TENOCHTITLAN OF TO-DAY
The El Paso Limited picked me up again twenty-four hours later. Beyond
Querétaro's ungainly aqueduct spread fields of tobacco, blooming with a
flower not unlike the lily; then vast, almost endless stretches of dead,
dry corn up low heights on either hand, and occasional fields of maguey
in soldierly files. At San Juan del Rio, famous for its lariats, a dozen
men and a woman stood in a row, some forty feet from the train, holding
coils of woven-leather ropes of all sizes, but in glum and hopeless
silence, while a policeman paced back and forth to prevent them from
either canvassing the train-windows or crying their wares. Evidently
some antinuisance crusade had invaded San Juan.
Mexico is a country of such vast vistas that a man might easily be taken
and executed by bandits within plain sight of his friends without their
being able to lend him assistance. Nowhere can one look farther and see
nothing. Yet entire companies of marauders might lie in wait in the many
wild rocky barrancos of this apparently level brown plain. Up and up we
climbed through a bare, stone-strewn land, touched here and there with
the green of cactus, sometimes with long vistas of maize, which here
hung dead in its half-grown youth because of the failure of the summer
rains. Fields of maguey continued. The air grew perceptibly cooler as we
wound back and forth, always at good speed behind the American engineer,
mounting to the upper plateau surrounding the capital, not through
mountains but by a vast, steadily rising world. Sometimes long,
unmortared stone fences divided the landscape, more often mile after
unobstructed mile of slightly undulating brown plain, tinted here and
there by maguey, rolled by us into the north.
A special train of soldiers, with a carload of arms and munitions,
passed on the way to head off the latest revolted "general." The
newspapers of the capital appeared, some rabidly "anti-American,"
stopping at nothing to stir up the excitable native against alleged
subtle plans of the nation to the north to rob them of their territory
and national existence, the more reputable ones with sane editorials
imploring all Mexicans not to make intervention "in the name of humanity
and civilization" necessary. The former sold far more readily. The train
wound hither and yon, as if looking for an entrance to the valley of
Mexico. Unfortunately no train on either line reaches ancient Anahuac by
daylight, and my plan to enter it afoot, perhaps by the same route as
Cortez, had been frustrated. A red sun was just sinking behind haggard
peaks when we reached the highest point of the line--8237 feet above the
sea--with clumps and small forests of stocky oaks and half Mexico
stretching out behind us, rolling brown to distant bare ranges backed by
others growing blue and purple to farthest distance. The scene had a
late October aspect, and a chilling, ozone-rich wind blew. By dusk the
coat I had all but thrown away in the sweltering North was more than
needed. We paused at San Antonio, a jumble of human kennels thrown
together of old cans, scraps of lumber, mud, stones, and cactus leaves,
with huge stacks of the charcoal with the soot of which all the
inhabitants were covered, even to the postmaster who came in person for
the mail sack. That week's issue of a frivolous sheet of the capital
depicted an antonino charcoal-burner standing before his no less
unwashed wife, holding a new-born babe and crying in the slovenly
dialect of the "pela'o": "Why, it is white! Woman, thou hast deceived
me!"
At dark came Tula, ancient capital of the Toltecs, after which night hid
all the scene there might have been, but for glimpses by the light of
the train of the great _tajo_ cut through the hills to drain the
ancient valley of Anáhuac. On we sped through the night, which if
anything became a trifle warmer. Gradually the car crowded to what
would have been suffocation had we not soon pulled in at Buena Vista
station, to fight our way through a howling pandemonium of touts, many
shouting English, among whom were the first Negroes I had seen in
Mexico.
