Two days, one night and a half night getting from Mexico to Tampico.
We had a “salon” and so were not too uncomfortable. Personally I
rather enjoy the incident of travel and in Mexico one usually does
not travel without adventure. Usually one derails. On this occasion
we just stopped (with a great jerk) for a couple of hours because our
engine’s piston-rod broke. It was a bleak and dusty place where maize
grew and not much fun. We next stopped because an oil box was on fire,
but that did not delay us greatly, finally we stopped two more hours
because the train in front had derailed. We walked up the line to see
what had happened, the engine was back on the rails, and a good many
Indians were at work mending the track. I looked at the lines with an
ignorant unprofessional eye, and then I asked questions ...: Should
the wooden sleepers be rotten and splitting? Should the screws be
entirely missing where two lines were riveted together? Should “pins”
stick up half an inch? and then I watched the efforts of four men at
the “points” trying to close the lines. They pulled at levers, and
finally hammered the line into place! This Railway is owned by American
shareholders, and the Mexican Government has not given it back yet,
because it cannot pay the damages for the deterioration it has suffered
at their hands. Meanwhile it deteriorates more every day, and I suppose
each train that passes renders the track more dangerous than the last.
During this interval, Dick, who found a pool in a ditch went into
bathe. It was a muddy pool where cattle drink. Dick took off all his
clothes and swam in it. Afterwards the sun quickly dried him and on
our way back to the train we called on an Indian lady who stood at her
home door. She was old. Her home was made transparently of irregular
bamboo sticks, oddments of dried palmleaf and some sacking. The roof
was thatched, the floor was mud. Two planks, raised each on four wooden
poles with a piece of matting on the top were the beds for herself and
her husband. A primitive cooker, some terra-cotta cooking utensils,
and “Our Lady of Guadalupe” in one corner, were the entire contents.
Whatever money they earned they spent neither on clothes nor house.
Perhaps it went entirely on food. I have seen worse in Ireland. But in
a country where the climate is kind (we were some considerable distance
from Mexico City) a thatched roof is almost all one needs. Life under
those conditions offers little, but demands less. From this place the
train went rapidly down hill, winding back and forth round the mountain
sides. We were in the rear coach and could see our engine going round
hairpin curves, and disappearing into tunnels! The views, which were a
mix up of Switzerland and Italy, excelled both. The most beautiful I’ve
ever seen. Too beautiful to take in. One felt humbled and awed. At one
place, as the train came round the bend of a mountain, we came in sight
of a river that cascaded for about half a mile into the valley below.
I exclaimed: “Why can’t one live in the beautiful spots of the Earth,
instead of seeing them as one passes by?” And I decided that I would
not, if I could help it, leave Mexico until I had managed somehow to
return to this place to live for a month, however primitively, if it
were possible to arrange it.
At all the stations where we stopped there was the ever present crowd
of vendors offering excellent cold chicken, hard boiled eggs, hot
fried potatoes, cakes and breads of every description, of all kinds
of fruits, for almost nothing,--coffee, pulque, lemonade and beer to
drink. At some of the mining stations one could buy small polished
opals for a peso each (if one bargained) carved and colored walking
sticks, Indian made toys and doll’s furniture. Baskets of good shape
woven with colors that were a real temptation! Blind beggars played
music and sang songs. At one station, a blind boy with a harp was led
around by his mother (a grey-haired Indian woman of great dignity of
countenance) he played and sang about 500 verses of the Peons ballad to
Villa! Towards the end we all knew the chorus well enough to join in,
and the train finally unable to wait any longer steamed away, leaving
him still monotonously singing the ballad to Villa!
When the train stopped out in the wild country side, the track was
alive with myriad butterflies of every size and color, especially
brimstone ones. It looked like an allegorical picture of Spring.
We arrived in Tampico about two A.M. on the second night.