inhabitants situated on the banks of the beautiful Tuxpam River a few
miles inland from the coast. The town is built on both sides of the
river, which carries off all the refuse and drainage to the ocean
below. This being a narrative of experiences rather than a history of
towns and villages, I have purposely refrained from long-drawn-out
topographical descriptions. The reader is doubtless familiar with
the general details of the crude architecture that characterizes all
Mexican villages and cities, and a detailed recital of this would be
a needless repetition of well-known facts, for there is a monotonous
sameness in the appearance of all Mexican towns and villages. For the
purpose of this narrative it matters little to the reader whether
the people of Tuxpam are all Aztecs, Spaniards, French or Indians,
though in point of fact they consist of a sprinkling of all of these.
Tuxpam itself is simply a characteristic Mexican town, but it should
be here permanently recorded that it has within its precincts one of
the most adorable women to whom the Lord ever gave the breath of life:
Mrs. Messick, the widow of the former American consul, is a native
Mexican of ebony hue, but with a heart as large and charitable and
true as ever beat in a human breast. She is far from prepossessing in
appearance, and yet to look upon her amiable features and to converse
with her in her broken English is a treat long to be remembered. Her
commodious home is a veritable haven for every orphan, cripple, blind
or otherwise infirm person that comes within her range of vision, and
her retinue of servants, with herself at their head, are constantly
engaged in cooking, washing and otherwise caring for the comforts and
alleviating the sufferings of those unfortunates who are her special
charges. She furnishes an illustrious example of the spirit of a saint
inhabiting a bodily form, and it is almost worth the trip to Mexico to
find that the native race can boast a character of such noble instincts.
Arriving at this picturesque town we went at once to the hotel. This
hostelry consisted of a chain of rooms built upon posts about nine feet
from the ground, and extending around the central market-place. There
is a veranda around the inside of the square, from which one may obtain
a good view of the market. The stands, or stalls, are around the outer
edge under the tier of rooms, while in the center men and women sit
on the ground beside piles of a great variety of fresh vegetables and
other perishable articles for household use. There is perhaps no better
selection of vegetables to be found in any market in America than we
saw here.
The partitions dividing the tier of rooms were very thin and extended
up only about two-thirds of the way from the floor to the ceiling,
so there was an air-space connecting all the rooms overhead. One
could hear every word spoken in the adjoining room on either side.
The furniture consisted of a cot-bed, a wash-stand and a chair. We
each procured a room, and as we looked them over and noted the open
space overhead, someone remarked that "it would be a great place
for smallpox." Having had no sleep the night before, and being very
tired after sitting in a cramped position all night in the boat, we
retired shortly after reaching town. At about four o'clock in the
afternoon I was awakened by a vigorous pounding at my door, and my two
companions, who were outside, shouted, "_Get up quick!_ there is a
case of smallpox in the next room!" I jumped up quickly and in my dazed
condition put on what clothing I could readily lay my hands on, and
snatching up my shoes and coat ran out on the veranda. After getting
outside I discovered that I had gotten into my trousers hind side
before and had left my hat, collar, shirt and stockings behind, but did
not return for them. We all beat a hasty retreat around the veranda
to the opposite side, of the court, or square, and the people in the
market-place below having heard the pounding on the door, and seeing me
running along the veranda in my _déshabillé_ concluded that the place
was afire. Someone gave the alarm of fire, and general pandemonium
ensued. The women-peddlers and huxsters in the market hastily
gathered up such of their effects as they could carry and ran out of
the inclosure into the street. In remarkable contrast to the usual
solicitude and thoughtfulness of motherhood, I saw one woman gather
up a piece of straw-matting with about fifty pounds of dried shrimp
and scurry out into the street, leaving her naked baby sitting howling
on the bare ground. Vegetables and all sorts of truck were hurriedly
dumped into bags and carried out. Happily this episode occurred in
the afternoon when there was comparatively little doing, and very few
pedestrians in the place; for had it happened in the early morning
when all the people are gathered to purchase household necessities
for the day, a serious panic would have been inevitable. About this
time our interpreter appeared, and three soldiers in white uniforms
came rushing up to us and enquired where the fire was. My companions
explained to the soldiers, through the interpreter, that it was only a
practical joke they had played on me. It now became my turn to laugh,
for they were both placed under arrest and taken before the magistrate,
charged with disturbing the peace and starting a false alarm of fire.
