IN THE VALLEY OF THE LAJA.
Beyond San Luis we come to Villa Reyes with the immense Hacienda of
Jaral, which at one time controlled 20,000 peon laborers, and during the
Revolution of 1810, furnished a full regiment of cavalry to the Viceroy
to fight the patriots. Beyond is the town of Dolores Hidalgo, “The
Sorrowful Hidalgo,” where was born Hidalgo, the George Washington of
Mexican Independence. Sept. 15, 1810, he set the watchfires burning
which dimmed not till Spanish misrule was ended in 1820. Still nearby,
is the city of San Miguel De Allende, also named for Allende, another
patriot priest who, like Hidalgo, suffered martyrdom for Mexican
liberty.
Here are the famous baths, with the water gushing from the mountain
side, through the baths to the evergreen gardens and fruits and flowers
in the valley. This city is situated on the enchanted Cerro de
Moctezuma, and overlooks the beautiful valley of the Laja (Lah-hah.) The
Hotel Allende was once the palatial home of a wealthy and pious man,
Señor Don Manuel Tomas de la Canal and his wife who donated the chapel
of the Casa de Loreto. Here is a beautiful Gothic church, the only one
in Mexico, and was the work of a native architect who drew his plans
with a stick in the sand, and this was the only guide his workmen had. A
dozen miles from San Miguel is the town of Atontonilto, famous as the
place where Allende and Hidalgo started with the Banner of the Virgin of
Guadalupe, and marched with it to San Miguel and opened the Revolution.
Here we leave the plain and enter the Vale of Laja, 250 miles north of
the city of Mexico. Before us is a frowning gateway of solid rock, but
following the shimmering little river, the beautiful valley breaks upon
the view like a panorama. Everywhere is the pepper tree, loaded to the
tips with the beautiful berries that look so much like our cherries.
Dame Nature here is at her best. Bananas, oranges, lemons and
pomegranates everywhere shade the peaceful homes whose acres in the rear
are covered with maize and pepper and fruits and flowers.
The people of Mexico do not live in the country, but in cities, towns
and hamlets, and prefer to thus live and travel long distances to their
work. In the Vale of Laja, it is one continual series of hamlets, where
the canon has widened into a beautiful valley whose season is perpetual
summer. Whatever grows elsewhere, grows here. Up the rocky slopes where
cultivation is impossible, the rich lava soil still supports countless
thousands of maguey and cactus plants that produce food and fuel, drink
and clothing. The bushels of succulent _tunas_ that a single cactus
bears, will feed a family for weeks, and the only labor required is the
picking. A stalk of _maguey_ will furnish in its undeveloped bud an
excellent substitute for cabbage. The unfermented sap is the _agua
miel_, or honey water of commerce. When fermented, a single stalk will
furnish for months a gallon a day of pulque.
Its broad leaves, which are eight feet long, furnish a thatch for the
house, and when dried, an excellent fuel. It is here the natives laze
their time away from sheer ennui. It is in this valley the railroad
contractors never go to hunt laborers. A Mexican works when he is
hungry, and why should he be hungry in this valley where his rations may
be had for the picking? And what would he do with money? The saloon has
no charms where every man is his own distiller, and the law gives no
occasion for “moonshine” and “blind tiger.” So it is the poor plains’
people who grade the road and drive the spikes, and even here the
railroad people experience difficulties. The native has an inseparable
attachment for his humble home, and will not under any circumstance
follow a construction gang far. When the construction train has passed
his home two or three miles, he finds it too far to return home at
night, and the next day he bolts for home, and the company has to hire
new laborers in the neighborhood; but when the work gets too far to walk
home, they throw up their jobs also. If a few are influenced to remain,
the whole family joins the procession, and move their temporary
residence each day. The same is true of the army. When on the march it
rarely has to supply a commissary, as each soldier’s wife follows the
march and cooks for him. In the midst of each hamlet in this valley is
to be seen the ever-present bell tower, and, clustered among the orange
trees, the little chapel. The native may have no other resting place
but mother earth, but his last penny will go to build his church.
While drinking in the beauties of the valley, we suddenly turn into the
equally beautiful city of Celaya, in the state of Guanajuata.
In 1570, sixteen married men and seventeen bachelors founded the town,
and it increased so in population, that in 1655, by a decree of Philip
IV, of Spain, it was made a city, but it was three years afterwards that
the inhabitants found it out. For beauty and importance of location,
Celaya has no peer. Here is a junction of the two most important
railroads, the Central and National, which offer transportation in every
direction for the product of its woolen mills and the extensive
haciendas throughout the valley.
