ON THE MEXICAN HIGHLANDS
With a Passing Glimpse of Cuba
BY
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS
Author of “In To The Yukon,” “Through Scandinavia
to Moscow,” etc.
CINCINNATI
PRESS OF JENNINGS AND GRAHAM
COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS
[Illustration: THE SIX COMRADES OF CAMP FLAP-JACK--1881]
To
JULIUS H. SEYMOUR, OTTO ULRICH VON SCHRADER,
EDMUND SEYMOUR, AND RUDOLPH MATZ,
COMPANIONS, COMRADES, AND
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS OF
“CAMP FLAP-JACK”
These pages are affectionately dedicated.
FOREWORD
These pages contain the impressions of a casual traveller--a few
letters written to my friends.
Upon the temperate Highlands of Mexico, a mile and more above the sea,
I was astonished and delighted at the salubrity of climate, the
fertility of soil, the luxuriance of tree and plant, the splendor and
beauty of the cities, the intelligence and progressiveness of the
people, the orderliness and beneficence of the governmental rule.
In Cuba I caught the newborn sentiment for liberty and order, and at
the same time came curiously into touch with restive leaders, who even
then boldly announced the intention to plot and wreck that liberty and
order by sinister revolution, if their wild spirits should find no
other way to seize and hold command.
If there shall be aught among these letters to interest the reader, I
shall welcome another to the little circle for whose perusal they were
originally penned.
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS.
CHARLESTON-KANAWHA, WEST VIRGINIA,
November 1, 1906.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FLYING IMPRESSIONS BETWEEN CHARLESTON-KANAWHA AND NEW
ORLEANS, 15
II. THE LIFE AND COLOR OF NEW ORLEANS, 25
III. SOUTHWESTWARD TO THE BORDER, 36
IV. ON TO MEXICO CITY, 44
V. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF MEXICO CITY, 56
VI. VIVID CHARACTERISTICS OF MEXICAN LIFE, 65
VII. A MEXICAN BULLFIGHT, 75
VIII. FROM PULLMAN CAR TO MULE-BACK, 86
IX. A JOURNEY OVER LOFTY TABLELANDS, 99
X. A PROVINCIAL DESPOT AND HIS RESIDENCE, 107
XI. INGURAN MINES--FIVE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED FEET BELOW
ARIO, 117
XII. ANTIQUE METHODS OF MINING, 128
XIII. SOME TROPICAL FINANCIAL MORALITY, 142
XIV. WAYSIDE INCIDENTS IN THE LAND OF HEAT, 157
XV. MORELIA--THE CAPITAL OF THE STATE OF MICHOACAN--HER
STREETS--HER PARKS--HER CHURCHES--HER MUSIC, 168
XVI. MORELIA AND TOLUCA--THE MARKETS--THE COLLEGES--THE
SCHOOLS--THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN SPIRIT, 181
XVII. CUERNAVACA--THE COUNTRY SEAT OF MONTEZUMA, OF CORTEZ
AND SPANISH VICEROYS, OF MAXIMILIAN--A PLEASANT
WATERING PLACE OF MODERN MEXICO, 188
XVIII. THE JOURNEY BY NIGHT FROM MEXICO CITY--OVER THE
MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA COAST--THE ANCIENT CITY
OF VERA CRUZ, 198
XIX. VOYAGING ACROSS THE GULF OF MEXICO AND STRAITS OF
YUCATAN FROM VERA CRUZ TO PROGRESSO AND HAVANA, 210
XX. THE CITY OF “HABANA”--INCIDENTS OF A DAY’S SOJOURN
IN THE CUBAN CAPITAL, 220
XXI. CUBA--THE FORTRESS OF LA CABAÑA, 236
XXII. CUBA--HER FERTILE SUGAR LANDS--MATANZAS BY THE SEA, 247
XXIII. CUBA--THE TOBACCO LANDS OF GUANAJAY--THE TOWN AND THE
BAY OF MARIEL, 259
XXIV. STEAMER MASCOT--CONCLUSION, 270
TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing Page
THE SIX COMRADES OF CAMP FLAP-JACK, 1881, 3
A VISTA OF MEXICO (_Frontispiece_), 15
LOG CABIN OF KENTUCKY MOUNTAINEER, 19
PICKING COTTON, MISSISSIPPI, 21
JACKSON STATUE, 28
THE CABILDO, 30
HAULING COTTON, NEW ORLEANS, 32
ALONG THE LEVEE, NEW ORLEANS, 34
ANCIENT FRENCH PAVEMENTS, 39
THE ALAMO, 41
OLD SPANISH CONVENT, 42
THE DESOLATE PLAINS, 46
AWAITING OUR TRAIN, 49
MULES CARRYING CORN, 51
A CARGADORE BEARING VEGETABLES, 53
PATIO, HOTEL ITURBIDE, 55
A SNAP-SHOT FOR A CENTAVO, 56
CARGADORES TOTING CASKS, 57
MY PROTECTORS OF THE MARKET, 58
ERRAND BOYS OF THE MARKET, 58
A RANCHERRO DUDE, 60
THE CATHEDRAL--MEXICO CITY, 62
LA CASA DE AZULEJOS--NOW JOCKEY CLUB, 64
PLEASED WITH MY CAMERA, 67
VOLCANO DE POPOCATEPETL, 69
A PULQUE PEDDLER, 71
A FRIEND OF MY KODAK, 72
DULCE VENDER, 73
VOLCANO DE IZTACCIHUATL, 74
SETTING A BANDERILLA, 76
TEASING EL TORO, 78
THE GARDENS OF CHAPULTEPEC, 81
MANZANILLO’S FATAL THRUST, 83
JUAREZ’ TOMB AND WREATHS OF SILVER, 85
