LAS TIERRAS CALIENTAS.
To the “Hot Lands,” we leave Puebla by the Inter-Oceanic railroad and
make the wild ride to the city of Vera Cruz. The first part of the
journey is across the mesa of burning sand and bare rocks. Soon after
leaving the city we pass the mount of Malinche, which supplies the city
with water. Malinche is the name given to Cortez soon after he reached
Mexico, For miles and miles not a tree graces the landscape. Now and
then a brilliant cluster of morning glories appear, but they are shrubs
and not vines. The geranium also appears, and no longer a shrub, but
almost a tree twenty feet high. Flocks of discouraged sheep and very
earnest cattle seem to be devoting all their attention to eating sand
and rocks. Of course it is contrary to custom for these animals to make
a steady diet off this kind of fodder, but with my most earnest
investigation it was all I saw for them to eat. A sparrow could be seen
anywhere on any given acre of ground.
A few shepherds wrapped in _serapes_ were constantly on the watch to
keep the gaunt and restless wanderers within their imaginary boundaries,
for it was contrary to custom to allow one flock to eat the sand that
belongs to another. The miserable huts of the natives are measured by
the length of the discarded cross-ties of the railroad. A quadrangle of
these stuck a foot in the ground and thatched with maguey leaves and the
citizen is “at home.” So is the donkey or whatever other animal he
possesses. Sometimes he has several razorback pigs tethered by a foot to
the end of a rope and they root in the ground and hone their backs
against the cross-tie that answers for a door-post and are happy. As the
train approaches a station, scores of women and girls press around the
car windows beseeching the passengers to buy fruits at the first class
cars, and cooked provisions at the second and third. The most of the
first class passengers are Americans, and as a rule they do not invest
heavily in Mexican provisions. They say it requires too much faith to
eat them.
And pulque. How could we get along without the fragrant pulque? With a
large earthen jar in her left hand, and a small one without handle in
her right, she anxiously seeks purchasers. When a purchaser is found,
down goes that right hand, fingers and all to the bottom of the jar, and
as it comes up full, the white, ropy fluid frescoes with its sticky
streamers everything in reach. In their anxiety to out-sell each other,
the anxious eyes are scanning every window for engagements while the
right hand mechanically is immersed to the wrist in the larger vessel.
At one cent a drink, and often as many vendors as purchasers, two or
three cents is the average revenue these people make from a train that
passes only twice a day. It is sad to see the hungry pleading eyes of
these half-naked women as they in vain offer their scanty wares to
people who do not buy. I have bought food from one of these beggars and
given it to another just to see them eat, and no starved beast could
have shown greater hunger and zeal with which they picked up every crumb
from the ground.
In the cities beggars are kept scarce by the police, but on these
plateaux they swarm, and grown men and women will crowd around the
train, and their clothing would not average two yards to the person.
Only twice did I see beggars attempting to offer an equivalent for the
alms they begged--at La Barca on the Mexican Central Road where two
blind beggars with cracked voices and rheumatic guitars inflicted the
painful combination upon the unoffending passengers. I think the
grimaces were given without charge, and only the music was expected to
be paid for, but I am sure my coppers were given for the heroic efforts
of that face to reach the sublimity of the music. The face was always
about three and a half flat keys below the instrument, and the much
abused instrument made no attempt to catch up with that wonderful voice,
but plodded along with her “reglar steady” for all pieces. Those three
organizations covered the whole baseball diamond in their progress, but
they all got together at the home base, and while the worthy Mrs. Beggar
collected the pennies, the crowd cheered the first warbler and called
for the second. Each one had the pitch that belonged to the other
fellow’s songs, but the crowd got it all anyway so what was the
difference? Anyway they were the only beggars that offered a _quid pro
quo_ and the crowd forgave them much, even as they had sinned much
against the musical profession in traveling on the high C’s without any
chart.