When the interpreter explained the matter to the magistrate that
official lost his dignity for a moment and laughed outright. He was
a good-natured old fellow (an unusual characteristic, I understand,
among Mexican magistrates) and appreciated the joke even more than I
did. He recovered his dignity and composure long enough to give us an
impressive warning not to play any more such pranks, and dismissed the
case.
Our baggage did not arrive until five days later, and was soaking wet,
as the boatman said he had encountered a gale in which he had barely
escaped inundation.
There was an American merchant in Tuxpam by the name of Robert Boyd,
whose store was the headquarters of all Americans, both resident
and traveling. Had we talked with Mr. Boyd before going to Mexico
there would have been no occasion for writing this narrative. He was
an extremely alert trader and in his thirty years' residence, by
conducting a general store and trafficking in such native products as
_chicle_ (gum,--pronounced chickly), hides, cedar, rubber and vanilla,
which he shipped in small quantities to New York, he had accumulated
about $50,000 (Mexican). We had expected to make on an average that sum
for every day we spent in Mexico, and were astonished that a man of his
commanding appearance and apparent ability should be running a little
store and doing a small three-penny[7] business. Three months later we
would have concluded that any American who could make fifty thousand
dollars by trading with Mexicans for thirty years is highly deserving
of a bronze monument on a conspicuous site. For clever trading in a
small way, the Mexican is as much ahead of the average Yankee as our
present methods of printing are ahead of those employed in Caxton's
time. They are exceedingly cunning traders and will thrive where even
the Italian fruit-vender would starve.
[7] The customary measurement of money values in Mexico is three cents,
or multiples of three, where the amount is less than one dollar.
The fractional currency is silver-nickels, dimes, quarters, halves,
and large copper pennies. Three cents is a _quartilla_, six cents a
_medio_, and twelve cents a _real_. Although five-cent pieces and dimes
are in common use, values are never reckoned by five, ten, fifteen or
twenty cents. Fifteen being a multiple of three would be called _real y
quartilla_, one real and a quartilla. In having a quarter changed one
gets only twenty-four cents no matter whether in pennies, or silver and
pennies. A fifty-cent piece is worth but forty-eight cents in change,
and a dollar is worth only ninety-six cents in change, provided the
fractional coins are all of denominations less than a quarter. If a
Mexican, of the peon class, owes you twenty-one cents and he should
undertake to pay it (which would be quite improbable) he would never
give you two dimes and a penny, or four five-cent pieces and a penny;
he would hand you two dimes and four pennies (two _reals_), and then
wait for you to hand him back three cents change. If you were to say
_veinte y uno centavos_ (twenty-one cents) to him he wouldn't have the
slightest idea what you meant; but he would understand _real y medio y
quartilla_,--being exactly twenty-one cents.
When we informed Mr. Boyd that we had come in search of vanilla, rubber
and coffee lands he must have felt sorry for us; in fact he admitted
as much to me a few months later when I knew him better. With his
characteristic courtesy, however, he told us of several places that we
might visit. We learned for the first time that the three industries
require entirely different soils and altitudes. For coffee-land he
recommended that we go up the Tuxpam River to what was known as
the _Mesa_ (high table-lands) district, while for vanilla-land he
recommended either Misantla or Papantla, further down the coast; and
rubber trees, he said, could be grown with moderate success in certain
localities around Tuxpam. He did not discourage us, because it was not
consonant with his business interests to dissuade American enterprise
and investments there, no matter how ill-advised the speculation might
be. Others before us had come and gone; some had left their money,
while others had been wise enough to get back home with it, and stay
there. Some investors had returned wiser, but never was one known to
return richer. All this, however, we did not learn until later. We
made several short journeys on horseback, but found no lands that
seemed suitable for our purposes. There were too many impediments
in the vanilla industry,--not least among which was the alacrity
with which the natives will steal the vanilla-beans as fast as they
mature. In fact, a common saying there is, "catch your enemy in your
vanilla-patch,"--for you would be justified in shooting him at sight,
even though he happened there by accident. It requires a watchman to
every few dozen vines (which are grown among the trees) and then for
every few watchmen it needs another watchman to keep an observing eye
on them. Again, the vanilla country is uncomfortably near the yellow
fever zone.