THE TREE WHERE CORTEZ WEPT, EL NOCHE TRISTE, 87
LAKE PATZCUARO, 90
OUR DEPARTURE--FONDA DILIGENCIA, 92
THE DISMANTLED CONVENT, PATZCUARO, 94
IZUS AND EL PADRE, 96
THE HIGHWAY TO THE PACIFIC, 101
NEARING ARIO, 103
A MILK RANCH NEAR ARIO, 106
THE AUTHOR--PLAZA GRANDE, ARIO, 108
THE DISTANT CORDILLERA, 113
BEGGING A CENTAVO, 115
THE JEFE POLITICO AND SOLDIERS, 117
TRANSFERRING THE PRISONER, 119
COOLING THE HORSES--RANCHO NUEVO, 121
A WILD FIG-TREE--LA PLAYA, 122
VOLCANO DE JORULLO, 124
RANCHO SAN PEDRO, 126
IN FLIGHT FROM MY KODAK, 128
THE ANCIENT STAMP MILL, 131
COPPER ORE DUMPS--LA CHINA MINES, 133
MOVING A MANSION, 135
BRINGING OUT THE ORE--LA CHINA MINES, 137
WASHING COPPER ORE, 138
AN ANCIENT DUMP OF COPPER ORE, 140
THE LLANOS--HAWK POISED UPON AN ORGAN CACTUS, 142
ARRANGING A BATTLE, 146
THE VICTOR, 146
VAQUEROS CROSSING THE RIO DE LAS BALSAS, 150
THE LANDING, RIO DE LAS BALSAS, 154
THE MIGHTY CORDILLERA, 158
A FLOCK OF SHEEP NEAR ARIO, 165
A STREET SCENE--PATZCUARO, 167
A VISTA IN MORELIA, 170
THE CATHEDRAL OF MORELIA, 172
A WILD OTOME IN FLIGHT FROM MY KODAK, 181
A DILIGENCIA--TOLUCA, 183
A SNAP-SHOT THROUGH A DOORWAY--TOLUCA, 186
SUSPICIOUS OF MY CAMERA, 188
MY COCHA--CUERNAVACA, 193
SHRINE OF THE VIRGIN OF GUADALOUPE--CUERNAVACA, 195
THE BORDA GARDENS--CUERNAVACA, 197
AZTEC INDIANS--MEXICO CITY, 199
VOLCANO DE ORIZABA, 202
THE MUNICIPAL PALACE--VERA CRUZ, 204
THE TAME VULTURES OF VERA CRUZ, 206
A NOBLE PALM, 208
A STREET OF VERA CRUZ, 211
THE LITTLE BOYS LEAVING OUR SHIP, 213
OFF FOR PROGRESSO, 215
THE HARBOR OF HAVANA, 218
A SPANISH HOTEL--HAVANA, 220
CALLE OBISPO--HAVANA, 222
THE CATHEDRAL--HAVANA, 227
THE FIRST GREENSWARD--HAVANA, 229
SELLING VEGETABLES--HAVANA, 231
A CORNER OF THE MARKET--HAVANA, 234
THE FORTRESS OF LA CABAÑA, 236
THE ENTRANCE TO LA CABAÑA, 238
WHERE PATRIOTS WERE SHOT--LA CABAÑA, 243
A SPANISH PARK--MATANZAS, 247
THE WRECK OF THE MAINE, 250
A GLIMPSE OF MATANZAS, 254
DRESSED FOR THE DAY, 259
ALONG THE MILITARY ROAD--A CEIBA TREE, 263
THE BAY OF MARIEL, 266
WRECK OF THE ALFONSO XII, 270
KEY WEST LIGHT--THE SOUTHERN EXTREMITY OF THE UNITED
STATES, 277
MAP OF MY JOURNEY, 283
ON THE MEXICAN HIGHLANDS
[Illustration: A VISTA OF MEXICO]
I
Flying Impressions Between Charleston-Kanawha and New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA,
_November 15th_.
When the New York and Cincinnati Flyer (the “F. F. V. Limited”) came
into Charleston yesterday, it was an hour late and quite a crowd was
waiting to get aboard. Going with me as far as Kenova were D, H, and
eight or ten of “the boys.” They all carried Winchesters and were
bound on a trip to the mountains of Mingo and McDowell, on the
Kentucky line, to capture a moonshine still which was reported to be
doing a fine business selling to the mines. D wanted me to go along,
and offered me a rifle or a shotgun, as I chose. They are big men, all
of them, and love a scrap, which means the give and take of death, and
have no fear except of ambush. I still carry in my pocket the
flat-nosed bullet D took from the rifle of Johnse Hatfield two years
ago, when he caught him lying-in-wait behind a rock watching for Doc.
Ellis to come forth from his front door. Johnse was afterward hanged
in Pikeville for other crimes. Then, a few months later, his brother
“Lias,” just to get even, picked off Doc. Ellis as he was getting out
of a Pullman car. Now “Lias” is said to be looking for D, also, but D
says he’s as handy with his gun as “Lias” is, if only he can get a
fair show. D is captain of this raid and promises to bring me tokens
of a successful haul, but I am apprehensive that, one of these days,
he or some other of “the boys” will not come back to Charleston.
At Ashland my Louisville car was attached to the Lexington train, and
we turned to the left up the long grade and soon plunged into the hill
country of eastern Kentucky. Here is a rough, harsh land, a poor,
yellow soil, underlying miles of forest from which the big timber has
long since been felled. Here and there small clearings contain log
cabins, shack barns, and soil which must always produce crops as mean
as the men who till it. We were traversing the land of the vendettas.
At the little stations, long, lank, angular men were gathered, quite
frequently with a rifle or a Winchester shotgun in their bony hands.
