Old Mexico and her lost provinces

[i]

[ii]

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[iii]

A JOURNEY IN

MEXICO, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, AND ARIZONA

BY WAY OF CUBA

By WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP

AUTHOR OF “DETMOLD” “THE HOUSE OF A MERCHANT PRINCE” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

1883

[iv]

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.

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		PAGE
Part I.—OLD MEXICO.
I.	By Way of Cuba and the Spanish Main	1
II.	Vera Cruz	16
III.	Up the Long Mountain Slope	24
IV.	The Capital	37
V.	The Projectors	54
VI.	The Ferro-carriles	70
VII.	The Railways at Work	80
VIII.	The Question of Money, and Shopping	96
IX.	Social Life, and some Notable Institutions	107
X.	The Fine Arts and Literature	120
XI.	Some Traits of Peculiar History, and the Mexican “Warwick”	134
XII.	Cuatitlan, and Around Lakes Xochimilco and Chalco	149
XIII.	To Old Texcoco	162
XIV.	Popocatepetl Ascended	175
XV.	A Banquet, and a Tragedy, at Cuautla-Morelos	185
XVI.	San Juan, Orizaba, and Cordoba Revisited	192
XVII.	Puebla, Cholula, Tlaxcala	210
XVIII.	Mines and Mining Traits, at Pachuco and Regla	227
XIX.	A Week at a Mexican Country-house	245
XX.	On Horseback and Muleback to Acapulco	263
XXI.	Conversations by the Way with a Colonel	275[vi]
Part II.—THE LOST PROVINCES.
XXII.	San Francisco	295
XXIII.	San Francisco (Continued)	324
XXIV.	The Villas of the Bonanza Kings	343
XXV.	The Vintage Season, and Monterey	359
XXVI.	A Wondrous Valley, and a Desert that Blossoms like the Rose	380
XXVII.	Visalia, Bakersfield, and Life on a Spacious Ranch	399
XXVIII.	Los Angeles	421
XXIX.	To San Diego, and the Mexican Frontier	448
XXX.	Across Arizona	469
XXXI.	Tombstone	482
XXXII.	Camp Lowell, Tucson, and San Xavier del Bac	496

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	PAGE
LAS CASAS PROTECTING THE AZTECS. By Felix Parra	Frontispiece
MEXICO, SHOWING PRESENT AND OLD FRONTIER	5
CATHEDRAL OF MEXICO	9
DOMES OF VERA CRUZ	17
MAP OF ENGLISH RAILROAD FROM VERA CRUZ TO MEXICO	25
TRANSCONTINENTAL PROFILE OF MEXICO	31
A RAILWAY JUDAS	33
A FLOWER-SHOW IN THE ZOCALO	43
COMPARATIVE LEVELS OF LAKES	46
THE HOMES OF THE POOR	49
ENTRANCE TO A TENEMENT-HOUSE	51
OLD SPANISH PALACE IN THE CALLE DE JESUS	56
SEMI-VILLA ON THE PASEO OF BUCARELLI	57
THE MODERN STYLE	58
PORCELAIN HOUSE IN SAN FRANCISCO STREET	59
THE DRIVE TO CHAPULTEPEC	63
GENERAL RAILWAY SYSTEM OF MEXICO	75
THE GREAT SPANISH DRAINAGE CUT	85
PAY CARAVAN ON THE MEXICAN NATIONAL ROAD	91
“NOT HERE FOR THEIR HEALTH”	93
MODERN SHOP-FRONTS AT MEXICO	99
THE “PORTALES” AT MEXICO	102
A “MERCERIA” AT PUEBLA	106
INTERIOR COURT-YARD OF MEXICAN RESIDENCE	111
MEXICAN COURTSHIP	113
THE DEATH OF ATALA. By Luis Monroy	123[viii]
GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ, EX-PRESIDENT OF MEXICO	139
GENERAL MANUEL GONZALES, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO	143
ENVIRONS OF MEXICO	150
SUNDAY DIVERSIONS AT SANTA ANITA	153
CREW OF “LA NINFA ENCANTADORA”	165
THE “FIND”	169
IN TIERRA CALIENTE	186
THE HILL OF EL BORREGO, AT ORIZABA	196
PRISONERS WEAVING SASHES AT CHOLULA	217
OLD FONT AT TLAXCALA	222
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN PULPIT IN AMERICA. TLAXCALA	223
PART OF CONVENT OF SAN FRANCISCO. TLAXCALA	224
SUPERINTENDENT’S HOUSE AT REGLA	241
PLOUGHMAN IN GRASS CLOAK	243
THE HACIENDA OF TEPENACASCO	246
THE THRESHING-FLOOR	249
THE TLACHIQUERO	251
NURSE AND CHILDREN AT THE HACIENDA	261
THE “DILIGENCIA”	267
OUR CAVALCADE AT IGUALA	281
THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS	290
ALCATRAZ ISLAND	297
“NOB” HILL, FROM THE BAY	299
CALIFORNIA STREET, SAN FRANCISCO	305
LONE MOUNTAIN	309
“HIGH JINKS” OF THE BOHEMIAN CLUB AMONG THE BIG TREES	313
GOLDEN GATE, FROM GOAT ISLAND	317
HIGH-GRADE RESIDENCES	327
CHINESE FISHING-BOATS IN THE BAY	331
CHINESE QUARTER, SAN FRANCISCO	335
A BALCONY IN THE CHINESE QUARTER	337
IN A CHINESE THEATRE	339
RAILWAY ROUTE: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND ARIZONA	345
PALO ALTO	354
RALSTON’S COUNTRY HOUSE	357
BOTTLING CHAMPAGNE AT SAN FRANCISCO	361
A BRANDY CELLAR, SAN JOSÉ	363[ix]
A BIT OF OLD MONTEREY	365
LOOKOUT STATION	367
CUTTING UP THE WHALE	369
THE HOTEL DEL MONTE, MONTEREY	371
CLIFFS AND FOREST AT MONTEREY	373
CHINESE FISHING VILLAGE	375
SAN CARLOS’S-DAY AT THE OLD MISSION	376
DRYING FISH AT CHINESE VILLAGE	377
COURT-HOUSE AT FRESNO	387
PRIVATE RESIDENCE AT FRESNO	393
FIRST BUILDING IN VISALIA	400
AN OLD-TIMER	401
LOGGING, BACK OF VISALIA	403
CHINATOWN, BAKERSFIELD	409
GYPSY CAMP AT BAKERSFIELD	411
A TYPICAL RANCH-HOUSE	414
SAN LUIS OBISPO	416
A RODEO	418
THE KERN RIVER CAÑON	419
TEHACHAPI PASS	422
MAIN STREET, LOS ANGELES	425
DON PIO PICO	428
MONGOLIAN AND MEXICAN	430
PARADISE	437
A MEXICAN WEDDING AT SAN GABRIEL	441
THE VINTAGE, SAN GABRIEL	443
IRRIGATING AN ORANGE-ORCHARD	445
A SYLVAN GLIMPSE AT RIVERSIDE	449
ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE	451
ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE	452
OLD MISSION AT SANTA BARBARA	455
PLAZA OF SAN DIEGO, OLD TOWN	457
OLD MISSION AT SAN DIEGO	460
DON JUAN FORSTER	461
SEÑORA FORSTER	462
FORSTER’S RANCH	463
SAN LUIS REY	465[x]
A TICHBORNE CLAIMANT	466
THE COLORADO RIVER AT YUMA	473
PASQUAL, CHIEF OF THE YUMAS	476
YUMA INDIANS AT HOME	477
DISTANT VIEW OF TOMBSTONE	484
“ED” SCHIEFFELIN	487
A TOMBSTONE SHERIFF AND CONSTITUENTS	494
APACHE PRISONERS AT CAMP LOWELL	497
AN ARIZONA WATERING-PLACE	499
CACTUS GROWTHS OF THE DESERT	501
STREET VIEW IN TUCSON	503
EXTERIOR OF MISSION CHURCH OF SAN XAVIER DEL BAC	505
INTERIOR OF CHURCH OF SAN XAVIER DEL BAC	507

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PART I.

OLD MEXICO.

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I.

Boom! Two ruddy old castles domineering a narrow
harbor entrance; on the other side a city, gray, warm-colored,
and time-stained, and the bells of the Church of
the Angels chiming for very early morning service! It
was Havana!

I began this journey to Old Mexico and her Lost
Provinces by sailing away from the foot of Wall Street,
East River, on the 31st day of March, 1881. Some
would have begun it, no doubt, by taking the railroad
to our Southern confines, and sailing by the steamers,
of medium size, which ply from New Orleans, Galveston,
and Morgan City—all places feeling very much the new
stimulus lately given to Mexican trade. Others—and
very likely they could not do better—would have taken
direct the excellent Alexandre Line, which carries the
mail from New York, calling at Havana, Progreso, Campeachy,
Frontera, and Vera Cruz.

Others, perchance, more adventurous, and fond of mixing
as much hardship as possible in their pleasure, might
have crossed the frontier at Texas, and, the new railroads
[2]being yet unfinished, been bumped and thumped a thousand
miles to the capital in the wretched diligencias
(stage-coaches) of the country.

I did none of these. I shall not be guilty of the egotism
of insisting that I did any better; but I had formed
a little plan of infusing variety into the trip without
making it too onerous. I stood boldly upon the deck of
the luxurious steamer Newport, bound for Cuba only.
From there I was to take the French packet making
regular trips from the ports of St. Nazaire and Santander
to Vera Cruz, and bringing much of the French and
Spanish migration; or a British steamer from Southampton,
or a Spanish one from Cadiz, might be taken in
the same way. The fare by any and all of the direct
sea routes is about the same, and may be set down
roughly at $85.00. The time consumed, where all connections
are expeditiously made, should be about eleven
days.

II.

There was no uncontrollable excitement on that raw
31st of March when we took our departure. People in
the great financial mart, hurrying about their stocks and
bonds, even blockaded us in an unthinking way as we
came down to the steamer. It might have been simply
a case of going to Europe, or anything else quite usual
and of little import. It was, instead, a case of going to
a land remote far beyond its distance in miles; shrouded
in an atmosphere of mystery and danger; little travelled
or sought for; the very antipodes of our own, though
adjoining it; venerable with age, though a part of a
new world; and said to have been suddenly awakened
from slumber by the first touches of a phenomenal new
development.

[3]

There are those of us whose conception of Mexico has
been composed principally of the cuts in our early school
geography, and the brief telegrams in the morning papers
announcing new revolutions. We rest satisfied with this
kind of concept about many another part of the globe as
well till the necessity arrives for going there or otherwise
clearing it up. I saw, I think, a snow volcano, and
a string of donkeys, conducted by a broad-brim hatted
peasant across a cactus-covered plain. I heard dimly
isolated pistol-shots fired by brigands, and high-sounding
pronunciamentos and cruel fusillades accompanying the
overthrow from the Presidency of General this by General
that, who would be served in the same way by General
somebody else to-morrow. To this should be added
some reminiscence of actions in the Mexican War, and
notably the portraits of General Scott and bluff old
Zachary Taylor.

To this, again, I would add fancies of buried cities in
Central America, and of Aztec antiquity, and the valor
and astuteness of Hernando Cortez and his cavaliers, remaining
from Prescott’s history of the Conquest. One
of the most captivating of volumes, this had seemed almost
mythical in its remoteness; and as to the idea of
actually verifying its scenes in person, it was beyond the
wildest imagination.

But now all at once this uncertain territory had become
real. The railroad had penetrated it, and made it
accessible to the average private citizen. Not that it
could yet be reached by railway, for the first international
line is still incomplete, though its termination is near
at hand; but a multitude of lines, undertaken by American
capital and enterprise, and aided by a Government
of liberal ideas, were traced over every part of the land,
[4]and some of them in progress. The locomotive screamed
along-side the troops of laden donkeys and in sight of
the snow volcanoes. Even the brigands were said to
have been dislodged from their fastnesses, the revolutions
had ceased, and a reign of peace and security begun.

Momentous rumors from these new enterprises were
frequent in the newspapers, and predictions indulged in
of the great increase of trade and population to result
to Mexico by them. General Grant, to whose personal
influence much of the turning of public attention in this
unwonted direction, after his first visit, should certainly
be ascribed, had taken the presidency of one of them.
Their stocks and bonds were being prepared in bank-parlors,
but as yet there was no “boom,” little that was
overt.

III.

I did not quite know, when standing on the deck of the
departing steamer, that I was to return to this dense New
York, with its tall towers and mansards and fairy-like
bridge, from the other side of the world. This journey
lengthened out into a long, desultory ramble, beginning
with Cuba, and, after Mexico, concluding with the most
remote, novel, and characteristic of our own possessions
on the Pacific slope. There is unity of subject, and even
a certain pathos, in the recollection that this latter was
once Mexican territory also. Its most obvious basis of
life is still Spanish, and it may be sentimentally considered
a kind of Alsace-Lorraine—a part of the sister republic
when it was well-nigh as large and powerful as
ourselves.

It was naturally cold on the 31st day of March, and
blustering weather followed us down the coast as far
as it dared. Then I awoke one morning early, at the
[5]warm gleam of summer in the yellow lattices of my cabin
window, and, looking out, saw that we were voyaging, on
an even keel, on the placid blue sea of the tropics. Fragrant
odors were wafted over to us from Florida, though
we did not see the land. The Pan of Matanzas came in
sight, and we studied the long, bold outline of the island
of Cuba. It was the Spanish Main. It was the perfection
of weather for piracy. If the “long, low, suspicious-looking
[6]craft, with raking masts,” which used to steal out
from sheltered covers to plunder rich galleons, had many
such days for their occupation, it was, so far at least, an
enviable one.

We had on board a Cuban who had married a Connecticut
wife, and lived so long in a Connecticut village that
he had a kind of Connecticut accent himself, and he was
taking his wife to see his family, where, no doubt, much
astonishment awaited her.

The captain, a merry and entertaining soul, had promised
us, for our last day’s dinner, a baked ice-cream. He
endeavored to get up bets on the improbability of his
being able to accomplish it; but there, sure enough, it
was, and doubters were put to scorn. There was a form
of ice-cream, frozen hard and firm, and a crust over it,
brown and smoking—a dish, as it were, typical of our
situation, as a hardy Northern element in the embrace of
the tropics. Not to continue the mystery of it, and as an
earnest that there shall be no “tales of a traveller” in
this record which are not strictly true, let it be explained
that the ice had been covered with a light froth of white
of egg, which was rapidly browned and scorched at the
cook’s galley before the interior had time to be dissolved.

IV.

And so, as I say, two ruddy stone castles, full of green
old bronze guns (we found that out afterward), looking
down upon a narrow harbor-entrance; and it was Havana!

It was the morning of the 5th of April on which we
entered it. We steamed up the strait to where it widens
out into a basin, made fast to a buoy, and had our first
glimpse of cocoa-palms, growing, unfortunately, around
[7]a cluster of coaling-sheds. Some harbor boats took us
ashore. We landed at broad stone steps pervaded by
smells, passed into the Custom-house (which had been
an old convent), and out of it into paved lanes full of
donkeys, negroes, soldiers, sellers of fruits and lottery-tickets,
engaged in transactions in a debased fractional
currency. The money of the debt-ridden island is that
of our “shin-plaster” war period, of unhappy memory. A
couple of boiled eggs in a common restaurant cost forty
cents; a ride in a horse-car, thirty-five. The wages of a
minor clerk at the same time were but $30 or $40 a
month. How does he make ends meet and provide for
his future? He buys regularly a certain amount of
hope in the Government lottery. “A demoralizing system
indeed!” I said, as I frowned over the wares of a
dealer who had lost a leg in the insurrection. I think
it was No. 11,014 I bought, however, in a grand extra
drawing, the first prize of which was to be a million, in
paper. I trust the gentle reader will feel that I repented
when I heard the result, some months after, in Mexico,
and that I should have tried just as hard to repent had
I won.

The Havanese were exercised just then over the discovery
of great frauds in their Marine Department.
Forty million dollars had been stolen, by collusion between
contractors and the commissariat, since the outbreak
of the rebellion in 1868. The Morro Castle was
full of prisoners of distinction—officers, marquises, and
counts, of the sugar aristocracy of the island, and Old
Spain—awaiting their trial by court-martial. The principal
operator, one Antonio Gassol, had already been
sentenced to two years’ confinement and the restitution
of a million of his ill-gotten gains.

The talk of not a few intelligent persons was, that the
[8]ten years’ insurrection had been purposely kept alive by
rings of contractors for purposes of spoliation, and by
ambition for military advancement. Dulce, they said—going
through the list of Captains-General—had married
a Cuban wife, and was secretly a traitor; De Rodas, when
asked for re-enforcements at a certain place, withdrew a
portion of the troops already there; Pieltan was occupied
in intriguing for the republican cause in Spain,
and the easy-going Concha for the cause of King Alfonso.
Finally, Martinez Campos and Jovellar were sent out,
and, yielding to the demand of the universal weariness,
by a little display of vigor, the one in the cabinet, the
other in the field, made an end of the languishing
struggle.

This may have been, however, merely the story of the
discontented, which should be taken with a grain of salt.
It is true, on the one hand, that the area of the island is
not great, and the despatch of forces from Spain easy; the
insurgents never held a town, and received no aid worth
mentioning from without. But, on the other hand, there
were no railroads of consequence, the ordinary roads were
wretched, and there was the wild manigua, as it is called,
half forest, half swamp, with which a good part of the
island has abounded from the date of Christopher Columbus
down. It was in the manigua that the insurgents
found refuge from pursuit.

V.

It so happened that the Ville de Brest was delayed in
her coming, and I had six or seven days of leisure in
the island. I employed part of it in a run down to Matanzas,
the second city. I saw on the way the manigua,
which is sentimentally pretty, from a distance, with[9]
masses of laurel, cypress, and graceful palms; but within
it is a thicket of intertwisted cactus, thorns, and creepers,
through which a way must be opened with the machete,
a formidable half knife, half cleaver, carried by the
peasants for general uses on the plantations, and which
served also as their weapon in the strife.

[10]

[11]

There was an International Exhibition in progress at
Matanzas, easily rivalled by almost any American county
fair. The railway ride of three hours and a half by a
ram-shackle train, run by a Chinese engineer, was hot and
dusty, but how well repaid by the first deep draughts of
satisfaction in understanding at last the heart of a tropical
country! There was the thatched cabin, shaded by
the broad-leafed banana. It was like “Paul and Virginia.”
Where was the faithful negro Domingo? The
hedges were of cactus and dwarf pine-apple. There were
groves of cocoa-nuts like apple-orchards with us, and unknown
fruits too numerous to mention. It was as if each
peasant proprietor had cultivated a gigantic conservatory,
and were indulging himself in the luxuries of life
in consideration of foregoing its necessities.

Matanzas was dull, even with its Exposition, a pretty
plaza, and the memory of a locally immortal poet, Milanes,
of whom a tablet in a wall testified that he was
born and died in a certain house. I looked into his
works at a book-stall. He wrote on “Tears,” “The Sea,”
“Spring and Love,” “The Fall of the Leaves,” “To
Lola,” and “A Coquette.” “Your mother little thought,
when she held you an infant in her arms,” he says, in
substance, to the coquette, “of what wiles and perfidies
you would be capable. Your beauteous aspect will in
time fade away, and what remorseful memories will
you not then have to look back upon!”

With this dip into the poetic inspiration of the heart
[12]of the island of Cuba let me take the train back to
town, having made a beginning of the discovery that a
glib rhyming talent—and facility in speech-making as
well—is common among the Spanish-Americans.

I visited a sugar plantation, where the negro slaves,
swarming out of a great stone barracks—the men in ragged
coffee-sacks, the women in bright calicoes—were as
wild and uncouth as if just from the Congo. Next I
went to the bathing suburb of Chorrera, where there is
a battered old fort that has done service against the pirates,
and where the American game of base-ball has
been acclimated.

VI.

Havana was gay with parks, opera-houses, clubs, and military
music. Awnings were stretched completely across
the two narrow streets of principal shops. Bright
tinting of the modern walls contrasted with a gray old
rococo architecture. An interior court of my hotel was
colored of so pure an azure that it was puzzling at the
first glance to say where the sky began and the wall
ended. The more important mansions were of a size
and stateliness within which is probably nowhere surpassed,
but neither in them nor the shabby little attempt
at a gallery were there any pictures worthy of the name.

“You will find all that—the treasures of art—in Mexico,”
the Havanese say. “Yes indeed! that is the place
for them.”

They speak with great respect of Mexico, with which,
perhaps, they have no very intimate personal acquaintance.
Up to the independence of the latter, in 1821, it
was the richest and greatest of all the Spanish possessions;
and Cuba, made more important in its turn by this
independence, was but a stopping-place on the way to it.

[13]

It is worth while to have seen Havana and Cuba as a
preliminary to Mexico. The Spanish tradition pervading
both is the same, with local modifications. It was here,
too, that Hernando Cortez prepared his immortal expedition
of discovery and conquest. Since I am preparing
my own, to follow over exactly the same course, why
should I repine that the Ville de Brest is a day or two
longer in coming?

He was a wild young fellow in the island in early
days, this Cortez, his chroniclers say, and gave little
promise of the great qualities he developed in the enterprise
which steadied him. The shilly-shally Velasquez
would have stopped the sailing of his expedition and
thrown him into prison, but he dropped down the harbor
before his preparations were half completed and finished
them elsewhere. He put to sea at last, with five hundred
and fifty men, in nine small vessels, to undertake the conquest
of an empire teeming with millions. The largest
of his vessels was of a hundred tons, and some were mere
open boats. In these he conveyed, too, sixteen horses,
which cost him, it is said of them, “inexpressibly dear.”

We make a boast of our hardihood sometimes, yet
grumble at sea-sickness, delays, the ordinary mischances
of the traveller. But think of it! To set out in such a
fashion, without steam, without charts, subject to every
bodily ill for which modern science has found a remedy,
and carrying your horses, worth well-nigh their weight in
gold, to proceed against an unknown empire! Why, we
do not know the first principles of boldness!

VII.

At last, on the 11th of April, the Ville de Brest came
in, and went out again on the same day. She was a
[14]steady-going, bourgeois-looking craft, as compared with
the elegant American steamer, and showed traces of hard
knocks in her long, plodding journey of twenty days to
this point. She treated us well enough, however, and
presented the novelty of surroundings for which I had
come aboard. There was a little, gold-laced captain, and
the crew wore white canvas hats and suits of two shades
of blue cotton, as if equipped for some charming nautical
opera. I believe I was the only English-speaking passenger;
and as it has never been known to occur to a foreigner
to practise his English, it was an excellent opportunity
for practising the languages likely to be needed
in the new country.

There was a young Frenchman who had been back to
his own country to marry a wife, and brought her with
him. There was a French engineer coming to report
for principals in Paris on Mexican mines; an agent of
a scheme for the establishment of a national bank. A
young Italian of Novara, who had “Student” printed on
his visiting-card, had secured an engagement as clerk in
the capital for three years. An elderly Spaniard was
coming over to look into the subject of forgotten heritages;
another had obtained a position in the mines at
Guanajuato. There were commercial men, and a well-to-do
Mexican family, returning from their travels, with
a son who had studied law at a Spanish university.

It has been proposed to call this body of water—made
up of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico—the
Columbian Sea, in compliment to sadly-neglected Columbus;
and it seems a good idea, but it will hardly now be
carried out. My predecessors have seen many an interesting
sight on this tropical old Spanish Main, the source,
too, of that greatest of natural mysteries, the Gulf Stream.
But these must have been in times long gone by. In the
[15]day of steam, with the swift prow always in motion, the
ocean is vacant. There is no catching of sharks and dolphins,
hardly even a covey of flying-fish. Those things
were for the long, lazy periods of calm, when the denizens
of the deep gathered curiously around the craft half
quiescent among them.

One of my predecessors in 1839—Madame Calderon
de la Barca, whose book on Mexico remains full of interest
still—was twenty-five days making the voyage from
Havana to Vera Cruz. She saw, too, as she approached,
the snow-clad peaks of Orizaba and the Cofre of Perote,
thirty leagues inland. We saw nothing of these. The
sky was of an opaque gray above low sand-hills, on which
a white surf was tumbling. We made our transit in
three days, including some stoppage by a “norther.”
The norther is of peculiar moment to the Mexican harbors
of the eastern coast; they are little more than open
roadsteads, and when it blows they cannot be entered.

---

I.

The sea of the subsiding “norther” was still running
heavily toward Vera Cruz, as if it would overwhelm it.
It was a little Venice that we saw when we came to it.
A half-mile or so of buildings, compact and solid, with
blackened old rococo domes and steeples; yellow for the
most part, scarlet, pink, green, and blue, in patches; a
stone landing-quay, and a long, light iron pier projecting
from it. At the end of the pier from a crane hung an
iron hook, and to this the imagination instantly hooked
on. It was the termination of the English railway to
the capital. By that road, with all possible expedition,
we should be borne up out of the miasmatic lands of
the coast—the over-luxuriant Tierra Caliente—to the
wonders of the interior.

To the left a reddish castellated fort. No suburbs—not
a sign of them—only long, dreary stretches of sand. Very
far down on the sand, with the sea breaking white over
her, was the English steamer Chrysolite, dragged from
her moorings by the gale and wrecked. We came in at
evening, and joined ourselves to a little cluster of steamers
and sailing-vessels made fast to buoys under the lee
of a coral reef, on which stands the disreputable old castle
of San Juan d’Ulloa. It is whitewashed in part, and
partly as blackened by time and powder as the reef itself.
A revolving lantern moved round on its summit. It was
told to the confiding that the Government kept prisoners
there to turn it; and they were instructed to look for
their dark, flitting forms and hear their lugubrious cries.
We heard all night, at any rate, the creaking of the pumps
of an American bark along-side, which had come disabled
into port, with a freight of logs from Alvarado, and could
barely keep afloat.

[17]

[18]

It so happened that it was the anniversary of the arrival
of Cortez, in the year 1519. He had arrived on the
evening of Thursday of Holy Week, and so had I. It
was on the morning of Good Friday that I went ashore.
We were taken off in small boats, and our ship unloaded
by lighters, for there is not one of these Mexican harbors
where a ship can lie up to a wharf in safety.

More than the usual embarrassments await the ordinary
traveller on the quay at Vera Cruz, by so much as
he is apt to know less of Spanish than of French—in
which most of the dearly-bought early foreign experience
is acquired—and nobody will tell him the truth. Let it
be fixed in mind that but one train a day starts for the
capital, and this at eleven at night. The designing bystanders
make you take your baggage to a hotel, pretending
that no other course is possible. Take it, instead, to
the depot at once and get rid of it, and then see the town.

For the town is by all means to be seen. One had
not expected much of a place the reputed home of pestilence,
and I shall not advise a lengthened stay; but, from
the point of view of the picturesque, it has some pleasant
surprises.

Founded by the Count de Monterey in the early part
of the seventeenth century—for it is not quite the site
of the original Vera Cruz of Cortez, which was above—it
has now attained a population of about seventeen thousand.
[19]The principal shops had a large, well-furnished
aspect, especially those in groceries and heavy hardware.
The Custom-house square was piled to repletion with
bales of cotton, railroad iron, and miscellaneous goods
awaiting transit.

I walked, the very first thing, into a large, cool public
library, which had once been a convent. It was not much
of a public library, the books being few, and to a certain
extent bound in vellum, as if they too had belonged to
the convent; but it was public, and what one did not
expect.

The churches were of a well-proportioned, solid, grandiose,
rococo architecture, and had charming bells. The
principal one, in a little shaded plaza, had its dome encrusted
with colored china tiles, which shone in the sun—a
feature waiting in plenty farther on. They were
draped in black, and crowded with worshippers to-day,
and abounded in strange figures of bleeding Christs, with
other evidences of a florid form of devotion.

Grass grew in joints of the pavement in the minor
streets, as I had seen it, for instance, in some such place
as Mantua. Long water-spouts project from the tops of
the flat-roofed white and yellow houses, and upon these
sit the solemn zopilotes. All the world knows that the
street-cleaning of Vera Cruz is conducted by the ravens,
or buzzards; but all the world does not know with what
a dignity these large zopilotes, of a glossy blackness, often
pose themselves immovably on the eaves against the deep
blue sky. They might be carved there for ornament.
Many a street-cleaning department is at least less sculpturesque,
and perhaps less efficient.

The principal thoroughfare, called of the Independence,
leads to a short, concrete-covered promenade, bordered
with benches and a double row of cocoanut-palms,
[20]and this to the open country. It is an early discovery
that the Mexican is patriotic. He is fond of naming his
streets and squares after his military achievements, and
particularly the Cinco de Mayo (the Fifth of May). We
shall hear plenty more of it, this Cinco de Mayo. It was
won at Puebla over the French, in 1862. He attaches
also to cities the names of his heroes. Thus Vera Cruz
itself is Vera Cruz of Llave, a general and governor;
Oaxaca, Oaxaca of Juarez, the sagacious President; and
Puebla, Puebla of Zaragoza, its commandant on the
5th of May above-named.

There were notices of a bull-fight posted on the dead
walls. Nearly all typical notes are struck at once—plaza,
Renaissance churches, patriotism, bull-fight, and tropical
vegetation. I took a tram-car of a peculiar, wide, open
pattern (made, however, in New York) out to the open
fields, and saw a dancing-place, a ball-ground, and the
dark, heavily walled-in cemetery.

The road to this latter should not be grass-grown, if
half the tales of dread told abroad be true. And yet
there are apologists even for the yellow-fever, or rather
those who say that its ravages are greatly magnified.

I fell in with the Yankee captain of the disabled bark
which had lain by us during the night. He was sitting
on a low stone post at a street corner, and was half disconsolate,
half desperate, by turns. He could find no dry-dock
in which to lie up for repairs; and he could get no
steam-pump, by the aid of which he might have kept on
his way. He was condemned to see his venture sold for
a song, for want of means to save it.

If little, as I say, was expected from the land at this
place, a good deal, on the other hand, was expected from
the water, at an ancient port, the New York of Mexico,
receiving nine-tenths of the commerce of a nation of ten
[21]million people. But not a year passes without a number
of disasters, which has led the underwriters to make
their risks to Vera Cruz about five times higher than to
most other ports. The aggregate of these losses for a
brief time would pay the cost of works needed to make
the inhospitable roadstead a harbor.

A few rudimentary preparations are absolutely necessary
before Mexico can enter upon the expected period
of prosperity, and the creation of harbors in some degree
commensurate with the new transportation facilities is
one of them. A breakwater plan will, no doubt, have to
be adopted like that so much in use on our great lakes
and the Channel ports of Europe. It was of interest to
hear, during my stay in the country, that this need had
impressed itself upon the authorities at Vera Cruz and
Tampico, and that they had taken the step of counselling
on what was best to be done with the American
engineer, Captain Eads, who was engaged in his unique
scheme of a ship railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

II.

I had the pleasure of spending the evening, pending
the departure of the train, in a large, cool, roomy house,
with the American consul. He had been a resident for
twelve years, and had brought up a family of daughters
here. It did not seem, at first sight, an attractive place
in which to bring up a family; but they saw a good deal
of company from the ships in port, took an occasional
run to the capital, or a vacation at Jalapa or Cordova,
above the danger-line, and seemed well content.

The consul was himself a physician, and had much to
say on the subject of the yellow-fever. He insisted that it
was epidemic, but not contagious. The local authorities
[22]put afflicted patients in their hospitals along-side others
suffering from ordinary sickness, and these latter do not
take it.

“Great damage,” he said, “is done to the commercial
interests of both countries by the annoying restrictions
of quarantine arising from this cause. There is no more
need of quarantine against yellow-fever than against common
fever and ague, since it cannot be transmitted.”

He quoted eminent medical authority at New Orleans
as sharing his views. From which it would seem that the
subject is worth careful looking into from official sources,
in order that, if there be a mere popular delusion, it may
be dispelled. As I write the Mexican Government has
just granted authority to the steamer line which carries
the mail into New Orleans to reduce the number of its
trips to one each month during the quarantine, increase
its freight and passenger rates fifty per cent., and, if the
traffic does not pay even under the increase, to abandon
it entirely.

The consul, in conclusion, had known but one countryman
of ours to die of it during his stay, and only a few
to be attacked. I may say, however, that the consul succeeding
this one—who has since gone away—arrived fresh
from Minnesota, and died at his post within a week.

Another interesting subject of talk with the consul
was the tariff laws and the usages of the port of entry,
naturally of leading importance here. The tariff system,
based on an original law of 1872, has been greatly tampered
with since, and is in a confused state; so that, with
the best intentions, importers are apt to be visited with
double duties, fines, detentions of goods, and law-suits.
There are some three hundred and seventy-eight articles
in the specified list. New articles are charged for after
the manner of those which they resemble. Thus, when
[23]the article of celluloid was first introduced there was
doubt whether it ought to be taxed twenty-nine cents a
kilogram as bone, or $2.20 a kilogram as ivory, and the
decision was finally in favor of the latter.

The merchant must use the names employed in the
country. Thus, our “muslin” should be merely “shirting”
or “calico;” while what is understood here by muslin
is really lawn, taxed twice as much. The least variation
in a label or form of package is visited with penalties.
Storage in the warehouses, too, is estimated, not by
the space occupied, but by the package, which is a hardship.
A case is told of where ordinary argenté hooks-and-eyes,
which should pay nineteen cents a kilogram,
were charged for as “plated silver,” which pays $1.15,
and then a double duty imposed for “false declaration,”
making the total $2.30 a kilogram. As a rule, a “venture”
is not a success. The laws, framed with excessive
severity against contrabandists, whom they often fail to
reach, afflict well-meaning persons. They make the consignee
of goods subject to all the penalties; and many
of these latter are afraid to touch, without the most ample
guarantees, consignments of goods which they have
not specifically ordered. The Germans succeed best in
this traffic, through their painstaking attention to the
local requirements.

“I will tell you a story,” said the consul, “of an unlucky
fellow who came here from England with a small
venture of fancy goods, part free of duty. The whole
cost him originally $1200; and he had consulted the
Mexican consul at Liverpool, and thought he knew what
he was about. When he got through the Custom-house
his total charges and fines had amounted to $2850. He
sold his stock for $2000, and borrowed money to pay the
difference and get out of the country.”

---

I.

There is but one train a day, each way, on the English
railway, and the journey occupies twenty hours. The
road is a great piece of engineering, and has been described
more than anything else in Mexico. Photographs—almost
the only good ones to be had in the country—are
plentiful, displaying its notable points. It climbs
seven thousand six hundred feet to the table-land in a
distance of about two hundred miles, the whole way to
the capital being about two hundred and sixty. It has
the transporting of the greater amount of construction
material brought into the country for the new roads, and
has lately been quite profitable. A first-class fare is $16;
a second-class, $12.50; and baggage is charged for, as on
the Continent of Europe.

Behold us at last at the station, at eleven o’clock at
night, ready to climb to the capital—but how unlike our
great predecessor, Cortez—by railway. No, indeed; poor
hero! he had to linger at the coast for months before
beginning his long and painful march, with a battle at
every step. Nor was it by the same route. He went in
by Tlaxcala, Cholula, Puebla, and so over between the
great snow-peaks of Popocatepetl and Ixtacihuatl (the
White Woman), down to the gleaming lakes and palaces
of ancient Tenochtitlan. In this course he was followed
by General Scott in his turn. The old diligence road—of
their adventures on which my predecessors have written
so much—continued practically the same route, going
first by National Bridge and beautiful Jalapa.

[25]

[26]

I say beautiful Jalapa—although I have not been
there myself—because all testimonies point with such
a unanimity to the charms of soil and climate, and the
beauty of the feminine type, in what is considered a peculiarly
favored spot, that I think there can be no doubt
about it.

There were no sleeping-cars; but the carriages, divided
into compartments for eight, and comfortably padded (on
the European plan), filled their place very well. The
passengers in the third-class cars had already begun the
night with a boisterous singing and playing of harmonicas.
To-morrow was the Sabado de Gloria (or Holy Saturday),
an occasion of merry-making, and they were taking
an earnest of it. A car containing half a company of
dusky Indian soldiers, who act as an escort, was coupled
on to the train.

The associates in the compartment in which I established
myself were the French engineer sent out to report
for principals in Paris on Mexican mines, and the
young Frenchman bringing back a bride from his own
country. All at once there entered it so lawless and
bizarre-looking a figure that the French engineer sent
out to report on mines to his principals in Paris thought
it prudent to descend hastily and seek quarters elsewhere.
The rest of us, though remaining, were, perhaps, in no
small trepidation. It was the first view at close quarters
of a dashing type of Mexican costume and aspect which
is peculiarly national.

Our new friend was dressed in a short black jacket,
[27]under which showed a navy revolver, in a sash; tight
pantaloons, adorned up and down with rows of silver
coins; a great felt sombrero, bordered and encircled with
silver braid; and a red handkerchief knotted around his
neck. A person in such a hat seemed capable of anything.
And I had forgotten to mention silver spurs,
weighing a pound or two each, upon boots with exaggerated
high and narrow heels. This last, by-the-way,
is a peculiarity of all boots and shoes in the market,
which aim thus, it would seem, to continue the old Castilian
tradition of a high instep.

Would it be his plan to overawe us with his huge
revolver, alone?

Or would he, at a preconcerted signal, be joined by
confederates from the third-class car or a way-station,
who would assist him to slaughter us?

The traveller is rare who arrives in Mexico for the
first time without a head full of stories of violence. The
numerous revolutions, the confused intelligence which
reaches us from the country, give a color to anything of
the kind; and the stories retain their hold for a time
even in the most frequented precincts.

We got under way. The new arrival, instead of devouring
us, proved the most amiable of persons, and
we were soon upon excellent terms with him. He was
a wealthy young hacendado, or planter, returning to
estates of his, on which he said six hundred hands were
employed. He offered cigars, gave us details in answer
to our eager curiosity about his novel dress; and we had
shortly even tried on—bride and all—the formidable
sombrero, and learned that the price of such an one in
the market is from $20 to $30. The silver-bound sombrero,
and ornaments of coins, are a favorite kind of
Mexican extravagance even among the lower classes,
[28]which is perhaps accounted for by the lack of proper
places of deposit for savings in other forms.

II.

It was moonlight. Sleep on such a night was out of
the question. Not a foot of the scenery ought to be lost.
But the padded coach was comfortable; the fatigues of
the day had been severe. The lively conversation became
fitful, then lapsed into long silences. The events of that
first night, half dozing, half waking, sometimes even
alighting at the little stations, seem wholly like a dream—the
waking part, if possible, stranger than the other.

Palms and bananas and dense coffee shrubbery, with
hamlets of thatched cottages sleeping peacefully among
them; a glimpse of a cataract; an Indian mother singing
to her baby; perfumes coming in at the window;
statuesque, silent men in blankets, and Moorish-looking
women, offering fruits; stations from the outer doors of
which, when reached, no town was visible, but only an
immense darkness; persons taking coffee in lighted interiors;
the dusky soldiers laughing loud in their compartment;
a few startling words of English, sometimes
with a Southern or even Hibernian accent, spoken by
imported employés of the line meeting to exchange a
comment, generally unfavorable, on their situation—these
are the impressions that stamp themselves upon
the memory.

As soon as the first gray of daylight appears it seems
incumbent on us to begin to admire the country. We
are not far past Cordoba, the centre of its most important
coffee-growing interest.

“Pouf!” says our friend, the hacendado, with an air
of disdain.

[29]

He will not take the trouble to look out of the window.
He expects things very much better. We have,
in fact, passed remarkable scenes in the night, but the
best is still before us, and presently begins.

At a little station called Fortin we commence to wind
along the side of one of the vast sudden gorges which
impede travel in the country, the barranca of Metlac.
There are horseshoe curves which almost permit the
traditional feat in which the brakeman of the rear car
is said to light his pipe at the locomotive. We pass
tunnels and trestle bridges, see our route above and below
us on the hills in such varied ways that it is hardly
possible to understand that these are not so many different
roads instead of the same. There is a point
above Maltrata, distant but two and a half miles in a
direct line, which must be reached by twenty miles of
zigzag.

The history of this road, from the political point of
view, presents hardly fewer obstacles and vicissitudes
than those opposed by nature to its engineers. It has
passed, in its time, under the rule of forty different presidencies,
and lost and recovered its charter in the revolutions.
Though of so moderate length it required over
thirty years and $30,000,000 to build it.

The passengers ran out at the small stations for flowers,
with which we adorned ourselves. So, too, wreaths were
hung about the neck of Cortez’s horse in his progress,
and a chaplet of roses upon his helmet. We gave the
new bride heliotrope, roses, jasmine, and the splendid
large scarlet flower—the tulipan—which may pass for
the type of tropical beauty.

The sun came up and lighted Orizaba, rising 17,375
feet beside us to the right, making it first rosy-red, then
golden. The peak is a perfect sugar-loaf in form, with
[30]nothing splintered and savage about it, as in Switzerland.
It seems almost too tame at first—a sort of drawing-master’s
mountain—and, above the tropical landscape, is like
snow in sherbet. The city of Orizaba is an important
small place, the scene of a dashing surprise of the Mexicans
by the French, at the hill of El Borrego. It has
charming torrents, which furnish water-power for cotton
and paper mills. One of these torrents, conveyed in an
arched aqueduct, turns the machinery of the ingenio, or
sugar plantation, of Jalapilla, once a country residence of
Maximilian.

A delegation of relatives had come down the night before
to await our young couple here. What embracing
and chattering! A Mexican embrace has a character of
its own. The parties fall upon each other’s necks, as we
are accustomed to see done on the stage. It is given,
too, between mere acquaintances, almost as commonly as
shaking hands.

A vivacious sister-in-law aimed to give the new-comer
an idea of what was before her in her future home.
“Such flowers as I have in the court-yard!” she said, raising
her eyes, with an expressive gesture; “such oranges,
camellias, azaleas! Ah yes, indeed, I believe it well.”

“And Jack?” inquired the husband, addressed as Prosper;
“how always goes poor Jack?”

“Ah! he is dead,” replied the vivacious sister-in-law.
“I regret to tell you, but so it is.”

It appeared that Jack was a favorite monkey, and for
a moment his untimely fate cast a certain gloom over the
company.

III.

From the heights where we were little villages, with
squares of cultivated fields around them, were seen at vast
[31]distances below, with the effect of those miniature topographical
preparations in relief displayed at international
exhibitions.

It greatly simplifies Mexico to remember that, in profile,
it is a long, continuous mountain-slope, rising from
the Atlantic to a central table-land, and falling, though
more gradually, on the other side to the Pacific. Along
the ascents, as well as at the top, are some benches, or
level breathing-places. These table-lands are the chief
seats of population, and they are utilized as much as
possible for the lines of the north and south railways.

This steep formation accounts for absence of navigable
streams and for the existence of climates verging from
tropical to temperate, nearly side by side. The sharpness
of contrasts in climate is scarcely to be appreciated by
the hasty voyager. The really tropical vegetation is succeeded
by a kind which to the eye of the American of
the North is quite as exotic. Banana and cocoa-nut are
followed by a hardy kind of fan-palm; by nopal, or
prickly-pear, as large as the apple-tree with us; by the
tall, straight organ-cactus, in use for hedges; and the
remarkable maguey, or century-plant.

What would not some of our American conservatories
or a certain well-known New York club give for some
of these splendid specimens! The spiky maguey, like a
sheaf of sword-blades, grows eight and ten feet high. It
is the typical production of the central table-land. Its
[32]sap furnishes in extraordinary quantities the beverage
called pulque—the wine of the country. From it, in addition,
are made thatch, fuel, rope, paper, and even stuffs
for wearing apparel.

Our third-class passengers celebrated their Sabado de
Gloria with great spirit, by shouting, and firing pistols
and Chinese crackers from the car windows. Teams of
mules, with their load, whatever it might be, gayly
adorned, showed that it was being equally observed in
the country. It is a day devoted by custom to the particular
abasement of Judas, who is treated as a kind of
Guy Fawkes and dishonored in effigy. Venders parade
the streets with grotesque images of him, and children
at this time estimate their fortune in the number of
Judases they possess, just as at the season of All-Souls
it is in cakes, gingerbread, and even more substantial
viands, fashioned into death’s-heads, cross-bones, and
coffins.

At Apizaco, the junction of a branch-road to Puebla,
we met a merry excursion, decorated with rosettes and
streamers. It had two mammoth Judases, stuffed with
fire-works, one on the locomotive, the other on a baggage-car.
The former was blown up, as a kind of compliment
to us by way of exchange of ceremonies with our own
train, amid hilarious uproar.

We had now entered upon the central table-land of
Mexico. Long, dotted, perspective lines of maize and
maguey stretched to distant volcanic-looking hills. A
few laborers in white cotton were ploughing with wooden
ploughs, after the pattern of the ancient Egyptians.
At the stations squads of a mounted rural police, in buff
leather uniforms and crimson sashes, which give them
a certain resemblance to Cromwell’s troopers, salute the
train.

[33]

The sparse towns consist of a nucleus of excellently
built old churches amid an environment of mud-colored
habitations. They are in crying need of whitewash.
Will they ever get it?

The face of the country was not the verdant paradise
that may have been expected, but parched and brown.
We had come at the end of the rainy season. Small
columns of dust, whirling like water-spouts, were a constant
feature of the landscape. A stage-coach going
along a distant road was marked by its own dust, as a
locomotive by its smoke.

Isolated houses there were none, with the exception
of (at long intervals) some gloomy, square, fort-like hacienda,
with straw-stacks and flocks and herds near it.
[34]Indian peasants offered for sale, all along the way, cakes
spiced with green and red peppers. The village of
Apam is the centre of the Bordelais of the pulque industry.
The new-comer here usually makes his first trial
of that beverage, milk-like in aspect, but somewhat viscid
and sour to the taste, with heady properties. It does not
commend itself to favor on a first acquaintance. Wry
and contemptuous grimaces are made over it, but in time,
as occurred in my own case, it may become very palatable,
as it is said to be healthful. It is poured into little
earthen pitchers from bags of whole sheep-skins, with the
wool-side in, like the wine-skins of the East and “Don
Quixote.” These bags, resembling dressed pigs, lie about
on the ground or the freight-car, with their legs dumbly
kicking up in the air, in many a grotesque attitude.

But one glimpse of real Aztec antiquity along the way,
and that at San Juan Teotihuacan, thirty miles from the
capital. The deceptive shapes of the hills, which assume
symmetrical forms, had frequently produced a throb of
half self-delusion, but here are two genuine pagan teocallis,
pyramids dedicated to the sun and moon, and a
great area covered with broken fragments and vestiges
of tombs. It is thought to have been old and ruined
even in the time of the Aztecs. Children offer at the
train caritas, as they call them (“little faces”), and other
fragments of earthen-ware, together with occasional pots
and idols of large size, which they represent as having
been dug up out of the soil. They have certainly been
buried in the soil; but later, finding that the manufacture
of spurious antiquities is a thriving industry, one
takes leave to question for what length of time.

And yet, what can it matter? These ancient-seeming
jars, with their symbols and images of the war-god and
what not upon them, are at least unique and historically
[35]correct. One does well to bring home what he can get,
for default of better, and not ask too many questions.

San Juan is a place that one mentally makes a note
of as to be returned to; and I spent some pleasant days
there later, poking among the potsherds of the past, and
picking up ordinary caritas and bits of flint weapons, for
myself.

IV.

But no dallying now. The shades of evening draw
on. We are weary and travel-stained with the twenty
hours’ journey and the many excitements of the day; but
the great moment is at hand. Gleams of distant water,
thickets of maguey and cacti, with a peasant stealing
mysteriously among them, behind a troop of donkeys!
The geography picture is realized to the life. The water
comes nearer; we skirt its borders. Can it be that these
lonesome, shallow expanses, without vestige of sail or
even skiff, their muddy shores white with a deposit of
salt and alkali—can it be that these are the great lakes of
Tenochtitlan, on which Cortez launched his brigantines?
And the famous floating gardens, where are they? All
in good time! We shall see. The sacred hill of the
Virgin of Guadalupe, with a cluster of interesting-looking
churches upon it, is passed. Remains of ruined haciendas
and fortifications, and dilapidated adobe hovels, appear.
We run out upon a long, low causeway, skirted
by the arches of an aqueduct, over marshes. Other similar
causeways are seen converging from a distance. One
had not expected to find everything so unrelievedly flat.
It is like climbing the mountain to find the Louisiana
lowlands. A chain of yet higher mountains surrounds
it, it is true; the snowy summits of Popocatepetl and its
mate, the White Woman, always shine upon it from a
[36]distance, but Mexico itself is a basin. It has been under
water, and would be yet, but for artificial works by
which the lakes have been made to recede and left
behind them these alkali-whitened margins.

It is a disillusionment very like that of approaching
Venice at low tide.

---

I.

There was a custom-house at the Buena Vista station.
Part of its profits are national, part municipal. The capital
is in a Federal District, ruled by a governor, not unlike
the District of Columbia. There is little inter-state
comity as yet among the different parts of the republic.
Each state still collects dues at its own frontiers, and the
towns take tolls (the alcabalas) on merchandise and food
entering their gates.

Mexico is not a cheap city of abode. Its hackney-coaches,
as in European countries as well, are an exception
to the general rule; but even these, with the various
commissionaires, who zealously aid you in putting your
baggage upon them, after getting it through the custom-house,
are dear for the first time. Travelling is like so
many other things in the world: you pay a bonus, or initiation
fee, in the beginning, after which the charges
are in a declining series. The particular hackney-coach
which conveyed us, a travelling companion and myself,
may have been a trifle dearer on account of a driver who
aspired to a few words of English. Not that we greatly
wanted it. The injury to one’s feelings in these cases of
the indifferent reception by the native of your first overtures
in his own language (as if his own language were
not good enough for him, forsooth), is sufficient, without
[38]a pecuniary burden added. But he charged for it, as I
say.

“Well, good-night,” he said, saluting us as patrons.
“Wass you wants?” And, after having passed the long,
shady strip of park called the Alameda, he even ventured
upon a certain facetiousness, as, “Wills you to want a
wiskey?”

He had learned this proud acquirement in the military
service on the frontiers of Texas.

A long, dark ride conveyed us to the principal hotel.
As it was once the palace of the Emperor Iturbide, after
whom it is named, it should have something stately about
it, and so it has. There is a high, sculptured door-way, of
an Aztec touch in the design, though not in the details,
and long, grotesque water-spouts project into the street.
Within is a large, dark, arcaded court, from which open
café and billiard-room, the leading resort of the golden
youth of the town.

The office is a dark little box of a place, with two serious
functionaries, who seem to receive the visitor only
with suspicion. The gorgeous and affable hotel clerk of
northern latitudes is unknown. In the rear are more
courts, not arcaded; and around all of these the rooms
are ranged in several stories.

It is not so late on the evening of his arrival but that
the traveller may, after dinner, still take a stroll. He
will be apt to fancy at first, from the quietude, that his
hotel is not on a principal street; but it is in the most
central part of the city—on the street which, with three
others running parallel for say half a mile, and the included
cross-streets, contain the principal retail traffic.

It is an early discovery that Mexico is a grave and
not a gay city. There are no crowds on the sidewalks,
no eating of ices in public, no cafés chantants, nothing
[39]Parisian. By nine or ten o’clock the people seem to have
retired, perhaps to be up betimes in the morning for the
work of the day. A military band plays three evenings
in the week, but even these concerts, except on Sundays,
are so sparsely attended that the men seem discoursing
the music for their own amusement.

Policemen are stationed at short intervals apart in the
quiet streets, with their lanterns set in the middle of
the roadway. They are obliged, by regulation, to signal
their whereabouts every quarter of an hour. The sound
of their whistles, which have a shrill, doleful note, like
that of a November wind, is heard repeated from one to
another all the night through.

II.

As Mexico has not, until lately, at any rate, expected
tourists, there are almost none of the usual appurtenances
for their pleasure and information to be met with. While
this may have its annoyances, if an ardent curiosity be
baffled too long, on the other hand freedom from the
sense of responsibility to exacting Baedekers and Murrays
has advantages of its own. The visitor with an eye
for the picturesque dips into a delicious feast of novelties,
makes discoveries on every hand, and has the pleasure
of testing the value of his own unaided conclusions.
By daylight, with all its bright colors upon it, and its
normal stir of life going on, the famous capital is a very
different place from what it was at night. By little and
little misapprehensions are shaken off. After the first
moments of disappointment we like it always more instead
of less, and in the end it takes a powerful hold.

Here at length is the great central plaza, in which
events of such moment have been transacted. To actually
[40]sit down upon a bench in the midst of it, and gaze
comfortably about—can it be possible?

The imposing cathedral makes a new pyramid on the
spot where once stood the pyramid of the Aztec war-god.
These stones should be ankle-deep with all the blood of
various sorts that has been spilled upon them. For a
moment one renews the pagan superstition. I would
gladly see set up again, for a brief instant, old Hutzilopotchli,
the war-god, aloft on his ancient terrace, hear
the beat of the lugubrious war-drum, and see the mournful
procession of captives winding up to the sacrifice, in
charge of the sinister priests with their black locks flowing
down upon their shoulders.

But not one instant too long. What! hideous priests,
you will indeed lay them down on the sacrificial stone,
and raise the knives of flint above their bared breasts for
the monstrous slaughter? Not one hair of their heads
shall be harmed. San Jago and Spain! When was Castilian
ever known to turn his back upon a foe? Up the
pyramid we go, leaping from step to step, though with
no better weapon than a sun-umbrella in hand, to their
deliverance. Ay, howl if you will, baffled miscreants,
and rattle your spears and arrows like hail upon us!
Down with your old Hutzilopotchli till he crashes in
fragments below there. Your carven sacrificial stone
shall be set up in the court-yard of the Academy of
Fine Arts of San Carlos for this, and your great calendar-stone,
a show-piece, against the side of the cathedral.

It is a good day’s work. I estimate that there were in
that train of captives not less than a hundred souls!

But it is hard to conjure up images of desperate conflicts,
though there have been so many, in this bright
sunshine, with the multitude of pretty, novel sights. On
one side of the square a beneficent institution, the National
[41]Loan Establishment, occupies what was once the
site of the palace of Cortez; on another, the long, white,
monotonous National Palace, the site of that of Montezuma.
In the centre is a charming little garden, with
benches, the Zocalo.

The cathedral, like most of the earlier architecture, is
in the Renaissance style, far gone to the vagaries of rococo.
It is saved from finicality, however, by its great
size and massiveness, except in respect to the terminations
of its towers, which are in the shape of immense
bells. Adjoining, and forming a part of it, is a parish
church, in a rich, dark-red volcanic stone, with carving
that recalls the fantastic façades of Portuguese Belem.
What a painting it would make, on one of the perfect
moonlight nights, which bring out every line of the
sculpture softly, and show the whole like a lovely vision!

There are little book-stalls in front, and gay booths devoted
to the sale of refreshing drinks—aguas nevadas—from
large, simple jars and pitchers of most noble and
pleasing shapes. The drinks are dispensed by dusky
Juanas and Josefas of Indian blood, with straight black
braids of hair down their backs. With a characteristic
taste the fronts of their booths are often wholly studded
and banked up with flowers, and furnished with inscriptions
formed in letters of carnation pinks and blue cornflowers.

Figures go by in blankets which one hankers to take
from them for portières or rugs. The men of the poorer
sort wear or carry, universally, the serape—a blanket with
a slit in the centre for the insertion of the head. Apart
from its artistic patterns, it is a useful garment in many
emergencies. It is not the most improbable thing in the
world that, in the course of the Mexican revival, we may
yet see it introduced in the States, and running a course
[42]of popularity like the ulster. The corresponding garment
of the women is the rebozo, a shawl or scarf, generally
of blue cotton, which, crossed over the head and
lower part of the face, gives a Moorish appearance. The
background of life here seems more like opera than sober
existence. Two other sides of the square are occupied
by long arcades, among the merchants of which, protected
from the sun and rain, one may wander by the
hour, watching the shrewd devices of trade, and picking
up those knick-knacks, trifling in the country of their
origin, which are certain to be curiosities elsewhere.
From time to time pass across the view, dark and Egyptian-like,
in a peculiar dress of bluish woollen, trudging
under heavy burdens, Indians who have yet preserved
the tradition of their race. Followed to their homes,
they are found to dwell, among the ruined walls of the
outskirts, in adobe huts which can have changed little
since the time of the Conquest.

These genuine Aztecs have peculiarly soft, pleasant
voices, in contrast with the Spanish voice, which is apt
to be harsh. They are shiftless and squalid, but their
manners are above their surroundings. It is a favorite
way with the Mexican to say, “This is your house;” and
I have had said to me on being introduced, “Well, now,
remember! number so-and-so, such a street, is your
house.”

Having looked into one of these Indian abodes, and
asked an elderly woman, by way of making talk, if it
were hers, she replied, “Yes, Señor, and yours also.”

Neither in the Zocalo nor the Alameda (a park, which
holds somewhat the position of the Common, in Boston),
are there trees with the hoary antiquity one might expect
in such time-honored places. But it appears that the setting
out of the trees, and the formation of the Zocalo[43]
entirely, is of modern date, the work of Maximilian, a
monarch who, in his short, ill-fated reign, had many
excellent projects.

[44]

[45]

The Zocalo is occasionally allowed to be enclosed, and
an admission-fee charged, for select festivities. The orations
were delivered there, for instance, on the national
festival of the 5th of May. When I first arrived a flower-show
was in progress. I have never seen anything
more charming of the sort. Our florists might get a
score of new ideas for the arrangement of bouquets.
Strawberries were introduced into some for effects of
color. Little streamers with gallant mottoes floated from
others. There were lanterns, and birds in cages. A military
band played, and people promenaded—dandies with
silver-braided hats, stout duennas, and fathers of families,
and slender, lithe señoritas, wearing the graceful mantilla
instead of the Paris bonnet.

In front of the Zocalo a permanent flower market is
held every morning, which is almost as pleasing.

Tramway cars run out of the plaza in numerous directions.
The city early utilized this invention, and boasts
of having one of the most complete systems existing.
The inscriptions on them have an attractive look. One
would like to take all the different routes at once. Patience!
it is all accomplished in time. Shall we go to
Guadalupe Hidalgo, with its treasures and its miraculous
Virgin; to Tacubaya and San Angel, with their villas;
Dolores, with its pensive cemetery, full of sculptures; La
Viga, with its picturesque canal, giving access to the chinampas
of flowers and vegetables; the gates of Belem
and Niño Perdido, familiar in the story of the American
conquest; Chapultepec? Yes, that shall be the very
first—Chapultepec, theatre of exploits of American valor
and of moving events in every historic epoch.

[46]

Mexico is extraordinarily flat, and laid out as regularly
at right angles as our own symmetrical towns. At the
ends of all the streets the view is closed by mountains.
Its flatness, together with its position in reference to the
adjoining lakes, are circumstances which have occasioned
great solicitude in the past, and still call for almost as
much, on a different ground. Formerly it was danger of
inundation; now it is defective drainage. Bad odors
offend the nostrils, and stagnant gutters and heaps of
garbage the sight, of the wayfarer about the interesting
streets.