As to rubber, we found very few trees in bearing, and the few
scattering ones we saw that had been "tapped," or rather "gashed," in
order to bleed them of their milk, were slowly dying. True, the native
method of extracting the milk from the trees was crude, but they did
not appear hardy.
One of the principal articles of export from this section is chicle.
The reader may not be aware that a great deal of our chewing-gum
comes from this part of Mexico, and that it is a thoroughly pure and
wholesome vegetable product. The native _Chiclero_ is the best paid
man among the common laborers in Mexico. Tying one end of a long rope
around his waist he climbs up the tree to the first large limb--perhaps
from thirty to sixty feet--and throwing the other end of the rope over
the branch lets himself down slowly by slipping the rope through his
left hand, while with the right hand he wields a short bladed machete
with which he chops gashes in the tree at an angle of about forty-five
degrees, which leading into a little groove that he makes all the
way down, conducts the sap down to the base of the tree, where it is
carried into a basin or trough by means of a leaf inserted in a gash
in the tree near the ground. This is a very hazardous undertaking and
requires for its performance a dexterous, able-bodied man. A single
misstroke may sever the rope and precipitate the operator to the
ground. In this way a great number of men are killed every year. The
sap is a thick, white creamy substance, and is boiled down in vats
the same as the sap from the maple tree. When it reaches a certain
thickness or temperature it is allowed to cool, after which it is made
up into chunks or squares weighing from ten to forty pounds each. It is
then carried to market on mule-back. The crude chicle has a delightful
flavor, which is entirely destroyed by the gum-manufacturers, who mix
in artificial flavors, with a liberal percentage of sugar. If the
gum-chewer could obtain crude chicle with its delicious native flavor
he (or she) would never be content to chew the article as prepared for
the trade.
Rubber is produced in the same way as chicle, and the milk from the
rubber tree is scarcely distinguishable, except in flavor, from that of
the chicle-producing tree. The latter, however, grows to much greater
size and is more hardy. It abounds throughout the forests in the
lowlands. The native rubber trees die after being gashed a few times,
and those we saw in bearing were very scattering. You might not see a
dozen in a day's travel.
The easiest way to make money on rubber trees is to write up a
good elastic article on the possibilities of the industry, form a
ten or twenty million dollar corporation and sell the stock to the
uninitiated,--if there are any such left. It would be a debatable
question with me, however, which would be the more attractive from an
investment point of view,--stock in a rubber company in Mexico, or one
in Mars. Both would have their advantages; the one in Mexico would
possess the advantage of closer proximity, while the one in Mars would
have the advantage of being so far away that one could never go there
to be disillusioned. The chances for legitimate returns would be about
the same in both places. It seems a pity that any of those persons who
ever bought stock in bogus Mexican development companies should have
suffered the additional humiliation of afterwards going down there to
see what they had bought into.
It is surprising that up to the present time no one has appeared before
the credulous investing public with a fifty-million dollar chicle
corporation, for here is a valuable commodity that grows wild in the
woods almost everywhere, and a highly imaginative writer could devote a
whole volume to the unbounded possibilities of making vast fortunes in
this industry.
While I was in Mexico a friend sent me some advertising matter of one
of these development companies that was paying large dividends on its
enormous capital stock from the profits on pineapples and coffee, when
in point of fact there was not a coffee-tree on its place, and it was
producing scarcely enough pineapples to supply the caretaker's family.