It was only two or three years ago that one of these passenger trains
was “held up,” by a rifle-armed gang, who found the man they were
looking for crouching in the end of the smoker, and shot him to death
right then and there--but not before he had killed two or three of the
assassins.
I had gone forward into the smoking car, for it is in the day coaches
where one meets the people of the countryside when traveling. I had
seated myself beside a tall, white-haired old man who was silently
smoking a stogie, such as is made by the local tobacco growers of this
hill country. He had about him the air of a man of importance. He was
dressed in homespun jeans and wore the usual slouch felt hat. He had a
strong, commanding face, with broad, square chin and a blue eye which
bespoke friendliness, and yet hinted of inexorable sternness. I gave
him my name and told him where I lived, and whither I was going,
introducing myself as one always must when talking to these mountain
people. He was a republican, like myself, he said, and had several
times been sheriff of his county; but that was many years ago and he
declared himself to be now “a man of peace.” We talked of the
vendettas and he told me of a number of these tragedies. When I made
bold to ask him whether he had ever had any “trouble” himself, he
replied, “No, not for right smart o’ yearn;” and then he slowly drew
from his trousers pocket, a little buckskin bag, and unwound the
leathern thong with which it was fast tied. Having opened it he took
out three misshapen pieces of lead and handed them to me, remarking,
“‘T was many yearn ago I cut them thar pieces of lead, and four more
of the same kind, from this h’yar leg of mine,” slapping his hand upon
his right thigh. “But where are the other four?” I queried. For an
instant the blue eyes dilated and glittered as he replied, “I melted
’em up into bullets agen, and sent ’em back whar they cum from.” “Did
you kill him?” I asked. The square jaws broadened grimly, and he said,
“Wall, I don’t say I killed him, but he ain’t been seen aboot thar
sence.” I offered him one of my best cigars, and turned to the subject
of the horses of Kentucky. He was going to Lexington, he said, to
attend the horse sales the coming week and he begged me to “light off
with him,” for he was sure I would there “find a beast” I would
delight to own. I promised to visit him some day when I should return,
and he has vouched to receive me with all the hospitality for which
Kentucky mountaineers, as well as blue grass gentlemen, are famed.
When we had come quite through the hill region, we rolled out into a
country with better soil, and land more generally cleared, and much in
grass. It was the renowned blue grass section of Kentucky, and at dark
we were in Lexington. Twinkling lights were all that I could see of
the noted town. The people who were about the station platform were
well dressed and looked well fed, and a number of big men climbed
aboard.
[Illustration: LOG CABIN OF KENTUCKY MOUNTAINEER]
We arrived at Louisville half an hour late. This was fortunate, for we
had to wait only an hour for the train to Memphis, via Paducah. Two
ladies, who sat behind me when I entered the car at Charleston, stood
beside me when I secured my ticket in the Memphis sleeper and took the
section next to mine. It had been my intention to change trains at
Memphis, take the Yazoo Valley Railway and go via Vicksburg, thinking
that I might see something of the Mississippi River; but in the
morning I met a young engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, who
told me that this route had a very bad track, the cars were poor, the
trains slow, while the line itself lay ten or twelve miles back from
the river so that I should never see it; therefore, I decided to stick
to the through fast train on which I had started, and go on to New
Orleans by the direct route down through central Mississippi.
When I awoke we were speeding southward through the wide, flat country
of western Tennessee. We passed through acres of cornstalks from which
the roughness (the leaves of the corn) and ears had been plucked,
through broad reaches of tobacco stumps, and here and there rolled by
a field white with cotton.
In the toilet room of the sleeper I found myself alone with a huge,
black-bearded, curly-headed planter, who was alternately taking nips
from a gigantic silver flask and ferociously denouncing the Governor
of Indiana for refusing to surrender Ex-governor Taylor to the
myrmidons of Kentucky law, to be there tried by a packed jury for the
assassination of Governor Goebel. I finally felt unable to keep silent
longer, and told him that I did not see the justice of his position,
and reminded him that the Governors of the neighboring States of West
Virginia, Ohio and Illinois had publicly expressed their approval of
the Governor of Indiana, and their disapproval of the political
methods then prevailing in Kentucky. He looked steadily at me with an
air of some surprise, then stretching out his flask begged me to take
a drink with him. He thereafter said no more on politics, but talked
for half an hour of the tobacco and cotton crops of western Tennessee.
We arrived in Memphis at about ten o’clock of the morning and stopped
there some time. In the big and dirty railway station I felt myself
already in a country other than West Virginia.
Memphis, the little I saw of it, appeared to be a straggling, shabby
town, with wide, dusty streets, and many rambling dilapidated
buildings. The people had lost the rosy, hearty look of the blue
grass country, and were pale and sallow, while increasingly numerous
everywhere were the ebony-hued negroes. We were passing from the
latitude of the mulattoes to that of the jet-blacks, the pure blooded
Africans.
[Illustration: PICKING COTTON--MISSISSIPPI]
Leaving Memphis, we turned southeastward and then due south, through
the central portions of the state of Mississippi. Here spreads a flat
country, with thin, yellow soil in corn and cotton. Everywhere were
multitudes of negroes, all black as night. Negro women and children
were picking cotton in the fields. There were wide stretches of
apparently abandoned land, once under cultivation, much of it now
growing up in underbrush and much of it white with ripened seedling
cotton. In many places the blacks were gathering this cotton,
apparently for themselves. There were a few small towns, at long
intervals. Everywhere bales of cotton were piled on the railway
station platforms; generally the big, old-fashioned bales,
occasionally the small bale made by the modern compress. This is the
shipping season, and we frequently passed teams of four and six mules,
hauling large wagons piled high with cotton bales coming toward the
railway stations. We passed through great forests of the long-leaved
yellow pine, interspersed with much cottonwood and magnolia, while the
leaves of the sumach marked with vivid red the divisions of the
clearings and the fields. The day was dull and cloudy and a chill
lingered in the air. The two lady travelers sat all day long with
their curtains down and never left their books. The scenery and life
of Mississippi held no interest for them.