The drainage problem, divested of the mystery with
which it has been surrounded in learned treatises, is
simply this. When the vast slope from the sea has been
surmounted, and the Valley of Mexico—as high as the
Swiss pass of St. Gothard—is reached, it is found to be
a shallow depression, containing six lakes. These are of
many different levels—Texcoco the largest and lowest.
On the edge of Texcoco, or in the midst of it, like another
Venice, with canals for streets, was built ancient
Mexico. This principal lake received the overflow of the
others, and the city was subject to frequent inundations.
It is even now, after a large shrinkage in the lakes, but
a little more than six feet, at its central portion, above
Texcoco. The waters of the three upper lakes—San Cristoval,
Xaltocan, and Zumpango—were turned back as
[47]has been done with the Chicago River of late. A great
Spanish drain in the early seventeenth century, the Tajo
of Nochistongo, was cut through the mountains, and got
rid of it in the direction of the Atlantic.

But Texcoco itself has no outlet, and, as experience
has proved, even with only Chalco and Xochimilco to be
taken care of, is still liable to overflow. With relief
from this peril is inseparably bound up the drainage
problem. The fall is so slight at best, that though Lake
Texcoco be preserved at a normal level, and kept from
backing up into the sewers, there is no destination for
the sewage received by it, which lies festering in the
stagnant water. With the rest is complicated also the
irrigation of the valley. No end of plans have been
offered to resolve these difficulties. Their history would
make an interesting chapter by itself. Some have proposed
to pump out the lake by steam; others, to intercept
the waters running into it, and allow it to dry up
naturally; another, to exhaust it by means of a great
siphon of stone and cement. But the judgment of most
is in favor of establishing a current, through a canal, to
some point lower than the lake; and the mountains in
the neighborhood have been searched for the most favorable
point of exit for such a canal.

The plan was officially adopted, in fact, and a considerable
beginning made, under the direction of an able
engineer of foreign education, Don Francisco Garay.
But the works were allowed to languish. Neither government
nor community seemed more than half-hearted
in the effort to get rid of evils to which they had so long
been used. The problem still remains one of the most
pressing of those to be resolved, and one of the most
interesting to foreigners intending to make Mexico their
home.

[48]

III.

Choosing any street at random where all are so attractive,
and proceeding to its termination, in this direction
or that, you arrive now at a mere cul-de-sac, now at a
city gate, now at vestiges of adobe fortifications, with a
moat. Few vehicles, apart from the hackney-coaches, are
to be seen, but plenty of troops of laden donkeys, and
everywhere the cotton-clad natives themselves bearing
loads under which the regular beasts of burden might
stagger. There is a story that when wheelbarrows were
first introduced to their notice on the railroad works, the
natives filled them in the usual way, and then carried
them on their backs.

Each separate kind of business has its distinctive emblem.
The butcher—elsewhere not a person noted for
great taste in ornament—displays a crimson banner, and
has his brass scales decked with rosettes. His supplies
are brought him by a mule, trotting along with quarters
of beef or carcasses of mutton on each side hung from
hooks. But it is especially the pulque shops (corresponding
to our corner liquor stores) which devote themselves
to decoration in its most florid form. Not one so poor
as to be without its great colored tumblers, and ambitious
fresco of a battle scene, or subject from mythology or
romance. They delight in such titles as “The Ancient
Glories of Mexico,” “The Famous St. Lorenzo,” “The
Sun For All,” “The Terrestrial Paradise,” and even
“The Delirium,” which often enough expresses the condition
of customers who imbibe too freely.

[49]

[50]

On the tramways pass not only passenger-cars, but
others for freight. They move the household goods of
a family, for instance. There are also impressive catafalques
and mourning-cars, running smoothly along, with
funeral processions. You may graduate from a hearse
with six horses, driver, lackey, and four pall-bearers, all
in livery, for $120, to one drawn by a single mule for
$3; and there are cars for the mourners in the grand
style at $12 and plain for $4.

Both these ideas, it would seem, might be advantageously
adopted by suburban lines of our own.

Presently comes by a more economical funeral—a
couple of peons (as the Indian laborers are called), at a
jog-trot, bearing a pine coffin on their shoulders.

Battered old churches and convents on a great scale,
and of a grand architecture, now for the most part devoted
to other purposes, are extraordinarily frequent.
Before the sequestration of Church property—in the war
called of the Reform, under Juarez, in 1859—Mexico was
well-nigh one great ecclesiastical estate. Without going
into the religious question, and supposing only the operation
of ordinary causes, it is easy to see how the Church
corporations—repositories of the gifts of the faithful,
moved by no feverish haste in speculation, and with no
reckless heirs to spend their gains—must in course of
time have become possessed of an enormous share of
worldly goods.

There is no lack of sculptured old rococo palaces, of
the conquerors and their successors, either. Many of
these are of a peculiar, rich red stone, with carved escutcheons
above their door-ways. There is one of which
I was fond, in the Calle de Jesus, with immense water-spouts
to its cornice, in the shape of field-pieces. Wheels
and all project in high relief.

Only infinitesimal quantities of vacant land exist within
the compass of the city. All is compactly built. The
Continental system of portes cochères and interior court-yards
[51]prevails. How many glimpses, both pleasing and
curious, into these interiors! What a pity that the severity
of our winters prevents building in a style which
would be so admirably adapted to our summers! Over
the entrances of some tenement-houses are placed pious
dedicatory signs, as “Casa de la Santisima,” “Casa de la
Divina Providencia.”

One day, as I made a hasty sketch of one of these, with
a water-carrier lying asleep in the archway, the custodian
came out and offered strenuous objections. “You are
mapping the house” (mappando la casa), he said, “and I
do not see how it can be for other than evil purposes.”

[52]

One of the most charming of all the mansions I saw
stood nearly opposite our hotel, and was faced up entirely
with china tiles, chiefly blue and white, and set with old
bronze balconies, as dainty and quaint as a dwelling in
fairy-land. I examined the interior of this house also,
and found it faced within as well with the same simple,
Moorish-looking, tiles, in staircase walls, ceilings, and
even the high, banked-up furnace, or range, in the kitchen.
An affable major-domo occupied his leisure with
painting, in a large library on the ground-floor. He was
just now engaged in copying and enlarging, very poorly,
the photograph of a lady, over which he held up his
brush for criticism. A maroon carpet was laid up the
centre of a grand staircase, and the same uniform color
prevailed in the carpets throughout. The rooms were
large and high, the principal ones opening both on the
street, and, by means of light glass doors draped with
lace, on the balconies running around the courts. These
balconies are edged in the general practice with climbing
vines and rows of handsome plants. In one of the rear
courts could be heard and seen the family carriage-horses,
together with others for the saddle, stabled according to
custom under the common roof.

There was a large saloon, with divans, and old-fashioned
mirrors, sloped forward from the walls, instead of pier-glasses;
and a little boudoir, with furniture entirely in
gilded wood and cane. There was a pretty family chapel,
with two prie-dieux for the master and mistress, and a
couple of benches for the use of the servants. In the
bedrooms of such houses are usually religious pictures,
copies of Murillo and the like; and there are also found
quaint effigies of sacred things, as a representation of the
Nativity; a Christ, with purple mantle and crown of
thorns; a life-size Virgin, in raiment of tissue of silver,
[53]standing upon the globe and a serpent’s head. The men
of the country are very widely imbued with the sceptical
spirit of the age, but the women, whose property these
objects are, are still devoutly Catholic.

These rooms, in such interiors, though less lofty and
impressively finished perhaps than those at Havana, have
not the complexity of objects with which we, in an ill-understood
passion for decoration, overload our own in
the United States. They are large, and contain a few
simple articles, with plenty of space around, and have an
unmistakable dignity of effect. When we can make up
our minds to do that, instead of depending upon a complication
of costly rarities in little space, we shall begin
to be palatial, and not merely bon bourgeois.

We do not know how republican we are, after all our
travelling abroad and reverence for things European, till
we come to where the stately old Continental traditions
are actually in force.

One of the enthusiasts of the new progressive movement,
writing of late of Monterey, a city of 40,000 people,
in the north, already connected with us by the Mexican
Central Railway, and coming into notice as a winter
resort, notes, as one of the signs of improvement, that
“the old Latin style of building, the square, flat-roofed
house, with interior court, is giving place, in the new
quarters, to American architecture.” To which I reply,
Heaven forbid! Let us never “improve” away with
“American architecture” the Moorish-looking dwellings
which, to lovers of the picturesque, should be one of the
principal inducements for visiting the country.

---

I.

Meanwhile the court-yard of our hotel, the palace of
the ancient Emperor Iturbide, is full of a curious group
of English-speaking foreigners, discussing a multitude of
projects. They sit usually in chairs on a little terrace at
the left of the court, behind which is a modest little
parlor, with a piano. As a general rule, the Mexican hotel
is without parlor, reading-room, or any other of those
appurtenances we are accustomed to look upon as an essential
part of the composition of a hotel.

The guests take their meals at a restaurant, entered
from the second court, or at other restaurants in the town
where they please, there being no provision by the hotel
itself. They look up wearily at their rooms around the
circumscribing galleries, push their hats on the back of
their heads, and pass their hands across their brows. The
atmosphere, at this elevation of 7600 feet, is very rare,
it will be remembered, and most are affected at first by a
feeling of dizziness and loss of appetite. They do not
find themselves quite right in health; and even the most
athletic pause once or twice, and hold by the balusters,
on their way up-stairs. The same amount of exercise
cannot be taken, in fact, by either men or animals, as
in a more dense atmosphere. The horses, for instance,
though good and speedy, can only be run short distances,
and then, as evaporation is rapid and draughts particularly
[55]dangerous, must not be let stand, but must be
walked up and down till gradually cooled.

I recollect my first glimpse of my room, to which, after
an interview with the sepulchral clerks below, I was
shown by the barefooted boy, “Pancho,” carrying a tallow
dip. It was without windows or other opening except
through a large transom above the door, and seemed
hot and suffocating. This may have been the influence
of imagination, however, for the climate is rarely either
hot or cold, but noted for its remarkable evenness.
There is no provision for heating during the winter. It
is said that even after a very few minutes of fire, in
stove or grate, the already thin air becomes so much farther
expanded as to produce discomfort. Later, in my
long stay at this hotel, I had a room higher up, on the
sculptured front, looking down upon the life in the thoroughfare,
which, taking a separate name at every block,
is here the Calle de San Francisco. Again, I had one
with a window commanding the shining, tile-covered
dome and part of a garden approach to the lovely old
convent of San Francisco, now devoted to the uses of an
Episcopal mission, and beyond that the mountains, with
the fair blue sky above them. Rising to begin the day,
the mornings were found peaceful and lovely, the genial
sunshine bathing the prospect, the blue sky but varied
with the piled-up clouds out of which castles in the air
are constructed. The visitor, having got over his temporary
oppression, remarks upon this almost unbroken
series with increasing wonder and admiration. It is
hardly the custom to comment on the weather in Mexico,
at least in the agreeable season, though the rainy
season is a different matter.

“A pleasant day?” says the listener, with lifted eyebrows,
should you do so. “Well, why not?”

[56]

Most familiar
among the group
of English-speaking
foreigners in
the court-yard during
my stay was
General Grant,
who has lent a
part of his great
fame to the development
of the resources
of a much-suffering
people.
Did he ever reflect
in these historic
halls, one wondered,
on the career
of the Emperor
Iturbide? Had all
the talk on Cæsarism
in the Press
ever put the idea the least bit in his head? Rumors,
mischievous to the cause of amity, ran at the very time
that it was in Mexico, not the United States, that he proposed
to found his empire. Certainly it would be difficult
to imagine so unmelodramatic a figure in the robes
and stars and crosses in which Iturbide has arrayed himself,
after the pattern of Napoleon the Great, in his portrait
at the National Palace.

Iturbide wrote in his memoirs—which, as a display of
egotism, are highly interesting reading—one sagacious
sentence. “Devotees of theories,” he says, “are apt to
forget that in the moral as in the physical order only a
gradual progress can be expected.”

[57]

This is very true; but the short-lived Emperor forgot,
as have many of his republican successors, that despotism
can never educate
the citizen
for the duties of
freedom.

Only once before—namely,
on the coming
of Maximilian—has
there been a
stir that might
be compared to
the present in a
country which
the progress of
the century has
heretofore seemed to ignore.
Could a secure government then
have been established, much
would have been done. But the
new-comers arrived as masters,
not as friends; and the conditions
were wholly unfavorable.
The real improvements, too, apart
from those intended for the glitter
and the comfort of the throne,
were but the shadow of those
proposed to-day.

Here the more efficient lighting
of the city by electric light
was heard discussed; there the opening of coal mines;
here the establishment of sugar refineries, shoe factories,
cotton mills. There were archæologists, constructors of
[58]telegraph lines, and engineers starting out or returning
from reconnoissances. This person had come down to
look into coffee-plantations; that,
to establish a new line of steamers.
This discourses of the improving
tranquillity of the country, and asserts
that three ploughs are now
sold to one revolver.
He names
over prominent
bandits who have
become peaceable
contractors and
farmers.

Some will organize
banks of
issue, and rid us
of the cumbrous
silver dollar. Another
is up from
the interior with
a scheme for a colony and mines—much too rose-colored,
one would say—with which he will start back to New
York to organize a syndicate. Mines of gold and silver
are one of the specialties of the country; but they seem
to present fully the uncertainties of mines elsewhere.

Some organized dinners, at which Mexican senators and
deputies were enlisted for the cultivation of more friendly
relations. These were held at the Concordia restaurant,
or the Tivoli of Bucarelli, or of the Eliseo (summer gardens),
with spacious banqueting halls. Much international
good-feeling was manifested, and the Mexican national
anthem and the “Star Spangled Banner” were played
alternately after the speeches. Everything was to be
[59]made over anew. A few of the younger men were going
and returning from expeditions of pleasure. They
came back from a bull-fight; from the baths of Alberca
Pane, where there is a fine tank for swimming, covered
with an awning; or the theatre. They had many an
amusing gibe, after our American way, on the backwardness
of things, and the difference of manners and customs
in the country.

But pleasure had as yet few votaries; the object of
most was serious work. The business of railroad-building,
and procuring of charters and subventions from
government, threw all else into the shade. Five great
lines, two of which had already
made long strides, were to traverse
the country from north to
south, and more than twice as
many from east to west, connecting
the oceans.
There were said
to be six hundred
American
engineers in
Mexico. They
are often young
graduates of
Cornell and other
polytechnic
schools. In the
capital the engineers
and employés
form settlements
in boarding-houses of their own; make resorts
of certain economical restaurants where little but English
is spoken. They associate but little with the natives,
[60]but go about their work rather rough-and-ready in appearance,
and seem to postpone adornment till the heat
and burden of the campaign are over. There was a
noticeable Southern element among them; and it will
be found, generally, that the enterprises in Mexico have
attracted a large representation from the Southern States.
There is still, among the rest, a remnant of the ex-Confederate
officers who came hither after the war, to engage—without
great success, as it happened—in coffee-planting
and the like.

Not a few of the young engineers, however, particularly
those who have their field of operations in the
provinces, have already found wives among the slender
señoritas of the country. It seems another case of going
after the women of Moab, as it were, for the rumor
comes back that these exacting helpmeets have often
made them change their religion, as a preliminary to
naming the happy day.

II.

A leading point with the projectors, is whether or not
Mexico is likely to become a large or metropolitan city.
It seems difficult, when on the ground, to doubt it.
Great cities have sprung up at a mere intersection of
railroads. But here is one with a population of 250,000
people already, a seat of government and of schools, colleges,
museums, and galleries of fine arts, with an admirable
climate and extraordinary scenery, and three
hundred and sixty years and traditions of great fascination
behind it. There are to come into or connect with
it, when all is complete, the Mexican Central, National,
and International roads, from the north; the Mexican
Oriental, on the eastern sea-board, and Occidental, on the
western; and General Grant’s road, the Mexican Southern,
[61]from the south—all to have interoceanic branches
and feeders; the Morelos road, the Acapulco road, the
English road to Vera Cruz; another, now constructing,
to the same point by Puebla and Jalapa; and a number
of short lines of less importance.

A small portion only of this would be sufficient to
create a metropolis outright, while Mexico has grown to
a certain greatness with no advantages at all—not even
wagon-roads. It seems its manifest destiny, with its
central position on transcontinental lines, and its established
prestige, to become the chief depository and place
of exchange for the whole country. It ought to be a
favorable point, too, for manufactures, and to become the
metropolitan residence of the wealthy from the interior.
These have rarely come to the capital heretofore. Not
even the senators and deputies bring their families, owing
to the barbarous state of the roads. The existing
difficulties of communication can hardly be conceived.
There are perfectly authentic accounts of persons who
have gone from Mexico to Vera Cruz, thence to New
York, thence across to San Francisco, and thence by
Pacific mail-steamer to Acapulco, rather than make the
direct journey of three hundred miles on muleback
over the sierra.

It is fair to say, however, that there are those who
think the future metropolis may be farther to the north,
as at San Luis Potosi.

If Mexico, then, is to be a great city, whither is it to
spread? It is compactly built within, and much of the
land about it is low, traversed by causeways. There is
no better place to think about it, nor to look down upon
the capital as a whole, than Chapultepec.

My first visit there was made on the tramway, where I
fell in with a Mexican colonel, who told me that he liked
[62]the Americans very well. He had spent some time in
captivity among them, having been taken prisoner at
San Jacinto, and had learned to know them as they are.
They mean well, he said, and are enterprising and appreciative
of the arts of life; and you can depend upon what
they say. Most of his countrymen, he said, very sensibly,
did not understand this, but were distrustful and jealous.
Their idea of American character, in fact, is largely
derived from foreign books in which it is conventionalized
and caricatured in an unfriendly way. There is evidence
of it on every hand. The American, as touched
upon in the newspapers and current literature, is the
“Yankee” of Dickens and followers of less intelligence
on the Continent. He is a sordid person, exclusively
wrapped up in “dollars,” and can know but little of the
chivalrous nature of those who thus superciliously disapprove
of him.

There is nothing very warlike about Chapultepec at
present. A glimpse is got, as you approach, of a light,
oblong, colonnaded edifice, with a lookout on the top,
which is now a part of the government observatory.
The hill is not precipitously high, though of a good elevation.
There is a monument at its foot to the memory
of the pupils of the military school who fell in its defence
in 1847, and in the grounds moss-grown cypresses and a
tank of clear water. I found the main part of the building,
when an upper terrace was reached, in a state of ruin.
The light iron columns of an arcade had been coquettishly
painted and gilded, and its walls decorated in the Pompeian
style, under Maximilian, but all had been wrecked
in the revolutions. There was a little garden, in which
a small guide picked me some flowers. He answered,
“Quien sabe?” in a childish lisp, to most inquiries, just
as his father, the custodian, if he had been there, would
have answered in his deeper base. “Quien sabe?” (Who
knows?) is a more dreamy and speculative rendering of
our own “Give it up,” or perhaps “Dunno!”

[63]

[64]

The most prominent object, in the long line of the
distant city against the bright gleam of Lake Texcoco
behind it, is a sudden little volcanic hill—El Peñon—which
rises out of it like a teocalli; and next to this the
cathedral.

As the lay of the land is studied from here it seems
rather natural that the city of the future, on grounds of
good drainage, ease of access, and scenery, should advance
in this direction to Chapultepec, ex-palace of the Montezumas
and of viceroys, military school, fortress, and observatory,
on the foremost spur of the foot-hills.

This was the intelligent forecast of Maximilian—a
ruler, it must be admitted, much better fitted to cope
with such pleasant matters than the ferocity of Mexican
war and diplomacy. And such was the view of a
rather wild-cat American Improvement Company, found
among the projectors in the court-yard, which professed
to intend a large purchase of land for building upon, to
sell part of it, with houses, on the instalment plan, and to
put up a mammoth hotel.

It seemed a little incongruous, this selling of the heritage
of Montezuma on the instalment plan; but we are
a people who do not stop even at the most venerable of
traditions; and the scheme might not be a bad one in
responsible hands.

Maximilian also made Chapultepec his summer palace,
and laid out to it the handsome Paseo de la Reforma, the
afternoon drive and promenade—the Bois and Central
Park of fashionable Mexico. During Lent, however,
fashion takes the caprice of changing to the Paseo de la
Viga, along the canal by which vegetables and flowers
[65]are brought to the capital from the floating gardens.
The Paseo de la Reforma is a wide, straight boulevard,
nearly two miles long, starting from a certain equestrian
statue of Charles IV. of Spain—the first bronze cast in
this hemisphere, and fine and excellent work. It is two
hundred feet wide, and has a double row of trees—eucalyptus
and ash—shading its sidewalks. The Mexican
equestrian dandy should be observed as he curvets his
horse along it among the fine carriages. He wears now
not only his weighty spurs and silver-braided sombrero,
but a cutlass at his saddle-bow, and larger revolvers than
ever. Not that there is need of them, since a couple of
mounted carbineers—of whom there seems no great need
either—are stationed at nearly every hundred yards; but
they are a part of his peculiar display. Some of our
young Americans, too, in the country, it must be said,
almost out-Mexican the Mexicans themselves, carrying
all their customs to an exaggerated extreme.

There are to be six circles, with statues, spaced at
proper intervals along the way. The first, containing a
fine Columbus, is finished; a Guatemozin, for the second,
is in progress. The next, it is said, will contain
Cortez. There at last will stand, face to face—their
countrymen now one people—the heroic defender and
the heroic conqueror, the two characters of such contradictory
traits within themselves, who both acted according
to their lights in their day and generation, and but
followed the path of inevitable destiny.

The causeways of La Veronica and La Romita—containing
ancient small-arched aqueducts, which bring water
to the city—branch off from Chapultepec, and form two
sides of an obtuse triangle, which the Paseo (or Calzada)
de la Reforma bisects. It was along these causeways that
the Americans ran, in that invasion of a very different
[66]character, in 1847. It is said that as Shields was charging
on that to the right, after the fall of the castle, Scott,
fearing his imprudent haste, sent to detain him. The
aide had got as far as the preliminary “General Scott presents
his compliments, and begs to say—” when Shields,
apprehending the message, cut him short with, “I have
no time for compliments now,” and hurried on, and got
into the city before he could be overtaken.

Do the Mexicans bear us a grudge for all that? They
seem just now to have amiably forgotten it, and far be it
from me to revive such memories in a boasting spirit.
There is a behind-the-scenes to it, here, upon the ground.
It is pathetic, and by no means calculated to produce
complacency, to read in the small history studied
in the schools the Mexican account of what took place.
The almost unbroken series of defeats from which they
went up, without hope of success, to the slaughter are
frankly admitted. The country was torn by internal dissensions.
The generals went back from the field to put
down or sustain governments, refused to aid one another
in their operations, and availed themselves of the troops
given them to seize upon power, instead of fighting the
Americans. There were not less than eleven changes of
government, chiefly violent, during the short course of
the war. In February and March of the year in which,
in September, the invaders made their entry there had
been fighting in the streets of the capital for well-nigh a
month between two presidents, neither strong enough to
put the other down. Want of courage is not a Mexican
failing. It was want of leaders, unity, everything that
gives steadiness in a great crisis.

The land ostensibly aimed at by the so-called Improvement
Company follows the Calzada of the Reform for
a considerable part of its length. It lies vacant, except
[67]for use as pasture. It has not been safe to live too far
from the thickly-settled district till the establishment of
law and order by the present administration, and the city
itself has furnished room enough. But what new accommodations
are to be needed in the great future, with the
vision of which imaginations are regaling themselves, it
is not an easy matter to determine.

Villas were spoken of, to be built with restricted
rights, so as to preserve a select and park-like aspect.
There were to be front lots enough on the Calzada alone
to pay the cost. The grand hotel talked of was to surpass
anything on the continent.

If somebody would but put up a hotel equal to our
own of the second grade it would be a boon to American
travellers. It might expect to draw, too, not a few of
the Mexicans themselves, who are hardly slower than the
rest of the world in recognizing a good thing when they
see it. The magnates who shall have made fortunes in
the new enterprises, and others who have them already,
could, no doubt, be relied on for a liberal patronage.

III.

This project is of no farther importance than as a
text for a mention of the Mexican tax and real estate
laws, which have their features of decided interest. “In
the moral as in the physical order,” as our friend Iturbide
tells us, “only a gradual progress can be expected.”
A nation of nine or ten millions, two-thirds of whom are
of pure Indian blood, used only to the most primitive
and poverty-stricken ways of life, cannot be too suddenly
pushed forward. They must be allowed to go at a
certain pace, even with the best of intentions, and slowly
adapt themselves to the improvements designed for their
[68]good; for it is by them, the rank and file, after all, that
these must be supported.

The country might seem, at first sight, the most glorious
place for real estate speculation in the world. Real
property is not taxed except upon such income as it produces.
When not actually producing income, it may be
idle indefinitely, and escape scot-free, however much it
may enhance in value meanwhile. But there are embarrassing
restrictions, devised through fear and jealousy of
the foreigner, which make the prospect much less attractive.
The traveller of means cannot follow his whim,
as he might almost anywhere else in the world, of buying
a pretty bit of land or house that attracts him and
leaving it, to return to when he will, or do what he
please with it.

By the Mexican Civil Code “no foreigner may, without
previous permission of the President of the Republic,
acquire real estate in the frontier states or territory
within twenty leagues of the frontier.” And “it is absolutely
prohibited to foreigners to acquire rustic or
urban property within five leagues of the coast.”

This may be well enough, and is aimed principally at
the United States, as a way of preventing any gradual
encroachments from the borders; but farther, and more
important: no foreigner may own real property at all,
except on condition of remaining permanently and looking
after it. If he be absent from the country for two
years, his property may be denounced and entered by the
first comer, the same as if it were a mine. He cannot
even have an agent in the country to hold it for him.
Nor, even should he comply with the rigid condition
named, could he then sell it to another foreigner.

The transient foreigner, so far as he is concerned, cannot
acquire real estate on any condition.

[69]

All this is set down in the Code in the most explicit
terms. The most driving improvement company, therefore,
could sell lots only to Mexicans. The class of
wealthy Americans expected as winter residents would
be ruled out of the calculation, though, of course, they
may stop at the hotel.

There is also some ambiguity as to what commercial
corporations, with one-third of their directors resident in
the country, may or may not do, since the construction
of the term “corporation” is not the same as with us.
Some construing or explanatory enactments are needed
to remedy the ambiguity last mentioned, and an entire
sweeping away is needed of all the rest.

If there be sincerity in the manifestations of desire for
progress, and aid from without, Mexico must sweep away
narrow and benighted restrictions. If outside capital be
demanded for works of amelioration and embellishment,
how can it be expected at such a price?

And why, in the name of goodness, in this enlightened
day, should not the foreigner be put upon the same footing
as the native in these matters, and allowed to hold
property wherever he will throughout the civilized world?

Let the foreigner bear in mind, too, that he must
be matriculated at the Department of Foreign Affairs,
through the Consul-general, in order to have any recognized
standing in a court of justice, in cases of difficulty.
Without this formality even his foreignness is not necessarily
conceded to him as a protection.

---

I.

The ferro-carriles, the caminos de fierro, or railways,
were the business of the hour. In speaking of the coming
greatness of the capital I mentioned glibly the principal
ones which are supposed to have a part in it. They
are by no means all built. Far from it! It is not even
certain that some of the most promising of them, on
paper, ever will be built.

The matter of granting railroad charters in Mexico is
by no means new. They have been granted for thirty
years or so, to Europeans and natives, who did little or
nothing with them. It was only when, under the adoption
of a more enlightened policy, they came to be
granted to Americans that the roads were built and the
charters had a value. At once everybody who prided
himself upon the necessary influence began to desire a
charter also. He might not want to use it at once, but
could keep it and see what turn things were to take. Or
he might transfer it to some more powerful ownership
to which it would be worth a consideration. This new
ownership, too, might wait to see what was likely to
happen. If railways promised to be profitable in the
country, it was well for certain great corporations in the
United States to have their feeders or extensions there;
at any rate, they could keep others from the field till they
should be satisfied of its character.

[71]

It is in this way, I surmise, that some of the present
franchises have been got, and are reflectively held. There
have been henchmen to procure them and turn them over
to patrons, who wait a while before going to work, trusting
to influence to procure the proper extensions and
renewals of time, if needed.

Stories were afloat of practices employed in the obtaining
of concessions and subsidies, which I should prefer
to believe falsifications. I heard one or two of them, it
is true, from somewhat inside sources, and such practices
are not unknown elsewhere; yet I like much better to
think that there are no persons of standing and influence
in Mexico who could prostitute their high position, and
put a shameless greed for gain before the public interest
in a crisis like the present, as these stories seem
to indicate.

“Why, in our great West,” said an American visitor,
settling himself back in his chair to complain vigorously
of certain treatment he had received, “if an immigrant
comes among us, we give him a lift. We help him build
his house, or perhaps put him up a barn; and are glad
to do it. If he has capital to start some kind of factory,
we give him a piece of land free of charge. That is the
American style. We put our hands in our pockets and
pay out a little, knowing full well that we shall get it
back in time in the greater prosperity of the town.”

“Yes,” I said, by way of sympathy with his aggrieved
situation, and a proper pride in the American style of
doing things, “and I am told that, in Chicago and St.
Louis, they pay his hotel bills a while, and try to keep
him, if not as a permanent resident, at least long enough
to get out a new census, in which he may be included.”

“But here,” my interlocutor continued, “there is nothing
of the kind. The first thing they ask about a new-comer
[72]is, ‘How much can we make out of him?’ They
want pay for permitting him to do something for them.
There is no public spirit, no local pride. What they
want is exorbitant gains.”

He went on to tell of an application for a charter
by an American company, which was absolutely refused.
They were afterward approached and told that the privilege
would be granted to a committee of Mexican senators,
who would in their turn transfer it to the company
for a handsome consideration. The go-betweens in this
negotiation declared that the personages who were to
have the final voice in the granting of the charter, as well
as themselves, would require to be paid, which might
have been true, and might not. A liberal share of the
subsidy to be voted for the railway was to be exhausted
in this way.

I do not know whether this be anything more than
political “striking,” or black-mailing, with which we are
familiar at Albany and elsewhere, and whether the corruption
ever really reaches to head-quarters. At any rate,
it was said that some part of the aid devoted to each several
enterprise was diverted in this way to private benefit.
The drainage of the valley had been offered in the
United States at a reduction of forty per cent. from the
amount voted by the appropriation bill, the difference to
be retained by the purveyors of the opportunity. One
hundred thousand dollars in cash was demanded, again,
as a preliminary, for the opportunity to fill in the works
of a certain harbor with stone at a reasonable rate. Such
accounts may be worth looking into by Mexican authority,
with the interest of good and economical work and
the abatement of scandal at heart. There is probably no
better form of patriotism for Mexico just now than a
strict and uncompromising honesty of administration.

[73]

II.

There were entered in the convenient statistical hand-book
known as the “Annuario Universal,” for the year,
a list of forty-one railways as in explotacion (running),
or under construction. But after many of those enumerated
was inserted a note, to the effect that, owing to
some unforeseen delay, the works were not yet begun.
Taking out these, and a larger number on which, though
technically begun, little or no labor had been expended,
there was still an unlooked for array of constructed
roads. Taking out the English road from Vera Cruz,
and what had been done by the American companies,
almost at the moment, these were found to consist of
short bits of local line scattered throughout the country.
There was not a through line among them; many were
operated by animal traction only; they had been built by
natives, been afflicted by bankruptcies and other troubles;
and represented the railway situation of the country
apart from outside assistance. You were even drawn a
good part of the way by animals on the English branch
from Vera Cruz to Jalapa; and in going from Mexico
to the mines at Pachuca, after leaving the main line at
Ometusco, we took first a diligence, and were then pulled
by mules in a Philadelphia-built horse-car. The number
of these isolated bits has not increased in the mean time,
several of them having been bought up and incorporated
in the larger enterprises.

In the mean time, however, the list of projected roads
at least has been liberally increased. The Congressional
session of 1881 was the most active ever known in the
authorization of new enterprises on a great scale. The
great Mexican Central, trunk line, had, however, been
[74]chartered in 1878, and the Mexican National in 1880.
The first charter under the modern movement dates
from October, 1867; and since then the Mexican Government
has issued charters for over 20,000 miles of road,
with subsidies probably to the amount of $200,000,000.
Many of these, with their subsidies, have lapsed, of
course. The Government is now held for about 15,000
miles of road, and subsidies of $90,000,000.

The enterprises on a great scale are all American, and
the chief ones among them may be estimated roughly as
follows:

	Miles.
Mexican Central (Boston Company)	2,000
Mexican National (Palmer-Sullivan)	2,000
Sonora (Boston Company)	500
Mexican Southern (General Grant, President)	1,000
Oriental (De Gress and Jay Gould)	1,200
Topolobambo (Senator Windom, President)	1,200
International (Frisbie and Huntington)	1,400
Pacific Coast (Frisbie)	3,000
Total	12,300

To these may be added the Sinaloa and Durango, from
the city of Culiacan to the port of Altata, in Sinaloa; the
Tehuantepec railway, and Captain Eads’s ship railway
across the same isthmus, to take the place of a ship canal.
The privilege to build an American railway across Tehuantepec,
it may be remembered, was secured (at the
same time with the lower belt of Arizona) by the Gadsden
treaty of 1853, supplementary to that of Guadalupe
Hidalgo. The road was supposed to be needed for the
consolidation of relations with our then newly acquired
territory of California. The Pacific railroad filled its
place, however, and the project, taken up and dropped
from time to time, has since had but a lingering existence.

[75]

[76]

Captain Eads proposes to transport bodily ships of
4000 tons, 190 miles, by land. He will have twelve
lines of rails, and four locomotives at once; and, to avoid
jarring in transit, changes of direction will be made by
a series of turn-tables instead of curves. The scheme is
a startling one, and meets with no little opposition. It
is still only on paper; but its proposer, who has abundantly
vindicated his sagacity in constructing the jetties
of the Mississippi and the great St. Louis bridge, remains
firm in his conviction that he will be able to sail ships
across the isthmus on dry land.

III.

The several enterprises are succinctly divided into two
classes—those on the ground, and those on paper. It is
not necessarily a disparagement to the last that they are
still in such a condition, for many of them are of very
recent origin.

The original Mexican Southern road is to run south
from Mexico, by Puebla and Oaxaca (capital of the populous
state of the same name) and the frontier of Guatemala,
with branches to the ports of Anton Lizardo, on
the Gulf of Mexico, and Tehuantepec, on the Pacific. It
is to connect also with the Tehuantepec railway. It
relies, as a principal resource, upon the transport of the
valuable productions of a rich tropical country, as cotton,
sugar, coffee, rice, and the like. Oaxaca is an important
small city of 28,000 people, birth-place of General Porfirio
Diaz, the Mexican power behind the throne, and undoubtedly
the weightiest person in the country. The
route will be a rugged one to build. Much of the area
is high and salubrious. The Oaxacan Indians are a sturdy
race, who have followed their leader, Diaz, and others in
many a hard-fought campaign.

[77]

This company, however, has lately effected a consolidation
with the Mexican Oriental, and both will henceforth
be known under the name of the Mexican Southern.

The Mexican Oriental sets out from Laredo, on the
Texas frontier, and proceeds to the capital by way of
Victoria, the capital of the state of Tamaulipas. It
claims to have a bee-line, and to be 200 miles shorter
than any other. Its mission is to occupy the district between
the coast and the Mexican National. It throws
out a branch from Victoria to San Luis Potosi; and has
a coast-line connecting Tuxpan, Nautla, and Vera Cruz.
It is fed by some 12,000 miles of road under control of
Jay Gould in the United States.

The International is chartered to run from Eagle Pass,
in Texas, to the city of Mexico, occupying a field left
vacant between the Mexican Central and National; and
is allowed to have also a cross-line to a point between
Matamoras and Tampico, east, and between Mazatlan and
Zihuataneso, west. The theory of each, it will be seen, is
to have an interoceanic line as well as a main line north
and south.

The Pacific Coast road covers the right to a vast
stretch, beginning at a point below Fort Yuma, Arizona,
and connecting the whole series of Pacific ports down to
Guatemala. The Topolobampo has also a long extension
southward, to touch at some of the same points.

The Topolobampo route (Texas, Topolobampo, and
Pacific) crosses the northern border states. It professes
to be a shorter transcontinental route to Australia and
Asia than any other that can be laid down on the map.
It claims to have at Topolobampo, just within the Gulf
of California, the ancient Sea of Cortez, one of the few
fine harbors of the Pacific coast.

These harbors are spaced at wide intervals apart.
[78]That of the Columbia River of Oregon is the highest
up. Then, 600 miles south, comes San Francisco; 441
miles below this is San Diego; 650 miles farther on, in
a direct line, or 936, doubling Cape St. Lucas, is Topolobampo;
and 740 miles south of this again is Acapulco.
Between them all there is nothing worthy the name of
harbor.

Topolobampo city, within the confines of the state of
Sinaloa, exists only on paper as yet, but nothing is more
impressive in its elegant regularity and finish than a paper
city. It claims to be 800 miles nearer New York
than San Francisco by railroad travel, and that a person
coming from Liverpool to Sydney, Australia, would save
600 miles in laying out a course from Fernandina, Florida,
by New Orleans and Topolobampo, which is indicated
as a route of the future. If some of these representations
be correct, no doubt it will be. We live
in times of a ruthless commercial greed which is stopped
by no sentimental considerations of vested rights and
convenience. We have but to see a short, through
line, with possible economies, to build it with all possible
despatch.

The road in question is to start from Piedras Negras,
on the frontier of Texas, and make for Topolobampo,
across the states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora,
with branches to Presidio del Norte, also on the Texas
frontier, and to Alamos, in Sonora, and the port of Mazatlan,
down the coast. These routes pass near, and
would greatly facilitate operations in some of the large
silver-mining districts, of late entered with success by
American capital and immigration. The reports of its
surveys chronicle an engaging prospect in various other
ways. It passes from belts of tropical products to those
of white pine, oak, and cedar, and others fitted for cereals,
[79]grass, and cotton, with a rich iron mountain, and deposits
of copper as well as silver.

The maxim is laid down that a railroad pays, in local
traffic, in proportion as one section of its line supplies
what another lacks. If the situation be as represented,
Topolobampo seems provided with most of the essential
conditions of success.

---

I.

The Sonora road is already built, and in operation as
I write. It is a stretch of three hundred miles, from
the Arizona frontier, to the port of Guaymas, near the
centre of the shore line of the Gulf of California. Its
United States connection is by a branch of the Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fé, from Benson, through Calabasas,
to the border at Nogales; and another is proposed, from
the Southern Pacific at Tucson. The management of this
enterprise, as well as of the Great Mexican Central, is
practically that of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé.

Its course is across the state of Sonora. It abolishes
the old system of ox-train transportation and the dusty
stage-line from Tucson. It will be found fault with,
among others, by the savage Apaches, whose refuge
Northern Mexico has so long been. Their depredations,
with their territory penetrated by railroads, must soon
come to an end once for all. The other Indians of the
state—Yaquis, Mayos, and Opatas—are docile, and a
principal reliance for cheap labor. The road taps mines,
and, by means of a branch, what is even more important
for Mexico, the valuable Santa Clara coal-fields. It has
the little city of Hermosillo, with its plantations, irrigated
by aqueducts, in its course; and its port of Guaymas is
commodious and sheltered.

[81]

II.

I have purposely reserved to the last—the better, perhaps,
to present them to view—the two great trunk lines
of principal importance, the Mexican Central and the
Mexican National. These two represent the bulk of the
entire movement as it is at present. Neither had many
miles in actual operation during my stay; but the works,
railway stations, city offices, and army of employés of
both, were constantly in sight at the capital, and were
the principal evidences by which the manner of the railway
invasion of Mexico could be judged.

Energy of movement, ingenuity in planning, and an
almost limitless expenditure, all indicated here conscientious
work, and not simply railroad building on paper.

The Central begins at El Paso, the terminus of the
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé, as well as a station on
the Southern Pacific, at the frontier of New Mexico.
It extends to the capital, a distance of thirteen hundred
miles, tapping on the way a long series of the leading
cities of the republic, most of these as well capitals of
states. It has also a great interoceanic cross-line, which
is to pass from the port of Tampico, on the Gulf of Mexico,
through the cities of San Luis Potosi, Lagos (the
junction with the main line), and Guadalajara, to San
Blas, on the Pacific. It is expected that the main line
will be completed about July, 1884.

The first reached in the chain of leading cities is Chihuahua,
with about eighteen thousand inhabitants. The
line is already running to this point, and is completed in
all three hundred and thirty-one miles southward from
Paso del Norte. The visitor by rail may already have
in Chihuahua a glimpse of a place presenting most of the
[82]typical Mexican features. It has Aztec remains, and a
large cathedral, built out of a percentage of the proceeds
of a silver-mine in bonanza. It is the scene where the
patriot Hidalgo, who first raised the standard of insurrection
against Spanish rule, was shot, having been treacherously
betrayed by his friends. This story is, unhappily,
of but too frequent repetition in Mexican annals.

Durango, three hundred miles farther, has twenty-eight
thousand people. It has been spoken of as the Ultima
Thule of civilized Mexico, the barren plains to the
north—which are, indeed, very common in all these uppermost
states—not having been considered worthy to
be included with the country below. There are places
where water is not to be had for two and three days at a
time, but must be carried by the traveller. The inhabitants
have had to depend considerably upon themselves
for defence, as is seen in the occasional fort-like haciendas,
with walls turreted and pierced for musketry.

Zacatecas, moving onward now into a country of recognized
civilization, has 62,000 people; San Luis Potosi,
45,000; Aguas Calientes, 35,000; Lagos, 25,000; Leon,
100,000; handsome Guanajuato, capital of the state
which is the richest of the whole interior, 63,000; Celaya,
30,000; Silao, 38,000; Irapuato, 21,000; Salamanca,
20,000; and luxurious Guadalajara, 94,000.

The mining of the precious metals is a leading industry
over all the area thus described, which abounds also
in the agricultural products of a gentle and temperate
climate. The railroad is now running northward from
the city of Mexico to Lagos, and is completed for three
hundred and thirty-four miles from this lower end.

Lastly in the chain of cities may be mentioned Queretaro,
which has a population of 48,000. It is the site of
flourishing cotton-mills, an aqueduct which is compared
[83]with the works of the Romans, and it saw the final resistance
and execution of Maximilian. Mexico itself has
200,000 inhabitants. I have summed up here nearly a
million of people; and it would seem that a railroad
along the line of which are scattered such communities
as these, grown to their present dimensions without even
tolerable means of approach, need not lack for support.

True, large numbers of the people are Indians and
very poor; but I point to the example of Don Benito
Juarez, the liberator of his country from the French, an
Indian of the purest blood, and to numerous others accessible
on every hand, to show that there is nothing inherent
in the race itself to debar it from the highest development
with increase of opportunities. And if any suppose
that they do not like to travel, let him simply inspect
the excursion trains where third-class cars are supplied
to them in sufficient numbers.

III.

I made the trip over the section of the Central to the
small city of Tula. Its principal feature is the passage
through the great Spanish drainage cut, along one side of
which it has been allowed to terrace its track. This cut—the
Tajo of Nochistongo, before mentioned, designed for
keeping the lakes from inundating the valley—was begun
under the viceroys as far back as 1607, and continued
for a couple of hundred years. Such mammoth earth-cutting—a
ditch twelve miles long, a couple of hundred
feet deep, and three hundred and sixty wide—was never
seen elsewhere in the world; and it is said to have cost
the lives of seventy thousand peons, or Indian laborers,
in the course of construction. Why this should have
been, and how they died—whether by slipping in and
[84]being buried, or under the exactions of cruel task-masters,
and whether those who passed away simply of old age
(for which it will be seen there was ample time) are included—does
not appear.

I went partly by construction train, dining in their car
with a group of jolly young engineers, and partly on
horseback over the terre-plaine (the graded road-bed),
which makes an excellent surface for riding. The peons,
swarming on the work, in white cotton shirts and drawers,
have reddish skins, bristly black hair, and a sudden, wild-eyed
way of addressing you. They have an analogy to
the Chinese type. They got at this time two and a half
reals (thirty-one cents) a day. They are very suspicious,
and have absolutely no idea of trust, or waiting over the
appointed time. Dangerous strikes have resulted from
some slight putting off of the pay-day, which usually
takes place once a week. In other respects they are
very tractable.

There were said to be thirty thousand of them at work
on railroads at this date. The rate of wages, so favorable
to the contractors at first, has been gradually rising
under the active demand in the mean time, and I have
heard, since my return, of a strike on one of the northern
roads for as high as $1 a day. They buy gay clothes for
Sunday, and pulque, and save nothing. Many will not
even work steadily. Two such form a partnership to
take a single place, and one works half the week and
the other the rest. There were some who walked all Saturday
night to spend Sunday at Queretaro, and returned
Monday morning. On the haciendas they are generally
in debt, and as they cannot leave when in debt, they are
so far attached to the land, like serfs. Each gang has a
Cabo (or head), who is simply an enterprising one of
themselves, and gets an allowance of two cents extra for
[85]each man he controls.
The Cabo is a great
man among the railway
laborers, and out of
cabos arise the Benito
Juarezes, and hopes indefinite
for the evolution
of the race.

I spent the night at Tula. It was the capital of the
Toltecs before the day of the Aztecs. I climbed the Hill
of the Treasure, to inspect some ruins over which archæologists
have made a stir. There are no sculptures nor
carved stones, nothing but some opened cellars and heavy
walls, with patches of a red plaster, as at Pompeii, adhering
to them. But we stayed our horses, and looked
[86]down, from a thicket of organ-cactus and nopal, upon a
lovely sunset over the valley of Tula. It is a little
pocket of fertility in the hills, and it does not seem at
all wonderful that the Toltecs stopped there in their
migrations southward.

My mozo pointed out a ruin in the thick woods, which
he declared was Toltec, knowing that to be what I was in
search of. It was picturesque enough, its walls having
been split by an irrepressible vegetable growth; but it
had the same style of battlements (a kind of Spanish
horn of dominion) as the fortress-like church in the town,
dating from 1553, and was much more modern.

I went into this cool old church—vast enough for a
cathedral—next day, when the temperature was warm
without. It was entirely vacant. Fatigued with my
journeying, I sat on a comfortable old wooden bench,
and dozed till awakened sharply by the striking of a
little cuckoo-clock. I seem to have dreamed that the
numerous quaint figures of saints, in dresses made of
actual stuffs, had somehow an every-day existence there,
in addition to their sacred character, and that they were
taking notice of the intruder, and offering audible comments.
This is one of the ways, I suppose, in which very
good miracles have been wrought before now.

For the rest, the place consisted of a plaza, with two
or three pulque-shops; a shop of general traps, with the
ambitious title of “Los Leones;” a botica (or drug-shop),
kept by one Perfecto Espinoza; a Hotel de las Diligencias;
and a little jail, at one corner of the plaza, where
a couple of soldiers walked up and down, and the prisoners
peeped out through a large wooden, grated door.

And there was a good restaurant, kept by a little
Frenchman, who moved on with it from time to time to
the head of the line.

[87]

IV.

The Mexican National, or “Palmer-Sullivan,” road is
due to the same enterprise which established the successful
Denver and Rio Grande system in Colorado and New
Mexico. It is, like that, a narrow gauge, instead of a
standard gauge, line, and a connection is to be ultimately
established between the two. In some respects it may
claim to be the pioneer in the modern movement, since
its agent in Mexico, James Sullivan, had obtained a
charter and begun to raise money in 1872, but was stopped
in his project by the panic of the following year.

The National takes a much shorter line to the capital
than the Central, say eight hundred miles, as against
thirteen hundred. Its initial point is Laredo, on the
Texas frontier. It is running already into Monterey,
the capital of Nuevo Leon, and built below Saltillo.
Of the charms of the little city of Monterey, which has
medicinal springs beside it, travellers begin to speak in
the warmest terms. It touches San Luis Potosi and Celaya
as well as the Central, and has along or near its
course other cities, well peopled, though less known to
fame, as Matchuala, the population of which is 25,000.
Its eastern port is Corpus Christi, Texas, though it will
have a branch also to Matamoras. Its westward extension
(only less important than the main line) winds
round about, through the cities of Toluca, Maravatio,
Morelia, Guadalajara, and Colima, down to the port of
Manzanillo.

Four of these are capitals, and all are populous, and
have wide, well-paved streets and handsome buildings,
public and private. Toluca, at a great height, 8825 feet,
above the sea, is often afflicted by a rather frigid temperature;
[88]Colima is distinctly in the tropics; but Morelia
affords the happy medium, and its whole state of
Michoacan has charms upon which the appreciative never
have done expatiating. Humboldt speaks of the lake
found at Patzcuaro as one of the loveliest on the globe.
Madame Calderon de la Barca, in her journey here, could
hardly refrain from regretting the lavishing by Nature
of what seemed (so few were there then to enjoy it)
almost a wasted beauty. “We are startled,” she says,
“by the conviction that this enchanting variety of hill
and plain, wood and water, is for the most part unseen
by human eye and untrod by human footstep.”

The route winds, too, on its way to Guadalajara,
around the great lake of Chapala. Truly, it seems they
are to be happy travellers, those of the immediate future,
to whom the simple device of the railway is to open up
so much of the wildness and loveliness of nature, combined
with the quaintness of an old Spanish civilization.
We are apt to forget, in our preconceived impressions,
what an important part Old Spain played in the country
during three hundred years, what treasures she spent
there. She had made a beginning of some of these solid,
regular cities, which surprise one like enchantment on
emerging upon them from forests and wastes, a hundred
years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
Very little, in fact, has been added to what the Spanish
domination left. The modern movement, since 1821, is
to be credited with very little in the way of new buildings.
Such compliments as are paid in the course of these
descriptions to the architecture belong chiefly to that remaining
from a much earlier date. The reputation of the
republic is still to be made in all such matters when it
shall have outgrown the ample legacies bequeathed it, and
have need of farther accommodations peculiarly its own.

[89]

V.

In all, the National has completed four hundred and
sixty miles. It is said of late to have been sold to an
English company. We need not forego our American
pride in its early achievements, even if this be so. Perhaps
such a transfer might be of benefit, in allaying the
dread of an overweening American influence.

It was not done even to Toluca in my time. It has to
face its most arduous engineering difficulties at the very
beginning, and fortunately goes far more smoothly afterward.
No less than seventeen bridges, of solid construction,
had to be thrown across the little stream of the
Rio Hondo in two or three miles of its course.

A pay-train on horseback started out from the central
office every Saturday, to convoy the silver coin for the
wages of the army of hands employed on the first section
of twenty miles.

“Ride with us!” its members often hospitably urged,
and I more than once accepted the invitation.

It is an all-day adventure, and a fatiguing one. Behold
us at early morning clattering out of the court-yard
to ride up into the fastnesses of the mountains, a curious
cavalcade. The treasure is packed upon the backs of a
dozen mules, which are placed in the centre. A troop of
Rurales (the efficient force organized by Porfirio Diaz
for the better protection of the rural districts) takes the
van. A numerous retinue of armed mozos of the company,
with ourselves, bring up the rear. The young
engineers, paymasters, and contractors, well mounted,
with long boots and revolvers, present a handsome, half-military
aspect.

We have presently lost sight of the city, and are upon
[90]high rolling barrens, where the surface is volcanic and
rent into an infinity of seams, and the only vegetation is
that of nopal, or prickly-pear, as large as apple-trees with
us. Here and there a cluster of white tents is seen at a
distance, and cotton-clad peons delving in gulch or on
mountain-side are like some strange species of white
insects.

The whole expedition wears a most un-nineteenth-century
air. We might be some band of marauders returned
from an ancient foray. The Rurales have something
in their cut—the buff leather jackets, crossed by
ample sword-belts, and wide, gray felt hats—of the troopers
of Cromwell. Each has a rifle in his holster at the
saddle-bow, and a gray-and-scarlet blanket strapped behind
him. Nothing could be more spirited, in color,
than these costumes, dismounted beside a cactus-tree, or
thrown out against the blue of distant mountains. On
the harness of some of the mules are embroidered in
red and blue their names, or that of some hacienda, as
“Santa Lucia,” to which they have belonged.

It is understood that an individual with a crimson
handkerchief around the back of his head, under his silver-bordered
sombrero, is the titular cacique of San Bartolito
by descent from ancient chiefs. He precedes us,
being employed by the company to look out for plots
and ambuscades. When we have passed what he considers
the dangerous points—these are generally in the
neighborhood of elevations, whence an intending bandit
could spy the road for a distance in both directions, and
where are ravines on either side for concealment and
escape—he rejoins the troop, and converses upon the
propriety of his receiving more salary for his arduous
duties. No molestation has ever yet been offered these
caravans, and there is hardly likely to be. From a considerable
experience in remote parts of Mexico I am
satisfied that, however prudent ample precautions may
be in exceptional cases like this, the ordinary traveller
runs little if any more danger of robbery than at home.

[91]

[92]

At the pay-stations we breast our way through crowds
of the peons so thick that the horses can hardly be prevented
from trampling upon them, always with their
narrow foreheads, bristling hair, staring, wild eyes, and
large, undecided mouths. Their money is jingled out to
them through a pay-window into their shabby sombreros.
Venders of small commodities and pulque wait for them,
and profit by the new supply of funds.

At these stations the engineers lead a kind of barrack
life. The interior contains some beds, a dining-table, and
a safe; outside is a storehouse of picks, shovels, and barrows.
Whether here, in their construction-car, or tents,
they extend the stranger a cheery hospitality. They are
hearty, robust fellows—“not here for their health,” as
their saying is. Many of them have seen service in war
and in other climes, and their company is both amusing
and instructive.

VI.

The right of way usually given in all the concessions
is for a width of two hundred and thirty feet. Material
and supplies for the road, and connected telegraph line,
are exempted from duty generally for the period of
twenty years. Neither the concession, property, nor
shares can be alienated to any foreign government, nor
can a foreign government be admitted as a shareholder.
The fear of foreign domination crops out everywhere in
Mexican legislation; and perhaps the weakness of the
nation, and the sad experience of its seizure by Napoleon
on the pretext of debt, are sufficient excuse for such
[93]nervousness. At any rate, all companies organized under
its charters agree to be strictly Mexican, and to
renounce all rights and exemptions as foreigners.

There is no great vacant public
domain, as with us, and the Government
has not aided the new
enterprises with land grants. Up
to a recent period, however, it has
attached to each concession a cash
subsidy of $10,000 to $15,000 a
mile. Both the Central and National
are thus subsidized. In order that the burden
may not fall too heavily upon an exchequer always weak,
the payments are made to depend upon the pledge of six
per cent. in the one case, and four in the other, of receipts
at the custom-houses. Certificates for the several
[94]amounts as they become due are issued to the companies,
which must wait for collection till there are funds to
meet them.

The latest plan, affecting most of the great schemes
still chiefly on paper, gives no subsidy with the charter,
but gives, instead, certain privileges to atone for its absence.
A less strict accountability to Government, with
a much higher tariff of charges, is permitted. It has
been questioned by some whether under these conditions
a charter without the subsidy is not better than with it.
It is to be borne in mind, however, so far as the matter
of the higher rates is concerned, that between competing
points the company which can afford to run at the
cheapest rates gets the business. If but a tithe of the
railroads now covering the map like a net-work be built,
there need be no fear of the lack of a lively competition.

The stocks and bonds of railroads are not bought on
the word of a desultory traveller mainly in search of the
picturesque—though I will admit, too, that they are often
bought upon less. I am not afraid, therefore, to express
a certain enthusiasm about the ferro-carriles of Mexico,
which are in everybody’s mouth. It is the railways
which have made the modern world elsewhere what it
is, and why should they fail of the usual effect here?

They may be overdone, and there may be panics and
shrinkages, such as have occurred elsewhere, though this
is not extremely probable, owing to the reasons for wariness
which lie very much on the surface. The conditions
to be conformed to must not be sought in a parallel situation
of things in the United States, but rather in such
countries, perhaps, as Russia and India, with a large
peasant population to be developed, instead of a new
population to be created. We have built railroads in
advance of settlement, and depended upon immigration
[95]to fill up in their wake. Mexico has but an infinitesimal
immigration, and presents no great inducements to it at
present. It must depend upon the local carrying trade
and natural development of the industries and commerce
of the country. It has a population per square mile but
little less than that of the United States. These are
of a natural intelligence, and capable of the stimulus of
ambition when opportunities are opened. They are to
be encouraged to be no longer satisfied with a bare subsistence
for themselves, but to produce from their fertile
lands a surplus, for which a market is now opened. They
are to trade upon it and become amassers of wealth.

No less than 10,000 miles of railways are spread over
what were once the old Mexican provinces of California,
Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada,
Utah, and Texas. Railways have brought these out of
the nothingness in which they recently lay so vast and
desolate. What must they not inevitably do at last for
Old Mexico itself, so fully peopled, and scattered with
centres of trade and of the arts of civilized life?

---

I.

It is perhaps thought that the work of improvement is
to be effected entirely from without, the Mexican himself
remaining passive, and allowing everything to be done
for him. The view is supported by the extent to which
the business of the country is already in the hands of foreigners.
The bankers and manufacturers are English.
The Germans control hardware and “fancy goods.”
French and Italians keep the hotels and restaurants;
Spaniards the small groceries and pawn-shops, and deal
in the products of the country. These latter have a repute
for somewhat Jewish style of thrift. They are
enterprising as administrators of haciendas, and often
marry the proprietors’ daughters, and possess themselves
on their own account of the properties to which they were
sent as agents. Whether it be due to such rivalry or
not, it is to be noted that there are few Jews in Mexico.
Finally, the Americans build the railroads.

The Mexican proper is a retail trader, an employé,
or, if rich, draws his revenues from haciendas, which in
many cases he never sees, and where his money is made
for him. These are on an enormous scale. The chief
part of the land is comprised in great estates, on which
the peasants live in a semi-serfdom. Small farms are
scarcely known. For his fine hacienda in the state of
[97]Oaxaca ex-President Diaz is said to have paid over a
million of dollars; on another the appliances alone cost a
million. The revenues of Mexican proprietors have been
heretofore devoted to the purchase of more real estate,
or loaned out at interest; at any rate, “salted down” in
some such way as to be of little avail in setting the
wheels of industry in motion.

Before adopting, however, the conventional view that
this state of things is due to inferiority of race or enervating
climate, considerations on the other side are to be
looked at. In the first place is the revolutionary condition
of the country, which until a recent date subjected
the citizen who ventured to place his property beyond
his immediate recall to a thousand embarrassments from
one or another of the contending parties. Such immunities
and advantages as there were, were enjoyed by foreigners
alone, under the protection of their diplomatic
representatives.

Again, there have been peculiar inequalities of fortune,
coming down from the old Spanish monarchical times.
There has been at one extreme of society a class too abject,
and at the other, one in too leisurely circumstances,
to greatly aspire to farther improvement, and the middle
class has been of slow formation. The difficulties in
the way of travel and communication with foreign parts
for the middle class, from the bosom of which financial
success chiefly springs, have been of a repressive sort.

The climate, of the central table-land at least, must not
be considered enervating. One must lay his ideas of
climate, as depending upon latitude, aside, and comprehend
that here it is a matter of elevation above the sea.
Individual Mexicans are to be met with who, under the
stimulus of the new feeling of security, have embarked
their capital, put plenty of irons in the fire, and appear to
[98]handle them with skill. The street railways of the capital,
an extensive and excellent system, are under native
management exclusively. It is as successful in mining.
It was only when the great Real del Monte Company at
Pachuca, formerly English, passed into Mexican hands
that its mines became profitable.