This is a great market for opals. As a precious stone, the opal ranks
high, but on account of its reputed bad luck, there are people who would
not wear one as a gift. Those of Hungary and Australia are harder than
these, but the fiery, prismatic glint of the opals of Celaya surpasses
any in the old country. I have heard of a fourteen carat opal in Hungary
that could not be bought for five thousand dollars. In Celaya they are
of all grades and all prices, but the most remarkable thing about them
is, in Celaya everybody offers them for sale. It does not matter when
the train arrives, in the grey of morning or the dead of night, the
ragged vendors are always on hand. As the train pulls into the station,
a hundred hands will be thrust through the fence pickets, and in each
hand, on a piece of black cloth, lie the beautiful gems, sparkling in
the artificial light.
“All _Americanos_ are rich,” is a saying of these people, as honestly
believed as the catechism, and all prices are made on that basis. If
your early education has been neglected in the line of precious stones,
you will do well to let these pirates pass, for they are Shylocks all,
these black-eyed natives.
One will look you in the eye, cross himself and swear by all the saints
that fifty dollars or nothing will move his opal.
If you know your business and the price of opals, you have the money in
your hand, and as the train starts, hold the silver temptingly before
his eyes, and rare is the case when this will not “fetch” him.
An opal may be precious, but to a hungry man, silver is more precious.
And that little trick is good for other trades as well as opals.
Anxiety or interest on your part is as fatal as greenness in trading
with these sharpers. Utter contempt and unconcern on your part, throws
the burden of concern upon him, and he soon begins to make concessions
by asking how much will you give. However much you may want a thing, you
must impress him that it is purely a matter of sympathy for his poverty
that you buy. You may slyly hear him set the price to one of his
countrymen, and when you come up and ask the price, without turning a
hair, he will multiply it by two.
The city of Celaya has much of interest in the church line; which is the
base of all greatness in this priest-ridden land. These are said to be
the prettiest churches in Mexico. The one of Our Lady of Carmen contains
the chapel of the Last Judgment and the most beautiful paintings and
frescoes. San Francisco, San Augustin, Tercer Orden are all hung with
paintings of the Michael Angelo of Mexico, Eduardo Tresguerres, painter,
architect and sculptor, a native of Celaya.
The public buildings are worth seeing and the baths are delightful. I
have never heard this town spoken of in connection with beautiful women,
but the most beautiful madonna face I have seen outside a picture frame,
I saw here at the railroad station, and the artist who would paint a
picture of beauty should seek this Celayan Helen, and yet from her
apparel, she was of humble family, but so was Cinderella.
This city is especially noted for its dulcies, or sweetmeats, and here
are made the best in Mexico. To be in good form of course you must eat
some Celayan dulcies; and having satisfied your conscience, we pass into
the Vale of Solis.
No serpent ever made a more tortuous track than did our train, trying to
leave that valley through the canon cut by the fretful little river in
ages past. Up the perpendicular cliffs which would shame Niagara, we
find a trail blasted from the granite sides just wide enough to admit
the track. Under a beetling cliff we pass El Salto de Medina, or
Medina’s Leap. So goes the story: Juan Medina was a famous bandit when
those gentlemen of the road carried the riches and cares of the country
upon their shoulders, and most generously relieved the good people of
all trouble in looking after their wealth. Spanish history does not
mention that they ever received a vote of thanks for the self imposed
duties, but such is the nature of this sordid world. But one day a
committee did call upon the bandit on some very pressing business when
he was not receiving guests. Perhaps the committee had forgotten his
“day at home.” The intrusion so disturbed the bandit that he started
away on the pony express, and the committee actually began shooting at
him, and, seeing no other escape from his friends, he spurred his horse
over the chasm and was dashed to atoms. I did not see the atoms, but I
saw the cliff three or four hundred feet high, and if you believe the
first part of the story, the atomic theory was easy.
Not a shrub is visible to mar the vision of this huge pile of granite
reaching a thousand feet in the air. Creeping along its side we enter
the Lopilote Canon, almost as dark as a tunnel. There must be something
in a name. Lopilote means buzzard, and I suppose it is called Lopilote
canon because the buzzards have no where else to roost but on the edge
of the canon, as there is not a bush visible. It reminds me of the man
who had a horse that was named Napoleon, all on account of the bony
part. On the rear platform is the place to stand. This is a narrow-gauge
road, and only has room for the cars with no margin for landscape.
