduraneans far and wide is one of the greatest works of man, and intothe park-like little central plaza, with its huge arbor of purplebourgainvillea.

The "Hotel Jockey Club" was not all that the imagination might havepictured, but at least there Was the satisfaction of knowing that anystranger in town, be he "gringo" or president-elect, famous or infamous,rich or honest, could stop nowhere else. Among its luxuries was a"bath," which turned out to be a massive stone vessel in the basem*ntwith a drizzle of cold water from a faucet above that was sure to rundry about the time the victim was well soaped; its frontiersman roomswere furnished with little more than weak-kneed canvas cots, and thebarefoot service of the dining-room was assisted by all the dogs, fowls,and flies of the region. But there lay two hungry weeks of CentralAmerican trail behind me and for days to come I ate unquestioninglyanything that came within reach of my fingers, of whatever race, color,or previous condition of servitude.

Just around the corner—as everything is in this miniature capital—theAmerican Legation delivered the accumulated mail of a month, and thepair of real shoes I had had the happy thought of sending to myself heremonths before. This bit of foresight saved me from hobbling on to thecoast barefoot. I had arrived just in time to attend one ofTegucigalpa's gala events, the inspection of her newly reformed policeforce. "It is set for three," said the legation secretary, "so comearound about three-thirty." Just around another corner we enteredtoward four the large dusty patio of a one-story building of mud blocks,against the adobe wall of which were lined up something over a hundredhalf-frightened, half-proud Honduranean Indians in brand new, dark-blueuniforms and caps, made in Germany, and armed with black night-sticksand large revolvers half-hidden in immense holsters. We took the placesof honor reserved for us at a bench and table under the patio verandabeside the chief of police, an American soldier of fortune named LeeChristmas. He was a man nearing fifty, totally devoid of all theembroidery of life, golden toothed and graying at the temples, but stillhardy and of youthful vigor, of the dress and manner of a well-paidAmerican mechanic, who sat chewing his black cigar as complacently as ifhe were still at his throttle on the railroad of Guatemala. Followingthe latest revolution he had reorganized what, to use his own words, hadbeen "a bunch of barefooted apes in faded-blue cotton rags" into thesolemn military company that was now to suffer its first formalinspection. The native secretary, standing a bit tremulously in the edgeof the shade, called from the list in his hand first the name ofChristmas himself, then that of the first assistant, and his own, hehimself answering "present" for each of these. Next were thecommanders, clerks, under-secretaries, and the like in civilian garb,each, as his name was pronounced, marching past us hat in hand andbowing profoundly. Last came the policemen in uniform. As the secretaryread his title and first name, each self-conscious Indian steppedstiffly forth from the ranks, throwing a foot, heavy with theunaccustomed shoe, high in the air and pounding the earth in the newmilitary style taught him by a willowy young native in civilian dresswho leaned haughtily on his cane watching every movement, made asharp-cornered journey about the sun-flooded yard and bringing up moreor less in front of his dreaded chief, gave a half turn, raised theright leg to the horizontal with the grace of an aged ballet dancer longsince the victim of rheumatism, brought it down against the left likethe closing of a heavy trapdoor, saluted with his night-stick andhuskily called out his own last name, which Christmas checked off on thelist before him without breaking the thread of the particular anecdotewith which he chanced at that moment to be entertaining us.

"I tried to get 'em to cut out this —— —— German monkey business ofthrowing their feet around," confided the chief sadly, "but it's no use,for it's in the —— —— military manual."

Judged by Central American standards the force was well trained. But thepoor Indians and half-breeds that made up its bulk were so overwhelmedwith the solemnity of the extraordinary occasion that they were evenmore ox-like in their clumsiness and nearer frightened apes in demeanorthan in their native jungles. The quaking fear of making a mis-stepcaused them to keep their eyes riveted on the lips of our compatriot,from which, instead of the words of wrath they no doubt often imagined,issued some such remark as:

"Why —— —— it, W——, one of the bums I picked up along the line oneday in Guatemala told me the best —— —— yarn that—"

Nor could they guess that the final verdict on the great ceremony thatrang forth on the awe-struck silence as the chief rose to his feet was:

"Well, drop around to my room in the hotel when you want to hear therest of it. But if you see the sign on my door,' Ladies Only To-day,'don't knock. The chambermaid may not have finished her official visit."

