LAND WITHOUT CHIMNEYS
--OR--
THE BYWAYS OF MEXICO.
BY
ALFRED OSCAR COFFIN, PH.D.
[Illustration: text decoration]
CINCINNATI, OHIO,
THE EDITOR PUBLISHING CO.,
1898.
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
THE EDITOR PUBLISHING COMPANY.
TO
PROFESSOR HELEN C. MORGAN,
MY FORMER TEACHER,
THIS BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
_Page._
THE SAN JUAN VALLEY 10
CHAPTER II.
SALTILLO AND THE PLATEAU 29
CHAPTER III.
SAN LUIS POTOSI 45
CHAPTER IV.
THE BILL OF FARE 63
CHAPTER V.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE LAJA 76
CHAPTER VI.
THE VALE OF ANAHUAC 93
CHAPTER VII.
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO 107
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHRINE OF GUADALUPE 118
CHAPTER IX.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS 141
CHAPTER X.
THE PASEO AND BULL FIGHT 153
CHAPTER XI.
LA VIGA CANAL 168
CHAPTER XII.
THE SUBURBS 179
CHAPTER XIII.
WITHIN THE GATES 192
CHAPTER XIV.
THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLE-FOOT 222
CHAPTER XV.
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS 232
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PYRAMID OF CHOLULA 241
CHAPTER XVII.
LAS TIERRAS CALIENTAS
CHAPTER XVIII.
GUADALAJARA IN THE VALE OF LERMA 269
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 282
CHAPTER XX.
DIVES AND LAZARUS 294
CHAPTER XXI.
POLITICAL ECONOMY 306
CHAPTER XXII.
PREHISTORIC RUINS 312
CHAPTER XXIII.
AZTEC COSMOGONY AND THEOGONY 322
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE LOST ATLANTIS 331
CHAPTER XXV.
CONCLUSION 348
A LAND WITHOUT CHIMNEYS.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO.]
PREFACE.
This book is not sent forth to fill a long-felt want; nor does the
author hope to convince all his readers to his way of looking at the
social and religious problems of Mexico.
As a teacher of modern languages, the author went to Mexico solely for
the purpose of mastering the language, but the remembrance of that
enjoyable stay allured him like a bird of passage when the spring has
come, and so he returned to study the people.
If what he has written will help any one to better understand our next
door neighbor, his humble efforts have not been in vain.
CHAPTER I.
THE SAN JUAN VALLEY.
Did it ever occur to the American reader that there lives a people
numbering twelve millions, who know not the comforts of the fire-place,
nor the discomforts of soot and chimney-swallows? And yet there lives
just such a people at our very doors; just across the Rio Grande, in
that strange land of romance and fiction, where the sixteenth and
nineteenth centuries go hand-in-hand and never unite; where the
variation in temperature is less than at any other place on the globe;
where an ancient race live among the ruined temples and pyramids of a
race they know not of; where the traveler finds mouldering ruins of hewn
stone engraved with figures and animals that have no likeness anywhere
else, except amid the ruins of Egypt; it is here you find the Land
Without Chimneys. The land of Montezuma; the spoil of Cortez; the
treasure-house of Spain; the modern Mexico, where fact and fancy so
mingle with romance and fable, that we hardly know when we have reached
historical data.
When the Spaniards reached Mexico in 1518, they found that the Toltec
history, done in picture-writing, was the most reliable source of
information obtainable in this strange fairy-land.
From these idiographic paintings we learn that the Aztecs, or Mexicans,
entered the valley from the north about 1200 A. D. Before the Aztecs
came, the valley was occupied by the Chicimecs, and before they had
pitched their tents around their capital hill, Chapultepec, the Toltecs
had ruled supreme.
The Toltecs, being exiled from Tollan, their ancient capital near lake
Tulare, wandered a hundred and twenty years, until, in 667, A. D., they
came to the bank of a river, where they founded another city which they
called Tollan, or Tula, in honor of their ancient capital. The ruins of
this ancient city lie twenty-five miles from the city of Mexico. During
the reign of their eighth king, a famine drove the Toltecs south,
whither many emigrated to Yucatan and Guatemala, where the Toltec
language is still spoken. But before the Toltecs, there lived in Yucatan
the Maya race, the most ancient in Mexico, whose tradition dates to the
year 793 B.C., when they arrived in Yucan by water from Tulapam. Here
tradition is lost until we examine the ancient ruins and pyramids of
Uxmal and Copan, whose walls are nine feet thick and covered with the
finest facades found in America; and then language fails us as we gaze
upon the massive walls of the pyramid of Copan, containing twenty-six
million cubic feet of stone brought from a distant quarry, whose base is
six hundred twenty-four feet by eight hundred nine feet, and a tower one
hundred eighty-four feet, built of massive blocks of stone, and
surmounted by two huge trees rooted in its mold.