In regard to coffee, we found that some American emigration company
appeared to be making a legitimate effort to test the productivity of
that staple, and had sent a number of thrifty American families into
Mexico and settled them at the _mesa_,[8] several miles inland from
Tuxpam. They had cleared up a great deal of land and put out several
thousand coffee-plants. There are many reasons why this crop cannot be
extensively and profitably raised in this part of Mexico,--and for that
matter, I presume, in any other part. Foremost among the many obstacles
is the labor problem. The native help is not only insufficient, but is
utterly unreliable. It is at picking-time that the greatest amount
of help is required, and even if it were possible to rely upon the
laborers, and there were enough of them, there would not be sufficient
work to keep them between the harvest-seasons. It would be totally
impracticable to import laborers; the expense and the climate would
both be prohibitive. Again, the price of labor here has increased
greatly of late years, without a corresponding appreciation in the
price of coffee.[9]
[8] In 1907, I received a letter from my foreman at the ranch, saying
that yellow fever had spread throughout the Tuxpam valley district, and
that upon its appearance in the American settlement at the _mesa_ the
whole colony of men, women and children literally stampeded and fled
the country, taking with them only the clothes that were on them. The
old gentleman (American) from whom I bought my place, and who had lived
there for forty-seven years prior to that time, fell a victim to the
yellow plague, together with his two grown sons. Thirty years before
his wife and two children had fallen victims to smallpox. Thus perished
the entire family. It is said that this is the first time in many years
that yellow fever had visited that district. I scarcely ever heard
of it while there, though Vera Cruz, a few miles further south, is a
veritable hot-bed of yellow fever germs.
[9] There is nearly an acre of coffee in full bearing on my place, but
I have not taken the trouble even to have it picked. Occasionally the
natives will pick a little of it either for home use or for sale, but
they do not find it profitable, and so most of the fruit drops off and
goes to waste.
Neither vanilla, coffee nor rubber had ever been profitably raised
in large quantities and we therefore decided that under the existing
circumstances and hindrances we would dismiss these three articles from
further consideration.
If we had been content to return home and charge our trip to experience
account, all would have been well,--but we pursued our investigations
along other lines. The possibilities of the tobacco industry claimed
our attention for awhile--it also claimed a considerable amount of
money from one of my companions. Someone (perhaps the one who had the
land for sale) had recently discovered that the ground in a certain
locality was peculiarly suited to the growth of fine tobacco, which
could be raised at low cost and sold at fabulous prices. We learned
that a large tract of land in this singularly-favored district was
for sale; so thither we went in search of information. The soil was
rich and heavily wooded; it looked as though it might produce tobacco
or almost anything else. I neither knew nor cared anything about
tobacco-raising and the place did not therefore interest me in the
least. One of my companions, however, had been doing a little figuring
on his own account, and had calculated that he could buy this place,
hire a foreman to run it, put in from five to eight hundred acres
of tobacco that year, and that the place would pay for itself and
be self-sustaining the second year. By the third year he would have
a thousand acres in tobacco, and the profits would be enormous. It
would not require his personal attention, and he could send monthly
remittances from home for expenses, and probably come down once a year
on a _pleasure trip_. Parenthetically, by way of assurance to the
reader that the man had not entirely lost his reason, I may say that
we learned in Tuxpam that of all routes and modes of travel to that
place we had selected by far the worst; that the best way was to take
a Ward Line Steamer from New York to Havana, and from there around by
Progreso, Campeche, and up the coast to Vera Cruz, thence to Tuxpam.
From Tuxpam the steamers go to Tampico, then back to Havana and New
York. However, one cannot count with certainty on landing at Tuxpam,
as the steamers are obliged to stop outside the bar and the passengers
and cargo have to be lightered over. The steamers often encounter bad
weather along the coast, and it frequently happens that passengers and
freight destined for Tuxpam are carried on up to Tampico.