Mexico City was a great disappointment. The hotel only a block from the
cathedral and the site of the great _teocalli_ of the Aztecs, to
which the German in Pátzcuaro had directed me, differed not even in its
smells from a Clark-street lodging-house in Chicago. The entire city
with its cheap restaurants and sour smelling pulquerias uncountable,
looked and sounded like a lower eastside New York turned Spanish in
tongue. Even morning light discovered nothing like the charm of the rest
of Mexico, and though I took up new lodgings en famille in aristocratic
Chapultepec Avenue, with a panorama of snow-topped Popocatepetl and
Ixtaccihuatl, her sleeping sister, and all the range seeming a bare
gunshot away, the imagination was more inclined to hark back to the
Bowery than to the great Tenochtitlan of the days of Cortez.
In a word, the capital is much like many another modern city, somewhat
bleak, cosmopolitan of population, with strong national lines of
demarkation, and a caste system almost as fixed as that of India, but
with none of the romance the reader of Prescott, Mme. Calderón, and the
rest expects. Since anarchy fell upon the land, even the Sunday
procession of carriages of beauty in silks and jewels, and of rancheros
prancing by in thousand-dollar hats, on silver-mounted and bejeweled
saddles, has disappeared from the life of the capital. To-day the
Mexican is not anxious to parade his wealth, nor even to venture it in
business. He is much more minded to bury it in the earth, to hide it in
his socks, to lay it up in the great republic to the north, where
neither presidents corrupt nor Zapatistas break in and steal.
By day moderate clothing was comfortable, but the night air is sharp and
penetrating, and he who is not dressed for winter will be inclined to
keep moving. Policemen and street-car employees tie a cloth across
their mouths from sunset until the morning warms. Ragged peons swarm,
feeding, when at all, chiefly from ambulating kitchens of as tattered
hawkers. The well-to-do Mexican, the "upper class," in general is a
more churlish, impolite, irresponsible, completely inefficient fellow
than even the countryman and the peon, in whom, if anywhere within its
borders, lies the future hope of Mexico. To him outward appearance is
everything, and the capital is especially overrun with the resultant
hollow baubles of humanity.
There are a few short excursions of interest about the capital. Bandits
have made several of them, such as the ascent of Popocatepetl,
unpopular, but a few were still within the bounds of moderate safety.
Three miles away by highway or street-car looms up the church of
Guadalupe, the sacred city of Mexico. It is a pleasing little town,
recalling Puree of the Juggernaut-car by its scores of little stands for
the feeding of pilgrims--at pilgrimage prices. Here are evidences of an
idolatry equal to that of the Hindu. Peons knelt on the floor of the
church, teaching their babies to cross themselves in the long intricate
manner customary in Mexico. A side room was crowded with cheap cardboard
paintings of devotees in the act of being "saved" by the Virgin of
Guadalupe--here a man lying on his back in front of a train which the
Virgin in the sky above has just brought to a standstill; there a child
being spared by her lifting the wheel of a heavy truck about to crush
it. It would be hard to imagine anything more crude either in conception
or execution than these signs of gratitude. To judge by them the Virgin
would make a dramatist of the first rank; there was not a picture in
which the miraculous assistance came a moment too soon, never & hero of
our ancient, pre-Edison melodramas appeared more exactly "in the nick of
time." The famous portrait of the miraculous being herself, over the
high altar, is dimly seen through thick glass. Inside the chapel under
the blue and white dome pilgrims were dipping up the "blessed" water
from the bubbling well and filling bottles of all possible shapes, not a
few of which had originally held American and Scotch whisky, that are
sold in dozens of little stands outside the temple.
These they carry home, often hundreds of miles, to "cure" the ailments
of themselves or families, or to sell to others at monopoly prices.
Good electric cars speed across amazingly fertile bottom lands
crisscrossed by macadam highways to Xochimilco. Nearing it, the rugged
foothills of the great mountain wall shutting in the valley begin to
rise. We skirted Pedregal, a wilderness of lava hills serving as quarry,
and drew up in the old Indian town, of a charm all its own, with its
hoar and rugged old church and its houses built of upright cornstalks or
reeds, with roofs of grass from the lake. Indians paddled about in
clumsy, leaky boats through the canals among rich, flower-burdened
islands, once floating.
