When I inquired the way to Tlaxcala there was such an ignorance on the

subject at my hotel, at Puebla, that it almost seemed as if I was the

first person who could ever have been there. A luxurious Englishman

abandoned me at this part of the expedition, claiming that nobody knew

whether there were conveyances from the junction, whether there were

even inns. It seemed to him a case of sitting on a Tlaxcalan door-step

and perishing of hunger, or being washed away by the torrents of the

rainy season. I found, however, that there was a choice of two trains a

day, and went on alone. What then? I suppose Cortez did rather more than

that. Tlaxcala was the most undaunted and terrible of all his enemies. He

made his way to it after insuperable obstacles, and it was only by the

alliance of the warlike Tlaxcalans, when he had finally won them over to

his cause, that he effected the conquest of Mexico.

The recollection had involuntarily given me rather dark and depressing

ideas of Tlaxcala, as a place of gloomy forests and gorges suited for

martial resistance. Who that has not seen it, I wonder, has the proper

conception of Tlaxcala?

IV.

It is not gloomy; there are no forests; the country is open and rolling;

and the name “Tlaxcala,” it now appears, is fertility, the “Land of

Bread.” I left at 11 A.M., and arrived at the village of Santa Ana, on

the railroad to Apizaco, in a couple of hours. After a time a conveyance

was to be had, in the shape of a dilapidated hack drawn by three horses,

in the lead, and two mules. This was run as a stage-line to Tlaxcala; and

in an hour more, largely of floundering over ruts and following the beds

of swollen brooks—for nobody ever thinks of mending a road in Mexico—we

were there. We met, on the way, the carriage of the state Governor, an

ancient coupé, improved by the addition of a boot, and drawn by two

horses and two mules. I was deposited on the sidewalk at the upper side

of a plaza, and scrutinized keenly when there by the shop-keepers of the

surrounding arcades and loungers on comfortable stone benches.

Tlaxcalan allies, in the shape of a small boy and a larger assistant,

seized upon my satchel, and we set out for a personal inspection of such

houses of entertainment as were to be heard of. The Posada of Genius

was altogether too wretched and shabby, as is apt to be the way with

genius. The Meson of the—I have forgotten its name—was too full to offer

accommodation, and had a morose landlord, who seemed to rejoice in the

fact. I came at last to a house where simply chambers were to be let. It

was highly commended by my smaller Tlaxcalan ally, a very rapid-talking

small boy, with the air of one much in the habit of dodging missiles.

“It will be two reals” (twenty-five cents) “the night, as you see it,”

said the proprietor, waving a hand in an interior bare of furniture.

“Ah! two reals the night!”

“But perhaps the gentleman would desire also a bed, a wash-stand, and a

looking-glass?”

“Yes, let us say a bed, wash-stand, and looking-glass.”

“Then it will be four reals the night.”

The larger Tlaxcalan ally, who had had nothing to do, established a claim

for services by offering praise of each successive article of furniture

as it was brought in, as, “_Muy buena cama, señor!_” “_Muy bonito

espejo!_”—“A very fine bed, señor!” “A very charming mirror, señor!”—and

the like.

V.

Now, all this is all exactly as it happened, and one should hardly be

compelled to spoil a good story by adding to it. Yet this appearance of

amusing stupidity is dissipated, after all, by remembering the methods of

travel in the country. Many, or most, journeys are made on horseback, and

the guest is likely to want only a room where he can lock up his saddle

and saddle-bags and sleep on his own blankets, or, if luxurious, on a

light cot, carried with other baggage on a pack-mule. This is all the

accommodation provided at the general run of the mesones.

At the Fonda y Cafe de la Sociedad I supped, by the light of two

candles, with a gentleman in long riding-boots, who had a paper-mill

in the neighborhood. He told me that he had learned the business at

Philadelphia. He was of a friendly disposition, and declared that I was

to consider him henceforth my correspondent, so far as I might have need

of one, on all matters, commercial and otherwise, at Tlaxcala. And to

that extent I may say I do so consider him to this day.

My room had, first, a pair of glass doors, then a pair of heavy wooden

ones, and opened on a damp little court, in which the rain was falling.

There were no windows nor transom, positively no other opening than a

couple of diminutive holes in the wooden door, like

“The fiery eyes of Pauguk glaring at him through the darkness,”

as one awoke to them in the early morning. Another streak under the door

figured as a sort of mouth. There was a clashing of swords in a corner

of the shady and handsome Zocalo when I went out, and I fancied at first

a duel, but it was only a couple of _Rurales_ going through their sabre

exercise under direction of an officer. The morning was bright and

beautiful. Hucksters were putting up their stands in the arcades for the

day’s business. A new market elsewhere, consisting of a series of light,

open pavilions, was one of the best in arrangement I have ever seen.

Tlaxcala recalls some such provincial Italian place as Este, seat of the

famous historic house of that name. It has once been more important than

now. The persons of principal consideration are the state employés. It is

the capital of the smallest of the states, the Rhode Island or Delaware

of the Mexican federation. I entered the quarters of the Legislature, and

found there the Governor, a small, fat, Indian-looking man, scarred with

a deep cut on his cheek, conferring with a committee of his law-makers.

There are eight of these in all, and they receive an annual stipend

of $1000 each. In the legislative hall a space is railed off for the

president and two secretaries. There is a little tribune at this rail,

from which the speeches are made. The members face each other, in two

rows, and comfortably smoke during their sessions, after the custom of

the Congress at Mexico also. The rest is reserved for spectators. On the

walls are four quaint old portraits of the earliest chiefs converted to

Christianity, all with “Don” before their names.

[Illustration: OLD FONT AT TLAXCALA.]

The secretary of the Ayuntamienta has in a glass case in his office some

few idols, the early charter of the city and regulations of the province,

and the tattered silken banner carried by Cortez in the conquest. This

last, once a rich crimson, is faded to a shabby coffee-color, and the

silver has vanished from its spear-head, showing copper beneath. Tossed

into corners were two large heaps of old, vellum-bound books from the

convents. This is a common enough sight in Mexico. Treasures are abundant

here which our own connoisseurs would delight to treat with the greatest

respect. Apart from this there is no other museum nor especial display

of antiquity. The town, kept nicely whitewashed, looks rather new.

It contains, however, the oldest church in Mexico. The chapel of San

Francisco, part of a dismantled convent, now used as a barracks, bears

the date of 1529, and within it are the first baptismal font (the same in

which the Tlaxcalan chiefs above-mentioned were baptized by Cortez) and

the first Christian pulpit in America. The ceiling is of panelled cedar,

picked out with gilded suns and the like. The approach is up an inclined

plane, shaded with ash-trees. Through three large arches of an entrance

gate-way, flanked by a tower, the town below appears as through a series

of frames. A massive church in the town plaza was cracked and unfitted

for use by an earthquake in the year 1800, and its ruins stand untouched,

with the bells still hanging in the steeple.

[Illustration: THE FIRST CHRISTIAN PULPIT IN AMERICA. TLAXCALA.]

To counterbalance this a modern church, very white, and a landmark to all

the country round about, has been put up on the high hill of Ocatlan, a

couple of miles back. I climbed there and looked down upon the prospect.

Women and girls were going up to the sanctuary with bunches of roses, on

some religions errand. There were wild pinks by the wayside, the air was

full of the twittering of birds, and the chimes rang musically. Looked

down upon from the height, Tlaxcala was seen to be a compact little

place, flat-roofed, low, almost exactly square. The wide bed of the

Zatuapan River, now very shallow, wound by it. The opposite hills, hung

over by vapors and rain-clouds with changing lights among them, were now

purplish and now indigo black.

[Illustration: PART OF CONVENT OF SAN FRANCISCO. TLAXCALA.]

VI.

On the floor above me at my lodging resided, in a comfortable way, a

doctor. He had with him a friend, French by nationality but long resident

at Mexico, who was at present _paseando_ a little here for his health.

This gentleman confided to me, mysteriously, that, since spending some

time here, he had reason to believe that there were mines of silver and

gold in the vicinity. In fact, he knew of some. “An Indian, some years

ago,” he said, “brought to the padre of one of the churches two papers

containing a fine dust. It was _poudre d’or_—gold-dust—nothing less. What

do you think of that?”

I thought highly of it—as I always do of treasure stories; nothing is

more entertaining.

“There are indications, in reading history,” he went on, “that much of

the supply of the precious metals in the time of the Conquerors was taken

from here. You are aware that most of the valuable mines were abandoned

by the Spaniards in the terrors of the War of Independence, and have

never since been worked. Often their very location has been forgotten.

I have a friend here who has certain knowledge of a place where _poudre

d’or_ can be found.”

He paused, perhaps to allow an offer to be made for an interest in the

attractive enterprise, but none was made.

He continued, alluringly: “It is my intention to enter into thorough

explorations, now that I have leisure, as soon as my health is slightly

more restored.”

I took the seat beside the driver on the ancient conveyance, going

back to Santa Ana. We went along sandy lanes, in which the rain of the

night before was almost dry, and between hedges of maguey. Maize on the

right—tall but slender, and without the large ears we are accustomed to;

barley and wheat on the left. All the country fertile. Malinche boldly in

sight, and a sky of rolling clouds, as in Holland. Shock-headed Indian

children, with a Chinese look, holding babies, and peering at us out of

rifts in palisades of organ-cactus. Bright skeins of wool in door-yards,

and glimpses of peasants weaving serapes in interiors. I recollect that

morning as one of a few of unalloyed content. Perhaps it was because,

in being at Tlaxcala, I had gratified a curiosity of an exceptional

eagerness.

XVIII.

_MINES AND MINING TRAITS, AT PACHUCA AND REGLA._

I.

We bought tickets for Pachuca at the Hotel Gillow, in Mexico. Pachuca,

one of the earliest, and richest, of the mining districts in the country,

notable for both its earlier and later history, is, fortunately, also one

of the most accessible to the traveller from the capital.

We took the train, from Buena Vista Station, at six in the morning. At

Omeltusco, forty miles down the Vera Cruz Line, a group of diligences

stood in waiting. Our own proved to be drawn by eight mules—two wheelers,

four in the centre, and two leaders. We jolted along execrable roads,

turned out where the mud-holes threatened to engulf us, and rode instead

over high maguey stumps which threatened to hurl us back into them.

The country was covered with magueys. The driver, by whom I sat, on

the box-seat, for the better view of what was passing, asked me, in a

patronizing way,

“Have the Norte Americanos also _pulque_? and do they _se borrachau_ (get

drunk) with it, like people here?”

We reached San Agostin, a shabby adobe hamlet, at eleven o’clock, waited

there a while for the Philadelphia-built horse-car on the tramway, of

which I have before spoken, and were at Pachuca about sundown. As to

scenery, historically, and from the point of view of its returns, Pachuca

is rivalled among raining districts perhaps only by Guanajuato; but the

place itself is shabby, and, lying nine thousand feet above the sea, its

atmosphere is raw and penetrating even in July. Regularly every afternoon

blow up a breeze and a dust like those which have attained celebrity at

San Francisco.

There were said to be ten thousand miners at work in the district.