The climate of Tegucigalpa leaves little to be desired. Otherwise it ismerely a large Central American village of a few thousand inhabitants,with much of the indifference, uncleanliness, and ignorance of the restof the republic. Priests are numerous, wandering about smoking theircigarettes and protected from the not particularly hot sun by broad hatsand umbrellas. One lonely little native sheet masquerades as anewspaper, the languid little shops, often owned by foreigners, offer ameager and ancient stock chiefly imported and all high in price; for ittakes great inducement to make the natives produce anything beyond thecorn and beans for their own requirements. The "national palace" is agreen, clap-boarded building, housing not only the president and hislittle reception-room solemn with a dozen chairs in cotton shrouds, butcongress, the ministry, and the "West Point of Honduras," thesuperintendent of which was a native youth who had spent a year or twoat Chapultepec. Against it lean barefooted, anemic "soldiers" in misfitoveralls, armed with musket and bayonet that overtop them in height. Themain post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in thecobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows waiting for themule-back mail-train to arrive that they may lock up in preparation forbeginning to look over the correspondence mañana. It is not the customto make appointments in Tegucigalpa. If one resident desires thepresence of another at dinner, or some less excusable function, hewanders out just before the hour set until he picks up his guestsomewhere. By night the town is doubly dead. The shops put up theirwooden shutters at dusk, the more energetic inhabitants wander a whileabout the cobbled streets, dim-lighted here and there by arc-lights, thecathedral bells jangle at intervals like suspended pieces of scrap-iron,arousing a chorus of barking dogs, and a night in which two blankets arecomfortable settles down over all the mountainous, moon-flooded region.There is not even the imitation of a theater, the plaza concert onSunday evenings, in which the two sexes wander past each other inopposite directions for an hour or two, being the only fixedrecreation. A man of infinite patience, or who had grown old and wearyof doing, might find Tegucigalpa agreeable; but it would soon pall onthe man still imbued with living desires.

The fitting shield of Honduras would be one bearing as motto thatmonotonous phrase which greets the traveler most frequently along hertrails, "No hay." The country is noted chiefly for what "there is not."Everywhere one has the impression of watching peculiarly stupid childrenplaying at being a republic. The nation is a large farm in size and apoorly run one in condition. The wave of "liberty" that swept over alarge part of the world after the French Revolution left these waywardand not over-bright inhabitants of what might be a rich and fertile landto play at governing themselves, to ape the forms of real republics, andmix them with such childish clauses as come into their infantileminds. The chief newspaper of the republic resembles a high-schoolperiodical, concocted by particularly thick-headed students withoutfaculty assistance or editing. A history of their childish governmentalactivities would fill volumes. In 1910 all the copper one-centavo coinswere called in and crudely changed to two-centavo pieces by surchargingthe figure 2 and adding an s, a much smaller one-centavo coin beingissued. The "government" may have made as much as $50 by thetransaction. Not long before my arrival, the current postage-stamps,large quantities of which had been bought by foreign firms within thecountry, were suddenly declared worthless, and the entire accumulatedcorrespondence for the next steamer returned to the senders, instead ofat least being forwarded to destination under excess charges.Foreigners established the first factory Tegucigalpa had ever known,which was already employing a half-hundred of the pauperous inhabitantsin the making of candles, when the "government" suddenly not only put aheavy duty on stearine but required the payment of back duty on all thathad already been imported. An Englishman came down from the mines of SanJuancito embued with the desire to start a manual-training school in thecapital. He called on the mulatto president and offered his servicesfree for a year, if the government would invest $5000 in equipment. Thepresident told him to come back mañana. On that elusive day he wasinformed that the government had no such sum at its disposal,

"I have saved up $2500 myself," replied the Englishman, "which I willlend the government for the purpose, if it will add a like amount."

But when mañana came again, the president expressed his regrets that thenational treasury could not endure such a strain.

The best view of Tegucigalpa is had from Picacho, a long ridge from backin the mountains, ending in a blunt nose almost sheer above thecity. Whoever climbs it recognises the reason for the native saying, "Hewho holds Picacho sleeps in the palace." Its town-side face is almostprecipitous, and on every hand spread rolling, half-bare uplandmountains. All but sheer below, in the lowest depression of the visibleworld, sits the little capital, rather compact in the center, thenscattered along the little river and in the suburb of Comayaguelabeyond it. The dull-red tile roofs predominate, and the city is sodirectly below that one can see almost to the bottom of every tree-grownpatio. A few buildings are of two stories, and the twin-towers of thelittle white cathedral stand somewhat above the general level. But mostnoticeable of any is the fact that all the vast broken plain surroundingit far and wide lies almost entirely uncultivated, for the most partneither cleared nor inhabited, crossed by several roads and trails, mostconspicuous of all the two white ribbons by one of which I had arrivedfrom the north and the other of which was already inviting me onward tothe coast and new climes.