I should be strongly of the opinion that the backwardness
of the Mexican is not the result of a native incapacity
or lack of appetite for gain, but chiefly of the physical
conformation of the country. The mule-path is traced
like a vast hieroglyphic over the face of it, and in this is
read the secret—lack of transportation.

But the zealous advocate of race and “Northern energy”
objects: “How long is it since we had no railroads
ourselves? And yet did we not reach a very pretty degree
of civilization without them?”

But Mexico not only had no railways, but not even
rivers nor ports. It was waterways which made the prosperity
of nations before the day of steam. It is hardly
credible, the completeness of the deprivations to which
this interesting country has been so long subjected. The
wonder is, to any experienced in the diligence travel, and
the dreary slowness of the journeys, at a foot-pace, by
beasts of burden, not that so little, but so very much, has
been done. On the trail to the coast at Acapulco, for
instance—in popular phrase a mere camino de pajaros
(road for birds)—have grown up some charming towns,
like Iguala, the scene of the Emperor Iturbide’s famous
Plan, which, it seems to me, the Anglo-Saxon race would
hardly ever have originated under such circumstances.

Commerce and trade in such a land naturally have their
peculiar aspects. There is, in the first place, the complicated
tariff, already referred to. Americans should not
let a new-born enthusiasm for a promising market hurry
[99]them into consignments without a thorough understanding
of the premises. As to engaging in undertakings in
the country itself, one who had done so held that the
new-comer should make his residence there for six months
or a year, and first acquaint himself with the people, their
customs, and language.

“Better make it two years, on the whole,” he said,
reflectively, “and then he will go home again and let it
alone altogether.”

Without sharing this saturnine view, the importance
of some preliminary acquaintance cannot be too strongly
insisted upon. The great inertia of customs and ways
of looking at things so different from our own is appreciated
more and more as time goes on.

[100]

The most promising openings at present would seem
to be, for capital, to work up into manufactures the raw
material with which the country abounds. These opportunities
will increase with the growth of transportation.
Labor is cheap. The peons have little inventive but sufficient
imitative talent, and make excellent mill-hands.
They work for twenty-five and thirty-seven cents a day,
and have no trades-unions nor strikes. There is little
opening as yet for persons of small means. The government
has taken but its first rudimentary steps toward the
encouragement of immigration, and the path is beset with
difficulties.

A commercial treaty is now in the hands of the Senate
of the United States. It will be adopted in some form
before long, and may result in the improvement of local
business opportunities, as it must in the volume of trade,
between the two countries. What we want is such a reduction
of duties as to put us on the same footing at least
as England (in favor of which there is a certain discrimination),
so that our goods and machinery can be sold in
the country on reasonable terms. It is predicted that a
trade which is now about $30,000,000 per annum (including
both exports and imports) can be made $100,000,000.
The Mexicans, on their side, desire admission for their
sugar and hemp. The treaty has met with its chief opposition
thus far from our Southern sugar-planters.
Their fear of competition is hardly reasonable at present.
Our own product seems more likely to go to Mexico
at first. It is a matter of note that sugar has been
selling at eighteen cents a pound of late at old Monterey,
in the country which professes to raise it.⁠[1] The total
[101]value of the exports from Mexico for the past fiscal year
has been $29,000,000. Of these $14,000,000 came to us,
and $10,000,000 went to England. Our own exports to
Mexico for 1881 were somewhat over $11,000,000.

II.

At present Mexico is perhaps the most difficult country
in which to do business in the civilized world. A
customer four or five hundred miles off, even on the best
roads, is five or six days’ journey distant. In preparing
for it it is not long since he was accustomed to first make
his will. The merchant has friendly as well as commercial
relations with his customer. He is more or less his
banker at the same time, not for the resulting profit, but
because it is expected of him. If he does not offer such,
accommodation some other house will. Credits are long,
and it is not expected that interest will be charged even
on quite liberal overlaps of time.

Payment is made in the bulky silver currency of the
country; and this is sent in large sums by guarded convoys,
the conductas, which converge upon the capital four
times a year—in January, April, August, and November.
There were but two banks issuing bills at this time, and
these to but a small amount, and receivable only at short
distances from the capital. One of these was a private
corporation, the other the National Monte de Piedad, or
pawn-shop.

The visitor becomes early acquainted with the Mexican
“dollar of the fathers,” to his sorrow. Sixteen of them
weigh a solid pound. It is obviously impossible to carry
even a moderate quantity of this money concealed, or to
carry it at all with comfort. The unavoidable exhibition
of it, held in laps, chinking in valises, standing in bags,
[102]and poured out in prodigious streams at the banks and
commercial houses, is one of the features of life.

Guadalajara, the supply from which unites with that
from Zacatecas at Queretaro, is the northernmost point
from which money is despatched by conducta to Mexico.
A portion of that even from here is despatched to San
Francisco, by the port
of San Blas, just as a
part of that from Zacatecas
goes to Tampico
through San Luis
Potosi. The country
north of San Luis to
the east ships its funds
to Matamoras; those
of Durango are divided
between Matamoras
and Mazatlan;
while Puebla, Oaxaca,
and the rest of the
south find their natural
outlet at Vera
Cruz.

The importance of
the great conducta in
these times is diminished
by the growing safety of the transport of money
by private hands. Its days are numbered with the
progress of the railways, nearing so rapidly the central
cluster of cities in which it has its origin. Even now it
no longer came wholly to town, but took the Central train
at the first feasible point, at Huehuetoca, the Spanish cut
for the drainage of the valley. Its place as a spectacle is
filled by the pay conductas of the railroads.

[103]

A revision of these accounts is needed almost from
moment to moment as I write, to keep pace with the rapid
changes in affairs. A National Bank and banks of foreign
incorporators have been established in the mean time, with
authority to issue large amounts of but inefficiently secured
paper. The Mexican National Bank may now issue
bills to the amount of $60,000,000, upon a capital of
$20,000,000. They are legal tender from individuals to
the government, but not from the government to individuals,
nor between individuals. One of the arguments in
favor of this bank, our minister was assured, was that it
would counteract in some sort the influence of the United
States: the usual patriotic leaven cropping up, it will be
seen; though how it should accomplish the purpose in
view it is by no means easy to understand. A flood of
depreciated paper is driving the solid coin out of circulation;
so that, while the traveller may be now able to
carry his money comfortably about him, there may be
much worse in store for the Mexicans themselves than
the handling of bags of unwieldy dollars. It is not
pleasant to see also that the government shows some
unusual pecuniary embarrassment. Its expenditures for
the last fiscal year exceeded its revenues by ten per cent.,
and a loan is talked of. Should a spirit of recklessness
enter into the management of the finances, in all this
whirl of novelties, complicated by the issues of paper, a
crisis might be precipitated, which would, of course, have
to be counted among the retarding influences on the railways.

III.

Shops and shopping in Mexico follow much more European
than American traditions. A fanciful title over
the door of the shop takes the place of the name of a firm
[104]or single proprietor. You have no Smith & Brown, but,
instead—on the sign of a dry-goods store, for instance—“The
Surprise,” or “The Spring-time,” or “The Explosion.”
A jeweller’s is apt to be called “The Pearl,” or
“The Emerald;” a shoe-store, “The Foot of Venus,” or
“The Azure Boot.”

The windows are tastefully draped, after the way of
shop-windows. Within stand a large force of clerks,
touching shoulder to shoulder. They seem democratic
in their manners, even by an American standard. They
shake hands over the counter with a patron with whom
they have enjoyed a slight previous acquaintance; ask a
mother of a family, perhaps, after the health of “Miss
Lolita” and “Miss Soledad,” her daughters, who may
have accompanied her thither. One of them, they hear,
is going to be married. Perhaps this is accounted for
by the presence among the minor clerks of some of considerable
social position—some of the class you meet with
afterward at the select entertainments of the Minister of
Guatemala, for instance. But a limited choice of occupations
has been open to the youth of Mexico, and those
who cared to work have had to take such places as they
could. They apply now with great eagerness for the
positions of every sort offering under the new enterprises.

It was not etiquette of late for ladies of the upper class
to do shopping in public, except from their carriages, the
goods being brought out to them at the curb-stone. Now
they may enter shops. A considerable part of the buying,
as of furniture and other household goods, is still
done by the men of the family. Nor was it etiquette
for ladies to be seen walking in the streets, even with a
maid, except to and from mass in the morning.

The change in both respects is ascribed to the horse-cars.
[105]The point of ceremony, it appears, was founded
somewhat upon the difficulty of getting about.

Americanism now appears in the streets with increasing
frequency, in the signs of dealers in arms, sewing-machines,
and other of our useful inventions. Our insurance
companies, too, are a novel idea, to which the
Mexicans seem to take with much readiness. The principal
shopping hours are from four to six o’clock of the
afternoon. From one till three, or even four, little is
done. Even the horse-cars do not run in the middle of
the day. There is a general stoppage of affairs for dinner.
It is but a short time since that enterprising person,
the commercial traveller, was unknown in the country,
but now he begins to flourish here as elsewhere.

The profits of favorably situated houses, in the absence
of keen competition, have been very large, and methods
of doing business correspondingly loose. The Mexican
merchant does not go into a fine calculation of the proportionate
value of each item of a foreign invoice, but
“lumps” the profit he thinks he ought to receive on the
whole. Some articles, in consequence, can be bought at
less than their real value, while others, in compensation,
are exorbitantly advanced.

It is the smaller trade, and that most removed from
metropolitan influences, which is the gayest and most
entertaining as a spectacle. How many picturesque market
scenes does not one linger in! Each community has
its own market-day, not to interfere with others. The
flags of the plaza and market-houses, which are commodious
and well built, are hidden under fruits, grains, cocoa
sacks and mats, striped blankets and rebosos, sprawling
brown limbs, embroidered bodices and kirtles, as if spread
with a thick, richly colored rug. A grade above the open
market is the Parian, a bazaar of small shops, in which
[106]goods, sales-people, and customers alike might all be put
upon canvas only with the most vivid of hues.

I give some examples
of the
street architecture
of the more important
shops.
The approach to
many is under the
welcome portales,
shady in sunshine
and dry in the
wet. Not a few
of the shops have
been old Spanish
palaces before being
adapted to
their present use.
I transferred to
my sketch-book a
bit from the leading
merceria (dry-goods
store) of the
important minor
city of Puebla
which I thought
particularly interesting.
It was
called, after the
prevailing fashion,
“The City of Mexico.” The entire front—upon
which still remained the carved escutcheon, showing that
it had been the residence of a family of rank—was faced
up between carvings, in a gay pattern in tiles, the figures
glazed, the rest an unglazed ground of red.

---

I.

The persons who once lived in these old Spanish palaces,
and descendants of the titles of nobility existing before
the Independence, are still much esteemed in a certain
small circle in the country. There are pointed out to you
those who should by right be marquises and counts, and
the titles are occasionally given them. The Mexican nobles,
from the time of Cortes down, lived in magnificent
style in their day. The Count of Regla, who has left his
trace after him in many directions, must have enjoyed
almost the state of royalty. A single hacienda of his in
Michoacan was thirty leagues in length by seventeen in
breadth, and, sloping down from the temperate plateau
to the tropic, comprised in its extent the products of almost
every clime. He fitted out two ships of the largest
size, building them of mahogany and cedar, and presented
them to the King of Spain. Inviting his majesty
to visit the country, he assured him that his horse should
tread on nothing but ingots of silver from the coast to
the capital.

A remnant of the old noblesse rallied around Maximilian
when he came to assume the Emperor’s crown. With
this, and what remains of Maximilian’s court, and some
few other families of a peculiarly exclusive turn, a circle
is constituted somewhat corresponding to the Parisian
[108]Faubourg St. Germain. They are sometimes stigmatized
as “Mochos,” literally hypocrites. They are rich, pass
much of their time abroad, protest against the sequestration
of the Church property, and exhibit a refined horror
at the vandalism of these later times.

“The government,” they tell you, “is in the hands of
the populacho, the rabble; the gente honrada, respectable
society, has nothing to do with it.”

In a novel which I have by a Mexican writer, Cuellar,
a secretary of legation at Washington, the scene is laid
in this faction or clique. “Chona,” or Incarnacion, the
heroine, or leading feminine character, “had been brought
up from childhood more to abhor than admire. The conversations
in the family continually turned upon the
utter antipathy which the men and things of Mexico
inspired.”

“They had for visitors Church notables and those of
the wealthy who still retained the parchments of their
ancestry. If they made any new acquaintance it was
some Spaniard lately come into relations with them
through the business of their estates.”

The fashionable men in the story have been educated
at Paris, and become elegantly blasé there as well. In
contrast to these is shown one Sanchez, a vulgar, pushing
fellow, upheaved from the depths by the revolutions.
He has the “gift of gab,” which he has utilized to make
himself a figure in politics; has enriched himself with the
spoils of the Church establishment, and secured a good
place under government. He more than hints, however,
when he is found to have finally lost it, that he is ready
to engage in upsetting “Don Benito”—it is now under
the régime of President Juarez that the scene is laid—or
in any other convulsion that may promise to again mend
his fortunes.

[109]

II.

I do not quite know which side the writer himself is
on, in this satirical work; it is so bitter all around. It is
certainly interesting as showing two such boldly distinct
types, one of them at least picturesque, evolved out of
the peculiar conflicts of the country. Let us hope that
there are few of the dangerous Sanchez pattern in the
present juncture of affairs. The Mochos cannot now be
numerous nor dangerous, with the wholesale victory of
middle or lower class republicanism around them. They
have taken little part, voluntarily, in the successive revolutions
since their own overthrow, leaving them rather to
be fought out by professional soldiers of fortune. They
temporize a little; attend, perhaps, the wedding of some
rich railway contractor’s daughter, in order, as they say,
not to draw upon themselves a direct enmity; but they
do not open their own houses in return; they do not
“entertain.”

Don Sebastian Lerdo, spoken of as the most scholarly
President the country ever had, is conceded to have been
to a considerable extent “in society.” He was expelled
by Porfirio Diaz, and is now in retirement at New York.
The political class since that time has either not been
well received in the circle spoken of, or, perhaps too busy
with other affairs, has not greatly cared for it.

Such being the case, there are few reunions, and these
of an informal character. Nor do the officials give entertainments
themselves. Social gayeties, as we understand
them, can hardly be said to exist in Mexico. It is only
under the neutral roofs of the foreign ministers that they
take place with some satisfaction. I had the good fortune
to be at the capital during the visit of General Grant, and
[110]to see a social movement which, by the general testimony,
was quite phenomenal. There was, among the rest, a
fashionable wedding, attended by the President and his
cabinet. A “reception” and banquet were given in the
evening on the occasion of the signing of a civil contract
between the parties. The religious ceremony took place
at church next day. The interior courts of the house
were wreathed with flowers, and lent themselves palatially
to the festivity, as they always do. The banquet was
spread along the bases of the columns of the arcade.

The young Mexican women are still kept apart from
the other sex, and made love to chiefly on their balconies
in the good old-fashioned, romantic style. Their manners
when met with in public, however, are not so unusual
as might be expected. They seem neither more
nor less diffident than elsewhere. They are allowed to
take part at balls in a slow waltz called the danza—so
slow as hardly to be a dance at all—which is chiefly an
opportunity for conversation.

The high-contracting parties to the marriage above-mentioned
were by no means young, and in general the exceeding
precocity of development and early age of entering
into the marriage relation supposed to be characteristic
of the tropics were not apparent. It was said that mercenary
considerations were not frequent, and claim was laid
to a good deal of simplicity and honest affection in the
settlement of these matters; though how the parties get
at each other, under the restrictive system, sufficiently to
enter upon a simple and honest affection, is one of those
things that remain a mystery. It is said that the young
woman who remains single is not stigmatized for it in the
common way as “old maid.” They say very charmingly
instead: “She is difficult. She is hard to suit.”

[111]

[112]

In the country the match-making is often taken charge
of by the village priest, who brings the parties together
finally at dinner.

As a general remark, the manners of the lower class of
the country are much better than ours, and those of the
upper are not as good—not as often based upon real
kindliness of heart and genuine desire to be of service.
The Mexican promises a hundred things which he has no
intention, often no ability, of performing. The American
is not without his faults—the more’s the pity—but
in a general way he aims to do as he agrees. He will
often make against the Mexican the reproach of a certain
slipperiness—a lack of appreciation of the importance of
adhering to his word.

III.

Each considerable group of foreign residents, as the
French, Germans, and Spaniards, has its handsome casino,
or club-house, which is a standing resource for the diversion
of members.

A French traveller as far back as 1838 complains of
the unsociable conduct of the Mexicans. If something
of the kind be still observed, therefore, it is not new.
“They abound,” he says, “in a superfluity of fine
phrases, and it is in this easy way that they discharge
themselves of their obligations.”

All who know European life, however, are aware that
the theatre and the café, with people of the Latin race,
largely take the place of the social visiting and entertaining
at home prevailing among Anglo-Saxons. Our next-door
neighbors, after all, may only have followed, making
a little more severe, the traditions of Old Spain. Ladies
do not often appear at the cafés, but they are often
at their boxes at the theatres, to which they subscribe
by the season; and they would go more frequently yet,
no doubt, were the pieces as a rule better worth their
consideration. There are three large, well-built theatres,
the Nacional, Principal, and Arbeu, and minor ones for
the working-class.

[113]

[114]

The entertainments esteemed of chief importance are
those of the French opera companies which come over
from Havana, on their rounds. A native Spanish opera-bouffe
and ballet, called zarzuela, is much given at other
times. For the rest, the theatrical pieces presented are
the works, in prose and verse, of the Spanish dramatists
current at home, or occasionally of some native dramatist,
announced with an extra flourish which his production
does not usually justify. They are all announced with
a sufficient flourish, so far as that is concerned. There is
always going on some especially Gran Funcion, as, for
example:

“The grand Drama of Customs, Entirely New, in
three acts and verse, by the distinguished poet, D. Leopoldo
Cano, author of the precious comedy, ‘La Mariposa,’
entitled ‘La Opinion Publica.’

“This sublime work of the distinguished poet, D. Leopoldo
Cano,” the bill goes on to say, “was received at
Madrid with an astounding acclaim. The Spanish Press
has lavished upon it a thousand eulogies…. In choosing
it for the second subscription night, we feel that the
public will know how to value it as it truly merits, and to
value at the same time the skill of the Company in their
most finished studies and essays.”

I do not recollect any of this as very novel, or likely to
be of interest if translated, apart from some portions depending
upon such a difference of manners and customs
as to be hardly intelligible to an American audience. My
acquaintance with the theatre began with a piece at the
Nacional, called “The First Patient.” There was a young
[115]doctor on the stage, and an acquaintance of his had fallen
in love with his wife, and put a note in her work-basket
by way of telling her so. The note was conveyed to the
husband, who, instead of shooting the imprudent writer,
took occasion presently to assume a look of horror, and
pretend that the latter had gone blind. Before the Lothario
could protest, a bandage was clapped over his eyes,
medicaments given to make him believe in his own misfortune,
and he was put under a course of onerous treatment.

After a series of absurd situations he was finally released,
persuaded by degrees that he was cured. The
patient raised the bandage. “Veo! veo!”—“I see!”—he
exclaimed, in wild delight.

“Very well, then—see that!” said the husband, thrusting
the offending letter under his nose.

This was amusing enough, but I was quite as much
amused all the time with the studious efforts of a companion
who had come with me—the French engineer sent
out to examine mines, before mentioned—who proposed
to turn the theatre into a school of languages. He
grasped at every word a semblance of which he seemed
to catch, and dived for verifications of it into his grammar
and dictionary. He resented in his ambition any
interpretation of passages which he did not himself originate,
and constructed such a theory of the play as its
author would by no means have recognized. When the
dénouement came, in the bold “Veo!” he seized upon it
with avidity.

“‘Veo,’ c’est bien trouvé ça—‘veo,’” he said, reflectively,
digesting it at his leisure. “Je vais le retenir ce
‘veo;’ vous-allez voir.”

And so he did, and proceeded to use it vigorously in
the restaurants and the like on the following day.

[116]

IV.

Though so much more be still proposed, there are certainly
some reasons for self-complacency in the country
even from the American point of view. Education is
found to be provided for in a manner that awakens admiration
and surprise. The primary schools are least looked
after, but the pupils who pass through these with a disposition
to go farther have an array of advantages open to
them at the capital superior to anything of a parallel sort
in the United States. The Government maintains national
schools respectively of engineering, law, medicine,
agriculture, mechanic arts, and trades (for both sexes), a
conservatory of music, an academy of fine arts, and a
library, provided with an edifice that New York well
might envy. It maintains a museum, institutions for
blind, deaf and dumb, and insane, for orphans, and young
criminals, and a long list besides of the usual charities of
enlightened communities. The schools are open without
money and without price to all, and there are even funds
to provide board, lodging, and pocket-money for students
from a distance, who are selected on certain easy conditions.

The students in agriculture pass some months of the
year at the haciendas to observe different crops and climates.
The graduates of the School of Arts and Measures
go out into the world prepared to make their living
as carpenters, masons, photographers, electro-platers, and
at numerous other trades. Before an opinion is passed
upon Mexican civilization the accommodations and neat
uniforms of the pupils of the blind institute should be
seen; the noble building erected in the last century for
the School of Mines; the beautifully clean, wide corridors,
[117]sunny class-rooms, embroidery-rooms, dormitories, and
drawing-rooms of the Viscaynas, the national college for
girls; and the arcades and charming central garden of
the National Preparatory School (in the professions) for
young men.

There was a fountain spouting among tropical plants
in the garden of the Preparatory School the day I went
there, and by the fountain was a young panther, or lion,
of the country, as they call it, confined in a cage. The
students, young fellows, who did not differ so greatly from
Yale and Harvard undergraduates in aspect, except for
the dusky Indian complexions among them, came now
and then and stirred up the lion a little, making him play
with a ball in his cage. They seemed to prepare their
recitations walking around the garden or sitting in the
ample corridors.

The principal text-books are studied in French or
English, in which languages they are apt to be written,
and the recitations are conducted in the same languages;
so that, what is so rare with us, graduates emerge from
these schools very tolerable linguists without ever having
been out of their own country.

All these institutions are housed for the most part in
the vast ancient convent edifices, which furnish ample
quarters to whatever is in need of them—to barracks,
hospitals, post-offices, prisons, railway stations, iron founderies,
and cotton-mills.

Each state of the republic, again, has its free college.
Judging from that of the state of Hidalgo, however,
which I saw at Pachuca—its internal arrangements in a
very filthy condition—all do not follow very closely the
example of the capital.

In the department of jails, unhappily, there is a deficiency.
As at present arranged, they can present but
[118]moderate terrors to evil-doers. The really fine penitentiary
at Guadalaxara is the only one in which modern
ideas of penal discipline are followed. There is by law
no death penalty at present. The number of nefarious
criminals is kept down by semi-official lynchings, shooting
on capture, into which nobody ever inquires. Others
are transported to Yucatan. There still remain enough,
however, to make one look with uneasiness on the slightness
of the means of restraint employed. The bolts and
bars are often only lattices of wood instead of iron. At
the city prison of Belen some two thousand persons are
confined. It seemed to me that a large part of them
must be much more comfortable than at their own squalid
homes. They made a strange spectacle indeed, looked
down upon in their large courts. Of all ages, and for
sentences of all durations, they eat, sleep, and work at
various light occupations together. No attempt is made
to prevent their communicating or staring about. They
have good air, light, and food, and are allowed a part of
their own earnings. They take a siesta at noon, play
checkers, gossip, and even bathe luxuriously in a central
tank.

The liberality toward education spoken of is the more
creditable since the Mexican treasury is not flourishing,
and a yearly deficit is more common than a surplus.
These expenses appear to be regarded as essential, whatever
else may suffer. It is the more creditable, too, since
the heads of the government do not indulge themselves
in expensive surroundings. The American legislator is
not himself without his marble colonnades and his furniture
of black walnut upholstered in Russia leather; but
President and Cabinet ministers here walk upon threadbare
carpets in the National Palace. The chamber of the
Senate is a modest little hall; and the Deputies sit in
[119]shabby quarters in another part of town, which were once
simply a place of amusement, the Theatre Iturbide.

The museum, chiefly of Aztec antiquities, to which one
turns with interest, is not of the extent or informing
character that may have been expected, and is under by
no means brilliant management. Its greatest attraction
is the arrangement of some of the larger fragments, particularly
the great sacrificial stone from the ancient temple
of the war-god, in the court-yard. There is a setting
of shrubbery and vines about them, and the sunlight
striking in among these upon the gray old remains, produces
some charming effects.

---

I.

The school of fine arts, on the other hand, the Academy
of San Carlos—which was to celebrate with a special
exhibition the one hundredth anniversary of its foundation—produces,
both in its collections and the ability of
its directing professors, a most satisfactory and agreeable
impression. You enter galleries which carry you back
again to the Louvre and Uffizi. They used a great deal
of bitumen, the old painters here. In its darkening it
has left now and then only isolated lights upon a face or
bits of drapery to glimmer out of a midnight gloom. It
is an artificial taste, no doubt, to like it, and “caviare to
the general;” but like it one does, at its most artificial,
after a long absence from anything of the kind.

The walls recall such galleries as that of Bologna in
the liberal scale of the works displayed. With such
models before them, there is no reason why students
should fall into a niggling and petty style. As a matter
of fact, they do not. They seem to excel in a bold, large
composition and the rendering of grandiose ideas. This,
rather than color, is their strong point. If our New York
schools of art are able to equal the portfolio of drawings
I saw as the result of a fortnightly exercise, they are certainly
not in the habit of doing so. Nor were they at all
equalled by those of the prize competition of the students
[121]of the British Royal Academy which I saw in the first
year of the presidency of Sir Frederick Leighton. This
devotion to large academical ideas—the fortunes of Orestes,
Regulus, and Belisarius—it is true, is a source of
weakness rather than strength from the money point of
view. The market of the time demands a domestic,
genre, realistic, and not a grandiose art. The market for
art of any kind in Mexico is extremely small. There are
no government commissions farther than an occasional
portrait or two, and enlightened patrons hardly exist.
There are no pictures of consequence in the best Mexican
houses. The predictions at Havana were not verified.
The abundance of native talent receives little encouragement.
Many a bright genius is forced to paint
his inventions on the walls of pulque shops, and finally
to quit the profession for lack of support.

The subjects are, for the most part, severely religious,
in consonance with the taste of the wealthy convents, the
patrons of art for whom they were originally painted.
The series is in a declining order of merit chronologically.
The earliest Mexican masters are the best. They
came from Europe, contemporaries of Murillo, Ribera, the
Caracci, trained in the splendid Renaissance period at its
acme, and they left here works which do it no discredit.
Mexico was a hundred years old already, and it was high
time that art should arise when Baltazar Echave began,
somewhat after the year 1600. There is a romantic tradition
that it was his wife who first taught him to paint.

The genius of this early school is very decorative, and
marked at once by refinement of sentiment, breadth, and
vigor. It delights in rich stuffs and patterns, in the
glitter of plate and weapons. It fills up all portions of
the canvas symmetrically, and colors with a subdued
richness. I recall a St. Ildefonso, by Luis Juarez, as
[122]an exquisite work. The saint, in a rich red mantle, by
a praying-desk and chair, both draped in the same color,
is receiving from angels the paraphernalia of a bishop.
The mantle of the nearest angel is in burnt sienna, and
these warm red hues, relieved by cool whites, are repeated
throughout. There is a group of six angel heads composed
in an ellipse, and, in the air, a Virgin, with that
bevy of fluttering angels about that take the place of
clouds in landscape. The minor heads, painted chiefly
from the same model, are full of sweetness and intelligence.

Arteaga has a noble St. Thomas; José Juarez, a quaint
couple of child martyrs, Saints Justo and Pastor, who
trudge along hand-in-hand like a pair of burgomaster’s
children (the scenes of their martyrdom shown in the
background), while angels rain down upon them single
pinks, roses, and forget-me-nots, carefully painted. A
younger Baltazar Echave, and Juan and Nicolas Rodriguez,
are of almost equal force.

A second period begins with Ibarra and Cabrera—the
latter very much the better—at the end of the same century.
They are without the same distinction. Their
figures have a bourgeois air. They aim to be pictorial
instead of decorative. The crude red and blue garments
with which we are monotonously familiar in religious art
come in with them; and the draperies, in smooth, large
folds, are apparently made up out of their heads.

The foreign gallery boasts many excellent works of the
school of Murillo, and an original each of Murillo, Ribera,
Carreño, Leonardo da Vinci, Teniers the elder, and
Ingres, with also probable Vandycks and Rembrandts.

A collection has also been formed of works of merit,
contributed to the regular biennial exhibitions, and purchased
by the Academy to illustrate modern Mexican[123]
art. The religious tradition still prevails to a large extent,
though the subjects are now taken from the Scriptures
instead of the Bollandists. They are Hagar and Ishmael,
the good Samaritan, the Hebrews by the waters of Babylon,
and Noah receiving the olive-branch, and the like.

[124]

[125]

There is in this contemporary work the general fault
of an over-delicacy and smoothness of painting, and a lack
of realism, while the design is excellent. These voyagers
in the ark have not experienced the woes of a deluge,
and the shepherds have the complexion of Lady Vere de
Vere. Rebull, who studied at Rome under Overbeck,
repeats here the dove-colors, violets, and lemon-yellows
of the modern decorations of the Vatican done under
that school.

The works of the latest period, under the able direction
of Señor Salome Pina, a pupil of Gleyre, are much
more virile, and the subjects more secular. We have
now Bacchus and Ariadne; the death of Atala; the slaying
of the sons of Niobe; an arch and dainty Cupid poisoning
a flower, by Ocaranza; a charming fisher-boy, by
Gutierrez. Some of the artists have had the advantage
of study also abroad. The strongest of them all, Felix
Parra, now enjoying a grand prize of Rome, produced
the masterpiece, a great canvas representing the friar
Las Casas protecting the Aztecs (from slaughter by the
Spaniards)—a work in sentiment, drawing, and color
worthy to hang in any exhibition in the world—before
he had seen any other country than his own.

Velasco has set a powerful lead in landscape. He is
especially a master of great distance. His favorite theme
is the curious, sienna-colored Valley of Mexico, which he
paints to the life.

There are some scattered works of the early school,
besides, in the houses of a few dilettanti at the capital
[126]and Puebla; and some few in the cathedrals of the same
places, though scarcely to be seen, from their disadvantageous
positions. Good pictures need not be looked for
in the churches. No doubt they were once numerous,
but they have been sacked from the country by invaders
and others, and found a profitable market abroad.

II.

In sculpture there is talent corresponding to that in
painting. The stately system of burial, in the panteons,
lends itself to sculpture and furnishes opportunities which
with us are relegated to the commonplace tombstone-makers.
The panteon is a solid city of the dead, walled
in, paved, and with courts and arcades like a city of the
living. The monument of greatest note is that, by Manuel
Islas, at the Pantheon of San Fernando, to Benito
Juarez, “the second Washington” of his country, old
Padre Hidalgo having been the first. His effigy in
marble, so realistic and corpse-like that it seems to have
been modelled from an actual cast in plaster, lies upon
a mausoleum, with a figure of Fame bending over it.
The realism of the principal figure is almost repulsive,
but it is redeemed by the grace of the angel, and nobody
can deny to this large work great vigor and dignity.

The bodies are not buried, but sealed up in mausolea,
or in niches in a wall, which present somewhat the aspect
of a Roman columbarium. Some of the monuments are
of the lovely Mexican onyx, with letters in gilt. I noted
one bearing only the initials M. M. They were alluring
to the curiosity, and on inquiring I found that it was that
of Miramon, general-in-chief of Maximilian, who fell by
the executioners’ bullets, with his master, and General
Mejia, at Queretero.

[127]

There were no flowers on this one to-day, but the
tombs of the patriots were elaborately decked, for it was
the great festival of the Cinco de Mayo.

I walked out and stood in the round-point by the
colossal bronze statue of Charles IV. The Paseo de la
Reforma and the causeways glittered with bayonets; the
cadets were coming down from the Military School back
of Chapultepec, and the garrison from the Citadel, to join
in the procession. The troops were reviewed in front of
the National Palace—as troops in smaller numbers seem
always being reviewed there. They are mainly of Indian
blood, and small in stature. The cavalry especially had
a rusty look in their outfit, and did not compare with the
dashing Rurales. The officers, on the other hand, are
trimly uniformed and quite French in aspect. There
were patriotic speeches in the Zocalo; the main thoroughfare
was strung with lanterns; and our Iturbide hotel was
very picturesque, with its three tiers of balconies draped
in the national colors—green, white, and red.

From time to time, as the procession moved, cannon
were fired in the Plaza, and the bells of the cathedral
turned over and over, like the wheels of machinery. I
never saw a better-conducted crowd. There was no fighting,
no inconvenient elbowing, no drunkenness. In the
evening the lanterns were lighted, and the great square
was filled with venders of fruits and knick-knacks, around
little bonfires of sticks, where they would bivouac for the
night. Later, red lights were kindled in the towers of
the cathedral, and every detail within stood out upon a
lurid ground as if they were burning. One could imagine
the camped venders in the square to be the ancient
Aztecs resting upon their arms, in order to attack Cortez
in his quarters on the morrow.

[128]

III.

Scarcely the same improvement is to be got from Mexican
literature as from Mexican art, but it is not without
its interest, both in itself and as an aid to knowledge of
the people.

Journals are very numerous. They are started upon
slight provocation, and as easily disappear. They attain,
as a rule, but a circulation of a few hundred copies. It
is thought that the Monitor Republicano, by far the most
important, may circulate from six to eight thousand. The
problem of existence for many of them would be difficult
without government aid. Subventions are given,
without public objection, so far as I have observed, to
the greater part of those managed with ability. The
system of subventions to the press was begun by our old
friend of school history, Santa Anna, and has been continued
ever since by governments which could not afford
to have anything more than the truth told about them,
at any rate. It is an encouraging sign, however, that the
Monitor is not a subventioned organ, yet speaks its mind
temperately and without apparent malice.

There is no efficacious law of libel, since extreme violence
of language is often indulged in by the periodicals
in their controversies with each other and outsiders. The
duel, which still survives, is somewhat of a corrective
upon this. The newspaper is about such a one in appearance
as at Paris, and includes a daily section of a serial
story. A Sunday edition is published, with literary selections,
and particularly poems, in large supply.

Actual literature as such is poorly paid. The reading
public is small. A thousand copies is a good edition even
for a popular book. The chief literary lights are found,
[129]as a rule, not of the shy, scholastic order, but possessed of
talent for oratory and bustling affairs. They take posts
in Congress, and are appointed as cabinet ministers.
General Riva Palacio, Juan Mateos, Prieto, Paz, Altimirano,
Justo Sierra, Peza, are deputies; Payno, a senator;
Cuellar, who wrote under the pseudonym of “Facundo,” a
secretary of legation. These are the native writers whose
works are more frequently in the hands of the public
than any others.

Prieto, who is chiefly a poet, however, has written a
book of his travels in the United States, in which some
amusing things will be discovered. He finds that with
us “the totality [lo colectivo] is grand and admirable, but
the individual egoistic and vulgar.” He saw Booth’s
Theatre, which is all of white marble (el Teatro de Both,
todo de marmol blanco); and, besides our hotels, the establishment
which we call a “Boarding” (el Boarding).
The Hudson and East rivers, he says, are two arms of the
sea, which freeze in winter, and even the immense quantity
of ice collected from these does not suffice for the
demands of the summer.

The poetical talent, of which we had a premonition in
Cuba, is that which principally abounds. There is plentiful
skill in versifying, with here and there a strain
of something very much higher, in the volumes of the
numerous authors. Prieto, above-mentioned, is found
principally a poet of “occasions.” He writes for the
unveiling of statues, to steam, electricity, and the like.
Juan Mateos strikes a fierce patriotic note. Altimirano,
a fiery Indian orator, who models himself in Congress
rather after Mirabeau, chooses as his themes for poetry
bees, oranges, poppies, morn, the pleasures of rural life.
They are excellent subjects in themselves, but it is an
artificial, and not a real, existence he describes. He
[130]would like to be Horatian, summons nymphs to disport
with him in the shade, and abounds in florid terms, without
thought.

Carpio is inspired more or less by Biblical subjects, as
Pharaoh and Belshazzar. In De Castro, Zaragoza, Gustave
Baz, and Cuenca are found charming conceits, of
pensive cast, and bits of description of a limpid purity.
Jewellers in words they may be called at their best, affiliated
to the Venetian school.

The argument of Zaragoza’s “Armonias” (Harmonies)
is briefly as follows: “When the flowers are dead, and
spring is over, the swallows take their flight; and when
again the flowers of spring adorn the mead, they, too,
return, bringing blessings on their wings.

“But when the illusions depart and leave behind them
only the thorns of the passions, in vain we invoke and
wait for them to return. The illusions, the swallows of
the heart, return, alas! never.”

So Gustave Baz, brooding in the sere winter over some
heavy sorrow, reflects upon the return of spring. But
the very contrast of its joyousness, the fresh rippling of
the brooks and melody of the birds, will but render his
sadness the heavier. “Then most keenly,” he laments,
“will break forth my grief. Then weightiest will the
air be laden with my sighs.”

The gem of the Lyra Mexicana is undoubtedly a certain
fugitive sonnet, “A Rosario,” by an unfortunate
young man, Acuña, who ended by taking his own life.
The poem expresses the charming ideals in love and the
bitterness of its disappointment, in a youth of fine and
sensitive nature. It has a poignancy and realism which
have, perhaps, never been surpassed. He returned from
a long journey, as the story is told, and found his betrothed
the wife of another. The shock proving unendurable,
[131]he committed suicide, leaving to the faithless
one the poem, a part of which may be thus rendered:

“Well, then, I have to say that I love you still, that I
worship you with all my being. I comprehend that your
kisses are never to be mine, that into your dear eyes I am
never to look…. Sometimes I try to sink you into oblivion,
to execrate you…. But alas, how vain it is! my
soul will not forget you. What will you, then, that I
should do, oh, part of my life? What will you that I
should do with such a heart?… Oh, figure to yourself
how beautiful might have been our existence together!…
But now that to the entrancing dream succeeds the
black gulf that has opened between us—farewell! love
of my loves, light of my darkness, perfume of all flowers
that bloomed for me! my poet’s lyre, my youth, farewell!”

IV.

If one try to select the most obvious trait in the native
fiction it is undoubtedly patriotism. This patriotism
is rampant in the press, and in the forms of official life.
The authorities are Citizen President, Citizen General,
and the like, as in the first French Republic, and they
conclude their official documents with the formula:
“Liberty In The Constitution.” The usurpation of
Maximilian served to bind the country into a certain
unity and awake this feeling to its utmost.

Two romancers, General Riva Palacio, and Juan Mateos,
have made use of the events of the French invasion
in a curious class of bulky novels, to call them so,
which have scored a popular success. “The Hill of Las
Campañas,” and “The Sun of May,” of Mateos, are respectively
more or less authentic accounts of the final
defeat and execution of Maximilian, and the defence of
[132]Puebla, slightly disguised. The “Calvary and Tabor,”
Riva Palacio, treats of the career of the Army of the
Centre in the same wars. Numbers of the characters
therefore are persons actually living, to be met with
every day, which gives to this fiction a singular effect.

Thus, in “El Sol de Mayo,” Manuel Payno, Altimirano,
and Riva Palacio himself are mentioned and their
manners described in the debate on the financial measure
which brought on the Intervention. Lerdo, long since an
exile, resident in New York, was at that time “el profeta
inspirada de nuestra nacionalidad” (the inspired
prophet of our nationality).

I pick out from the same book this paragraphic mention
of our own civil war: “And Edmundo Lee shone
like a star in the victories of Springfield and Bull Run.”
Perhaps the friends of General Robert E. Lee would
have some difficulty in recognizing him under such a
description.

These novels are printed with each sentence as a separate
paragraph, for easier reading. They first began to
rival somewhat the popular Fernandez y Gonzalez, by
some called “the Spanish Dumas,” whose works are
printed in the journals, together with translations of those
of Gaboriau and Dickens. Another flimsy series, in
covers of green, white, and red, called “Episodios Nacionales,”
aim to sugar-coat a didactic exhibition of the
events of the War of Independence. One individual
after another tells a long, dreary narrative about what
happened; these fall in with somebody else who tells
more, and so it goes.

These stories are read chiefly by the middle and lower
classes, the upper class, as in most provincial states of society,
preferring books from abroad. Their favorable
reception may be accounted for in part by the lack of
[133]regular histories and of newspaper intelligence, so that
the populace may to some extent be getting their information
for the first time.

Riva Palacio has written also, with Manuel Payno, a
large work appropriately called El Libro Rojo (The Red
Book). It gives an account (and graphic illustrations)
of the heroes and other notables in Mexican history who
have come to violent ends. This is a fate that has overtaken
aspirants to distinction quite regularly, and the
plates from the book, hung up at the book-stalls in the
Portales, are a ghastly chamber of horrors. The three
fighting curates of the early insurrection, Hidalgo, Morelos,
and Matamoras begin the series; and Maximilian,
Mejia, and Miramon, standing with bandaged eyes at the
Hill of las Campañas, for the present conclude it.

Several minor writers have feebly essayed the Aztec
material for fiction. Riva Palacio has availed himself
also of the picturesque life under the Spanish viceroys.
Of him it is to be said that, though of the sensational
school, and careless in plan, he has, not unfrequently,
passages of genuine force, and unhackneyed incidents
that enchain the attention.

---

I.

It would seem that history in Mexico might be a somewhat
confusing study; and so, in fact, it is. There have
been fifty-four Presidents, one regency, and one Emperor,
in fifty-six years, and a violent change of government
with nearly every one.

Picking up the little volume by Manuel Payno, used
in the schools, and opening it at random, I find—

“Question.—What events followed?

“Answer.—Truly imagination is lost, and memory confounds
itself, among so many plans and pronunciamentos;
but we will follow the thread as best we can.”

The period referred to is that of the revolt of Texas,
which proceeded to constitute itself “The Lone Star Republic.”
Looking a little farther with interest to see how
this is accounted for, we find:

“The settlers were North Americans, a portion, as we
have said, colonized by Stephen Austin. They set up
the pretext that they were not permitted to sell their
lands, and, later, that the Federal Constitution had been
violated; and they rose against the Government. The
latter felt it necessary to put down the rebellion, and
took measures to assail that remote and sterile State.”

These dispositions, as we know, ended in the defeat and
capture of Santa Anna at San Jacinto. There is always a
[135]fascination in being behind the scenes, and I confess that
this little opportunity of finding out what was thought
of itself by a country which has jarred so much with our
own was one of the attractions of being in Mexico. The
American war is accounted for as a wicked attempt to
sustain and annex the revolted province of Texas; and
equally good solutions are found for the various other
invasions by foreign powers.

What! is there no absolute right? Are all combatants
alike striking for their altars and their fires, and resisting
wanton aggression? Will not these Mexicans even yet
admit, though beaten, and though it has passed into history,
that they terrorized our frontier, and oppressed an
industrious and enterprising province? Why, then, perhaps
both sides were wrong; and let us aspire for the
day when all such quarrels may be settled by an international
arbitration.

II.

The young Mexican learns first about his Aztec ancestry,
the mild semi-civilized aborigines, who built cities
and temples, and were ruled by luxurious Montezuma and
scholarly Nezhualcoyotl. The latter, at Texcoco, was a
maker of verses and stoical maxims like another Marcus
Aurelius.

Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1519. Then followed
a government of nearly three hundred years by sixty-four
Spanish viceroys. A rebellion, of eleven years’ duration,
marked by many of the features of a servile uprising,
drove out the Spaniards in 1821. Grasping and inconsiderate
in their colonial management as their way has
always been, the Spaniards had probably only themselves
to thank for it.

Iturbide, who commanded the revolt at the end, made
[136]himself briefly Emperor. His generals, notably the irrepressible
Santa Anna, who first here comes into view,
rose against him, and proclaimed a Federal Republic.
Santa Anna, when the opportunity offered, made himself
Dictator, and changed the Federal Republic to a centralized
republic, and the states to departments. Santa
Anna had numberless ups and downs, having obtained
possession of the supreme power no less than six times,
with intervals of overthrow and banishment.

The Federal Republic was reconstituted in time, with
twenty-seven states, one territory and a federal district,
pretty much on the model of our own, and it still retains
this form, as it is likely to. There is no doubt
about the democratic tendency of the people, but perhaps
it is something in the impulsive blood of the Latin race
which has prevented the leaders from conceiving a republic
on the Anglo-Saxon plan. They have been inspired
almost without exception by a craving for the sweets of
power. Their rampant patriotism has been like the religion
of those persons who would die for a cause, but will
not live in accordance with the least of its dictates. There
seems to have been no conception until lately of that
larger patriotism which educates the people in their duties,
and constitutes a state of society where the rights of
all are guaranteed and people go about their avocations
without interference.

III.

Would you recall, by-the-way, what became of Santa
Anna? He, who had so indignantly shaken off the yoke
of Iturbide, wrote a missive of congratulation, while living
in banishment in the West Indies, to Maximilian, and
endeavored to take service under him. His aid was rejected,
whereupon he turned to Juarez, only to be repulsed
[137]again. In a rage at both sides, he fitted out an
expedition on his own account, landed in the country, and
was well-nigh being shot, after the model, and almost on
the same ground, as that Iturbide whom he had pronounced
against forty-two years before. The court-martial,
however, spared his life, “in consideration of the
ancient services done to his country in Texas, at Tampico,
and Vera Cruz,” and sent him again, superannuated
and poor (for he had squandered an ample fortune in this
attempt), to finish his days in banishment.

I cannot forbear going a little farther into the questions
and answers of the little history. Of the gallant
generals who fought so well for the Independence, Victoria
was the first President. Bravo pronounced against
him, and was exiled to South America. Guerrero, defeated
as a candidate for the succession by Pedraza, took
up arms and seized it by force. He repelled, while in
office, a new attempt by the Spaniards to recover the
country.

“Question.—I suppose that with this triumph the government
of Guerrero was firmly established?

“Answer.—This was to have been hoped, but that
happened which always happens in Mexico—just the
contrary.”

Bustamente, in fact, pronounced against Guerrero; and
when the latter would have returned to the capital from
an expedition designed to put down the revolt, he found
it closed against him, and in favor of Bustamente also.

“Q.—What end had this revolution?

“A.—The most terrible that can be imagined. The
Government at Mexico, feeling that it could not overcome
Guerrero … bought over, for $70,000, a Genoese
named Picaluga, who commanded a vessel anchored
in the harbor of Acapulco. Picaluga invited Guerrero
[138]to dine on board, and this manifestation of hospitality
was accepted in good faith. When they had dined the
Genoese signified to Guerrero that he was a prisoner, and
set sail with him to the port of Huatulco and delivered
him into the hands of his enemies. This great and
good man, valiant and worthy of the respect and gratitude
of the nation … was shot in the puebla of Cuilapa,
on the 15th of February, 1831.”

It was not till 1848, for the first time, that the
Presidency was transferred without violence, and under
the law. The incumbent was General Herrera, and he
was succeeded peaceably by General Arista. These two
administrations “will forever place themselves before
historians, both Mexican and foreign,” says the history,
“as models of honor, economy, and order.” But Arista
was deposed in two years, and in the next three months
there were four Presidents, the last of them Santa Anna,
on one of his periodic returns.

Thus the turmoil of revolutions has continued down
to recent times. A certain Don José Maria Gutierrez
Estrada directed a letter to the authorities in 1840, proposing,
as a measure of relief, that a monarchical government
should be established in Mexico; and the idea, in
the distracting state of things we have seen, cannot be
considered wholly without reason. It caused great scandal
nevertheless, but Gutierrez Estrada stuck to it tenaciously,
and, by a very singular coincidence, he was one
of those who, twenty-four years after, went to Miramar
to present the imperial crown to the Archduke Maximilian.

If I cite a number of such events from the past it is
not for the purpose of being disagreeable or arguing
that the same state of things is to last. It is partly
because they are amusing, and partly to obtain a more
[139]encouraging point of view for the present. It will be
seen that the later administrations, though not without
their faults, are a vast improvement upon their predecessors,
and do not constitute a declining ratio.

General Porfirio Diaz occupied unmolested a full term,
from 1876 to 1880, and handed over the place to General
Manuel Gonzales, who holds it at present in the same
security. Diaz began the current career of improvement
by his liberal chartering of railroads, and Gonzales follows
in his track. Both must be considered to have
made a most exemplary and promising use of their
powers. But, since we have arrived at “Don Porfirio,”
let us see how he entered upon office in the beginning.

[140]

IV.

Since he is, by general admission, the power behind the
throne, the Mexican “Warwick,” the President who has
been, is, and is to be, let us inquire a little also who he
was. “His influence in the country,” says the Monitor,
“is decisive, incontestable. Something more than Benitez
in the past, he is not only the great commoner, but
the one man of the present.”

Porfirio Diaz was born in Oaxaca, in 1830. His family
destined him for the law, but he took to soldiering instead.
Beginning as a private, he entered the city of
Mexico as general-in-chief of the forces which wrested it
from the French. Once in these wars, when a prisoner
at Puebla, he let himself down by a rope from a tower
and made his escape. His career is studded with romantic
incidents, but the career of what Mexican leader
is not?

The Latin race admires the military type, and “Don
Porfirio,” or more familiarly “Porfirio,” as the people delight
to call him, bethought him to turn his prestige in
the field to account. He offered himself for the Presidency
against Juarez, on the platform of no re-election,
in 1871. Lerdo de Tejada, Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, was also in the field as a third candidate. Let the
figures in this remarkable election be noted, as an indication
of the acute interest the Mexican voters take in their
own balloting. In a population of 8,836,411 a total of
only 12,361 votes were cast. Juarez received 5837, Diaz
3555, Lerdo 2874, and 95 are recorded as “scattering.”

“Q.—Relate to me what happened thereafter.

“A.—General Porfirio Diaz issued, from his hacienda
of La Noria, a manifesto, hence called the Plan of La
[141]Noria, repudiating the existing powers, and proposing to
retain military command until the establishment of a new
order of things.”

A bloody war of more than a year followed, in which
the Porfiristas were utterly routed. Diaz, amnestied, presented
himself at the capital, and was affably received
by Lerdo, who assured him, on the part of the Government,
that he might live tranquil without fear of persecution
or harm. “Nothing,” breaks forth our historian,
in enthusiasm about these times, “gives a better idea of
the constancy and elevation of the Mexican character, a
heritage from its Spanish ancestry, than what passes in
our wars, both civil and foreign. It appears that defeats
but serve as stimulus and fresh aliment to the fray.”

Upon what possible theory these ambitious chiefs have
always made their partisans so ready to be slaughtered for
them, is a speculation which I shall not go into. Porfirio
now remained quiet till 1876, when he issued the Plan of
Palo Blanco, and rose against Lerdo, who had succeeded
Juarez. He captured Matamoras by a bold stroke of
strategy; was himself captured on shipboard; and escaped
from the Lerdists by leaping into the sea, through
the connivance of the French captain, whom he afterward
made consul to St. Nazaire. After a series of such-like
adventures his persistence won the day, and Lerdo
took to flight. “Don Sebastian” Lerdo is spoken of as
probably the most scholarly and accomplished President
the republic ever had. He had been a school-master,
however, and tried to govern the country in the pedagogue
spirit to which he had been used. He lost favor,
too, by his lack of military talent, and fled when his fortunes
were by no means desperate. The country people
were strongly on his side at first, but this singular thing
happened—that, finding him unable to protect them
[142]against the roving bands of revolutionists favoring Diaz,
they joined them in disgust, and went on with them to
the capital.

It is upon such original guarantees that the authority
which Porfirio has devoted to the extension of law and
order and the benefits of civilization reposes.

V.

The subject of these remarks is a person neither talkative
nor taciturn. He is of commanding height, a
swarthy, half-Indian complexion, a figure stalwart but
not heavy, and of a military yet somewhat nonchalant
bearing, all of which may form a part of his attraction.
He knows how to utilize the arts of peace as well as
war. Perhaps he believes a little in the motto, “Let me
make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its
laws;” for the ballad-singers at Santa Anita, on the Viga
Canal, whither the populace swarm on Sundays to indulge
in dancing, pulque, tamales, and flowers from the floating
gardens, have many a long-drawn refrain to the praises of
Don Porfirio Di-i-i-az. It is hardly fair, perhaps, to suggest
that these are subsidized, since they may rest upon
pure admiration of his merits, after all.

The Mexican law prohibits re-election, except after an
interval of four years, and Porfirio Diaz was too ardent
a one-termer to be able to overstep this prohibition with
any consistency. He has placed his friend and fellow-soldier
Gonzales in office as his locum tenens. He will
assume it himself for the next term, dating from 1884.
After that—so the plan is supposed to be arranged—he
will give it to General Treviño, his companion in arms
and strong auxiliary in his pronunciamentos. Treviño
has married the daughter of an American general, Ord,
[143]and it may be supposed that American interests will not
suffer in his hands.

Porfirio is romantic even in his Machiavellianism.
The only source from which he might have had anything
to fear was perhaps a lingering Lerdist sentiment.
It represents, or represented, a conservative element, of
better social position than the rude democratic force in
power. He set to work to conciliate this Lerdist sentiment.
He has been able to take of late the effectual
means of marrying into the very midst of it, having
chosen for his third wife the daughter of Senator Romero
Rubio. Romero Rubio was the right-hand man of
Lerdo, and his companion in exile. He is now president
of the Senate, and the official who is empowered by law
to call and control a new election, in case of a vacancy in
[144]the Presidency of the nation. Gonzales suffers from an
old wound, received at Puebla, and it has been thought
by some that Diaz might need to be called to the chair
even before the appointed limit of time.

Nor could he have had any personal repugnance to
overcome in this match. His usual good-fortune attends
him. The young lady is under twenty, accomplished,
and of a high-bred air. She will be recollected by Americans
as among the prettiest of the belles who took part
in the round of festivities given in honor of General
Grant at his last visit. This, too, will be pleasing to the
people. Don Porfirio means that the people shall be
pleased. When General Grant, on his first visit to the
country in his tour around the world, was the curiosity
and hero of the hour, Porfirio was his inseparable attendant
and courteous host. A certain resemblance was
traced between them. Both had been illustrious generals,
both presidents. When Grant returned a second
time, and was now less popular, on account of his interest
in the railway concessions, and a jealousy which had
meantime arisen of American aggression, Don Porfirio
was unfortunately obliged to be far distant, distributing
charity to sufferers on the northern confines of the republic.

The work of conciliation has long been going on. Old
functionaries have been reinstated in place; veteran army
officers have been approached and offered new commands.
One of these latter told me that President Gonzales had
sent for him, after having kept an espionage on his conduct
for some time, and asked him, in a bluff way,

“Why do you continue to talk against the Government,
and pass your time in idleness—you who were
once so good a soldier?”

“Sir,” he replied, “you know my sentiments, and the
[145]cause for which I fought. I cannot deny that I hold
them still. I take the consequences. I have pawned
my valuables and clothing for food. If I rust in idleness
it is because I have no occupation to turn to.”

“I admire your manliness,” the President replied.
“Here is your appointment to the command of a regiment.
Your cause is dead, as you know, and cannot be
revived. I ask of you no political services. I ask of
you only to be as before—a soldier.”

It is needless to say that after this there was at least
one Lerdist the less.

I do not wish to be understood as finding fault with
this policy of astute conciliation; far from it. The hammer-and-tongs
method has been so long in vogue that it
is a delightful relief. The chicanery of matrimonial alliances,
and assumption of frank and soldierly manners,
will be welcomed by all the foreign capital in the country
as a great improvement upon throat-cutting.

From vast estates in Oaxaca, which with a commendable
economy he has amassed meantime, the Mexican
Warwick, controls the destinies of his country with an
ease like moving one’s little finger. He pleases himself
in the interim to be governor, and commander of the
forces, of this fighting state. In the absence of any
efficient electoral system the country is under his absolute
dictatorship; while, with the ostensible division of
powers, there is no way of tracing the responsibility to
its source.

Not that there is the least danger of anybody’s trying
to do so. There are apparent Brutuses in both Houses
of Congress, orators and poets who have turned off many
a diatribe and many an ode to freedom on the best classic
and French republican models, but they have nothing to
say against this Cæsar. They are not very free agents,
[146]to tell the truth. They are really sent by the governors
of the respective states, and these governors have been
manipulated in advance. Porfirio can undoubtedly make
threats as well as promises; and an unlucky representative,
if content to forego a better place, may even lose
the one he has. He cannot depend upon adequate support,
either, should he have a notion to resist. The
“boys” are much given to “going back” on one another
in Mexican history.

I shall be found fault with by some persons, as likely
as not, for undue severity. He is a beneficent Cæsar,
after all, compared with former times; he has brought
back something like a Golden Age; he oppresses nobody,
at least, not the foreigners, and gives a stimulus to every
worthy enterprise.

So be it; and probably there is no more genial government
than a Cæsarism of the beneficent sort, fairly
established. But it is too full of dangers. Porfirio is
doing nothing to educate the nation. “In effect,” one
of his own papers says to him, “it is not alone with railways
that a nation so disorganized as ours can reconstitute
itself; not alone the locomotive and the telegraph
that can make us happy. There should emanate from
the regions of power something like an impulse of obedience
to the law and observance of the institutions upon
which the social and political well-being of the country
rests.”

It is not probable that there will soon again be serious
disturbances. “All the grabbers have got places,” say
some critics of a cynical turn, “and there will be no more
revolutions.” A better saying, however, is current: “A
bad government is preferable to a good revolution.”
There is a weariness of fighting. The country seems to
savor the little-known luxury of peace with a positive
[147]gusto. The railways diminish the chance of trouble by
for the first time furnishing ample employment to the
idle, who formerly occupied themselves in plunder and
were ready to follow the banners of insurgent chiefs.
They will be a potent military engine in enabling the
Government to mass its forces at points of danger. The
fear, too, may be present of interference by foreign governments,
should the enterprises of their citizens be
threatened with serious damage by new upheavals.

Still, there are great administrative abuses. The civil
service is notoriously corrupt. Opportunities for galling
oppression are open to the governments, both federal
and state, and, most ominous of trouble, redress by the
ballot is not possible. The anomaly is presented of a
republic in which there is no census nor registration of
voters, no scrutiny of the ballot-box except by the party
in power. There is hardly a ray of interest in the political
machine by the people themselves. The number of
votes cast at elections is pitifully small, as we have seen.
It is not considered worth while to vote. The lower
classes read no informing journals, have no public speakers.
No organized opposition exists. Such opposition
as there is is purely personal. All contests for office are
personal, and not a matter of principles. The Government—that
of the centre influencing the states, and these
in turn the communities—sustains and counts in what
candidates it pleases. There are no data for objection,
since nobody can point to the real number of voters in
a given place, nor their names.

When this is understood it seems to account for almost
all that has happened. There is absolutely no remedy
for oppressive domination but in rebellion. With the
best of dispositions, the most entire patience, what has
happened in the past may happen again.

[148]

If there be any statesmanship in Mexico, may we not
hope to see some champion arise to remedy this, instruct
the masses in their rights, enumerate and register them,
and insure them the first essential of a free government—an
accurate and unfettered suffrage?

---

I.

The saying is current that “Outside of Mexico all is
Cuatitlan.”