Out of pure charity I took one of the Mrs. Beggar aside and very softly
asked her if she did not think an ordinary three-cornered file would
help her husband’s voice and also his throat. The word “throat” was my
Waterloo. Lifting her coal black eyes to mine she looked the thanks she
uttered as she said: “Lord, señor, a thousand thanks, that is the very
thing, he has not had a square meal today.” When will people learn that
everything intended for the throat is not to be eaten? Such gross
ignorance discourages my good Samaritan impulse and seriously interferes
with my work as a reformer. The same thing happened at a restaurant
where the same dish of butter had kept guard on the table so long that
it was being consumed by its own inactivity, and was making itself felt
further and further from its base of operations. Out of pure charity for
my fellow boarders, I heroically made a martyr of myself and relieved
the old guard which “died but never surrendered,” so the other fellows
might have a fresh dish, and what was the result? _Bismillah!_ that
eagle-eyed waiter reported that I just actually made my living off that
brand of butter, and next meal the old guard had been replaced by a
whole pound of the same vintage but more vigorous and loud. Such
ignorance leads people to misinterpret my noble motives. Now, here I was
trying to make good music for coming generations, by offering that old
lady a file to rasp down the nightingale’s fog horn, and she thinks I am
so entranced with the unearthly music that I want to show my
appreciation by giving them a cubic meal. Alas this thankless world! It
was ever thus.
I said they were the only beggars that paid for their alms, but I make
one exception. Between Guadalajara and San Pedro a beggar has a gold
mine. Not what you would call a gold mine, but it is one for him. He has
a fortune in his knees, which got on the wrong side of his legs, and as
the street-car stops to change mules he painfully hobbles on crutches to
the car, makes his exhibit, collects the coppers and hobbles back to his
seat to wait for the next car, and he never utters a word. He has what
ordinary people call “a sure thing.” He always made me think of the
tramp and the dog. The dog found the tramp in the hay-mow and growled.
The tramp said: “Good doggie, good doggie,” and the dog wagged his tail
but kept growling. The tramp said: “It may be all right, but I don’t
know which end to believe.” So every time my beggar friend turned his
face away from the car, his knees and feet seemed to try to come back,
and I did not know which end to believe. This beggar question is too
large and has made me wander away from my subject. I was talking about
the women sousing their dirty hands into the pulque, but small matters
like that do not count. The old saw is still in vogue, that we must all
eat our peck of dirt before we die, and so we in Mexico just eat our
peck and get the dreaded duty from our minds.
There are many more miles of desert and pastures where the cattle still
feed upon sand, and then we come to the fortress of San Juan de Los
Llanos. In the midst of the desert where it never rains, and where
there is no green thing in sight, lies this huge fortress of St. John of
the Plains. For four hundred years this has been the King’s highway from
the gulf to the capital, and all the treasures of gold and silver to
Europe, and of merchandise from Europe have had to pass along here in
caravans of pack-animals and armed escorts. This road was a veritable
Captain Kidd’s treasure-house to the hundreds of bandits that have
swarmed through this country, so it is no more of a policy than
necessity that the soldiers are here.
We are now nearing the rim of the plateau and pass through miles of rich
mining country until we leave the state of Puebla and enter the state of
Vera Cruz. We are a hundred miles from the sea and eight thousand feet
above it on the backbone of the Cordilleras. Around us is white frost,
and in four hours we shall be in perpetual summer. We are above the
clouds and everything is invisible. The clouds envelop the train like a
pall, and we are conscious of only one thing; we are plunging down the
mountain with breaks down, and with the descent of one hundred and
thirty-three feet to the mile. A rift in the clouds discloses a
semi-tropical forest, and upon every tree are myriads of beautiful
orchids of blue, red, scarlet, orange--every color and in the greatest
profusion. A thousand feet below is a little town we are trying to
reach. The train approaches it first on this side and then on that, and
winds down the mountain in a kind of spiral, and at last stops at the
station. Above us is the track we have just left, and if a rock was
loosed from it, it would fall upon the roof of the train at the station.