Perhaps five hundred are British subjects, originally from the tin mines

of Cornwall. They manifest in their new surroundings a rude independence

of character amounting to surliness. I heard here of my French engineer

who had been sent over to examine mining property. He had eccentrically

given his left hand, after a way some Frenchmen have, to the captain of

one of the mines, on his descent, and the colony talked of nothing but

this. They had banded together to guy and mislead him in his inquiries as

much as possible, and one of them told me, with a bitterness the trivial

circumstance hardly seemed to warrant, that if he came again, with his

supercilious way of treating people, they would try to tumble him into

some pit. Our poor friend, I fear, went away, if he believed what was

told him, with some very singular items of information.

II.

Pachuca has become a good-sized city within a comparatively modern

period, while Real del Monte, adjoining, once more important, still

remains a village. The English element is not new in either. There was

probably more of it toward 1827 than even now. On the close of the War of

Independence an impression went abroad of most brilliant profits awaiting

whoever would furnish capital to reopen and work the old Spanish mines

abandoned and ruined in the disasters of the long struggle.

The idea was seized upon with especial avidity in England. It was

represented that but two simple things were needed: the pumping-out of

the water which had accumulated in the disused shafts, and improved

machinery for working at lower levels, than those which had been within

the reach of the primitive appliances of the country. Seven great English

companies were formed, which proceeded to pour out millions upon millions

of pounds, distributing the money among the several mining districts of

chief repute; and these half depopulated Cornwall for laborers for the

new interests. The idea was in itself a good one. Mexico had produced in

three hundred years of mining, according to the estimate of Humboldt,

$1,767,952,000 of value in the precious metals. The yield had been going

on before the Revolution at the rate of $30,000,000 yearly. It was an

industry of the greatest regularity. From 3000 to 5000 mines were in

operation, and constituted its chief wealth. Its towns were mining towns;

its great families mining families. The funds from this source had built

the churches, the dams for irrigation by which the great agricultural

estates were brought under cultivation, and had supplied the gifts and

loans to the King by which the nobility secured their titles. By the

Revolution this source of wealth was exhausted and dried up. The new

Congress of the country felt the imperative need of doing something to

reopen it, and encouraged the advent of foreign capital by a legislation

which is still felt as a liberalizing influence in mining matters.

The idea was a good one, as I say, but the foreign investors did not

sufficiently estimate the difficulties of their undertaking, the novelty

of the country, language, persons, and processes, and the physical

obstacles with which they had to deal. Almost without exception they lost

money. The “boom” of 1824 was followed by a panic in 1826, a general

depression at home, and, in course of time, the transfer of the interests

to cheaper hands.

Among the English companies mentioned was the Real del Monte Company,

which bought up, among others, all the mines of the Count of Regla,

at Real del Monte and Pachuca. These had produced in fifty years

$26,500,000. The history of the growth of the Count’s magnificence

is briefly this. His principal vein, the Biscaina, had been worked

continuously from the middle of the sixteenth century. Its yield in 1726

was nearly $4,500,000. In the beginning of the eighteenth century it

was abandoned in consequence of the impossibility of drainage with the

defective appliances of that day. A shrewd individual took up these mines

anew in later years, and associated with him Don Pedro Tereros, a small

capitalist, who became his heir. In 1762 Tereros struck a bonanza, and

in twelve years took out $6,000,000. He procured the title of Count of

Regla by his munificent gifts to Charles III., and, investing his money

judiciously, entered upon the career of splendor to which reference has

heretofore been made.

By 1801, however, he found himself at such a depth with his levels that

the yield was insufficient to pay the expenses of extraction, and the

mines were again disused. It was in this condition that the English

company took them, knowing full well that there was treasure in the

deeper levels, and proposing to bring it out with its improved machinery

and Cornish labor.

The director took a salary of $40,000 a year, built himself a castellated

palace, and rode out with a body-guard of fifty horsemen. A magnificent

road was built to Regla, six leagues away. The only access thither, for

the six hundred mules of the Count of Regla, had been by a dangerous

bridle-path. Five large steam-engines and lesser machinery were dragged

up from the coast at Vera Cruz, occupying the labor of a hundred men and

seven hundred mules for five months.

In all this probably a million pounds was consumed. Treasure was not

found as expected—what there was appearing instead in new mines. After

struggling hopelessly a while the management passed into other hands.

The parade was dispensed with, and the costly machinery sold out, to a

Mexican company, for about its value as old iron, and then the property

began to pay.

An English “Anglo-Mexican Company” also owned mines at Pachuca, and in

like manner came to grief. There was an element of luck in all this, too,

it must be admitted. Less than a hundred feet from where work was stopped

in the Rosario, for instance, one of the mines of the latter, the new

company struck a bonanza, which has been paying munificently ever since.

The present director, Señor Llandero y Cos, a brother of the Secretary of

State, lives in the same castellated palace, but on a simpler scale. I

had reason to know that even he had had not a little to suffer from the

fierce independence of his surrounding Cornishmen. I descended into two

of the richest mines, Santa Gertrudis and San Rosario. Of these Santa

Gertrudis has paid in a brief space thirty-nine dividends of $20,000 each.

III.

The interior, even of the richest Mexican silver-mine, is hardly what

the novice might expect. You put a candle, pasted by a lump of mud, on

the top of your hat and crawl through all sorts of dark and dripping

holes. Now and then a guide flashes his light on some black and grayish

discolorations with a look of professional pride, but you do not exactly

fall down in ecstasy over these. There are no forks and spoons hanging

ready to your hand, no presentation plate, nor even ingots. The heaps of

ore about the shafts do not glitter, and seem good for little but to mend

the roads. The principal shafts are about sixteen feet in diameter, the

galleries five by eight, and spaced about eighty feet apart. At the San

Pedro mine the pumping-engine was of one hundred and fifty horse-power,

and another of the same power drew up the malacate, or skip, full of ore

in bags of maguey fibre. In some of the old mines, at Guanajuato and San

Luis Potosi, they tell us, peons still tote the ore up the interminable

ladders on their backs; but this, I think, must be rare. The depth of

the Santa Gertrudis is about six hundred feet. The material is marl,

limestone, and quartz, all of a soft character and easy to work, but

requiring a heavy timbering-up. The clothing of the laborers is ransacked

for nuggets by three separate searchers in turn, as they emerge from

their work.

There is a Government School of Practical Mining at Pachuca, to which

students are sent after finishing the theoretical course at the Mineria,

or school of technology, in Mexico. The director, an affable man, showed

us the process of beneficiating, or extracting the metal from the rough

ore, in miniature. You see the rock first crushed and reduced, with

water, to a paste, then mingled with sulphate of copper, common salt, and

quicksilver, which get hold of the metal. The quicksilver is afterward

withdrawn and reserved for continued use. He gave me, also, a pamphlet of

his on a new form of application of “La Accion Mechanica del Viento”—the

mechanical action of the wind. A large wind-mill was moving in the

court-yard made in accordance with his principle, which substituted

large zinc cones for the ordinary sails and slats.

The extracting processes were more entertainingly seen, however, at the

beneficiating haciendas themselves. The “Loreto” is one of the principal.

The ore is crushed either by the Cornish stamp, which drops a succession

of iron-shod beams upon it; the Chilean mill, which grinds it by means

of superposed revolving stones; or the _arrastra_. The last is the most

primitive, cheapest, and still most in use. The crushing is done by

common stones, hung to the arms of a horizontal cross, dragged round and

round in a circular bed by mule-power.

Then follows the making of _tortas_, “the patio system,” which had

its origin here in 1557. Numerous large mud-pies of the powdered ore

and water are laid out on a vast open court floored with wood. The

chemicals mentioned are thrown in in successive stages, and troops of

broken-down horses are driven around in the mass for from two to three

weeks in succession, thoroughly mingling it together. It is then brought

in wheel-barrow loads to washing-tanks, where men and boys puddle it

bare-legged till the metal falls to the bottom and the detritus runs

away. “Rebellious” ores are treated by first calcining, then separating

with mercury by “the barrel process.” This last is done chiefly at the

hacienda of Velasco, on the way to Regla.

Of the two hundred and sixty-seven mines in the district, seven are

worked by the Real del Monte Company. The paying mines are comparatively

new, discovered within the last twenty or thirty years. The old Spanish

mines do not pay, and are, in fact, little worked. The stories of old

Spanish mines, abandoned, perforce, at the date of the Independence,

and ready to yield splendid returns to whoever will reopen them, serves

very well as romance; but it must be remembered that sixty years

have elapsed since the Independence, and there have been plenty of

prospectors with a shrewd eye for gain in the country in the mean time.

The Mexicans themselves are good miners. It will not do to look on with

amused contempt even where very primitive processes are largely retained,

for these are often better adapted to the peculiar conditions than any

others. Thus the puddling of the _tortas_ by mules and human legs, with

labor at but thirty cents a day, is deliberately preferred to machinery.

Whoever might care to make purchases in such a place would do well to buy

among the newly discovered mines. Or one may yet prospect for himself,

for the district appears by no means exhausted. Robbers in the state

of Hidalgo long served as an impediment to freedom of prospecting in

out-of-the-way places, and it is only of late that their power has been

broken. The last Governor is said to have shot three hundred of them.

Wild-cat properties and pitfalls of the usual sort await the unwary here.

That perversity which, by some natural law, seems to take hold upon

dealers in mines as well as in horses possesses them in Mexico not less

than elsewhere.

The Mexican mine is divided into twenty-four imaginary equal parts,

_barras_, and fractional parts of these are bought and sold as its stock.

IV.

As to the mining laws of the country, I have heard them described by

some Americans as better than our own. In certain respects this is true.

The reprehensible looseness with which our American “district recorders”

receive conflicting claims covering the same property many times over

is unknown. An official goes to the field and settles the equity of

the case at once, and never records but one title. Litigation about the

original title of a Mexican mine is almost unknown, while that of an

American mine of any value is invariably in litigation.

On the other hand, there are some drawbacks. While a foreigner may hold

property in mines in Mexico without being subject to the obligation

of residence, as in respect to other real estate, provided he have a

resident partner, nobody in Mexico, foreigner or otherwise, can acquire

a mine outright and in absolute ownership. He cannot own it in fee, no

matter what sum he pays for it. The legal theory is that the title to

a mine is only that of “conditional possession,” and in the nature of

usufruct, which is “the right of using and enjoying a thing of which the

owner is another.” On violation of the conditions the title reverts to

the sovereignty—formerly the King of Spain, now the Republic of Mexico.

The body of the Ordinances as at present followed was promulgated by the

King of Spain in the year 1783. To allow a mine to stand idle is assumed

to be an injury to those who might otherwise work and extract profit from

it. It is enacted, therefore, as follows:

“I (the King) order and command that any one who shall for four

consecutive months fail to work a mine, with four operatives, regularly

employed, and occupied in some interior or exterior work of real utility

and advantage, shall thereby forfeit the right which he may have to the

mine, and it shall belong to the denouncer who proves its desertion.”