It shows that the capital entertains a true Parisian esteem
for itself, and a corresponding contempt for the rest
of the country. Cuatitlan is a little village twenty-five
miles to the northward, reached by a narrow-gauge railroad,
built by Mexicans, but purchased by the Mexican
Central. It was at Cuatitlan that I saw my first bull-fight.
It is one of the two places in the vicinity where
the capital thus amuses itself, the sport being prohibited
in town. In some states, as Zacatecas, it is abolished entirely.

There were five bulls killed that day, and three horses,
but no men—unfortunately, the novice in these cowardly
and disagreeable representations is inclined to think.
Each bull came in ignorant of the fate of his predecessor,
and ran at the streamers with a playful air. You felt
like scratching his back and calling him “good old fellow,”
instead of waiting to see presently his pained astonishment
and torture, his glazing eye and staggering step,
and death like that of an actor in melodrama. The horses
were wretched hacks, allowed to be gored purposely as a
part of the spectacle. They were driven around the ring
afterward till they dropped, and their life-blood poured
with an audible noise, like the spatter of a rivulet. Upon
which the boisterous youth of Mexico, of the lower class,
cried “Bello!” “Bellissimo!” in frenzied delight.

[150]

[151]

The gray old walls of the parish church, immense, and
of excellent design (as they all are), rise above the amphitheatre.
Within are figures of saints grotesquely adorned,
or realistically horrible, in the usual style. The devout
Indians are not archæologists, and have no idea of paying
honor other than as they understand it. I have it on
authority that when left to themselves they have been
known to equip the Saviour of the World in a twenty-dollar
hat, chaparreras (a kind of riding breeches), spurs,
sabre, and revolver, sparing no expense to make him a
cavalier of the first fashion.

The houses of the town, built of concrete or adobe,
sometimes plastered and tinted, are of one story. There
are some small portals for the use of out-of-door merchants,
a few pulquerias, and thread-needle shops, and a meson,
or inn, “of the Divine Providence,” where enormous-wheeled
wagons are corralled in line, and muleteers sleep
upon their packs, as in the times of Don Quixote.

This is Cuatitlan, this the Mexican village, which can
be dreary enough to one who does not look at it with the
fresh interest of a new-comer. You cannot take as much
comfort in the lower class of people as you would like,
on account of their habits. There is no denying that in
the neighborhood of Mexico at least they are very dirty.
They do not clean up even for their festivals. I saw
them dancing at a public ball at the Theatre Hidalgo,
which, among other amusements, the municipality provided
for them free, on the national festival of the 5th
of May. There were charcoal dealers and such persons,
with their women, and they had not taken the pains to
[152]remove a single smudge of their working-day condition.

Cuatitlan was the birth-place of the simple peon Juan
Diego, who in 1531 saw the miraculous apparition of the
Virgin of Guadalupe. He was passing the barren hill
where her elaborate pilgrimage church now stands, and
she gave him roses which had flowered where no flower
had ever been seen before. A banner with the image
of this miraculous Virgin was carried all through the wars
of the Independence. Guadalupe is still one of the spots
to be visited, and you buy such sacred knick-knacks there
as at Lourdes or Einsiedlen, but the church is stripped of
its treasures now, and the surroundings have a shabby
aspect.

II.

At San Angel, Tlalpam, and other similar points in the
vicinity of the capital, there was formerly an extensive
villa life. It has curiously decayed, even while the security
of living in such a way has increased. There are no
fierce heats, however, to drive people to the country. It
is always comfortable in town. No watering-places nor
summer resorts in our sense of the word exist. People
who go to their haciendas visit them more to look after
their business interests than in need or love of country
life. Bills are up in the grated windows of the long,
low, one-storied villas at San Angel, and the fruits fall
untasted in the orange and myrtle gardens. The villagers
endeavor to atone for this neglect of them by
feasts of flowers, and little fairs, which last a week at
a time. On these occasions, among other attractions,
existing ordinances against gambling are set aside, and
their small plazas are filled with games of hazard.

[153]

[154]

The Viga Canal, as far as Santa Anita, is a livelier and
more unique resort. Santa Anita is the St. Cloud or
Bougival of Mexico. Thither go, especially on Sundays,
lively persons to disport themselves on the water and
pass a day of the picnic order, taking lunch with them,
or depending on such cheap viands as the place offers.
The wide yellow canal is more Venetian than French at
first. A mouldering red villa or two on its banks, with
private water-gates, might belong to the Brenta. Afterward
lines of willows and poplars are reflected in the
water, and then it is French again.

Flat-boats coming on, piled up with bales of hay and
wood, echo each other peacefully from distance to distance.
Swift, small chalupas (dug-outs) follow, managed
by the Indian master in poses for a sculptor, while his
wife—or it is as often an Indian woman alone—is ensconced
among flowers and vegetables, with which it
overflows. This is the region of the chinampas, the
gardens from which the markets of Mexico are most
liberally supplied. They are formed by the division of
what was once a marsh, by narrow branch canals, into
small oblong patches. The patches are so small that the
owner passes around the borders in his canoe, and keeps
all portions moist with water, which he throws out upon
them with a calabash. By this care, and the rich character
of the redeemed soil, luxuriant crops are produced.

The houses of the village are generally of bamboo, and
without windows, sufficient light penetrating through the
interstices. The first business of the participants in the
Sunday festivities here is to provide themselves with large,
thick wreaths of lovely poppies and blue and white cornflowers,
which are sold for the merest trifle. They wear
these upon their heads, in their caperings, with a highly
classic effect. A general frizzling sound is heard, where
eatables, of which peppers form a large ingredient, are
[155]prepared on little charcoal furnaces without and primitive
fire-places within. “Come in!” the busy venders
cry; “come in, señors, señoras, and señoritas, and be
seated! Aqui los niños! Here is the place for the children!
Here is the place where they are appreciated, and
by no means considered a nuisance!”

“Tamales calientitos! dear little tamales, very nice
and hot!” they cry. In the same caressing way a cabman
in want of a job will call you patroncito, “dear little
patron,” though you may be as large as a grenadier.

They decorate their little stands with turnips and radishes
cut into ingenious shapes of flowers, and with a
profusion of little birds in wax, and the Mexican Goddess
of Liberty astride of an eagle. A swarm of flat-boat men
cluster at the edge of the canal, bidding for your patronage.
Dancing is going on in almost every court-yard;
the ballad-singers strike up lazy refrains; and in the Carcel,
in a dirty little plaza, by a fountain, a single prisoner
monotonously rattles his wooden grating, and glares out
at the gayety like a madman. No self-respecting American
prisoner could be induced to stay in a place so easy
to escape from. But there is no accounting for tastes.

III.

But are there no real chinampas, no gardens that actually
float, according to the tradition? Was all that, then,
a myth?

Not at all. The soil hereabouts is solidified now, anchored
down, as it were; but it has in its time floated,
and in that condition borne crops. Farther on whole
expanses are found only kept in position by stakes, with
four feet of water below, and yet strong enough to sustain
grazing cattle. An expedition was organized, in
[156]which I was privileged to set off, under the hospitable
guidance of the Director of the Drainage of the Valley,
to witness these marvels in person. We had a large
row-boat, rowed by five oarsmen; and in our party was
an amiable English traveller, who has written a book
about Mexico,⁠[2] and described, among others, this very
expedition.

We started about seven o’clock in the morning from
the garita of La Viga, an old Spanish water-gate, at which
toll is taken from the market boats. The current was
against us. The canal of La Viga, a stretch of about sixteen
miles, is the outlet of Lake Xochimilco into Texcoco.
Chalco and Xochimilco are practically the same lake, being
separated only by a narrow causeway of ancient date,
which is open at the centre and spanned by a little bridge.

There are numerous hamlets along the way, built like
Santa Anita, and each with a few venerable palm-trees in
its plaza. The Jefe Politico of one embraced our Director
of the Desagüe and kissed his hand. At another a solid
little bridge had lately been thrown across the canal, and
we heard of a banquet that had been given on the occasion.
The orator of the day had delivered a resounding
address on human progress, and declared that he was
proud to be a resident of a village which could accomplish
such a feat. We lunched at a fort-like hacienda
at Ixtapalapa, the point where the canal issues from the
lake, and there found horses awaiting to take us to the
top of the Hill of the Star. Upon this eminence, according
to Prescott, were rekindled the extinguished fires
and the beautiful captive sacrificed at the end of each
of the cycles of fifty years, when the Aztecs thought the
existence of the world was to be terminated.

[157]

We found nothing on the summit but a few heavy
foundation stones, possibly remains of a sacrificial altar.
Our horses had to be walked actively about, to prevent
their taking serious cold from the rapid evaporation. It
is chiefly memories that are found on such places. I
plucked there, however, to send in a letter, a dark-red
common flower, and pleased myself with the fancy that
it might have drawn its sanguinary hue from the ground
so steeped in slaughter.

Though at the entrance of the lake, no shining expanse
of water was visible. The greater part of the surface,
in fact, is covered with a singular growth of entwined
roots and débris, supporting a verdant meadow. Passage
through it is effected by canals and shifting natural
channels, which change with the wind.

Two of our men after a time got out and towed the
boat. The ostensible terra firma sank under their weight
like the undulations of “benders” in thin ice. Now and
then one floundered and went in waist-deep, whereat the
others laughed. The margins are kept in place along the
permanent channels by pinning them down with long
stakes.

We fell in with wandering strips of growing verdure,
called cintas (ribbons), and larger ones, bandoleros (bandits),
drifting about at their own sweet will. Our host
told us, though this he would not guarantee as of his own
experience, that in the earlier times a garden of flowers
and vegetables was now and then wrecked along-shore
after a gale of wind, as if it had been a bark. Contrabandists,
robbers who occasionally beset the market-boats,
and political refugees have sometimes found this a favorable
place of refuge, and escaped pursuit by diving under
the illusive area and coming up elsewhere.

We dined al fresco at Mas Arriba, a place named quite
[158]in the American style, literally Farther On. The margins
were full of yellow water-lilies, and the clear spaces reflected
distant mountains. Evening drew on, and then
night. The frogs and crickets waked up their lonesome
refrain, and fire-flies twinkled brightly in the morass.
A few drops of rain fell, which increased in time to a
shower.

IV.

We reached the long causeway between the two lakes
late at night, in pitch darkness and torrents of rain, and
screened ourselves a while under the little bridge, which
barely accommodated the boat. Here was Tlahuac, an ancient
island town or village, at the centre of the causeway.
Waiting was useless. We landed in the rain, bought
candles at a wretched tienda kept by Indians as solemn
as statues, and set out in search of a lodging. A mozo
preceded us, like a great fire-bug, sheltering a burning
candle under a straw mat as best he could, to aid us in
keeping out of the deeper puddles.

We were recommended to the Padre, as the only person
capable of entertaining visitors of our distinction, and
found him in an ancient Dominican convent looming up
in the darkness. He received us with many apologies,
gave us a good supper, manifested an interest in the late
gossip of Mexico, and put us to sleep on the church carpets
on the floor of a vast, bare room, provided with a
few old religious pictures and bits of furniture.

Any temporary discomforts of this night of adventure
were amply atoned for by the beautiful bright morning
of the next day. We found Tlahuac a kind of Venetian
island, a Torcello, as it were, on which some population of
New Zealanders might have put up their thatched huts.
The church rising in the centre had one of the usual shining
[159]tiled domes, and was preceded by a court and arched
gate-way. Its outer walls were covered with a large pattern
of quatre-foils in red and yellow. I do not recollect
just such a design again till I came later to the
old Spanish mission of San Juan Capistrano, in Southern
California. The island has sunk, or rather the lake has
risen, in course of time, and the bases of the columns in the
church are some four feet below the level of the ground.

Near by was the village school, and, as we got under
way, we heard the shrill little voices of the children reciting
their spelling in concert. All the shock-headed
adult residents, in their garments of white cotton, looked
as stupid as possible; but it is not always safe to judge
by appearances.

From here the view of the two great snow-clad volcanoes
is uninterrupted and glorious. We were told to
feel with the oars at one place in the canal the pavements
of a submerged Aztec city. Cortez mentions such
a one in his letters. In 1855 the rumor of a new Pompeii
spread abroad, based upon the finding of a few submerged
Aztec huts in Lake Chalco, but no remains of
any real importance have ever come to light.

V.

On this day, in Lake Chalco, we took our mid-day meal
at the base of Xico, a little island volcano now extinct.
It is of solid granite, without so much as a blade of grass
externally, and the ascent is smooth and difficult. The
boatmen sometimes see “Will-o’-the-wisps” on its summit,
which, they say, are kindled by the witches. We
climbed it, notwithstanding, and found a gently sloping
crater, filled with maize-fields, which could easily have
been approached from the other side.

[160]

The water began to be charmingly clear, and the bottom
was full of a red weed like coral. We gathered
ferns, lilies, the fragrant little white flower of St. John—flor
de San Juan, sold in large bunches in the market—and
other flowers, yellow, purple, and vivid scarlet, of unknown
names.

The clouds still hung threateningly about, and gave us
now and then a slight sprinkle of rain. But as we drew
near to Chalco and the end of our two days’ voyage they
cleared away.

The prospect from this point is the subject for a landscape
painting of the grand order. The town of Chalco,
with an ancient and noble church edifice, supplies the
element of human interest. In front is the blue water
in spaces, with their reflection, and a wealth of marsh
plants, arrow and lance heads, ferns, and flowers. In the
distance is the great snow-clad mountains, upon which
wreathing mists throw changing lights and shadows.
Ixtacihuatl, the White Woman, though the lesser, I continually
find the more picturesque of the two, in its sharp
and rugged outline. Popocatepetl, in the more perfect
symmetry of its cone, is a little monotonous, like Orizaba.

We came, by a short branch canal, to the station of La
Compañia, on the Morelos railway, and took the train
back to town. We were just in time to hear of a disturbance
near by by General Tiburcio Montiel, and his
arrest by the Government forces. It was said that he
had headed a communistic uprising of Indians for the
recovery of their lands. He declared through the press
afterward that he had but gathered a posse to aid him
in the execution of some legal process. Quaint risings of
a communistic sort, however, have not been uncommon.
Demagogues have more than once told the simple-minded
peons that the lands of the country were theirs—had been
[161]wrested from their ancestors by the Spanish conquerors—and
it was high time to get them back. An ingenious
hacendado, waited upon by such a delegation, admitted
their view, but met it with another.

“Yes,” said he, “the Spaniards took your lands, it is
true; but before that you Aztecs took them from the
Toltecs. Find me first, therefore, some Toltecs; I will
yield my title only to them.”

---

I.

My next journey was by lake across Texcoco to the
old capital of that name. I had hoped to take El Nezhualcoyotl,
which lay in the mud by the Garita of San
Lazaro, when I went to make preliminary inquiries.
There would have been a certain fitness in approaching
the ancient capital in a boat named after the sovereign
who made it illustrious; but it was not its day for sailing.

The Nezhualcoyotl was clipper-built, as it were, a long,
rusty, gondola-like scow, devoted exclusively to passenger
traffic. We took instead a freight-boat of much larger
and heavier build, La Ninfa Encantadora, or “the Enchanting
Nymph.” She would have been called the Mary
Ann or Betsy Jane elsewhere, but such is the difference
in the tropical imagination.

A cabin sheltered the passengers and some budgets of
goods which were done up in the inevitable petates, rush
mats, and included two bags of silver. There were a
couple of young women going to pasear—take a little
vacation—at Texcoco. “It will be triste, of course,”
they said, “like everything out of Mexico; still, we are
going to try it for a while.” They offered a part of
their lunch, as travelling companions were continually
doing wherever I went, and the skipper offered us pulque.
Two older women, in blue rebosas, sat like statues, holding
[163]their parcels and an Indian baby in their laps, from
one end of the long journey to the other.

The canal of San Lazaro on this side extends about a
league to the lake. It is very much less attractive than
that of Chalco. Its terminus in the city is the point
of a most animated and Venetian-like market scene, but
one earns his pleasure in dealing with this canal at the
expense of many a bad odor. Six men put a sort of harness
on themselves and dragged us along, plodding on
the tow-path, as Russian peasants drag their boats in
some of their rivers. A man on horseback with a tow-rope
also assisted, on the other side.

The water, shoal in the beginning, shoaled more as we
went on, till we were aground on flats in the edge of the
lake. The city sewage was aground with us. Still, the
situation was relieved by the striking prospect. The teocalli-like
Peñol, where there are warm baths, was close
at hand. Sky and water were of an identical blue; the
shallow expanse reflected the circuit of dark and purplish
foot-hills and great snow-peaks beyond as perfectly as if
it had been as deep as they were high.

Our crew walked for an hour in the mud, pushing
against long poles projected from the sides, before we
could be said to be fairly afloat. Then they came
aboard and poled the rest of the way. They walked up
an inclined plane, carrying the poles over their heads, and
came down, pushing, with them supported against their
shoulders, in a bold and striking motion. It was eight
o’clock when we set out, and four when we reached the
mouth of the short branch canal which makes up to Texcoco.
The distance must be about thirty miles. A cross
arose out of the lake half way over, and our polemen
stopped at it and shouted three times, with startling effect,
“Alabo al gran poder de Dios! Ave Maria
[164]purissima!”—“Hail to the almighty power of God! Hail,
Mary the purest!”

Unexpectant of anything of the sort, I hurried out
from the cabin, taking it to be some defiance at enemies,
or disturbance among ourselves. We met other packets
like our own, loaded with people. A considerable part of
the cargoes was the fine large red earthen jars and dishes
we saw at Mexico, which are made at Texcoco. The
piled-up bales and pottery, the strange figures, and the
flashing poles of one of these craft, coming on, make it
a highly original and spirited subject.

Then we fell in with one of the curiosities of the
lake—disbelieved in by some—swarms of the mosca,
a little water-fly, so thickly settled on the water that we
took them for flats and reefs. They resemble mosquitoes,
but neither sting nor even alight on the boat. They are
taken in fine nets and carried to Mexico, as food for the
birds; and they have eggs, which are sold in the market
and made into tortillas, which are said to be very palatable.

The shores are encrusted with native alkali, which has
its share in the production of the disagreeable odors.
Peasants gather the crude product and load it upon donkeys,
to carry to a salt and soda works, and a manufactory
of glass, situated at Texcoco.

Was it in this same branch canal that Cortez launched
his brigantines for the destruction of the naval power of
the Aztecs? There is water in but a part of it now; and
traces of substantial locks are found, where grass is growing
and cows feeding.

[165]

[166]

II.

I spent nearly a week at Texcoco assimilating the quiet
interior life of the country. I dined at the Restaurante
Universo, both cheaply and better as a rule than at Mexico,
and found a chamber with the keeper of the principal
tienda, there being no inn. I even became something
of an expert in pulque. The true connoisseur takes
it mitad y mitad: half of agua miel newly from the
maguey field, and half the stronger beverage of longer
standing. I made the acquaintance of the Jefe Politico,
a polite, youngish man, said to be a terror to evil-doers.
He had made the roads safe. He had a way of shooting
at brief notice, and transporting to Yucatan, or if he contented
himself with a mere fine it was a sounding one.
The pulquerias must be closed at six o’clock, and other
shops at nine. One day the Deputy returned from his
seat in Congress, and was given a characteristic reception.
A troop of twenty or so of his constituents mounted on
horseback, and preceded the omnibus in which he was
drawn, from the railway station back into the town, at
the top of their speed, shouting and firing pistols. Crackers
and pistols were fired also from the omnibus.

I made the acquaintance also of the local druggist, an
intelligent person, who had a collection of antiquities.
He was of the pure Indian race, and professed himself
proud of being an Indian, and proud of being a Texcocan.
He had lately brought out a very strong distillation
of pulque, a kind of patent medicine, and asked my advice
about introducing it in the United States. He evidently
thought we were made of money, for I am sure
we never should have been willing to pay so much a
bottle.

The place has now about six thousand people. Its
churches are immense. It has a long, shabby plaza, with
a market arcade on one side, and an Alameda, also in
poor condition. The Jefe Politico might extend his protection
next to a few internal improvements. Hamlets
[167]cluster near together in a fertile area round about. I
noted one day two peons soberly carrying on their shoulders,
among the magueys, what appeared to be a dead
body. It proved to be instead the saint of the village
church, which they were quaintly conveying, as a loan, to
one of the others, to assist in a festival of the morrow.

In the hamlet of Santa Cruz the population are potters.
Each has a little round tower of a furnace attached
to his house, works on his own account, and sets out
the large, ruddy jars on his roof to dry. He could acquire
a competence if persevering, but the moment he
has a dollar ahead he stops work till it is spent. In other
houses persons were seen at looms weaving blue cotton
stuffs for apparel.

Numbers of ancient carven stones occur, let into the
church walls and pavement, and set up in the Alameda.
Remains of teocallis are also numerous, as they might
well be in a place once the seat of the Augustinian age of
Aztec culture. They are treated with no respect at all.
They are worn down into mere knolls, and planted with
crops. From the site of one now levelled a proprietor
was said to have taken out a treasure. What with its
age, the destruction of haciendas in the wars, and the
practice of the Indians, still prevailing, of burying their
money in the ground, there ought to be treasure-trove in
Mexico, if anywhere. Certain it is that my host at the
tienda, Señor Macedonia, had in his till some beautiful
old Spanish coins, which he displayed to the gossips who
came in the evening to sip beverages and play dominos.

Among the gossips thus sociably tomando copas (taking
cups) at the tienda there was one, a certain “Don Santiago,”
who told me that he was pulling down, in his
garden, the largest pyramid of the place, to sell the material
for building purposes. This was of real interest.
[168]Going thither, his pyramid was found to be indeed of
imposing size. It was laid up in regular courses of
sun-dried brick, and there were vestiges of a facing and
superposed pavements of cement, as at San Juan Teotihuacan.
There was present in the place with me an
archæologist—a newspaper archæologist, I should call him.
He termed himself an “expedition;” he had an omnivorous
taste for unearthing things, without knowledge of the
language, or apparent acquaintance with any previous researches
or theories; and his discoveries were intended
principally to redound to the fame of a journal which
had sent him out. Between us we brought to light a section
of a great bass-relief which now occupies a place in
the National Museum at Mexico. It was probably seven
feet in its longest dimension and five in the other, and
must have been a quarter or so of the whole work. It
contained a calendar circle, no doubt establishing the
date, and part of the figure of a warrior in elaborate regalia,
possibly that of old Nezhualcoyotl himself. The
archæologist, whom perhaps I unfairly disparage for the
auspices under which he appeared, set to work with a
will, and soon had half a dozen natives taking the surface
off the rest of the soil in the vicinity, for the remaining
fragments, but without success. It was the
fierce practice of the Spaniards to break the religious
emblems of the conquered pagans, to prevent them, as
far as possible, from returning to their idolatrous practices,
and most likely they rolled down one fragment of
the great stone one way, and another another, to separate
them as widely as possible; so that they will be found
on different sides of the pyramid. All day long it was
“Don Santiago!” here, and “Don Santiago!” there, as
the excavators plied their labors; while I spent some part
of it, shaded by an impromptu awning of mats, noting
[169]down in a drawing the peculiarities of the “find” we
had made. I do not profess myself an archæologist,
except from the picturesque point of view. It is my
private surmise that a great deal of good investigation is
lavished upon these matters which had much better be
spent upon the present; but here was a case in which the
sentiment of the picturesque was amply gratified. There
was a genuine pleasure in being one of the first to salute
this interesting fragment of antiquity after its long sleep,
to tenderly brush the dirt from it and trace its enigmatic
lines.

III.

There is a decided resemblance, to this day, in looks
and habits, between the Mexican peon and the Chinaman.
Writers on the subject have generally represented
[170]America as originally peopled from Asia, the Asiatics
having crossed over, perhaps, at Behring’s Straits, and
made their way south. One Mexican writer stoutly
maintains that Mexico was the cradle of the race, and
the migration was in the opposite sense. This accords,
at any rate, with Buckle’s general theory, that the thickly
settled portions of the earth were at first those where
climate and a natural food-supply made the maintenance
of life easy. In these places, too, civilization began.
The warm and fertile area of Central America, therefore,
would have teemed with humanity before the waste
North was peopled. There may have been sculptured
cities, one upon another, long before even Uxmal and
Palenque, the origin of which was lost in obscurity to
the Aztecs.

However this may be, the Aztecs themselves, whether
descendants of a race expatriated from the South and
become rugged in the North, or having crossed over from
Asia, came down from the colder regions, like the Goths
and Vandals upon Italy. The tradition on this point is
clear. One day two leading personages, Huitziton and
Tecpultzin, in their far-off northern regions, wherever
they were, heard a small bird singing in the branches
ti-hui! ti-hui!—let us go! They listened intently and
took counsel together. “This is really very singular,”
we may suppose Huitziton saying, while Tecpultzin sagely
laid a finger beside his nose and listened again. One
would like a historic picture by some competent humorist
of these two simple worthies deciding the fate of their
nation. Ti-hui! ti-hui! piped the little songster inexorably,
and that there seemed nothing for it but that the
Aztec people should move southward, which they proceeded
to do.

They overwhelmed the civilized Toltec capital at Tula
[171]in their progress. They had a farther oracle saying that
they were to stop when they should arrive where an
eagle was sitting on a nopal plant; and this they found
at Mexico, on the very spot which now is the plaza of
San Domingo. The whole district became filled in time
with small kings and princes tributary to the Montezumas.
The most refined and peaceable type of them
all arose at Texcoco.

In the Cerro of Texcocingo, some ten or twelve miles
back of the town, remain extensive vestiges of an architectural
magnificence which show that the accounts of
the historians are not made of whole cloth. We had a
trooper appointed us, as an escort and guide, by the Jefe
Politico, and rode out to visit them.

Ascending the hill, of perhaps two thousand feet in
height, overgrown with hardy nopal and maguey, you
come to excellent flights of steps cut in the solid rock,
giving access to aqueducts, bathing tanks, cisterns, and
caverns, heavily sculptured within and without, which are
remains of temples and palaces.

Our trooper had little ambition in these matters, and
after showing us a part declared that there was no more,
and went comfortably to sleep. It was only by climbing
alone to the top that I found the principal display. Here
the philosophic Nezhualcoyotl, in his retirement, hung in
the air, above the wide prospect of his capital, the lake,
and his rival of Mexico. And here, in the deserted mountain,
with a guide who had gone fast asleep below, his
ghost might be half expected to be met with wandering
in the still sunshine, but unfortunately it was not. He
wrote poems of a pensive cast. He reflected even in his
time as to whether life is worth living, and his general
theme was the vanity of all things mortal.

“Where is Chalchintmet, the Chicameca?” he asks.
[172]“Mitl, the venerator of the gods; Tolpiltzin, last of
the Toltecs; and the beautiful Xinlitzal—where are
they?”

These no doubt once famous personages can be the
better spared now, on account of their unpronounceable
names, but to the writer they represented something very
tangible and solid.

“Very brief is the realm of flowers,” he continues,
“and brief is human life…. Our careers are like the
streams, which but run on to excavate their own graves
the more surely…. Let us look, then, to the immortal
life…. The stars that now so puzzle us are but the
lamps that light the palaces of the heavens.”

Such, if he be properly presented by Spanish adapters,
were the sentiments of this early monarch. Truly the
latent capacities even of the natural man are not so far
below the surface; and it may be that no agency will
be found so potent to awaken them with a rush as the
modern facility in railway transportation.

IV.

On the return we visited a country residence, combined
with large mills for making paper and grinding grain.
It was called the Molino del Flores, and belonged to the
wealthy Cervantes family of Mexico. One of this Cervantes
family was the subject, in 1872, of a celebrated
exploit by the plagiarios, or kidnappers. He was seized
while coming out of the theatre at night, a cloak was
thrown over his head, and he was bundled into a cab.
He was buried a long time under the floor of a house, just
enough food being given him to sustain life. The plagiarios
did not secure the large ransom they demanded,
after all, but were finally apprehended, and shot—three
[173]of them—against the wall of the house, the Callejon Zacate,
No. 8, where they had detained their victim.

The Molino del Flores was not only charming in itself,
but may serve as a text for mentioning the very different
sentiment thrown around anything in the shape of a manufactory
from that prevailing with us. Mills, residence,
granaries, and chapel, terraced up into a steep hill-side
from a little entrance court, are constructed upon the
same motif, and form a single establishment. It is set in
a striking little gorge. The water-power, after turning
the mills, is utilized for lovely gardens, in which there
are a hundred fantastic jets and surprises. There is an
out-of-door bathing tank, for instance, at the end of a secluded
walk, screened by shrubbery. The disrobing seat
is managed in a small cave in the cliff, and the shower,
on pulling a ring, falls from the summit, forty feet above.
It is a place that might have served for such an adventure
as that of Susannah and the Elders.

In the novel of “Maria,” one of the most charming of
stories, with which I first made acquaintance in Mexico,
though its scene is laid among similar customs in South
America, the heroine is represented as preparing the bath
for the hero in such a tank by scattering fresh roses into
it with her own fair hands.

A rustic bridge, on which La Sonnambula might have
walked, is thrown across the cataract to a quaintly frescoed,
rock-cut mortuary chapel, where, among others, the
last titled ancestor of the house lies buried. He had ten
distinct surnames—was Marques de Flores, a General of
Brigade, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Captain
in Iturbide’s Guard, Cavalier of the Order of Guadalupe,
Regidor, Governor, Notabile under Maximilian,
and more; from which it will be seen that the pomp of
the hidalgos well survived in Mexico.

[174]

The same caressing way of looking at industrial establishments
here noticed is universal, and is, in part, no
doubt, due to their rarity and a thorough appreciation of
their usefulness. I recollect everywhere the sugar haciendas,
“beneficiating” haciendas, or ore-reducing works,
and cotton-mills treated in similar fashion.

One voyage across Lake Texcoco was quite sufficient
of its kind, and I returned by diligencia to the junction
point of the since completed railway, and thence by rail
to the capital. The pulling-gear of our diligencia was a
thing of shreds and patches. A boy ran beside the mules
all the way to mend the broken ropes and supplement,
with whistling and flapping, the exertions of the driver.
The houses in the villages are of unwhitewashed adobe,
with palings of organ-cactus. It was like riding through
a brick-yard. Fine irrigating canals, fed from the mountains,
frequently crossed our course, indicating the substantial
scale on which agricultural works are conducted.
More than one monumental ruined hacienda, too, showed
that they had formerly been on even a more elaborate
scale than now.

---

I.

I do not know whether I advise everybody to climb
Popocatepetl. There it is always on the horizon, the
highest mountain in North America, and one of the few
highest in the world—a standing inducement to the adventurous.
Few accept it, however, though among those
who have done so are said to be ladies. I should somewhat
doubt this, but, even if so, there seem to be some
features of this ascent which make it uncertain whether
the effort “pays” quite as well as Alpine mountaineering.

At any rate, if one will go, let him have all the particulars
and the necessary outfit in advance, at the capital
itself. Little aid or comfort will be found elsewhere on
his way. The proper preliminary for ascending Popocatepetl
is to find some one who has been there and
knows all about it, and to bear in mind besides the few
following points, for his informant will be sure to have
forgotten them.

The feet are to be kept dry and warm, for there are
hours of climbing in wet snow. This is, perhaps, best
accomplished by superposed pairs of stout woollen stockings.
The guides usually recommend strips of coarse
cotton cloth, to be bound around in Italian contadino
fashion; but this is a delusion and a snare, and they
mean it to be so. They consider, very justly, that if the
[176]traveller can be made so uncomfortable as to quit the
ascent before it is half accomplished they shall collect
the price agreed upon and be saved a great part of their
trouble.

There should be shoes provided with some arrangement
of spikes in the soles, against the painful slipping
backward. There should be a supply of food and warm
covering for camping-out, since absolutely nothing is to
be had, and the temperature is very cold at the shelter
of Tlamaca, where probably two nights will have to be
passed.

I accomplished the ascent with two companions. We
had in the beginning such assurances of special assistance
that it seemed about to be robbed of all its terrors. The
volcano is regularly owned, and worked as a sulphur
mine, by General Sanchez Ochoa, Governor of the Military
School. We were put in charge of one of his superintendents,
who was to see that we had every convenience,
and that the malacate, or windlass, was put in
order for us to descend into the crater. I surmise that
this particular superintendent did not greatly care to encounter
the needed hardships on his own account, for
certain it is that in the sequel we were left short of many
elementary necessities, and there was no malacate for the
descent, nor any reference to it.

You arrive at Amecameca, forty miles from Mexico,
by train. Everybody should go there. It is one of the
loveliest of places, and has inns for the accommodation
of visitors. Amecameca will one day be frequented from
many climes, if I am not much mistaken. It has features
like Interlaken. Cool airs are wafted down to it from
the mountains, and its site resembles an Alpine vale.
There are points of view in the vicinity whence a sharp
minor peak separates itself from the main snow mass of
[177]Popocatepetl, like the Silberhorn from the Jungfrau, at
Interlaken. The streets are clean, and the houses almost
all neatly lime-washed in white or colors. The market-place
is a scene for an opera—a long arcade, full of bright
figures; behind this is a group of churches and court-yards;
behind these the vast snow mountains, as at Chalco,
but nearer. A little hill at the left, across a strip of
maize-fields, is called the Sacro Monte, and has a sacred
chapel of some kind. I climbed thither while the negotiations
for horses and guides were in their first tedious
stage, and found a quaint Christ in the chapel, and a most
engaging view from its terrace.

II.

We set off with a captain, or chief guide, who called
himself Domingo Tenario; a peon guide, Marcellino Cardoba,
who had worked for three years at sulphur-mining
in the volcano. He also acted as muleteer. We had four
horses and a mule—the whole for eight dollars a day.
Domingo Tenario would also ascend the mountain for a
dollar more. We were to be gone three days, the greater
part of which the expedition consumes.

The first part of the way wound among softly undulating
slopes, yellow with barley, out of which projected
here and there an ancient pyramid, planted with a crop
also. By the roadside grew charming white thistles,
tall blue lupines, and columbines. We crossed arroyos,
brooks, and barrancas, gorges. The aspect changed to
that of an Alpine pasture. There were bunch grass, tender
flowering mosses, and cattle feeding. An eccentric
dog, who was attached, it seemed, to one of the horses,
and had the ambition to ascend the mountain also, instead
of saving his strength for it, here ran up and down and
[178]bit at the heels of the herds in the most wasteful manner.
It seems a small detail of an enterprise of pith and
moment to mention, but “Perro,” as we called him, for
want of acquaintance with his name, if he had one, contrived
a score of sage and amusing devices to attract an
attention to himself beyond his deserts. The horses
were frescoed on the flanks with a kind of Eastlake decoration
made up of the brands of successive owners.

The English landed proprietor in our small party occupied
himself with collecting specimens, and soon had a
kind of geological and botanical pudding in his satchel.
The American engineer took observations with his barometer
and thermometer. Crosses are set up at intervals
along the way. These indicate places where a death by
violence has occurred, but not always a death by the hand
of man. Did the custom prevail of setting up a cross
in New York, for instance, wherever a violent death had
occurred, we too should have a liberal share of these
emblems.

We entered the deep, solemn pine-woods; the night
came on, and a sharp cold seemed to penetrate to the
marrow. Buildings appeared in the gloom, with red
flames dancing merrily through the windows. Aha! the
rancho of Tlamaca, with hospitable fires made up, no
doubt, expressly for our reception!

What a disappointment! The buildings proved to be
but some shelters of rough boards, with plentiful interstices,
and not a whole pane of glass. The cabin devoted
to the uses of the superintendent contained but a single
cot. The dancing flames were those from the process of
smelting the crude sulphur, which is done in brick furnaces
in the principal structure. Two Indian boys stirred
the fires, and coughed in a distressing way all night long.
We threw ourselves down to sleep among the sulphur-sacks.
[179]One was choked by the fumes, if near the furnaces,
and penetrated by the draughts through crevice
and broken window-pane, if remote. Tlamaca is itself
12,500 feet above the sea, and its thermometer ranges
about 40° Fahrenheit. Without other covering than a
light rubber overcoat—for I had not been instructed to
bring other—it was impossible to sleep. I went out and
paced the yard, sentry fashion, at three o’clock in the
morning, as the only resource for keeping the blood in
circulation. It was moonlight, and I had the partial compensation
of studying the volcano, bathed in a lovely
silver radiance.

Mountains are rather given to making their poorest
possible figure. Here we are, at this point, already 12,500
feet above the sea, and this is to be subtracted from the
total. Shall we ever meet with a good, honest mountain
rising its whole 19,673 feet at once, without these shuffling
evasions? I fear not. They are only to be found in the
designs of tyro pictorial art.

I say 19,673 feet, because so much General Ochoa insists
that Popocatepetl is, by a late measurement with the
barometer of Gay-Lussac. He even estimates 1700 feet
more for the upper rim of the crater, which has never
been scaled. I do not know that this has ever passed
into any official form, but I had it from his own lips.
The latest Mexican atlas makes it but 5400 metres, or
17,884 feet, which coincides with the measurement of
Humboldt. I much prefer to rally to General Ochoa,
for my part, and to believe that I have climbed a mountain
of 21,373 feet, instead of one of a mere 17,884.

The barometer of our own expedition, unfortunately,
stopped at 17,000 feet, the limit for which it was set—a
limit which barometers are not often called upon to
surpass.

[180]

III.

We left the Rancho, at six in the morning, on horseback,
and rode three hours toilsomely over rocks of
basalt, and black sand. The poor animals suffered painfully,
but we needed all our own strength for the later
work, and could not spare them. They were left at a
point called Las Cruces, where a cross tops a ledge of
black, jaggedly-projecting volcanic rock. The lines of
composition in this part of the ascent were noble and
magnificent, the contrasts startling. Across the vast,
black undulations, on which our shadows fell purple-black,
appeared and disappeared in turn the rich red castellated
Pico del Fraile, and the dazzling white breadths
of the greater mountain engaging our efforts.

Backward from Las Cruces lay a dizzy view of the
world below. Across was the height of Ixtacihuatl, the
White Woman, keeping us company in our ascent. The
valley of Mexico could be seen in one direction, the valley
of Puebla, and even the peak of Orizaba, 150 miles
away, in the other. Against the mysterious vastness
stood the figures of our men and horses on the ledge of
volcanic rock, as if in trackless space.

It was here that “Perro” charged down the slope after
crows, which tantalized him and drifted lazily out of his
reach, and so wasted his forces that he was obliged to
abandon the expedition. Las Cruces was 14,150 feet up.
The climb now began on foot, in a soft black sand. One
of the leading difficulties of the climb is said to arise
from the exceeding thinness of the air, which makes
breathing difficult. I cannot say that I discriminated between
this and the shortness of breath due to the natural
fatigue.

[181]

Isolated pinnacles of snow stood up like monuments
in the black sand, as precursors of the permanent snow-line.
The cool snow-line was a luxury for the first few
moments. We sat down and lunched by it, and from
there took our last views backward. Cumulus clouds
presently filled up the valley with a symmetrical arrangement
like pavement. Such bits as appeared through furtive
openings recalled the charming lines of Holmes’s, in
which a spirit, “homesick in heaven,” looks back on the
earth it has left:

Up to this point—a little higher, let us say—the effort
is rewarded. A view of “the kingdoms of the world and
the glory thereof” has been had which could not be got
elsewhere. But above this it has little more reward than
that of being able to boast of it to your friends. A few
steps in the snow, and imperfectly protected feet were
sodden, numb with cold, and not to be dried again till the
final descent. There was a painful slipping and falling
in the snow, and blood-marks were left by ungloved
hands. The grade is excessive, the top invisible. Who
can estimate when he shall attain it? The prospect consists
of jagged snow-pinnacles without cessation, an endless
staircase of them reaching up into the sky. Sometimes,
in the sun, all the pinnacles glitter; again, thick
fogs, like a gray smoke, gather round. There is no more
casting yourself down now in warm scoriæ and sand. If
you sit you are chilled. Yet rest you must continually.
Every step is a calculation and an achievement. You
calculate that you will allow yourself a rest after ten,
after twenty more. The snow is not dangerous; there
[182]are no crevasses to fall into, as in the Alps; it is only
monotonous and fatiguing. I seem to have gone on for
an hour after farther endurance was intolerable. The
guides encourage you—when they find that you really
mean to go up—with the adjuration, “Poco á poco” (little
by little); so that we paraphrased our mountain as
“Poco-a-poco-catepetl.”

Finally, with sighs and groans of labored effort, instead
of the lightness with which one might be expected to salute
a point of so extreme high heaven, we staggered over
the edge of the crater at about two o’clock in the afternoon.
I had doubted at one time whether the English
landed proprietor would be able to reach it. He had
grown purple in the face. Perhaps I had even hoped
that he might need a friendly arm to assist him down
again on the instant; but he said, with the true British
tenacity,

“Oh, bless you, I am going to the top, you know.”

And so he did.

IV.

It was a supreme moment. One seemed very near to
eternity. It seemed easy to topple through the ice minarets
guarding the brink, and down into the terrific chasm.

There is no comfort at the top when reached. It is
frigidly cold. None of the expected heat comes up from
the interior. An elemental war rages around, and it is
no place for human beings. There is a kind of fearful
exaltation. A slope of black sand descends some fifty
feet to an inner edge, broken by rocks of porphyry and
flint, which the imagination tortures into fantastic shapes.
Hence a sheer precipice drops two thousand feet, a vast
ellipse in plan. There was snow in the bottom of the
crater. Jets of steam spouted from ten sulfataras, or
[183]sources, from which the native sulphur is extracted. The
hands who work there are said to live in the shelter of
caves, and remain for a month at a time without exit.
They are lowered down by windlass, on a primitive contrivance
they call a caballo de minas—horse of the mines.
The sulphur is hoisted in bags and slid down a long
groove in the snow to the neighborhood of the rancho.
It takes the palm in purity over all sulphurs in the
world. A company has been formed, it is said, for the
purpose of working the deposits more effectually and
utilizing the steam-power in the bottom for improved
hoisting machinery.

The men were on strike at the time, as it happened,
and the windlass was not in place, and was not adjusted.
If it had been, and we had descended, we might have
found the warmth for which we were well-nigh perishing.
Snow began to drive from the heavy cloud-banks.
When it snows the crater within is darkened, roarings
are said to be heard, and strange-colored globules and
flames play above the sulfataras.

“What if there should be an eruption?” suggested
the alarmist of the party, as we began to beat our retreat
from the untenable position.

“There has not been an eruption for at least seven
thousand years,” said the scientific member, with contempt.
“A certain kind of lignite in the bottom, requiring
that length of time to form, establishes it.”

“So much the more reason, then,” said the alarmist:
“it is high time there was another.”

With that we slipped and floundered down the snow-mountain
with the same celerity with which Vesuvius is
descended. We crossed again the black volcanic fields,
mounted our horses, and spent once more the night at
Tlamaca, having learned by experience how to make it
[184]slightly more comfortable than the other. The next day
we rode back to Amecameca.

When Señor Llandesio, Professor of the Fine Arts at
Mexico, made this ascent, as he did in 1866, he says that
he found two attempts necessary before he succeeded. I
have the pamphlet in which he describes it. “The guide
and peon whispered together continually,” he says, “which
made me think they were going to play us some trick.”

Sure enough, they did. After a good way up they
represented that it was perilous, impossible, to go farther.
He descended, and had taken his seat in the diligencia to
return to Mexico, when he met another party, with more
honest guides, and, turning back with them, this time
succeeded. He describes a young man so fatigued on
the mountain that he desired, with tears in his eyes, to
be left to die. Another succumbed owing to the singular
cause, that he had fancied that ardent spirits would
have no effect in the peculiarly attenuated atmosphere,
and had emptied nearly a whole bottle of brandy.

Señor Llandesio was told by the Indians that they believed
in a genius of the mountain, whom they called
Cuantelpostle. He was a queer little man, who dwelt
about the Pico del Fraile, helped the workmen at their
labors when in a good humor, and embarrassed them as
much as possible when in a bad. They said, also, that
presents were offered by some to propitiate the volcano,
for the purpose of obtaining rain, and the like. These
were buried in the sand, and the places marked by a flat
stone. This practice may account for some of the discoveries
of Charnay, who unearthed about the foot of the
mountain much interesting pottery.

---

I.

When I saw Amecameca again it was to pass it on board
a gala train going down to celebrate the completion of
the Morelos railway to Cuautla, in Tierra Caliente. The
Morelos railway is a native Mexican work. It was built
under the auspices of Delfin Sanchez, a son-in-law of President
Juarez, was rushed forward with great expedition,
in order to secure valuable premiums, added to the regular
subsidy by Government, and there was much defective
work in its construction. It is laid to the narrow gauge,
and projected ultimately to reach Acapulco, but this latter
need hardly be looked for in any predicable time. At
present it reaches about seventy-five miles—to Cuautla-Morelos,
capital of the state of Morelos.

All official and distinguished Mexico was aboard that
day—the President, the justices of the Supreme Court,
generals, senators, littérateurs, and, greatest of all, Porfirio
Diaz. “Porfirio” wore a felt hat with a tall top, and
his manner with his friends was easy and unpretentious.
Had the accident of a week later happened that day instead,
the Republic of Mexico would have needed to be
reconstructed from the bottom upward.

[186]

[187]

A locomotive exploradora, a lookout engine, went on
ahead of us to see that all was safe. Every little place
had its music and firing of crackers, and the local detachment
of Rurales reined up at the station. At Amecameca
there were as many as fifty of the latter, with drawn
swords, all on white horses, which the firing made plunge
with great spirit. At Ozumba was a battalion of mounted
riflemen, under command of a handsome young officer in
an eye-glass, who might have come fresh from the military
school of Saint Cyr. The Indian populations, who
could never have seen the locomotive before, maintained
nevertheless, as their way is, a certain stoicism. There
were no wild manifestations of surprise, no shouts; they
even fired off their crackers with a serious air.

The line is a congeries of curves without end, to overcome
the three-quarters of a mile grade perpendicular
from Amecameca to Cuautla. Cuautla has seven thousand
people. For the ten years, up to this time, there
had not been even diligence communication with it, and
the railway was an event indeed. The enterprise was carried
through chiefly by the exertions of a Señor Mendoza
Cortina, who has great sugar estates in the neighborhood.

The streets were decorated with triumphal arches, and
borders of tall banana-plants. They were shabby, and
the place more squalid than is the rule in the temperate
climates above. The Indians had an apathetic look.
Few young and interesting faces were seen among them,
but an extraordinary number of hags. I found in use
some very pretty pottery, which I was told was made at
Cuernavaca, forty miles away. Simple bits of stone and
shell were impasted in the common earthen-ware with an
effect like that of old Roman mosaic. There was a distinctly
Indian Christ in the parish church. In the plaza in
front stands a great tree, somehow connected with a noche
triste of the patriot Morelos. Like Cortez at Mexico, he
was forced to retreat one night in 1812, after a gallant
resistance of sixty-two days to a siege by the Spaniards.

[188]

II.

The extremely civilized company pouring down to this
shabby little place had a grand banquet in an old convent
now adapted to the uses of a railway station, and
plentiful speech-making afterward. There were a number
of merry young journalists of the party, and they
comported themselves as merry young journalists are
apt to. They rapped on the table and called “otro!”
“otro!”—another!—with pretended enthusiasm, even
after the dullest speeches. It seemed typical of something
curiously illogical in the Mexican mind that in festoons
about the banqueting hall were set impartially the
names of the presidents and other great men of the past,
from Iturbide down to Manuel Gonzales. Iturbide adjoined
Bravo and Guerrero, by whom he was shot as a
usurper and enemy of the public peace; and Lerdo Porfirio
Diaz, by whom he was ousted as traitor and tyrant.
In the same way these personages, alternately one another’s
Cæsars and Brutuses, are honored impartially in the
series of portraits in the long gallery of the National
Palace.

There was naturally prominent here the portrait of the
Padre Morelos, with the usual handkerchief around his
head, and bold air of bandit chief. It is curious that
priests should have taken such a share in the early insurrection.
They recall those warrior ecclesiastics of the
Middle Ages, who used to put on quite as often the secular
as the spiritual armor. Probably the oppressions of
the Spaniards were often too intolerable even for ecclesiastical
endurance. Morelos, strangely enough, when the
revolt broke out, was curate under Hidalgo at Valladolid,
in Michoacan, and followed him to the field. He came,
[189]in his turn, to be generalissimo of the Mexican forces,
and to have the name of Valladolid changed to Morelia
in his honor. He had undoubtedly the military gift.
His defence of Cuautla is considered one of the most
glorious deeds of Mexican history. It was the third in
the trio of priests, Matamoras, his intimate and lieutenant,
who broke the siege with a hundred horse and aided
his retreat when it finally became necessary.

Matamoras in due course was taken and shot, at Valladolid,
by no other than Iturbide, the future liberator.
Iturbide, then in the Spanish forces, “had signalized
himself,” to quote our history again, “by his repeated
victories over the insurgents, and the excessive cruelty
of which he made use on frequent occasions.” He routed
Matamoras at Puruapan, took him prisoner, and put him
to death, as has been said. To repay this, Morelos butchered
two hundred Spanish prisoners in cold blood. So
the strife of incarnate cruelty went on. Morelos himself
was made prisoner by an act of treachery, and shot, after
the customary fate of Mexican leaders, at San Cristobal
Ecatapec, at four o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st of
December, 1815.

Iturbide’s account, in his minutes, of the insurgent
chiefs whom he was so active in exterminating is very
far from flattering. And here they are all apotheosized
together. Verily it seems as if some high court of inquiry
and review should be constituted for apportioning
out a little the relative merits and defects of the past. The
Mexican national anthem, a stirring and martial air, invokes
among other things the sacred memory of Iturbide.
But if Iturbide really deserved to be shot on setting foot
on shore after his banishment, it seems much as if Americans
should invoke the sacred name of Benedict Arnold.
Arnold, too, rendered excellent services to his country.
[190]Nobody was a braver or better soldier than he before he
attempted to betray it to the British.

Well, I suppose the Mexicans understand it, but I don’t.
Are they content with such a mixed ideal of good? Can
a person have been such a patriot at one time that no
subsequent crimes can weigh against him? One very
simple lesson from it all would seem to be a less impatience
with the ruling powers, on the one hand, and much
less haste with powder and shot, on the other.

III.

I stayed a couple of days at Cuautla, to visit the sugar
haciendas. The sugar product is large, and the district
one of the most convenient sources of supply for central
Mexico. A week afterward the newly inaugurated road
was the scene of an accident unequalled, I think, in the
annals of railway horrors. Five hundred lives were lost,
in a little barranca, an insecure bridge over which had
been washed out by the rain. A regiment in garrison at
Cuautla was ordered to Mexico, and started in a train of
open “flat” cars, there not having been passenger cars sufficient
for the purpose. On other flat cars was a freight
of barrels of aguardiente. The start was made in the afternoon.
There was delay on the track. The shower
came on, the night fell, and the men, pelted by the storm,
without protection, broke open the aguardiente, and drank
their fill. Some say that the engineer reported the road
unsafe, but was forced by an exasperated officer to go on
with a pistol at his head. They came to the broken
bridge, and the train went through. The soldiers who
were not mangled and incapacitated outright—drunk, and
crazed with excitement—stabbed and shot one another.
The barrels of aguardiente burst and took fire; the cartridges
[191]in the belts exploded; the swollen torrent claimed
its own; and the fury of a tropical storm, in a night as
black as Erebus, beat down upon the writhing mass of
horror.

It was at this price that the extra subventions for
speedy completion of the work were earned. A whitewashing
report was made afterward, I believe, but the
Government caused the road to be put in order before
it was again opened; and the case may serve as a needed
lesson to all railway builders in Mexico.

---

I.

The impressions of the first journey upward from the
coast are too vague to satisfy, yet it is better to push on
to the capital and not take off the edge of the novelty
by dallying on the way. The intervening places are
returned to afterward.

How different the feeling now! The things that had
seemed so formidable are harmless enough. You take
now with gusto the pulque, handed up at Apam. You
understand the motley figures, the interiors, the flavors
of the strange fruits and cakes, the proper expressions to
use, and prices to pay. The helpless feeling of standing
in need of continual directions is got rid of, and travel
has become a matter of confidence and pleasure. Our
Mexicans of the lower class are not over-quick in the
matter of directions, to tell the truth. I recollect, as an
example, asking a small shop-keeper, one day, the way
to a neighboring street.

“There it is,” he said; “but” (insisting, in a flustered
way, on being puzzled by my accent, though he had comprehended
what I meant) “no hablamos Americano aqui”—“We
don’t speak American here.”

I found a lodging at a tienda at San Juan Teotihuacan,
the ancient city of the dead. The owner had before entertained
Americans. He had a dog to which he had
[193]given, in pleasant recollection of one of them, as he
said, the remarkable name of “Lovis,” which afterward
proved to be “Lewis.” Adjoining was a barracks of
Rurales, whose bugles sounded a cheerful réveille in the
morning. The central plaza is perhaps three miles from
the station. On the way you cross a handsome stone
bridge built by Maximilian. The river San Juan had
vanished from under it and left a mere gulch, as is the
way with most of the streams in the dry season.

The inhabitants have their houses, gardens, and all,
often above the cement floors left by the extinct race,
and the edges of these floors crop out beside the road,
worn down through them. Nobody has framed a satisfactory
theory of the place, but it is supposed to have
been a great pantheon, or burial-place, for the dead of
importance. Maximilian encouraged excavations, and a
great Egyptian-looking head, unearthed in his time, is
seen. Charnay dug there later, and so did my friend of
the newspaper expedition. Probably a commission ought
to be issued by the Government for tunnelling, without
impairing their form, the two pyramids, to ascertain if
there be not something of importance within. It is at
present both conservative and apathetic in such matters.
The larger pyramid, that of the Sun, has an excellent zigzag
plane approaching its summit. A long road, called
the “Street of the Dead,” strewn on both sides with
heaps of weather-worn stones, indicating constructions,
extends from it to that of the Moon. Both are now
grown with scrubby nopals and pepper-trees.

A couple of children ran out from a cottage at the foot
of the Pyramid of the Sun, to sell “caritas,” the little
antiquities, the day I approached to climb it. From the
top you see other villages, as San Francisco, Santa Maria
Cuatlan, San Martin. The inhabitants of San Francisco
[194]have erected a cross here, where an idol, with a burnished
shield, once stood to catch the first rays of the
rising sun, and come in procession each year, on the 3d
of May, to conduct a religious ceremonial and drape it
with flowers. The white summit of Popocatepetl barely
shows itself above the intervening range of the Rio Frio.
The officiators at the pagan altar may have hailed it sparkling
afar, like another sacrificial fire. The country round
about is garden-like, abounding in maize and maguey,
sheep and cattle. I observed some large straw-ricks,
fashioned by leisurely employés, in the prevailing taste
for adornment, into the form of houses, with a figure of
a saint chopped out in bass-relief. It was a calm, lovely
Sunday. A fresh breeze played, though the sun was
warm; cumulus clouds piled themselves up magnificently;
and the tinkle of the church-bells came up from the
surrounding villages.

The clouds—“luminous Andes of the air,” as a poet
has aptly called them—are of especial impressiveness, I
think, above this great plain. I noted them again with
great pleasure at Huamantla, in the state of Tlaxcala. It
is a shabby place of unpainted adobe, out of which rise
the fine domes and belfries of a dozen churches, as if
they were enclosed in a brick-yard. Thither Santa Anna
retired for his last futile resistance, after the Americans
under Scott had taken the capital; and there, according to
the school history, “the terrible American guerilla, Walker,
was killed in personal combat by an intrepid Mexican officer,
Eulalio Villaseñor.” Near by is Malinche, a mountain
dubbed with a nickname given by the Aztecs to
Cortez, which is a feature of all this part of the country.
It is not of great height, but of peculiar, volcanic shape.
It is a long slope, made up of knobs and jags, reaching
to a central point as sharp as an arrow-head. Peons are
[195]ploughing, with oxen and the primitive wooden plough,
in fertile ground around its base, and its dark mass is
thrown out boldly against dazzling banks of cloud.

II.

At Orizaba you are down in the tropics again, but not
tropics of too oppressive a kind. A young friend from
Mexico was making a visit there in a family to which I
was admitted, and I was glad to see something of the
place in a domestic way. It has, say, fifteen thousand
inhabitants. The Alameda, with its two fountains, stone
seats, orange-trees, and other shrubberies, is very charming;
so is the little Zocalo, by the Cathedral. There
grows in the gardens here the splendid tulipan, a shrub
in size like the oleander, the large flowers of which glow
from a distance like scarlet lanterns. Tall bananas bend
over the neatly whitened houses. My Hotel de Diligencias
was white and attractive. Next to it a torrent tumbled
down a wild little gorge, amid a growth of bananas,
and, passing under a bridge, turned flouring and paper
mills. I had this under my eyes from my window; and
I had also an expanse of red-tiled roofs, gray belfries and
domes, and the bold hill of El Borrego beyond. The city
is enclosed by a rim of hills. It was now the season when
the rains were growing frequent; and a humid atmosphere,
and wet clouds, dragging low and occasionally
dropping their contents, kept the vegetation of a fresh,
vivid green.

At the hotel table d’hôte a couple of young men of
very Indian physiognomy—lawyers, I should judge, by
profession—talked pantheism and such-like subjects in
the tone of Victor Hugo’s students. A lady whose husband
was a general officer told me that she had been in
[196]the United States—at New Orleans—accounting thus for
a little knowledge of English. That meant that she had
shared her husband’s exile there. One comes to understand
and smile at it after a while. “Tomo el rumbo á
la costa, y salio de la Republica, embarcandose para Orleans”—“He
took the road to the coast and sallied from
the Republic, embarking himself for New Orleans”—has
passed almost into a formula in the accounts of public
men, New Orleans having always been a notable place
of temporary refuge and plotting for their return.

[197]

There was a gay party, of station, who had come down
to pasear a little, in a private car, and were taking back
with them a great supply of the flowers and fruits of the
tropics. Shall I reluctantly admit that they all ate with
their knives, and with the sharp edge foremost? Our
waiter gave us, smilingly, soup without a spoon, this and
that other dish without a fork, and hastened off for long
absences; or he would apathetically say, “No hay”—“There
is none”—of a dish, but would bring it if it were
insisted on with decision. A fellow-guest informed me
at dessert that he had been in New York, and that the
American fruits and dulces—sweets—were all alike and
insipid. This shows that there is a natural equilibrium
in things, for it is precisely the complaint that visitors
from the North first make of those of the tropics.

My acquaintances in the place were the family of the
Licenciado—let us say—Herrera y Arroyo. The names
of both masculine and feminine progenitors are thus
usually linked together by the “y”—and. They told
me that there was very little formal entertaining done.
They occupied themselves with embroidery, studying
English, and domestic matters. Their house was roomy,
but had little furniture. The rocking-chair can never
again be called a peculiarly Yankee feature by anybody
who has seen it in the lower latitudes. The typical Mexican
parlor, or living-room, has, like the one here, a mat
spread down in the centre, on a brick floor, and two cane
rocking-chairs on one side and two on the other, in which
the inmates spend much of their time.

We had a kind of picnic one day to the Barrio Nuevo,
a very pretty coffee-and-milk-like cascade of the Rio Orizaba.
Boys ran out from thatched cottages in the edge
of town to pick flowers and offer them to the señoritas,
expecting to be rewarded, of course, with a little consideration.
[198]There is another cascade, even prettier—the
Rincon Grande.