There is one place on the road where a stone dropped from a car window
would hit the track at two separate levels. It is a journey one never
wants to take twice by daylight. If you pass the dangers at night you
save the nervous speculation as to what would happen if a wheel should
break on the brink of a chasm a thousand feet deep, and a floating cloud
conceals the nature of the rocks you would land upon in the awful depths
below.
Every few hundred yards by the track are wooden crosses and stone
cairns. I ask my neighbor: “_Porque las cruces?_” He devotedly crosses
himself and mentions them as unfortunate meeting places of travelers and
bandits, and after the meeting the traveler still remained. Every one
who passes considers it his duty to add a stone to the cairn.
At the stations the half-clad natives, shivering in the chill mountain
air, offer food and beautiful flowers for sale. Orange blossoms from the
valley and a dozen other rare blossoms the foreigner has never seen, and
the beautiful orchids with the roots done up in leaves are offered for a
real, (12½ cents) which would cost five or six dollars at an American
florist’s.
Down, down we go, through dark canons and over spider bridges and below
the clouds. Now our wraps are uncomfortably warm and we lay them aside
and open the windows. From every where comes the odors of rare tropical
flowers and the iridescent rays of beautiful butterflies, and we are
half down the mountain at Jalapa (Halapa). Jalapa is a city of fifteen
thousand population, and was once the capital of Vera Cruz and has much
to endear it to the tourist. As the train stops you enter a street-car
drawn by six mules which will carry you to town on the hillside of
Meniltepec. When you wish to come back to the train, the brakes are set
and the car will bring you back itself, and the mules will be down after
a while to draw it back. It is a regular toboggan affair, and you feel
as if you were shooting the chutes, were it not for the heavy bumpers
that would stop you were the brakes to give way. I think the Mexican
style of carrying the babies slung over the back must have originated in
Jalapa. If a nurse should undertake to roll a baby carriage, and while
talking to a policeman should let the buggy get a start down any street,
it would shoot the chute for Vera Cruz on an incline of thirty degrees.
Before the Inter-Oceanic Rail Road was completed the street-cars ran to
Vera Cruz, seventy miles away, and all the company had to do was to mass
their mules in Vera Cruz and their cars in Jalapa and start the cars on
schedule time with enough brakemen to prevent a hot box. The streets are
not quite as crooked as a corkscrew, and not quite as straight as a
cow-trail when she is grazing, and starting from the top, each first
floor window looks out upon its neighbor’s house-top. It rains here
about eight days in the week. The town is four thousand feet above sea
level, and just behind it is the Copre de Perote peak, thirteen thousand
four hundred and three feet high, and plenty high to catch the rain
clouds from the gulf. When they strike the jagged edge of this toboggan
slide which holds Jalapa, they simply disgorge and go back for another
load. They seem to be a very faithful, conscientious set of clouds that
put in a good day’s work and never grumble about working over-time or
the agitation of an eight hour system. I got tired carrying my umbrella.
It would rain half an hour and sunshine half an hour till the next cloud
got snagged on that mountain, and so between them there was no rest for
my umbrella. I am always full of good motives and advice, and the same
work a lawyer wants ten dollars for, I distribute with a lavish
ha--mouth. Armed with my good intentions and my dripping umbrella, I
called upon a member of the city council and suggested the idea of
filing off the rough edges of the mountain so it would not snag the
clouds and drench the people so often, but my words and good intentions
were all wasted. Those citizens have been sliding down hill so long and
been drawn up again by mules, they have no energy whatever, and would
never climb that mountain till they got street-cars up there. And
besides, if the cloud system was altered they would have to establish a
different sewer-system, and that means work, and of course they would
not.
These clouds have done one thing though, they have banished the thatch
roof, and every house is built of stone and roofed with half-cylindrical
brick tiles which project a full yard over the eaves. This constant
drizzle has killed the usefulness of the old and tried friend--the
almanac. You don’t have to ask when it will rain for you know it will
rain in half an hour. Then it is no pleasure looking in the almanac to
see when the first frost will fall so we can gather chestnuts or pecans,
because frost never comes, and fall never comes, and winter never
comes, but it just stays one eternal spring. The trees are always green
and if a leaf falls another grows in its place, and if you pluck an
orange another blossom springs out immediately, and if you cut a bunch
of bananas, a new shoot starts up for another stem, and as fast as you
pick the coffee berry, a perfect shower of snow white blossoms appear.