Another car runs out to Popotla along the old Aztec causeway by which
the Spaniards retreated on that dismal night of July 2, 1520. Now the
water is gone and only a broad macadamed street remains. The spot where
Alvarado made his famous pole-vault is near the Buena Vista station, but
no jumping is longer necessary--except perhaps to dodge a passing
trolley. Instead of the lake of Tenochtitlan days there is the flattest
of rich valleys beyond. The "Tree of the Dismal Night," a huge cypress
under which Cortez is said to have wept as he watched the broken
remnants of his army file past, is now hardly more than an enormous,
hollow, burned-out stump, with a few huge branches that make it look at
a distance like a flourishing tree still in the green prime of life. The
day was rainy and a cold, raw wind blew. The better-clad classes were in
overcoats, and the peons in their cotton rags wound themselves in
blankets, old carpets, newspapers, anything whatever, huddling in
doorways or any suggestion of shelter. Cold brings far more suffering in
warm countries than in these of real winters.
The comandante of notorious old Belén prison in the capital spoke
English fluently, but he did not show pleasure at my visit. An
under-official led me to the flat roof, with a bird's-eye view of the
miserable, rambling, old stone building. Its large patios were literally
packed with peon prisoners. The life within was an almost exact replica
of that on the streets of the capital, even to hawkers of sweets,
fruit-vendors, and the rest, while up from them rose a decaying stench
as from the steerage quarters of old transatlantic liners. Those who
choose, work at their trade within as outside. By night the prisoners
are herded together in hundreds from six to six in the wretched old
dungeon-like rooms. Nothing apparently is prohibited, and prisoners may
indulge with impunity in anything from cigarettes to adultery, for which
they can get the raw materials.
The excursion out to the Ajusco range, south of the city, was on the
verge of danger. Zapata hung about Cuernavaca and marauders frequently
approached the very outskirts of the capital. Under our knapsacks we
struck upward through the stony village where the train had set us down,
and along a narrow road that soon buried itself in pine forests. A
bright clear stream came tumbling sharply down, and along this we
climbed. A mile or more but we picked up at a thatched hut an Indian boy
of ten as burden-bearer and guide, though we continued to carry most of
our own stuff and to trust largely to our own sense of direction. Above
came a three-hour climb through pine-forested mountains, such as the
Harz might be without the misfortune of German spick and spanness. He
who starts at an elevation of 7500 feet and climbs 4000 upward in a
brief space of time, with a burden on his back, knows he is mounting.
Occasionally a dull-gray glimpse of the hazy valley of Mexico broke
through the trees; about us was an out-of-the-way stillness, tempered
only by the sound of birds. About noon the thick forest of great pine
trees ceased as suddenly as if nature had drawn a dead-line about the
brow of the mountain. A foot above it was nothing but stunted oak
growths and tufts of bunch-grass large as the top of a palm-tree. On
the flat summit, with hints through the tree-tops below of the great
vale of Anáhuac, we halted to share the bulk of our burdens with the
Indian boy, who had not brought his "itacate." The air was most
exhilarating and clear as glass, though there was not enough of it to
keep us from panting madly at each exertion. In the shade it was cold
even in heavy coats; but merely to step out into the sunshine was to
bask like lizards.
Our "guide" lost no time in losing us, and we started at random down the
sharp face of the mountain to the valley 4000 feet almost directly below
us. Suddenly a break in the trees opened out a most marvelous view of
the entire valley of Mexico. Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl stood out as
clearly under their brilliant white mantles of new-fallen snow as if
they were not sixty but one mile away, every crack and seam fully
visible, and the fancied likeness of the second to a sleeping woman was
from this point striking. The contrast was great between the dense green
of the pine forests and the velvety, brown plain with its full, shallow
lakes unplumbed fathoms below. Farther down we came out on the very
break-neck brink of a vast amphitheater of hills, with "las ventanas,"
huge, sheer, rock cliffs shaped like great cathedral windows, an easy
stone-throw away but entirely inaccessible to any but an aviator, for an
unconscionable gorge carpeted with bright green tree-tops lay between. I
proposed descending the face of the cliff below us, and led the way down
a thousand feet or more, only to come to the absolutely sheer rock end
of things where it would have taken half the afternoon to drop to the
carpet of forest below.