The next day we went to the sugar ingenio of Jalapilla.
A fine wide avenue of trees stretched up to it. The locusts
were singing in them. The grass and trees were
exquisitely green. The snow-peak of Orizaba, hidden at
the town itself, here rises above intervening hills. There
were arcades, and monumental gateways, and a massive
aqueduct on arches, which brings the water from a fine
torrent. In the sunless green archways of the old aqueduct
the señoritas found with rapture specimens of rare
and delicate ferns growing. Ox-wains brought the cane to
the mills. We watched it through the processes of crushing
in the machinery, and tasted the pleasant sap when
first expressed, and later at some of the stages of boiling
down. Aguardiente is also made on a large scale. The
peasants along the road sell you a draught of it in its
unfermented state, with tamales. The residence attached
is a large, two-story white house, with a high iron gate
between white posts. It was loaned to Maximilian as a
country retreat by the conservative owners at one time.
At present it is shabby and unfurnished, but a single
room being occupied by the proprietor, who has the
rough-and-ready tastes of a ranchero, and little taste for
display.

III.

At one of the theatres at this time was playing, by a
Zarazuela, or “variety” company, “La Torre de Neslo
ó Margarita de Borgogno;” at the other, by a juvenile
company, “La Fille de Madame Angot.”

Whoever would thoroughly enjoy Mexico must have
the taste for old architecture. There is no end to it, and
it is often the only resource. It is of that fantastic rococo
[199]into which the Renaissance fell, in the luxury and
florid invention of its later stages; but even where least
defensible, from the point of view of logic and fitness, it
is redeemed now by its mouldering, its time-stains, and
superposed layers of half-obliterated colors. Little can
be said, except in this way, for the carvings and various
detail, but the masses are invariably of a grand and noble
simplicity. The material is generally rubble-stone and
cement, and cannot be very expensive. The principal
lines of the style are horizontal. The dome, semi-circular
in shape, plays a great part in it. I have counted not
less than eight, like those of St. Mark’s, at Venice, on a
single church. The dome is built, if I mistake not, of
rubble and cement also, on a centring of regular masonry,
perhaps even of wood. It is a reminiscence of the Moors.
These edifices were put up three hundred years ago, by
builders in the flush of the Byzantine influence, which
radiated from Granada, then lately conquered. I know
of no school in which the niggling, petty, and expensive
character of our own efforts in this line could be better
corrected. Vamenos! Will not some of our leisurely
young architects with a taste for the picturesque travel
here, with their sketch-books, and bring us back plans
and suggestions from this impressive work, for use among
ourselves?

Some of the old churches take an added interest from
their present fate. It would have been monotonous to
have them all alike in full ceremonial, and now they are
pathetic. I used to linger to hear the buglers practise in
the cloistered church of Carmen, used as a barracks. It
is stripped of everything, the pavement broken, the walls
full of bullet-holes, and painted with the names of detachments,
as 18º de Infanteria, 7º Compaña de Grenaderos,
which have occupied it. In the smoke-stains, the damp,
[200]to which patches of gilding still adhere, and the vestiges
of scaling fresco, dim, mysterious visions are made out.
The bare chancel daïs, still surviving, gives to the interior
the aspect of some noble throne-room. In our own
country such a monument would be inestimably prized,
and would become a pilgrimage-place from far and near;
but here it is simply one of a great number.

In the little public plaza outside a few convicts were
repairing the paths. A pair of them would bring some
dirt, about an ordinary wheel-barrow full, on a stretcher,
dump it in a leisurely way, and go back for more, all with
plentiful deliberation. They might have been laborers,
engaged by the city aldermen, on a New York boulevard.
A couple of soldiers with muskets lounged on the stone
benches to guard them as they worked. The punishment
of the prisoners could hardly have been in what they did,
but principally in the exposure—unless, indeed, they were
taken from a different part of the country. I wondered
if their friends came here sometimes and watched them;
and what a pain it must have been for the sensitive to
work thus, hedged round by an invulnerable restraint and
infamy, in sight of the homes where they had lived and
all the ordinary avocations of life in which they had
engaged.

An important cotton-factory at Orizaba has a fine architectural
gate-way, and a statue of the founder, Manuel
Escandon (1807 to 1862), in the court, after the practice
heretofore adverted to. Paper is also made here. A series
of fines is prescribed, in printed rules, for the hands
coming late in the morning and falling into other misdemeanors.
The sum of these makes up a fund for charitable
use among themselves. A savings-bank department
is also conducted for the benefit of the operatives. To
encourage savings an extra liberal interest is paid when
[201]the amount on deposit has reached fifty dollars. To
avoid in part the interruption of the frequent church
holidays, a dispensation had been obtained from the ecclesiastical
authorities, allowing work to go on, on most
of them, as usual.

IV.

From Orizaba the next stage was to Cordoba. Cordoba
is in the full tropics, and there I first made acquaintance
with the coffee culture, the leading industry of the
place. The plant is less striking in aspect than I had
expected. It is a bush, with small, dark, glossy leaves,
its stem never over six or seven inches in diameter, even
at an age of fifty years. It is twelve feet high at most,
but usually topped and kept lower for greater convenience
in harvesting the product. It bears a little axillary
white flower, fragrant like jasmine, and the green berries
at the same time. A coffee plantation has not the breadth
of the platanaras, the fields of towering bananas; but it
needs shade, and large oaks are left distributed through
it which accomplish this purpose. If left to the sun
wholly it yields large crops at first, then dies. The coffee
plant should bear after the fourth or fifth year, and
yield a half-pound yearly for fifty or sixty years. It
should have cost, up to the time of beginning to bear,
about twenty-five cents. This is supposing a high cultivation.
By the more shiftless method commonly found
in use here it costs but half as much, but, on the other
hand, yields no more than three ounces on an average.

Some few Americans, and other foreigners, have established
themselves at Cordoba, and lead a dreamy existence
in the shade. At one time it was the scene of an extensive
coffee-planting by ex-Confederate generals, but these
attempts were not successful. I was fortunate enough
[202]to be conducted about by an old gentleman, of German
birth, who had lived here forty years. He had the tastes
of a naturalist and farmer, and the existence pleased him.
He took in his hand a machete from the wall, and we set
forth for a walk, with much improving discourse by the
way, in the fields and plantations. The machete, a long
half cleaver, half sword, opens you a path through a thicket,
cuts you a coffee or an orange stick, lops an orchid
from its high perch on the rugged tree-bark, or brings
down a tall banana, and splits open its covering to serve
as a protection to a budget of botanical specimens. Some
small grandchildren of the house begged to accompany
us. They had hardy, out-of-door habits, and ran by our
sides with merry clamor, finding a hundred things to
interest them along the way.

My genial guide had planted coffee himself. Much
money has been lost at it, it seems, and it cannot be
very profitable except under economical processes and an
improved market. When transportation becomes cheaper
we shall have introduced into the United States from
Mexico also many choice fruits, notably the fine Manilla
mango, not now known. The fruits of the country
grow on you with experience. To my taste the juicy
mango, which at its best combines something of the melon,
pine-apple, peach, and pear, is the most delicious of
them all. Other fruits are the chirimoya, guava, mamé,
granadita (or pomegranate), zapote, chazapote, tuna, aguacate,
and many more, the distinctive peculiarities of which
I could not describe in a week.

The best soil for the coffee is that of virgin slopes, capable
of being well manured. It should be manured once
in two years. The planting takes place in the rainy
season, and the principal harvest is in November and
December. Women and children cut off the berries,
[203]which are then dried five or six weeks, and barked; or
are barked earlier by a machine. The chief labor consists
in destroying the weeds, which must be done from
two to six times a year. The plants are set in squares,
at a distance of about seven feet apart. The trees recommended
for shade are the fresno, or ash, cedro (cedar),
the huisache, aguacate, maxcatle, cajiniquil, and tepehuajé,
the characteristics of which I could hardly explain, more
than those of the fruits, except that they are generally
dark and glossy-leaved, and many of them as large as our
elms. There is a theory, too, in favor of shading by bananas,
and plantations are found where the two grow
together.

But a native proprietor with whom I talked objects to
this. “The platano is a selfish and grasping plant,” he
says, indignantly. “It draws twice and thrice its proportionate
amount of nourishment from the soil. Is it not
beaten down, too, in every storm? And the ravaging
hedgehog comes in search of it, and, while he is about
it, destroys the coffee as well. No, indeed, no combination
of platano and coffee for me!”

The poor platano! However, it can stand abuse. How
quickly it grows! Its great leaves, more or less tattered
by friction, flap and rustle above your head like banners
and sails as you walk about in the tropical plantation. It
is called the “bread of the tropics.” An acre of land
will produce enough of it to support fifty people, whereas
an acre in wheat will support only two. If the tropics
had had a good deal harder time in getting their bread,
by-the-way, they would not have been in so down-trodden
and slipshod a condition.

I will not say that we had the better coffee at our hotel
for being in its own country. It is the old story of “shoemaker’s
children” again, I suppose. On the contrary, I
[204]recollect it as especially poor. The hotel—possibly it has
improved by this time—was wretchedly kept and served.
They gave us half a dozen kinds of meat in succession,
without ever a vegetable, in such a luxuriance of them.
The waiters were sunk in apathy, the management even
more so. They seem often to say to you, with an ill-concealed
aversion, at a Mexican hotel, “If you will stay,
if you will insist on bringing your traps in, we will do
what we can for you, but we are not at all anxious for it.”

Pack-mules were kept in the court, and under a cloister
at one side women and girls were stripping tobacco.
Your room, at a provincial hotel, opens upon a gallery in
which mocking-birds are hung in wooden cages—always
one at least. It is the practice of the Mexican mocking-bird
to sleep continuously throughout the day, so as to be
in health and spirits for the exercise of the night. He
begins at midnight, and continues his dulcet ingenuity of
torture till daybreak. Naturalists have had much to say
of the mocking-bird, comparing him to a whole forest full
of songsters, and the like. It may be unwise to set up in
opposition to so much praise, but there are times when
a planing-mill in the vicinity, or a whole foundery full
of trip-hammers, would be a blessing and relief in comparison.

Should the mocking-bird have injudiciously impaired
his strength during the day, so as to allow of a brief
respite, the interval is filled in by the shrill, quavering
whistles of the street watchmen, who blow to each other
every quarter of an hour during the night, to show that
they are awake and vigilant.

You leave Cordoba at 4.30 in the morning; that is, if
you go by the up-train. I was awakened an hour too soon
at my hotel, which, having to call me, wanted it over as
soon as possible. I had leisure while waiting to collect
[205]the views of one of these watchmen. He showed me
the Remington rifle with which he was armed. He said
that he went on duty at 7 P.M. and finished at 5.30 A.M.,
and received three and a half reals—forty-two cents—a
day, which he did not think enough. There are no cabs
at Cordoba. It is a tram-car, making a total of two
trips a day, that takes you, bag and baggage, two dark
miles or so to the station.

V.

But I did not leave before first visiting the Indian
village of Amatlan. I do not insist that erudition of
incalculable value has been brought to light in these
travels, but they were a succession of excursions into
the actual heart of things. I was pleased when I could
find something unmodified by the innovations of railway
travel, and witness the familiar, every-day life of the
people. Perhaps we never thoroughly understand anybody
until we learn his routine. A stimulus to what we
usually neglect, and take as a matter of course, is aroused
abroad. Law-making, education, buying and selling, eating
and drinking, marriage, and the burial of the dead, all
yield entertainment. The traveller who spreads before
us only the outré and startling that he has seen may still
leave us very much in the dark about where he has been.
In Mexico, however, almost everything is outré.

To Amatlan and back is a comfortable day’s excursion.
We found saddle-horses for hire, and a young Indian as a
guide, and set off. My companion on this excursion was
a commercial traveller, a sprightly young American of
Spanish origin. Commercial traveller in machetes and
other cutlery: such was his profession. The machetes
were of American make. I have one hanging in my room
[206]at this writing which came from Water Street, in New
York. This agent had taken his last order (having canvassed
the little store-keepers in the plaza under my own
view, as if they had been those of Kalamazoo, Aurora,
or Freeport), and was awaiting the sailing of his steamer
from Vera Cruz. Having nothing more to do, he entered
into the examination of manners and customs for their
own sake with a certain zest, though perhaps comprehending
for the first time that such things could be
worth anybody’s notice.

Amatlan is the richest Indian village in—well, one of
the richest of Indian villages. Its plantations of pine-apples
are the finest in the state of Vera Cruz, to which all
this territory from Orizaba down belongs, Orizaba being
its capital. The pines grow about sixteen inches in height,
and should last ten years. They are set in narrow lines,
and the general aspect of the field from a little distance
is that of large sedge-grass. You will buy three of them
sometimes for a tlaco, one cent and a half. We met natives
driving donkey-loads of them to market. There
were some fields of tobacco, of fine quality, in flower.
The Peak of Orizaba is magnificently seen from all this
district. It is lovelier and bolder than at first upon familiar
acquaintance. Church, the painter, finds the preferable
point of view farther up the railroad, using the wild
gorges of Fortin as a foreground. The village proved to
be composed chiefly of wooden and cane huts, shingled
or thatched, and the population to be exclusively Indian.
They do not wish any others to join them. They display
everywhere the same clannish disposition. If persons of
European origin who might come to remain could not
be got rid of by churlishness, it is thought that severer
means would be resorted to.

The Indian race, as a rule, is patient and untiring in
[207]certain minor directions. They make long, swift journeys,
for instance, acting as beasts of burden or messengers,
so that, seeing their performances, the words of Buffon
come forcibly to mind: “The civilized man knows
not half his powers.” But in the greater concerns of life,
those requiring forethought for a permanent future, they
are very improvident. Perhaps, however, those of Amatlan
differ from others, or perhaps the general reputation
may not be wholly deserved, for the Cordobans tell you
that Amatlan is even richer than Cordoba.

There are said to be a number of native residents worth
from $50,000 to $80,000 each. They buy land, and bury
their surplus cash in the ground. It may well enough be
that the lack of savings-banks, or any more secure place
of deposit for money than the ground, has something to
do with the improvidence complained of. The alcalde,
the chief of them, was estimated as worth a million,
though this I should very much doubt. He had no large
ways of using his wealth, but was said to incline to avarice
and delight in simply piling it up. There was a
project at one time to build a tram-road hence to Cordoba,
the capital to be supplied in part by the Indians,
but it fell through. Some of the well-to-do send their
sons to good schools, and even to Mexico, to take the
degree of licentiate. These favored scions, on their return,
must put on the usual dress, and live in no way
differently from the rest. The daughters, on the other
hand, are never educated, but set, without exception, to
rolling tortillas and the other domestic drudgery.

VI.

We dined at an open-air shanty posada, with dogs and
pigs running freely about under our feet. Coffee, without
[208]milk, sugar, and pine-apples were all supplied by the
fields about. Some few spectators were interested, but
not very much, in a slight sketch I made of their buildings
and costume. My commercial traveller, by way of
arousing greater enthusiasm in this, represented that it
was to be “put in a machine” afterward, and showed,
by a dexterous chuckle and twist of the thumb, how it
would then be so improved that you would never know
it. But even this stirred them only indifferently.

We visited the alcalde in his quarters. He was
bristly-haired, clad in cotton shirt and drawers, and bare-legged,
like the rest. Official business for the day was
over, but he showed us the cell in which on occasion he
locked up evil-doers. He was said to administer justice
impartially to the rich and poor alike, and with a natural
good-sense. But for occasional perversions of justice effected
by a Spanish secretary he was obliged to employ,
he himself being illiterate, it was thought that his court
averaged well with the more pretentious tribunals of the
country.

We rode back by a different way, through a large, cool
wood. It abounded in interesting orchids, and there was
an undergrowth of coffee run wild, the glossy green of
its leaves as shining as if just wet by rain. There was
not that excessive tangle and luxuriance supposed to be
characteristic of the tropics; our own woods are quite as
rampant. All that is found, you learn, in Tehuantepec, for
instance, and Central America. There tree-growths seize
upon a dwelling, crunch its bones, as it were, and bear up
part of the walls into the air; and it is vegetable more
than animal life that is feared. We forded three pretty
brooks, and came to an upland where cows were pasturing,
and the steeples of Cordoba were again in sight.
Our young guide lassoed a cow, led her to a shed where
[209]tobacco was drying, and offered us the refreshment of a
draught of new milk.

Being asked if this were quite regular and correct, he
answered that the cows were there at pasturage in charge
of his uncle. I trust that this was so.

---

I.

You turn off from the junction of Apizaco, on the Vera
Cruz railway, to go to the large, fine city of Puebla. It
is the capital of the state of the same name, and has a
population of about seventy-seven thousand. Many prosperous
fabricas (factories) are seen along the fertile valley
of approach; then the forts, attacked and defended
on the great Cinco de Mayo, appear on the hills, looking
down, like Mont Valerien and Charenton above Paris.

Certainly everything out of Mexico is not Cuatitlan.
Puebla is very clean, well paved, and well drained. The
streets are not too wide, as many of them are at the capital.
I thought our hotel, De Diligencias, which was very
well kept, by a Frenchman, much better than the Iturbide.
It had been a palace in its day, and had traces yet
of armorial sculptures. Our rooms opened upon a wide
upper colonnade, where the table was spread. It was full
of flowers, which shut out whatever might have been
disagreeable to the eye below. I am bound to admit that
the remorseless mocking-bird sang all night among them.
I have mentioned heretofore the tiled front of a shop,
“La Ciudad de Mexico.” A picturesque mosaic-work in
tiles of earthen-ware and china upon a ground of blood-red
stone abounds. Sometimes it is a diagonal pattern,
covering a whole surface; again only a broad wainscot or
[211]frieze. Plaques, representing saints, which you take at
first for hand-bills, are let into walls. These tiles are
made at Puebla, where there are as many as ten fabricas
of them, the best in the country. I visited one of these,
found the manufacture cheap, and brought away some
specimens. The workmanship is rude and hasty, but the
effect artistic and adapted to its purpose. The most liberal
example of their use, and one of the most charming
interiors I have ever seen, was that of what is now the
Casa de Dementes, or lunatic asylum for men, of the state
of Puebla. It was formerly a convent of the nuns of
Santa Rosa, and was decorated after their taste. Entrance,
vestibule, stairs, central court, and cloisters, with
fountain in the centre; balustrade, benches, tanks and
bath-tubs, kitchen furnace, and numberless little garden
courts, are all encrusted with quaint ceramics. It is like
walking about in some magnified piece of jewelry. The
blue-and-yellow fountain in its court is as Moorish as
anything in Morocco.

There are forty-two patients in this institution, with an
attendant appointed to each ten. The rich among them
pay $16 a month, the rest nothing. Another one, San
Roque, contains thirty-two women, also maintained by the
state. The general hospital, of San Pedro, another large
ex-convent, with a nice garden, was clean, cool, and well
ordered; and—curious feature to note—departments for
allopath and homœopath arranged impartially side by
side. These governments take, officially, no sides with
either, but give them both a showing.

The Cathedral at Puebla is equal in magnificence to
that at Mexico. There is the usual Zocalo, full of charming
plants, before it. The large theatre, “De Guerrero,”
entered by a passage from the portales, had but a scant
audience on the evening of our attendance, but was itself
[212]worthy of inspection. It had four tiers of boxes and a
pit; the decoration was in white and gold, upon a ground
of blue-and-white wall-paper, the whole of a chaste and
elegant effect. The peasant costumes of women in each
of the provinces vary in colors and material, though the
same general shapes are preserved. At Cordoba, white
and striped cotton stuffs were in order; at Mexico,
Egyptian-looking blue-and-black woollen goods. Those
in all this part of the country I thought particularly
pleasing; and the great market and gay Parian, or bazaar,
where they are principally displayed, were not soon
exhausted as a spectacle. The men are usually bare-legged,
and in white cotton. In the warm part of the
day they carry their bright-colored serapes folded over
one shoulder, and when it is cooler put them on, by simply
inserting their heads through the slit.

Now comes by a woman in white, with a red cap and
girdle; now two girls of fourteen, all in white, hurrying
swiftly along under heavy burdens. Here are women in
embroidered jackets, others in chemises, with profuse
bands of colored beads, or rebosos of rayed stuff, like the
Algerian burnous. Skirts are of white blanket material,
with borders of blue, or blue with white, or yellow.
The principal garment is a mere skirt of uncut goods,
wrapped around the hips and kept in place by a bright
girdle. Above this is whatever fantastic waist one
pleases, or a garment with an opening for the head, after
the fashion of the serape. To all this is added a profusion
of necklaces of large beads, amber, blue, and green,
and large silver ear-rings, or others of glass, in the Mexican
national colors, green, white, and red. There is a
universal carrying of burdens. The men accommodate
theirs in a large wooden cage divided into compartments.
The women tie over their backs budgets done up in a
[213]rug of coarse maguey fibre. Often they carry a child
or an earthen jar in it; or, when full, pile a large green
or red water-jar on the top.

Affording so abundant material for the artist, they
were excessively suspicious of any attempt to turn it to
account. There were traditions among them that bad
luck would be encountered should they allow pictures to
be taken. It was to take away something from themselves,
and they would be left incomplete—probably to
waste and die. Nor could their costumes be bought from
them except with great difficulty. Much as still remains,
there has been a great change, and disappearance, since
the close of Maximilian’s empire, of local peculiarities in
dress. There has been a disappearance, too, with the advent
of machinery and imported notions, of many pretty
hand-made articles that formerly adorned the markets.
Among these were carvings in charcoal, once of a peculiar
excellence. Of those that remain still of great interest
are life-like puppets, in wax and wood, of figures
of the country, costumed after their several types.

On the evening of May 19th, as we sat at dinner in
the hotel corridor, down came the rain in the court. In
a few moments a row of long gargoyles were spouting
streams which were white against the blackness, and
crossed one another like a set display. “Va! for the
rainy season!” said the host. It usually begins by the
15th. “Voilà! ten months past in which we have had
scarcely a drop!”

As almost any desired climate can be had by varying
more or less the altitude, the rainy season is of variable
date in different parts of the country. At Mexico it is
very much later. I did not find it, either here or elsewhere,
so incommoding as might be fancied. It rains principally
at night, and the succeeding day is bright and clear.
[214]In Mexico, as in California, the rainy season means that
in which rain falls about as with us, while the dry season
is that in which there is none at all.

II.

Have any forgotten the tragic advent, and preliminary
agitations, of the entry of Cortez into the sacred city
of Cholula? He assembled the caciques and notables in
the great square, and at a given signal, turned his arms
upon them and slew them, to the number of three thousand.
He had discovered an artful plot among them for
the destruction of his army, and it was his aim in this way
to strike such a terror into the country that he should
have done with such things once for all. The god worshipped
at Cholula was a far milder one than the bloody
war god at Mexico—the peaceful Quetzalcoatl, God of the
Air. He instructed the people in agriculture and the arts.
His reign was a golden age. Cotton grew already tinted
with gorgeous dyes, and a single ear of maize was as
much as a man could carry. To his honor the largest of
all the teocallis and temples was erected. He was represented
with painted shield, jewelled sceptre, and plumes
of fire. Could Cortez have waited till now (such are the
changes of time) he might have gone into Cholula from
Puebla, to the foot of this very pyramid, in a beautiful
horse-car. A tramway, ultimately to be extended, and
operated by steam, reached to this point, a distance of six
miles, and our conveyance was a horse-car with a glass
front (New York built) which I have never seen equalled
elsewhere. The driver of it was a Tennessee negro, who
had married an Indian maid and settled, much respected,
in the country. He had formerly been body-servant of a
Mexican general, had travelled with him in the United
[215]States and Europe, and picked up several languages. He
called upon us afterward at our hotel, to politely inquire
our impressions of his tramway.

The principal features of the trip were exquisite views
of Popocatepetl and Ixtacihuatl across yellow grain-fields;
a dilapidated convent turned to an iron foundery; an old
aqueduct crossing the plain; a Spanish bridge, sculptured
with armorial bearings, across the river Atoyac;
and a fine grist-mill; and farther on a cotton-mill, turned
by the water-power of the same river.

There has been a controversy as to whether the great
mound was natural or artificial in origin. I do not see
how there can be doubt about it now, for where numerous
deep cuts have been made in it, for roads or cultivation,
the artificial structure of adobe bricks is plainly visible.
Such a place as it is to lie upon at ease and dream and go
back to the traditions of the past! You may cast yourself
down under large trees growing on the now ragged slopes,
or by the pilgrimage chapel on the crest, where the God of
the Air once reared his grotesque bulk. There is a sculptured
cross, dated 1666, at the edge of the terrace, and
rose-bushes grow out of the pavement. I know of no
prospect of fertile hill and dale, scattered with quaint villages,
in any country that surpasses it. An American
was there that day with the purpose of buying a hacienda,
if he could find one suitable, and I for one thought
there were many plans much less sensible.

Cholula had four hundred towers in its pagan times,
and it may have had round about it almost as many spires
when the Christian domination succeeded. Let me recite
the names of a few of the villages seen from the top
of the great pyramid, all with their churches, by twos
and threes, or more: San Juan; San Andres; Santiago;
Chicotengo; La Santissima; La Soledad; San Rafael;
[216]San Pablo Mexicalcingo; San Diego; La Madalena;
Santa Marta; Santa Maria; San Isidoro; San Juan Calvario;
San Juan Tlanutla; San Mateo; San Miguelito
(Little Saint Michael); Jesus; San Sebastian.

One of the old churches lying deserted in the fields
might be purchased, no doubt, and utilized for the basis
of a picturesque manor-house. Suppose we should take
yonder one, for instance, down by the Haciendita de
Cruce Vivo—the Little Hacienda of the Living Cross?
A cloud is just now passing over, marking the place
with a dark patch. A brook is leaping white through
the meadow, trees stretch back from the walls, and the
rest lying in strong light is divided by patches of an exquisite
cultivation with the regularity of market-gardens.

We dined, at Cholula, at the clean Fonda de la Reforma,
in a large, brick-floored room, invaded by flowers
from a court-yard garden. No people can fashion such
charming homes without excellent traits; so much is positive
beyond dispute. We were admitted, I think, to the
residence portion of the house, the owner of which was a
doctor, and we examined, while waiting for our repast, a
lot of his antiquated medical books, some dating from
1700.

The plaza is as large as at Mexico, but grass-grown—for
the place is of but modest pretensions now—and lonely,
except on market-day, when the scene is as gay and the
costumes even prettier than at Puebla itself. In the centre
is a Zocalo; at one side a vast array of battlemented
churches. That of the Capilla Real, consisting of three
in one, is now decayed and abandoned. On the other is
a fine colonnade devoted to the Ayuntamienta, or town
council, with the jail. What a pity it is that we have so
scant accounts left us of the life of Mexico when all this
feudal magnificence was in full blast!

[217]

[218]

I cannot say just why I visited so many prisons. Perhaps
because they were always under the eye, adjoining
the public offices, and the prisoners were a cheerful lot,
who did what they could to attract attention. At Cholula
we found them weaving, on a primitive kind of
hand-loom, bright sashes of red and blue, which are sold
in part for their own benefit. Their accommodations
compared favorably with the barracks along-side. When
we asked questions about them they stopped work and
listened attentively. The guards, I fancy, thought we
were trying to identify some persons who had robbed us—not
conceiving of such a visit for the pure pleasure
of it.

III.

When I inquired the way to Tlaxcala there was such
an ignorance on the subject at my hotel, at Puebla, that it
almost seemed as if I was the first person who could ever
have been there. A luxurious Englishman abandoned
me at this part of the expedition, claiming that nobody
knew whether there were conveyances from the junction,
whether there were even inns. It seemed to him a case
of sitting on a Tlaxcalan door-step and perishing of hunger,
or being washed away by the torrents of the rainy
season. I found, however, that there was a choice of two
trains a day, and went on alone. What then? I suppose
Cortez did rather more than that. Tlaxcala was the most
undaunted and terrible of all his enemies. He made his
way to it after insuperable obstacles, and it was only by
the alliance of the warlike Tlaxcalans, when he had finally
won them over to his cause, that he effected the conquest
of Mexico.

The recollection had involuntarily given me rather
dark and depressing ideas of Tlaxcala, as a place of
[219]gloomy forests and gorges suited for martial resistance.
Who that has not seen it, I wonder, has the proper conception
of Tlaxcala?

IV.

It is not gloomy; there are no forests; the country is
open and rolling; and the name “Tlaxcala,” it now appears,
is fertility, the “Land of Bread.” I left at 11 A.M.,
and arrived at the village of Santa Ana, on the railroad
to Apizaco, in a couple of hours. After a time a conveyance
was to be had, in the shape of a dilapidated hack
drawn by three horses, in the lead, and two mules. This
was run as a stage-line to Tlaxcala; and in an hour more,
largely of floundering over ruts and following the beds
of swollen brooks—for nobody ever thinks of mending a
road in Mexico—we were there. We met, on the way, the
carriage of the state Governor, an ancient coupé, improved
by the addition of a boot, and drawn by two horses and
two mules. I was deposited on the sidewalk at the upper
side of a plaza, and scrutinized keenly when there by the
shop-keepers of the surrounding arcades and loungers on
comfortable stone benches.

Tlaxcalan allies, in the shape of a small boy and a
larger assistant, seized upon my satchel, and we set out
for a personal inspection of such houses of entertainment
as were to be heard of. The Posada of Genius was altogether
too wretched and shabby, as is apt to be the way
with genius. The Meson of the—I have forgotten its
name—was too full to offer accommodation, and had a
morose landlord, who seemed to rejoice in the fact. I
came at last to a house where simply chambers were to
be let. It was highly commended by my smaller Tlaxcalan
ally, a very rapid-talking small boy, with the air of
one much in the habit of dodging missiles.

[220]

“It will be two reals” (twenty-five cents) “the night,
as you see it,” said the proprietor, waving a hand in an
interior bare of furniture.

“Ah! two reals the night!”

“But perhaps the gentleman would desire also a bed,
a wash-stand, and a looking-glass?”

“Yes, let us say a bed, wash-stand, and looking-glass.”

“Then it will be four reals the night.”

The larger Tlaxcalan ally, who had had nothing to do,
established a claim for services by offering praise of each
successive article of furniture as it was brought in, as,
“Muy buena cama, señor!” “Muy bonito espejo!”—“A
very fine bed, señor!” “A very charming mirror, señor!”—and
the like.

V.

Now, all this is all exactly as it happened, and one
should hardly be compelled to spoil a good story by adding
to it. Yet this appearance of amusing stupidity is
dissipated, after all, by remembering the methods of
travel in the country. Many, or most, journeys are
made on horseback, and the guest is likely to want only
a room where he can lock up his saddle and saddle-bags
and sleep on his own blankets, or, if luxurious, on a light
cot, carried with other baggage on a pack-mule. This is
all the accommodation provided at the general run of
the mesones.

At the Fonda y Cafe de la Sociedad I supped, by the
light of two candles, with a gentleman in long riding-boots,
who had a paper-mill in the neighborhood. He
told me that he had learned the business at Philadelphia.
He was of a friendly disposition, and declared that I was
to consider him henceforth my correspondent, so far as
I might have need of one, on all matters, commercial and
[221]otherwise, at Tlaxcala. And to that extent I may say I
do so consider him to this day.

My room had, first, a pair of glass doors, then a pair of
heavy wooden ones, and opened on a damp little court,
in which the rain was falling. There were no windows
nor transom, positively no other opening than a couple
of diminutive holes in the wooden door, like

as one awoke to them in the early morning. Another
streak under the door figured as a sort of mouth.
There was a clashing of swords in a corner of the shady
and handsome Zocalo when I went out, and I fancied at
first a duel, but it was only a couple of Rurales going
through their sabre exercise under direction of an officer.
The morning was bright and beautiful. Hucksters were
putting up their stands in the arcades for the day’s business.
A new market elsewhere, consisting of a series of
light, open pavilions, was one of the best in arrangement
I have ever seen.

Tlaxcala recalls some such provincial Italian place as
Este, seat of the famous historic house of that name. It
has once been more important than now. The persons
of principal consideration are the state employés. It is
the capital of the smallest of the states, the Rhode Island
or Delaware of the Mexican federation. I entered the
quarters of the Legislature, and found there the Governor,
a small, fat, Indian-looking man, scarred with a
deep cut on his cheek, conferring with a committee of
his law-makers. There are eight of these in all, and they
receive an annual stipend of $1000 each. In the legislative
hall a space is railed off for the president and two
secretaries. There is a little tribune at this rail, from
which the speeches are made. The members face each
[222]other, in two rows, and comfortably smoke during their
sessions, after the custom of the Congress at Mexico also.
The rest is reserved for spectators. On the walls are four
quaint old portraits of the earliest chiefs converted to
Christianity, all with “Don” before their names.

The secretary of the Ayuntamienta has in a glass case
in his office some few idols, the early charter of the city
and regulations of the province, and the tattered silken
banner carried by Cortez in the conquest. This last, once
a rich crimson, is faded to a shabby coffee-color, and the
silver has vanished from its spear-head, showing copper
beneath. Tossed into corners were two large heaps of
old, vellum-bound books from the convents. This is a
common enough sight in Mexico. Treasures are abundant
here which our own connoisseurs would delight to
treat with the greatest respect. Apart from this there is
no other museum nor especial display of antiquity. The
town, kept nicely whitewashed, looks rather new. It contains,
however, the oldest church
in Mexico. The chapel of San
Francisco, part of a dismantled
convent, now used as a barracks,
bears the date of 1529, and within
it are the first baptismal font
(the same in which the Tlaxcalan
chiefs above-mentioned were
baptized by Cortez) and the first
Christian pulpit in America.
The ceiling is of panelled cedar,
picked out with gilded suns and
the like. The approach is up an inclined plane, shaded
with ash-trees. Through three large arches of an entrance
gate-way, flanked by a tower, the town below appears as
through a series of frames. A massive church in the
[223]town plaza was cracked and unfitted for use by an earthquake
in the year 1800, and its ruins stand untouched,
with the bells still hanging in the steeple.

To counterbalance this a modern church, very white,
and a landmark to all the country round about, has been
put up on the high hill of Ocatlan, a couple of miles
back. I climbed there and looked down upon the prospect.
Women and girls were going up to the sanctuary
with bunches of roses, on some religions errand. There
were wild pinks by the wayside, the air was full of the
twittering of birds, and the chimes rang musically.
Looked down upon from the height, Tlaxcala was seen
[224]to be a compact little place, flat-roofed, low, almost exactly
square. The wide bed of the Zatuapan River, now
very shallow, wound by it. The opposite hills, hung
over by vapors and rain-clouds with changing lights
among them, were now purplish and now indigo black.

VI.

On the floor above me at my lodging resided, in a
comfortable way, a doctor. He had with him a friend,
French by nationality but long resident at Mexico, who
was at present paseando a little here for his health. This
[225]gentleman confided to me, mysteriously, that, since spending
some time here, he had reason to believe that there
were mines of silver and gold in the vicinity. In fact,
he knew of some. “An Indian, some years ago,” he said,
“brought to the padre of one of the churches two papers
containing a fine dust. It was poudre d’or—gold-dust—nothing
less. What do you think of that?”

I thought highly of it—as I always do of treasure
stories; nothing is more entertaining.

“There are indications, in reading history,” he went
on, “that much of the supply of the precious metals in
the time of the Conquerors was taken from here. You
are aware that most of the valuable mines were abandoned
by the Spaniards in the terrors of the War of Independence,
and have never since been worked. Often
their very location has been forgotten. I have a friend
here who has certain knowledge of a place where poudre
d’or can be found.”

He paused, perhaps to allow an offer to be made for
an interest in the attractive enterprise, but none was
made.

He continued, alluringly: “It is my intention to enter
into thorough explorations, now that I have leisure, as
soon as my health is slightly more restored.”

I took the seat beside the driver on the ancient conveyance,
going back to Santa Ana. We went along sandy
lanes, in which the rain of the night before was almost
dry, and between hedges of maguey. Maize on the right—tall
but slender, and without the large ears we are accustomed
to; barley and wheat on the left. All the
country fertile. Malinche boldly in sight, and a sky of
rolling clouds, as in Holland. Shock-headed Indian children,
with a Chinese look, holding babies, and peering at
us out of rifts in palisades of organ-cactus. Bright skeins
[226]of wool in door-yards, and glimpses of peasants weaving
serapes in interiors. I recollect that morning as one of
a few of unalloyed content. Perhaps it was because, in
being at Tlaxcala, I had gratified a curiosity of an exceptional
eagerness.

---

I.

We bought tickets for Pachuca at the Hotel Gillow,
in Mexico. Pachuca, one of the earliest, and richest, of
the mining districts in the country, notable for both its
earlier and later history, is, fortunately, also one of the
most accessible to the traveller from the capital.

We took the train, from Buena Vista Station, at six in
the morning. At Omeltusco, forty miles down the Vera
Cruz Line, a group of diligences stood in waiting. Our
own proved to be drawn by eight mules—two wheelers,
four in the centre, and two leaders. We jolted along execrable
roads, turned out where the mud-holes threatened
to engulf us, and rode instead over high maguey stumps
which threatened to hurl us back into them. The country
was covered with magueys. The driver, by whom I
sat, on the box-seat, for the better view of what was passing,
asked me, in a patronizing way,

“Have the Norte Americanos also pulque? and do
they se borrachau (get drunk) with it, like people here?”

We reached San Agostin, a shabby adobe hamlet, at
eleven o’clock, waited there a while for the Philadelphia-built
horse-car on the tramway, of which I have before
spoken, and were at Pachuca about sundown. As to scenery,
historically, and from the point of view of its returns,
Pachuca is rivalled among raining districts perhaps
[228]only by Guanajuato; but the place itself is shabby, and,
lying nine thousand feet above the sea, its atmosphere is
raw and penetrating even in July. Regularly every afternoon
blow up a breeze and a dust like those which have
attained celebrity at San Francisco.

There were said to be ten thousand miners at work in
the district. Perhaps five hundred are British subjects,
originally from the tin mines of Cornwall. They manifest
in their new surroundings a rude independence of
character amounting to surliness. I heard here of my
French engineer who had been sent over to examine
mining property. He had eccentrically given his left
hand, after a way some Frenchmen have, to the captain
of one of the mines, on his descent, and the colony talked
of nothing but this. They had banded together to guy
and mislead him in his inquiries as much as possible, and
one of them told me, with a bitterness the trivial circumstance
hardly seemed to warrant, that if he came again,
with his supercilious way of treating people, they would
try to tumble him into some pit. Our poor friend, I
fear, went away, if he believed what was told him, with
some very singular items of information.

II.

Pachuca has become a good-sized city within a comparatively
modern period, while Real del Monte, adjoining,
once more important, still remains a village. The English
element is not new in either. There was probably
more of it toward 1827 than even now. On the close of
the War of Independence an impression went abroad of
most brilliant profits awaiting whoever would furnish
capital to reopen and work the old Spanish mines abandoned
and ruined in the disasters of the long struggle.

[229]

The idea was seized upon with especial avidity in England.
It was represented that but two simple things were
needed: the pumping-out of the water which had accumulated
in the disused shafts, and improved machinery
for working at lower levels, than those which had been
within the reach of the primitive appliances of the country.
Seven great English companies were formed, which
proceeded to pour out millions upon millions of pounds,
distributing the money among the several mining districts
of chief repute; and these half depopulated Cornwall
for laborers for the new interests. The idea was
in itself a good one. Mexico had produced in three hundred
years of mining, according to the estimate of Humboldt,
$1,767,952,000 of value in the precious metals.
The yield had been going on before the Revolution at
the rate of $30,000,000 yearly. It was an industry of
the greatest regularity. From 3000 to 5000 mines were
in operation, and constituted its chief wealth. Its towns
were mining towns; its great families mining families.
The funds from this source had built the churches, the
dams for irrigation by which the great agricultural
estates were brought under cultivation, and had supplied
the gifts and loans to the King by which the nobility
secured their titles. By the Revolution this source of
wealth was exhausted and dried up. The new Congress
of the country felt the imperative need of doing something
to reopen it, and encouraged the advent of foreign
capital by a legislation which is still felt as a liberalizing
influence in mining matters.

The idea was a good one, as I say, but the foreign investors
did not sufficiently estimate the difficulties of their
undertaking, the novelty of the country, language, persons,
and processes, and the physical obstacles with which
they had to deal. Almost without exception they lost
[230]money. The “boom” of 1824 was followed by a panic
in 1826, a general depression at home, and, in course of
time, the transfer of the interests to cheaper hands.

Among the English companies mentioned was the Real
del Monte Company, which bought up, among others, all
the mines of the Count of Regla, at Real del Monte and
Pachuca. These had produced in fifty years $26,500,000.
The history of the growth of the Count’s magnificence is
briefly this. His principal vein, the Biscaina, had been
worked continuously from the middle of the sixteenth
century. Its yield in 1726 was nearly $4,500,000. In
the beginning of the eighteenth century it was abandoned
in consequence of the impossibility of drainage with the
defective appliances of that day. A shrewd individual
took up these mines anew in later years, and associated
with him Don Pedro Tereros, a small capitalist, who became
his heir. In 1762 Tereros struck a bonanza, and in
twelve years took out $6,000,000. He procured the title
of Count of Regla by his munificent gifts to Charles III.,
and, investing his money judiciously, entered upon the
career of splendor to which reference has heretofore been
made.

By 1801, however, he found himself at such a depth
with his levels that the yield was insufficient to pay the
expenses of extraction, and the mines were again disused.
It was in this condition that the English company took
them, knowing full well that there was treasure in the
deeper levels, and proposing to bring it out with its
improved machinery and Cornish labor.

The director took a salary of $40,000 a year, built himself
a castellated palace, and rode out with a body-guard
of fifty horsemen. A magnificent road was built to Regla,
six leagues away. The only access thither, for the six
hundred mules of the Count of Regla, had been by a dangerous
[231]bridle-path. Five large steam-engines and lesser
machinery were dragged up from the coast at Vera Cruz,
occupying the labor of a hundred men and seven hundred
mules for five months.

In all this probably a million pounds was consumed.
Treasure was not found as expected—what there was appearing
instead in new mines. After struggling hopelessly
a while the management passed into other hands.
The parade was dispensed with, and the costly machinery
sold out, to a Mexican company, for about its value as
old iron, and then the property began to pay.

An English “Anglo-Mexican Company” also owned
mines at Pachuca, and in like manner came to grief.
There was an element of luck in all this, too, it must be
admitted. Less than a hundred feet from where work
was stopped in the Rosario, for instance, one of the mines
of the latter, the new company struck a bonanza, which
has been paying munificently ever since.

The present director, Señor Llandero y Cos, a brother
of the Secretary of State, lives in the same castellated
palace, but on a simpler scale. I had reason to know
that even he had had not a little to suffer from the
fierce independence of his surrounding Cornishmen. I
descended into two of the richest mines, Santa Gertrudis
and San Rosario. Of these Santa Gertrudis has paid in
a brief space thirty-nine dividends of $20,000 each.

III.

The interior, even of the richest Mexican silver-mine,
is hardly what the novice might expect. You put a candle,
pasted by a lump of mud, on the top of your hat and
crawl through all sorts of dark and dripping holes. Now
and then a guide flashes his light on some black and grayish
[232]discolorations with a look of professional pride, but
you do not exactly fall down in ecstasy over these. There
are no forks and spoons hanging ready to your hand, no
presentation plate, nor even ingots. The heaps of ore
about the shafts do not glitter, and seem good for little
but to mend the roads. The principal shafts are about
sixteen feet in diameter, the galleries five by eight, and
spaced about eighty feet apart. At the San Pedro mine
the pumping-engine was of one hundred and fifty horse-power,
and another of the same power drew up the malacate,
or skip, full of ore in bags of maguey fibre. In
some of the old mines, at Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi,
they tell us, peons still tote the ore up the interminable
ladders on their backs; but this, I think, must be
rare. The depth of the Santa Gertrudis is about six hundred
feet. The material is marl, limestone, and quartz,
all of a soft character and easy to work, but requiring a
heavy timbering-up. The clothing of the laborers is ransacked
for nuggets by three separate searchers in turn, as
they emerge from their work.

There is a Government School of Practical Mining at
Pachuca, to which students are sent after finishing the
theoretical course at the Mineria, or school of technology,
in Mexico. The director, an affable man, showed us the
process of beneficiating, or extracting the metal from the
rough ore, in miniature. You see the rock first crushed
and reduced, with water, to a paste, then mingled with
sulphate of copper, common salt, and quicksilver, which
get hold of the metal. The quicksilver is afterward withdrawn
and reserved for continued use. He gave me, also,
a pamphlet of his on a new form of application of “La
Accion Mechanica del Viento”—the mechanical action
of the wind. A large wind-mill was moving in the
court-yard made in accordance with his principle, which
[233]substituted large zinc cones for the ordinary sails and
slats.

The extracting processes were more entertainingly seen,
however, at the beneficiating haciendas themselves. The
“Loreto” is one of the principal. The ore is crushed
either by the Cornish stamp, which drops a succession of
iron-shod beams upon it; the Chilean mill, which grinds
it by means of superposed revolving stones; or the arrastra.
The last is the most primitive, cheapest, and still
most in use. The crushing is done by common stones,
hung to the arms of a horizontal cross, dragged round and
round in a circular bed by mule-power.

Then follows the making of tortas, “the patio system,”
which had its origin here in 1557. Numerous large mud-pies
of the powdered ore and water are laid out on a vast
open court floored with wood. The chemicals mentioned
are thrown in in successive stages, and troops of broken-down
horses are driven around in the mass for from two
to three weeks in succession, thoroughly mingling it together.
It is then brought in wheel-barrow loads to washing-tanks,
where men and boys puddle it bare-legged till
the metal falls to the bottom and the detritus runs away.
“Rebellious” ores are treated by first calcining, then separating
with mercury by “the barrel process.” This last
is done chiefly at the hacienda of Velasco, on the way to
Regla.

Of the two hundred and sixty-seven mines in the district,
seven are worked by the Real del Monte Company.
The paying mines are comparatively new, discovered
within the last twenty or thirty years. The old Spanish
mines do not pay, and are, in fact, little worked. The
stories of old Spanish mines, abandoned, perforce, at the
date of the Independence, and ready to yield splendid
returns to whoever will reopen them, serves very well as
[234]romance; but it must be remembered that sixty years
have elapsed since the Independence, and there have been
plenty of prospectors with a shrewd eye for gain in the
country in the mean time. The Mexicans themselves are
good miners. It will not do to look on with amused contempt
even where very primitive processes are largely
retained, for these are often better adapted to the peculiar
conditions than any others. Thus the puddling of
the tortas by mules and human legs, with labor at but
thirty cents a day, is deliberately preferred to machinery.

Whoever might care to make purchases in such a place
would do well to buy among the newly discovered mines.
Or one may yet prospect for himself, for the district appears
by no means exhausted. Robbers in the state of
Hidalgo long served as an impediment to freedom of
prospecting in out-of-the-way places, and it is only of late
that their power has been broken. The last Governor
is said to have shot three hundred of them. Wild-cat
properties and pitfalls of the usual sort await the unwary
here. That perversity which, by some natural law,
seems to take hold upon dealers in mines as well as in
horses possesses them in Mexico not less than elsewhere.

The Mexican mine is divided into twenty-four imaginary
equal parts, barras, and fractional parts of these are
bought and sold as its stock.

IV.

As to the mining laws of the country, I have heard
them described by some Americans as better than our
own. In certain respects this is true. The reprehensible
looseness with which our American “district recorders”
receive conflicting claims covering the same property
many times over is unknown. An official goes to the
[235]field and settles the equity of the case at once, and never
records but one title. Litigation about the original title
of a Mexican mine is almost unknown, while that of an
American mine of any value is invariably in litigation.

On the other hand, there are some drawbacks. While
a foreigner may hold property in mines in Mexico without
being subject to the obligation of residence, as in respect
to other real estate, provided he have a resident
partner, nobody in Mexico, foreigner or otherwise, can
acquire a mine outright and in absolute ownership. He
cannot own it in fee, no matter what sum he pays for it.
The legal theory is that the title to a mine is only that
of “conditional possession,” and in the nature of usufruct,
which is “the right of using and enjoying a thing
of which the owner is another.” On violation of the
conditions the title reverts to the sovereignty—formerly
the King of Spain, now the Republic of Mexico. The
body of the Ordinances as at present followed was promulgated
by the King of Spain in the year 1783. To
allow a mine to stand idle is assumed to be an injury to
those who might otherwise work and extract profit from
it. It is enacted, therefore, as follows:

“I (the King) order and command that any one who
shall for four consecutive months fail to work a mine,
with four operatives, regularly employed, and occupied
in some interior or exterior work of real utility and advantage,
shall thereby forfeit the right which he may
have to the mine, and it shall belong to the denouncer
who proves its desertion.”

The method of acquiring title to a new and original
mine is to go before the proper officer in the district
in which it has been discovered and register a claim.
Ninety days is then allowed to any other persons who
may advance pretensions to it also, to appear, after which
[236]it is confirmed to him whose case is best established.
Abandoned and forfeited properties are “denounced”
by a similar formality. Veins or mines may be denounced
not only on common lands, but those of any
private individual, on paying for the surface occupied.
In order, however, to obviate malicious or idle destruction,
the searcher may be made to give security, before
beginning his trial, for any damage he may occasion to
the owner of the ground. Sites and waters for reducing
works are included in the same permission.

The denouncer must take possession and begin the
prescribed work within sixty days. The discoverer may
have three pertenencias, or claims, continuous or interrupted,
on any principal vein which is absolutely new.
The pertenencia consists of two hundred metres along
the line of the vein and one hundred on each side (or as
the miner may desire), as measured on a level. A person,
not the discoverer, can denounce two contiguous
mines, on the same vein, but one may acquire as many
others as he likes by purchase.

The ancient code created a General Tribunal of Mining
for New Spain, and gave it cognizance of all mining
matters. It was composed of a President, Director-general,
and three Deputies-general, elected by the Reales,
or mining districts, and two Deputies besides, elected by
each Real. The Real had to be a place containing a
church, six mines, and four reducing establishments, in
actual operation. The qualifications for holding office
were, that one should have been engaged in practical
mining for ten years, that he should be an American, or
European Spaniard, free from all inferior blood, and that
he should agree to “defend the mystery of the Immaculate
Conception of Our Lady.”

It would seem that offices were not always in as active
[237]demand as in our days, for heavy fines are enacted for
non-acceptance on election, besides being compelled to
serve afterward. An honest and straightforward purpose
appears in the rules of procedure quite worthy of imitation
elsewhere. Let us cite some examples.

“As said classes of causes and suits,” says the King,
“ought to be determined between the parties briefly and
summarily, according to manifest truth and good faith,
as in commercial transactions, without allowing delays,
declarations, or writings of lawyers, it is my will that
whenever any persons appear in said Royal Tribunals …
to institute any action, they (the tribunals) shall not admit
any complaint or petition in writing until after they
have cited the parties before them, if it be possible, so
that, hearing orally their complaints and answers, they
may settle with the greatest despatch the suits or dispute
between them; and not being able to succeed in this, and
the matter in question exceeding the value of two hundred
dollars, petitions in writing will be admitted, provided
they be not drawn up, arranged, or signed by lawyers….
In the judgments which may be pronounced no
consideration shall be paid to any default in observing
the minute formalities of the law, or to inaccuracies or
other defects; but, in whatever stage of the proceedings
the truth may be ascertained, the causes shall be decided
and adjudged.”

The legal fraternity had secured a repute for sometimes
misleading justice, it is seen, even so far back as
this. There appears to have been a Consulado, or Tribunal
of Commerce, upon pretty much the same plan.
This ancient system has been swept away by various
stages. Since the day of the republic the power once
vested in the old tribunal has been lodged with the ordinary
civil courts and political authorities.

[238]

It is doubtful whether mining has ever been pursued
to better advantage, made more productive and regular,
and more effectively freed from the element of wild-cat
speculation, than in New Spain of the period considered.

There were decrees to prevent miners, especially those
of affluence, from wasting their substance. Negligence in
tunnelling, imperfect ventilation, and the like, by which
life and health are endangered, were severely punished.

Criminals and vagabonds were made to labor in the
mines, but the main bulk of laborers in early times consisted
of the Indians, apportioned to proprietors as repartamientos,
and held in a kind of slavery.

V.

The gorgeous Count of Regla was a great mine-owner
here in his day. It was hence that he would have taken
the ingots for the King of Spain to ride upon from the
coast to the capital, should they have been called for by
an actual acceptance of his splendid invitation before
mentioned.

His ancient beneficiating hacienda of Regla, say eighteen
miles from Pachuca, is of great interest. A most
excellent wagon-road, constructed by the Real del Monte
Company, at large expense, leads to it. As many as
eighty heavily loaded ore-wagons, each drawn by from
eight to a dozen mules, traverse it in a single day.

Señor Llandero y Cos kindly provided us, for this and
the remaining part of our expedition, with horses and a
mozo, to be kept at our convenience. White posts of
substantial masonry dotted the abrupt slopes, by way of
locating the various claims. Some lonesome-looking
wooden structures, not unlike Swiss chalets, generally
marked the shafts of the smaller mines as we went onward,
[239]while a small arrastra or two was turned by mule-power
in the neighborhood. One, called the Fortune, if
what was said were true, should rather have been the
Misfortune or the Ill-fortune, for it had never produced
a tlaco of profit.

Convolvuli and fragrant flor de San Juan touched
with a trace of beauty the sterile hills. Real del Monte,
embowered in rich woods, presented a scene like a fine
landscape in Pennsylvania. We stopped first at the old
Presidio, above the Tereros Mine, where the convicts
drafted for mining labor were formerly kept; then dismounted
and went down a ravine, to see the mouth of a
tunnel, seven thousand yards in length, built to drain the
works of the original Real del Monte Company.

Hamlets were set near together along the road, and the
country continued bold and generously wooded. At the
abandoned Moran Mine, one of the Count of Regla’s principal
treasure-stores in its time, we found picturesque remains
of walls and columns, with a round tower, which
had once contained a hoisting drum. It was obliged to
be abandoned, like the Sanchez, in the vicinity, for lack
of water. Near the Sanchez is the mouth of the general
drainage tunnel constructed by the Count. Esteemed
very important in its day, it has been wholly eclipsed by
works on a larger scale prevailing in the mean time.
Velasco, where “rebellious” ores are treated, is presided
over by an English superintendent. He had in use a
crushing-machine of still a different pattern from those
described. Heavy iron rockers, driven by steam-power,
were worked back and forth upon the ore in a bath of
water. It was claimed that one-fourth more work could
be done with this at an equal expenditure of power than
by the Chilean mill. Attached to the establishment in
the usual way were a charming villa and gardens. The
[240]superintendent at Pachuca sometimes came there to pass
a fortnight’s vacation.

The immediate approach to Regla is along the side
of a deep tropical barranca. Bananas grow generously
within it, and a palm-thatched Indian village crowns its
opposite verge. The hacienda itself is set down in a
most impressive natural formation. It is encompassed
by grand columniated cliffs of basalt, like those of the
Giant’s Causeway. The columns are hexagonal in shape,
with an average diameter approaching three feet. At
places whole areas of them have been distorted and
twisted hither and thither in the cooling, with a most
wild and singular effect.

A cascade like a little Niagara tumbles roaring down
among them, and furnishes the strong water-power
for the works. The hacienda belongs to the Real del
Monte Company, and it is chiefly ores of that company
which are brought to this strangely attractive scene to be
treated. Troops of horses were going round in the usual
way in a great walled patio, making the tortas. Connected
with this were smelting-furnaces and kindred
buildings of many sorts. Madame Calderon de la Barca,
who also visited Regla, found it such a place as might
have been conjured up by magic, by some giant enchanter,
for his own purposes. Mediæval-looking towers,
gateways, terraces, a chapel, and prison garnish it. Opposite
the chapel is a pretty residence, Moorish in aspect,
surrounded by vines and flowers. The whole is said to
have cost some two millions of dollars.

We spent a night here with the superintendent, Don
Ramon Torres, a youngish man, who had learned his
avocation in the mines at Guanajuato. He seemed but
too delighted, in his comparative isolation, to entertain
company and honor the introduction of his chief, Señor
[241]Llandero. He dwelt in his talk upon the lack of ambition
among the Indian laborers. He said, among other
things, that in the Tierra Caliente the women were better
workers than the men.

Our next stage from here was to be the hacienda of
Tepenacasco, near Tulancingo, where Mr. Brocklehurst
and myself had been invited to visit, in order to witness
the manner of life on one of the great country estates.
Regla is rather famous for thunder-storms, and on the
day of our departure we had one of the traditional sort.
Within a few minutes after its commencement the cascade
was blood-red with soil torn out by the swollen
[242]stream. The storm abated at first, but we encountered
it in renewed fury on wide green uplands like an Illinois
prairie, known as the Plains of Mata. As we galloped
in the midst of it, the rain pouring in torrents from our
rubber blankets, the lightnings (rayos) darted into the
ground, now on this side, now on that, in a way which
I can only compare—perhaps too trivially—to spearing
for olives in a jar with a fork. The rayos are dangerous
in this region, as naturally on open plains everywhere,
and crosses mark places where herdsmen have
been stricken down among their flocks. One of these
victims had been found recently, with his animals gathered
around in a circle at close quarters staring at him
curiously, while he lay stark on his face.

The rain had its lulls and relapses, and twice in succession
we took shelter under the sheds of isolated ranchitos
which we fell in with. We were joined here by an occasional
ploughman, wearing the long cloak of coarse woven
grass, which diverts the water from the wearer. We were
joined, too, by all the domestic animals of the neighborhood.
The wait at the last retreat seemed as if it would
never end. At last a pig ventured forth, and we said, idly,
that if he should return we would accept it as an augury
that the deluge was over and the waters had ceased upon
the face of the earth. Sure enough, he came back presently,
munching a green carrot-top; and, receiving this
like the olive-branch brought to Noah, we sallied forth.
Our confidence proved well justified. A lovely prismatic
bow of promise was presently set in the sky, the clouds
rolled away, scattering their last lingering drops, the rills
babbled merrily, and the face of the country sparkled
with an enchanting freshness. We paused again briefly
at a hacienda which belonged to the Governor of the
state. The main building was large, plain, and yellow-washed,
[243]and had before it an enclosed threshing-floor,
on which grain is tramped out by the feet of horses. A
young American girl had been employed as governess
here up to a recent date.

[244]

It was now toward evening. The sunset glowed warm
upon the little hamlet of Acatlan, through which our road
was seen winding below. In its midst lay a dismantled
convent, with belfries still standing, which from a distance
resembled an English ruined abbey. It was found
on being reached, however, unlike the latter, to be built
of bricks and adobe. I had at first taken this for our
hacienda itself, but the hacienda proved equally attractive
in a different way. After a couple of miles farther on
we sent back our horses and guide with a warm missive
of thanks to their owner, and were hospitably installed at
Tepenacasco.

---

I.