There is absolutely no season. Four crops of corn can be grown, allowing
ninety days to each crop. Sugar and coffee and tobacco are the main
crops. The state of Vera Cruz borders the gulf for five hundred miles
with an average width of seventy-five, and in all that territory, the
soil does nothing but push things out. The Indian takes a sharp stick
and makes a hole in the ground and drops a grain of corn, covering it
with his foot, and ninety days afterwards he gathers his crop, and that
is absolutely all he does in the way of labor. A banana stem will spring
up eight or ten inches in diameter with several bunches of bananas and
eighty to the bunch. He gathers them and knocks the stalk down and
presto! another springs from the roots, and this he does perpetually.
The coffee plant is the most beautiful plant in this region, and bears
till the slender branches touch the ground. The fruit is like our
cherries or plums, and the natives eat it as we do cherries, and only
the seed is sold for drinking. All around Jalapa in the forest grows the
vanilla vine so dear to the cake and ice-cream fraternity. The vine
grows all over the forest like grape vines, and is not cultivated. The
flowers are greenish yellow with spots of white, and the pods grow in
pairs like snap-beans, six inches long and as large as your finger.
They are first green and then yellow, and when fully ripe are brown. The
pods are dried in the sun and then touched up with palm oil to make them
shine. The Indians make a good living by gathering the pods and selling
them in Jalapa, which is the chief market for vanilla. They also gather
from these woods sarsaparilla, which has its home here. All druggists
keep on their shelves a drug called Jalap, which grows here and gets its
name from the old town of Jalapa. With pine-apples and plantains and
limes and apricots and pomegranates and bread fruit and sugar and coffee
and tobacco all growing at their doors, what wonder is it that the
people all say, “Jalapa is a bit of heaven dropped down to earth.” All
they need is a tree to grow hammocks ready-made and swinging, and the
millennium has come. It is situated near the foot of the volcano of
Orizaba, the second highest mountain in America outside of Alaska, and
the rich hills and valleys are covered with vast heaps of volcanic tufa
and ashes which are natural fertilizers.
The American army on its march from Vera Cruz stopped here to shoot the
chutes--and the natives--and exchange hospitality with them. The natives
have a very vivid recollection of that visit, and on the principal
street stands a tall granite monument with this inscription:
“SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE NATION’S HEROES
WHO DIED IN DEFENSE OF THEIR COUNTRY
AGAINST THE AMERICAN INVASION IN 1847.”
The thing is so absolutely true and incisive that most Americans who
read it like to quietly slip off to another street where there is no
grim accuser. Every time he looks dispassionately back at that war he
feels like the big bully who slugged the little boy in the street just
because the boy had spunk enough to fight back, and then took all his
apples. California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona must always feel like
blood money to the American people, as they were taken from Mexico to
extend slave territory.
Santa Anna was born in this town, and the reckless traveling up and down
these toboggan streets must have given him his dare-devil spirit which
marked every stage of his eventful life.
Jalapa is the summer resort of the moneyed people of Vera Cruz. Every
May when the Yellow Fever awakes from his sleep in Vera Cruz, the brave
citizens in a body back up the hill to Jalapa and shake their fists at
him and dare him to cross the line, and the fever does not dare. They
would simply pull a plug out of one of their special clouds and flood
him back to the sea. There must have always been a city here: behind the
present city are stone pyramids fifty feet high, and countless
foundations of stone walls laid in cement. There are oak trees four feet
in diameter growing through pavements laid in hewn stone and cement. The
architecture is different from that of the Aztec, and there is neither
language nor tradition as to who built these ancient ruins. They lie
towards the coast between Jalapa and Orizaba.