The method of acquiring title to a new and original mine is to go before

the proper officer in the district in which it has been discovered and

register a claim. Ninety days is then allowed to any other persons

who may advance pretensions to it also, to appear, after which it is

confirmed to him whose case is best established. Abandoned and forfeited

properties are “denounced” by a similar formality. Veins or mines may be

denounced not only on common lands, but those of any private individual,

on paying for the surface occupied. In order, however, to obviate

malicious or idle destruction, the searcher may be made to give security,

before beginning his trial, for any damage he may occasion to the owner

of the ground. Sites and waters for reducing works are included in the

same permission.

The denouncer must take possession and begin the prescribed work within

sixty days. The discoverer may have three _pertenencias_, or claims,

continuous or interrupted, on any principal vein which is absolutely

new. The _pertenencia_ consists of two hundred metres along the line

of the vein and one hundred on each side (or as the miner may desire),

as measured on a level. A person, not the discoverer, can denounce two

contiguous mines, on the same vein, but one may acquire as many others as

he likes by purchase.

The ancient code created a General Tribunal of Mining for New Spain, and

gave it cognizance of all mining matters. It was composed of a President,

Director-general, and three Deputies-general, elected by the _Reales_,

or mining districts, and two Deputies besides, elected by each _Real_.

The _Real_ had to be a place containing a church, six mines, and four

reducing establishments, in actual operation. The qualifications for

holding office were, that one should have been engaged in practical

mining for ten years, that he should be an American, or European

Spaniard, free from all inferior blood, and that he should agree to

“defend the mystery of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady.”

It would seem that offices were not always in as active demand as in our

days, for heavy fines are enacted for non-acceptance on election, besides

being compelled to serve afterward. An honest and straightforward purpose

appears in the rules of procedure quite worthy of imitation elsewhere.

Let us cite some examples.

“As said classes of causes and suits,” says the King, “ought to be

determined between the parties briefly and summarily, according to

manifest truth and good faith, as in commercial transactions, without

allowing delays, declarations, or writings of lawyers, it is my will that

whenever any persons appear in said Royal Tribunals ... to institute any

action, they (the tribunals) shall not admit any complaint or petition

in writing until after they have cited the parties before them, if it be

possible, so that, hearing orally their complaints and answers, they may

settle with the greatest despatch the suits or dispute between them; and

not being able to succeed in this, and the matter in question exceeding

the value of two hundred dollars, petitions in writing will be admitted,

provided they be not drawn up, arranged, or signed by lawyers.... In

the judgments which may be pronounced no consideration shall be paid

to any default in observing the minute formalities of the law, or to

inaccuracies or other defects; but, in whatever stage of the proceedings

the truth may be ascertained, the causes shall be decided and adjudged.”

The legal fraternity had secured a repute for sometimes misleading

justice, it is seen, even so far back as this. There appears to have been

a _Consulado_, or Tribunal of Commerce, upon pretty much the same plan.

This ancient system has been swept away by various stages. Since the day

of the republic the power once vested in the old tribunal has been lodged

with the ordinary civil courts and political authorities.

It is doubtful whether mining has ever been pursued to better advantage,

made more productive and regular, and more effectively freed from

the element of wild-cat speculation, than in New Spain of the period

considered.

There were decrees to prevent miners, especially those of affluence, from

wasting their substance. Negligence in tunnelling, imperfect ventilation,

and the like, by which life and health are endangered, were severely

punished.

Criminals and vagabonds were made to labor in the mines, but the main

bulk of laborers in early times consisted of the Indians, apportioned to

proprietors as _repartamientos_, and held in a kind of slavery.

V.

The gorgeous Count of Regla was a great mine-owner here in his day. It

was hence that he would have taken the ingots for the King of Spain to

ride upon from the coast to the capital, should they have been called for

by an actual acceptance of his splendid invitation before mentioned.

His ancient beneficiating hacienda of Regla, say eighteen miles from

Pachuca, is of great interest. A most excellent wagon-road, constructed

by the Real del Monte Company, at large expense, leads to it. As many as

eighty heavily loaded ore-wagons, each drawn by from eight to a dozen

mules, traverse it in a single day.

Señor Llandero y Cos kindly provided us, for this and the remaining part

of our expedition, with horses and a mozo, to be kept at our convenience.

White posts of substantial masonry dotted the abrupt slopes, by way of

locating the various claims. Some lonesome-looking wooden structures, not

unlike Swiss chalets, generally marked the shafts of the smaller mines as

we went onward, while a small _arrastra_ or two was turned by mule-power

in the neighborhood. One, called the Fortune, if what was said were true,

should rather have been the Misfortune or the Ill-fortune, for it had

never produced a tlaco of profit.

Convolvuli and fragrant _flor de San Juan_ touched with a trace of beauty

the sterile hills. Real del Monte, embowered in rich woods, presented a

scene like a fine landscape in Pennsylvania. We stopped first at the old

_Presidio_, above the Tereros Mine, where the convicts drafted for mining

labor were formerly kept; then dismounted and went down a ravine, to see

the mouth of a tunnel, seven thousand yards in length, built to drain the

works of the original Real del Monte Company.

Hamlets were set near together along the road, and the country continued

bold and generously wooded. At the abandoned Moran Mine, one of the

Count of Regla’s principal treasure-stores in its time, we found

picturesque remains of walls and columns, with a round tower, which had

once contained a hoisting drum. It was obliged to be abandoned, like the

Sanchez, in the vicinity, for lack of water. Near the Sanchez is the

mouth of the general drainage tunnel constructed by the Count. Esteemed

very important in its day, it has been wholly eclipsed by works on a

larger scale prevailing in the mean time. Velasco, where “rebellious”

ores are treated, is presided over by an English superintendent. He

had in use a crushing-machine of still a different pattern from those

described. Heavy iron rockers, driven by steam-power, were worked back

and forth upon the ore in a bath of water. It was claimed that one-fourth

more work could be done with this at an equal expenditure of power than

by the Chilean mill. Attached to the establishment in the usual way were

a charming villa and gardens. The superintendent at Pachuca sometimes

came there to pass a fortnight’s vacation.

The immediate approach to Regla is along the side of a deep tropical

barranca. Bananas grow generously within it, and a palm-thatched Indian

village crowns its opposite verge. The hacienda itself is set down in a

most impressive natural formation. It is encompassed by grand columniated

cliffs of basalt, like those of the Giant’s Causeway. The columns are

hexagonal in shape, with an average diameter approaching three feet. At

places whole areas of them have been distorted and twisted hither and

thither in the cooling, with a most wild and singular effect.

A cascade like a little Niagara tumbles roaring down among them, and

furnishes the strong water-power for the works. The hacienda belongs

to the Real del Monte Company, and it is chiefly ores of that company

which are brought to this strangely attractive scene to be treated.

Troops of horses were going round in the usual way in a great walled

patio, making the tortas. Connected with this were smelting-furnaces and

kindred buildings of many sorts. Madame Calderon de la Barca, who also

visited Regla, found it such a place as might have been conjured up by

magic, by some giant enchanter, for his own purposes. Mediæval-looking

towers, gateways, terraces, a chapel, and prison garnish it. Opposite the

chapel is a pretty residence, Moorish in aspect, surrounded by vines and

flowers. The whole is said to have cost some two millions of dollars.

We spent a night here with the superintendent, Don Ramon Torres, a

youngish man, who had learned his avocation in the mines at Guanajuato.

He seemed but too delighted, in his comparative isolation, to entertain

company and honor the introduction of his chief, Señor Llandero. He

dwelt in his talk upon the lack of ambition among the Indian laborers.

He said, among other things, that in the Tierra Caliente the women were

better workers than the men.

[Illustration: SUPERINTENDENT’S HOUSE AT REGLA.]

Our next stage from here was to be the hacienda of Tepenacasco, near

Tulancingo, where Mr. Brocklehurst and myself had been invited to visit,

in order to witness the manner of life on one of the great country

estates. Regla is rather famous for thunder-storms, and on the day of

our departure we had one of the traditional sort. Within a few minutes

after its commencement the cascade was blood-red with soil torn out by

the swollen stream. The storm abated at first, but we encountered it in

renewed fury on wide green uplands like an Illinois prairie, known as

the Plains of Mata. As we galloped in the midst of it, the rain pouring

in torrents from our rubber blankets, the lightnings (_rayos_) darted

into the ground, now on this side, now on that, in a way which I can

only compare—perhaps too trivially—to spearing for olives in a jar with

a fork. The _rayos_ are dangerous in this region, as naturally on open

plains everywhere, and crosses mark places where herdsmen have been

stricken down among their flocks. One of these victims had been found

recently, with his animals gathered around in a circle at close quarters

staring at him curiously, while he lay stark on his face.

The rain had its lulls and relapses, and twice in succession we took

shelter under the sheds of isolated _ranchitos_ which we fell in with.

We were joined here by an occasional ploughman, wearing the long cloak

of coarse woven grass, which diverts the water from the wearer. We were

joined, too, by all the domestic animals of the neighborhood. The wait at

the last retreat seemed as if it would never end. At last a pig ventured

forth, and we said, idly, that if he should return we would accept it as

an augury that the deluge was over and the waters had ceased upon the

face of the earth. Sure enough, he came back presently, munching a green

carrot-top; and, receiving this like the olive-branch brought to Noah, we

sallied forth. Our confidence proved well justified. A lovely prismatic

bow of promise was presently set in the sky, the clouds rolled away,

scattering their last lingering drops, the rills babbled merrily, and

the face of the country sparkled with an enchanting freshness. We paused

again briefly at a hacienda which belonged to the Governor of the state.

The main building was large, plain, and yellow-washed, and had before it

an enclosed threshing-floor, on which grain is tramped out by the feet of

horses. A young American girl had been employed as governess here up to a

recent date.

[Illustration: PLOUGHMAN IN GRASS CLOAK.]

It was now toward evening. The sunset glowed warm upon the little hamlet

of Acatlan, through which our road was seen winding below. In its midst

lay a dismantled convent, with belfries still standing, which from

a distance resembled an English ruined abbey. It was found on being

reached, however, unlike the latter, to be built of bricks and adobe. I

had at first taken this for our hacienda itself, but the hacienda proved

equally attractive in a different way. After a couple of miles farther on

we sent back our horses and guide with a warm missive of thanks to their

owner, and were hospitably installed at Tepenacasco.

XIX.

_A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE._

I.

With a taste for country life, so novel a domain to explore, and

constantly agreeable weather, I found a week’s stay at the hacienda one

of the most agreeable of experiences. From a distance the extensive

habitation has a stately air, like some ducal residence. In approaching

it you pass first through fields of maguey and blossoming alfalfa,

then by a long stone corral for cattle, extensive barracks and huts

of laborers, and a pond bordered with weeping willows. It is built of

rubble-masonry and plaster, whitewashed, and consists of a single liberal

story. The dwelling, with numerous connected buildings, makes in all a

façade of about six hundred feet. A belfry, with two tiers of bronze

bells hung in arches, sets off the centre. The large windows are defended

by cage-like iron gratings. A door, flanked by holy-water fonts, at the

left of that forming the main entrance, opens into a family chapel. In

a gable above the main entrance is inscribed this motto—which has not,

however, prevented the hacienda from being the scene of more than one

sack by revolutionary forces:

“_En aqueste destierro y soledad disfruto del tesoro de la paz_”—“In this

retirement and solitude I enjoy the treasure of peace.”

