Got up at 5:30 A. M. Waked Louise and Dick, breakfasted at 6:15
and then proceeded in a car to catch the seven o’clock train. We
started a little late and half way the car stopped in a perfectly
deserted street. The panic and agitation in which I finally arrived
at the station, to catch the only Mexico City express of the day
is indescribable. My destination was not Mexico, but Micos, about
ten hours away where I had contrived (as I planned) to camp by the
falls. All the camp gear had gone on ahead, but waiting for me at
the seven o’clock train were my four friends. Each of them director,
superintendent, or some occupation of the sort in a Tampico firm. One
an Irishman, one a Scotchman, one a Canadian and the other a Mexican.
They were arranging for me, and organizing my camp, and joining it for
a holiday. They greeted me at the station by the calming assurance
that although it was seven o’clock, the train would not leave for an
hour. As a matter of fact it did not start for two hours and a half.
I had gotten up at five to catch a train that left at 9:30. Meanwhile
we were turned out of our compartment while it was hermetically sealed
and fumigated--the enforced legislation for every train from a bubonic
plague district. Dick walked around in the pouring rain with a friend
and bought a baby parrot without a cage. The flies were such as Tampico
alone can boast. When we did start, the engine broke down six miles
out. It was nightfall when we reached Micos, a primitive little country
station, in the middle of a village street. Here we were met by one who
had gone ahead to select our camp. He said he had not had time to get
things fixed, and that meanwhile he was renting for us a house in the
village. Leaving the others to go to the house I walked back along the
railway line with the Irishman to view the falls, and select a site. It
was not easy, as the bank goes sheer down from the railway to the falls
and sheer up from the falls to the mountain top, both sides densely
covered with virgin vegetation. In this place there are no roads,
peasants load their donkeys and mules and drive them along the single
file tracks. There are no churches. The Spaniards never penetrated into
this wilderness, the blood of the people is pure undiluted Indian.
The railway has brought to them whatever they know of civilization.
At the top of a stony track leading down to the valley, two natives,
man and wife, bade us “Buenos Noches.” We asked them where they lived.
They pointed way down below to a thatched roof and in gallant native
fashion “There is _your_ house” they said to us, assuring us that if
we pitched our camp there, we could get eggs, fresh milk, a child for
Dick to play with, and moreover a boat to ferry the river. We took some
cigarettes from them and walked back, reaching our village house after
nightfall. It stood on a bank above the railway. It was, of course,
unfurnished. Three beds had been put in one room for Dick, Louise and
myself. The walls were of dried mud, whitewashed. The floor was of wet
mud into which the legs of the bed sank unevenly. Our mosquito nets
hung from a transparent ceiling of bamboo through which one could see
the thatch. The next room was full of beds for our friends and across
a patio, that was like the yard of a pig pen, we walked on duck boards
to the kitchen and dining room. I slept with my front door wide open,
the moon streaming in, the largest cockroach I have ever seen on the
wall, and an upturned cube box next to me with my clock and Margaret’s
photograph. The conditions were so novel and interesting that one
forgot the discomfort. Every man in the next room (there was an open
doorway over which I hung a sheet for privacy) snored like two men
each. The village dogs held concert in the night and woke up all the
cocks. Two trains came in to the station whistling and the mountains
re-echoed. The insects made an unceasing sound, as of machinery, and at
five the next morning I got up.