With a taste for country life, so novel a domain to
explore, and constantly agreeable weather, I found a
week’s stay at the hacienda one of the most agreeable of
experiences. From a distance the extensive habitation
has a stately air, like some ducal residence. In approaching
it you pass first through fields of maguey and blossoming
alfalfa, then by a long stone corral for cattle,
extensive barracks and huts of laborers, and a pond
bordered with weeping willows. It is built of rubble-masonry
and plaster, whitewashed, and consists of a single
liberal story. The dwelling, with numerous connected
buildings, makes in all a façade of about six hundred feet.
A belfry, with two tiers of bronze bells hung in arches,
sets off the centre. The large windows are defended by
cage-like iron gratings. A door, flanked by holy-water
fonts, at the left of that forming the main entrance,
opens into a family chapel. In a gable above the main
entrance is inscribed this motto—which has not, however,
prevented the hacienda from being the scene of more
than one sack by revolutionary forces:

“En aqueste destierro y soledad disfruto del tesoro de
la paz”—“In this retirement and solitude I enjoy the
treasure of peace.”

[246]

[247]

Immediately in front of the buildings is laid out, after
a usual custom, a substantially paved and enclosed area,
semi-circular at one end, used as a threshing-floor. Troops
of running horses are driven around here upon the grain,
like those in the patio process, only in a very much livelier
fashion. The long façade was made up in part of
massive trojes, or granaries, comprised under the same
roof as the house. Each troje has a special name of its
own inscribed upon it. There were, for instance, the
“Troje de la Espigero” (“Corn in the Ear”), the “Troje
de la Teja” (“Tiled Roof”); and the “Troje de Limbo”
and “Troje de Nuestro Señor del Pilar.” The walls
of these granaries were of great thickness, in order to
preserve the contents cool and at an even temperature.
Heavily buttressed, and with their long lines of piers, a
yard square, extending down the dim interiors, they are
more like basilicas of the early Christian era than simple
barns. The central cluster of buildings alone, not counting
those detached, covers perhaps from four to five
acres. Mounting to the roof and looking over its expanse,
broken by the openings of numerous courts, you
seem to be contemplating, as it were, some agricultural
Louvre or Escorial. Its rear wall is washed by a presa,
or artificial pond for irrigation, which stretches away like
a lake. Beyond this rises a charming grassy hill, called
the Cerro. We climbed the Cerro, and lounged away
more than one afternoon there in sketching, and contemplating
the beautiful level valley of Tulancingo, spread
out below.

The white hacienda with red roofs lay in front, reflected
clearly in its pond. Tulancingo was a white patch
at a distance, and other white patches nearer by were the
hamlets of Jaltepec, Amatlan, and Zupitlan—the latter in
ruins. Straight, lane-like roads led from one to another.
The mountains on the horizon afforded glimpses of basaltic
[248]cliffs of the same formation as those at Regla, and
of the white smoke of charcoal-burners rising from their
forests. Cattle wandered in fine herds in the grassy pasture,
each tended by its herdsman and dog. We saw a
troop of them at twilight come to drink at the pond, and
the complication of all their moving forms was curiously
picked out in silhouette against the gleaming brightness
of the water.

At evening there returned to the court-yard of the hacienda,
to disband after their day’s labor, sometimes as
many as forty ploughmen. If it had rained they wore
their barbaric-looking grass cloaks. They drove yokes
of oxen and bulls harnessed to the primitive Egyptian
plough, and carried long goads to prod their animals.
After them rode in now and then an armed horseman,
wrapped in his serape, who overlooked and guarded them
at work. At the same time came troops and droves of
the other animals needing to be housed: black swine from
the grassy slopes of the Cerro; mules released from harness;
young horses and mules not yet put to work;
milch-cows, and young steers and heifers, each wending
its way sedately to its own department.

Most of the cattle, I observed, were hornless. This is
brought about by a practice of paring the young horns
when first sprouting. It would seem that this might be
desirable among ourselves, both on the farm and especially
in transporting cattle in the cars ordinarily in use.
Milking-time came only once a day—in the morning—and
not, as with us, twice. The hind-legs of the cows
are lassoed together when being milked. The calves of
tender age are also lassoed to the side of the mother,
and it is a quaint and amusing sight to see their impatient
demonstrations while awaiting the conclusion of the
process.

[249]

[250]

I sat down one day with “Don Rafael,” the administrador,
or salaried manager, of the estate, to make a rough map
of its general distribution and extent. The property proved
to be some eighteen miles in length by twelve in its greatest
width, and of very irregular pattern. It had no less
than eleven large presas, formed by dams at convenient
points for irrigation. The principal dam was a mile in
length, and by means of it had been formed a lake of two
miles in its principal dimension. On the borders of this
stands the feudal-looking ruined hamlet, with church and
hacienda, of Zupitlan, before mentioned. The bulk of
the estate was in grass, but irregular patches of ground
had been taken out here and there for various crops, and
to each was given its special name. Thus the field of
San Pablo was devoted to maize and alfalfa; Las Animas,
San Antonio the Greater, and San Antonio the Less were
given up to maize; Del Monte and San Ignacio el Grande
to barley.

The magueyales, or maguey fields, were of considerable
extent. The making of the pulque from their product
was confided to a special functionary called the tlachiquero.
The heart of the maguey is cut out at a certain
stage of its growth and a bowl thus formed, into which a
quantity of sweet sap continues to run regularly for several
months. By the end of that time the plant is dead,
and is uprooted and replaced by another. The sap is at
first called agua miel, or honey-water, which it resembles.
The tlachiquero makes a daily pilgrimage to the fields,
and draws off the agua miel by means of a bulky siphon
formed of a gourd. Sometimes he bears simply a bag,
made of undressed sheepskin, like the wine-skins of Old
Spain, on his back; again, he is accompanied by a donkey
loaded with a number of these skins. He transfers the
sap to these bags, and returns with it to a department of[251]
his own, called the Tinecal. There he pours it into shallow
vats of undressed skin, where it is allowed to ferment.
Without describing the process farther in detail, in a fortnight
it is ready for sale or for home consumption.

[252]

[253]

The pasture fields have their distinctive titles also.
There were, for instance, San Gaetano, San Ysidro, and
San Dionysio; and, again, the corrals of San Ricardo,
San Gaetano, and Las Palmas, where cattle were enclosed
at various times. Dairy-farming was the principal industry
of the estate. Its neat cattle numbered seventeen
hundred head. The pay-roll showed a total for the week
of eight hundred and fifty men and boys.

The living apartments of the dwelling were set along
two sides of an arcaded court-yard, which had a dismantled
fountain in the centre. Offices and store-rooms occupied
the other two sides. A department for the butter
and cheese making had a special court to itself in the
rear. One of the store-rooms contained an ample supply
of agricultural implements. Those of the slighter sort, I
learned, such as ploughs, spades, picks, hammers, and the
coa, a peculiar cutting-hoe, are made in the country,
at Apulco, not far distant, where are also iron-works.
An iron plough made at Apulco costs $7, while the imported
American plough costs $10. There are wooden
pitch-forks and spades among the implements. The
wooden, or Egyptian, plough is much more in use than
that of iron. It consists simply of a wooden beam shod
with an iron point, and has an adjustable cross-piece
for service in case the furrow needs to be made wider.
The purpose to which it is most applied is that of turning
shallow furrows between rows of corn, and for this it
appears well enough adapted. At Pensacola, in the state
of Puebla, such larger pieces of agricultural machinery as
reapers, mowers, and separators are manufactured.

[254]

II.

We happened, among other accommodations, in our exploration
of the corridors, upon a prison, described as for
use in locking up the refractory peons when they will not
work.

“Can you do that? Have you, then, such an absolute
power over them?” I asked our host, in some surprise.

“Why, no,” he replied, in effect, deprecatingly, “I suppose
not; but, you see, now and then it is the only way to
manage them, and we have to. It is not civilizated, that
people,” he continued, in an English which left something
to be desired, “and we do the best what we can.”

This seems something very like a feudal control on
the part of the hacendado, but his numerous dependents
do not seem to complain of it. Cases of protest before
the magistrates are rarely known, and should they be
made it is not likely, since the magistrates are friends of
their masters, and of the same social station, that they
would meet with any great attention.

We found this laboring population living in squalid
stone huts, often six and eight persons in a room. The
floors were simply the dirt of the ground, and there was
sometimes not even so much as the usual straw mat to
sleep or sit upon. We were told here again that the peons
are avaricious. They are believers in a general way, but
not greatly given to religion. Few attend the services at
the chapel, even on Sunday. They summon the priest
when about to die, but not otherwise. But few of the
children go to school. As a whole, they seemed about as
wretched as the poor Irish, except for the advantage over
the latter in climate. In every interior is seen a woman
on her knees, rolling or spatting the interminable tortillas.

[255]

The laborers on the pay-roll were of two classes: those
employed by the week, and those employed by the year.
The former “found themselves;” the latter were “found”
by the estate, and paid a certain sum at the end of the
year. Wages ran from six cents a day for the boys to
thirty-seven for the best class of adults.

III.

The administrador was assisted, in the management of
the hacienda, by the mayor-domo and the sobre-saliente,
who acted as his first and second lieutenants; a caporal,
who had general charge of the stock; and a pastero, who
had charge of the pastures. The pastero it was who indicated
the condition of the various areas of pasturage,
that the animals might be moved to one after another of
them in turn. These minor officers were of the native
Indian race. They were dark, swarthy men, very bandit-looking
when armed and mounted on horseback, but in
reality, when you came to know them, as mild and amiable
persons as need be wished for.

One, “Don Daniel,” supervised the butter and cheese
making interest. A book-keeper, “Don Angel,” kept an
account of all the property of the estate—receipts, and
disbursements, and an inventory of stock—upon a system
which seemed a model of commercial accuracy. Every
week a report was forwarded to the owners, at Mexico,
upon a printed blank filled out in the most exhaustive
detail, so that they could see at a glance how they stood.

The administrador, Don Rafael, was a steady-going
man of middle age, a native of San Luis Potosi. He
had land and casitas, little houses, of his own, which he
rented. He had also a house in the city of Tulancingo,
near by, occupied by his family, whom he visited once a
[256]week. His salary reached about $1000 a year, and he
could be called a person of substance. A conspicuous
scar on his forehead led it to be supposed that he might
have seen service in the field; but he spoke with contempt
of the wars of his country when questioned about
it, and said that he had got his scar in breaking a horse.

“A sensible man can always find better occupation than
fighting,” he said. “I have busied myself with regular
industry. The North Americans, now, understand that.
They have good ideas. There everybody works and gets
a little ahead in the world. Without money in his pocket
what is a man good for? He might as well take himself
over to the cemetery yonder at once and have done
with it.”

Don Angel was young, mild, taciturn, painstaking, and
a native of Old Spain. His handwriting was small and
neat, and he had a great head for details. His salary
was the sum of $400 a year. The revenues of the estate
which it was his province to cast up amounted, I was
told, to $20,000 a year.

Don Daniel, the butter and cheese maker, was young
also, but large, handsome, rosy, and had excellent teeth,
with coal-black hair and beard. He was a model of robust
health and lively spirits. He too had a wife at Tulancingo,
whom he visited every Sunday, returning before
daylight on Monday morning, to be in time for the milking.
He was given to strumming on a guitar in the evening,
and assembled around him in his room such convivial
spirits as the hacienda afforded. Nonsensical refrains
like

were heard proceeding from there long after more staid
and decorous persons were in bed.

[257]

Another member of the household was, let us say,
“Manuel,” a boy of eighteen, looking younger, who had
formerly been a cadet at the national military school. He
was here learning the business of a hacienda, or, as some
said, he was a young scapegrace whom it was designed
to keep out of mischief. At any rate, he was an aide-de-camp
to Don Rafael, and took his orders about on horseback.
He dressed, like Don Rafael, in a substantial suit
of buff leather. He was a very garrulous and communicative
person, and, as our attendant and guide—in which
capacity he offered himself, I think, somewhat as an excuse
for escaping more onerous labors—he furnished us
much useful information. His elders took a tone of raillery
with him, representing him as a very callow youth,
whose views were of no consequence, and who should
be seen but not heard from. They ridiculed his French,
which he had learned at the military school, even affecting
not to believe that it was French at all. Our visit
was the occasion for a strenuous effort on his part to set
himself right on this point.

“N’ai-je pas bien dit?” he cried to us, across the generous
dining-table where we sat together, stretching at
the same time a bony, school-boy arm for aid in putting
the scoffers down.

One day we mounted to go to a beautiful clear spring
of water, which was admired even as early as by Humboldt
in his travels. On others we visited the adjacent
hamlets, or Tulancingo, from which, later, we were to
take the diligence homeward. Again, we made our objective
points the various crops, a dam undergoing repairs,
or the remoter pastures and corrals.

The herdsman and a boy-assistant at these corrals slept
at night in their blankets under a mere pile of stones.
The upper irrigating dams are discharged of their waters,
[258]when it is desired, by the primitive device of lifting
up one cross-beam after another from a narrow gate
in the centre. In some of the maize-fields are lookout
boxes, aloft on high poles, as a device against crows and
other marauders. The general surface over which we rode
was the grassy plain, affording a delightful footing for
the horses. It was of a fresh, soft green, and enamelled
besides with flowers, like violets, the blue maravilla, and
many varieties of a yellow flower resembling the dandelion,
but prettier.

IV.

The room first entered from the main corridor in the
house itself was devoted to the uses of a despacho, or office.
Here was the department of Don Angel, and the
master himself sometimes took his place behind the long,
baize-covered table, strewn with matters of business detail,
to hold audience with the peons of the estate, who
came, with wide-brimmed hats humbly doffed, to make
known various wants and complaints. In the corners
stood rifles, spades, and the long branding-iron, which
is heated in the month of August to brand the young
cattle with the device of their owner.

A fat dark peon enters, and proffers a request for an
allowance to be made him for a baptism in his family.

“A baptism?” says the master, briskly. “Well, now,
come on! Speak up; don’t stand mumbling there! Let
us see what your ideas are.”

The man suggests, deferentially, to begin with, the sum
of $3 for a guajolote, or turkey, as a pièce de résistance
for his feast.

“You are always wanting a guajolote, you people. You
don’t need anything of the kind. However, let us say
$1.50—twelve reals—for the guajolote. What next?”

[259]

“The pulque—about forty cuartillas of pulque.”

“Twenty cuartillas of pulque,” says the master, ruthlessly
cutting down the estimate by half. “Well, what
next? Speak up!”

The peasant, one of the laborers by the year, perseveres,
in his humble, soft voice, regularly making his
estimate for each article twice the real figure, and having
it as regularly cut down. He caps the whole by demanding
four reals for a sombrero, well knowing—and knowing
perfectly well that his master knows also—that the
kind of sombrero he would be likely to want costs but
one real.

We had proposed to witness the festivities of this christening,
but unfortunately delayed too long at table on the
evening of its occurrence, and lost it. But the sky was
gloriously full of stars as we went out among the huts
and barracks. A woman came out of one of the tenements
and made a complaint of a neighbor with whom
she had had a row, but got no great sympathy, and
hardly seemed to expect any. They are admirably polite,
these poor rustics—nobody can deny them that. As
we sat by the road one day at Amatlan, sketching, some
of the women called to us as they went by:

“Buenas dias, señores! Como han pasado, ustedes,
la noche? Adios, señores!”—“Good-day, sirs! How did
you pass the night? Good-bye, sirs!”

We had not in any way first addressed them, and they
did not stop, but went swiftly onward, scarcely turning
their heads to look. These and many more of the sort
are but their ordinary salutations.

The immediate family at the hacienda consisted of one
of the several heirs, “Don Eduardo,” his wife, mother,
and two small children, and their Indian nurses. They
were in the habit of spending but a small portion of the
[260]year here, and, when they came, lived in quite informal
style. Servants and employés, equally with her intimates,
called the young mistress “Cholita,” a diminutive
of her name Soledad. There was little or no receiving or
paying of visits, owing to the great distances to be traversed
and the scarcity of neighbors.

V.

Social life in the country is hardly known. We had
piano music and singing in the evening in a stately, dimly-lighted
salon of the style of the First Empire. One
day a large farm vehicle, gayly decorated with boughs,
was brought around, all hands got into it, and we proceeded
to the lake at Zupitlan for a picnic. The provisions
were carried on a litter by a couple of men, and a
guard on horseback, with his rifle, rode along-side for our
protection. Such a precaution was not absolutely needed,
perhaps, but there had been a time—before the Governor
of Hidalgo had taken his summary measures—when the
brigands would have swooped down from the adjacent
hills and seized upon such a procession with little ceremony.
After dining al fresco we amused ourselves with
shooting some of the ducks and cranes which abound on
the lake.

We had chocolate and buns on rising in the morning,
and two over-liberal repasts, resembling each other in
character, at noon and nine in the evening. The dogs
swarmed in and out over the house, which presented the
aspect of a generous farm rather than a villa.

It was designed in its day for much greater state. The
furniture, though battered and ruined now, was of the
charming artistic pattern of the First Empire, and all
the rooms were large and of fine proportions. In one of
[261]the two principal bedrooms the bed is raised upon a daïs,
ascended by steps. In the other the corners are cut off
by columns, so as to give it an octagon shape. In three
of these corners the beds are regularly built in between
the columns; the fourth is taken for a door. It so happened
that I had not read Madame de la Barca before
leaving home. Perhaps I had but a rather disparaging
[262]idea of a work descriptive of Mexico coming down no
later than 1839. On taking it up after my return I had
an opportunity to find how little the country had changed.
She too visited this hacienda of Tepenacasco. She noted,
among other items, a quaint wall-paper, of a Swiss pattern,
on the octagon room. That very paper is there to
this day.

The proprietor was of quite a different sort in those
times. He used to give bull-fights in the court before
his portal, which is now a threshing-floor, and is said to
have entertained half the population of Tulancingo at
his table. He finally ruined himself by his extravagance.
It is said, among other things, that if he took a sudden
notion to go to Mexico, a hundred and twenty miles
away, he rode his horses so hard that they sometimes
dropped dead under him.

---

I.

The time came at length—all too soon—for my final
Mexican journey—to the Pacific coast at Acapulco, where
I was to take the steamer for San Francisco.

I was advised not to go to Acapulco. There are always
persons ready to advise you not to do perfectly feasible
things. It was now August, and the rainy season had
begun in town itself. It began one afternoon with a
rush. I had been reading at the National Library, and,
coming out at four o’clock, found the streets a couple of
feet deep in water. The cabs, now at a premium, and
some few men on horseback, who could give a friend a
lift, served as impromptu gondolas upon these impromptu
canals. There were also cargadores, who, for a medio,
carried you on their backs from corner to corner. I was
told that ladies in the balconies, watching the animated
sight, now and then slyly held up a real, in consideration
of which the cargador dropped some gallant in the water,
presenting a ridiculous sight. Such inundations last several
hours before the sluggish sewers can carry off the
surplus water, and they leave the ground-floor habitations
of the poor in but a cheerless condition, as may be imagined.

If this were to be added to the other embarrassments
of life every afternoon, it was not interesting to think of
[264]remaining longer at the capital. And yet, with Macbeth,
there seemed “nor flying hence, nor tarrying here.” The
journey to Acapulco was represented as very difficult and
dangerous. The route was a mere trail or foot-path, a
buen camino de pajaros—a good road for birds. No
wheeled vehicle ever had passed or ever could pass over
it. All this was, indeed, the case. Three large rivers
were to be crossed, and these unbridged.

“Suppose,” said the advisers, putting the case in that
bold and alarming way in which advisers delight, “that
these should be swollen by the floods, as is naturally to
be expected now in the rainy season. You would then
be delayed so long on their banks as to miss your steamer,
which touches at Acapulco only once a fortnight.
Again, the road lies, for days at a time, in ravines and
the beds of streams; but when the waters occupy their
channels what room is there for travellers?”

If to this were added the natural reflections of the novice
on the score of danger to property and person in entering
upon so wild a section, the prospect was not at all
a pleasing one. Nevertheless it would be almost too much
to expect that a person bound for California should come
back to the United States again in order to go there, and
I had a firm conviction that the Acapulco trip could be
made.

II.

I had negotiated a little already with an arriero, or
muleteer, named Vincente Lopez, in a street called Parque
del Conde. He would furnish a horse to ride, and a
mule to transport my baggage, each for $20—all other
expenses to be defrayed personally along the way—which
makes the three hundred miles come a good deal higher
than so much railway travel. I had thus dallied with
[265]the idea, and my decision was precipitated by the sudden
coming down of the rain. I hurried to Parque del
Conde Street, and closed with Vincente Lopez. I was
glad to learn from him that he had also another patron
who was going, in the person of a colonel of the
army. The journey, under the most favorable auspices,
consumes ten days on horseback, besides the day occupied
in going down by stage-coach to the provincial city of Cuernavaca,
where the bridle-path begins. Considering all
the circumstances as stated, there were many companions
one would much less prefer to have than so presumably
bold and well-informed a person as a Mexican regular
officer.

He proved to be a veritable military man, a colonel
who had seen twenty years’ service in different wars of
his country, and bore bullet-holes in his body as the result
of them. He had begun in the War of the Reform,
which overthrew the Church and aristocratic party; he
had fought against the French and Maximilian in the
second War of Independence; and, lastly, for the government
of Lerdo against Porfirio Diaz. To the party of
the latter he was, however, now reconciled, and he was going
to take a command on the disturbed northern frontier.
If more were needed, he had lately fought a duel, as he
told me, in which the weapons were sabres, and had so
slashed his opponent, a brother officer, that the latter was
laid up in a grievous state at the hospital. A vacant barracks
had been set apart, by the War Department, for this
proceeding. Army duelling, as on the Continent, is connived
at. The case seems to be that, if you fight, you are
afterward reprimanded; but if you do not, you are likely
to be cashiered as pusillanimous.

Not that the colonel was in all respects the most agreeable
of travelling companions. He was much wrapped
[266]up in his own affairs at first, and later displayed some
traits of a certain childish selfishness.

Vincente Lopez collected our baggage at the appointed
time. He was a plausible person, and when he desired
the full amount of his bill in advance I had well-nigh
yielded to him. I submitted, however, as more equitable,
that one-half should be paid down and the remainder on
the completion of the journey according to contract.

“That would be equitable, indeed, for ordinary arrieros,”
said Vincente Lopez, “but I am one of especial
probity. It is my habit to watch over the persons who
confide themselves to my care with a tender solicitude,
and in the present instance I have intended to multiply
even my usual pains. I am one of those who have never
known what it is to encounter on the way the slightest
delay or annoyance.”

He seemed wounded in his finest sensibilities by an appearance
of mistrust, which was to him hitherto unknown.
There were considerations in his favor. He said that the
colonel, at another hotel, had paid the full sum in advance,
and this proved true. Whatever money was to be
taken, besides, must be in the heavy silver coinage of the
country, $16 to the pound, and to be rid of the weight
and jingling of even a part of it was desirable. Still,
on the whole, the contract was drawn in my way, by
the advice of the dark secretary of the Iturbide Hotel.
Though it seemed almost cruel at the time to act in
this formal manner with so good a man, the precaution
proved in the sequel to be very useful.

[267]

[268]

III.

My colonel was accompanied down to Cuernavaca in
the diligencia—in which we were all extremely jolted,
dusty, and uncomfortable together—by two generals.
They had apparently come to give him parting directions
about his mission. One of them was a thick-set, black-bearded
man, with a husky voice, and a conspicuous scar
upon his face. I must not branch off too much into side
issues, but the history of the scar was that, while commanding
in Yucatan, he had ordered to be shot, on some
of the ordinary revolutionary pretexts, a member of the
powerful family of Gutierrez Estrada, a family with commercial
houses in Paris, Mexico, and Merida, and noted,
among other things, for the beauty and intelligence of its
women. A brother of the victim came over from Paris
as an avenger, sought out the general in question, met
him in a duel, and left this mark, which, at the time of
its infliction, brought the recipient to death’s door.

The city of Mexico is some 7500 feet above the sea,
and, having come up, we now followed a great downward
slope. It abounds in bold points of view, from which the
prospects spread vision-like at vast distances below. Cuernavaca
presents one of the most thrilling of these.
What is yonder singular detail in the valley? A hacienda
set in the open side of an extinct volcanic crater,
of which the whole interior has been brought under smiling
cultivation. And yonder yellowish spot? The sugar-cane
fields of the Duke of Monteleone. He is an Italian
nobleman of Naples, who inherits, by right of descent, a
part of the estates reserved here for himself by Cortez.
The Conqueror was made “Marquis of the Valley,” with
his port at Tehuantepec, and an estate comprising twenty
large towns and villages, and 23,000 vassals.

Nowhere is there a quainter group of old rococo
churches than that in this solid little city. They have
flying buttresses, of two arches in width, descending
quite to the ground, domes, and other inlay in colored
[269]porcelain tiles; and they are all clustered together, with
tombs and a battlemented wall about them. A student
of architecture coming this way with his sketch-book
in his hand could find material here for a month. I am
not sure that the trip could not be made enjoyably, as it
certainly could economically, on foot, with an attendant
to carry a knapsack, as we met some German naturalists
and prospectors making it farther on. Close by is a garden
on a great scale—the Jardin Borda—to which one
obtains admittance for a fee. It has a stone fish-pond as
large as a lake, terraces, urns, and statues worthy of the
most luxurious prince in Europe. I was told that it
could be bought for $5000. I asked the custodian about
the owner—what he had been remarkable for.

“He had altos pesos,” replied the man, which is Spanish
for “a pile of money.” Bushels of delicious mangoes
were rotting untouched along the walks. From
the outer terrace you look down into the barranca which
Alvarado crossed by a fallen tree when sent by his indefatigable
general against the disaffected Gonzalo Pizarro.
Here are guava, mango, pine-apple, banana, and plenty of
other fruits, but not yet the cocoa-nut, which only flourishes
lower down.

Behold us ready to set forth on the trail! Vincente
Lopez is not present, strange to say, to cast about us the
fostering care he has promised. On the contrary, he has
quietly sold out his contract and gone back to the Parque
del Conde with his profits. We are in the hands of a
new muleteer, “Don Marcos,” who has never made the
journey to Acapulco before, and a fourteen-year-old boy,
“Vincente,” who is depended upon to find the way.
Every cavalcade in Mexico is bizarre, and ours, ordinary
enough there, would attract attention elsewhere. First,
upon the mule “Venado” rides the colonel, a tall, spare
[270]man, in military boots, wide hat with silver braid, and a
linen blouse, through which project the handles of huge
revolvers. He is aiming, not at display, but comfort. Of
myself I shall say nothing. It is a privilege of the narrator
to let it be supposed that he is always gallant and imposing
in appearance, and exactly adapted to the circumstances
of the case. I rode the rather large bay horse
“Pajaro.” Don Marcos, a deprecating, tricky person,
with a purpose, soon evident, of making up from us his
bad bargain, wore a crimson poncho and cotton drawers,
and bestrode the small white horse “Palomito” (“Little
Dove”). Thus appreciatively had he thought fit to name
all the animals, though he had but on the instant come
into possession of them. The trunks, first securely sewn
up in cocoa-mats, were tied, the colonel’s upon the back
of the mule “Niña,” and mine upon “Aceituna.” Vincente,
the boy, ran barefoot most of the way to Acapulco
behind the mules, crying, “Eh! machos!” and cracking
at them with a combination whip and blinder. With this
same blinder their eyes were covered while their loads
were being put on and taken off, at morning, noon, and
night.

There was a bit of wagon-road at first, as there is outside
of each of the more important places along the way.
This soon merged in the trail, which was of increasing
wildness. The huts and hamlets we fell in with were
of cane, well thatched. There were fields of cane,
trains of mules laden with sugar-loaves, and an occasional
stately sugar hacienda. Now and then there were the remains
of one ruined in the wars. At noon the mules
were unpacked at some favorable point, and the expedition
rested for several hours. It was the custom to take
a siesta during the extreme heat of the day. At night
there were occasional mesons, or rude inns, but generally
[271]our stopping-place was such accommodation as could be
offered by the inhabitants of the villages. The baggage
was piled up under a thatched pavilion. Beds, consisting
of mats of stiff canes resting upon trestles, were arranged
for us along-side, or in open piazzas. These, in the warm
nights, were more agreeable than might be supposed. À
la guerre comme à la guerre! Sleeping almost under the
belle étoile, you could study the constellations, the outlines
of strange, dark hills, your own thoughts, and hear
the dogs bark, down at remote Sacocoyuca, Rincon, and
Dos Arroyos, and there was not a little pleasant novelty
in the situation. At the gray of dawn we were off.

The people, all of Aztec blood, were gentle with us,
honest, and not much less comfortable in their circumstances
than farmers newly established at the West.
The predicted difficulties of the undertaking largely
melted away. It rained chiefly at night; there were but
one or two showers in the daytime, though of these one
was very hard. The food obtained along the way was of
rustic quality, and occasionally scanty, but, on the other
hand, it was often excellent. Chickens were generally to
be had, with fried bananas as the most frequent vegetable
accompaniment. The national dish of frijoles (black
beans) was always palatable. There was milk in the
morning, but not at night, the cows being milked but
once a day. We foraged more or less for ourselves.
The colonel would demand a couple of eggs under the
off-hand formula of un par de blanquillos, which can
hardly be translated, but is as much as to say, “A pair of
little white ’uns.” He declared it “a miserable population”
where they were not to be had.

On the very first day out Don Marcos came to say that
he had no money with which to buy feed for the animals.
It was with the reserve I had retained, doled out
[272]little by little, that this necessary purpose was thereafter
accomplished, and the arriero perhaps kept from leaving
us in the lurch.

It was à propos of this incident that my first glimpse
into the peculiar nature and inclinations of the colonel
was obtained. It was now evident that it would have
been better not to have paid the man in advance. But
the colonel refused either to regret that he had done so
or to regard it as a lesson for the future.

“I am a philosopher,” he said. “The philosopher
makes no account of such things.”

These views he professed also on other occasions, and
seemed, with a bravado of stoicism, almost to go in search
of inconveniences.

“But is it not rather philosophy,” I argued, “to avoid
such inconveniences as one can by a little exercise of
forethought, and then endure the inevitable with equanimity?”

“No; that is the civilian’s, not the soldier’s, point of
view,” he persisted, with obstinacy.

IV.

This route, probably no better, and certainly no worse,
was travelled, as now, nearly a hundred years before the
Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was the sole
highway between Acapulco, the only really excellent
port on the Pacific Coast, and the capital. It has seen
the transit of convoys of treasure, slaves, silks, and spices
from the Indies, bound in part for Old Spain. A regular
galleon used to sail from Acapulco for supplies of
Oriental goods. It has seen the march of royalist troops,
under the sixty-four viceroys, and of many a wild insurgent
troop. Morelos operated here, with his bandit handkerchief
[273]round his head, and kept the district clear of
Spaniards down to the sea at Acapulco. By one of the
rivers still lies the massive stone-work for a bridge, the
construction of which was abandoned in the War of Independence,
seventy years ago.

Most momentous of all the processions it has seen,
however, must be counted that of Iturbide, who returned
along it, with his new tri-colored flag of the three guarantees—Religion,
Union, and Independence—to the capital,
to make himself, for a brief season, Emperor. This
brilliant figure, of such an ignominious end, is still greatly
honored in Mexico, and there is something rather typical
of Mexico, or of Spanish America generally, in his
history. Taking the position which would have been
that of a Tory here, he fought against the earlier insurrection
of his country, from its outbreak, in 1808, till
1820. Sent in command of an army against the rebel
chief Guerrero in the latter year, he united with instead
of attacking him, seized a convoy of treasure to serve as
sinews of war, and drew up at Iguala—a charming little
city on the route—a plan of independence of his own.
The Viceroy, in despair, tried to buy him back with
promises of pardon, money, and higher command, but
without success. He made a triumphal entry into the
capital in September, 1821. In May of the following year
a sedition, which he had without doubt artfully set on foot,
roused him at his hotel at night, with a clamor that he
should become Emperor. He appeared upon his balcony
and affected to reluctantly consent to the popular will.

He modelled himself after Napoleon, nearly his contemporary.
There is a portrait of him at the National
Palace, in the same gorgeous coronation robes affected by
the latter, though in his own whiskered countenance he
is more like the English Prince Regent of the same date.
[274]In August he imprisoned some Deputies, and in October,
still following his illustrious prototype, put his troublesome
Congress out-of-doors. But in October also the
country rose against him, and he was obliged to leave it
and take refuge in England. He returned again in July
of the next year—another Napoleon from Elba; but, instead
of sweeping the country with enthusiasm, he was
seized upon landing, and ordered to prepare for death
within two hours. Four days of grace were finally given
him, and then he was shot.

Iturbide was a person of a highly politic turn, as has
been seen. A thorough devotee of expediency, he maintained
(and there was not a little truth in this) that a people
made up so largely of Indian serfs suddenly released
from tyranny was not ready for self-government. He
said that he had meant the Empire to be only temporary.
He had shown no personal valor in the service of his
country, as there had been no occasion for it; all his actual
fighting had been against it. Yet he is commemorated
in the national anthem,⁠[3] and a certain hold, in the
Napoleonic way, which he had upon the popular imagination,
was relied upon by the French when they endeavored
to establish Maximilian in Mexico. A grandson of
Iturbide still lives who was adopted by Maximilian, in
order to give his dynasty a more indigenous effect, and
made heir to the succession. The boy’s mother, who at
first acquiesced in the usurping order of things, later
repented, and endeavored to get him away. This was
finally effected through the mediations of Secretary Seward
and Mr. John Bigelow, then Minister to France.

---

I.

Iturbide was the subject of confab between the
colonel and myself as we jogged along the way; and
this led naturally up to Maximilian. My companion
had served under Escobedo in the campaign in which
Maximilian was overthrown, and had witnessed his execution
at the tragic Cerro de las Campañas.

“He died like a true soldier,” said the colonel. “He
was not afraid; though he deserved his fate, and I would
not have had it otherwise.”

It seems to be the general verdict that this ill-starred
ruler was not without the physical fortitude which is esteemed
a part of the heritage of princes. But he was
better fitted for many other things than the task of fastening
a monarchy upon belligerent Mexico. I drew the
conversation, when an opening appeared, to the present
novel relations of Mexico with our own country.

“Had I the authority,” said the colonel, frankly, “I
would never have granted the railroad charters which are
making this great bustle. I fear the aggressions of the
Americans. The conservative Mexican policy is to grant
you such privileges only when they are balanced by others
to Europeans. This was the consistent policy of Juarez
and Lerdo. It was Porfirio Diaz, during his presidency,
who first broke it down and brought this invasion upon us.”

[276]

“We, on the contrary, incline to make it one of his
merits,” I said—“a proof of his superior enlightenment.
He stepped over the boundaries of narrow prejudice and
jealousy, and allowed a beginning to be made of developing
the country by those who were ready to do it, without
waiting farther for those who would not.”

“His enemies say he was bought,” rejoined the colonel,
who had evidently no great love for Porfirio. “He has
not been wholly above corruption in his time. He made
fabulous sums out of the liquidation of the military arrears,
for instance. He paid a million dollars for his
magnificent hacienda in the state of Oaxaca. Where
did that come from? That is a great weakness among
us for official corruption. There are too many examples
of it. A defaulting person in a high place is rarely punished.
When I see a case of that kind treated with severity
I shall begin to conceive new hopes.”

“But,” I argued, “the Americans certainly have no
other designs than that of commercial profit. They do
not want your country. What Americans have anything
to gain by taking it? Who would put his hand in his
pocket to pay the expenses of a war of annexation? We
look out for ourselves as individuals, and we fail to see
where the profit comes in. We are large enough now
to gratify our own vanity on that score. Love of glory
and territorial aggrandizement is not one of our national
traits. Spoliation might rather be feared at the hands
of some ambitious prince, if you had any such for a
neighbor, who could turn it to personal account.”

“You will not annex us with bayonets,” he returned;
“you will annex us with dollars. I feel it; I know it.
Your great commercial enterprises will insensibly get
hold of the vitals of our country, and the rest will follow.
Perhaps there may be disturbances, and your government
[277]called in to protect the property of investors. There will
naturally be sympathy for them at home, and they will
move heaven and earth rather than lose. A thousand
times better that our country were not developed at all
than at such a price.”

As I still insisted upon the unreasonableness of this
notion, the colonel continued: “Even granting that you
are sincere in what you say of the wishes of your people,
I feel that it is the manifest destiny of Mexico to be taken
by the United States. In former times the Latin races
ruled the world, but in this and the coming ages the Saxon
race will do it. You are a strong, commercial people,
and commerce is the breath of the nostrils of modern
civilization. Look at what you have done in California
since it ceased to be a Spanish province. I have been at
San Francisco—a great, splendid city; I looked upon it
with amazement. ‘This was once Mexican,’ I said to
myself. ‘Ah, what a different genius from that of Mexico!’
Yes, you will get us. It will be the amelioration
of many abuses, and our greater prosperity, without
doubt; but I hope I shall never live to see the day. As
a patriot, as a soldier, I would give my life fifty times
over rather than consent to it.”

“But, since you concede such benefits as probable,” I
ventured to say, “what is this patriotism upon which you
so strongly insist? We do not want you, and have no
designs upon you, but—purely for the sake of argument,
and talking as enlightened persons—is it not rather fantastic?
Is a boundary-line such an object in itself? May
not a good deal that has stood for patriotism in the past
be a mere provincial narrowness? Supposing that Mexico,
or Canada, without force, but in its own judgment of
what was for the good of its people, should desire to become
a part of the Union, maintaining its organization in
[278]states and its local self-government as now, and merely
sending delegates to Washington to represent it in national
affairs, would you, as a Mexican citizen, feel bound
to resist, as if it were the consummation of something
scandalous and recreant? Is not the enjoyment of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the greatest advantage,
the object of a rational being? Is there any
virtue in an essential Mexicanism, Americanism, or Anglicism,
that it should be preserved at all hazards?”

And, having asked many such-like questions, I endeavored,
farther, to explain a view that we may be all approaching
a great cosmopolitan period, when we shall be
members of a republic of nations, and foreigners, as
such, shall nowhere any longer be either dreaded or despised.

“That is all very well,” said the colonel, stubbornly,
“since the advantage is to fall on your side; but I tell
you I would give my heart’s blood rather than see it.”

As to the value of his prognostication I have no opinion;
but this seriousness of conviction about the plans of
the Americans from such a source was full of interest.
It is held by the bulk of the Mexican people, and it
means trouble ahead for the enterprises, since it must
increase with their very success.

“Has any party ever been heard of, with you, in favor
of annexation?” I went on to ask.

“There is no such party,” he replied. “There are
none who could favor it—unless, singularly enough, it
might be the Church party. Protestant country though
you are, with you they could enjoy a greater freedom
than here. Since their suppression under the War of the
Reform there can be no convents, religious orders, nor
monastic schools; but in the United States, I understand,
they could have as many as they wished.”

[279]

The colonel was rather fond, as stated, of dwelling
upon the soldier’s point of view. One day, when he had
been writing, as he said, to his mother, he declared, in a
gloomy mood, not without its pathos: “That is the only
tie that binds me to life. At forty-four, as you see me,
I have passed through many disappointments and chagrins.
I have little pleasure in the present and no great
hopes for the future. Well, that is a proper state of mind
for the soldier.

“The soldier,” he went on to say, “should be one who
either sets little value upon life, and looks to death as a
release, or one having a supreme sense of honor, of pride
in his profession, and duty to his government. He makes
a contract, as it were, with authority. He is well paid and
highly considered; in return, he must be ready to spill
his blood whenever his employer demands it.”

II.

The display of childish selfishness on my companion’s
part to which I have adverted consisted in getting up
one morning and riding off on my horse, without saying
so much as “By your leave.” He had cast eyes on it as
we went along, judged it to be on the whole preferable
to his mule, and in this direct way took possession. The
matter was adjusted, but not till it had assumed at one
time an almost international aspect. It was in the coolness
resulting from this incident that I rode on alone
and first saw Iguala.

The expedition had stopped, after its usual day’s march,
before sunset, at the tropical hamlet of Platanillo. I
was anxious, however, to pass the night instead in the
notable city named. The twilight shuts down very rapidly
here, and from the estimates of casual informants I
[280]had miscalculated the distance. “Adelantito, señor,”
they said, after the inaccurate way of such informants—“Just
a little way ahead;” “Aca bajito, no mas”—“Right
down there; a mere trifle, that is all.” I had a distant
glimpse or two of it from the pass, while the sun glowed
like a beacon-fire on the crests of vast mountains encompassing
its little valley. A small lake sparkled in its vicinity,
and plantations of cane near it showed a brighter
green. Of the town itself, which might have been a
mammoth hacienda, only a dome and a few white spots
appeared out of the midst of a quadrangle of foliage
marked off on all sides to an even line. Then night
came on, a dark and cloudy one, though without rain.
My horse slipped with me on the steep over rolling
stones. It was no longer safe to ride after that, and I
led him most of the way, picking out the path in the
dark. The view had been very deceptive, and we had
many miles to go.

Lonely gulches, brooks, and bits of wood were passed.
Cows had gone to sleep in upland pastures, and one occasionally
loomed up, a mysterious shape, in the path and
took herself out of the way. The rays of a clouded moon
gleamed now and then on a white patch of the lake, but
the city seemed to have vanished out of existence. At
last, however, a dim light in a dome, then a barking of
dogs, and audible human voices. All this time there had
been neither house nor hut. It was after nine o’clock.
I came close up to one of the formal lines of trees,
opened a gate in it, and was in the midst of Iguala.

[281]

[282]

I do not know whether the place has quite advantages
enough to offset so much discomfort. What there is to
be seen could easily have been taken in the next day on
the march. There is no other vestige of Iturbide yielded
to inquiry than the house in which the Plan of Iguala is
said to have been signed—the oldest, as it is one of the
shabbiest, in the place. It is of one story, like most provincial
Mexican houses, with the whitewash badly rubbed
off its adobes, and is now a poor fonda, or restaurant,
without so much as a sign.

But Iguala is charming. A row of clean, white colonnades,
made up of square pillars of masonry, supporting
red-tiled roofs, extends around a central plaza. The windows
of the better residences are closed, not with glass,
but projecting wooden gratings of turned posts, painted
green. The market, a little paved plaza, opening from
the other, consists of a series of double colonnades, light,
commodious, and very attractive. The church, of a noble,
massive form, made gay by an azure belfry and clock,
stands in a grassy enclosure surrounded by posts and
chains. Across the way is the zocalo, with brick benches,
deep, grateful shade of tamarindos, as large as elms, and
arbors draped with sweet-peas in blossom. Such a park,
such a church, and such a market could be conscientiously
recommended as worthy of any populace in the world.
The heads of palm-trees star the heavier, Northern-looking
foliage. Grass sprouts plentifully between the cobble-stones,
and gives a rural air. A band played in the
zocalo in the evening, though there was but a small scattering
of persons to hear it.

As I was making a sketch of the zocalo from a portal
some very well-dressed young men and a professor came
out. It proved that this house was a school, and a pleasant
one it seemed.

“Amigo”—friend—they said, in a rather patronizing
tone, “what is your interest in this place? What is your
picturing designed for?”

Three days farther on is Chilpancingo, to which also
complimentary terms—in a lesser measure than Iguala—may
[283]be applied. It is the capital of this rugged Guerrero,
a state named after the patriot general, who was once,
like our own Marcos and Vincente Lopez, a muleteer. It
contains an ornate Government-house, a zocalo with a
music-stand; and we met here a colonel of the detachment
of cavalry guarding the country, gotten up in such
dapper civilian riding-dress as if for a promenade in Central
Park. Population—but populations are hard to get
at in Mexico. I should say, at random, for either place,
about three thousand people.

At Chilpancingo you see the place in which the original
Declaration of Independence of Mexico was proclaimed,
in 1813. It had to be fought for many a long
year till the day of Iturbide. This is merely a white
house with a tablet, and not of farther interest. It was
a wild and problematic cause, truly, when remote Chilpancingo
was resorted to by the first constituent Congress,
assembled by Padre Morelos, to throw off the yoke of
Spain.

But how has all this been done? These little bits of
ornate civilization are like enchanted places which we
happen upon in penetrating the fastnesses of the mountains.
Perhaps we had better take out at once some
such commission as that of the Adelantado of the Seven
Cities; and yet greater discoveries may await us, never
before heard of by man. Each lies in its miniature valley,
smiling and fertile, with wagon-roads for a little
space around; but their inhabitants can hardly be conceived
as going over the wild trail to supply themselves
with the fashions and comforts they possess.

Candid judges from without would pronounce it impassable,
and think it a practical joke that they were
asked to consider it a road. We crossed and recrossed
swift, small streams, the water reaching to the animals’
[284]shoulders. The colonel had a way of dangling his military
boots on such occasions in the water, to let me see how
excellently they were made; but one night, I observed, he
could not get them off, and the next morning he could
not get them on. All of one day we traversed the cañada,
or gorge, of Cholitea, over a sandy bed of which the
flood had not yet taken possession; another day, the
Cañada del Zopilote. Our old friend of the North, the
ailanthus, was common where other natural features were
dreariest, and often filled the air insufferably with its
odor. The three rivers crossing our way were swollen
indeed, as had been predicted. When we came down
to the wide Mescala it was opaque with red soil, and
tearing past at twenty miles an hour. We were transported
across it in a flat skiff guided by an oar. There
was no plank to aid in the embarking of the horses, and
one of them fell into such a panic as caused a terrific
combat of well-nigh half an hour. He was finally thrown
on board, more dead than alive, with lassoed legs.

“Ah, what a soul you have!” (Ah, que alma tienes!)
cried Marcos fervently to his animal, which had well-nigh
kicked us all into the river; and losing all policy in his
rage, he begged to borrow my revolver, that he might
despatch such a brute, of the ownership of which he was
ashamed.

The Papagallo River succeeding, we crossed in a dug-out,
and the animals swam. I asked the colonel, in my
simplicity, if this were not more or less like war, meaning
the manner of travel, our foraging, half open-air way of
sleeping, and the like. He smiled in disdain, and gave
me a sketch of his campaigns in the day of the French
usurpation. The rightful government had had at one
time so little foothold in the country that it was called
the Government of Paso del Norte, from the farthest
[285]town on the northern frontier, to which it was driven.
Eating and sleeping seem hardly to have been the custom
at all till, by an unremitting guerilla warfare, the tide
was turned.

When we came to “the Cajones,” however, he admitted
that this was a little like war. We slipped and slid
all one day down the Cajones—natural, or rather most
wofully unnatural, steps in the solid rock, in the midst
of a dark forest. The perpendiculars are three and four
feet at a time, and often there are mud-holes at the bottom;
and besides, there are vines that aim to take you
under the chin. The sagacious steadiness of the pack-mules,
picking their steps unaided in the most critical
situations, was wonderful to see.

We met peons, in white cotton, coming up with barrels
of ardent spirits on their shoulders, and we came to a full
stop to allow the passage of jingling mule-trains of goods.
The water ran in the path with us, courteously sharing its
right of way. At one place it increased and converged
from every side, and the wood was full of its murmurs,
as if another universal deluge were coming to overwhelm
us. It was full, also, of patches of pale-green light upon
moss-covered stones, and limpid pools, and delicate ferns,
like snow crystals turned vegetable. Now and then some
white cascade stood out of the semi-obscurity like a beckoning
Undine.

Among vegetable growths on the way was the gum-copal,
not unlike our white birch. There was a tree, the
cuahuete—if I may trust the pronunciation of Marcos—smooth,
bronze-colored, and often of a repulsive red, as if
full of blood. We saw a good many charming red-and-yellow
flowers on a high bush, like butterflies alighted,
and once or twice a sprig of heliotrope and a calla-lily.
The amape, found in the villages, and somewhat like the
[286]chestnut, was the finest shade-tree. There was a notable
absence throughout the journey of what we are accustomed
to deem the essentially tropical features. Very
often one might have been riding in the woods of Connecticut.
There was not even a rank luxuriance of
growth, just as there were no serpents nor the swarms
of pestiferous insects (other than a few gnats) to have
been expected. We saw once a couple of coyote wolves
trotting demurely along, and, again, a large iguana, a
harmless reptile, one of which I also noted later, gliding
around an old bronze gun at the fort of Acapulco.

Birds I hardly recollect at all, except a white heron or
two, charmingly reflected in an upland pool one early
morning, and the tecuses, a kind of black-bird. Vincente
pelted at these latter with small stones, by way of trying
his aim. The organ-cactus, however, should be exempted
from the complaint of a want of tropicality. It abounds
thickly about the gorges and on the mountain slopes.
Rising twenty-five feet and more in height, the plants
are like seven-branched candlesticks of the Mosaic law,
or spears of the gods hurled down and yet quivering in
the earth. The fan-palm, too, must be excepted. It
crops out on the bleak hill-sides as common as mullein-stalks
with us. I can never respect it, in the conservatories,
again. To see it thus was a kind of shock: it was
like seeing some exotic belle of society masquerading as
a kitchen wench. For one day before reaching the coast
we had the cocoa-nut-palms. Nobody in the hamlets
would get the fruit down for us except on a wholesale
order, for munificent prices, which brought the cost above
what it is in New York. There was often a shortage of
the other fruits and commodities, as sugar, in the same
way, in or near the very places where they grew.

Toward the concluding stages of the march we fell in
[287]with another travelling-companion, an officer in the Customs
service. When he learned that the colonel was
going to the frontier, with a view, among other things,
to suppress the extensive smuggling carried on there,
he said, “You had better make your little $20,000 or
$30,000 by protecting it. That will be much less trouble.
The smugglers will buy up your soldiers, anyway;
so it amounts to the same thing.”

I must not represent that the colonel was always of an
oppressively serious carriage. On the contrary, he developed
a vein of humor, the more amusing from the simple
good-faith of those at whose expense it was generally exercised.

“Do you charge no more than this to persons of our
consideration, my good woman?” he said to a peasant,
whose bill was modest, though but in keeping with the
primitive nature of the accommodations. “It is a species
of affront, as one might say. Do you comprehend that I
am a colonel in the army, and this gentleman a learned
traveller, noting down the manners and customs of foreign
lands? When strangers of our position come this
way again understand that double what you have demanded
is the least that you should take.”

The woman, abashed, received double her fee, and replied
that she would bear the lesson in mind for the
benefit of future comers.

Again, meeting three honest-faced Indian maids, with
pitchers on their heads, going to the spring, he said,
“Good-day, Marias!” and turning to me, in an aside,
“Not that I know, from Adam, whether one of them
is Maria or not.”

He praised glaringly, to her face, as of exceeding comeliness,
a servant-maid who wore gold ear-rings and necklace,
and was, perhaps, not of more than average dumpiness
[288]and plainness. She waited on us at table at Tierra
Colorada. The colonel desired to know her name.

“Victoria.”

“Well are you named Victoria!” he cried, in simulated
enthusiasm. “Que cara simpatica!” (“What a sympathetic
face!”) he repeated at intervals.

Meekly, and with no suspicion of raillery, she replied,
each time, “Mil gracias (“A thousand thanks”), señor.”

“Give thanks rather to Heaven, which made you so,
and not us, who do but recognize it,” rejoined the colonel,
piously.

At La Venta de Peregrino the night was hot, and it
still rained, after having rained all day. A garden of
bananas twenty feet tall grew next the basket-like house
of canes where we stopped. We hung up our wet garments
and properties on the poles of the thatched porch,
or pavilion, till it resembled one of those very numerous
national establishments, the empeños, or pawn-shops.
Dogs, cats, donkeys, horses, pigs and fowls—“shooed” out,
when they became too familiar, with an emphatic Ooch-t!—gathered
under the same shelter, as if it had been a
Noah’s ark. We supped on pepper-sauce, tough chicken,
frijoles, tortillas, cream-cheese, and coffee without milk,
spread out upon a mat on the ground. The proprietor in
person—a man in an embroidered shirt and cotton drawers,
whose talk was not of the wisest sort—held pitch-pine
splints to light the feast.

“Now, how does it happen, hombre,” inquired the colonel,
as if in a speculative way, “that a person of your fine
appearance; a person of manners, intelligence, education,
hospitality; a statesman, as one might say, who goes to
Dos Arroyos to see who is going to be elected mayor” (the
man had been there that day, as he told us), “with a fine
house like this—how does it happen, I say, that you have
[289]not a table of any sort to serve two travellers a supper
upon?”

“Pos bien,” said the illiterate host, both pleased and
flustered, scratching his head. “Tables? Yes, tables, now,
to be sure. All that you say is very true, but there is a
great scarcity of carpenters in this part of the country.
Si, escasen muncho (Yes, they are mighty scarce), I can
tell you.”

III.

Two days after this we came down to Acapulco. It is
a town for the most part of straggling huts, with a straggling
thirty-five hundred of people. It has no vestiges
of its antiquity but an old Spanish fort, after the order
of Morro Castle, dismantled by Maximilian’s French on
their abandonment of the place.

Near the fort lay a couple of rusted rails in position on
a bit of washed-out embankment, the beginning of a railroad
inaugurated here with a flourish on the 5th of May,
1881. Having passed over the line, one would judge that
it might be much more than dread of American aggressions
which would prevent its speedy completion.

There was no small pleasure in discovering at last, like
another Balboa, the Pacific Ocean, in boarding the fine
steamer of the Pacific Mail Company, the City of Grenada,
which had come her long jaunt from Panama northward,
and re-establishing connection with the outer world.

With this, too, began an acquaintance with the western
ports of Mexico. One of the semi-monthly steamers,
rightly chosen, each month puts into them all. An idea
of the country can thus be got which would not be possible
otherwise without much greater fatigue and expense,
but it is not at all as favorable as that presented by the
interior.

[290]

Neither of the three lower ports is of great size. Acapulco
has the most complete and charming harbor. Manzanillo
is a small strip of a place, on the beach, built of
wood, with quite an American look. The volcano of
Colima appears inland, with a light cloud of smoke
above it.

San Blas is larger, but still hardly more than an extensive
thatched village. On the bluff beside it exist the ruins
of an ancient, substantial San Blas, shaken to pieces by an
earthquake. Some old bronze bells from its church have
been brought down and set up on some rude wooden
trestles, on the ground in front of the poor chapel, without
a belfry, which now fills the ecclesiastical needs of
the place. This arrangement is sometimes referred to
satirically as la torre de San Blas—the steeple of San
[291]Blas. My slight sketch of these bells, made on a fly-leaf
of my note-book in the first instance, came to have an
importance far beyond its own merits. I have the gratification
of knowing that it proved to be the source of
nothing less than the last inspiration of Longfellow. The
great and good poet died on the 24th of March, 1882.
In his portfolio was found his final work, “The Bells of
San Blas,” dated March 15, which afterward appeared in
the Atlantic Monthly. His memorandum-book contained
a reference, as a suggestion for a poem, to the number
and page of Harper’s Magazine of the same month, in
which the sketch was published.

At Mazatlan we are in a bustling harbor, and a well
and handsomely built little city, with improvements and
shops of the better sort, which other countries than Mexico
might be satisfied with. It seems surprising, until we
comprehend the extensive back country which is tributary
to it, how a city of but fourteen thousand people can be
justified in maintaining so elaborate a stock of goods.

We steam finally across the Gulf of California and up
the coast of that peninsula which seems one of the remotest
points of the globe. The days are calm and blue;
the bold outlines of the shores offer constant novelty. An
arbitrary line is passed: we have lost Mexico, but gained
California—the richest and most marvellous of her provinces.

It is remarkable now to recall that, upon the accession
of the Emperor Iturbide, Mexico boasted of being, with
the exception of Russia and China, the most extensive
empire in the world.

[292]

---

[294]

---

I.

It is the way of sea-coasts, as observed from the water,
to maintain a close reserve. If they allow us a cliff or
two, a suggestion of green forests, or a mountain in the
background, it is as much as they do. All their natural
projections, from a steamer’s deck, retire into a straight
line. “You have chosen your element,” they seem to say,
“and you shall not enjoy at once the pleasures of both.
If you can do without me, so can I without you, and until
you take the pains to disembark you shall know nothing
of the attractions I purposely keep out of sight just
over the surf-whitened margin.”

The coast of California seems of even an especial moroseness
in this respect. You pass some few islands, inlets
at San Diego and Wilmington, the Santa Barbara
Channel, and the bays of Santa Monica, San Luis, and
Monterey; but for the most part the coast of the land of
gold stretches on unbroken, low, brown, and bare. Search
is vain for any suggestion of orange-grove or palm. It is
foreign-looking to one who arrives from the east of the
United States. Lions might come prowling down such
slopes. It might be Morocco, and we, on our travels,
[296]some new Crusoe escaped in the long-boat, with Xury,
from the Rover of Sallee, and afraid to land for the
howlings of wild creatures.

If, in our Pacific Mail steamer, we were discovering
the country for the first time—as every traveller does
discover a new country for the first time, no matter what
accounts he may have heard of it—we should try along
without finding a single good harbor for four hundred
and fifty miles, from San Diego, at the Mexican frontier,
to San Francisco.

Then all at once comes an opening through bold Coast
Range at the water’s edge, and we are in the far-famed
“Golden Gate.” It is a mere eyelet—a strait, giving access
to a wide expanse of bay. So happy is the opening,
and commodious the shelter afforded, that the reversal of
the churlishness prevailing up to this point seems miraculous.

There is no doubt, when once the site is understood, as
to why San Francisco is located just where it is. It has
the only natural harbor between Astoria, Oregon, to the
north, and San Diego, to the south. It bears, besides,
with this advantage, such a relation to the resources of
the back country, that it could not escape a destiny of
greatness.

It is not simply a bay upon which we have entered, but
an inland sea, with a great commerce of its own. Immediately
in front rise round-backed Goat Island and Angel
Island, resembling monsters asleep; and terraced Alcatraz,
with its citadel, as picturesque as a bit of Malta.
Vistas open beyond on many sides, with gleams of light
falling on white cities under lowering atmospheres of
smoke. San Francisco, close at hand, piles up impressively
on steep hills, its bristling structures covering their
undulations sharply from numerous hills. The water-front
is full of shipping. French and Russian and British
frigates, and a Mexican gun-boat, are lying at anchor.
Craft of all shapes and sizes cross one another’s wakes
in the harbor. The lateen-sails of Genoese and Maltese
fishermen and the junks of Chinese shrimp-catchers are
among them. Large ferry-boats, superior, as a rule, to
those we are familiar with at the East, ply to Oakland,
the Brooklyn of the scene—a city already of fifty thousand
people; Alameda, with its esplanade of bathing
pavilions; Berkeley, with its handsome university and
institution for blind, deaf, and dumb; San Quentin, with
its prison; and rustic Saucelito and San Rafael, under the
dark shadow of Mount Tamalpais.

[297]

[298]

From Oakland projects an interminable pier, built by
the Central Pacific Railway. A mile in length as it is,
it was to have gone on to a junction with vacant Goat
Island, which would then have been made a city also, and
become the terminus of all transcontinental journeys.
This project was stopped by violent opposition from
property-holders on shore.

Patches of yellow, under the Presidio, are taken by our
novices on the steamer for the “Sand-lots,” famous in
the Kearneyite agitations. The Presidio is a barracks,
which was a fort and mission in the time of the first settlement
by the Spaniards—to what slight extent they
ever settled the place—in the year 1776. The man who
has “been here before” plants himself squarely on the
deck, pulls down a silk cap over his eyes, and explains
that the Sand-lots are not the Presidio, but nothing less
than the large yard of the new, unfinished City-hall, in
the centre of town. But Kearneyism is dead and buried,
he says—as the case proved—and there will be no chance
to see one of these traditional assemblages.