Tell it not in Gath, but they do say that the most beautiful women in
Mexico live in Jalapa. “Bewitching, alluring are the women of Jalapa,”
is what the natives mean when they say: “_Las Jalapenas son
halaguenas._” Perhaps this accounts for the saying that Jalapa is a
part of paradise let down to earth. The prevailing type of beauty here
is the blonde with blue eyes and brown hair, while elsewhere it is the
brunette with black eyes and hair. After one has seen _las Jalapenas
halaguenas_, the old churches and the musty paintings lose their
interest. The old town shows its age probably more than any other in
Mexico, and if these old stones could speak they might tell us of the
building of Cholula. Whatever is old in Mexico is still older in Jalapa.
Excursions to Coatepec and Jelotepec, about six miles away, may be made
on horse-cars through tropical forests and coffee groves, and then we
continue our tobogganing to Vera Cruz. On the down slide we pass Cerro
Gordo, where General Scott defeated Santa Anna, April 18, 1847. He must
have defeated the town too, for it is not there. A few mud huts are
patriotic enough to remain and continue the name, for which they deserve
much credit. Perhaps they are guarding the place to preserve Santa
Anna’s wooden leg which was lost here in battle. They have not yet
learned that it is in Washington City.
We finally stow away our thermometer to prevent its melting and running
away. They say that straight down in the ground underneath Vera Cruz to
an indefinite depth it is really hotter than Vera Cruz. Perhaps. Vera
Cruz is a good place to stay away from. From May to October it is the
summer residence of his majesty _El Vomito Negro_, a black vomit,
familiarly known as Yellow Fever. This is not only his summer residence,
but his permanent home, but during the winter months he is “not at
home;” but May 1st., on house-cleaning day, his residence is open to all
comers, be they light-weight, middle-class or sluggers. He gives all
odds and guarantees a knockout in the first round or forfeit the
championship.
During 1868-4 the French army planted four thousand soldiers in a little
cemetery which they facetiously called “_Le Jardin d’Acclimation._” The
Mexicans call it “_La Ciudad de los Muertos_,” the City of the Dead. The
population of Vera Cruz in 1869 was 13,492 and the number of deaths for
the ten years ending in 1879 was 12,219. The average duration of life by
these figures was eleven years! The annual deathrate is ninety per
thousand population, while in the United States it is 22.28 per
thousand. The safest way to see the city in the summer is to go in on
the train, go out to the old castle of San Juan d’Ulloa about a mile out
in the harbor, climb to the light house and take a good look, then get
on the same train and get up and out, or rather out and up. The town
covers about sixty acres and has no suburbs but sand and water. An
avenue of palms on the main street is the principal feature. If you stay
till night you will see the raven hair of the Mexican ladies sparkling
with gems, but they are only fireflies or “lighting bugs.” Three or four
of these tropical fireflies placed under a tumbler will give light
enough to read by. They have a natural hook on their bodies, so they are
fastened in the hair by this hook without pain to themselves. Our
American cities are troubled about their street-cleaning department; but
Vera Cruz has a street-cleaning commission that is a commission. Here
they work without salary and only ask bed and board. The only other
bonus they ask is that the city fine any person five dollars for killing
any member of the commission; which seemed only reasonable, so the city
gladly consented, and now the agreement is entirely satisfactory to
employer and employee.
The city council, on the city records, calls these commissioners
Zopilotes, but ordinary people just call them turkey-buzzards.$1‘Their
contract calls for bed and board--or tree. They find their board in the
garbage piles and refuse heaps of the streets, and their bed on the
church steeples and on the city hall and on your gate post or any other
soft place where it is comfortable to rest after a hard day’s work. The
city has not yet appointed a commission to clean up behind the
commissioners, and if I should suggest the thing to them they would
misunderstand my ideas of reform, so I will leave them to their fate and
the heavy death roll which they will still charge to _El Vomito_ and
exonerate the Zopilotes. Owing to an oversight in drawing up the
contract, no mention was made of nesting-places for the commissioners,
and so they had to make other arrangements elsewhere, but where it is
the deponent sayeth not.