Standing on the steps you can easily touch the rock wall on one side
with your hand, while on the other you may hear the splash of the
imprisoned waters over a sheer fall of many hundreds of feet, but
nothing can be seen. The engineer can see only one coach behind his
engine as he makes his famous curve of 35 degrees, the shortest on any
road in America. Up and straight ahead, where the eye can see only
granite walls with peaks bathed in clouds, and no visible means of
passage, but at last light breaks through the top, and the devil’s hole
is passed.
What a sigh of relief it is to be over with the nervous strain. What if
a wheel had slipped or an axle broken, or a stray rock had fallen upon
that ten foot trail? There was hardly a chance in a million for a life
to have been saved. It recalled the dilemma of a negro who was asked his
preference of travel, by rail or steamboat. He unhesitatingly chose the
railroad with this argument: “Ef the train runs off the track, dar yo
is. Ef the steamboat sinks, whar is you?” He had never traveled the
Lopilote Canon when he made the remark, or he would have chosen to walk.
Once out of the Sierra Madre Mountains, we are again in the beautiful
Vale of Lerma. The river Lerma is the longest in Mexico, seven hundred
miles, and changes its name to Rio Grande de Santiago before it empties
into the Pacific. We cross the river at the beautiful city of Acambaro,
in the state of Guanajuata, where a branch road leads to Morelos and
Patzcuaro, the beautiful lake region. Here is a quaint old arched
bridge, built in 1513. Here were headquarters for the Army of
Independence, under Hidalgo in 1810, and Gen. Scott’s army crossed this
bridge on the march to the city of Mexico. This is called the most
self-satisfying city in Mexico, and lies hidden among the trees a half
mile from the station. The lover of the quaint and curious should by all
means see this old town of ten thousand inhabitants, whose only
diversion is to go down and see the train come in. Its quietness is
oppressive, and the town seems to be under a spell like the enchanted
city in the Arabian Nights.
The fine music by the female orchestra is one of the attractions. In the
foreground is the river Lerma, in the background the trees ever green
and the mountains ever blue, and peeping up here and there the towers of
old churches, which altogether make an enchanted scene worth your
journey to see.
It was many centuries ago that the Tarascan and Otomite Indians built
this town, and in 1526 Don Nicholas Montanes marched his Spanish troops
through the quiet town and laid the foundation of the Catholic church we
see in all its glory today. The hand of the vandal has not yet laid hold
of Acambaro with its modern innovations and church repairs according to
_fin du siecle_ notions of architecture, so the town really looks the
age it claims, and the descendants of these same Indians live in the
identical houses their ancestors built.
In the Calle de Amargura are fourteen little chapels commemorating the
stations of the cross, ending in the Soledad on the hill. The church of
San Francisco and the deserted convent have their especial charms.
Acambaro is in the state of Guanajuata (_wan-a-water_), but in the See
of Michoacan. While sitting in the beautiful plaza whose immense trees
reach to the caves of the old convent towers, you see a carriage
approaching drawn by two white mules. As it draws near the crowd, a
tall, fine-looking man in long black robe appears and holds his hands
above his head. Instanter, every person in sight of that carriage falls
to his knees or upon his face, and remains until the hands of the
mysterious stranger are lowered. It is the Bishop of Michoacan on the
way to his palace in Morelia, and he stopped to bless the people. Slowly
and reverently the worshipers rise from their groveling in the dust,
with a radiance upon their dusky faces as though the Son of God had just
passed by. This is the class of people that keep Mexico living back in
the seventeenth century.
Still down the Lerma from Acambaro is the Hacienda de Robles extending
thirty-three _kilometers_ on each side of the river, and which furnishes
hundreds of peons, and still further is the city of Irapuata, the
perpetual home of the strawberry. For three hundred and sixty-five days
in the year no train has ever passed Irapuata without strawberries being
offered for sale, for in this rich valley it is perpetual seedtime and
harvest. The whole year is springtime, and the energies of all the
people are devoted to strawberries. It was Sydney Smith who said:
“Doubtless God Almighty could have made a better berry than the
strawberry, but God Almighty has never done so.” The _fresas_ are all
offered in a basket holding from one pint to three quarts, and are
arranged with great care, so that the large ones shall all be on top. If
you know your business you do not buy till the train is pulling out, and
then a silver dime gets _fresas_, basket and all. When you consider that
a Mexican dime is worth five and a half cents in Uncle Sam’s money, you
can figure out the cost at leisure. The basket would sell at fifteen
cents in the States, and the bottom does not punch up to the middle
either. When I look at my pile of empty baskets, I wonder if I cheated
the little pirates, but I get my balm in knowing that hundreds of people
pay them the thirty or forty cents they first ask for them, which will
enable them to strike a balance sheet. I know strawberries are
perishable, and a twenty-five cent basket today will not be worth a dime
by the next train time, which is next day, so I offer him the price a
day in advance, which he would have to take tomorrow. He knows that I am
“onto his curves,” as the baseball boys say, so we get along finely and
always trade as the train begins to move and he realizes that it is now
or never.