In the late afternoon we passed through Mississippi’s capital,
Jackson, and could see in the distance the rising walls of the new
statehouse, to be a white stone building of some pretentions. Here a
number of Italians and Jews, well dressed and evidently well-to-do,
entered our sleeper _en route_ to New Orleans. The country trade of
Mississippi is said to be now almost altogether in the hands of Jews
and of Italians. The latter coming up from New Orleans, are acquiring
many of the plantations in both Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as,
in many cases, pushing out the blacks from the work on the plantations
by reason of their superior intelligence, industry and thrift. A lull
in Italian immigration followed the New Orleans massacre of the Mafia
plotters some years ago, but that tragedy is now quite forgotten, and
a steady influx of Italians of a better type has set in.
In the dining car, I sat at midday lunch with a round-faced, pleasant
mannered man some forty years of age, with whom I fell into table
chat. He was a writer on the staff of a western monthly magazine and
was well acquainted with the country we were traversing. He pointed
out places of local interest as we hurried southward, while many
incidents of history were awakened in my own mind. All of this land of
swamp and bayou and cotton field had been marched and fought over by
the contending armies during the Civil War. Here Grant skirmished with
Johnston and won his first great triumphs of strategy in the capture
of Vicksburg. Here the cotton planters in “ye olden time” lived like
lords and applauded their senators in Congress for declaring in public
speech that “Mississippi and Louisiana wanted no public roads.” Here
Spain and France contended for supremacy and finally yielded to the
irresistible advance of the English-speaking American pioneer,
pressing southwestward from Georgia, Carolina and Tennessee.
It was still the same flat country when, near dusk, we entered
Louisiana. At the first station where we stopped an old man was
offering for sale jugs of “new molasses” and sticks of sugar cane--the
first hint that we were surely below the latitude of the frosts.
It was a murky night, no stars were out, only a flash of distant
electric lights told us that we were approaching New Orleans. We were
in the city before I was aware. Quickly passing many unlighted
streets, we were suddenly among dimly lighted houses, and then drew
into an old-time depot, a wooden building yet more dilapidated than
that of Memphis. We were instantly surrounded by a swarm of negroes.
There were acres of them with scarcely a white face to be seen. I made
out one of the swarthy blacks to be the porter of the new St. Charles
Hotel. Giving him my bags, I was piloted to an old-fashioned ’bus and
was soon driving over well asphalted streets amidst electric lights,
and found myself in the thoroughfares of a really great city. From
broad Canal Street we turned down a narrow alley and drew up in front
of a fine modern hotel. This is an edifice of iron, stone and tile,
with seemingly no wood in its structure, large, spacious and filled
with guests, the chief hostelry of New Orleans, and worthy of the
modern conditions now prevailing in this Spanish-French-American
metropolis of the Gulf States.
II
The Life and Color of New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA,
_November 16th_.
After a well-served dinner in the spacious dining-room of the hotel,
where palms and orange trees yellow with ripened fruit and exhaling
the fragrance of living growth were set about in great pots, I lighted
my cigar and strolled out upon narrow St. Charles street. Following
the tide of travel I soon found myself upon that chief artery of the
city’s life,--boulevard, avenue and business thoroughfare all in
one--stately Canal street. It was crowded with a slowly moving
multitude, which flowed and ebbed and eddied, enjoying the soft warm
air beneath the electric lights and stars. I quickly became a part of
it, taking pleasure in its leisurely sauntering company.
The typical countenance about me was of the dark, swarthy Latin south,
and tall men were rarely met. Among the gossiping, good natured
promenaders of Canal street there is none of the haste which marks New
York’s lively “Rialto;” none of the scurry and jam which jostles you
in brusque Chicago. In New Orleans there is an air of contented ease
in the movement of the most poorly clad. Even the beggars lack the
energy to be importunate.
At a later hour, crossing the wide thoroughfare, I was at once among
narrow streets, the _rues_ of the _Vieux Carré_, the _Quartier
Francais_,--the _Quartier_ now, but once all that there was of New
Orleans. The transition was sharp. The buildings hinted of Quebec and
Montreal, and of Old France. Balconies clung to second stories, high
adoby and stucco walls were entered by narrow, close-barred doorways,
latticed windows looked down upon the passer-by, and now and then, I
fancied behind their jalousies the flash of dark eyes. My ear, too,
caught softly sonorous accents which are foreign to the harsher
palatals and sibilants of English. Beneath a glaring electric arc two
swarthy pickaninnies were pitching coppers and eagerly ejaculating in
curious, soft French. A man and a woman were chaffering at a corner
meat shop, seller and buyer both vociferating in an unfamiliar tongue.
I was hearing, for the first time, the Creole patois of old New
Orleans.