Within the inside are statues and hieroglyphics and inscriptions which
tell to the world their history, but they speak in an unknown tongue,
which may tell us of their Tulapam on the lost Atlantis. In despair, we
give up the riddle of the first people of Mexico, and take a nearer view
of the present inhabitants. The country is divided into three parts--the
coast region called _tierra calienta_, where the tropical sun makes life
a burden, and engenders that scourge of Mexico, _el vomito_, or yellow
fever.
Midway between the coast and the mountain is the _tierra templada_,
where the mean temperature is 68° F. The _tierra fria_, or cold country,
is the plateau which caps the crest of the Cordilleras, so different
from the mountains of the rest of the world that a carriage road was
built for eight hundred miles along the crest of the mountains, without
the service of an engineer.
Here the mean temperature is 63° F., and on account of the altitude rain
seldom falls, and, where it does fall, the porous amygdaloid rocks
absorb it so quickly that the plateau is a veritable desert, where the
cactus and other thorny plants have taken possession of soil and rock
alike. What adds more than anything else to its barrenness, is the utter
lack of forest tree or green grass. Everywhere, for miles and miles of
landscape, the eye meets only the bare rock and brown earth, with here
and there the ever-present cactus and its kind.
What wonder is it that nearly all these plateau people are beggars, when
the water for their very existence must be drawn from the locomotive
tanks each day as the train passes? Far across the treeless plain they
see the smoke of the locomotive, and from every adobe hut and
straw-thatched jackal swarm the eager-eyed women, carrying the empty
five-gallon cans of the Standard Oil Company, or their smaller _ollas_
of burnt earthenware.
To supply that horde would be to disable the train, so the fireman fills
a number and again mounts his engine amid the silent looks of anguish
from the disappointed faces that plead more eloquently than words. Yet
there are whole townships of this desert, fenced in with stone walls,
and upon these haciendas the rancheros grow rich off their herds at the
expense of the poor peons, and the source of their wealth is the prickly
pear.
The thick, fleshy leaf is both food and water to the starving cattle.
Where herds are small, the herder, with a huge knife or machete, cuts
the cruel thorns from the leaves or singes them in a great bonfire; but
on the vast estates the cattle must, from necessity, get their food
without help. It may be curious to know how these leaves can furnish
water in a country where it rarely rains. The reason is, the skin is so
tough it does not lose any water by evaporation, and it is thus able to
carry water a year or more without additional rain. This cactus grows to
the height of fifteen feet, with innumerable branches armed with needles
nearly as long as your finger, and it bears bunches of fruit about the
size and shape of lemons, called _tunas_. This is the staff of life for
the poor people on the plains, and without it, existence on the plateau,
for man or beast would be impossible.
But this country was not always a desert. Before the coming of the
Spaniards it was clothed in verdure, but “it was not like the plains of
Old Castile,” and so the reckless gold hunter turned the beautiful
plateau into a Sahara, in which the silver mines now pay from eleven to
sixteen dollars a cord for wood, brought on the backs of diminutive
burros, and five dollars and seventy-five cents for a hundred and fifty
pounds of corn.
It is purely a lack of thrift that no effort is now made to restore the
land to its original inheritance. The eucalyptus tree of California has
been tried in many places and thrives well, and with proper protection
would soon grow a forest. The present wood supply is the mesquite, which
never grows taller than a peach tree, and the average size stick of wood
it furnishes is but little larger than a beer bottle. Yet, with all its
scarcity, the locomotives use it, because coal from the United States
costs twenty-one dollars a ton. This wood is packed on the backs of
dozens of little burros, and is carried as far as a dozen miles for
delivery.
This is a land without chimneys, for two reasons: The climate is not
cold enough to require fires, and if it was, the poor people would never
be able to purchase wood. The little cooking that is done, is
accomplished by little charcoal fires in braziers.