From the river and from wells dug in the valley irrigation makes this
unusual fertility possible, and the old-time well-sweep is everywhere,
with its long see-saw pole with a weight at one end and a bucket tied to
the other. A ride of a mile on the horse-car is worth while. You will
see what you see in almost every Mexican town, not a shade tree on the
streets, and the brown, flat-roofed adobe houses without windows are
anything but inviting. Of course there are fine churches, what town has
not its Carmen and Merced and San Francisco? And of course its plaza and
band-stand, and Sundays and every alternate evening in the week the
government furnishes its citizens with music.
Irapuato is an important junction for trains going to the Pacific Coast,
and is in the midst of a fertile valley that needs no Nile to enrich it,
no augurs to propitiate the God of the harvest, no winter, no summer,
this is Utopia.
Leaving Irapuato and Acambaro behind, we still follow the Lerma towards
its source. We pass thousands and thousands of peons with their oxen
plowing with a sharp stick, or treading out the grain on the harvest
floor just as they did in Egypt three thousand years ago. Fat cattle and
water-fowl and farms and landscape and shifting panorama give us an
uncanny feeling that the thing is not real, that such a beautiful
country is seen only in pictures, that some hallucination has taken hold
upon us, so swiftly and charmingly do they change in their beauty. Were
all of Mexico like the Vale of Lerma, it would be the fairest spot on
earth. And then comes the sickening thought that the whole seven hundred
miles of this paradise is in the possession of two or three dozen land
owners that nothing on earth could prevail upon to sell to the small
farmer. These land owners live either in Paris or Madrid, and support
palaces in the old world from blood money of these debtridden Mexicans.
More than that, they have had laws enacted to restrain their descendants
from parting with the land, the rightful inheritance of the Indians who
till it on sufferance, and are thus made aliens in the land of their
birth.
In the distance is the fountain head of Rio Lerma, and now we see the
snow cap of the Volcan de Toluca, and at its base the beautiful city of
Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico. Here within three hours of
the city of Mexico, are two of the grandest natural wonders on earth,
the precipice of Ocoyocac and El Volcan de Toluca. This city of twenty
thousand inhabitants was built in 1533, and is upon the dividing line of
the tropical country of _tierra caliente_ and the mountainous _tierra
templada_, so absolutely everything you have ever seen growing, will
grow here. Its altitude is sufficient for wheat which grows in British
America, and the warm winds from the Pacific make an eternal tropical
summer for everything else. The buildings in the city are superior to
most you have seen. The market-house with its pillars painted in
Pompeiian colors is the finest in Mexico, and was once an exposition
building. At the station vendors will offer you fruits and basket at
such a price you wonder if they were stolen. Here too is a great market
for baskets and bird cages, and the baskets are so closely woven they
will hold water.
Here is the _Instituto Liberario_, the Harvard College of Mexico. Here
grows the coral tree, whose graceful stem is six or seven feet high with
pendant palm-shaped foliage, and crowned with vegetable coral of the
deepest red, an exact counterpart of the Mediterranean article. Horse
cars lead to the city along _Calle Independencia_, where stands a statue
to _Hidalgo et Libertador_, and here the wealth of the Republic is
displayed in its public buildings. Around the plaza is that universal
arrangement of huge arches called _portales_ or arcades, which enclose
the sidewalk and support the second story. The average height is twelve
or fifteen feet, and besides being a sidewalk, it is also used for
vendors’ booths. Here are sold lace work and drawn work and feather work
and carved work and onyx and souvenirs of all kinds.
Here is shown the fine residence of a rich haciendado who was once a
great patron of the bull-ring and furnished many a _toro bravo_ for the
ring, and when the noble animals entered the arena with his colors
dangling from their necks, the very walls shook with the loud huzzas.
Once upon a time a famous bull fought his way back to life. The lances
of the picadores broke and he killed all the horses. The banderilleros
could not place the darts so he could not shake them from his shaggy
neck, and the matadores lost their reputation and were hissed from the
ring, because they could not place the sword. Here the old haciendado
begged the president to not permit him to be lassoed and assassinated,
but to give him his freedom. This was granted, and many years afterward
when he died his skin was stuffed to adorn his master’s banquet hall.