Along one narrow _rue_--all streets are _rues_ and all _rues_ are
narrow here--were many brilliant lights. It was the _rue_ ---- where
cafés and wine shops and quiet restaurants abound. When last in New
York M B, had posted me and said, “If ever you shall be in New
Orleans, go to the Café ----. Go there and if you care to taste a
pompano before you die, a pompano cooked as only one mortal on this
earth can do the job, go there and whisper to the _chef_ that ‘I’m
your friend.’” So I went and found the _chef_ and ever since have
dreamed about that fish. The room was large; its floor was sanded and
scrupulously clean. Many little tables were set along the walls. Pangs
of hunger griped me the instant I peered within that door. I grew
hungrier as I sat and watched the zest and relish with which those
about me stowed away each dainty fragment. I was ready for that
pompano when at last it came. I have eaten this fish in New York, in
Baltimore, in Washington and in Richmond, and ever as I came further
south did the delicacy of its flesh and flavor grow. Now, the long
leap to New Orleans has given me this gourmet’s joy fresh taken from
the waters of the Gulf. I ate with slow and leisurely delight, letting
my enamored palate revel in the symphony of flavor, sipping my claret,
and watching the strange company which filled the room. The men were
mostly in evening dress--lawyers, bankers and business men. They had
come in from the theatre or, perhaps, had spent the evening over
cards. At some of the tables were only men, at others ladies were
present, young, comely and, many of them, elegantly gowned. Black eyes
were dominant among these belles, and here and there I fancied that I
caught the echo, in some of their complexions, of that warmer splendor
of the tropics which just a dash of African blood when mixed with
white, so often gives, and which has made the octoroon demoiselles of
New Orleans famous for brilliant beauty the world around. It was a gay
company, full of chat and laughter and gracious manner--the
graciousness of well-bred Latin blood.
When, at last, my pompano was vanished, and the claret gone, and I
regretfully quitted the shelter of _La_ ---- it was long past the
stroke of twelve, yet the café was still crowded and the _Vieux Carré_
was alight and astir as though it were early in the night. Again
crossing Canal street, I found the American city dark and silent. I
hurriedly went my way to the hotel, my footsteps echoing with that
strange, reverberating hollowness which marks the tread upon the
deserted, midnight city street.
In the morning I was up betimes, taking a cup of coffee and a roll,
and then making my way down St. Charles street and crossing Canal to
the _rue_ Royale, passing the open gates of the old convent garden
of the Ursulines, now the Archbishop’s palace, and turning into the
_rue_ St. Petre, then into Jackson Square. The air was cool. The world
had not quite waked up. The gardeners with their water carts were
giving the morning bath to the lawns and flowers of the park. A
friendly mannered policeman had just disturbed two tramps from their
nightly slumber, bidding them move on. I sat down upon a stone bench
near where they had slept and looked across at the old Spanish-French
Cathedral of St. Louis and the municipal buildings of the courts, the
Cabildo and Hotel de Ville--architectural monuments of an already
shadowy past. The chimes were ringing to matins and the devout were
entering to the early mass.
[Illustration: JACKSON STATUE--NEW ORLEANS]
I watched the hurrying groups, musing the while upon the picture
before me. Here, the Canadian de Bienville, and Cadillac and Aubry and
their French compeers, as well as the Spanish Captains General, from
Don Juan de Ulloa to Don Manuel Salcedo had offered up their thanks
for safe arrival from dangerous voyages across uncharted seas. Here,
Don Antonio O’Rielly, Havana’s murderous Irish Governor, had ordered
his Spanish musketeers to shoot to death the Creole patriots,
Lafreniere, Milhet, Noyant, Marquis, Caresse, that devoted band who
refused to believe that Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul and his Majesty,
Louis XV, _le bien aimé_--had secretly made cold-blooded sale of the
fair Province of Louisiana to Spain. Here, Citizen Laussat, by order
of Napoleon, had surrendered the great Louisiana Province to General
Wilkinson and Governor Claiborne, the Commissioners of Thomas
Jefferson, who thereby added an empire to the dominion of the young
government of the United States. Here, also, had been celebrated with
so much pomp and trumpet fanfare the victory of Andrew Jackson’s
border riflemen over Pakenham’s Peninsular veterans. The historic
Place d’Armes has been rechristened Jackson Square, and “Old Hickory”
now rides his big horse in the midst of a lovely municipal garden. In
later years, here also had Confederate Mayor and Federal General
posted their decrees and proclamations, among the latter that famous
“General Order No. 28,” wherein the doughty General presumed to teach
good manners to the dames and demoiselles of New Orleans, and gained
thereby the sobriquet “Beast Butler.”
The worshipers were returning from the mass. My reverie was at an end.
I arose and, crossing the square, strolled over to Decatur Place
toward the old French market by the river side. There I found much
that reminded me of the greater _Marché Central_ which I had visited
one early morning in Paris. There were the same daintiness and care
in arranging and displaying the vegetables, the same taste and skill
in showing the flowers, which are everywhere the glory of New Orleans.
There were bushels of roses--the Marechal Neil, the gorgeous Cloth of
Gold among the more splendid. Here also the butchers were carrying the
meats upon their heads, just as they did in France, and the fish and
game were as temptingly displayed. But the people of the market,
though speaking the French tongue, were widely different. The swarthy
tints of the tropics were here in evidence. Negresses black as night
made me _bonjour!_ The venders and porters were ebony or mulatto, and
even the buyers were largely tinctured with African blood, while the
French they talked was a speech I could with difficulty comprehend.
The sharp nasal twang of Paris was greatly softened, and their “u” had
lost that certain difficult liquidity which English and American
mouths find it almost impossible to attain. Curious two-wheeled carts
loaded with brass milk cans were starting on their morning rounds, and
lesser two-wheeled wagons were being loaded with vegetables, meats and
fish for the day’s peddling throughout the city. Burdens were not so
generally borne upon the backs and shoulders as in France, although
some of the women and a few men were carrying their wares and goods
upon the head with easy balance.
[Illustration: THE CABILDO--NEW ORLEANS]
The _Vieux Carré_ has in it to me a certain note of sadness. As you
wander along its _rues_ and ways you feel that, somehow or other, the
days of its importance and its power are forever gone. Mansions, once
the imposing homes of the affluent, are now cracked and marred, and
there seem to be none to put them into good repair. Dilapidation
broods over the _Vieux Carré_. You feel that the good old Creole days
are surely fled. You realize that as the language of La Belle France
is disappearing, so the leisurely customs and easy habits of French
New Orleans, before many years, will be submerged by the direct speech
and commercial brusqueness of modern America.