My friend had gotten his money easily and was now unconsciously
planning a scheme for spending it with equal facility. The more we
tried to dissuade him the more convinced he was of the feasibility of
the plan. We argued that no one had ever made any money in tobacco
there, and that it was an untried industry. He said that made no
difference; it was because they didn't know how to raise tobacco.
He would import a practical tobacco-man from Cuba--which he finally
did, under a guarantee of $200 a month for a year--and that he would
show the Mexicans how to raise tobacco. He bought the place, arranged
through a friend in Cuba for an expert tobacco-raiser, and sent
couriers through the country to engage a thousand men for chopping and
clearing. He was cautioned against attempting to clear too much land,
as it was very late. The rainy season begins in June, and after that
it is impossible to burn the clearings over. The method of clearing
land here is to cut down the trees and brush early in the spring, trim
off the branches and let them lie until thoroughly dry. In felling a
forest and chopping up the brush and limbs it forms a layer over the
entire area, sometimes five or six feet deep. Under the hot sun of
April and May, during which time it rarely rains more than a slight
sprinkle, this becomes very dry and highly inflammable. Early in June
the fires are set, and at this season the whole country around is
filled with a hazy atmosphere. The heat from the bed of burning tinder
is so intense that most of the logs are consumed and many of the stumps
are killed; thus preventing them from sprouting. Every foul seed in the
ground is destroyed and for a couple of years scarcely any cultivation
is required.
Our would-be tobacco-raiser paid no heed to advice or words of
warning; he was typical of most Americans who seek to make fortunes in
Mexico,--they have great difficulty in getting good advice, but it is
ten times more difficult to get them to follow it. You rarely obtain
trustworthy information from your own countrymen who have investments
there, for the chances are fifty to one that they are anxious to sell
out, and will paint everything in glowing hues in the hope that they
may unload their burdens on you. Even if they have nothing to sell,
they are none the less optimistic, for they like to see you invest your
money. Wretched conditions are in a measure mitigated by companionship;
in other words, "Misery loves company."
Hereafter I shall refer to the man who bought the tobacco land as Mr.
A., and to my other companion as Mr. B.
Mr. A. was delayed in getting his foreman and had the customary
difficulty in hiring help. Three hundred men was all he could muster
at first, and they were secured only by paying a liberal advance of
twenty-five per cent. over the usual wages. They began cutting timber
about the 28th of April,--the season when this work should have been
finished, and continued until the rainy season commenced, when scarcely
any of the clearing had been burned; and after the rains came it was
impossible to start a fire, so the whole work of felling upwards of
four hundred acres of forest was abandoned. Every stub and stump seemed
to shoot up a dozen sprouts, and growing up through the thick layer
of brush, branches and logs, they formed a network that challenged
invasion by man or beast. The labor was therefore all lost and the
tobacco project abandoned in disgust.
I was told by one of the oldest inhabitants--past ninety--that it
had never once failed to rain on San Juan's (Saint John's) Day, the
24th of June. Sometimes the rainy season begins a little earlier,
and occasionally a little later, but that day never passes without
bringing at least a light shower. Of course it was in accord with
my friend's run of luck that this should be the year when the rainy
season began prematurely; but the truth of the matter is, it was about
the most fortunate circumstance that could have occurred; for as it
turned out he lost only the money laid out for labor, together with
the excess price paid for the land above what it was worth; whereas,
had everything gone well he was likely to have lost many thousands of
dollars more.[10]
[10] A few years later Mr. A. sold his unimproved land for about
one-third of what it cost him, so that now I am the only one of the
party to retain any permanent encumbrances there. Be it said, however,
to the credit of my injudicious investment, that there has never been
a year when I have not received a small net return, over expenses; and
that is far more than I can say for my farm in Massachusetts, with all
its modern equipments. It has lately been discovered that that section
of Mexico is rich in petroleum, and in 1908 I leased the oil-privileges
alone for a sum nearly as large as I expected ever to realize for the
whole place.