Behind the city is the volcano, which can be explored in two days. The
height is 16,156 feet and the top is no more than ten feet wide, and the
crater contains a fathomless lake with a whirl-pool in the center.
Standing here amid the eternal snows the earth is spread before you as
is denied in any other part of the world. Three miles up in the air you
stand and in the west you see the Pacific Ocean; across the Sierra
Madres appear the snow-white top of Volcan Popocatapetl (smoking
mountain) 17,685 feet high; Volcan Ixtaccihuatl (white woman) 15,714
high; Citlatepetl (mount of the star) 17,664 feet high; Nauchampatapetl
(square rock) and Pirote’s Chest, peak answering peak, and still through
the azure vista beyond lie the blue waters of the Mexican Gulf. Toluca
is the fourth highest mountain in Mexico, being overtopped by Orizaba
and the two named above. It is from these eternal reservoirs that the
cities get their supplies of ice, and any day the Indians laden with
their chilly burden descend among the human mozaics to furnish the
American barrooms with their _sine qua non_ at ten cents a pound.
Of course the usual churches and fine paintings must be seen, so we
visit Tercer Orden, Carmen and Tecajec. And now we prepare to see a
sight that has not a peer on the globe. Two engines are hitched to the
train and we begin to climb the Sierra Madres. We stop at the little
town of Ocoyocac, and in a half hour the train returns on the horse shoe
curve one thousand perpendicular feet above the town. Not a bush nor a
blade of grass interrupts the vision as we nervously look down one-fifth
of a mile upon the toy-looking houses we could drop a stone upon. You
instinctively hold your breath as we creep around this narrow trail
blasted from the solid granite and marvel at the engineering that could
ever dream of such possibilities. Far beyond over the plain of Toluca is
a panorama that will abide with you forever, but which you can never
describe. We soon come to the mills of JaJalpa and pass under the stone
aqueduct more than a hundred feet high which curries the pure mountain
water to the thirsty city below.
Every city near a mountain gets its water through these massive stone
aqueducts that are built to last a thousand years. Up, up we slowly
climb with our two locomotives until we reach Salazar and take a few
minutes to raise steam for the final climb. At last we stop on the
back-bone of the Sierras, at La Cima, (the summit) twenty-four miles
from the capital, and 11,000 feet above the sea. Herein the Torrid Zone
among the clouds the frost is white upon the rails, and the damp fog
chills you to the marrow. There behind us is a rushing mountain torrent,
the source of the river Lerma, just starting on its seven hundred mile
journey to the Pacific. Here just in front of the locomotive is a
fretful little brook that breaks into a thousand cascades in its journey
to the Mexican Gulf. Forty miles to the south is a scene that defies
description. A hundred miles to the south stand those mighty sentinels
of the beautiful Nahuatl Valley, Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, in that
clear atmosphere, almost in speaking distance. In the midst of the
valley lie the silver lakes of Texcoco and Xochimilco, large enough to
mirror those lofty sentinels and reflect their perpetual robes of white
to the nymphs and naiads in the azure depths below.
Could these everlasting hills speak, what a tale they could unfold of
the awful tragedies they have witnessed in this valley; of crimes and
bloodshed and migrations and banishments; of nations who wrought while
Phœnician commerce was young; of cities built and crumbled to dust; of
opulence and power and intrigue! They might tell us who carved the
Calendar Stone, and who evolved its astronomical knowledge, and who
wrote the hieroglyphics of Tula, and in what language are the facade and
tablet inscriptions of Palenque and Uxmal, and, before the Aztecs,
whence came the Toltecs, and Tlascalans, and their forerunners the
Tezcucans, who in turn were driven out by the Acolhuas in the inverse
order by Tepanecs, and Chalcos, and Xochimilcos, and who built the seven
mysterious cities of Cibola, and the pyramid of Bholula, and the mounds
and the pyramids of Tampico, and Panuco and the pyramids to the sun and
moon at Teotihuacan, and why was the stately avenue of pillars left at
ancient Mitla, and why, O Sphinx of the Valley! dost thou not reveal the
secrets of the dead past whose unmultiplied aeons are to thee as but an
open book? But the sphinx answered never a word. My tears and eloquence
turned to thin air in the morning frost, and after waiting a reasonable
time for an answer, I thought of that old tale about Mahomet and the
mountain, and that decided my course. I determined to go find out for
myself, and as the engineer had dropped one engine behind he said if I
was going with him I had better get a move on myself, so I set forth to
solve the mysteries that have baffled the world in the Valley of Mexico.
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