If all this country was a plateau, then my tale would not be told, but
there can be no mountains without valleys, and it is these valleys that
make Mexico one of the most delightful spots in this country. In the
lovely valley of the noisy little San Juan River, rests the beautiful
city of Monterey--“King Mountain.”
Situated at the foot of the Sierra Madres, surrounded by cloud-covered
peaks, there seems to be not enough room for its seventy-five thousand
inhabitants, as it first bursts upon the vision through the towering
masts of Yucca palms. It is wedged between “La Silla,” Saddle Mountain,
and “Las Mitras,” the Bishop’s Mitre; but this is only the first trick
which this clear and illusive atmosphere plays upon the traveler from
the lowlands.
The perspective seems unduly fore-shortened, and mountain peaks which
are really twenty-five miles away, appear to be within an hour’s walk.
After your law of optics has been restored, you discover that no
prettier spot could have been chosen for a city than that for Monterey.
Founded three hundred and thirty-five years ago, upon an elevation 1700
feet above the sea, the seasons are so nearly alike that December is as
pleasant as May.
In the western part of the city are the homes of the wealthy; beautiful
houses in shaded gardens where tropical birds and flowers have their
home, and where spraying fountains and living streams of water remind
one of the tales of fairy-land. Just beyond these homes is the Bishop’s
Palace, the last fortification to succumb to the American army of
invasion when the city was taken. Around the palace are many cannon,
some half-buried beneath the soil, and one with the unbelched shot still
imbedded in its throat where, for fifty years it has lain in mute
testimony of that unequal struggle which General Grant called “The most
unholy war in all history.”
Across the valley, three miles as the crow flies, are the famous hot
springs of Topo Chico, at the base of a mountain of black marble, which,
in building material, shows a beautiful stripe of alabastine whiteness.
It was here the daughter of Montezuma and the élite of the Valley of
Mexico came to bathe and chase dull care away, after the whirl of the
court in the capital city of Tenochtitlan, long before the coming of the
white man.
At a temperature of 106° F. the water bursts forth in a heroic stream
that bears testimony of the intense fires that hurl it forth.
This reminds us that there is hardly a city in Mexico that has not its
hot water baths, and it need not excite surprise, when three of the
loftiest volcanoes in the world stand guard over the valley; Orizaba in
the east and Popocatapetl and Ixtacihuatl in the south, the highest
standing 17,782 feet above the sea.
The water of Topo Chico, after serving the baths, is carried through the
valley in irrigating ditches. Leaving the horse-cars which brought us
from the city, we are enticed across the beautiful meadows to a grove of
palms and tropical flowers, and find ourselves at the lofty walls of an
enclosure which at first gives the impression of a penitentiary, but
which you afterwards learn is a “Campo Santo,” or cemetery.
We walk around the forbidding walls until we come to a massive iron
gate, and through its opening we see a forest of wooden crosses which
tell their own tale, but the sexton will tell another.
“A relic of by-gone days was he,
And his hair was white as the foaming sea.”
He had dug a row of twenty-four graves, twenty-three of which were open,
but the other was filled to the brim with bones and scraps of clothing
taken from the others. A peep into these revealed cross-sections of
leg-bones here, two ribs and a hand there, with a jawbone or a vertebra
lying in the bottom. The sexton explained that a person may rest in
peace for the period of five years, and if, after that time his
relatives do not pay a tax on his grave, his resurrection day will come
to make room for newer tenants and better renters.
And so on for a hundred years or more they will begin at the gate and
dig graves and collect taxes until they reach the rear wall, and then
start over. If everybody paid, the yard would remain intact and the
sexton would have to start a new farm; but with the average Mexican, the
cost of remaining alive is a far more serious question than remaining
dead for an orthodox resurrection.
He much prefers using his spare cash during those five years in buying
masses from the priest to get the soul of his late departed out of
Purgatory, and if he succeeds in that, the bones may go; so every five
years he is prepared to see his friend’s lodging aired and let to new
lodgers. The wealthy rent tombs which are built in the outer wall, and
here they can peep through the glass doors and see the dust of their
fathers sifting down upon the ashes of their grandfathers to the third
and fourth generation. The sexton was not very careful in removing his
renters, and would leave a leg in No. 7 and carry the other remains to
24. I asked him if that would not complicate matters a little in the
final resurrection. He assured me that Purgatory was the place to right
such small matters, and if the priest was paid enough he would get them
all together. That reminds me of a wealthy man who died, and the priest,
with an eye to business, called upon the son of the late departed, and
impressed upon him the urgency of paying for enough masses to take his
father’s soul from Purgatory. The son asked how much would do it. The
priest, after a careful calculation said: “He was a pretty hard case and
no less than five hundred dollars will move him,” and the son paid the
money.