In the afternoon I rode many miles upon the trolley cars through and
about the city, and particularly along by the levees and through the
fine avenue St. Charles, and the upper modern section. Low, very low,
lies New Orleans, the greater part of it only a few feet above the
water, really below the level of the Mississippi in times of flood.
Many streets are now asphalted and kept comparatively clean, but the
greater portion of the city is yet unpaved, or, when there is pavement
at all, is still laid with the huge French blocks of granite (a foot
or eighteen inches square) put down two centuries ago. The city
lies too close to perpetual dead water to permit of modern drainage
and there are few or no underground sewers. The houses drain into
deep, open gutters along the streets between the sidewalks and the
thoroughfares over which you must step; fresh water is pumped into
these gutters and, combining with the inflowing sewerage, is pumped
out again into the Mississippi. It is in this crude and unsanitary
manner that New Orleans strives to keep measurably clean.
[Illustration: HAULING COTTON--NEW ORLEANS]
The residence section, in the American city, contains many handsome
mansions with wide lawns and a profusion of semitropical trees, and
everywhere are gardens--flower gardens that are riotous masses of
roses and jasmines and splendid blooms. Just as the glory of England
is her flowers, where no home is too humble for a window box, so, too,
is it in New Orleans. However dirty she may be, however slovenly and
slipshod, you must yet love the city for her flowers. Even the
laborer’s most humble cottage glows with its mass of color.
New Orleans has no parks to boast of--Audubon Park is a mere ribbon of
green--but the cemeteries on her borders are really her parks. The
live oaks in them hang with masses of drooping moss, and blossoming
magnolias and shrubs are everywhere. So near is the water to the
surface, however, that there can be no burials within the earth, and
the cemeteries are therefore filled with tombs built above the ground.
Many of these are costly works of art.
The city clings to the river where the Mississippi makes a great bend,
like a half moon, to the southwest, whence its name, the “Crescent
City.” Only the big embankments, fourteen to fifteen feet in height,
prevent the homes and gardens, as well as the entire business portion
of the city, from being sometimes submerged by the angry waters of the
great river. I found it strange, from a steamer’s deck, lying at the
levee, to be looking down into the city, ten or twenty feet below. It
reminded me of Holland and of Rotterdam, except that there the waters
are the dead and quiet pools of Dutch canals, while here they are the
swelling restless tide of the more than mile-wide Mississippi.
Along the levees were many ocean liners loading with molasses, sugar
and cotton, chiefly cotton, in which there is an enormous and
constantly increasing trade. The biggest ships now come up right
alongside the wooden wharves of the levees, and for several miles lie
there bow to stern.
The theatres and business blocks, the customhouse, and city hall and
other public buildings of New Orleans are none of them modern, but
appear to have been built long years ago, yet, notwithstanding their
marks of antiquity, the business part of the city is animate with stir
and action. There is hope in men’s faces in New Orleans, and the
younger men are finding in the city’s waxing commerce opportunity for
achievement which their forefathers never knew. With the completion of
the Panama Canal, New Orleans will become one of the greatest of
commercial ports.
[Illustration: ALONG THE LEVEE--NEW ORLEANS]
From New Orleans I shall go via the Southern Pacific Railway, crossing
the Mississippi and traveling westward through Louisiana and Texas to
San Antonio, Texas, and then I shall go south into Mexico.
III
Southwestward to the Border
(Written on the train and mailed at Laredo, Texas.)
_November 16th_.
The journey from New Orleans was somewhat tedious, but yet so crowded
with new sights that the time passed quite too quickly for me even to
glance at the copy of Lew Wallace’s _Fair God_, which I had bought in
New Orleans for reading on the way.
At 9:45 A. M. I left the Hotel St. Charles and took the ’bus for the
Southern Pacific Station, which is a shabby, weatherworn wooden
building down by the water side, in the French quarter of the city. A
large, ill-kept waiting room was crowded with emigrants--chiefly
“crackers” and “po’ white trash” from the cotton states. A wide
gangway led to the clumsy puffing ferryboat which took us across the
Mississippi to a series of long, low, wooden sheds where our
transcontinental train awaited us.
The ferry crosses the Mississippi from near the center of the bow,
where the river sweeps in a giant curve against the crescent shore.
The current is swift, and whether the waters be high or low, the river
always hurries on with relentless eagerness toward the Gulf of Mexico,
one hundred miles away.
As I stood upon the boat and my eye swept up and down the river, the
city stretched before me black and sombre beneath a heavy pall of
smoke, flat and uninteresting, only here and there a spire or steeple
lifting itself solitarily above the level monotony. But along the
miles of levees there was activity and life. Ocean steamers were
taking on cargo, and multitudes of river steamboats were discharging
freights of cotton bales and other upstream products, brought from the
coal mines and wheat fields and plantations of Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, and Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee, of
Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa, even from the Dakotas and Nebraska
and Kansas, and from Missouri and Arkansas and Mississippi and
Louisiana, for here converges the vast interior water-traffic of the
continent. (The enormous traffic of the Great Lakes is now urging
Congress to give them ship canals and unimpeded access to New
Orleans.)
It is a prodigious traffic that steadily increases notwithstanding the
competition of the railways which are now penetrating everywhere,
even into the rich plantation country. For some years after the Civil
War, New Orleans seemed to be losing her one-time pre-eminence as a
port. The railways to the north threatened to cut off her trade from
above, the silting up of the Mississippi’s mouths threatened to
destroy her access to the sea. Then came the strong, wise hand of
Uncle Sam, who built the magnificent jetty system contrived by Captain
Eads, and New Orleans began to wake up. Her trade increased by leaps
and bounds, the river traffic revived, and she became the mistress of
a water commerce far exceeding what she had known before. Now not
merely are her suburbs extending along the river, but her trade and
commerce have crossed to the western shore, where a new and
supplemental city is rapidly growing up. There, the Southern Pacific
Railway and other western lines have erected their shops and
factories, laid out extensive yards and built great warehouses. There
they unload and store the freight which Louisiana, Texas and the
farther West send eastward for distribution to the eastern railway
connections which carry it to the Gulf and Atlantic seaboard ports for
export, and for delivery to domestic consumption by inland water
carriage.