[Illustration: THE HACIENDA OF TEPENACASCO.]

Immediately in front of the buildings is laid out, after a usual custom,

a substantially paved and enclosed area, semi-circular at one end,

used as a threshing-floor. Troops of running horses are driven around

here upon the grain, like those in the _patio_ process, only in a very

much livelier fashion. The long façade was made up in part of massive

_trojes_, or granaries, comprised under the same roof as the house.

Each _troje_ has a special name of its own inscribed upon it. There

were, for instance, the “_Troje de la Espigero_” (“Corn in the Ear”),

the “_Troje de la Teja_” (“Tiled Roof”); and the “_Troje de Limbo_”

and “_Troje de Nuestro Señor del Pilar_.” The walls of these granaries

were of great thickness, in order to preserve the contents cool and

at an even temperature. Heavily buttressed, and with their long lines

of piers, a yard square, extending down the dim interiors, they are

more like basilicas of the early Christian era than simple barns. The

central cluster of buildings alone, not counting those detached, covers

perhaps from four to five acres. Mounting to the roof and looking over

its expanse, broken by the openings of numerous courts, you seem to be

contemplating, as it were, some agricultural Louvre or Escorial. Its

rear wall is washed by a _presa_, or artificial pond for irrigation,

which stretches away like a lake. Beyond this rises a charming grassy

hill, called the Cerro. We climbed the Cerro, and lounged away more than

one afternoon there in sketching, and contemplating the beautiful level

valley of Tulancingo, spread out below.

The white hacienda with red roofs lay in front, reflected clearly in

its pond. Tulancingo was a white patch at a distance, and other white

patches nearer by were the hamlets of Jaltepec, Amatlan, and Zupitlan—the

latter in ruins. Straight, lane-like roads led from one to another.

The mountains on the horizon afforded glimpses of basaltic cliffs

of the same formation as those at Regla, and of the white smoke of

charcoal-burners rising from their forests. Cattle wandered in fine herds

in the grassy pasture, each tended by its herdsman and dog. We saw a

troop of them at twilight come to drink at the pond, and the complication

of all their moving forms was curiously picked out in silhouette against

the gleaming brightness of the water.

At evening there returned to the court-yard of the hacienda, to disband

after their day’s labor, sometimes as many as forty ploughmen. If it had

rained they wore their barbaric-looking grass cloaks. They drove yokes of

oxen and bulls harnessed to the primitive Egyptian plough, and carried

long goads to prod their animals. After them rode in now and then an

armed horseman, wrapped in his serape, who overlooked and guarded them

at work. At the same time came troops and droves of the other animals

needing to be housed: black swine from the grassy slopes of the Cerro;

mules released from harness; young horses and mules not yet put to work;

milch-cows, and young steers and heifers, each wending its way sedately

to its own department.

Most of the cattle, I observed, were hornless. This is brought about

by a practice of paring the young horns when first sprouting. It would

seem that this might be desirable among ourselves, both on the farm

and especially in transporting cattle in the cars ordinarily in use.

Milking-time came only once a day—in the morning—and not, as with us,

twice. The hind-legs of the cows are lassoed together when being milked.

The calves of tender age are also lassoed to the side of the mother, and

it is a quaint and amusing sight to see their impatient demonstrations

while awaiting the conclusion of the process.

[Illustration: THE THRESHING-FLOOR.]

I sat down one day with “Don Rafael,” the administrador, or salaried

manager, of the estate, to make a rough map of its general distribution

and extent. The property proved to be some eighteen miles in length by

twelve in its greatest width, and of very irregular pattern. It had no

less than eleven large _presas_, formed by dams at convenient points for

irrigation. The principal dam was a mile in length, and by means of it

had been formed a lake of two miles in its principal dimension. On the

borders of this stands the feudal-looking ruined hamlet, with church and

hacienda, of Zupitlan, before mentioned. The bulk of the estate was in

grass, but irregular patches of ground had been taken out here and there

for various crops, and to each was given its special name. Thus the field

of San Pablo was devoted to maize and alfalfa; Las Animas, San Antonio

the Greater, and San Antonio the Less were given up to maize; Del Monte

and San Ignacio el Grande to barley.

The _magueyales_, or maguey fields, were of considerable extent. The

making of the _pulque_ from their product was confided to a special

functionary called the tlachiquero. The heart of the maguey is cut out

at a certain stage of its growth and a bowl thus formed, into which a

quantity of sweet sap continues to run regularly for several months. By

the end of that time the plant is dead, and is uprooted and replaced by

another. The sap is at first called _agua miel_, or honey-water, which

it resembles. The tlachiquero makes a daily pilgrimage to the fields,

and draws off the _agua miel_ by means of a bulky siphon formed of a

gourd. Sometimes he bears simply a bag, made of undressed sheepskin,

like the wine-skins of Old Spain, on his back; again, he is accompanied

by a donkey loaded with a number of these skins. He transfers the sap to

these bags, and returns with it to a department of his own, called the

Tinecal. There he pours it into shallow vats of undressed skin, where it

is allowed to ferment. Without describing the process farther in detail,

in a fortnight it is ready for sale or for home consumption.

[Illustration: THE TLACHIQUERO.]

The pasture fields have their distinctive titles also. There were, for

instance, San Gaetano, San Ysidro, and San Dionysio; and, again, the

corrals of San Ricardo, San Gaetano, and Las Palmas, where cattle were

enclosed at various times. Dairy-farming was the principal industry of

the estate. Its neat cattle numbered seventeen hundred head. The pay-roll

showed a total for the week of eight hundred and fifty men and boys.

The living apartments of the dwelling were set along two sides of an

arcaded court-yard, which had a dismantled fountain in the centre.

Offices and store-rooms occupied the other two sides. A department

for the butter and cheese making had a special court to itself in the

rear. One of the store-rooms contained an ample supply of agricultural

implements. Those of the slighter sort, I learned, such as ploughs,

spades, picks, hammers, and the _coa_, a peculiar cutting-hoe, are made

in the country, at Apulco, not far distant, where are also iron-works.

An iron plough made at Apulco costs $7, while the imported American

plough costs $10. There are wooden pitch-forks and spades among the

implements. The wooden, or Egyptian, plough is much more in use than that

of iron. It consists simply of a wooden beam shod with an iron point,

and has an adjustable cross-piece for service in case the furrow needs

to be made wider. The purpose to which it is most applied is that of

turning shallow furrows between rows of corn, and for this it appears

well enough adapted. At Pensacola, in the state of Puebla, such larger

pieces of agricultural machinery as reapers, mowers, and separators are

manufactured.

II.

We happened, among other accommodations, in our exploration of the

corridors, upon a prison, described as for use in locking up the

refractory peons when they will not work.

“Can you do that? Have you, then, such an absolute power over them?” I

asked our host, in some surprise.

“Why, no,” he replied, in effect, deprecatingly, “I suppose not; but, you

see, now and then it is the only way to manage them, and we have to. It

is not civilizated, that people,” he continued, in an English which left

something to be desired, “and we do the best what we can.”

This seems something very like a feudal control on the part of the

hacendado, but his numerous dependents do not seem to complain of it.

Cases of protest before the magistrates are rarely known, and should they

be made it is not likely, since the magistrates are friends of their

masters, and of the same social station, that they would meet with any

great attention.

We found this laboring population living in squalid stone huts, often

six and eight persons in a room. The floors were simply the dirt of the

ground, and there was sometimes not even so much as the usual straw

mat to sleep or sit upon. We were told here again that the peons are

avaricious. They are believers in a general way, but not greatly given

to religion. Few attend the services at the chapel, even on Sunday.

They summon the priest when about to die, but not otherwise. But few of

the children go to school. As a whole, they seemed about as wretched as

the poor Irish, except for the advantage over the latter in climate. In

every interior is seen a woman on her knees, rolling or spatting the

interminable tortillas.

The laborers on the pay-roll were of two classes: those employed by the

week, and those employed by the year. The former “found themselves;” the

latter were “found” by the estate, and paid a certain sum at the end of

the year. Wages ran from six cents a day for the boys to thirty-seven for

the best class of adults.

III.

The administrador was assisted, in the management of the hacienda, by

the _mayor-domo_ and the _sobre-saliente_, who acted as his first and

second lieutenants; a _caporal_, who had general charge of the stock;

and a _pastero_, who had charge of the pastures. The _pastero_ it was

who indicated the condition of the various areas of pasturage, that the

animals might be moved to one after another of them in turn. These minor

officers were of the native Indian race. They were dark, swarthy men,

very bandit-looking when armed and mounted on horseback, but in reality,

when you came to know them, as mild and amiable persons as need be wished

for.

One, “Don Daniel,” supervised the butter and cheese making interest. A

book-keeper, “Don Angel,” kept an account of all the property of the

estate—receipts, and disbursements, and an inventory of stock—upon a

system which seemed a model of commercial accuracy. Every week a report

was forwarded to the owners, at Mexico, upon a printed blank filled out

in the most exhaustive detail, so that they could see at a glance how

they stood.

The administrador, Don Rafael, was a steady-going man of middle age, a

native of San Luis Potosi. He had land and _casitas_, little houses, of

his own, which he rented. He had also a house in the city of Tulancingo,

near by, occupied by his family, whom he visited once a week. His salary

reached about $1000 a year, and he could be called a person of substance.

A conspicuous scar on his forehead led it to be supposed that he might

have seen service in the field; but he spoke with contempt of the wars of

his country when questioned about it, and said that he had got his scar

in breaking a horse.

“A sensible man can always find better occupation than fighting,” he

said. “I have busied myself with regular industry. The North Americans,

now, understand that. They have good ideas. There everybody works and

gets a little ahead in the world. Without money in his pocket what is a

man good for? He might as well take himself over to the cemetery yonder

at once and have done with it.”

Don Angel was young, mild, taciturn, painstaking, and a native of Old

Spain. His handwriting was small and neat, and he had a great head for

details. His salary was the sum of $400 a year. The revenues of the

estate which it was his province to cast up amounted, I was told, to

$20,000 a year.

Don Daniel, the butter and cheese maker, was young also, but large,

handsome, rosy, and had excellent teeth, with coal-black hair and beard.

He was a model of robust health and lively spirits. He too had a wife at

Tulancingo, whom he visited every Sunday, returning before daylight on

Monday morning, to be in time for the milking. He was given to strumming

on a guitar in the evening, and assembled around him in his room such

convivial spirits as the hacienda afforded. Nonsensical refrains like

“Amarillo si, amarillo no,

Amarillo y verde, me ho pinto,”

were heard proceeding from there long after more staid and decorous

persons were in bed.

Another member of the household was, let us say, “Manuel,” a boy of

eighteen, looking younger, who had formerly been a cadet at the national

military school. He was here learning the business of a hacienda, or, as

some said, he was a young scapegrace whom it was designed to keep out of

mischief. At any rate, he was an aide-de-camp to Don Rafael, and took his

orders about on horseback. He dressed, like Don Rafael, in a substantial

suit of buff leather. He was a very garrulous and communicative person,

and, as our attendant and guide—in which capacity he offered himself,

I think, somewhat as an excuse for escaping more onerous labors—he

furnished us much useful information. His elders took a tone of raillery

with him, representing him as a very callow youth, whose views were of no

consequence, and who should be seen but not heard from. They ridiculed

his French, which he had learned at the military school, even affecting

not to believe that it was French at all. Our visit was the occasion for

a strenuous effort on his part to set himself right on this point.