A fellow-gringo, bound for the Pacific exit on a miniature horse, packedaway my baggage on his cargo mule and left me to walk unhampered. Ahighway some fifty feet wide and white with dust struck off uncertainlytoward the southwest, a splendid highway once, built for automobiles bythe combined efforts of the government and an American mining companyfarther up in the hills, but now suffered to fall here and there into adisrepair that made it as useless for such traffic as a mountain trail.The first day of thirty miles brought us to Sabana Grande, with aspecies of hotel. During the second, there were many down-gradeshort-cuts, full of loose stones and dusty dry under the ever warmersun, with the most considerable bridge in Honduras over the PasorealRiver, and not a few stiff climbs to make footsore my entrance into thevillage of Pespire. Here was a house that frankly and openly displayedthe sign "Restaurante," in a corner of which travelers of persuasivemanners might be furnished tijeras, scissor-legged canvas cots onwhich to toss out the night; for Pespire is far below Tegucigalpa and onthe edge of the blazing tropics.

For which reason we rose at three to finish the half-day of sea-levelcountry left us. The stars hung brilliant and a half moon lighted up away that was hot even at this hour. From sunrise on huge lizardsscurried up among the wayside rocks as we passed, and sat torpid,staring at us with their lack-luster eyes. Natives wearing spurs ontheir hoof-like bare feet rode by us now and then, and mule-trains orscreaming wooden carts crawled past on their way up to the capital. Alltraffic between Tegucigalpa and the outside world passes either overthis route or the still longer trail from Puerto Cortez, on the northcoast, from which a toy railroad limps a few miles inland before losingits courage and turning back. By daylight the fantastic ranges of theinterior had disappeared and the last low foothill soon left us to plodon straight across a dust-dry sandy plain with brown withered grass andmesquite bushes, among which panted scores of cattle. Honduras runs sonearly down to a point on its Pacific side that the mountains of bothSalvador and Nicaragua stood out plainly to the right and left.

By sweltering ten we were swimming in the Pacific before the scatteredvillage of San Lorenzo, though there was visible only a little arm ofthe sea shut in by low bushy islands. It was our good fortune not tohave to charter by telegraph and at the expense of a Honduranean fortunemeans of transportation to the island port of Amapala; for before wecould seek the shelter of our sun-faded garments a launch put in for aparty that had been forming for several days past. The passengersincluded a shifty-eyed old priest in charge of two nuns, the rules ofwhose order forbade them to speak to men, and the mozo of an influentialHonduranean who had shot a man the night before and was taking advantageof his master's personal friendship with the judge of the district. Thelaunch wound between bushy banks and came out at last on a rich-blue bayshut off in the far distance by several jagged black volcanic islands,toward one of which it wheezed a hot and monotonous three hours. Thiswas "Tiger's Island," named evidently from the one moth-eaten specimenthat had once been landed here by a passing circus. At a narrow woodenwharf of this we at length gradually tied up. Ragged, barefoot soldiersstopped us to write our pedigrees, as if we were entering some newcountry, and addressed us in monkey signs instead of the Spanish ofwhich experience had convinced them all traveling foreigners wereignorant.

Amapala is a species of outdoor prison to which all travelers to or fromHonduras on the Pacific side are sentenced for a term varying in lengthaccording to their luck, which is generally bad. Those who do not sleepin the park toss out their imprisonment on a bedstead of woven ropes ina truly Honduranean building that disguises itself under the name of"Hotel Morazán," the slatternly keeper of which treats her helplessinmates with the same consideration as any other prison warden devoid ofhumanity or oversight. The steamer I awaited was due before I arrived,but day after day I lay marooned on the blazing volcanic rock without ahint as to its whereabouts. Not even exercise was possible, unless onecared to race up and down the sharp jagged sides of the sea-girtvolcano. The place ranks high as an incubator of malignant fevers andworse ailments, and to cap the climax the ice-machine was brokendown. It always is, if the testimony of generations of castaways is tobe given credence. Our only available pastime was to buy a soap-boxfulof oysters, at the cost of a quarter, and sit in the narrow strip ofshade before the "hotel" languidly opening them with the only availablecorkscrew, our weary gaze fixed on the blue arm of water framed by theshimmering hot hills of Salvador by which tradition had it ocean craftsometimes came to the rescue.

But all things have an end, even life imprisonment, and with the middleof January we awoke one morning to find a steamer anchored in theforeground of the picture that had seared itself into our memories. Allday long half-naked natives' waded lazily back and forth from the beachto the clumsy tenders, exchanging the meager products of the country forill-packed merchandise from my own. Night settled down over theirunfinished task, the self-same moon came out and the woven-rope cotsagain creaked and groaned under unwilling guests. But by noon next day wehad swung our hammocks under the awning of the forecastlehead and wereoff along the tropical blue Pacific for Panama.

THE END