He names for us the various hills, and points out the[299]
Palace Hotel, the Market Street shot-tower, and the homes
of some of the great millionnaires who have made such a
stir in their day and generation. Three or four of these
latter top California, or “Nob,” Hill, with a prominence
in keeping with their owners’ station. They are those of
the railroad kings, Crocker, Stanford, and Hopkins—the
mining kings having up to this time expended their principal
building efforts in the country. “Nob” Hill is
three hundred feet high, plebeian Telegraph Hill nearly
as much, and Russian Hill, to the west—the latest precinct
taken into favor for fine residences—three hundred
and sixty. Murray Hill, New York, be it noted, is but
seventy-eight. The riff-raff of Telegraph Hill climb, as
is seen, by a multitude of wooden stairways; but how in
the world do the Crœsuses get up to their habitations,
which cut the sky-line so imposingly? We shall see.

[300]

[301]

The city does not begin directly at the ocean, but a
mile or two within. It follows the inner shore of a
long, narrow peninsula which comes from the south to
meet one coming from the north, and forms with it the
strait and bay.

It is, indeed, an inland sea, this bay. You go southward
upon it thirty miles, northward as far, and thirty
miles north-eastward to the Straits of Carquinez—which
has Benicia on one side, and Martinez, the point of departure
for ascent of the peak of Mount Diablo, on the
other. Through these straits you pass, again, into Suisun
Bay, which receives the waters of the Sacramento and
San Joaquin rivers, and is itself some twenty miles in
extent.

II.

You are struck, on coming ashore from Mexico, with
the excessive thinness of everything American. Our belongings
[302]seem all of a piece with our light-running machinery,
with the spider lines of yon American buggy
waiting for its owner. We evade Nature by a deft trick,
and do not obstinately oppose her. There the old walls
were as solid yet as the everlasting hills; here we seemed
to be living in flying-machines.

How strange, arriving from the other side of the world,
to find people lining the dock dressed in the common
way, and chattering the common speech, even to the latest
bits of slang! A China steamer, however, had come
in along-side just before us, and supplied a novel element
of foreignness. Almond-eyed Celestials, in blue blouses,
swarmed her decks and poured down her sides. Groups
were loaded into express-wagons, and driven away uptown
in charge of friends come down to meet them.
Others trudged stoutly on foot, with their effects deposited
in a pair of wicker baskets, at the ends of a long
bamboo on their shoulders. This way of carrying burdens
is constantly met with. The vegetable dealers hawk thus
their wares from house to house, and present the aspect
of the figures in cuts of the tea-fields. It is poor travelling
when the curiosity alone and not the imagination
is gratified, and San Francisco promises ample material
for both.

Had we come in the gold days of ’49 we should have
landed some half-dozen blocks farther inland than to-day.
By so much has the water-front since been extended and
built into a solid commercial quarter. The ’Forty-niners
found but a scanty strip of sand at the base of the steep
hills.

Why, then, did they stop here, and build their city at
such infinite pains and expense, instead of seeking a more
convenient site elsewhere? There is, or was, some even
more serious objection to all other locations. At Oakland,
[303]insufficient depth of water; at Saucelito, where
whalers, Russian and other, had been accustomed to refit,
Tamalpais, 2700 feet high, as against Telegraph Hill, but
300. Distant Benicia and Vallejo—the latter now the
naval station of the Pacific Coast, and once briefly the
capital of the State—were much too far away. Steam
was little in use. The greater part of the ships came
under sail, and there were no tugs to pull them. They
must be able to get in and out with all greatest attainable
expedition.

Such ships as these were, according to the accounts
we have of them! The most antiquated and dangerous
hulks were furbished up once more for this last voyage.
The eager humanity they carried took little heed of perils
and discomforts so they were but on the way to the
goal to which all adventurous spirits turned. When the
port was still but a beggarly scattering of huts and tents
it could muster two hundred sail, good and bad, at once.
Many of them never got out again. It was not on account
of nautical difficulties, but partly because they had
no return cargoes, and principally because their crews ran
away from them to the mines the moment foot touched
shore. Certain craft were beached and converted into
dwellings; others, utilized for a time as warehouses, rotted
at their moorings, and to-day form “made ground.”
The remarkable city to which they came, which had
eight hundred and fifty souls in 1848, and twenty thousand
in ’49, has now, in an existence of thirty-four
years, three hundred thousand.

The buildings on the level made ground stand generally
on foundations of piling. The practice prevails, too,
of tying them well together with iron rods, against the
jar of the occasional earthquake, which is among San
Francisco’s idiosyncrasies. It is proposed to improve the
[304]water-front with a continuous, massive sea-wall, and a
portion of this is already built. Extensive yards of attractive
redwood lumber, which resembles cedar, and
warehouses for grain, are seen. The elevator system,
owing to lack of ships for properly carrying grain in
bulk, is nowhere in use throughout California.

We reach next an area given up to heavy traffic in the
fruits and produce of the country. Battery and Sansome
streets succeeding are lined with large wholesale dry-goods
houses similar to those in the greater Eastern cities.
Montgomery Street shows stately office buildings, exchanges,
and hotels. Kearney Street has been hitherto
the chief site of the more elegant retail trade. Its prestige
is passing, however, to Market Street, a wide thoroughfare
which recalls State Street, Chicago. Having
unlimited room for extension in the north and south direction
of the peninsula, whereas the others named are
contracted, Market Street is to be San Francisco’s Broadway
of the future.

The financial centre is contained in the area of two
blocks, between California and Bush, Sansome and Montgomery
Streets. Here are those institutions whose great
transactions and singular history are unknown now to but
few parts of the world.

The Nevada Bank, financial lever of the Bonanza
kings, and point from which has been supposed to emanate
all the weightiest influences connected with mining
matters, is a four-story and Mansard iron building, with
the usual classic “orders.” The Bank of California,
whence the brilliant Ralston rushed forth from his
troubles to drown himself in the bay, is two stories, of
“blue stone,” of a pleasant color, and exceedingly sharp,
agreeable cutting. The Merchants’ Exchange, erected
so long ago as 1867, is a very ornate, town-hall-looking[305]
building, of iron and stone, dark-colored, with a clock-tower
in the centre. It is adjoined by the Safe Deposit
Company, in a similar style, in the basement of which a
glimpse is to be had of a splendid steel treasure-chamber,
with a dozen life-size men in armor, gilded.

[306]

[307]

The large and agreeably proportioned Stock Exchange,
on Pine Street, is of gray granite, with numerous polished
columns. The board-room within is an amphitheatre,
and a bronze railing protects the circle of seats.
With its agreeable illumination and neat furniture, including
Axminster rugs, it presents a much more home-like
aspect than is the rule with such places. Mining
stocks exclusively are dealt in.

It is quiet enough now. We have fallen upon evil
days. Capitalists have withdrawn their millions to the
East; ships come only in ballast, for grain, instead of
with valuable exchange cargoes, and charge rates almost
prohibitory; there is not one “turn-out” now on the
Cliff House road where there were formerly a dozen;
and real estate has shrunk fifty per cent.—if in some
places it have any value at all.

This board was once the theatre of a speculative movement
which took hold upon the community like madness.
The aggregate value of the mining stocks on the list, at
the period of highest prices, in the year 1875, was, in
round numbers, $282,000,000. The aggregate value of
the same stocks in the summer of 1881 was but $17,000,000.
There had occurred a shrinkage of $265,000,000,
or more than fifteen times the total value surviving.

What had happened? The “bottom had dropped out”
of the famous “Comstocks,” perhaps the richest mines
known to history. “Consolidated Virginia,” valued at
$75,000,000, was now worth less than $1,000,000. “Sierra
Nevada” fell from $27,000,000 to $825,000. But the
[308]greatest shrinkage of all was in “California.” This unhappy
stock shrank from $84,000,000 to $351,000.

These figures explain a depression the vestiges of
which, though the ruinous crisis has long passed, still remain.
The stock-gambling mania possessed the community
without distinction of station, and hardly of age or
sex, and when the bubble broke there was reason enough
for gloom with all who had laid up their treasure in such
unstable form.

Some of the earlier buildings, now flat, thin, and unornamental,
were obtained at expense quite out of proportion.
The stone for the old City Hall was brought
expressly from Australia; that of the Wells-Fargo building,
and the Union Club, from China. The granite of
the Branch Mint, a fine, classic design, was dressed in
Oregon. The newer structures exhibit all the varieties
of form and color in which the modern decorative taste
delights. The material for most is procured in the State
itself.

The idea of being in a remote part of the world is
kept before you in many ways. Here is a sign of the
“New Zealand Insurance Company.” Fancy New Zealand,
where a cannibal population was lately eating missionaries,
sending us over its insurance companies! Here
is the Alaska Commercial Company, the Bank of British
Columbia; and here, its inscription gilded in Chinese as
well as English, the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking
Company. An occasional building is without the usual
entrance-doors, its staircase, in the comparative mildness
of the climate, left as open as the street.

A system of alleys passes among the colossal structures,
and these abound in refreshment resorts—“The Dividend
Saloon,” “Our Jacob,” “The Comstock Exchange,” and
“The New Idea”—to which the hastening business men
[309]repair in intervals of their labors. The San Francisco
boot-blacks, a model to their class, are neatly uniformed
men instead of ragged urchins. Favored by the climate,
they establish their rows of easy-chairs on platforms under
a canvas awning, have a newspaper and the gossip
for you while you wait, and somewhat usurp the place
so long sacred to the barber.

The corner of California and Montgomery Streets may
be considered one of two focal points in San Francisco;
the “Lotta Fountain” is the other.

The Lotta Fountain—a tawdry, little, cast-iron affair,
presented to the city by the actress after whom it is
named—has been given a place of distinguished honor.
Five important streets radiate from it. Its pedestal is
[310]a place where the timid seek refuge when entangled in
the throng of vehicles. Market Street extends to the
Oakland Ferry one way, and past the Mechanics’ Institute
and pleasure resort of Woodward’s Garden to the
distant Mission Hills in the other. Geary Street takes
you, by a “cable road,” westward to Lone Mountain,
around which all the cemeteries are grouped, and Golden
Gate Park, stretching to the ocean. On the top of Lone
Mountain stands up to view from far and wide a dark
cross, which weirdly recalls that of Calvary. Third Street,
a thoroughfare of working-people, abounding in small restaurants,
markets, and “tin-type” galleries, leads to the
water at a different angle from Market. Finally, Kearney
Street debouches also at the Lotta Fountain, and Montgomery
terminates but a few steps below.

The Palace Hotel, vast, drab-colored, of iron and stuccoed
brick, looms up nine stories in height on Market
Street, and closes the vista from Montgomery. Studded
with bay-windows, it has the air of a mammoth bird-cage.
The San Franciscan, wherever met with, never fails to
boast of it as the most stupendous thing of its kind in the
world. With the conviction that size is not always the
particular in which our hotels, like some of our communities,
most need improvement, I should say that perfection
had hardly yet been reached.

Within it is more satisfactory. At night an electric
light strikes upon many tiers of columns, as white as
paint can make them, in a large glass-roofed court, with
an effect quite fairy-like and Parisian. Twice a week a
band plays there, and the guests promenade up and down
their galleries or look over the balustrade. In the bottom
there are flowers, people sitting in chairs, and carriages
stand in a circular, asphalt-paved driveway.

Though the resident of San Francisco feels called upon
[311]to complain of its present stagnation, the bare existence
of such a place strikes the new-comer with amazement.

Its air is not ephemeral, but of a fine, massive gravity.
Its shops are filled with costly goods, its streets with
comely, beautifully dressed women. It has an art and
literature. Private galleries contain foreign modern pictures
of the best class. Some local artists have made for
themselves a more than local reputation. There is a well-attended
“School of Design,” which has already graduated
several pupils whose talent has been recognized
abroad. The “Mercantile Library” is the most handsome
and complete in its appointments of any American city.

San Francisco “society,” though a trifle bizarre in the
use of its newly acquired wealth, has an under-stratum of
unexceptionable refinement. Its most bizarre side, too, is
certainly approved of in Europe, where its magnates entertain
kings and give their daughters in marriage to
lofty titles.

The European traveller who visits “the land of Barnum”
and “of Washington” with literary intent must
be cruelly broken up by what he will find here. Such a
place should be a vast, motley camp, as it is known to
European travellers that most American cities should be.
With its thirty-three years, and its heterogeneous elements,
it should exhibit a combination of squalor and
mushroom splendor. The wretched shanty should elbow
the vulgar palace, a democratic boorishness of manners,
blazing in diamonds, the faint, refined natures that by any
chance have ventured into such a Babel. But, alas! we
live in an age of expedition, of labor-saving inventions.
With unlimited means, such as here enjoyed, the work of
years is condensed into months. Camp there is none, but
a luxurious city, presenting all the ordinary characteristics
of civilization.

[312]

An association comprising in a genial way most of the
best elements of San Francisco is the Bohemian Club. It
is found taking a very creditable interest in literature and
the arts—it numbering the professionals and amateurs in
these branches in its membership—and entertains and
welcomes distinguished strangers. A monthly entertainment
of a light, composite character is held, known as a
“Jinks.” The grand festival of the year, however, is
a “High Jinks,” which takes the form of an excursion
into the country. The principal ceremonial of the High
Jinks has sometimes been held at night, in masquerade
costume, among the Big Trees, the enormous redwoods
of Sonoma County, to the northward. It may well be
believed that the doings on these occasions are as fantastic
and amusing as the merry inventions of a couple of
hundred bright social spirits can make them.

III.

A population of three hundred thousand souls is not
extraordinary now, as populations go, but there are certain
things which make San Francisco cosmopolitan beyond
its actual size. An entirely new commercial situation
gives rise to a new milieu. San Francisco faces
toward Asia, the great English-speaking colonies of
Oceanica, and the islands of the sea, as New York faces
Europe. It enjoys already a trade with the Orient
amounting to ten millions per annum in imports and
eight millions in exports. The possibilities of this trade,
extended among the teeming populations in the cradle
of the human race, seem almost limitless. A way will be
found sooner or later out of the imbroglio into which our
inexperience has plunged us on the Chinese question, and
communication will flow unimpeded. In countries separated[313]
by water, and demanding each other’s productions,
cities arise at the places of transfer, and proportioned to
its volume; and for all this San Francisco has one of the
most remarkable of situations.

[314]

[315]

The Oriental trade is but a small item in the total. It
has ships, besides those bound for the Eastern and European
ports, going out to the British and Russian possessions
in the North, Mexico, Central and South America,
Tahiti, Feejee, Manila, the Sandwich and Friendly
Islands—to all those far-off points in the South Pacific
which now in their turn promise to shine with the light
of civilization and become powers of the earth.

Coals are burned at firesides—not of the most desirable
quality, it must be confessed—which come from the
coast once characterized by the poet in the line—

Seventy millions pounds of sugar a year are brought from
those Sandwich Islands which slew Captain Cook, now a
civilized, modern state. But it is particularly Australasia,
and our coming relations with it, that awaken admiring
speculations. Melbourne, Australia, has already more
than 280,000 people, Sydney 225,000, while along the
coasts of that once cannibal New Zealand, now sending
us its insurance companies, scatter also a line of flourishing
cities: Dunedin, with its 43,000 people; Auckland,
with 40,000; Christchurch, 32,000; Wellington, 22,000;
and I know not how many others.

Astoria and Portland, in Oregon, San Diego, and, no
doubt, ports to be created in time along the Mexican
shores, will receive a share of these new influences in
the world, but at San Francisco they touch us first and
nearest.

There is a definite fascination in coming to the “jumping-off
[316]place,” the final verge of the latest of the continents.
An excellent situation in which to feel it is to lie
on the brown heather at the point above the Golden Gate—though
it is a raw and gusty place in which to lie too
long—or to look down from the parapeted road or piazza
of the Cliff House.

Here practically nothing intervenes between you and
Japan, except we make mention of the clump of Seal
Rocks, upon which the grouty sea-lions are floundering
and roaring, down there in the surf in front.

“Ah! when a man has travelled,” says Thoreau, “when
he has robbed the horizon of his native fields of its mystery,
tarnished the blue of distant mountains with his feet,
he may begin to think of another world.”

Very well. Perhaps it may do a man no harm to think
of another world now and then, if not upon one pretext,
on another. At evening the Golden Gate is the way to
the sunset. The orb of day settles into the sea at the
end of the gleaming strait, precisely in that East where
we always figure it to ourselves as rising in the morning.
The great circle is at last complete; and, as the extremes
of every kind, even of love and hate, are said to be identical,
the old, quiescent East has become the bound of the
new, impetuous West.

“What is a world to do,” you idly ask, “when it has no
longer a West? How is it to get on without that vague
open region on its borders, always the safety-valve and
outlet for surplus population and uneasy spirits?”

“But when the race has quite arrived at this farther
shore, will it stop here? or will it possibly start round
the world again? Will it go on yet many times more,
always beginning with the highest perfection yet attained,
weaker types dying out in front to make room,
till it shall become in its march a dazzling army of light?[317]
Is a millennium, perchance, to be reached in this cumulative
way, as the power of a magnet is increased by the
number of turns of the helix?”

[318]

[319]

“The sentiment of gain,” I say, continuing these wise
speculations, “has been the leading factor in drawing the
nations around the globe. Gold has been dangled as a
bait: first, the hope of it by conquest; later, in mines of
the precious metals. It has danced, Ariel-like, will-o’-the-wisp-like,
before them. Tantalized, disappointed, after
floundering on a ways, they have paused to develop the
lands upon which they found themselves.

“But now at length, when the vacant spaces are full,
and the need of subterfuge exhausted, the bait is cast
down, to be gorged upon by those who find it. Never
before, till ’49, were its followers rewarded with such unstinted
liberality. The treasure of the earth seemed piled
up in the fastnesses of the far Pacific.”

I recall that their yield since the year 1848 has reached
the sum of $2,100,000,000, and is still going on at
$80,000,000 a year. Gold, scattered at first in the very
sands, was later washed out of the gravel-banks, by the hydraulic
process, and later yet got by crushing the quartz
rock. When gold began to diminish it was followed by
silver. The great “Bonanza” mines of Nevada were
discovered. “Consolidated Virginia” alone produced
$65,000,000 in seven years.

IV.

What fabulous sums besides—to go back to town—the
managers made by the ingenious process of “milking the
market” I do not undertake to compute. The prices of
this celebrated stock at successive dates, not far apart,
were: first, $17 a share; then $1; $110; $42; $700; and
then, in the final collapse, in 1875, little or nothing at all.

[320]

I have seen a poor saloon called the “Auction Lunch,”
on Washington Street, near the Post-office, said to have
been kept by the once barkeepers, Flood and O’Brien,
who attained such a splendid prosperity. There is no
historic tablet over the door, but one naturally looks with
reverence at the place where the beginning of such things
could be. The proprietors of the “Auction Lunch” were
in the habit of taking gold-dust occasionally in a friendly
way from miners, for safe-keeping while the owners were
enjoying themselves about town. It was from such persons
that they obtained the “points” which resulted in
their getting possession first of “Hale and Norcross,” and
then of the greater part of the properties of the Comstock
lode.

I fell in with a professed friend of theirs of early times,
whose fortunes had not mended at all at the same pace.
He descanted on the inequalities of fate, and what he
termed “bull-dog” luck.

He could prove that Flood and O’Brien were not even
good business men—“though Jimmy Flood does go about
with a wise air,” he said, “and Billy O’Brien left, at his
death, half a million dollars to each of eight or ten nieces.”

There is hardly a limit to the exceptional characters
and exceptional doings to be heard of in San Francisco.
Though the city affect—or has been driven into—a quiescent
air now, it has hardly ever done anything like any
other place. It began with the wild Argonauts of ’49,
whom Bret Harte has so strikingly portrayed. It had
had six great fires, which destroyed property to the
amount of $23,000,000, when yet less than three years of
age. It was ruled for months, in the year 1856, by a vigilance
committee, which rid it of eight hundred evil-doers
of one sort and another, the worst by summary execution,
the rest by banishment.

[321]

The politics of the State before the war were Democratic,
with a rather strong Southern bias. There was a
long feud between the two great Senatorial paladins,
Broderick and Gwin, which resulted in the death of
Broderick by the duelling-pistol of one of the partisans
of the latter. There was the long fight and a final deliverance
from an incubus of forged Spanish land titles, the
manufacture of which “had become a business and a
trade,” and which covered the area of the city many
times over. Then came the war, and the peculiarities
growing out of the retention of a solid currency, while
the rest of the country was deluged with a depreciated
paper.

The brilliant period, later, when the Bonanza mines
were pouring out their floods of riches, and the favorite
stocks were running delightfully up and down the gamut
from $1 to $700 a share, was followed, as I have said, by
a depression of the deepest dye. In the unbearable disappointment
of their losses, and the stagnation of trade,
a part of the community snatched at a theory held out
to them by demagogues, that it was their political institutions
which were somehow to blame. Upon this basis a
singular new party, wild and half-communistic in character,
arose, and met with a brief success. The truckman,
Denis Kearney, was its Caius Gracchus or Watt Tyler,
and set it in motion with blasphemous mouthings from
an improvised tribune in the Sand-lots. It elected a
mayor who was at the same time a Baptist preacher.
This mayor’s son—preacher, too—rode up one day and
assassinated at his own door an editor who had passed
strictures on their course. The party voted a new constitution,
which was thought to be a prelude to universal
confiscation, and capitalists fled before it in alarm.

And, finally, this remarkable city, having become the
[322]recipient of a Chinese immigration which has given to a
part of it the aspect of a portion of the Flowery Kingdom,
has been agitated by fears of complete subversion under
Orientalism, and has originated new problems for political
economy and international law.

After but a tithe of such violent and novel experiences
any city would be glad to rest awhile. San Francisco
seems entering upon a new period, and likely to do things
henceforth more in the normal way. There has been a
time of contemplation, and the lessons of the past have
struck in. As things have slowly improved the gloom of
the reaction has disappeared after the unhealthy inflation
that gave it birth. The new political craze was of but
short duration. I never saw anywhere so quietly conducted
an election as that of the last autumn, which
dismissed the Kearney-Kalloch faction from power. A
special provision prevents the approach of any person but
the voter immediately engaged within one hundred feet
of a polling-place. I had rather expected to see dead and
maimed Chinamen lying at every corner, or fleeing before
infuriated crowds. But though San Franciscans entertain
beliefs of their own as to the undesirability of a
great Chinese immigration, during a long stay I neither
saw nor heard of an attempt to molest any individual on
account of it.

The new constitution itself proved a harmless bugaboo.
It is a gratifying tribute, in fact, to native common-sense
and Anglo-Saxon ideas that this instrument, produced in
a time of great excitement, and, as was charged, with the
most subversive intentions, should not only contain so little
that is dangerous, but so much in a high degree commendable.
It does not harm property. Frightened capital
may return with entire safety. I profess myself so
far a person of incendiary opinions as to hold that an
[323]honest directness of purpose in this new constitution, its
effort to simplify legislation and sweep away embarrassments,
often maintained much more in the interest of legislator
and lawyer than the public good, is well worthy of
imitation elsewhere.

Physical and commercial conditions are also changing.
Life hereafter will depend less upon spasmodic “finds,”
and more on the humdrum and legitimate industries.
Mining, though the supply of treasure, with improved
machinery, still holds out in a uniform way, takes a lesser
rank. Agriculture and manufactures come every
day more to the front. California produces an annual
wheat crop of $50,000,000, a wool crop of $10,000,000,
wines to the amount of $4,000,000, and fruits worth as
much more, though these last two branches are but in
their infancy. Of the greater part of all this San Francisco
is the entrepôt.

The smoke of the soft coals of Alaska, Oregon, and
Australia too may be allowed to thicken the air to some
purpose, since it produces manufactures to the amount of
$75,000,000 per annum.

---

I.

Kearney Street (sharing its distinction now with
Market Street) is, in sunshiny weather, the promenade
of all the leisurely and well-dressed. It abounds in jewellers,
who often combine the business of pawnbroking
with the other, and are fond of prefixing “Uncle” to
their names. Thus, “Uncle Johnson,” “Uncle Jackson,”
or “Uncle Thompson,” all along the way, make a genial
proffer of their hospitable service. There are shops of
Chinese and Japanese goods, though this is not the regular
quarter, and “Assiamull and Wassiamull” invite us
to inspect the goods of the East Indies.

Perhaps European foreigners of distinction—English
lords, M.P.’s, and younger sons, German barons and Russian
princes—on their way round the world, are not more
numerous than in New York, but they seem more numerous
in proportion. The books of the Palace Hotel
are seldom free of them, and they are detected, at a
glance, strolling on the streets or gazing at the large
photographs of the Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees
which hang at prominent corners.

There is a genial feeling about Kearney Street, which
arises, I think, from its being level—at the foot of the
steep hills. The temptation is to linger there as long as
possible. The instant you leave it for the residence portion
[325]of town you have to begin a back-breaking climb.
The ascent is like going up-stairs, and nothing less.

The San Francisco householder of means is “like the
herald Mercury new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.”
How in the world, I have asked, does he get up there?
Well, by the Cable road. I consider the Cable road one
of the very foremost in the list of curiosities, though I
have refrained from bringing it forward till now. It is a
peculiar kind of tramway, useful also on a level, but invented
for the purpose of overcoming steep elevations.

Two cars, coupled, are seen moving, at a high rate of
speed, without jar and in perfect safety, up and down all
these extraordinary undulations of ground. There is no
horse, no steam, no vestige of machinery, no ostensible
means of locomotion of any kind. The astonished comment
of the Chinaman, observing this marvel for the first
time, may be worth repeating once more, old as it is:

“Melican man’s wagon, no pushee, no pullee; go top-side
hill like flashee.”

The solution of the mystery is an endless wire cable
hidden in a box in the road-bed, and turning over a great
wheel in an engine-house at the top of the hill. The foremost
of the two cars is provided with a grip, or pincers,
running underneath in a continuous crevice in the box
with the cable. When the conductor wishes to go on he
clutches with his grip the cable; when he wishes to stop
he lets go and puts on a brake. There is no snow and
ice to clog the central crevice, which, by the necessities of
the case, must be open. The system has been applied,
however, with emendations, in Chicago, and is about to
be on the great Brooklyn Bridge, at New York.

The great houses on the hill, like almost all the residences
of the city, are of wood. It seems a pity, considering
the money spent, that this should be so. It is
[326]attributed to the superior warmth and dryness of wood
in so moist and cool a climate, and also to its security
against the shock of earthquakes. Whatever be the reason,
the San Francisco Crœsuses have reared for themselves
palaces which might be swept off at a breath and
leave no trace of their existence. Their architecture has
nothing to commend it to favor. They are large, rather
over-ornate, and of no particular style.

The Hopkins residence—a costly Gothic château, carried
out also in wood—may be excepted from this description.
The basement stories, however, are of stone, and
there is enough work in these and foundations to build
many a first-class Eastern mansion. To prepare sites for
habitations on the steep hills has been an enormous labor
and expense. The part played by retaining-walls, terraces,
and staircases is extraordinary. The merest wooden
cottage is often prefaced by works which outweigh its
own importance a dozen to one.

When a peerage is drawn up for San Francisco, the
grader will follow in rank the railroad-builder and the
miner. To hardly anybody else has such an amount of
lucrative employment been open. What a cutting and
filling! what gravelling and paving!

Striking freaks of surface and arrangement result.
The city might have been terraced up, like Genoa, or
Naples above the Chiaja. It is picturesque still, in the
thin, American way, through the absolute force of circumstances.
You enter the retaining-walls of stone or
plank through door-ways or grated archways like the
postern-gates of castles. You pass up stone steps in tunnels
or vine-covered arbors within these; or zigzag from
landing to landing of long, wooden stairways, without.
Odd little terrace streets and “places,” as Charles Place,
with bits of gardens, are found sandwiched between the
[327]regular formation. A wide thoroughfare, Second Street—cut
through Rincon Hill, the Nob Hill of a former day,
to afford access to water for vehicles—has been the occasion
of leaving isolated, high and dry, some few old
houses, with cypress-trees about them, approached by
wooden staircases almost interminable. Dark at sunset
against a red sky, for instance, they present effects to
delight the heart of an etcher.

In this line, however, nothing is equal to Telegraph
Hill, which bristles with the make-shift contrivances of a
much humbler population. Bret Harte lived there at
one time, and asserts that the goats used to browse on his
pots of geranium in the second-story windows. They
also pranced on the roof at night in such a way that a
new-comer thought there had been a fine thunder-storm.
Elsewhere, instead of precipices, you meet with chasms.
[328]Looking down from the roadway, you will see some poor
figure of a woman sewing in a bay-window which was
once filled with air and sunshine, but now commands
only a patch of mildewed wall.

The views from the hills are of no common order.
As you rise on the Cable road you hang in the air above
the body of the city, and above the harbor and its environment.
The Clay Street road, one of the steepest,
passes through the Chinese quarter. Half-way up an
ensign, of a blue-and-crimson dragon on an orange
field, on the Chinese Consulate-general, flies, a bright bit
of color in the foreground. The bay, far below the eye,
has an opaque look. On some rare days it is very blue
in color, but oftener it is of slate or greenish gray. Passing
vessels criss-cross their wakes in white upon the
green like pencils on a slate.

The atmosphere above it is rarely clear. Some lurking
wisp of fog at best is generally stealing in at the Golden
Gate, or under dark Tamalpais, watching to rush over
and seize upon the city. An obscurity, part of fog and
part of smoke, hovers in areas, now enveloping only the
town, again the prospect, so that nothing can be seen,
though the town itself be free. Now it lifts momentarily
from the horizon for glimpses of distant islands and
cities, and the peak of Mount Diablo, thirty miles away,
and shuts down as suddenly as if these were but figments
of a vision.

The view down upon the lights at night is particularly
striking. Set in constellations, or radiating in formal
lines, they are like the bivouac of a great army. It
might be the hosts of Armageddon were encamped
round about awaiting the dawn. For several days, from
California Street Hill, there was the spectacle of a devastating
fire in the woods of Mount Tamalpais. Its dark
[329]smoke rendered the sunsets lurid and ominous, and at
night the burning mountain, reflected in the bay, was a
more terrible Vesuvius or Hecla.

II.

One is hardly supposed to “travel” as yet in America
as in Europe. We make our journeys here for definite
objects, chiefly on business. No doubt, if we could bring
ourselves to the same receptive frame of mind, the same
readiness to be amused by odds-and-ends of experience,
a good deal the same kind of pleasure could be got out
of it as there. San Francisco at least appears to afford
a few of exactly the same details which receive the attention
of the leisurely abroad.

Italian fishermen eat macaroni, and drink red wine,
and wait upon the tides, about the vicinity of Broadway
and Front Streets. The Italian colony, for the rest, is
pretty numerous. The part that remains on shore is
chiefly composed of grocers, butchers, and restaurateurs.
Chinese shrimp-catchers are found in the cove at Potrero,
behind the large new manufacturing buildings of
that quarter, and again at San Bruno Point, twelve
miles down the bay. Their boats and junks are not
on a large scale, but display the usual peculiarities of
their nautical architecture.

The French colony is also numerous, and the language
heard continually on the street. Taking advantage of
the variety and excellence of supplies in the markets,
French restaurants furnish repasts—including a half-bottle
of wine of the country—of extraordinary cheapness.
A considerable Mexican and Spanish contingent
mingles also with the Italians, along Upper Dupont,
Vallejo, and Green Streets. Shops with such titles as
[330]La Sorpresa and the Tienda Mexicana adjoin the Unità
d’Italia and the Roma saloon. A Mexican militia company
turns out, under the green, white, and red tricolor,
on every anniversary of the national independence, the
16th of September. During the Carnival season a form
of entertainment known as “Cascarone parties” prevails
among the Spanish residents. The participants pelt one
another with egg-shells filled with gilt and colored papers.
Sometimes a canvas fort is erected in the street,
and attacked and defended by means of these missiles
and handfuls of flour. Such Spanish life as there is can
hardly be said to have remained from the early days,
since the Spanish settlement at best was infinitesimal. It
has been attracted here in the mean time like other immigration.
A dusky mother, smoking a cigarette, in a
hammock, in a palm-thatched hut, on the Acapulco trail,
told me of a son who had gone to San Francisco twenty
years before and become a carpenter there. He had forgotten
now, she heard, even how to speak his native
language.

The Latin race seems to have been especially attracted
to the country of a mild climate and original traditions
like their own. But German and Scandinavian names
too on the sign-boards—Russian Ivanovich and Abramovich,
and Hungarian Haraszthy—show that no one blood
or influence has exclusive sway. There appears to be
an unusually free intermingling and giving in marriage
among these various components. They are less clannish
than with us. Lady Wortley Montagu remarked, at Constantinople,
some hundred years ago, a similar fusion,
and believed it a reason for a debased and mongrel race.
But a very different class of blood mingles here from
that of Orientals at Constantinople. Our much more
cheerful theory is, that we are to combine the best qualities,
the hardihood and good looks of all, while eliminating
their defects. Certainly the bright, intelligent aspect
of the children of San Francisco does nothing as yet to
discredit such a theory.

[331]

[332]

Such vestiges of ’49 as yet remain are extremely few.
I confess to surprise as well at the slightness of the historic
records at the Pioneer Society. I make little doubt
that they could be easily paralleled in many other libraries
of the country. “North Beach,” under Telegraph
Hill, may be visited both for its memories and present
aspect of picturesque ruin. It is where the pioneer ships
landed. Hence, also, the ill-fated Ralston swam out into
the bay, and here are the remains of “Harry Meigs’s
Wharf.” Harry Meigs was a famous prototype of
Ralston’s in the Fifties. Defeated in brilliant financial
schemes, and having endeavored to save his defeat by
forgery, he was obliged to take flight. He chartered a
schooner to take him to the South Sea Islands, which lay
off the wharf for him at midnight.

“This is hell,” he is reported to have said as he
stepped on board, expressing thus his Lucifer-like sense
of humiliation and downfall.

He did not remain long at the South Sea Islands, but
sailed for Peru. There he began the world again, built
all the railways of that republic, became a great millionnaire,
sent back and paid all his debts, and was divested,
by act of Legislature, so far as legislation could do it, of
the stigma of his crimes. His story is by no means a
good one to hold up to the emulation of youth, but it is
romantic, and in some sense characteristic of California.

The blackened old pier is a dumping-place for city
refuse now, and swarms of chiffoniers gather around it
to pick out such scraps of value as they may before they
are washed away by the daily tides.

[333]

The leading streets of San Francisco commemorate the
pioneers of State or place. A newer series adopts the
names of the States of the Union, and simple numbers,
which are carried already to Forty-fifth, for avenues, and
Thirtieth for streets. The fast-growing, tough, fragrant,
but scrawny, eucalyptus is much in use as a shade-tree.
In the door-yards grow cypresses, the Spanish-bayonet,
and the ordinary flowers, needing a great deal of sprinkling
to keep them in good order.

The San Francisco school of writers, developed in the
successful days of the Overland Monthly, have not made
much use of the city itself in their literature. Bret Harte
confined his local range to the doings of certain small
boys, some “Sidewalkings,” and the disagreeable features
of the climate, in “Neighborhoods I Have Moved From.”
It was from Folsom Street that the adventurous Master
Charles Summerton, aged five, set out for his great expedition
to Van Dieman’s Land, by way of the Second and
Market Street cars. I had occasion to visit Folsom Street
sometimes, and even this slight incident—such is the potency
of the literary touch—has given it a genial interest
which many others, as good in appearance, and even
stately Van Ness Avenue, on the other side of town—very
much better—by no means share.

III.

San Francisco offers, in my view, the advantage of
saving a trip around the world. Whoever, having seen
Europe, shrinks from farther wanderings may derive here
from a compact Chinese city of 30,000 souls such an idea
of the life and doings of the Celestial Empire as may
appease curiosity and take the place of a voyage to the
Orient.

[334]

The Chinese immigrants, it is true, rarely erect buildings
of their own, but fit themselves to what they find.
They fit themselves in with all their peculiar industries,
their smells of tobacco and cooking-oil, their red and yellow
signs and hand-bills, opium pipes, high-soled slippers,
sticks of India ink, silver pins, and packets of face-powder,
their fruits and fish, their curious groceries and more
curious butcher’s meat—they have fitted all this into the
Yankee buildings, and taken such absolute possession that
we are no longer in America, but Shanghai or Hong-Kong.
The restaurants make the nearest approach to the
national façades, but this is brought about by adding
highly-decorated balconies, lanterns, and inscriptions, and
not building outright.

I had the curiosity to try one of the best of the restaurants—quite
a gorgeous affair, at the head of Commercial
Street—and found the fare both neatly served and palatable.
There was a certain monotony in the bill, which I
ascribed to a desire to give us dishes as near the American
style as possible. We had chicken-soup, with flour
paste resembling macaroni; a very tender chicken, sliced,
through bones and all, in a bowl; a bowl of duck; a pewter
chafing-dish of quail with spinach. All the food is set
out in bowls, and each helps himself, with ebony chopsticks,
to such morsels as he desires. The chopsticks, held
in the fingers of the right hand, somewhat after the manner
of castanets, are about as convenient to the novice as
a pair of lead-pencils. We drank saki, or rice brandy, in
infinitesimal cups, during the dinner, and at dessert very
fine tea.

The upper story of these places is reserved for guests
of the better class. Those of slender purses are accommodated
below. To these is served a second drawing of
the same tea which has been used, and such meats as remain[335]
in a tolerable state. The upper story is decorated
with carved work, painted scarlet, and heavily gilded, and
screens, lanterns, and teak-wood tables and stools; while
below pine-wood tables are deemed good enough.

[336]

[337]

Dropping in late one evening for a cup of tea, I had
the fortune to witness a supper-party—a novel, genre picture,
glowing with color. There were a dozen dignified-looking
men, dressed in handsome silk clothing—black,
blue, and purple. With them were as many women—young,
slender, and pretty, of their type, while the women
seen walking about the streets are very coarse and clumsy.
[338]Their black hair was carefully smoothed, and looped up
with silver pins, and their complexions were daintily made
of pink and white and vermilion, realizing exactly the
heads painted on their silken fans. The most interesting
girl was of Fellah or Hebrew aspect, and was probably
not without an admixture of other blood in her veins.
The men occupied carved teak-wood stools about a large
table, spread with a white cloth, and covered with charming
china. The women stood by and served them. Now
and then one of the latter rested momentarily on a corner
of a stool, in a laughing way, and took a morsel also. The
whole was a bit of bright Chinoiserie worth a long journey
to witness.

They were very merry, and played, among other amusements,
a game like the Italian mora. In this one would
hold up fingers in rapid succession, while the others
shouted the probable number at the tops of their voices.
What with this, their laughter, drumming on the table,
and general hubbub, besides an orchestra of their peculiar
music adding its din from behind a screen, they were not
very unlike a party of Parisian canotiers and grisettes
supping at Bougival.

The temple and the theatre of the Chinese emigrant
have an identical character wherever he goes. I found
here the same scenes in both I had witnessed in Havana
at the beginning of my journey. The temple, economically
set up in some upper rear room, abounds in gaudy
signs and some good bronzes, but is little frequented.
The theatre is far more popular. The dresses used here
are rich and interesting. The performers are continually
marching, fighting, spinning about, pretending to be
dead and jumping up again, and singing in high, cracked
voices like the whine of a bagpipe. A doughty warrior,
who may be Gengis Khan or Timour the Tartar, and bear
himself with the “most haughty stride and withering
pride,” will sing you his lines in this same puny, whining
voice, and no other. The slightness of the means of illusion
is a naïve feature of interest in the Chinese drama.
As one of the simple rustics in the Midsummer Night’s
Dream holds up an arm to represent a wall, across which
Pyramus and Thisbe are supposed to talk, so here, if it
be designed, for instance, to represent the march of an
army through the woods, a screen is put up at one side
of the stage, bearing an inscription which no doubt says
“Woods,” and around this the military betake themselves.

[339]

[340]

The cemetery is more curious even than the theatre of
Chinadom in San Francisco. I came upon it in the course
of a long stroll one afternoon, and was almost the only
spectator of some peculiar ceremonial rites in propitiation
of the dead. It is not grouped in the general Golgotha at
Lone Mountain, but adjoins that devoted to the city paupers,
out among the melancholy sand-dunes by the ocean.
It is parcelled off by white fences into a large number of
enclosures for separate burial guilds, or tongs. These have
large signs upon them—“Fook Yam Tong,” “Tung Sen
Tong,” “Ye On Tong,” etc. One has almost difficulty
to persuade himself that he is awake witnessing such doings
as here take place in the broad sunlight of Yankee-land.

It is the practice to convey the bones of their dead to
China, but there are preliminary funerals in regular form.
All the “hacks” in San Francisco are often engaged.
The bones are left in the ground a year or more before
removal.

Toward three in the afternoon a number of express-wagons
of the common sort drove up with freights of
Chinamen and Chinawomen, and curiously assorted provisions.
[341]The “hoodlum” drivers conducted themselves
peaceably enough, but seemed to have a certain sardonic
air at the idea of having to draw their profits from patrons
of such a class. The provisions were unloaded, taken
up and laid on small wooden altars, of which there is one
at the front of each tong. Most conspicuous were whole
roast pigs, decorated with ribbons and colored papers.
There were next roast fowls, rice, salads, sweetmeats,
fruits, cigars, and rice brandy. The participants set to
work to fire revolvers, bombs, and crackers, kindle packages
of colored paper, make profound genuflections before
the graves, and scatter libations upon them of food and
liquors. Only the roast pigs were reserved and taken
home again; all the rest was scattered about. The din
and smoke increased apace; the strange-garbed figures
pranced about like sorcerers, and the decorated pigs
loomed out with a goblin air. It seemed a veritable
witches’ Sabbath. Some of the fruits and cigars were
hospitably offered to me as I looked on; and I will say
that parsimony does not seem a vice of the Chinaman,
though he lives upon so little, and is content with moderate
returns.

Coming back the same way in the evening, I noted
prowling figures of white men among the graves, gathering
up the fragments cast down by the improvident
heathen.

I am glad, on the whole, not to have the mooted Chinese
question to settle in person. On the one hand, a
great law of political economy—the natural right of man
to seek happiness where he will; on the other, a view that
the best good of a community does not necessarily consist
in mere size and value of “improvements.” The reflective
mind will find it rather in the greatest average distribution
of comfort. I should say that there have been no
[342]evils of consequence experienced from the presence of the
Chinese population as yet. Without them the railroads
could not have been built, nor the agricultural nor mining
interests developed. With all the complaint, too, of
competition, the wages of white labor are better here than
at the East, and the cost of living is certainly not more.

A proper male costume for San Francisco is humorously
said to be a linen duster with a fur collar. The
variability of the climate within brief spaces of time is
thus indicated. It varies largely, in fact, in different
parts of the same day, though the mean for the year is
remarkably even. The mean for January—the coldest
month—is but fifty degrees, and for September—the
warmest—fifty-eight. It is a famous climate for work,
but the average temperature, as is seen, is pretty low for
comfort. People go away for warmth in the summer
quite as much as for coolness. The rainy season—the
winter—is really the pleasantest of the year. The air is
clearer then, while the prospects are verdant and best
worthy to be seen. At other times fogs prevail, or bleak
winds arise in the afternoon, and blow dust, in a dreary
way, into the eyes of all whose misfortune calls them to
be then in the streets.

We return to town from our Chinese ceremony along
wide Point Lobos Avenue, the drive to the Cliff House.
It is skirted on one side by the public pleasure-ground,
Golden Gate Park, an area of half a mile by three miles
and a half, which is being redeemed from an original condition
of drifting sand in a wonderful way. All the outer
tract near the ocean is as desert and yellow as Sahara. A
few scattered dwellings appear in the sands, each with its
water-tank and wind-mill, a yucca-plant or two, and some
knots of tough grass about it. The city appears on the
edge of the steep, as if it were looking over in surprise.

---

I.

I had marked out as a field of travel Southern California.

It is not easy to decide on the instant just what Southern
California should be deemed to comprehend. Most of
the State, leaving out the mining and lumbering districts,
displays some of those tropical features in which the idea
of Southernness to the imagination of the temperate climates
consists. You see orange, fig, and pomegranate
trees surrounding pleasant homes at Sonoma, well to the
north of San Francisco. One of the most important districts
for raisin-culture is near Sacramento and Marysville,
north-west. At the springs of Calistoga, seventy-five
miles north, is found a group of the finest palm-trees
in California. It is safe to assume, however, that all this
will be found in the greater perfection as the low latitudes
are approached.

San Francisco lies not far from midway of the State, and
Southern California may conveniently be taken as all that
part south of the seaport and metropolis. It was upon
the area just below, around the Bay, that the Rev. Starr
King lavished his most polished eulogies, describing the
“flowers by the acre, flowers by the square mile,” which
he saw there, in the spring. To the vicinity of San José,
fifty miles down, Bayard Taylor proposed (if he should
[344]live to be old, and note his faculties failing) to retire in
order to renew his youth. And but seventy-five miles
farther south are the summer resorts—and winter resorts
as well—of Santa Cruz and Monterey.

I set out in mid-autumn, the time of the county fairs,
when the products of an agricultural country should be
seen to particular advantage. There was held at San
José the combined fair of the counties of Santa Clara
and Santa Cruz, and that I made my first objective
point.

There are no means of exit from San Francisco by land
except to the southward, the long, narrow peninsula on
which it lies being surrounded on all other sides by water.
One may cross, however, by ferry to Oakland—the Jersey
City and Hoboken, as well as Brooklyn, of the place—and
go around the bay on that side by a road which reaches
San José also. In doing so you traverse Alameda County,
which raises nearly a million bushels of wheat a year
from a single township, together with tons of sugar-beets,
and more hay than any other county in the State. It
comes third also in rank for grape-vines, and has tropical
pretensions of its own, making an exhibit of orange and
lemon trees in certain favored nooks. But the more direct
way is the coast division of the Southern Pacific
Railway, down the peninsula.

Let us glance at topography a moment. California is
fenced off into valleys by two long north and south
ranges—the Sierra Nevadas, immensely high, and the
lower Coast Range. These meet in acute points, north
at Shasta, and south at the Tejon Pass, and become one.
They enclose between them the vast central space known
in its upper portion as the Sacramento Valley, and its
lower as the San Joaquin Valley, from the two main rivers
by which it is drained. The granite Sierra Nevadas
contain the peaks of from thirteen to fifteen thousand feet
elevation which have obtained an extensive fame in the
world. The Coast Range, of softer materials, averages
only from two to six thousand feet.

[345]

[346]

The Sierra Nevadas do not greatly divide their strength,
but the Coast Range throws out frequent spurs parallel
to itself. These take separate names, as Sierra Morena,
Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz mountains, and form numerous
long, narrow valleys and benches of table-land between
themselves and the Pacific Ocean.

Down the large Santa Clara Valley, one of those formed
in this way in the midst of a diversified region, our first
excursion takes us.

By the time the files of freight-cars constituting the
immediate environs of all American cities are passed we
find ourselves running through a tract of small vegetable
gardens and windmills. Clusters of buildings in white
enclosures, that looked from town, on their hills, like
Mexican haciendas, are “institutions” of various sorts.
A long arm of San Francisco Bay accompanies us thirty
miles south, and is seen gleaming to the left, with a wide
stretch of marsh between. Ark-like structures on piles, at
intervals along the water’s edge, are guard-houses, keeping
watch over beds of the small California oyster, which has
never yet been either coaxed or driven into a grandeur commensurate
with the pretensions of everything else about it.

The conception that has gone out about Southern California
is that it is an earthly Paradise. I will say at once
that it is very charming, even in the dry season, but it
is an earthly Paradise very different from the best idea
of it one has been able to get by previous investigation.
I found myself there, in short, in the dry season, and
most writers have spoken of it only as viewed in the
season of rains and verdure.

[347]

The guide-book promises, “after a few minutes’ ride,
orchards, vineyards, elegant farm-houses, prospects to
charm all who love the beauties of nature.” But, really—one
rubs his eyes—where are they? The ground is
mournfully bare and brown. Hardly a tree or a bush is
seen; not a green blade of grass. At length some small
trees, a variety of scrub-oaks, at a little distance resembling
the olive! Farm-houses are few, and not at all
“elegant.” The hills are of the color of camel’s hide,
and not unlike the camel’s humps.

At Millbrae, finally, there is a glimpse of the wooden
towers, in the American style, of a villa, and a large
dairy barn. At Belmont the low hills are close at hand.
At Menlo Park a charming flower-bed is cared for, by
the track, as at foreign railway-stations. We are in
the chosen site for villa residences of the San Francisco
millionnaires. The surface is flat, and with its growth of
oaks recalls the outskirts of Chicago, as at Hyde Park or
Riverside.

The valley widens till the hills are distant and veiled in
blue, with tawny grain-fields between; but still no verdure!
And where are the wild flowers? One hardly
expects them now “by the acre and by the square mile,”
it is true, since it is autumn; but of all the primroses,
the larkspur, the lupin, the poppies of tradition, not one!
Not a narcissus! not a chrysanthemum! Oh, my predecessors!
what shall I think of you?

In the spring the flowers bloom and carpet the earth
as grass carpets it elsewhere. Speaking of the spring the
eulogists do not say a word too much. But it is my
originality to have seen Southern California in the autumn
and winter—as it is for seven months of every
year, and as it may be, in exceptional seasons, the whole
year through.

[348]

Not to make a great deal of this bareness and dryness
would be to neglect a most essential feature. The annual
rains begin in December, January, or February, and
continue till June, diminishing in May, which is sometimes
itself a dry month. In the autumn the leaves fall—what
comparatively few there are to fall—as elsewhere,
and are not renewed.

“But you set up to be a land of perpetual summer,
you know,” one argues with the Californian, in the first
state of surprise.

“So we are,” he replies; “but that does not necessarily
mean perpetual verdure. Look at the thermometer!
look at the fertility of the land! You have but to run
water on it by irrigation, and it will do whatever you
please. Contrast this brown season with your own white
one. The land is dry and easy to get about on, and the
sky above is uniformly pleasant. Do you prefer your
fields of sheeted snow, under the howling blasts? your
quagmires of mud and slush, alternately freezing and
thawing?”

“Very true,” I admit, accepting this different point of
view.

Then, perhaps, by way of finishing touch, he adds,
rising to a dignity well justified by the facts, “California
sets up to be a land of relations, commercial, agricultural,
mineral, and social, which have made it a power in the
world. It has revolutionized values, struck the key-note
of new social conditions, and begun a new commercial
era. California has arrived at a point where she takes
her place in the Union on the ordinary terms. We no
longer depend upon a repute for astounding beauties and
eccentricities—though of these, too, there is no lack, as
you will find.”

[349]

II.

San José, a city of twenty thousand people, contests
with Sacramento the honor of being third in importance
in the State. You alight there at the small station. In
the vicinity are a waiting horse-car, a blacksmith’s shop,
and rail-fences painted with advertisements. These have
a very American look, to begin with, for a place with a
romantic Spanish name—a place to which you are recommended
to come in search of the elixir of life. And so
have the small picket-fences an American look, and the
comfortable little clapboarded wooden houses behind
them, with scroll-sawed ornaments in their piazzas.
With the exception of an unusual number of French
and Italian names on the sign-boards, and some large,
clean tuns in front of the shops of dealers in native
wines, it is as downright a little Yankee town as ever
was. There is much shade in the streets, and in a public
green, but the trees are yet too small and low.

It is a clean, prosperous city, the centre of a rich agricultural
district. It has excellent schools and all the
other conveniences of life. A good deal of money has
been spent on the principal business buildings. As in
most other provincial towns throughout the State, they
are much covered with bay-windows, in what might be
described as the San Francisco style of architecture. An
iron trestle-work tower was going up at the intersection
of the two main streets, to rise to a height of two hundred
feet, to contain an electric light and illuminate the
town. The white Court-house, in the classic style,
though not large, is agreeably proportioned, and quite
a model of its kind.

The week’s doings at the Fair Grounds resolved themselves
[350]chiefly into trotting-matches. I was told that the
combined display of the two counties was poorer this
year than either was in the habit of making alone.
There was racing and ornamental riding, one day, by
young women, and those who took premiums were girls
of but fourteen and sixteen. Another popular feature of
these county fairs was “firemen’s tournaments,” in which
different companies held contests of speed, equipped with
all their paraphernalia.

There was but a scattering display of live-stock, and
little or no fruit. The two-hundred-pound squash, the
twenty-six-pound turnip, the beet five feet in length and
a foot through, the apples and pears commensurate with
these, were not shown. I had seen them before, and did
not much regret their absence. I have a lurking suspicion
that there is a standard of the vegetable as of the
human race, and that the Tom Thumbs and General
Bateses of the one are not more fortunate in their departure
from it than those of the other.

The capacity of the country to produce fruits, not
simply of abnormal size, but fine quality—excepting the
apple, which requires extremes of heat and cold, and
remains insipid—has, perhaps, been too well tested to
need competitive exhibitions. What better county fair
than the daily display of fruits and vegetables in the San
Francisco market? The regular season for any and all
of them is twice as long as on the Atlantic coast at corresponding
latitudes.

I traversed the much-eulogized “Alameda,” an avenue
of willows and poplars, of three miles, set out, in 1799,
by Spanish friars. These founded a mission among the
Indians at Santa Clara, to which town the avenue extends.
There remains at Santa Clara the chapel of the
mission, with its adobe walls, five feet thick, and flat
[351]wooden ceiling, rudely painted. It is now a part of a
flourishing collegiate institution. Across the way is a
clump of ruinous old adobe cottages of the same date;
but we are adjured to pay no great heed to these, since
we are going presently to Monterey, which has, as it
were, a grand specialty of all that kind of thing.

The Alameda poplars and willows make but a moderate
showing for their age, and can hardly be rated equal
to New Haven elms, for instance. Behind them, along
both sides of the road, are houses of a bourgeois comfort,
as in the town. There are said to be residents of wealth
and leisure who have been attracted here to pass the remainder
of their days in peace. The Coast Mountains,
they say, cut off the fogs and winds of the ocean, and a
higher range on the other side bars out the heats of the
country eastward. We endeavor to divine, in some superior
refinement of taste and sentiment, the abodes of
these particular ones. It is a pleasant conception, that
of coming here to live for the pure physical delight in
living, and highly interesting. Perhaps their daughters
will stand by the gates with a certain repining mingled
with their air of superior distinction, as if they, for their
part, had not quite so willingly consented to abandon a
world of larger opportunities. But we do not succeed.
Some of these residents are simply rude mining men who
have broken their constitutions in Nevada and Utah;
and, after all, the desire to live a life of physical contentment
does not imply taste in architecture and landscape
gardening.

III.

One had expected a good deal of novelty and picturesqueness
from these towns, of romantic “San” and
“Santa,” and “Los” and “Del,” and feels rather aggrieved
[352]not to get so much of it. Its absence is explained
in part by the fact that there were rarely original settlements
corresponding to the present names. These are
taken rather from ranches, springs, or mines in the neighborhood.
On the arrival of the Americans in California
there were but thirteen thousand Spanish, or Mexicans,
all told, while the territory was as large as New York,
Pennsylvania, and the six New England States put together.

Let us believe that the pleasing designations will act as
a stimulus, and these communities will live up to their
names in time, as they never could have done were they
simply Smithville and Jonesville.

The impressions at San José, and in the country at
large, resulting from a second visit a month later, were
more agreeable. Something like the proper point of
view had then been attained. The face of nature was to
be parched, and the towns rather commonplace; but the
continued cloudlessness of the sky, and quality of the air,
were more, and the peculiar form of pleasure was settled
where it belonged.

The district of villa residences of the millionnaires,
when penetrated, gained much in attractiveness. There
are white-oaks and chestnut-oaks, as well as scrub-oaks, in
groups of a park-like appearance, and live-oaks, with long,
gray Spanish moss depending from them. If there are no
wild flowers, there are plenty of the cultivated sort, with
lawns kept green by fountains and hose. Where there is
water, the winter, or brown season, need never extend.

As a rule, long stretches of white picket-fence surround
the places, and the houses themselves are white.

The bonanza kings have been invested with a greater
air of magnificence than really belongs to them. Their
places cost them immense sums, it is true, but a reduction
[353]should be made to Eastern standards. The outpouring of
untold millions put up the prices of land, labor, and every
commodity entering into the result, so that less was obtained
for the money than an equal expenditure would
have procured here. The Menlo Park district is inferior
to Llewellyn Park, Englewood, Irvington, and others, in
the neighborhood of New York.

The builders have struck out a kind of style of their
own, perhaps in too great haste to wait for imported
ideas. The houses are chiefly of wood. Flood, of Flood
& O’Brien, and “Consolidated Virginia” when the great
bonanza was struck, had just completed one of great size,
on an estate of five hundred acres, at Menlo Park. There
was a terrace, with a fine bronze fountain. The main
steps were of polished marble with bronze sphinxes, and
bronze dragons studded the ornate stables—the whole
glaring, white, and over-gorgeous, like listening to the
noise of a brass band.

There are some gentler, more home-like places, and recalling
the tone of rural life at the East. Such a one is
that of ex-Governor Leland Stanford, at Palo Alto. Here
is a breeding farm for horses, one of the most complete of
the kind in the world. Of seventeen hundred acres one
hundred are occupied by stables, barns, and small paddocks,
which, at the foot of a gentle rise of ground, make
a small city by themselves. It is inhabited by a population
of nearly five hundred animals, who return hither
from business, as it were, in the pastures and race-tracks,
and have two hundred persons employed in their domestic
service. The spacious stables are uniformly floored
and ceiled up with redwood, strewn with the freshest
straw, and kept as neat as the most unexceptionable
drawing-room.

Scions of the stock, representing the best thoroughbred
[354]and trotting strains
in the country, are
an important influence
in improving
the breed of horses
throughout the Pacific
slope. It was
here that the curious
experiments were
conducted, at the
expense of Governor
Stanford, for arriving
at a better understanding of the speed of horses
by photographing them in motion. The photographer,
Muybridge, of San Francisco, succeeded, by an ingenious
arrangement of electrical wires, communicating with cameras,
in securing twelve distinct views of a single stride.
The attitudes are of the most unexpected sort, and some
of them even comic.

[355]

From the time of foaling the colts are gently handled,
and made as familiar with the touch of harness as with
that of human hands. As a consequence they are tame,
gentle, and even affectionate, and never need formal
breaking. The effect of the system of training has been
apparent in some notable records of speed. On the Bay
District Association track, at San Francisco, in 1880, the
two-year-old Fred Crocker lowered the record for a one-mile
trot to 2′ 25¼″. Last year Bonita, a two-year-old
filly, cut it down to 2′ 24½″. At the same trotting exhibition
Wildflower, another two-year-old, made the mile
in 2′ 21″; and Hinda Rose, a yearling filly, added to the
fame of the farm by cutting down the yearling record to
2′ 36½″.

The interiors of these fine villas are, as a rule, better
than the exteriors. The Mills house, at Millbrae, residence
of a banking and railway magnate, now of New
York, is a notable collection of portières and Oriental
rugs, and bed-chambers done in the finest woods, with a
picture-gallery of works of Gérôme, Detaille, and Bouguereau,
while from all the windows are vistas of fan-palms,
flower-beds, greensward, and bronzes.