After a while they met again. “And how is my father getting along?”
asked the son. “You see,” said the priest, “your father was in the
middle of Purgatory and I had to move him a long way, but I have him
towards the outer edge now, and I think two hundred dollars more will
pass him out.” The money was paid without protest, and this so
encouraged the priest that he resolved to make one more deal.
“And how is my father now?” was asked when they met again. “Well, I have
him right at the edge of Purgatory with one foot over the line, and I
think another fifty dollars will pass him into heaven.”
“O no!” said the son. “You don’t know my father. If he has one foot in
heaven, St. Peter and all Purgatory can’t keep him out and so I will
save this fifty dollars.”
As the sexton and I talked, a funeral procession entered the gate,
consisting of two men and two women of the poorer class. On the head of
one man was a dead child stretched upon a board. The other came to the
sexton for instructions. He pointed them to a row of thirteen small
graves, dug about two feet deep and two of them were filled with the
bones from the others.
The child was taken from the board and chucked in, but was found to be
several inches too long for the grave, so its head was bent up until the
pall-bearer could gouge out enough dirt to admit the body straight, and
then enough dirt and bones were raked in to cover it a foot and a half.
Meanwhile, the women sat upon neighboring graves, chatting and smoking
cigarettes until the grave was filled. Thirteen minutes after they had
entered they were gone, leaving the sexton and myself alone with the
dead. Within ten minutes another procession entered, preceded by a
company of priests with lighted candles, followed by a hearse with a
velvet covered coffin. Behind the hearse walked a procession of young
men with lighted candles, and then I knew a man was dead, for no women
attend the funerals of men.
On entering, the body was taken from the coffin and buried, and the
coffin returned to the undertaker. Wood is too scarce in Mexico to buy
coffins when a rented one will do as well, and besides, it would give
the sexton too much trouble in his impromptu resurrections if he had to
dig through hard wood boards.
If you should ask these people why they dig over and over a few acres of
enclosed ground when just outside there are leagues and leagues of
ground that will not grow anything else but a good crop of graves, they
would shrug their shoulders and say: “_Quien sabe?_”--who knows--with
that untranslatable gesture which forbids other question. Should you ask
the tax collector, he might look over his balance-sheet and give you an
answer about how much it takes to run the government.
Nothing better illustrates the stature of these people than the death of
an American. He was a conductor, and the railroad employees determined
to give him an orthodox Christian burial, but no coffin could be found
long enough, so he was put into one with both ends knocked out. Then
came the inspection, and official announcement and permit, and enough
red tape to consume two whole days and all the patience of the American
colony, and involved enough writing to have chartered the city.
All cemeteries are reached by mule car; and for those who cannot afford
a hearse, a funeral car and as many empties as are needed, are always to
be had. The funeral car is painted black or white, with a raised dais to
support the coffin, and in a sweeping gallop the cortege is soon at the
cemetery gates on schedule time.
All head-boards and grave-stones are embellished with the ominous black
letters R. I. P. They tell me that is Latin for “May he rest in peace;”
but I think they ought to add, “For five years.”
The cathedral in all Mexican cities is the one place of attraction. The
one here was used as a powder magazine during the Mexican war, and the
walls still bear the grim ear-marks of cannon balls.
The finest church here is Nuestra Señora del Roble, which is old, but
seems never to be finished, and thereby hangs a tale.
No church property is taxable here until it is finished, so the astute
priests rarely finish one. There are churches here whose foundations
were laid three hundred years ago, and as you stand in the grand nave,
bits of stone falling around you will be the only evidence of the
workmen two hundred feet above.
The stone used is almost as porous and as light as chalk, and responds
readily to the chisel for ornamentation, but hardens on exposure. These
building blocks are nearly always two feet square, and are built into
the wall rough, and with scaffolding built around; the stone-mason, with
mallet and chisel, will work for years, creating an ornamentation that
is a joy and beauty forever. Patience here is a cardinal virtue, and
time has no value whatever, and to their credit, be it said, that these
decoraters are artists, and their work is beautiful. A man will begin
work on a hundred year job with as much _sang-froid_ as though it was to
last a month.