We were to take the through San Francisco Express, and I had
anticipated a fine transcontinental train, something like our own “F.
F. V.” which takes us from Kanawha to Cincinnati, or New York. But I
was disappointed. The “Sunset Limited,” as it is called, consisted of
two sleepers, hitched behind a number of shabby immigrant cars and
old-fashioned passenger day coaches. None of these were vestibuled,
and there was no dining car attached. I had secured, fortunately,
several days in advance, a lower berth as far as San Antonio; but many
passengers applied who could obtain no berths, and were allowed to
crowd into the sleepers for lack of accommodation in the day coaches,
into which the swarming immigrants had overflowed.
[Illustration: ANCIENT FRENCH PAVEMENTS]
We were late in starting; we were late at every station along the
road; we were an hour late when we arrived next morning at San
Antonio; a poor beginning, surely, for a train that must journey four
long days and nights to the Pacific coast.
We traversed a flat land, with many ditches and canals and pools of
stagnant water lying a few feet below the level of the surface. The
soil was black and rich. We crossed acres and acres, thousands of
acres, of sugar-cane, and we saw many large mills, all using modern
machinery for grinding cane and making sugar. Then there were fewer
ditches, fewer canals, the land was higher, slightly, and there were
miles of cotton fields, the cotton yet in the boll, ripe for the
picking. Then it was a land with many little ditches, and little
dykes; there were rice fields to be flooded; and there were rice
mills,--representing a large and rapidly increasing interest. Every
extent of forest we passed hung heavy with gray moss and parasitic
vines. There were many live oaks and palmettoes and some cypress. The
land was still gradually rising, finally becoming drier, grass-covered
and grazed by herds of cattle and horses; but it was flat, always
flat.
Toward dusk we passed through Beaumont, the famous oil town. This is
the fateful place where millions of dollars have been made and lost
within a few months. Ten years ago a group of our own Kanawha
tenderfeet drilled here a four-hundred-foot dry hole, and abandoned
the project, finding no oil within a stone’s throw of the spot where,
a few years later, Dan Lucas drilled down eight hundred feet, and
struck his seventy-thousand-barrel gusher. There was an excited “boom”
throng at the station, and the travelers entering our car fairly
buzzed thrilling talk of oil. Among them were a number of ladies, more
bediamonded, bejeweled and begolded than any group of femininity I
ever saw before. The men, too, wore flashing jewels and bore that
distinct stamp which marks those who, with nonchalance, win or lose
a fortune in a night. They were by all odds the toughest-looking lot
of elegantly clad men and women I ever yet beheld.
[Illustration: THE ALAMO]
We passed Houston near midnight, and in the morning by eight o’clock
were at San Antonio, a city of wide streets, and spacious parks
adorned everywhere with palms and palmettoes and semitropical shrubs.
We entered a ’bus and drove a mile to the station of the International
and Great Northern Railway, which comes down from St. Louis and runs
south seventy miles to Laredo, on the Rio Grande and the Mexican
border. We passed the bullet-battered walls of the famous Alamo, the
hallowed shrine of every loyal Texan, then a large Roman Catholic
Cathedral with Spanish roof and bell tower, a huge convent and several
stately public buildings. San Antonio is a city of forty thousand
people and the last American town of magnitude north of Mexico. At the
station, where we waited half an hour, I saw my first Mexican
_greasers_, in their prodigious _sombreros_ and began to feel myself
nearing a strange land.
Our train from the North drew in at nine o’clock, on time, all
vestibuled, lighted with electricity, with a dining car attached, and
all its equipment greatly superior to that of the Southern Pacific.
It was one of the Gould trains from St. Louis to the far South.
Leaving San Antonio, we traversed a country still flat, always flat,
covered with sand and mesquit for miles and miles and miles. As far as
the eye could see in every direction, hour after hour stretched this
illimitable monotonous wilderness. The mesquit trees looked like
ill-grown peach trees. To my unaccustomed eye, we seemed to be passing
through endless barren orchards, the trees standing generally thirty
or forty feet apart. Here is the home of the jack rabbit, and toward
the Mexican border and within reach of the waters of the Rio Grande,
deer abound. Quail are also common, but of other life there is little
or none. Here and there the mesquit trees were cut away, and wide,
sandy fields were planted with cotton. Cattle also were cropping the
short, dry native grass. As we traveled south the grass diminished,
the sand increased and the prickly cactus became increasingly
plentiful. At one of the stations where we stopped for the engine to
take water, I talked with a tall white-bearded planter, who stood
holding his horse, the horse accoutered with Mexican saddle and
lariat, the man in high Mexican _sombrero_. “The labor hereabouts is
all Mexican,” he said. “Mexican peons you can import in unlimited
numbers, who are glad to work for thirty cents per day and board
themselves. Hence there are no negroes south of San Antonio, for no
negro will work and live on such small pay. Moreover, the soil is so
poor and water is so scarce that neither cotton nor cattle could here
be raised with profit, if it were not for the low wage the Mexican is
glad to accept.”
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH CONVENT]
We reached Laredo, a city of some five thousand inhabitants, about six
o’clock, P. M., where I sent the following telegram, “Cane, cotton,
cattle, mesquit, sand and cactus, O. K.,” which, though brief, sums up
the country I have been traversing for the last two days. Laredo is
upon the American side of the Rio Grande, which is crossed by a long
bridge to Nuevo Laredo, in the State of Nuevo Leon. Here smartly
uniformed Mexican customs officers examined my baggage and passed me
through.
