In Desolate Places.--Beauty Everywhere.--Railway Engineering.--Analogy
in the Conduct of Life.--El Paso.--The Sand Storm.--Human Grasshoppers.
--The Placid Night.--Rev. Dr. Higgins.--Juarez.--Rev. M. Cabell Martin.
--Strangeness of our Mexican Glimpse.--The Post-Office.--The Old Church.
--The Padre's Perquisites.--The Prison.--El Paso Again.--Cavalry Going
East for the War.
After leaving San Antonio, the night soon shut out the landscape from
our view, and the next morning revealed to us a rather forlorn region.
This is how it impressed Mrs. Morgan. I quote from her diary: "We awoke
to find ourselves in a desolate portion of country, bare prairie,
stretching away towards craggy hills whose irregular outline is very
picturesque, and the soft blue and purple shadowing on them is
beautiful. Droves of cattle wandered about, feeding on the sparse dried
grass, which is the only forage the poor beasts seem to have."
Even the most unpromising places have some compensation in them, for
the beauty of the distant mountains was worth seeing, and the natural
cured grass of the prairies has wonderful sustaining power. In fact, it
is a hay crop wisely scattered everywhere, needing neither storehouse
nor barn, always on hand--or at mouth, one might say--for the strolling
droves. We passed during our morning's run some splendid pieces of
railroad engineering. We were constantly rising above the sea level,
every mile bringing us up to the mountain heights. This rapid ascent
was managed by a most circuitous route among the foothills, winding in
and out, and doubling again and again upon our track. A railway map
gives one an idea of almost straight lines from place to place. How
different is the reality! It seemed to me a symbol of theory and
practice in real life. A proposition in business or in morals seems as
simple and inevitable as that two and two make four; but many are the
twists and turns that must be taken in all departments of life before
the end in view can be attained.
By these necessary zigzags and retracing curves we made our advance,
higher and higher. The sparse vegetation revealed our increasing
altitude, the trees became few and stunted, and the wild plants more
limited in variety. We descend again as we pass on, until toward
evening we reached El Paso. Here we landed in the midst of a fearful
sand storm. We were met by a dear old friend of former days, the Rev.
Dr. Higgins, whose first impulse was to tell us that it was not always
thus in El Paso. We should hope not; for it was fearful. The wind blew
at a dreadful rate, sweeping along with it dense clouds of sharp sand
which gave one a sense of being lashed with whipcords. In the midst of
this blinding dust and sand, obscuring the light, people moved about
like huge grasshoppers. A contrivance of transparent celluloid, fitted
like glasses to the eyes, extending from above the eyebrows, down well
on the cheeks, gave people this absurd insect-like appearance. It was
gruesome and comical at once. Several of our party invested immediately
in these most necessary appliances, in order to get round a little in
what looked like a forlorn town; but ere an hour or so had passed we
found the storm gone, and all in placid peace, while the stars shone
down through the clear night with true southern brilliancy.
The next morning Dr. Higgins was once more with us, and was delighted
to act as guide to our younger contingent, who did El Paso thoroughly,
and went also across the river, the Rio Grande del Norte, into the
Mexican town of Juarez. Some of the party met with a sad experience on
their return, when they had to pay so much a pound tax, and _ad
valorem_ besides, on a Mexican blanket whose gay stripes had taken
their fancy in a shop at Juarez.
My cicerone was the Rev. M. Cabell Martin, Rector of St. Clement's, El
Paso, who drove me in his buggy over the frontier to Juarez and showed
me all that was to be seen. It is astonishing what a change one sees in
little more than a few yards of distance. Once across the bridge from
El Paso, and you are in a new atmosphere. El Paso is like a New England
town, after all; a little rough here and there, a little strange it may
be, like the strangeness of the city pets, the alligators, who sleep in
luxurious laziness in the public square; but yet it all was in our
ways, and we were at home. But in Juarez all is different. As we drive
along, two men by the roadside making adobe looked as if they might
have been with the Israelites in Egypt at the same business. With their
naked legs they were kneading up the black muck, which, when of the
proper consistency, they deftly moulded into form for the great master
workman, the sun, to dry at his leisure and pleasure. The streets of
the town seemed bare. The shops were in most cases without windows or
exterior openings, save the entrance door. The booths and stalls in the
streets for cheap eatables, vegetables, pottery, and odds and ends had
a wild, gypsy grace about them, all water-colors, ready to be painted,
just as they were.
We saw the post-office where Juarez kept up the government and
existence of the Republic of Mexico during the whole of the Maximilian
invasion. It was a close point to the United States for escape and
liberty if he was molested. When Maximilian received his death-shot,
Juarez went on with his presidency, taking no notice whatever of the
usurpation as if it never had place. This man, of pure Indian blood,
was certainly of heroic mould, and a stanch lover of light and liberty.
We looked into the church, a most interesting old adobe building, with
walls of immense thickness. The interior was a well-proportioned
parallelogram of good height, with a grand wooden roof of carved beams
of a dark hue, possibly black with age. We were told that the work had
been all done by native workmen in ages past. Part of the doors in the
same style, like Aztec work, had been ripped away and thrown outside to
make way for a jimcrack gallery for singers. We longed to bring those
old doorposts with us, and looked up with gratification at the roof as
yet safe in its distance and old magnificence. The church walls had
been all done up in whitewash, and the altar was adorned with saints
and a Madonna decked out in real laces, satins, velvets, and jewelry,
possibly real also. The effect of it all was bizarre and a trifle
depressing.
We saw the arena for the Sunday and _fete_-day bull fights, and also
the square behind the church where the Mexican padre indulges in his
form of church sociables and grab-bag business. He does it by letting
out the spaces of the square to all sorts of three-card-monte men,
and other catchpennies of that ilk, from December 8th, through the
Christmas Holidays, until the following _fete_ of the Epiphany. It is
said that the padre gets his percentage on the profits also. Poor man,
he must have some compensation, for his lot is such that, under the
laws of Mexico, he, or any other padre, cannot walk the streets in
clerical garb, but must disguise their calling in the ordinary dress of
a civilian. The padre in question, I was told, usually appeared in the
dress of an ordinary peon.
We took a peep into the prison, and were instantly assailed by the
prisoners behind the bars and in the open court within the gates,
offering us for sale trinkets they had made. The Mexican prison rules
do not oblige the jailers to provide food for their prisoners, so they
must in some way hustle for themselves, buy from their jailers, or
depend upon the charity of others. An officer in full uniform lounged
on a chair near by the outer door, and soldiers in canvas uniforms were
on guard with military rigidity, with arms in their hands. It was like
a bit out of the Middle Ages, or a scene from the opera, where brigands
and regulars have varying fortunes of conquering and being conquered.
It was nice to drive back over the Rio Grande del Norte again into the
home land; to have a chat with the United States Custom House officer;
to show him our purchases worth about fifty cents American money, for
which we had got eight or ten pieces of pottery from a street vender,
and then after our chat to be told "it was all right."
When we got into El Paso we saw the first touch of real war in the
shape of a regiment of cavalry bound for New Orleans and Cuba. There
were shouts and hurrahs as they moved off in their train, but not the
noisy enthusiasm which one might expect. Our American people are not
shouters, they are too serious. There is a silence about their most
excited conditions which a stranger can hardly understand.