A workman will take an intricate pattern of wall-paper, and, with a
paint-pot and brush, will spread that design over ten thousand square
yards of surface, and at a distance of ten feet you cannot detect his
work from genuine wall-paper. The perspective is so deceptive in one
church in Monterey, that you almost run into the rear wall before you
are aware that the long aisle is a painted one. You must stand or kneel
in the churches, as no seats are provided. One church in Puebla is the
only exception. Most of the churches are bedizened with cheap gew-gaws
and tinsel, which gives you an impression of a child’s playhouse.
The church of San Francisco is the oldest in town, and its bells were
cast in Spain.
A large painting in there which is meant for the _piece de resistance_,
represents Christ with a Spanish fan in his hand, and the Madonna
draped in a Spanish cloak of the vintage of 1520. Another represents the
Shepherds with violins in their hands looking at the Babe in the manger.
It all reminds me of February 22, in New York, when national
proclivities will rise against time and circumstances, and George
Washington will blaze with all his calm dignity from the Teuton’s shop
window with a huge glass of lager in his hand, and the citizen from
County Cork flashes him forth from his aldermanic window with an extra
width to his supermaxillary, while Hop Long Quick displays him with his
weekly washee washee, sporting a three foot queue.
I suppose all this proves that we think a lot more of ourselves than we
do of others, and of our nationality: “My country, may she ever be
right, but right or wrong, my country.”
I suppose local color is everything to the ambitious artist, and in
making the rounds of the different churches, the amount of dripping gore
you encounter in the transit from the Sanhedrin to Calvary is appalling.
Were you to meet the _dramatis personæ_ in the flesh, and away from
their settings, you would be in doubt as to whether they were just from
the foot-ball game, or a delegation from Darktown Alley “After de Ball.”
Beyond the city and near the foothills is the modest little chapel of
Guadalupe.
Around it is a grove of maguey plants with their long, fleshy leaves,
just as inviting to the jack-knife of the Mexican boy as a white beech
tree was to you when you were loitering around the country church. Nor
were these boys less boys than others, for all over these telltale
leaves are inscriptions, some cut “When you and I were boys, Tom, just
twenty years ago.” Nor were all these inscriptions outbursts of piety
and consecration to the church. Some still told the old, old story, that
the lovely Ramona was _La alma de mi vidi, mi dulce corizon_, the soul
of his life and his sweetheart forever.
I sincerely hope Ramona got the letter and rewarded the young man for
his splendid sculpturing, but I doubt if he “sculped” all the things I
read.
Some were avowals to the service of the Virgin, and I know of no place
better calculated to inspire such thoughts of worship than the little
chapel of Guadalupe.
Beyond the chapel was a young man quarrying stone, and in his idle hours
he had chiseled out a small miniature chapel, about three feet long and
similar in design to Guadalupe. Perhaps he was the one who wrote the
pious inscription, but he looked just about old enough to have boiled
over with that effervescence about Ramona.
While he was at work, I slyly investigated his means of saving grace.
Within the little chapel were candles and tinsels of gold leaf and
silver, and symbols made of pewter and tin, and bits of broken crockery
and other childish playthings, while around it were planted a row of
resurrection plants.
This botanical wonder, _Selaginella lepidophylla_, grows upon the bare
rocks, and may be kept a dozen years in a trunk, but when placed in a
saucer of water, immediately changes its grey color for green, and
unfolds its fronds like a thing of life. When taken from the water it
closes up like a chestnut-burr, and continues in its dormant state till
water is given it, when it responds every time. This young man having
all this paraphernalia as a means of worship may be strange, but what
about the church from which he drew his pattern?
What the lower classes here do not know about the bible would fill a
book.
The city of Monterey is supplied with water from a famous spring in the
heart of the city, which also gives birth to the Santa Lucia, which is
crossed by numerous bridges, and is the public bath-house and laundry. A
whole company of soldiers will march from the barracks down the
principal street, and the first bridge they reach, down they go into the
water, and every man will take off his shirt, wade in and begin his
laundering. In all likelihood, they will find as many women already in
the water enjoying a bath, and they will all sit in the sun and smoke
cigarettes together while their clothes dry.
The little proprieties which most people attach to a bath do not seem to
trouble these innocent people, especially when an orthodox bath-house
charges a quarter of a dollar for what the city gives free gratis for
nothing. If cleanliness is next to godliness, these people must be away
up in the line of promotion, for from sunrise to sunset, I have seen
every rod of this canal a moving panorama of black-haired swimmers, men,
women and children, while the banks were white with drying laundry.