Their day’s work was done and we saw that all the resorters had resorted
to their resorts, so we resorted to the train, unpacked our thermometer
and hied us away. Vera Cruz has had a monopoly of the shipping business,
but has a rival now in Tampico. When you go to Tampico, you must tar and
grease your hands, face and neck, then wear a pair of leather gloves
and muzzle your face with wire netting. You may keep the insects off but
you will smell like a barrel of train oil. The entomologists must have
got tired classifying insects and dumped all the remnants at Tampico.
One sociable little fellow has a habit of crawling under your toe-nail
while you sleep and digging a hole till he is out of sight and then
going to sleep. He has no special reason for this except to make you cut
off your toe to get him out or to make you sleep in your boots. The
monkeys and parrots are very sociable too, but familiarity breeds
contempt. If I must associate with monkeys I prefer those with two legs
so when I abuse them they can understand my wrath.
For description of Tampico see Encyclopædia Britannica. Besides the
Inter-Oceanic, there is another railroad entering Vera Cruz, the British
road that was thirty-five years in building and cost forty million
dollars. This road leaves the plateau at Boca del Monte (mouth of the
mountain) eight thousand feet above the sea, and falls four thousand
feet in passing over the first twenty-five miles of circuitous track,
and it falls twenty-five hundred perpendicular feet in the first twelve
miles, or two hundred and eighty feet to the mile. That tired, sinking
feeling is very, very present when you start down. A double engine
called the “Farlie,” having two sets of driving machinery and the boiler
in the center, pulls this train, and when it starts up hill it has to
stop every ten miles to rest. The Britishers who built that road had
faith and plenty of it. Below Orizaba, the road crosses a gorge a
thousand feet deep, and was blasted from the solid rock. To do so,
workmen were suspended by ropes over the cliff, and worked for hours
with hammer and chisel. One piece of track clinging to the wall is not
over ten rods long and required seven years to build. So costly was this
road that when it was first opened in 1873 first class freight rates
from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, two hundred and sixty-three miles
away, were $76 a ton on freight trains and $97.77 on passenger trains.
Since Tampico is now a rival port freight is only $45 a ton and still
the road hardly pays for its outlay. We soon enter the beautiful valley
of La Joya (the Gem) and down, down below the clouds we pass through
evergreen foliage of ferns and flowers that surpass anything in beauty
ever attempted by brush and canvas; mammoth ferns and tangled vanilla
vines and other parasitic vines that coil around the giant trees and
strangle them to death, and then feed upon the remains. Tropical birds
of all colors and migratory birds from other lands are here without
number. It is here the Indian hunter pursues his vocation of killing to
make the wonderful featherwork, so salable in the capital, and just here
we enter the beautiful city of Orizaba, the capital of Vera Cruz.
Behind the city is the snow-capped volcano of Orizaba, eighteen thousand
three hundred and fourteen feet above the sea, three miles and a half
high. Violent eruptions took place here in 1545-6 but it has been on a
strike ever since. Being the second highest mountain in North America,
perhaps it is putting on airs. At any rate it is chilly enough now and
the melting snows form innumerable cascades and waterfalls; and so the
Chicmec Indians called the volcano “Ahauializapan” or “Joy in the
waters,” but the Spaniards had neglected their pronunciation in their
early youth and this was their Shibboleth, so they called it Orizaba and
let it go at that. Earthquakes have always been a specialty with
Orizaba, and the largest church has had its steeples thrown down three
times, and many others have a rakish, corkscrew perpendicular, which
gives the impression that they have been on a jag or are trying to
imitate the leaning tower of Pisa. A river runs through the town, and
runs cotton and sugar and flour mills. Orizaba is exactly of the same
altitude as Jalapa and what was said of the richness and fertility of
that burg is true of Orizaba. Volcanic ash is the fertilizer which needs
only moisture, which is abundant. The streets are paved with lava, and
there are three schools for girls and two for boys. If you like mountain
climbing, plenty of blankets, two days’ provisions--and some
silver--will take you to the crater of Orizaba, if your lungs can stand
the rarified air.