There was nothing to do but to climb out again and skirt the brink of
the canyon. In the rare air we were certain a score of times of being
about to drop dead from exhaustion, yet a two-minute rest always brought
full recovery. Then came a wild scramble of an hour along sheer rocks
thick-draped with moss that pealed off in square yards almost as often
as we stepped on it, and threatened to drop us more than a half-mile to
the tree-tops below. Climbing, clinging, and circling through a
wilderness of undergrowth amid the vast forest of still, dense-green
pines, but with such views of the valley of Mexico and the great
snow-clads as to reward any possible exertion, we flanked at last the
entire canyon. In the forest itself every inch of ground was carpeted
with thick moss, more splendid than the weavings of any loom of man,
into which the feet sank noiselessly. Everywhere the peaceful stillness
was tempered only by a slight humming of the trees, and the songs of
myriad birds, not a human being within screaming distance, unless some
gang of bandits stalked us in the depth of the forest. More likely they
were by now sodden with the aftermath of Sunday festivities, and anyway
we were armed "hasta los dientes."
At length, as the day was nearing its close, we fell into what had once
been a trail. It was moss-grown and wound erratically in and out among
the trees, but went steadily down, very level compared to the work of
the preceding hours, yet so steep we several times spread out at full
length to slide a rod or more. The sun was setting when we came to the
bottom of "las ventanas" only a couple thousand feet from where we had
first caught sight of them hours before. Thereafter the trail moderated
its pace and led us to the most beautiful thing of the day, a clear
ice-cold stream at the bottom of the cliffs. We all but drank it
dry. Then on out of the canyon and across a vast field of rye, back of
which the great gorge stood like some immense stadium, with stalwart
athletic pines filling all the seats. This is the spot where Wallace's
"Fair God" burst forth upon the valley. We descended between immense
walls of pines, half unseen in the dusk and framing a V-shaped bit of
the vale of Anahuac, a perfect crimson fading to rose color, culminating
in the pink-tinted snow-clads above.
At dark we left the boy at his hut, on the walls of which his father had
just hung the two deer of that day's hunt. There was no hope of catching
the afternoon train from Cuernavaca, and we laid plans to tramp on
across the valley floor to Tizapan. But Mexican procrastination
sometimes has its virtues, and we were delighted to find the station
crowded with those waiting for the delayed convoy that ten minutes later
was bearing us cityward through the cool highland night.
I had hoped to walk from Mexico City to the capital of Honduras. That
portion of the route from former Tenochtitlan to Oaxaca and the Isthmus
of Tehuantepec, however, was not then a promising field for tramping by
any one with any particular interest in arriving. I concluded to flank
it by train. It was a chilly gray day when the little narrow-gage train
bore us close by the miraculous temple of Guadalupe, with its hilltop
cemetery and stone sails, and into the vast fields of maguey
beyond. Peons and donkeys without number, the former close wrapped in
their colored blankets, the latter looking as if they would like to be,
enlivened the roads and trails. We skirted the shore of dull Lake
Texcoco, once so much larger and even now only a few inches below the
level of the flat plain, recalling that the Tenochtitlan of the Conquest
was an island reached only by causeways. At San Juan Teotihuacan, the
famous pyramids lost in the nebulous haze of pre-Toltec history bulked
forth from the plain and for many miles beyond. The smaller, called that
of the Moon, was a mere squat mound of earth. But the larger had lately
been cleared off, and was now of a light cement color, rising in four
terraces with a low monument or building on the summit. It contains
about the same material as the pyramid of Cheops, but is larger at the
base and by no means so high, thereby losing something of the majesty of
its Egyptian counterpart.