IV
On to Mexico City
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO,
_November 18th_.
_He llegado en esta ciudad, hoy, cerca las ocho de la mañana!_ The
moment we crossed the Rio Grande we changed instantly from American
twentieth century civilization to mediæval Latin-Indian. The Mexican
town of Nuevo Laredo, the buildings, the women, the men, the boys, the
donkeys, all were different. I felt as though I had waked up in
another world. As we approached the station of the Mexican city, I
noticed an old man riding upon his donkey. His saddle was fastened
over the hips just above the beast’s tail, his feet trailed upon the
ground. He sat there with immense dignity and self-possession, viewing
with curiosity the _gringos_, who had come down from the land of the
distant North. He silently watched us for some moments and then rode
solemnly away, while I wondered by what hand of Providence it was he
did not slide off behind.
From Nuevo Laredo to Monterey, which we reached at half past ten P. M.,
was all one flat mesquit and cactus-covered plain; sand, mesquit
and cactus; cactus, sand and mesquit, mile after mile, till darkness
fell upon us, when we could see no more. Monterey is the center of
Mexico’s steel and iron industries, of large tobacco manufactories, of
extensive breweries. It is the chief manufacturing city of modern
Mexico. Our stay was brief, and I caught only a glimpse of a cloaked
and high-_sombreroed_ crowd, hurrying beneath the glare of electric
lamps, and then we passed on toward the great interior plateau of the
Mexican Highlands.
During the night it grew cold. I awoke shivering and called for
blankets. In San Antonio the morning had been warm and, all day, south
to Laredo and on to Monterey, the heat had been oppressive. It was
cold when I left Kanawha, but the chilly air had not followed me
beyond New Orleans, and I had there packed into my trunk all my warm
clothing and checked it through to Mexico. Passing westward through
Louisiana and Texas, the mild air was delightful and I was comfortable
in my thinnest summer garments. Thus dreaming of orange groves and
sunny tropics I fell asleep. Now I was shivering with a deadly chill,
and the thin keen air cut like a scimiter. I pulled on my overcoat,
which I fortunately still had with me, and slept fitfully till the
day.
We crossed, during the night, the first great mountain range which
shuts out the inland plateau of central Mexico from the lowland plains
stretching eastward toward the Gulf and into Texas. We climbed many
thousands of feet to Saltillo, where the mercury almost registered
frost. Now we were descending the inner slopes of the barrier
mountains, passing near the battle field of Buena Vista, where Zachary
Taylor smote Santa Anna and his dark-skinned horde, and gained the
fame which made him President of the United States. We were entering
that vast desolate inland plain which stretches so many hundreds of
miles south to Acambaro, where we should begin to climb again yet
higher ranges, crossing them at last--at an altitude of eleven
thousand feet,--before we should finally descend into the high cool
valley of Anahuac to the City of Mexico.
About nine o’clock, we drew up at a wayside station for breakfast
(_almuerzo_). If I had known it, I might have obtained my _desayuno_
coffee and roll at an earlier hour upon the train. We were now upon a
wide-stretching sandy level. A cold mist hung over us. The scorching
sun was trying to penetrate this barrier. A band of Indians wrapped
to their eyes in brilliant colored blankets of native make
(_zerapes_), their high-peaked _sombreros_ pulled over their eyes,
with folded arms, silent as statues, stood watching us. I deliberately
took their photograph. They did not smile or move. A group of Indian
women sitting on the ground near these men were not so placid. They
regarded the kodak as an evil mystery and hid their faces in their
_rebozos_ when I pointed my lens at them. The strange instrument
smacked of witchcraft, and they would none of it. With _rebozos_ still
drawn, they got upon their feet and fled.
[Illustration: THE DESOLATE PLAINS]
In another hour the bright white sun dissipated the mists. The sky was
blue and cloudless. The track ran straight, with rarely a curve, mile
after mile into the South. The land lay flat as a table, an arid
plain, shut in by towering, verdureless mountains, ranging along the
horizon on east and west. All day we thus sped south through
illimitable wastes of sand, and sage brush and cactus, and a curious
stunted palm, which lifted up a naked trunk with a single tuft of
green at the very end. The landscape gave no sign of ever having been
blessed by a drop of water, the barren prospect extending upon all
sides in apparently unending monotony.
Now and then we passed a small station made of adoby brick. Now and
then, a cluster of adoby dwellings centered about a low-roofed adoby
church. At one place a half wild _rancherro_ raced along beside the
train on his _broncho_, vainly trying to keep the pace and wildly
waving his _sombrero_ as he fell behind. At the stations were always
women and children, and the ever silent men standing like statues.
They never moved, they never spoke, they never smiled; they gazed at
us with blank astonishment. As we came further and further south, the
extreme aridness of the landscape began to lessen. Cattle began to
appear upon the plain, adoby villages became more frequent, the
swarthy dark brown population became more numerous. Toward
midafternoon, the towers, the high walls, the red tiled roofs of a
great church, a cathedral, and a town of magnitude grew large before
us. We drew up at a fine, commodious station, built of red sandstone.
There, gathered to meet the train, were curious two-wheeled carts and
antique carriages with high wheels, drawn by mules; many donkeys
bearing burdens, some with men sitting upon their hips; a multitude of
dark-faced Latins, men in high _sombreros_, the women with heads
enveloped in _rebozos_ or _mantillas_. We were at the station built a
mile distant from the important city of San Louis Potosí, one of the
great ore-smelting centers of Mexico, and a city of sixty thousand
inhabitants. In the station we dined, and I ate my first Mexican
fruits, one a sort of custard apple, and all delicious.
[Illustration: AWAITING OUR TRAIN]