I also ascended Orizaba, and my proxy said he could almost see into the
land of the almighty dollar, the vision was so grand. I felt happy.
Delightful excursions through the pretty gardens to Yngenio, the lakes
and mills of Nogales, to the innumerable cascades of Rincon Grande,
Tuxpango, El Bario Nuevo and Santa Ana. On the way to these, the orchids
and other floral beauties just beg of you to pluck them and thus make
room for their companions. Down the mountain we glide with brakes set
and enter the steel laces of the spider bridge across the Metlac and
hold our breath to lighten our weight to the other side. We feel much
better after we are over, and just beyond in the tropical vale of Seco
is Cordova, on the border of the _tierra caliente_ and _tierra
templada_. We are in the same belt as Jalapa and Orizaba, therefore in
the heart of the coffee plantations. The principal food of the
lower-class is bananas. The banana is an annual that grows about ten
feet high and about a foot in diameter before the bud appears, and then
from the top springs a purple bud eight or nine inches long, shaped like
a large acorn. This cone hangs from a long stem upon which a leaf
unfolds, displaying a large cluster of young fruit. As soon as these
have set, the leaf drops off and another unfolds, exposing another young
brood of buds. When these set, the process is repeated until there are
nine or ten circles of young bananas, and when complete the bunch has
nearly a hundred bananas, and the stalk never has to be replanted. It
requires less attention and produces more than any plant known.
If the coffee plant was allowed to grow with its own sweet will, it
would become a tree thirty feet high, but then the berry would be hard
to gather, so it is topped and pruned so as to spread laterally. The
leaf is a shining evergreen, the flower is a snowy white star with the
odor of jassamines, and the fruit is a bright red, turning to purple
when ripe. The fruit looks much like a cherry and tastes as well, but
this is not for what it is cultivated. Within the berry are two kernels
or seeds with their flat sides adjoining, and enclosed in a thin
pericarp. The fruit is spread in the sun to dry, and the outer surface
is shriveled to a pulp, when it is removed by the hand. The pericarp or
thin husk still remains, and this is removed by being broken between
rollers and winnowed, and the coffee berry is ready for market. It must
be shipped alone as it will absorb any and all odors with which it comes
in contact, and a cup of coffee with a Limburger aroma is not a desired
innovation. The Mexican prides himself on the superiority of his coffee
bean, and all travelers praise the article as drunk _a la Mexicana_.
A president of France once visited a village hostelry, and asked the
woman in charge to bring him all the chicory she had in the house. After
she had proudly delivered all her chicory to him he said: “And now
madam, I will thank you for a cup of good coffee.” The Mexican is not
above deception, however. Parrots grow here by the million and paroquets
by the billion, and in nearly all colors of the rainbow, but only the
ones with the yellow head will ever learn to talk, and no color of
paroquets will do more than chatter. But what is that small thing to a
Mexican? He simply gets a number of parrots and a pot of yellow ochre,
and in three shakes of a sheep’s tail he has a cage full of yellow-head
parrots worth five dollars each before they learn to talk. They next
spot the American “greenies” with money to burn, and the rest, is it not
written in the book of a retributive Nemesis who recorded those blue
streaks of profanity when that parrot got its first bath? Yea, verily.
“In ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.”
Bret Harte may come down here with his mandolin and pick that same tune
in Spanish and he will receive an encore.
The Mexican will sell you “antiquias” from a pyramid that he made last
month, and he will sell you a coffee-wood walking stick that was made
from an old railroad crosstie and loaded with lead, and he will sell you
a blanket he stole from you last night, but when you call for coffee you
get the real article, and it is not prepared in either iron or tinned
vessels, but unglazed pottery. They fill your cup half full of coffee
and half full of milk and pass you the sugar, and when you have done,
like Oliver Twist, you call for more.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL GUADALAJARA.]