The painter who first made that picture about the mermaids sitting upon
a rock and combing their raven locks, must have been standing on a
[Illustration: BATHING AT AGUASCALIENTES.]
bridge here and got his idea from the Mexican houris trying to dry their
hair before they--well, while waiting for their clothes to get dry.
The _puenta_ Purisima is the bridge where a wing of the Mexican army
withstood Gen. Taylor’s division. The legend says that the image of the
Virgin hovered over the Mexican army and enabled it to do wonders, and
that they re-enacted the old story of Thermopylæ. Below the old bridge
is a perpetual laundry. A Mexican laundry is a study in white, and when
you have mastered the details, it differs not one jot or tittle from all
the other laundries in the republic.
Like Mahomet’s mountain, the Mexican laundress always carries her
clothes to the water, and rests upon her knees by the brink. She casts a
garment into the stream until it is wet, and then wads it upon a flat
stone, and soaps it until it is a mass of foam. She then puts it in a
wooden tray, such as we use in our kitchen, and rubs all the soap out of
it, and immediately empties the water and repeats the process.
If she dips a piece a dozen times, she soaps it just as often, and
empties the soapsuds after each rubbing, and never, never uses the
soapsuds a second time.
This is very hard on a bar of soap, but the linen is returned to you as
white as snow.
There are many Americans in Monterey, and they are trying very hard to
implant their American customs upon the country, one of which is the
color line in public places.
All the streets are paved with smooth, round cobble stones from the
mountain gorges. They are about the size and shape of a butter-dish,
and they make just about as smooth a pavement as so many acres of cannon
balls would make, buried half way in cement, and meeting about as
closely as round objects usually meet.
I can think of no American equivalent, except a corduroy log bridge, or
driving across the railroad tracks in a switch-yard.
The gutter is always in the middle of the street, which is a foot or
more lower than the rest. An American has gained a concession to lay one
street with Texas vitrified brick, and let us hope it is a fore-runner
of others. But, come to think of it, it might work a hardship to a
time-honored custom; an innovation to some might prove an iconoclast to
the church.
It has long been a custom during Passion week and other fiestas, for the
priests to prescribe a penance for those who confessed to a sin in
thought or word or deed either in the past, present or future tense; and
one of the favorite punishments is to require a number of maidens to
walk down a street leading to a church, and return, crawling upon their
bare knees to the church to be absolved. As they would leave a trail of
blood over the cruel stones, some agonized lover would east his zerape
before his beloved and beseech her to let him lead it in front of her to
the church and spare the laceration; but poor ignorant creatures, they
have been taught that this is the only way to have their sins forgiven.
I notice I never see men in these pilgrimages, and it must prove that
the men have more hard sense than the women, or else the priests have
their own reasons for appointing women only.
Now what would a penance amount to on a San Antonio brick pavement?
Just a picnic, no more. It takes a regulation Monterey pavement to draw
blood in the first round. I like the Texas innovation, but I shall vote
to keep one of these threshing-machine streets for the church and _auld
lang syne_.
In Monterey are a number of smelting works, where the lead and silver
ore is reduced to pigs, and here we see the applied difference in wages.
The hardest work in the smelter is to weigh in and deliver to the
furnace a thousand pounds of ore every fifteen minutes, and this is not
unskilled labor either. The man has a two-wheeled cart into which he
must weigh in 600 pounds of ore, and 400 pounds of coke and flux
material. Those ores are perhaps fifty yards away at the dump, and if
the ore is very refractory, he must mix four or five grades in different
proportions. His cart must be always on scales as he goes from one pile
to the other, and he must make four trips an hour, and for this he
cannot possibly make over a dollar a day, and the regulation wages for
even the hardest work is 67½ cents for a maximum, if he is able to make
eight full hours.
I saw an Indian boy who had become so expert, he could load his cart
with three or four different ores and not miss the amount by more than
ten pounds when weighed.
The engines never stop night nor day, except to collect the rich gold
dust which collects in the flues. It is a very dangerous, suffocating
job, which a white man always gets ten dollars for, and a Mexican five
_reals_, or 67½ cents.
Two railroads pass Monterey. The Mexican Central to Tampico on the Gulf,
and the Mexican National to the City; and on the latter we now leave
for Saltillo and the battle-field of Buena Vista.
[Illustration]