“_N’ai-je pas bien dit?_” he cried to us, across the generous

dining-table where we sat together, stretching at the same time a bony,

school-boy arm for aid in putting the scoffers down.

One day we mounted to go to a beautiful clear spring of water, which was

admired even as early as by Humboldt in his travels. On others we visited

the adjacent hamlets, or Tulancingo, from which, later, we were to take

the diligence homeward. Again, we made our objective points the various

crops, a dam undergoing repairs, or the remoter pastures and corrals.

The herdsman and a boy-assistant at these corrals slept at night in

their blankets under a mere pile of stones. The upper irrigating dams

are discharged of their waters, when it is desired, by the primitive

device of lifting up one cross-beam after another from a narrow gate in

the centre. In some of the maize-fields are lookout boxes, aloft on high

poles, as a device against crows and other marauders. The general surface

over which we rode was the grassy plain, affording a delightful footing

for the horses. It was of a fresh, soft green, and enamelled besides with

flowers, like violets, the blue maravilla, and many varieties of a yellow

flower resembling the dandelion, but prettier.

IV.

The room first entered from the main corridor in the house itself was

devoted to the uses of a _despacho_, or office. Here was the department

of Don Angel, and the master himself sometimes took his place behind the

long, baize-covered table, strewn with matters of business detail, to

hold audience with the peons of the estate, who came, with wide-brimmed

hats humbly doffed, to make known various wants and complaints. In the

corners stood rifles, spades, and the long branding-iron, which is heated

in the month of August to brand the young cattle with the device of their

owner.

A fat dark peon enters, and proffers a request for an allowance to be

made him for a baptism in his family.

“A baptism?” says the master, briskly. “Well, now, come on! Speak up;

don’t stand mumbling there! Let us see what your ideas are.”

The man suggests, deferentially, to begin with, the sum of $3 for a

_guajolote_, or turkey, as a _pièce de résistance_ for his feast.

“You are always wanting a _guajolote_, you people. You don’t need

anything of the kind. However, let us say $1.50—twelve reals—for the

_guajolote_. What next?”

“The _pulque_—about forty _cuartillas_ of _pulque_.”

“Twenty _cuartillas_ of _pulque_,” says the master, ruthlessly cutting

down the estimate by half. “Well, what next? Speak up!”

The peasant, one of the laborers by the year, perseveres, in his humble,

soft voice, regularly making his estimate for each article twice the

real figure, and having it as regularly cut down. He caps the whole by

demanding four reals for a sombrero, well knowing—and knowing perfectly

well that his master knows also—that the kind of sombrero he would be

likely to want costs but one real.

We had proposed to witness the festivities of this christening, but

unfortunately delayed too long at table on the evening of its occurrence,

and lost it. But the sky was gloriously full of stars as we went out

among the huts and barracks. A woman came out of one of the tenements

and made a complaint of a neighbor with whom she had had a row, but got

no great sympathy, and hardly seemed to expect any. They are admirably

polite, these poor rustics—nobody can deny them that. As we sat by the

road one day at Amatlan, sketching, some of the women called to us as

they went by:

“_Buenas dias, señores! Como han pasado, ustedes, la noche? Adios,

señores!_”—“Good-day, sirs! How did you pass the night? Good-bye, sirs!”

We had not in any way first addressed them, and they did not stop, but

went swiftly onward, scarcely turning their heads to look. These and many

more of the sort are but their ordinary salutations.

The immediate family at the hacienda consisted of one of the several

heirs, “Don Eduardo,” his wife, mother, and two small children, and their

Indian nurses. They were in the habit of spending but a small portion

of the year here, and, when they came, lived in quite informal style.

Servants and employés, equally with her intimates, called the young

mistress “Cholita,” a diminutive of her name Soledad. There was little

or no receiving or paying of visits, owing to the great distances to be

traversed and the scarcity of neighbors.

V.

Social life in the country is hardly known. We had piano music and

singing in the evening in a stately, dimly-lighted _salon_ of the style

of the First Empire. One day a large farm vehicle, gayly decorated with

boughs, was brought around, all hands got into it, and we proceeded to

the lake at Zupitlan for a picnic. The provisions were carried on a

litter by a couple of men, and a guard on horseback, with his rifle,

rode along-side for our protection. Such a precaution was not absolutely

needed, perhaps, but there had been a time—before the Governor of Hidalgo

had taken his summary measures—when the brigands would have swooped down

from the adjacent hills and seized upon such a procession with little

ceremony. After dining _al fresco_ we amused ourselves with shooting some

of the ducks and cranes which abound on the lake.

We had chocolate and buns on rising in the morning, and two over-liberal

repasts, resembling each other in character, at noon and nine in the

evening. The dogs swarmed in and out over the house, which presented the

aspect of a generous farm rather than a villa.

[Illustration: NURSE AND CHILDREN AT THE HACIENDA.]

It was designed in its day for much greater state. The furniture, though

battered and ruined now, was of the charming artistic pattern of the

First Empire, and all the rooms were large and of fine proportions.

In one of the two principal bedrooms the bed is raised upon a daïs,

ascended by steps. In the other the corners are cut off by columns, so

as to give it an octagon shape. In three of these corners the beds are

regularly built in between the columns; the fourth is taken for a door.

It so happened that I had not read Madame de la Barca before leaving

home. Perhaps I had but a rather disparaging idea of a work descriptive

of Mexico coming down no later than 1839. On taking it up after my return

I had an opportunity to find how little the country had changed. She too

visited this hacienda of Tepenacasco. She noted, among other items, a

quaint wall-paper, of a Swiss pattern, on the octagon room. That very

paper is there to this day.

The proprietor was of quite a different sort in those times. He used

to give bull-fights in the court before his portal, which is now a

threshing-floor, and is said to have entertained half the population of

Tulancingo at his table. He finally ruined himself by his extravagance.

It is said, among other things, that if he took a sudden notion to go to

Mexico, a hundred and twenty miles away, he rode his horses so hard that

they sometimes dropped dead under him.

XX.

_ON HORSEBACK AND MULEBACK TO ACAPULCO._

I.

The time came at length—all too soon—for my final Mexican journey—to

the Pacific coast at Acapulco, where I was to take the steamer for San

Francisco.

I was advised not to go to Acapulco. There are always persons ready to

advise you not to do perfectly feasible things. It was now August, and

the rainy season had begun in town itself. It began one afternoon with

a rush. I had been reading at the National Library, and, coming out at

four o’clock, found the streets a couple of feet deep in water. The cabs,

now at a premium, and some few men on horseback, who could give a friend

a lift, served as impromptu gondolas upon these impromptu canals. There

were also _cargadores_, who, for a medio, carried you on their backs

from corner to corner. I was told that ladies in the balconies, watching

the animated sight, now and then slyly held up a real, in consideration

of which the _cargador_ dropped some gallant in the water, presenting a

ridiculous sight. Such inundations last several hours before the sluggish

sewers can carry off the surplus water, and they leave the ground-floor

habitations of the poor in but a cheerless condition, as may be imagined.

If this were to be added to the other embarrassments of life every

afternoon, it was not interesting to think of remaining longer at the

capital. And yet, with Macbeth, there seemed “nor flying hence, nor

tarrying here.” The journey to Acapulco was represented as very difficult

and dangerous. The route was a mere trail or foot-path, a _buen camino

de pajaros_—a good road for birds. No wheeled vehicle ever had passed

or ever could pass over it. All this was, indeed, the case. Three large

rivers were to be crossed, and these unbridged.

“Suppose,” said the advisers, putting the case in that bold and alarming

way in which advisers delight, “that these should be swollen by the

floods, as is naturally to be expected now in the rainy season. You would

then be delayed so long on their banks as to miss your steamer, which

touches at Acapulco only once a fortnight. Again, the road lies, for days

at a time, in ravines and the beds of streams; but when the waters occupy

their channels what room is there for travellers?”

If to this were added the natural reflections of the novice on the score

of danger to property and person in entering upon so wild a section, the

prospect was not at all a pleasing one. Nevertheless it would be almost

too much to expect that a person bound for California should come back to

the United States again in order to go there, and I had a firm conviction

that the Acapulco trip could be made.

II.

I had negotiated a little already with an _arriero_, or muleteer, named

Vincente Lopez, in a street called Parque del Conde. He would furnish a

horse to ride, and a mule to transport my baggage, each for $20—all other

expenses to be defrayed personally along the way—which makes the three

hundred miles come a good deal higher than so much railway travel. I had

thus dallied with the idea, and my decision was precipitated by the

sudden coming down of the rain. I hurried to Parque del Conde Street, and

closed with Vincente Lopez. I was glad to learn from him that he had also

another patron who was going, in the person of a colonel of the army.

The journey, under the most favorable auspices, consumes ten days on

horseback, besides the day occupied in going down by stage-coach to the

provincial city of Cuernavaca, where the bridle-path begins. Considering

all the circumstances as stated, there were many companions one would

much less prefer to have than so presumably bold and well-informed a

person as a Mexican regular officer.

He proved to be a veritable military man, a colonel who had seen twenty

years’ service in different wars of his country, and bore bullet-holes in

his body as the result of them. He had begun in the War of the Reform,

which overthrew the Church and aristocratic party; he had fought against

the French and Maximilian in the second War of Independence; and, lastly,

for the government of Lerdo against Porfirio Diaz. To the party of the

latter he was, however, now reconciled, and he was going to take a

command on the disturbed northern frontier. If more were needed, he had

lately fought a duel, as he told me, in which the weapons were sabres,

and had so slashed his opponent, a brother officer, that the latter was

laid up in a grievous state at the hospital. A vacant barracks had been

set apart, by the War Department, for this proceeding. Army duelling,

as on the Continent, is connived at. The case seems to be that, if you

fight, you are afterward reprimanded; but if you do not, you are likely

to be cashiered as pusillanimous.

Not that the colonel was in all respects the most agreeable of travelling

companions. He was much wrapped up in his own affairs at first, and

later displayed some traits of a certain childish selfishness.

Vincente Lopez collected our baggage at the appointed time. He was a

plausible person, and when he desired the full amount of his bill in

advance I had well-nigh yielded to him. I submitted, however, as more

equitable, that one-half should be paid down and the remainder on the

completion of the journey according to contract.

“That would be equitable, indeed, for ordinary _arrieros_,” said Vincente

Lopez, “but I am one of especial probity. It is my habit to watch over

the persons who confide themselves to my care with a tender solicitude,

and in the present instance I have intended to multiply even my usual

pains. I am one of those who have never known what it is to encounter on

the way the slightest delay or annoyance.”