A cheery sun appeared, but the air remained cool. Fields of maguey in
mathematically straight lines stretched up and away out of sight over
broad rolling ridges. I had put off the experience of tasting the
product until I should reach Apam, the center of the pulque industry. At
that station an old woman sold me a sort of flower-pot full of the stuff
at two cents. I expected to taste and throw it away. Instead there came
a regret that I had not taken to it long before. It was of the
consistency and color of milk, with a suggestion of buttermilk in its
taste and fully as palatable as the latter, with no noticeable evidence
of intoxicating properties. No doubt this would come with age, as well
as the sour stink peculiar to the pulquerías of the cities.
The train made a mighty sweep to the northward to escape from the
central valley, bringing a much closer and better view of the two
snow-clads, first on one, then on the farther side. By choice I should
have climbed up over the "saddle" between them, as Cortez first entered
the realms of Montezuma. A dingy branch line bore us off across broken
country with much corn toward Puebla. On the left was a view of
Malinche, famous in the story of the Conquest, its summit hidden in
clouds. I was now in the Rhode Island of Mexico, the tiny State of
Tlaxcala, the "Land of Corn," to the assistance from which Cortez owes
his fame. The ancient state capital of the same name has been slighted
by the railway and only a few decrepit mule-cars connect it with the
outer world. I slighted these, and leaving my possessions in the station
of Santa Ana, set off through a rolling and broken, dry and dusty, yet
fertile country, with the wind rustling weirdly through the dead brown
fields of corn. The inhabitants of the backward little capital were even
more than usually indifferent to "gringoes," seldom giving me more than
a glance unless I asked a question, and even leaving me to scribble my
notes in peace in a shaded plaza bench.
There is nothing but its historical memories of special interest in
Tlaxcala. It is a town of some 3000 inhabitants, a few hundred feet
higher than Mexico City, with many ancient buildings, mostly of stone,
often mere ruins, from the seams of surely half of which sprout grass
and flowers, as they do between the cobbles of its streets and its large
rambling plaza. I visited the old church on the site of which
Christianity--of the Spanish brand--was first preached on the American
continent. Here was the same Indian realism as elsewhere in the
republic. One Cristo had "blood" pouring in a veritable river from his
side, his face was completely smeared with it, his knees and shins were
skinned and barked and covered with blood, which had even dripped on his
toes; the elbows and other salient points were in worse condition than
those of a wrestler after a championship bout, and the body was tattooed
with many strange arabesques. There were other figures in almost as
distressing a state. A god only ordinarily maltreated could not excite
the pity or interest of the Mexican Indian, whose every-day life has its
own share of barked shins and painful adversities. It was amusing to
find this village, hardly larger than many a one about the home of
Mexican hacendados, the capital of a State. But the squads of rurales
and uniformed police and the civil employees of Government were very
solemn with their responsibilities. I had seen it all in an hour or two
and drifted back along the five lazy miles to Santa Ana. Tlaxcala lies
between two gaunt broken ridges, with rugged chains all about it, yet
the little State is by no means so completely _fenced in_ by nature
as the imagination that has fed on Prescott pictures.
Puebla, third city of Mexico, is even colder than the capital. The
snow-clads of the latter look down upon it from the west, and far away
to the east stands Orizaba, highest peak of Mexico. In the haze of
sunset its great mantle of new-fallen snow stood out sharply, darker
streaks that ran down through the lower reaches of snow dying out in
nothingness, as the mountain did itself, for as a matter of fact the
latter was not visible at all, but only the snow that covered its upper
heights, surrounded above, below, and on all sides by the thin gray sky
of evening. By night there was music in the plaza. But how can there be
life and laughter where a half-dozen blankets are incapable of keeping
the promenaders comfortable? In all the frigid town there was not a
single fire, except in the little bricked holes full of charcoal over
which the place does its cooking. Close to my hotel was the "Casa
Serdan," its windows all broken and its stucco front riddled with bullet
holes, for it was here that two brothers, barricading themselves against
the government of Porfirio Diaz, spilled the first blood of the long
series of revolutions and worse that has followed. Already the name of
the street had been changed to "Calle de los Mártires de Noviembre,
1910."