He seemed wounded in his finest sensibilities by an appearance of

mistrust, which was to him hitherto unknown. There were considerations in

his favor. He said that the colonel, at another hotel, had paid the full

sum in advance, and this proved true. Whatever money was to be taken,

besides, must be in the heavy silver coinage of the country, $16 to the

pound, and to be rid of the weight and jingling of even a part of it was

desirable. Still, on the whole, the contract was drawn in my way, by the

advice of the dark secretary of the Iturbide Hotel. Though it seemed

almost cruel at the time to act in this formal manner with so good a man,

the precaution proved in the sequel to be very useful.

[Illustration: THE “DILIGENCIA.”]

III.

My colonel was accompanied down to Cuernavaca in the _diligencia_—in

which we were all extremely jolted, dusty, and uncomfortable together—by

two generals. They had apparently come to give him parting directions

about his mission. One of them was a thick-set, black-bearded man, with a

husky voice, and a conspicuous scar upon his face. I must not branch off

too much into side issues, but the history of the scar was that, while

commanding in Yucatan, he had ordered to be shot, on some of the ordinary

revolutionary pretexts, a member of the powerful family of Gutierrez

Estrada, a family with commercial houses in Paris, Mexico, and Merida,

and noted, among other things, for the beauty and intelligence of its

women. A brother of the victim came over from Paris as an avenger, sought

out the general in question, met him in a duel, and left this mark,

which, at the time of its infliction, brought the recipient to death’s

door.

The city of Mexico is some 7500 feet above the sea, and, having come

up, we now followed a great downward slope. It abounds in bold points

of view, from which the prospects spread vision-like at vast distances

below. Cuernavaca presents one of the most thrilling of these. What is

yonder singular detail in the valley? A hacienda set in the open side of

an extinct volcanic crater, of which the whole interior has been brought

under smiling cultivation. And yonder yellowish spot? The sugar-cane

fields of the Duke of Monteleone. He is an Italian nobleman of Naples,

who inherits, by right of descent, a part of the estates reserved here

for himself by Cortez. The Conqueror was made “Marquis of the Valley,”

with his port at Tehuantepec, and an estate comprising twenty large towns

and villages, and 23,000 vassals.

Nowhere is there a quainter group of old rococo churches than that in

this solid little city. They have flying buttresses, of two arches in

width, descending quite to the ground, domes, and other inlay in colored

porcelain tiles; and they are all clustered together, with tombs and a

battlemented wall about them. A student of architecture coming this way

with his sketch-book in his hand could find material here for a month. I

am not sure that the trip could not be made enjoyably, as it certainly

could economically, on foot, with an attendant to carry a knapsack, as

we met some German naturalists and prospectors making it farther on.

Close by is a garden on a great scale—the Jardin Borda—to which one

obtains admittance for a fee. It has a stone fish-pond as large as a

lake, terraces, urns, and statues worthy of the most luxurious prince

in Europe. I was told that it could be bought for $5000. I asked the

custodian about the owner—what he had been remarkable for.

“He had _altos pesos_,” replied the man, which is Spanish for “a pile

of money.” Bushels of delicious mangoes were rotting untouched along

the walks. From the outer terrace you look down into the barranca

which Alvarado crossed by a fallen tree when sent by his indefatigable

general against the disaffected Gonzalo Pizarro. Here are guava,

mango, pine-apple, banana, and plenty of other fruits, but not yet the

cocoa-nut, which only flourishes lower down.

Behold us ready to set forth on the trail! Vincente Lopez is not present,

strange to say, to cast about us the fostering care he has promised. On

the contrary, he has quietly sold out his contract and gone back to the

Parque del Conde with his profits. We are in the hands of a new muleteer,

“Don Marcos,” who has never made the journey to Acapulco before, and a

fourteen-year-old boy, “Vincente,” who is depended upon to find the way.

Every cavalcade in Mexico is bizarre, and ours, ordinary enough there,

would attract attention elsewhere. First, upon the mule “Venado” rides

the colonel, a tall, spare man, in military boots, wide hat with silver

braid, and a linen blouse, through which project the handles of huge

revolvers. He is aiming, not at display, but comfort. Of myself I shall

say nothing. It is a privilege of the narrator to let it be supposed that

he is always gallant and imposing in appearance, and exactly adapted

to the circumstances of the case. I rode the rather large bay horse

“Pajaro.” Don Marcos, a deprecating, tricky person, with a purpose, soon

evident, of making up from us his bad bargain, wore a crimson poncho and

cotton drawers, and bestrode the small white horse “Palomito” (“Little

Dove”). Thus appreciatively had he thought fit to name all the animals,

though he had but on the instant come into possession of them. The

trunks, first securely sewn up in cocoa-mats, were tied, the colonel’s

upon the back of the mule “Niña,” and mine upon “Aceituna.” Vincente, the

boy, ran barefoot most of the way to Acapulco behind the mules, crying,

“_Eh! machos!_” and cracking at them with a combination whip and blinder.

With this same blinder their eyes were covered while their loads were

being put on and taken off, at morning, noon, and night.

There was a bit of wagon-road at first, as there is outside of each of

the more important places along the way. This soon merged in the trail,

which was of increasing wildness. The huts and hamlets we fell in with

were of cane, well thatched. There were fields of cane, trains of mules

laden with sugar-loaves, and an occasional stately sugar hacienda. Now

and then there were the remains of one ruined in the wars. At noon

the mules were unpacked at some favorable point, and the expedition

rested for several hours. It was the custom to take a siesta during the

extreme heat of the day. At night there were occasional _mesons_, or

rude inns, but generally our stopping-place was such accommodation as

could be offered by the inhabitants of the villages. The baggage was

piled up under a thatched pavilion. Beds, consisting of mats of stiff

canes resting upon trestles, were arranged for us along-side, or in open

piazzas. These, in the warm nights, were more agreeable than might be

supposed. _À la guerre comme à la guerre!_ Sleeping almost under the

_belle étoile_, you could study the constellations, the outlines of

strange, dark hills, your own thoughts, and hear the dogs bark, down at

remote Sacocoyuca, Rincon, and Dos Arroyos, and there was not a little

pleasant novelty in the situation. At the gray of dawn we were off.

The people, all of Aztec blood, were gentle with us, honest, and not much

less comfortable in their circumstances than farmers newly established at

the West. The predicted difficulties of the undertaking largely melted

away. It rained chiefly at night; there were but one or two showers in

the daytime, though of these one was very hard. The food obtained along

the way was of rustic quality, and occasionally scanty, but, on the other

hand, it was often excellent. Chickens were generally to be had, with

fried bananas as the most frequent vegetable accompaniment. The national

dish of _frijoles_ (black beans) was always palatable. There was milk in

the morning, but not at night, the cows being milked but once a day. We

foraged more or less for ourselves. The colonel would demand a couple of

eggs under the off-hand formula of _un par de blanquillos_, which can

hardly be translated, but is as much as to say, “A pair of little white

’uns.” He declared it “a miserable population” where they were not to be

had.

On the very first day out Don Marcos came to say that he had no money

with which to buy feed for the animals. It was with the reserve I had

retained, doled out little by little, that this necessary purpose was

thereafter accomplished, and the _arriero_ perhaps kept from leaving us

in the lurch.

It was _à propos_ of this incident that my first glimpse into the

peculiar nature and inclinations of the colonel was obtained. It was

now evident that it would have been better not to have paid the man in

advance. But the colonel refused either to regret that he had done so or

to regard it as a lesson for the future.

“I am a philosopher,” he said. “The philosopher makes no account of such

things.”

These views he professed also on other occasions, and seemed, with a

bravado of stoicism, almost to go in search of inconveniences.

“But is it not rather philosophy,” I argued, “to avoid such

inconveniences as one can by a little exercise of forethought, and then

endure the inevitable with equanimity?”

“No; that is the civilian’s, not the soldier’s, point of view,” he

persisted, with obstinacy.

IV.

This route, probably no better, and certainly no worse, was travelled, as

now, nearly a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

It was the sole highway between Acapulco, the only really excellent port

on the Pacific Coast, and the capital. It has seen the transit of convoys

of treasure, slaves, silks, and spices from the Indies, bound in part

for Old Spain. A regular galleon used to sail from Acapulco for supplies

of Oriental goods. It has seen the march of royalist troops, under the

sixty-four viceroys, and of many a wild insurgent troop. Morelos operated

here, with his bandit handkerchief round his head, and kept the district

clear of Spaniards down to the sea at Acapulco. By one of the rivers

still lies the massive stone-work for a bridge, the construction of which

was abandoned in the War of Independence, seventy years ago.

Most momentous of all the processions it has seen, however, must be

counted that of Iturbide, who returned along it, with his new tri-colored

flag of the three guarantees—Religion, Union, and Independence—to the

capital, to make himself, for a brief season, Emperor. This brilliant

figure, of such an ignominious end, is still greatly honored in Mexico,

and there is something rather typical of Mexico, or of Spanish America

generally, in his history. Taking the position which would have been

that of a Tory here, he fought against the earlier insurrection of his

country, from its outbreak, in 1808, till 1820. Sent in command of an

army against the rebel chief Guerrero in the latter year, he united with

instead of attacking him, seized a convoy of treasure to serve as sinews

of war, and drew up at Iguala—a charming little city on the route—a plan

of independence of his own. The Viceroy, in despair, tried to buy him

back with promises of pardon, money, and higher command, but without

success. He made a triumphal entry into the capital in September, 1821.

In May of the following year a sedition, which he had without doubt

artfully set on foot, roused him at his hotel at night, with a clamor

that he should become Emperor. He appeared upon his balcony and affected

to reluctantly consent to the popular will.

He modelled himself after Napoleon, nearly his contemporary. There is a

portrait of him at the National Palace, in the same gorgeous coronation

robes affected by the latter, though in his own whiskered countenance he

is more like the English Prince Regent of the same date. In August he

imprisoned some Deputies, and in October, still following his illustrious

prototype, put his troublesome Congress out-of-doors. But in October also

the country rose against him, and he was obliged to leave it and take

refuge in England. He returned again in July of the next year—another

Napoleon from Elba; but, instead of sweeping the country with enthusiasm,

he was seized upon landing, and ordered to prepare for death within two

hours. Four days of grace were finally given him, and then he was shot.

Iturbide was a person of a highly politic turn, as has been seen. A

thorough devotee of expediency, he maintained (and there was not a little

truth in this) that a people made up so largely of Indian serfs suddenly

released from tyranny was not ready for self-government. He said that

he had meant the Empire to be only temporary. He had shown no personal

valor in the service of his country, as there had been no occasion for

it; all his actual fighting had been against it. Yet he is commemorated

in the national anthem,[3] and a certain hold, in the Napoleonic way,

which he had upon the popular imagination, was relied upon by the French

when they endeavored to establish Maximilian in Mexico. A grandson of

Iturbide still lives who was adopted by Maximilian, in order to give his

dynasty a more indigenous effect, and made heir to the succession. The

boy’s mother, who at first acquiesced in the usurping order of things,

later repented, and endeavored to get him away. This was finally effected

through the mediations of Secretary Seward and Mr. John Bigelow, then

Minister to France.

XXI.

_CONVERSATIONS BY THE WAY WITH A COLONEL._

I.