It is nearly three hours' walk from the plaza of Puebla to that of
Cholula, the Benares of the Aztecs, and for him who rises early it is a
cold one. What little romance remains would have fled had I made the
trip by mule-car. As it was, I could easily drop back mentally into the
days of the Conquest, for under the brilliant cloudless sky as I
surmounted a bit of height there lay all the historic scene before
me--the vast dipping plain with the ancient pyramid of Cholula, topped
now by a white church with towers and dome, standing boldly forth across
it, and beyond, yet seeming so close one half expected an avalanche of
their snows to come down upon the town, towering Popocatepetl and her
sister, every little vale and hollow of the "saddle" between clear as at
a yard distance. Then to the left, Malinche and the rolling stony hills
of Tlaxcala, along which the Spaniards advanced, with the beautiful cone
of Orizaba rising brilliant and clear nearly a hundred miles away. The
great rampart separating them from the cherished valley must have
brought bated breath even to the hardy soldiers of Cortez.
This unsurpassed view accompanied all the rest of the peaceful morning
walk. By nine I was climbing the great pyramid from the top of which the
intrepid Spaniard tumbled down the ancient gods, and about which
occurred the first of the many wholesale massacres of Indians on the
American continent. To-day it is merely a large hill, overgrown on all
sides with grass, trees, and flowers, and with almost nothing to bear
out the tradition that it was man-built. From the top spreads a scene
rarely surpassed. Besides the four mountains, the ancient and modern
town of Cholula lies close below, with many another village, especially
their bulking churches, standing forth on all sides about the rich
valley, cut up into squares and rectangles of rich-brown corn
alternating with bright green, a gaunt, low, wall-like range cutting off
the entire circle of the horizon. The faint music of church bells from
many a town miles away rode by on a wind with the nip of the mountain
snows in it. But Prescott has already described the scene with a
fidelity that seems uncanny from one who never beheld it except in his
mind's eye.
To-day the pyramid is sacred to the "Virgin of the Remedies." Gullible
pilgrims come from many leagues around to be cured of their ills, and
have left behind hundreds of doll-like figures of themselves or the
ailing limb or member made of candle wax that breaks to bits between the
fingers. Then there are huge candles without number, martyrs and
crucifixions, with all the disgusting and bloody features of elsewhere;
every kind and degree and shape and size of fetish. Cholula needs badly
another Cortez to tumble her gods down to the plain below and drive out
the hordes of priests that sacrifice their flocks none the less surely,
if less bloodily, than their Aztec predecessors.
A bright red sun came up as the train swung round to the eastward,
hugging the flanks of Malinche, and rumbled away across a sandy, very
dry, but fertile country, broken by huge barrancas or washouts, and
often with maguey hedges. Most of my day was given up to Mr. ---- come to
think of it, I did not even get his name. He drifted into the train at
the junction and introduced himself by remarking that it was not bad
weather thereabouts. He was a tall, spare man of fifty, in a black suit
rather disarranged and a black felt hat somewhat the worse for wear. He
carried a huge pressed-cardboard "telescope" and wore a cane, though it
hardly seemed cold enough for one. His language was that of a
half-schooled man, with the paucity of vocabulary and the grammar of a
ship's captain who had left school early but had since read much and
lived more. Whenever a noun failed him, which was often, he filled in
the blank with the word "proposition." Like myself, he traveled
second-class because there was no fourth.
It may be that the biography which pieced itself unconsciously together
as he talked needs a sprinkle of salt here and there, but it all had the
earmarks of veracity. He was a Briton, once a surgeon in the British
army, with the rank of captain, saw service with Roberts in Egypt, and
was with Kitchener at the relief of Khartum. Later he served in India
with the Scotch Grays. He looked the part, and had, moreover, the accent
and scars to go with it. Glimpses through his conversation into the
background beyond suggested he had since been in most parts of the
world. He liked Argentina best and the United States least, as a place
of residence. Practising as a physician and oculist, he had amassed a
moderate fortune, all of which he had lost, together with his wife and
child, and possibly a bit of his own wits, in the flood of Monterey.
Since that catastrophe he had had no other ambition than to earn enough
to drift on through life. With neither money nor instruments left, he
took to teaching English to the wealthier class of Mexicans in various
parts of the country, now in mission schools, now as private tutor. A
Methodist institution in Querétaro had dispensed with his services
because he protested against an order to make life unpleasant to those
boys who did not respond with their spending money to a daily call for
alms at the morning assembly. Six months ago he had drifted into a
little town near San Marcos, wearing the title of "professor," and got
together a class of private pupils, chief among them three daughters of
a wealthy hacendado. Rebels came one day and in the exuberance that
follows a full meal long delayed, with pulque embroidery, one of them
fired two shots through the window not far from his venerable British
head. The "professor" picked up a two-foot mahogany ruler, marched out
into the plaza and, rapping the startled rebel over the skull, took his
rifle away from him and turned it over to the delighted jefe
político. From then on his future seemed assured, for if the rest of the
town was poor, the hacendado's wealth was only rivaled by his daughters'
longing for English.
But life is a sad proposition at best. On the Monday preceding our
meeting the "professor" sat with his pupils in the shade of the broad
hacienda veranda when he saw two priests wandering toward the house
"like Jews with a pack of clothing to sell." "It's all up with the
Swede," he told himself according to his own testimony. The prophecy
proved only too true. The padres had come to order that the three
daughters be god-mothers to the "Cristo" (in the form of a gaudy doll)
that was to be "born" in the town on Christmas eve and paraded to the
cathedral of Puebla. As their ticket to heaven depended upon obedience,
none of the faithful señoritas dreamed of declining the honor, even
though it involved the expenditure of considerable of papá's good money
and required them to spend most of the time until Christmas rehearsing
for the ceremony and "praising the glory of God" with the priests in a
room of the church, locked against worldly intruders. Naturally this
left them no time for English. His mainstay gone, the "professor" threw
up the sponge and struck out for pastures new, carrying his trunk-like
"telescope" two hot and sandy leagues to catch this morning train.
At Esperanza the Briton went me one better on my own custom of "living
on the country." To the _enchiladas_, large tortillas red with
pepper-sauce and generously filled with onions, and the smaller
tortillas covered with scraps of meat and boiled egg which we bought of
the old women and boys that flocked about the train, he added a liter of
pulque. Not far beyond, we reached Boca del Monte, the edge of the
great plateau of Mexico. A wealth of scenery opened out. From the window
was a truly bird's-eye view of the scattered town of Maltrata, more than
two thousand feet almost directly below in the center of a rich green
valley, about the edge of which, often on the very brink of the
thick-clothed precipice, the train wound round and round behind the
double-headed engine, traveling to every point of the compass in its
descent. The town rose up to us at last and for the first time since
mounting to San Luís Potosí two months before, I found myself less than
a mile above sea-level. Instead of the often bare, wind-swept plateau,
immense weeds of the banana family grew up about us, and a beautiful
winding vale reeking with damp vegetation stretched before and behind us
as we slid onward. High above all else and much farther away than it
seemed, stood the majestic, snow-white peak of Orizaba. In mid-afternoon
we descended at the city of that name.
It was large, but really a village in every feature of life. Here again
were the broad eaves of one-story, tile-roofed houses, stretching well
out over the badly cobbled streets, down the center of which ran open
sewers. The place was unkempt and unclean, with many evidences of
poverty, and the air so heavy and humid that vegetation grew even on the
roofs. I wandered about town with the "professor" while he "sized it up"
as a possible scene of his future labors, but he did not find it
promising. By night Orizaba was still well above the tropics and the
single blanket on the hotel cot proved far from sufficient even with its
brilliant red hue.