Iturbide was the subject of confab between the colonel and myself as

we jogged along the way; and this led naturally up to Maximilian. My

companion had served under Escobedo in the campaign in which Maximilian

was overthrown, and had witnessed his execution at the tragic Cerro de

las Campañas.

“He died like a true soldier,” said the colonel. “He was not afraid;

though he deserved his fate, and I would not have had it otherwise.”

It seems to be the general verdict that this ill-starred ruler was not

without the physical fortitude which is esteemed a part of the heritage

of princes. But he was better fitted for many other things than the task

of fastening a monarchy upon belligerent Mexico. I drew the conversation,

when an opening appeared, to the present novel relations of Mexico with

our own country.

“Had I the authority,” said the colonel, frankly, “I would never have

granted the railroad charters which are making this great bustle. I fear

the aggressions of the Americans. The conservative Mexican policy is

to grant you such privileges only when they are balanced by others to

Europeans. This was the consistent policy of Juarez and Lerdo. It was

Porfirio Diaz, during his presidency, who first broke it down and brought

this invasion upon us.”

“We, on the contrary, incline to make it one of his merits,” I said—“a

proof of his superior enlightenment. He stepped over the boundaries of

narrow prejudice and jealousy, and allowed a beginning to be made of

developing the country by those who were ready to do it, without waiting

farther for those who would not.”

“His enemies say he was bought,” rejoined the colonel, who had evidently

no great love for Porfirio. “He has not been wholly above corruption in

his time. He made fabulous sums out of the liquidation of the military

arrears, for instance. He paid a million dollars for his magnificent

hacienda in the state of Oaxaca. Where did that come from? That is a

great weakness among us for official corruption. There are too many

examples of it. A defaulting person in a high place is rarely punished.

When I see a case of that kind treated with severity I shall begin to

conceive new hopes.”

“But,” I argued, “the Americans certainly have no other designs than that

of commercial profit. They do not want your country. What Americans have

anything to gain by taking it? Who would put his hand in his pocket to

pay the expenses of a war of annexation? We look out for ourselves as

individuals, and we fail to see where the profit comes in. We are large

enough now to gratify our own vanity on that score. Love of glory and

territorial aggrandizement is not one of our national traits. Spoliation

might rather be feared at the hands of some ambitious prince, if you had

any such for a neighbor, who could turn it to personal account.”

“You will not annex us with bayonets,” he returned; “you will annex us

with dollars. I feel it; I know it. Your great commercial enterprises

will insensibly get hold of the vitals of our country, and the rest will

follow. Perhaps there may be disturbances, and your government called in

to protect the property of investors. There will naturally be sympathy

for them at home, and they will move heaven and earth rather than lose. A

thousand times better that our country were not developed at all than at

such a price.”

As I still insisted upon the unreasonableness of this notion, the colonel

continued: “Even granting that you are sincere in what you say of the

wishes of your people, I feel that it is the manifest destiny of Mexico

to be taken by the United States. In former times the Latin races ruled

the world, but in this and the coming ages the Saxon race will do it.

You are a strong, commercial people, and commerce is the breath of the

nostrils of modern civilization. Look at what you have done in California

since it ceased to be a Spanish province. I have been at San Francisco—a

great, splendid city; I looked upon it with amazement. ‘This was once

Mexican,’ I said to myself. ‘Ah, what a different genius from that of

Mexico!’ Yes, you will get us. It will be the amelioration of many

abuses, and our greater prosperity, without doubt; but I hope I shall

never live to see the day. As a patriot, as a soldier, I would give my

life fifty times over rather than consent to it.”

“But, since you concede such benefits as probable,” I ventured to say,

“what is this patriotism upon which you so strongly insist? We do not

want you, and have no designs upon you, but—purely for the sake of

argument, and talking as enlightened persons—is it not rather fantastic?

Is a boundary-line such an object in itself? May not a good deal that

has stood for patriotism in the past be a mere provincial narrowness?

Supposing that Mexico, or Canada, without force, but in its own judgment

of what was for the good of its people, should desire to become a part

of the Union, maintaining its organization in states and its local

self-government as now, and merely sending delegates to Washington to

represent it in national affairs, would you, as a Mexican citizen, feel

bound to resist, as if it were the consummation of something scandalous

and recreant? Is not the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness to the greatest advantage, the object of a rational being? Is

there any virtue in an essential Mexicanism, Americanism, or Anglicism,

that it should be preserved at all hazards?”

And, having asked many such-like questions, I endeavored, farther, to

explain a view that we may be all approaching a great cosmopolitan

period, when we shall be members of a republic of nations, and

foreigners, as such, shall nowhere any longer be either dreaded or

despised.

“That is all very well,” said the colonel, stubbornly, “since the

advantage is to fall on your side; but I tell you I would give my heart’s

blood rather than see it.”

As to the value of his prognostication I have no opinion; but this

seriousness of conviction about the plans of the Americans from such

a source was full of interest. It is held by the bulk of the Mexican

people, and it means trouble ahead for the enterprises, since it must

increase with their very success.

“Has any party ever been heard of, with you, in favor of annexation?” I

went on to ask.

“There is no such party,” he replied. “There are none who could favor

it—unless, singularly enough, it might be the Church party. Protestant

country though you are, with you they could enjoy a greater freedom than

here. Since their suppression under the War of the Reform there can be

no convents, religious orders, nor monastic schools; but in the United

States, I understand, they could have as many as they wished.”

The colonel was rather fond, as stated, of dwelling upon the soldier’s

point of view. One day, when he had been writing, as he said, to his

mother, he declared, in a gloomy mood, not without its pathos: “That is

the only tie that binds me to life. At forty-four, as you see me, I have

passed through many disappointments and chagrins. I have little pleasure

in the present and no great hopes for the future. Well, that is a proper

state of mind for the soldier.

“The soldier,” he went on to say, “should be one who either sets little

value upon life, and looks to death as a release, or one having a supreme

sense of honor, of pride in his profession, and duty to his government.

He makes a contract, as it were, with authority. He is well paid and

highly considered; in return, he must be ready to spill his blood

whenever his employer demands it.”

II.

The display of childish selfishness on my companion’s part to which I

have adverted consisted in getting up one morning and riding off on my

horse, without saying so much as “By your leave.” He had cast eyes on it

as we went along, judged it to be on the whole preferable to his mule,

and in this direct way took possession. The matter was adjusted, but not

till it had assumed at one time an almost international aspect. It was in

the coolness resulting from this incident that I rode on alone and first

saw Iguala.

The expedition had stopped, after its usual day’s march, before sunset,

at the tropical hamlet of Platanillo. I was anxious, however, to pass

the night instead in the notable city named. The twilight shuts down

very rapidly here, and from the estimates of casual informants I had

miscalculated the distance. “_Adelantito, señor_,” they said, after

the inaccurate way of such informants—“Just a little way ahead;” “_Aca

bajito, no mas_”—“Right down there; a mere trifle, that is all.” I had

a distant glimpse or two of it from the pass, while the sun glowed like

a beacon-fire on the crests of vast mountains encompassing its little

valley. A small lake sparkled in its vicinity, and plantations of cane

near it showed a brighter green. Of the town itself, which might have

been a mammoth hacienda, only a dome and a few white spots appeared out

of the midst of a quadrangle of foliage marked off on all sides to an

even line. Then night came on, a dark and cloudy one, though without

rain. My horse slipped with me on the steep over rolling stones. It was

no longer safe to ride after that, and I led him most of the way, picking

out the path in the dark. The view had been very deceptive, and we had

many miles to go.

Lonely gulches, brooks, and bits of wood were passed. Cows had gone to

sleep in upland pastures, and one occasionally loomed up, a mysterious

shape, in the path and took herself out of the way. The rays of a clouded

moon gleamed now and then on a white patch of the lake, but the city

seemed to have vanished out of existence. At last, however, a dim light

in a dome, then a barking of dogs, and audible human voices. All this

time there had been neither house nor hut. It was after nine o’clock. I

came close up to one of the formal lines of trees, opened a gate in it,

and was in the midst of Iguala.

[Illustration: OUR CAVALCADE AT IGUALA.]

I do not know whether the place has quite advantages enough to offset so

much discomfort. What there is to be seen could easily have been taken in

the next day on the march. There is no other vestige of Iturbide yielded

to inquiry than the house in which the Plan of Iguala is said to have

been signed—the oldest, as it is one of the shabbiest, in the place. It

is of one story, like most provincial Mexican houses, with the whitewash

badly rubbed off its adobes, and is now a poor _fonda_, or restaurant,

without so much as a sign.

But Iguala is charming. A row of clean, white colonnades, made up of

square pillars of masonry, supporting red-tiled roofs, extends around a

central plaza. The windows of the better residences are closed, not with

glass, but projecting wooden gratings of turned posts, painted green.

The market, a little paved plaza, opening from the other, consists of

a series of double colonnades, light, commodious, and very attractive.

The church, of a noble, massive form, made gay by an azure belfry and

clock, stands in a grassy enclosure surrounded by posts and chains.

Across the way is the zocalo, with brick benches, deep, grateful shade

of _tamarindos_, as large as elms, and arbors draped with sweet-peas

in blossom. Such a park, such a church, and such a market could be

conscientiously recommended as worthy of any populace in the world. The

heads of palm-trees star the heavier, Northern-looking foliage. Grass

sprouts plentifully between the cobble-stones, and gives a rural air. A

band played in the zocalo in the evening, though there was but a small

scattering of persons to hear it.

As I was making a sketch of the zocalo from a portal some very

well-dressed young men and a professor came out. It proved that this

house was a school, and a pleasant one it seemed.

“_Amigo_”—friend—they said, in a rather patronizing tone, “what is your

interest in this place? What is your picturing designed for?”

Three days farther on is Chilpancingo, to which also complimentary

terms—in a lesser measure than Iguala—may be applied. It is the capital

of this rugged Guerrero, a state named after the patriot general, who was

once, like our own Marcos and Vincente Lopez, a muleteer. It contains an

ornate Government-house, a zocalo with a music-stand; and we met here a

colonel of the detachment of cavalry guarding the country, gotten up in

such dapper civilian riding-dress as if for a promenade in Central Park.

Population—but populations are hard to get at in Mexico. I should say, at

random, for either place, about three thousand people.

At Chilpancingo you see the place in which the original Declaration of

Independence of Mexico was proclaimed, in 1813. It had to be fought for

many a long year till the day of Iturbide. This is merely a white house

with a tablet, and not of farther interest. It was a wild and problematic

cause, truly, when remote Chilpancingo was resorted to by the first

constituent Congress, assembled by Padre Morelos, to throw off the yoke

of Spain.

But how has all this been done? These little bits of ornate civilization

are like enchanted places which we happen upon in penetrating the

fastnesses of the mountains. Perhaps we had better take out at once some

such commission as that of the Adelantado of the Seven Cities; and yet

greater discoveries may await us, never before heard of by man. Each

lies in its miniature valley, smiling and fertile, with wagon-roads for

a little space around; but their inhabitants can hardly be conceived as

going over the wild trail to supply themselves with the fashions and

comforts they possess.

Candid judges from without would pronounce it impassable, and think it

a practical joke that they were asked to consider it a road. We crossed

and recrossed swift, small streams, the water reaching to the animals’

shoulders. The colonel had a way of dangling his military boots on such

occasions in the water, to let me see how excellently they were made; but

one night, I observed, he could not get them off, and the next morning

he could not get them on. All of one day we traversed the _cañada_, or

gorge, of Cholitea, over a sandy bed of which the flood had not yet taken

possession; another day, the Cañada del Zopilote. Our old friend of

the North, the ailanthus, was common where other natural features were

dreariest, and often filled the air insufferably with its odor. The three

rivers crossing our way were swollen indeed, as had been predicted. When

we came down to the wide Mescala it was opaque with red soil, and tearing

past at twenty miles an hour. We were transported across it in a flat

skiff guided by an oar. There was no plank to aid in the embarking of

the horses, and one of them fell into such a panic as caused a terrific

combat of well-nigh half an hour. He was finally thrown on board, more

dead than alive, with lassoed legs.

“Ah, what a soul you have!” (_Ah, que alma tienes!_) cried Marcos

fervently to his animal, which had well-nigh kicked us all into the

river; and losing all policy in his rage, he begged to borrow my

revolver, that he might despatch such a brute, of the ownership of which

he was ashamed.

The Papagallo River succeeding, we crossed in a dug-out, and the animals

swam. I asked the colonel, in my simplicity, if this were not more or

less like war, meaning the manner of travel, our foraging, half open-air

way of sleeping, and the like. He smiled in disdain, and gave me a sketch

of his campaigns in the day of the French usurpation. The rightful

government had had at one time so little foothold in the country that it

was called the Government of Paso del Norte, from the farthest town on

the northern frontier, to which it was driven. Eating and sleeping seem

hardly to have been the custom at all till, by an unremitting guerilla

warfare, the tide was turned.

When we came to “the Cajones,” however, he admitted that this

was a little like war. We slipped and slid all one day down the

Cajones—natural, or rather most wofully unnatural, steps in the solid

rock, in the midst of a dark forest. The perpendiculars are three and

four feet at a time, and often there are mud-holes at the bottom; and

besides, there are vines that aim to take you under the chin. The

sagacious steadiness of the pack-mules, picking their steps unaided in

the most critical situations, was wonderful to see.

We met peons, in white cotton, coming up with barrels of ardent spirits

on their shoulders, and we came to a full stop to allow the passage

of jingling mule-trains of goods. The water ran in the path with us,

courteously sharing its right of way. At one place it increased and

converged from every side, and the wood was full of its murmurs, as if

another universal deluge were coming to overwhelm us. It was full, also,

of patches of pale-green light upon moss-covered stones, and limpid

pools, and delicate ferns, like snow crystals turned vegetable. Now and

then some white cascade stood out of the semi-obscurity like a beckoning

Undine.

Among vegetable growths on the way was the gum-copal, not unlike our

white birch. There was a tree, the _cuahuete_—if I may trust the

pronunciation of Marcos—smooth, bronze-colored, and often of a repulsive

red, as if full of blood. We saw a good many charming red-and-yellow

flowers on a high bush, like butterflies alighted, and once or twice a

sprig of heliotrope and a calla-lily. The _amape_, found in the villages,

and somewhat like the chestnut, was the finest shade-tree. There was

a notable absence throughout the journey of what we are accustomed to

deem the essentially tropical features. Very often one might have been

riding in the woods of Connecticut. There was not even a rank luxuriance

of growth, just as there were no serpents nor the swarms of pestiferous

insects (other than a few gnats) to have been expected. We saw once a

couple of coyote wolves trotting demurely along, and, again, a large

_iguana_, a harmless reptile, one of which I also noted later, gliding

around an old bronze gun at the fort of Acapulco.

Birds I hardly recollect at all, except a white heron or two, charmingly

reflected in an upland pool one early morning, and the _tecuses_, a kind

of black-bird. Vincente pelted at these latter with small stones, by way

of trying his aim. The organ-cactus, however, should be exempted from

the complaint of a want of tropicality. It abounds thickly about the

gorges and on the mountain slopes. Rising twenty-five feet and more in

height, the plants are like seven-branched candlesticks of the Mosaic

law, or spears of the gods hurled down and yet quivering in the earth.

The fan-palm, too, must be excepted. It crops out on the bleak hill-sides

as common as mullein-stalks with us. I can never respect it, in the

conservatories, again. To see it thus was a kind of shock: it was like

seeing some exotic belle of society masquerading as a kitchen wench. For

one day before reaching the coast we had the cocoa-nut-palms. Nobody in

the hamlets would get the fruit down for us except on a wholesale order,

for munificent prices, which brought the cost above what it is in New

York. There was often a shortage of the other fruits and commodities, as

sugar, in the same way, in or near the very places where they grew.

Toward the concluding stages of the march we fell in with another

travelling-companion, an officer in the Customs service. When he learned

that the colonel was going to the frontier, with a view, among other

things, to suppress the extensive smuggling carried on there, he said,

“You had better make your little $20,000 or $30,000 by protecting it.

That will be much less trouble. The smugglers will buy up your soldiers,

anyway; so it amounts to the same thing.”

I must not represent that the colonel was always of an oppressively

serious carriage. On the contrary, he developed a vein of humor, the

more amusing from the simple good-faith of those at whose expense it was

generally exercised.

“Do you charge no more than this to persons of our consideration, my

good woman?” he said to a peasant, whose bill was modest, though but in

keeping with the primitive nature of the accommodations. “It is a species

of affront, as one might say. Do you comprehend that I am a colonel in

the army, and this gentleman a learned traveller, noting down the manners

and customs of foreign lands? When strangers of our position come this

way again understand that double what you have demanded is the least that

you should take.”

The woman, abashed, received double her fee, and replied that she would

bear the lesson in mind for the benefit of future comers.

Again, meeting three honest-faced Indian maids, with pitchers on their

heads, going to the spring, he said, “Good-day, Marias!” and turning to

me, in an aside, “Not that I know, from Adam, whether one of them is

Maria or not.”

He praised glaringly, to her face, as of exceeding comeliness, a

servant-maid who wore gold ear-rings and necklace, and was, perhaps, not

of more than average dumpiness and plainness. She waited on us at table

at Tierra Colorada. The colonel desired to know her name.

“Victoria.”

“Well are you named Victoria!” he cried, in simulated enthusiasm. “_Que

cara simpatica!_” (“What a sympathetic face!”) he repeated at intervals.

Meekly, and with no suspicion of raillery, she replied, each time, “_Mil

gracias_ (“A thousand thanks”), _señor_.”

“Give thanks rather to Heaven, which made you so, and not us, who do but

recognize it,” rejoined the colonel, piously.

At La Venta de Peregrino the night was hot, and it still rained, after

having rained all day. A garden of bananas twenty feet tall grew next

the basket-like house of canes where we stopped. We hung up our wet

garments and properties on the poles of the thatched porch, or pavilion,

till it resembled one of those very numerous national establishments,

the _empeños_, or pawn-shops. Dogs, cats, donkeys, horses, pigs and

fowls—“shooed” out, when they became too familiar, with an emphatic

_Ooch-t!_—gathered under the same shelter, as if it had been a Noah’s

ark. We supped on pepper-sauce, tough chicken, frijoles, tortillas,

cream-cheese, and coffee without milk, spread out upon a mat on the

ground. The proprietor in person—a man in an embroidered shirt and cotton

drawers, whose talk was not of the wisest sort—held pitch-pine splints to

light the feast.

“Now, how does it happen, hombre,” inquired the colonel, as if in a

speculative way, “that a person of your fine appearance; a person of

manners, intelligence, education, hospitality; a statesman, as one might

say, who goes to Dos Arroyos to see who is going to be elected mayor”

(the man had been there that day, as he told us), “with a fine house like

this—how does it happen, I say, that you have not a table of any sort to

serve two travellers a supper upon?”

“_Pos bien_,” said the illiterate host, both pleased and flustered,

scratching his head. “Tables? Yes, tables, now, to be sure. All that you

say is very true, but there is a great scarcity of carpenters in this

part of the country. _Si, escasen muncho_ (Yes, they are mighty scarce),

I can tell you.”

III.

Two days after this we came down to Acapulco. It is a town for the most

part of straggling huts, with a straggling thirty-five hundred of people.

It has no vestiges of its antiquity but an old Spanish fort, after

the order of Morro Castle, dismantled by Maximilian’s French on their

abandonment of the place.

Near the fort lay a couple of rusted rails in position on a bit of

washed-out embankment, the beginning of a railroad inaugurated here with

a flourish on the 5th of May, 1881. Having passed over the line, one

would judge that it might be much more than dread of American aggressions

which would prevent its speedy completion.

There was no small pleasure in discovering at last, like another Balboa,

the Pacific Ocean, in boarding the fine steamer of the Pacific Mail

Company, the _City of Grenada_, which had come her long jaunt from Panama

northward, and re-establishing connection with the outer world.

With this, too, began an acquaintance with the western ports of Mexico.

One of the semi-monthly steamers, rightly chosen, each month puts into

them all. An idea of the country can thus be got which would not be

possible otherwise without much greater fatigue and expense, but it is

not at all as favorable as that presented by the interior.

Neither of the three lower ports is of great size. Acapulco has the most

complete and charming harbor. Manzanillo is a small strip of a place, on

the beach, built of wood, with quite an American look. The volcano of

Colima appears inland, with a light cloud of smoke above it.

[Illustration: THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS.]

San Blas is larger, but still hardly more than an extensive thatched

village. On the bluff beside it exist the ruins of an ancient,

substantial San Blas, shaken to pieces by an earthquake. Some old bronze

bells from its church have been brought down and set up on some rude

wooden trestles, on the ground in front of the poor chapel, without a

belfry, which now fills the ecclesiastical needs of the place. This

arrangement is sometimes referred to satirically as _la torre de San

Blas_—the steeple of San Blas. My slight sketch of these bells, made

on a fly-leaf of my note-book in the first instance, came to have an

importance far beyond its own merits. I have the gratification of knowing

that it proved to be the source of nothing less than the last inspiration

of Longfellow. The great and good poet died on the 24th of March, 1882.

In his portfolio was found his final work, “The Bells of San Blas,”

dated March 15, which afterward appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_. His

memorandum-book contained a reference, as a suggestion for a poem, to the

number and page of _Harper’s Magazine_ of the same month, in which the

sketch was published.

At Mazatlan we are in a bustling harbor, and a well and handsomely built

little city, with improvements and shops of the better sort, which other

countries than Mexico might be satisfied with. It seems surprising, until

we comprehend the extensive back country which is tributary to it, how a

city of but fourteen thousand people can be justified in maintaining so

elaborate a stock of goods.

We steam finally across the Gulf of California and up the coast of that

peninsula which seems one of the remotest points of the globe. The

days are calm and blue; the bold outlines of the shores offer constant

novelty. An arbitrary line is passed: we have lost Mexico, but gained

California—the richest and most marvellous of her provinces.

It is remarkable now to recall that, upon the accession of the Emperor

Iturbide, Mexico boasted of being, with the exception of Russia and

China, the most extensive empire in the world.