Ralston’s old house, at Belmont, now the property of
Senator Sharon, is of those of the greatest interest, through
interest in the remarkable man who built it. Starting
from humble origin, he rose to be a great capitalist and
the promoter of brilliant schemes of improvement, both
public and private. He conducted to success a hundred
projects which in other hands would have been folly, and
arrived thus at such an unbounded confidence in his star
that he thought he could not fail. He was entangled at
last, however, in schemes beyond his control. Strong and
athletic, and in the prime of life, he went down to “Harry
Meigs’s” wharf, in San Francisco—almost the very point
[356]from which his great prototype sailed away to Peru—and
swam out half a mile into the bay. It was for refreshment
in his troubles, as some say, but, as the general
opinion is, with the purpose of suicide. At any rate he
was never seen alive again.

The house that was his is notched into the hill-side, in
a rolling country, much pleasanter than the plain at Menlo
Park. A pretty gorge behind it is dammed to furnish
a water-supply. There are gas-works, a bowling-alley, and
an elaborate Turkish bath among the out-buildings, and
a grange-like barn of solid stone, ivy-grown, which cost
$80,000. The immense house is wood, white, in the usual
fashion, and, with its numerous stories and windows, is
not unlike a large country hotel. A peculiar arrangement
and great spaciousness give it a palatial air within.
The principal rooms open into one another by glass partitions,
which can be rolled away, so that in large gatherings
there need be no crowding through door-ways.
There is an arcade above, around a grand staircase, with
tribunes projecting, in which young women in colors, at
an evening party, for instance, would look particularly
houri-like. What in another house would be the ordinary
veranda is here a delightful promenade, glazed in,
and provided with easy furniture and a parquetry floor.
Behind a row of such main apartments as drawing-room
and library comes a parallel row, of which one is a great
ball-room, entirely faced with mirrors. Pianos, mantels,
and stair-posts are of California laurel—a new industry
encouraged by the owner among many others.

[357]

[358]

We drove from Belmont back through a succession of
cup-like dells in the lower mountains, a number of them
dammed to form pretty lakes, the sources of supply for
the Spring Valley Water Company—a corporation of
great prominence at San Francisco. The slopes at first
were tawny with grain stubble; then scattered with the
thick bush known as chaparral; then bare. We passed
an occasional lonely farm known as a “milk ranch,”
or “chicken ranch.” There are no farms in California;
no matter how small the tract is, it is always a ranch.

In the strong, warm sunshine chance objects on the
bare slopes cast intense, purplish shadows. That of a
distant tree is as dark as if a pit had been dug under it.
That of a bird, flying low, is followed as distinctly as the
bird itself. You are reconciled at last to the brown
tone. It is like Algeria. White stands out in brilliant
relief against it. One would rather like it to be a different
white, however, than that of the little wooden
houses. The falconers of Fromentin might career or
the rival Arab chiefs of Pasini hold conferences among
such hills.

---

I.

It was the pleasant vintage season at San José. Santa
Clara County, of which San José is the capital, boasts
of a number of acres of grape-vines under cultivation
(over eleven thousand) second only to Sonoma County.
Napa, however, to the north, and Los Angeles, to the
south, greatly surpass it in gallons of wine and brandy
produced.

I visited, among others, the Le Franc vineyard, which
dates from 1851, and is the pioneer in making wine-growing
a regular industry. Here are about a hundred and
seventy-five thousand vines, set out a thousand, perhaps,
to the acre. The large, cheerful farm buildings are upon
a gentle rise of ground above the area of vines, which is
nearly level. An Alsacian foreman showed us through
the wine-cellars. A servant-maid bustling about the
yard was a thorough French peasant, only lacking the
wooden shoes. The long tables, set for the forty hands
employed in the vintage-time, were spread with viands
in the French fashion. Scarcely a word of English was
spoken.

At other places the surroundings are as exclusively
Italian or Portuguese. One feels very much abroad in
such scenes on American soil. The foreigners from
Southern Europe take naturally to wine-making and go
[360]into it, from the few hundred gallons of red wine made
by the Portuguese and Italian laborers for their own
families, to the manufacture of an American champagne
on a large scale by the Hungarian, Arpad Haraszthy, at
San Francisco. The Americans, who have not acquired
the habit of looking upon wine as a necessity in the
family, are not yet, as a rule, very active in its production.

A certain romantic interest attaches to this ancient industry.
The great tuns in the wine-cellars and all the
processes were very clean. It was re-assuring to see the
pure juice of the grape poured out in such floods, and to
feel that here was no need—founded on scarcity, at least—for
adulteration.

Teeming loads of the purple fruit were driven up, and
across a weighing scale. The contents are lifted to an
upper story, put into a hopper, where the stems come
off, and the grapes fall through to a crusher. They are
lightly crushed at first. It is something of a discovery
that the earliest product of grapes of every hue is white
wine. The red wine gets its hue from the coloring matter
in the skins, which are utilized in a subsequent ruder
squeezing.

I shall not enter upon all the various processes—the
racking off, clarifying, and the like—though, so much in
the company of those who spoke with authority and were
continually holding up little glasses to the light with
a gusto, like figures in popular chromos, I consider
myself to yield in knowledge of such abstruse matters
to none. Immense upright casks, containing a warm,
audibly fermenting mass, and others lying down, neatly
varnished, with concave ends, are the most salient features
in the dimly lighted wine-cellars.

[361]

[362]

They are not cellars, properly so called, either, since
they are wholly above-ground. The casks rest on
wooden sills upheld by short brick posts. In the cellars
of General Naglee, a successful maker of brandy on a
large scale, the cobwebs have been allowed to increase
and hang like tattered banners. Through these the light
penetrates dimly from above, or with a white glare from
a latticed window, upon which the patterns of vine-leaves
without are defined. The buildings are brown,
gray, and vine-clad, with quaint, Dutch-pavilion-looking
roofs, and dove-cotes attached. A lofty water-tank, with
a wind-mill—a feature of every California rural homestead—here
is more tower-like than usual.

Round about extend long avenues of eucalyptus, pine,
tamarind, with its black, dry pods; the pepper-tree, with
its scarlet berries; large clumps of the nopal cactus, and
an occasional maguey, or century-plant. All is glowing
now with the tints of autumn. Poplar and cottonwood
are yellow. The peach and almond, the Lawton blackberry,
and the vineyards themselves, touched by frost,
supply the scarlet and crimson. The country seems
bathed in a fixed sunshine, or in hues of its own wines.

The vines, themselves short and stout, and needing no
support, yield each an incredible number of purple clusters,
all growing from the top. They quaintly suggest
the uncouth little men of Hendrik Hudson who stagger
up the mountain, in “Rip Van Winkle,” with kegs of
spirits on their shoulders.

No especial attention is given to the frosts now, but
those of the early spring are the object of many precautions.
The most effectual is to kindle smudge-fires about
the vineyard toward four o’clock in the morning, the
smoke of which envelops it and keeps it in a warmer
atmosphere of its own till the sun be well risen.

[363]

[364]

Three to four tons of grapes to the acre are counted
upon; while farther south, where irrigation is used, they
expect from eight to twelve. But it is claimed, in the
standing controversy on the subject, that the irrigated
grapes are watery, while those of lesser yield excel them
in quality. The best results, we were told, are got from
such vines as the Mataro, Carignane, and Grenache, imported
cuttings from the French slope of the Pyrenees.
There were at Le Franc’s not less than sixty varieties,
under probation, many of which will, no doubt, give an
excellent account of themselves. They are assembled
from Greece, Italy, Palestine, and the Canary Islands, so
that we have all the chances of the development of
something suited to our peculiar conditions.

II.

I left San José to drive along the dry, shallow bed of
the Guadalupe River to the Guadalupe Quicksilver Mine,
a more remote and less visited companion of well-known
New Almaden. The mine is in a lovely little vale, with
a settlement of Mexican and Chinese boarding-houses
clustered around it. Some bold ledges of rock jut out
above, and a superintendent’s house surrounded by flowers
hangs upon the hill-side. A weird-looking flume conveys
the sulphurous acid from the calcining furnaces to a hill-top,
upon which every trace of vegetation has been blasted
by its poisonous exhalations.

Then I made a little tour by rail southward through
the immense “Murphy” and “Miller and Lux” ranches,
comprising a grain country as flat as a floor.

We turned west through the fertile little Pajaro Valley,
the emporium of which for produce, and fine redwood
lumber, cut in great quantities on the adjoining
Santa Cruz Mountains, is the thriving town of Watsonville.
[365]We ran along a rugged coast, past wooded gorges
and white sea-side cottages, at Aptos and Soquel, to the
much-frequented resort of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz has
bold variations of level, the usual commonplace buildings,
a noble drive along cliffs eaten into a hundred fantastic
shapes by the waves, and shops for the sale of shells, and
its summer boarders, who become, with change of seasons,
winter boarders in turn. Thence finally to the long-anticipated
Monterey.

Here at last was something to commend from the point
of view of the picturesque without reservation. Monterey
has a population which still, in considerable part,
speaks Spanish only. It retains the impress of the Spanish
domination, and little else. When you are told in
your own country that somebody does not speak English,
you naturally infer that it is brokenly, or only a little.
[366]But at Monterey it means absolutely not a word. There
are Spanish signs on the shops, and even Spanish advertisements,
as, for instance, the Wheeler & Wilson Maquinas
á Coser, on the fences.

My Mexican experience was a liberal education for
Monterey, and I made the most of it. I was taken to
call upon an ancient señorita, in whose history there was
some romance.

“Las rosas son muy secas”—(“The roses are very dry”)
she said, apologetically, as we entered her little garden,
laid out in regular parallelograms, behind an adobe wall
topped with red tiles. Large yellow and red roses were
blowing to pieces in the wind before her long, low adobe
house.

She was one of those who spoke no English. It seems
as if there were some wilful perversity in it, after having
been since 1846 a part of the most bustling State of the
most active country in the world. It seems as if it must
be some lingering hatred of the American. But the
señorita is far too gentle for that. There is, perhaps, no
reason beyond a general mental inertness by virtue of
which the Mexican survivors have suffered all their other
interests as well as this to go by the board.

The señorita is a little, thin old lady of fifty. Her romance
was with an American officer, it is said, thirty
years ago, and she has never since married, but has withered,
like her roses, at Monterey.

As seen from a distance, scattered loosely and white
on the forest-crested slope of the fine bay, the little city,
which has now perhaps two thousand inhabitants, does not
show its unlikeness to other places. But when entered
it consists almost exclusively of whitewashed adobe houses,
and the straggling, mud-colored walls of enclosures, for
animals, known as “corrals.” Many of them are vacant.
[367]At frequent
intervals is
encountered
too some
abandoned
old adobe
barracks, or
government house, or military prison of historic fame,
with its whitewash gone, holes in its walls, and bits of
broken grating and balcony hanging aimlessly on, waiting
only the first opportunity to let go.

The travellers of my youth had a fashion of talking
glibly of adobe, without explaining what adobe was. Let
me not be guilty of the same error. Adobe is bricks
made of about twice the usual size, and dried in the sun
instead of being baked. Walls are made of great thickness,
[368]in order that, though outside and inside crumble off,
there may be a good deal left. Like a number of other
things, it stands very well while not assailed; and in this
climate it is rarely assailed by violent extremes of temperature.

The typical adobe house of the best class is stuccoed
and whitewashed. It is large on the ground, two stories
in height, and has verandas. Again, it is of but one story,
with an interior court-yard. It has green doors and shutters,
and green, turned posts, in what we now call the
“Queen Anne style,” and it is comfortable and home-like
to look at.

One of them contains the first piano ever introduced
into California, and the owners are people who made haste
to sell out their all at San Francisco and invest it here, in order
to reap the greater prosperity which was thought to be
waiting upon Monterey. Two old iron guns stand planted
as posts at the corners of the dwelling. In front of others
are some walks neatly made of the vertebræ of whales,
taken by the Monterey Whaling Company. The company
is a band of hardy, weather-beaten men, chiefly Portuguese,
of the Azores, who have a lookout station on the
hill by the ruined fort, and a barracks lower down. They
pursue their avocation from the shore in boats, with
plenty of adventure and no small profit.

Monterey, which is now not even a county seat, was
the Spanish capital of the province from the time it was
thought necessary to have a capital. The missionary father,
Junipero Serra, came here from Mexico in the year
1770. It was next a Mexican capital under eleven successive
governors. Then it became the American capital,
the first port of entry, the scene of the first Constitutional
Convention of the State, and an outfitting point for the
southern mines. Money in those early days was so
plenty, I have heard tell, that store-keepers hardly
stopped to count it, but threw it under the counter in
bushelfuls.

[369]

[370]

A secret belief in the ultimate revival of Monterey
seems always to survive in certain quarters, like that in
the reappearance of Barbarossa from the Kylfhäuser
Berg, or the restoration of the Jews. Breakwaters have
been ambitiously talked of, and it is said that the bay
could be made a harbor and shipping-point and the rival
of San Francisco.

The only step toward such revival as yet is a fine hotel,
built by the Southern Pacific railroad, which may make
it, instead of Santa Cruz, across the Bay, the leading sea-side
resort. Though not so grandiose a direction as some
others, this is really the one in which the peculiar conditions
of the old capital are most likely to tell. The summer
boarder can get a tangible pleasure out of its historic
remains and traditions of greatness, though they be good
for nothing else. The Hotel del Monte is a beautiful
edifice, not surpassed by that of any American watering-place,
and unequalled in the charming groves of live-oak
and pine and profusion of cultivated flowers by which it
is surrounded, and the air of comfort combined with its
elegant arrangements.

This is the way with our friends of the Pacific coast.
If they do not always stop to follow Eastern ideas and
patterns, when they really attempt something in the same
line, they are as likely as not to do it a great deal better.

The climate at Monterey, according to statistical tables,
is remarkably even. The mean temperature is 52° in
January and 58° in July. This strikes one as rather cool
for bathing, but the mode is to bathe in the tanks of a
large bath-house, to which sea-water is introduced, artificially
warmed, instead of in the sea itself.

[371]

[373]

In other respects the place seems nearly as desirable at
one time of the year as another. The quaint town is
always there; and the wild rocks, with their gossiping
gulls and pelicans; and the drives through the extensive
forests. There are varieties of pine and cypress—the
latter like the Italian stone-pine—peculiar to Monterey.
The more venerable trees, hoary with age and hanging
moss, are contorted into all the fantastic shapes of Doré’s
“Inferno.” They grow by preference on the most savage
points of rock, and the wild breakers toss handfuls of
spray up to them high in the air, in amity and greeting.

[374]

Along the beach on this far-away point of the Pacific
Ocean we find a Chinese fishing settlement. Veritable
Celestials, without a word of English among them, have
pasted the usual crimson papers of hieroglyphics on shanty
residences. They burn tapers before their gods on the
quay, and fish for a living in just such junks and small
boats as may be seen at Hong-Kong and Canton. They
prepare avallonia meat and avallonia shells for their home
market. One had rather thought of the Chinese element
as confined to San Francisco alone, but it is a feature of
quaint interest throughout all of Southern California.

At Monterey is found an old mission of the delightfully
ruinous sort. It is in the little Carmel Valley,
which is bare and brown again, after the green woods
are passed, four miles from the town. The mission fathers
once had here ninety thousand cattle, and other
things to correspond. There are now only some vestiges,
resembling earth-works, of their extensive adobe walls,
and, on a rise overlooking the sea, the yellowish, low,
rococo church of San Carlos.

[375]

[376]

The Mexican traditions in design and proportion accompanied
them here, but the workmanship as they went
farther from home became curiously rude, and speaks of
the disadvantages under which it was done. A dome of
concrete on the bell-tower is unequally bulged; a star window
in the front has very irregular points. The interior
does not yield, as a picture of sentimental ruin, to Muckross
Abbey or any broken temple of the Roman Campagna.
The roof, open now to the sky, with grasses and
wild mustard growing from its crevices, was of stone
arches, supplemented with timber-work tied with raw-hides.
The whole body of the church—pilasters, capitals,
frieze, and all—is set on a curve springing from
the floor—a peculiarity I have never seen elsewhere.
There are grasses growing within, sculptured stones
tumbled down, vestiges of a tile pavement, tombs, bits
of fresco, and over all the autograph scribblings of a
myriad of A. B. Smiths and J. B. Joneses, visitors here
in their time like ourselves.

[377]

[379]

Once a year, on St. Charles’s-day, in early November,
a memorial service is held, attended by all the shabby
Spanish-Indian life remaining in the country round
about. The place is unique. It seems even more lonely
than ruins of the same kind in the mother country,
through standing amid surroundings of such a different
class. Nothing is more conducive to pensiveness of a
pleasant kind than, lying within this ruined enclosure, to
watch the waving in the wind of the long grasses on its
walls and listen to the plash of the sea on the shore, but
a few steps distant.

---

[380]

XXVI.

A WONDROUS VALLEY, AND A DESERT THAT BLOSSOMS LIKE THE ROSE.

I.

The Yosemite, currently spoken of as the “Valley,” is
comprised in the belt formed by drawing lines across the
State from San Francisco and Monterey respectively. It
is a wild, strange nook among the Sierras, one of the
few places not only not disappointing, but worthy of far
more praise than has ever been bestowed upon it. It is
like one of those mysterious regions on the outskirts of
the fairy-land of the story-books—a standing resource of
adventure to all the characters who enter it, and it is
proper enough that our earthly Paradise of Southern
California should have such a region of enchantment
also adjoining it.

I reached it by stage-ride of sixty miles, from the Southern
Pacific Railroad, at Madera, to Clark’s Station, and
thence by stage and horseback of twenty-five miles to the
Valley. The autumn days were lovely there. The foliage,
turned by a local climate quite as severe as that of
New England, glowed with a vivid richness. The Merced
River, a gentle stream, pursuing a devious way in
the bottom, which is as level as a floor, reflected the
color from many a mirror-like pool and sudden bend.
Walls of rock rise on either hand to an elevation of
three-quarters of a mile, varying from one-half to one-eighth
[381]of a mile in width. It is rather a chasm than a
valley. At night the radiance of a full yellow moon invested
all its wonders with an added enchantment. The
cliffs are exactly what we think cliffs ought to be, but
what they seldom are. They are of the hardest granite,
pleasantly gray in color, and terminate in castle and dome
like forms. The precipices are sheer and unbroken to the
base, with almost none of those slopes of débris that detract
from precipices in general. It is a little valley suitable,
without a hair’s-breadth alteration, to the purposes
of any giant, enchanter, or yellow dwarf of them all. It
is such scenery as Doré has imagined for the “Idyls of
the King.” One half feels himself a Sir Lancelot or Sir
Gawain, riding along this lovely and majestic mountain
trail; and as if he should wear chain-armor, a winged helmet,
and a sword upon which he had sworn to do deeds
of redoubtable valor.

It was the coast valleys and some coast towns that we
took on our first journey. This time we have come down
the main line of the Southern Pacific Railway through
the central plain of the State. The railway is traced
along the great central valley known as the San Joaquin,
on a line nearly midway between the Sierra Nevadas
and the Coast Range.

The road is still comparatively new, and the settlements
have attained no great dimensions. It did not as a rule
touch at the older towns existing, but pursued a direct
course through a country where all had to be opened up.
As some of the places passed by were of considerable
size no little dissatisfaction ensued, and the mutterings
are still heard. Frequent mention of this grievance
is heard by the traveller through Southern California.
Some of the neglected places even maintain that they
would have been better without any railroad at all. References
[382]are thrown out to former glories of a dazzling
sort which it is sometimes difficult to credit, though a
railroad naturally effects great innovations in trade. To
the ordinary observer it would appear that the introduction
of a splendidly equipped railway, even if it distribute
its blessings a little unequally at first, and its tariff be
high, must be a great and permanent advantage to everything
remote as well as near. For the first time an adequate
means has been afforded for the transport of immigrants
and supplies through the whole length of the
State.

The Southern Pacific Railway has completed connections
which give it a transcontinental route from San
Francisco, across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, to
New Orleans. Immigrants are to be brought in by
steamer from Liverpool to New Orleans, and thence by
rail at a rate not to exceed that to the central West. The
fares to California heretofore have been almost prohibitive,
which is one of the reasons why so rich a country
contains as yet less than a million of people. The languid
movement hither of the valuable class of immigration
which pours into the West, though ascribed by some
alarmists to the presence of the Chinese, is due to the
cost of travel and the lack of cheap lands for settlement.
The Chinese are certainly not rivals in the matter
of land, since they acquire little or none of it.

The new opportunities opened to transportation, the
depression of the mining interest, and rapid increase of
the Chinese, have awakened of late an exceptional interest
in white immigration. A committee of some of the
most prominent persons in the State has opened an inquiry
into the most effectual means of promoting it. It
will no doubt set forth more clearly than has ever been
done before an account of such territory as is open to settlers,
[383]whether offered by the government, the railroads,
or the great ranches, its advantages and the methods of
reaching it.

It seems a little singular at first that lack of suitable
lands can be adduced as a reason for lack of population in
so vast a region, with the climate and other natural advantages
of which so much has been said. It can only be understood
by taking into account the unusual atmospheric
dryness, and the important part played by water, which
has to be brought upon the soil by costly contrivances;
The locations where there is sufficient natural moisture
for the maturing of crops are of small extent. They were
among the first taken up. In much of the central and
southern portions of the State the annual rain-fall is
almost infinitesimal in quantity. At Bakersville, the
capital of Kern County—whither our journey presently
leads us—it is no more than from two to four inches.
Light crops of grain and pasturage for stock may occasionally
be got even under these conditions, but the only
certain reliance is irrigation.

The springs and small streams were early appreciated
at their value, and seized upon by persons who controlled
with them great tracts of surrounding country, valueless
except as watered from these sources. These tributary
tracts are used chiefly as cattle and sheep ranges. A person
owning five thousand acres will often have for his
stock the free run of twenty thousand more. Cultivation
is confined to the springs and water-courses, and becomes
a succession of charming oases in a desert the superficial
sterility of which is phenomenal.

The tenure of land by thousands of acres under a single
ownership is a tradition from the Spanish and Mexican
times. It has been much decried, as a great evil, and
it is said that the State would be much more prosperous
[384]in a series of small farms. This is probably true, and the
system as it exists may be ascribed in part to the greed
of individuals, but it arises principally out of the natural
features of the country. The wealth of the large holders
alone enables them to undertake works of improvement,
such as canal-making, drainage, and tree-planting, on an
effectual scale. Perhaps the State will have to lend its
assistance, and establish a public system of irrigation and
drainage, before the land can be fully prepared for the
small settler.

Water! water! water! How to slake the thirst of this
parched, brown country, and turn it over to honest toil
and thrift, is the great problem as we go southward, and
the processes of irrigation are the most distinctive marks
upon the landscape wherever it is improved.

II.

It is in early November that we begin to traverse the
long San Joaquin Valley from Lathrop Junction, just below
Stockton, southward. The side tracks of the railroad
are crowded with platform-cars laden with wheat for the
sea-board. The “elevator” system is not yet in use, and
the grain is contained in sacks for convenient handling.

Hereabouts are some of the most famous wheat ranches.
A man will plough but a single furrow a day on his
farm, but this may be twenty miles long. There is sufficient
rain-fall for the cereals, but not for the more exacting
crops. The land gives but few bushels to the acre
under the easy system of farming, but it must be remembered
that there are a great many acres. The stubble of
the grain-fields is whitened with wild-fowl. At a way-station
a small rustic in an immense pair of boots goes
over to a pool and blazes away with a shot-gun. Presently
[385]he returns, dragging by the necks an immense pair
of wild-geese, almost beyond his strength to pull. The
tawny color of the fields, and the great formal stacks of
straw piled up in them, recall some aspects of the central
table-land of Mexico. Many or spacious buildings are
not necessary in the mild, dry climate of California.
The prosperous ranches have, in consequence, a somewhat
thin, unfurnished appearance compared with Eastern
farms.

The most prominent object at each station is a long,
low warehouse of the company, for the accommodation of
grain. Like the station buildings generally it is painted
Indian red, in “metallic” paint. The station of Merced
is one of the two principal points of departure for the
Yosemite Valley, Madera the other. At Merced an immense
wooden hotel, for travellers bound to the Valley,
overshadows the rest of the town. It rises beside the
track, and the town is scattered back on the plain.

At Madera appears the end of a V-shaped wooden
aqueduct, or flume, for rafting down lumber from the
mountains fifty miles away to a planing-mill. Some of the
hands also occasionally come down the flume in temporary
boats. As the speed is prodigious these voyages abound
in excitement and peril. The structure, supported on
trestles, according to the formation of the ground, stretches
away in interminable perspective to the mountains,
which are rose-pink and purple at sunset. The scene is
suggestive of the Roman Campagna, with this slight, essentially
American work as a parody of the broken aqueducts
and temples of the classic ancients. The lumber
flume, however, is a bold and costly enterprise, though
we be prone to smile at it.

By degrees we draw away from the wheat ranches,
more and more on the uncultivated plain. The town
[386]of Fresno, two hundred miles below San Francisco, and
about midway between two important streams, the San
Joaquin and Kings Rivers, is in the midst of a particularly
desolate tract, known, up to a very recent period, as
the San Joaquin Desert. One should alight here. There
is no better place for examining the marvellous capabilities
of a soil which appears at first sight inhospitable to
the last degree. Fresno is in the hands of enterprising
persons, who push and advertise it very actively. We
heard at San Francisco of the Fresno Colony, the Central
Colony, American Colony, Scandinavian Colony, Temperance
Colony, Washington Colony, and others of similar
names clustered around Fresno. It is advertised as
one of those genial places, alluring to the imagination of
most of us, where one can sit down under his own vine
and fig-tree, secure from the vicissitudes of climate, and
find a profitable occupation open to him in the cultivation
of the soil, and all at a moderate cost.

The aspect of things on alighting is very different from
what had been expected, but all the substantial advantages
claimed seemed realized, and the process of founding a
home may be witnessed in all its stages.

The town has a population of two thousand, most of
which it has gained in the past five years. It is set down
on the east side of the railroad highway, with a thin scattering
of foliage slightly veiling the formality of its lines.
It consists of a few streets of two-story wooden and brick
buildings. The streets cross one another at right angles,
and have planked sidewalks. A slight eminence above
the general level is the site of the County Court-house,
which somewhat resembles an Italian villa in design, and
has Italian cypresses in front. The court-houses of half a
dozen counties down the line, from Modesto, the capital
of Stanislaus, to Bakersfield, capital of Kern, are identical
[387]in pattern, so that it is both typical of its kind and evidence
of an economical spirit.

A sharp distinctness of outline is characteristic of these
cities of the plain. Separated from the main part of
Fresno by the railroad, as by a wide boulevard, is a row
of low wooden houses and shops, as clearly cut out against
[388]the desert as bathing-houses on a beach. This is the Chinese
quarter. It tells at a glance the story of the peculiar
people who tenant it: the social ostracism on the one
hand, and their own indomitable clannishness on the
other.

There is now hardly any hamlet so insignificant, even
in the wastes of Arizona, that the Chinese have not penetrated
it, in search of labor and opportunities. Every
settlement of the Pacific slope has its Chinese quarter, as
mediæval towns had their Ghetto for the Jews. It is not
always without the place, as at Fresno; but, wherever it
be, it constitutes a close corporation and a separate unit.
In dress, language, and habits of life it adheres to Oriental
tradition with all the persistence the new conditions
will admit.

The Celestials do not introduce their own architecture,
and they build little but shanties. They adapt what they
find to their own purposes, as has been said, distinguishing
them with such devices that the character of the
dwellers within cannot be mistaken.

A great incongruity is felt between the little Yankee
wooden dwellings and the tasselled lanterns, gilded signs,
and hieroglyphics upon red and yellow papers with which
they are profusely overspread. Here Ah Coon and Sam
Sing keep laundries like the Chinese laundry the world
over. Yuen Wa advertises himself as a contractor for
laborers. Hop Ling, Sing Chong, and a dozen others
have miscellaneous stores. In their windows are junk-shaped
slippers, opium pipes, bottles of saki, rice-brandy,
dried fish, goose livers, gold and silver jewelry, and packets
of face-powder and hair ornaments for the women.
The pig-tailed merchants themselves sit within, on odd-looking
chests and budgets, and gossip in animated cackle
with customers, or figure up their profits gravely in
[389]brown-paper books, with a brush for a pen. Women—much
more numerous in proportion to the men than
is commonly supposed—occasionally waddle by. Their
black hair is very smoothly greased, and kept in place by
long silver pins. They wear wide jackets and pantaloons
of a cheap black “paper cambric,” which increase the natural
awkwardness of their short and ungainly figures.

Up-stairs, in unpainted, cobwebby, second stories, are
the joss-houses. Here hideous but decorative idols grin
as serenely as if in the centre of their native Tartary, and
as if there were no spires of little Baptist and Methodist
meeting-houses rising indignantly across the way. Pastilles
burn before the idols, and crimson banners are
draped about; and there are usually a few pieces of antique
bronze upon which the eye of the connoisseur rests
enviously.

Other interiors are cabarets, which recall those of the
French working-classes. A boisterous animation reigns
within. The air is thick with tobacco-smoke of the peculiar
Chinese odor. Games of dominoes are played with
magpie-like chatter by excited groups around long, wooden
tables. Most of those present wear the customary blue
cotton blouse and queer little black soft hat, and all have
queues, which either dangle behind or are coiled up like
the hair of women. Some, however—teamsters, perhaps
here only temporarily—are dressed in the slop clothing
and cowhide boots of ordinary white laborers.

The Chinamen are servants in the camps, the ranches,
and the houses of the better class, track-layers and section
hands on the railroad, and laborers in the factories and
fields. What Southern California, or California generally,
could do without them it is difficult to see. They
seem, for the most part, capable, industrious, honest, and
neat. One divests himself rapidly of the prejudice against
[390]them with which he may have started. Let us hope that
laborers of the better class, by whom they are to be succeeded,
may at least have as many praiseworthy traits.

The town of Fresno is as yet chiefly a supply and market
point for the numerous colonies by which it is environed.
These colonies straggle out in various directions, beginning
within a mile or two of the town. The intervening
land still lies in its natural condition for settlement. It
is difficult to convey an idea of its seemingly hopeless
barrenness. Instead of complaining of dry grass here one
would be grateful for a blade of grass of any kind. The
surface is as arid as that of a gravelled school-yard. It is
even worse, for it is undermined with holes of gophers,
owls, jack-rabbits, and squirrels. To ride at any speed is
certain to bring one to grief through the entangling of his
horse’s legs in these pitfalls. As the traveller passes there
is a scampering on all sides. The gray squirrels speed for
their holes with flying leaps, the jack-rabbits with kangaroo-like
bounds. They run toward us, if they chance to
have been absent from home in an opposite direction.
Not one considers himself safe from our clearly malicious
designs till he has dived headlong into his own proper
tenement.

Here and there are tracts white with alkali. Flakes of
this substance, at once bitter and salt to the taste, can be
taken up in an almost pure condition. Elsewhere we pass
through tracts of wild sunflower—a tall weed, charming
in flower, but now thoroughly desiccated, and rattling together
like dry bones.

This description applies, for the greater part of the
year, not only to Fresno, but in an almost equal degree
to Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and nearly the whole of
Southern California. Without it the wonders which
have been produced by human agency could not be understood.
[391]The face of nature in all this district was a
blank sheet of paper. The cultivator had absolutely
everything to do. He discovered on trial that he had a
soil of remarkable capacity, and, with the aid of water
and the genial climate, he could draw from it whatever
he pleased.

Water is the salvation of the waste places, and makes
the desert blossom like the rose. One’s respect for this
pleasant element is, if possible, increased upon seeing
what it is here capable of. It seems that, if used with
sufficient art, it might almost draw a crop from cast-iron.
The vegetation of Southern California is thoroughly artificial.
It consists of a series of scattered plantations created
by the use of water. In these the traveller finds his
flowers, palms, vineyards, and orange groves, and, burying
himself among them, like the ostrich with its head in the
sand, he may refuse briefly to recognize that there is
anything else; but, as a matter of fact, only a small beginning
has been made. What has been done, however,
is an earnest of what can be done. It is found that,
as irrigation is practised, the land stores up part of the
water, and less is needed each year. In wells, too, the
water is found nearer the surface, proving that the soil
acts as a natural reservoir. As time goes on, and canals
and vegetation increase, no doubt important climatic
changes may be looked for. In the end Southern California
may be as different from what it is at present as
can be imagined.

The several Fresno colonies for the most part join one
another, and form a continuous belt of cultivation. On
entering their confines the change is most agreeable.
Close along-side the desert, the home of the gopher and
jack-rabbit, only separated from it by a narrow ditch of
running water, are lovely vineyards, orchards of choice
[392]fruits, ornamental flowers and shrubs, avenues of shade-trees,
fields of corn, and green pastures of the alfalfa, a
tall and strong clover, which gives half a dozen crops a
year. Embowered among these are the homes of happy
families, larger establishments for the drying of fruits
and converting the munificent crops of grapes into wine.
Many of the homes are as yet but modest wooden cottages.
Others, of a better class, are of adobe, treated in
an ornamental way, with piazzas and Gothic gables.

The most important residence is that of a late member
of the San Francisco Stock Board, who has gone into the
cultivation of grapes here on a large scale. It is a handsome
villa that would do credit to any town. The improvements
of the Barton place were in but an incipient
state at the time of our visit. A great array of young
vines brightened the recently sterile soil, but timidly and
as if not quite certain of approval. Young orange and
lemon trees in the door-yard were muffled in straw till they
should have gained a greater hardihood to withstand the
frosts. Elsewhere water was being run out from irrigating
ditches over fields in preparation for the first time.
It is the custom to soak them, in order that they may be
perfectly levelled. Knolls or any other inequalities must
not be left to hinder the equal distribution of water to the
crop. A wide canal stretched back from the numerous
out-buildings toward the horizon. On the verge of the
wide plain showed the blue Sierras, veiled by a slight
chronic dustiness of the atmosphere.

[393]

[394]

In the more established portions of the colonies some
charming bits of landscape are found. The Chinese farm-hand
wears a blue blouse and a wide basket-hat which he
calls mow. He pronounces this hat “heap good” if complimented
upon it. He prunes the vines or collects the
generous clusters of grapes; or else he digs a vegetable
garden by the side of a canal, in which himself, his vegetables,
his cabin, a row of poplar-trees, and the blue sky
overhead are all reflected together. Poplars, willows, and
cottonwoods are planted along the canals to strengthen
their banks. At Eisen’s wine-making place, for a considerable
distance, oleanders in flower are seen spaced between
the trees. The water runs clear and swift. At
Eisen’s it turns a mill. No doubt devices for bathing in
it might also be contrived if desired.

The long, symmetrical lines of trees have a foreign, or
at least un-American, air. It is not difficult to recall to
mind the mulberries and elms that bend over the irrigating
canals of Northern Italy and drop their yellow leaves
upon them in autumn like these. It might be Lombardy
again, and the glimpses of distant blue the Alps instead
of the Sierras. The locks and gates for the water are of
an ephemeral structure as yet, made of planking instead
of substantial brick and stone. The smaller ditches are
often stopped with mere bits of board let down into
grooves, instead of gates with handles. It is urged, however,
that handles offer inducement to idlers to lift them
up out of pure mischief, and waste the water.

The colonies are not quite colonies in the usual sense;
that is to say, they were not founded by persons who combined
together and came at one and the same time. The
lands they occupy were distributed into parcels by an
original owner, and, after being provided with water facilities
by an irrigation company, put upon the market at
the disposal of whoever would buy. No doubt a certain
general consistency rules them in keeping with the names
respectively set up, but it is not rigorous. Probably nothing
need prevent a native American from joining the
Scandinavian Colony, or a Scandinavian the American
Colony, should he desire to do so.

[395]

As to the Temperance Colony, it must be sorely tried
in a locality the most liberal and profitable yield of which
is the wine grape. It seems hardly a propitious place to
have chosen. Scoffers say that in some instances while
settlers will not make wine themselves they will sell their
grapes to the wine-making establishments. This I merely
note as “important, if true.”

The standard twenty-acre lot, as prepared for market at
Fresno, has its main irrigating ditch, of perhaps four feet
in width, connecting with the general irrigating system.
For twelve and a half dollars a year it receives a water-right
entitling it to the use of whatever water it may
need. The buyer must make his own minor ditches, and
prepare his ground from this point. He usually aims to
establish in his fields a number of slightly differing levels,
that the water may be led to one after the other. For
ground in the preliminary condition described about fifty
dollars per acre is demanded. Most of the earlier settlers
bought for less, and the price named strikes one as high,
considering the newness of the country, and the excellent
farming land to be had in the older parts of the country
for less. Prices are less here, however, than at Los Angeles,
Riverside, or San Diego, farther south.

It is argued in answer to objectors that though land be
not nominally it is really cheap, in consideration of its extraordinary
productiveness. It is held that an investment
here gives better returns than anywhere, and at the same
time that the climate and other conditions promise a more
pleasurable existence than could be enjoyed elsewhere.
This Fresno land, for instance, yields four and five crops
of alfalfa a year. Vineyards planted but two and a half
years are shown which produce five tons of grapes to the
acre. Five years is the period required for the vines to
come into full bearing. It is estimated that an acre of
[396]vines in that condition will have cost one hundred and
twenty-five dollars, allowing fifty dollars as the price of
the ground, and it is then counted upon for an annual
yield of ten tons of grapes, at twenty dollars a ton. The
rate of growth in vegetation is one of the things to note.
Fruit-trees are said to advance as far in three years as in
seven on the Eastern sea-board.

The personal stories of the colonists are often interesting.
They have generally had some previous hard experience
of the world. Such a man, working sturdily in the
field preparing the ground around a new cottage of his
own, lost a fortune in the San Francisco Stock Board.
The funds for his present enterprise were provided by
his wife, who had turned to keeping boarders, and sent
him her small profits monthly until he should have made
ready a place for their joint occupancy. Instances were
heard of where nice properties had been secured with
no other original capital than a pair of brawny hands.
These, however, were exceptional. The country appears
to be one where it is most desirable for the new-comer to
have a small capital.

In the Central Colony a comfortable estate was owned
by four spinster school-teachers of San Francisco. They
had combined to purchase eighty acres. One of them
lived on the place and managed it. The others contributed
from their earnings until it had reached a paying
basis, passed only their vacations there at present, but
looked forward to making it their ultimate retreat.

The idea seems both a praiseworthy new departure in
the direction of female emancipation and charming in itself.
I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of
the resident manager of the experiment. Her experiences,
written out, would, I think, be interesting and instructive.
There was an open piano in the pleasant cottage
[397]interior, and late books and magazines were scattered
about. It was a bit of refined civilization dropped down
in the midst of the desert.

This lady had come, she said, for rest. She took pleasure,
too, in the country, and in seeing things grow. She
had made mistakes in her management at first, mainly
through trusting too much to others, but now had things
in good control. Four farm-hands—Chinamen—were
employed. The eighty acres were distributed into vineyard,
orchard, and alfalfa, about one-half devoted to the
vineyard. Its product was turned, not into wine, but raisins.
Apricots and nectarines had been found up to this
time the most profitable orchard fruits. Almonds were
less so, owing to the loss of time in husking them for
market. There was among other crops a field of Egyptian
corn, a variety which grows tall and slender, and runs
up to a bushy head instead of forming ears. The sight
of it carried one back to the Biblical story of Joseph and
his brethren, and the picture-writing in the Pyramids.

The grapes for raisin-making are of the sweet Muscat
variety. There was a “raisin-house” piled full of the
flat boxes in which raisins are traditionally packed. The
process of raisin-making is very simple. The bunches
of grapes are cut from the vines, and laid in trays in
the open fields. They are left there, properly turned
at intervals, for a matter of a fortnight. There are
neither rains nor dews to dampen them and delay the
curing. Then they are removed to an airy building
known as a “sweat-house,” where they remain possibly
a month, till the last vestiges of moisture are gone.
Hence they go to be packed and shipped to market.

One must walk rather gingerly at present not to discern
through the young and scattering plantations the
bareness beyond, but in another ten years the scene can
[398]hardly fail to be one of rich luxuriance. The site is flat
and prairie-like, and I should prefer, for my part, to locate
my earthly Paradise nearer the hills. Still, the taste of
the time runs to earthly Paradises which are at the same
time shrewd commercial ventures, and the cultivation of
the plain is much easier than that of the slopes.

---

[399]

XXVII.

VISALIA, BAKERSFIELD, AND LIFE ON A SPACIOUS RANCH.

I.

Visalia, capital of Tulare County, thirty-four miles
south of Fresno, is one of the older towns left aside by
the railroad. I put it in the most obvious way, but a
patriotic Visalian, on the other hand, said to me with
warmth, “Left by the railroad! Visalia left by the railroad!
I guess not. It is the railroad that is left by
Visalia, as it will find out.”

Visalia is reached, from the junction of Goshen, by a
short branch-road of its own. It is larger than Fresno,
but less animated. It has perhaps twenty-five hundred
people, a court-house of the pattern described, and a
United States land-office.

When the epithet “old” is used of any California town
not of Spanish origin it simply means an approximation
to the year 1849. The building of most hoary antiquity
in Visalia dates only from the year 1852. It has been
government-house, jail, and store in turn, and is now
decorated with the legend “Mooney’s Brewery.” The
town was founded by one Vise, an erratic person, who
came across the plains from Texas, and had followed in
his life such various professions, besides that of pioneer,
as preacher, trader, gambler, foot-racer, and jockey. It
happened that the quarter section of land upon which he
settled was at the time unsurveyed, and not legally open
[400]to pre-emption.
This irregularity
was not discovered
till years
later, when the
town had grown
up on the site.
It was brought to
light by an employé
of the land-office,
who thereupon
ingeniously
undertook to pre-empt
the ground
for himself.

“And what came of this bold attempt upon vested interests?”

“The party was promptly fired out of town,” was the
reply.

Visalia is rather prolific in stories, if an “old-timer” of
the right sort can be happened up to tell them. Cattle
kings, whose herds once filled the San Joaquin Valley,
have retired hither. You may hear how Cattle King
“Pat Murray” won his wife. She was a fascinating
person in her youth, the daughter of a landlady with
whom Pat Murray, then struggling and impecunious,
boarded, in company with numerous mates. There was
great aspiration and rivalry for her hand. Pat Murray
stole a march in this wise. As they were setting off in
company on an expedition he said, “The trip is a rough
and dangerous one, boys. I propose that we leave our
money and valuables with the old lady for safe-keeping.”
The rest agreed, and handed over to him their property
to deliver to her. The shrewd Pat Murray represented
[401]it all as his own, and obtained in this way such consideration
in her eyes—as a person exceptionally well-to-do in
the world—that she advised her daughter to “set her
cap” at him, and all was happily accomplished before
the ruse was discovered.

On another occasion—whether in this same courtship
or not the chronicles do not say—Pat Murray disposed of
rivals, who visited in the evenings a comely damsel of
the general acquaintance, by soft-soaping the log serving
as approach to her cabin across a small stream. Having
thus arranged, he
sat calmly enjoying
the fair one’s
society, and listening
with appreciative
ear to
the splash of the
successive victims
as they slid off
into the water.

Stories are told
of Spanish bandits
and treasure
of precious metals
in the mountains,
and of the
wild administration
of justice in
early times, when
offenders were
occasionally executed
first and
sentenced afterward.

[402]

The first treasurer of the county is said to have carried
the records of his office in his hat, and, being a person
given to travel and of an absent mind, he scattered these
documents far and wide behind him, even to the confines
of Utah and Arizona.

At Visalia I first observed “Spanishtown,” a community
which begins to appear regularly along-side of “Chinatown”
as we go southward. It is composed of persons
of Mexican blood, poor, shiftless, and not always of the
most reputable character.

Charming views of the high Sierras, now powdered
with the first snows of winter, are had. The surface is
more rolling than at Fresno, and strewn with fine clumps
of chestnut-oaks. There are big trees back in the great
mountains equalling in size those of the Yosemite.
Lumbermen at work there cut down numbers which,
though insignificant as compared to the very largest,
are monstrous in themselves.

The water for the irrigation of this district is drawn
out of Kings, Tule, and Kaweah rivers by companies,
who give to their principal canals such names as the
People’s Ditch, the Last Chance Ditch, the Mussel
Slough Ditch, and the Lower Kings River Ditch. The
main ditches or canals range from twelve to forty feet
in width. Wing dams confine and direct into them such
portions as are desired of the wide, meandering rivers.

A California river of the south is something of a
curiosity. Extravagantly wide, it is in compensation
preposterously shallow. Only a few last over the dry
season at all; the most evaporate and wholly disappear.
Their dry beds, variegated by a few islets studded with
sycamores, are more like wagon-roads than the beds of
rivers. Sometimes these exhausted water-courses differ
in color from the surrounding soil, and are seen stretching
as rivers of gray or silvery sand through the general
yellow of the desert.

[403]

[404]

Though irrigation be yet in its infancy its belongings
have attained great dimensions. There are three hundred
miles of canals of the requisite size in Tulare
County, and more than three thousand miles in California
all together. One main canal, that of the San Joaquin
and Kings River, has a length of seventy-four miles
and a width of nearly seventy feet.

II.

A branch-road westward from Goshen, a continuation
of that from Visalia, conveys the traveller to the bustling,
fast-growing little towns of Hanford and Lemoore,
in the Mussel Slough country. This district, adjoining
Tulare Lake, was recently part desert and part swamp.
It has been redeemed so as to rank now among the best
farming land in California. Its chief product is wheat.
The inhabitants raise hardly the vegetables needed for
their own use. Malaria is rather prevalent, but it is said
to arise, as in many other irrigated districts, from the
careless use of water rather than the fundamental situation.
The water, instead of being carefully drained off,
is too often allowed to lie in stagnant pools.

The Mussel Slough was the scene, in the month of
May, 1880, of a bloody conflict between the settlers and
railroad authorities which has become celebrated. Officers
of the law, acting for new claimants, attempted to
take possession of the land under a railroad title. Legally
in the wrong, though perhaps morally in the right,
the settlers organized to resist, put out stirring manifestoes,
which read like the declarations of oppressed people
struggling for their liberty, and called on gods and men
[405]to witness the justice of their cause. In the fight that
ensued five settlers lost their lives, all at the hands of a
single man—one Crowe, a United States marshal, who
displayed a prowess and coolness under fire never surpassed
in any of the narratives of sensational literature.
Crowe himself was despatched. A number of the survivors
were tried for their part in the affair, condemned
to eight months’ imprisonment, and served out their term
in Santa Clara jail. They had but just been released,
say a month before our arrival. Their brethren and
well-wishers had received them on their return with
an ovation, the noise of which hardly yet ceased to ring
in the air.

III.

Bakersfield, capital of Kern County, seventy-five miles
farther south, somewhat smaller than Visalia, boasted at
one time the distinction of a malady peculiar to itself.
The Bakersfield form of malarial fever, whatever the fine
difference that distinguished it from others, had a position
apart in the medical works. The sanitary condition
of the place, however, has been greatly improved by the
extension of drainage and irrigation works, and can, no
doubt, be made all that could be desired.

Of the three lakes, Tulare, Buena Vista, and Kern,
which make so large a showing on the map, the latter
two, with their surrounding marshes, have been dried up,
and the former is on its way to extinction also. These
lakes had for me, on the map, a mysterious and important
air. I seized the first opportunity to penetrate their
mystery, by riding down to Tulare Lake on horseback.
You cannot reach the margin, for fear of miring. Nor
is the approach on foot much easier. The tules, or
rushes, rise high above your head, and are infested with
[406]a dangerous breed of wild hogs, descended from vagrant
deserters from the ranches. In such fragmentary glimpses
as are had between and over the tules an expanse of
dreary surface appears which may be either water or the
alkali-whitened bed from which the water has receded.
The vicinity swarms with wild fowl. Their multitudinous
chatter has a kind of metallic clang in it. Now
white, now dark, as they are before or against the sunlight,
they flutter above the reeds and stubble-fields like
autumn leaves blown by the wind.

The drying up of the lakes is occasioned by the diversion
of the surplus waters of the Kern River for the
redemption of desert lands. This gave rise to a controversy,
lately settled by a legal decision which is a step in
the crystallization into shape of a system of water jurisdiction
for California. The great firm of real-estate men
and ranchmen, Miller & Lux, owned the lands below;
the almost equally great firm of Haggin, Carr & Tevis,
those, for the improvement of which the water was taken
out, above. The first-named complained of the diversion
of the waters as a detriment to them, and an infringement
of their riparian rights. Riparian right, it will be
remembered, in the English common law, gives to the
resident on a stream the right to have it flow as it was
wont through his grounds without diminution or alteration.

The contest at first promised to be one of physical
force. Miller & Lux endeavored to close the sluices at
which the water was taken out. Just, as in Scripture,
the herdsmen of Gerara strove against the herdsmen of
Isaac, saying, “It is our water,” the hardy vaqueros of
Haggin, Carr & Tevis were mustered in opposition to
them, with orders to lasso and throw into the canal anybody
who should interfere with the sluices. This determined
[407]show of resistance prevented a conflict, and the
case went to the civil courts.

The decision spoken of holds that the doctrine which
prevails in California is not that of riparian right, but
that of “prior appropriation for beneficial uses.”

That is to say, the greatest good of the greatest number
is consulted. The point had been raised before in
controversies about the diversion of water for mining
purposes. In these cases the ruling was, that the doctrine
of riparian right is “inapplicable, or applicable only
in a very limited extent, to the necessity of miners, and
inadequate for their protection.” It was farthermore
held that all of the English common law is not in force
in California, but only such portions of it as are adapted
to the peculiar conditions of the State. The agricultural
and mining interests, therefore, are now put, in this respect,
on the same footing.

Bakersfield takes its tone essentially from live stock.
It has special resorts for drovers and sheep-herders. Its
streets are generally full of horses, caparisoned in the
Spanish style, tied to hitching-posts and awaiting their
owners before the stores and taverns. The sheep-herders,
a lonely race, become morose and melancholy in their
long wanderings with their flocks apart from the habitations
of men and human speech. They are far removed
from the shepherds of Boucher and Watteau. Some are
said to go insane through the monotony of their lives;
and it is an occupation taken up only as a last resort, and
unfitting him who pursues it for any other. Strangely
enough, there is a rather English tone among them.
Young prodigals of good family are found who, after
trying their fortunes in Australia, India, and elsewhere,
are eating the husks of repentance here in true Scriptural
fashion.

[408]

The shops in Bakersfield, as throughout our travels,
are kept principally by the Jews, who are great pioneers.
No people are growing up more ardently with the new
West; and where they are found business is pretty sure
to be good.

The Chinatown is a district of compact little streets, of
an extent that indicates a population almost equal to that
of the rest of the place. An irrigating ditch surrounds it
like a moat. The cabins along this, picturesquely reflected
in it, are gray and weather-beaten, varied with
patches of bright Orientalism, and shaded by a line of
tall poplar-trees. The Spanishtown, close by, is a cluster
of dance-houses and corrals, between which swarthy Josés
and Juanitas are seen passing.

As if this were not foreignness enough already, we
stumble upon a camp of strolling gypsies, their tents
pitched on the borders of Spanishtown. They are English,
and have come from Australia, dropping their “h’s”
all along the way, no doubt, as liberally as here. They
are like types of Cruikshank and Dickens. An apple-faced
Mrs. Jarley appears in a large velvet bonnet with
plumes. A very tightly-dressed, slender individual, with
a weed on his hat, might pass for Sam Weller. He is
a horse-tamer and jockey. At his heels follows a belligerent
bull-dog. Behind one of the tents a child of nine,
Cassie by name, with fine, dark eyes, is making a toilet
before a bit of cracked mirror. She pastes down her wet
hair into a semblance of the “water-waves” of fashionable
society. When interrupted with a compliment on
the arrangement she affects displeasure, and tosses it all
abroad again with a native coquetry.

The Mrs.-Jarley-looking woman is the fortune-teller.
She declares that there are persons whose fortunes she
would not tell for twenty—no, not for fifty dollars.

[409]

[410]

Mine, however, through an especial liking she affects to
have taken to me, and the dulness of trade, she promises
to tell, in the most effective manner, for two dollars only.

IV.

The possessions of some of the great land-owners are
prodigious. It is a favorite story that certain ones can
drive a herd of cattle from the northern counties of the
State to San Diego, its southern limit, and quarter them
every night on their own ground. Haggin, Carr & Tevis,
whose property I was privileged to examine in detail,
have at Bakersfield four hundred thousand acres nearly
in one body. Much of this was secured for a trifle in
the condition of desert land, and has been redeemed.

One ranchman who had acquired a great estate of this
kind chiefly while surveyor-general of the United States
was the occasion of drawing forth one of the best bon
mots of Lincoln.

“I congratulate you,” said our martyred President.
“You have become monarch of about all you have surveyed.”

[411]

[412]

The owners do not often live upon their estates;
they leave them in the hands of managers, and draw
the revenues. The Haggin, Carr & Tevis property is
divided into a number of separate ranches, each with its
resident superintendent. The “Bellevue Ranch” is the
centre and focus of authority. Here are the residence
and office of the general manager, and a force of book-keepers,
engineers, and mechanics, who keep the accounts,
map, plan, supervise, construct, repair, and give to the
whole the clock-work regularity of a great commercial
enterprise. The numerous buildings constitute a considerable
settlement. There is a “store” of general merchandise
and supplies. A dormitory and a dining-hall
have been erected for the laboring hands. A tower-like
water-tank, surmounted by a wind-mill, and accommodating
a milk-room below, rises at one side. There are
shops for the mechanics, capacious barns, and long sheds
filled with an interminable array of agricultural implements.
It is worth while to take a walk past this collection
of reapers, threshers, sulky-ploughs, and rakes, and
study out their uses. The immense “header and separator”
rises from the rest like a leviathan. A whole
department is devoted to “road-scrapers,” “buck-scrapers,”
and ploughs of various sorts used in the construction
and dredging of the irrigating ditches. The soil is,
fortunately, free from stones, and the work, for the most
part, easy. One enormous plough is seen which was
designed to be drawn by sixty yoke of oxen, and to cut
at once a furrow five feet wide by four deep. Like the
famous Great Eastern, it has defeated itself by its own
mass, and its use has been abandoned.

More than $500,000 has been expended in the item of
fencing alone. An average of four hundred laborers is
employed, and, in the harvest season, seven hundred.
The rate of wages is from two and a half to three dollars
per day for mechanics, and a dollar per day for common
hands. This seems low as compared with information
from other sources, and the chronic complaints of the
scarcity of farm labor, in the California papers.

No great portion of this domain appears to be in the
market for settlers of small means, though the intention
is avowed of offering some of it in this way when thoroughly
reclaimed. Tracts, however, are occupied on favorable
terms by “renters,” who take from 120 to 600
acres. Very many of these are Portuguese and Italians.
They are usually unmarried, and work in companies of
[413]from six to fifteen persons. You see them, dark and
swarthy, going about in the traditional Garibaldi shirt,
with hardly a word of English among them.

The renter is provided with a house, artesian well,
credit to a moderate amount at the store, and the use of
some cows. He has the milk of these, but must give
their increase to the estate. His lease runs three years,
and he pays in rent one-third of his crop. Instances of
large profits are frequent among these persons, and the
same opportunities are open to others who wish to follow
their example.

The superintendents and upper employés on the place
are largely Southern men. California, was a favorite
point for Southern immigration at one time, so much
that the course of the State in the war, influenced by the
historic Judge Terry and Senator Gwin, was considered
problematical. These that I speak of, however, are gentlemen
who have come here to repair their fortunes at a
later period. They have for the most part titles from
the service of the extinct Confederacy, and the gentle
voices and friendly courtesy characteristic of the Southern
type.

A typical ranch-house, that, for instance, of our hospitable
friend Major McClung, on his section of the subdivided
property, is a long, two-story dwelling, painted in
the Indian-red so popular throughout the country. It is
raised on posts considerably above the ground, to allow
of a free circulation of air underneath. There is an open
hall through the centre for the same purpose. An irrigating
ditch resembling a moat passes in front, crossed by
a little rustic bridge.

Traces of alkali yet show white in the soil of orchard
and garden, but do not prevent a plentiful growth of
oleanders, roses, pear, peach, cherry, almond, and apricot
[414]trees. The
young orange-trees
were, as
at Fresno, put
up in mufflings
of straw for
the winter.
The weather
is very
hot at noon-day,
but so cool at
morning and
evening that
wood-fires are
burned. The
chill in the air is of a penetrating kind, felt the more by
contrast with the heat of the day, and fire is a necessity.
The house-servants were clean, white-aproned Chinamen;
those out-of-doors, Mexicans. One of these latter had
[415]trained a goose, “Dick,” to follow him like a pet dog,
and nothing was more curious than to see the pride of
both master and biped in this ridiculous relation.

Cattle-raising is the leading industry; alfalfa, for carrying
the stock over periods of scarcity, is the leading crop.
Stacks of alfalfa of great size, one containing seven hundred
tons, were seen. It is the ordinary color of hay externally,
but when cut into is green.

A successful experiment has also been made in the
raising of cotton. The hands were in the field going
about among the white pods for the second picking.

Though out of season, a rodeo was organized for our
benefit, to show the method of handling the roving cattle
on a large scale. A number of vaqueros rode out in various
directions till lost to sight. Presently traces of dust
arose on the several horizons. The plain, on which a few
cows had been peacefully feeding, was filled with stamping
and lowing herds, driven toward the centre by the careering
vaqueros. When gathered in sufficient numbers
feats of lassoing the animals, by either leg or horn, separating
special animals or classes, and the like, were undertaken,
and carried through with marvellous dexterity. As
a culmination, hats and ropes were picked up from the
ground, the rider going at full speed. A silver half-dollar,
placed on edge in the dust of the roadway, was seized
after several attempts by a swarthy Aztec.

The herders are usually Mexicans, equipped in the
Mexican style, but with the greater part of the finery
left out. The bosses, who often even excel them in pure
horsemanship, are generally Americans.

[416]

[417]

The ranch known as the Livermore borders Kern and
Buena Vista Lakes, and is the southernmost in the tier.
The herds are gathered there in the early spring, and
driven to the ranch of San Emidio, in the mountains.
They pick up their subsistence at San Emidio till the
middle of September, when they are conducted back
again. Such migrations from plain to mountain pasture,
and back again, recall some features of the Norwegian
pastoral life of Boyesen’s charming romance,
“Gunnar.”

At the Livermore Ranch you are at the apex of the
San Joaquin Valley. Here the Sierra Nevada and the
Coast Range effect a junction, and oppose a natural barrier
to farther progress. The railroad has to cross this
barrier by a wonderful piece of engineering, the Tehachapi
(Te-hatch-a-pe) Pass. At one place five different
lengths of track pass and repass at different levels. By
the singular “Loop” the road enters a tunnel, emerges,
twists spirally round the mountain, and reappears directly
above itself.

At San Emidio we are on the boundary-line of San
Luis Obispo County, and could make our way directly,
no doubt, to its pretty, mountain-encompassed capital.
This is more easily reached, however, with attractive
Santa Barbara below, by steamer, or stage-road along
the coast.

Returning to Bakersfield, you may ride west to the wild
cañon of the Kern River, and the mining towns of Kernville
and Havilah. The mining industry has never taken
the same development south of the San Joaquin River as
north. It is probable both that there is less ore and that
the ventures have been managed with less skill. At Kernville
is a quartz-mill, with a hundred stamps, which after
many vicissitudes has fallen into the hands of its former
workmen for debt, and is now run by them on the co-operative
principle.

[418]

[419]

The rolling country by which the Kern River Cañon
is approached is, if possible, even more desolate than the
plain. There is almost a necessary connection in our
usual impressions between hills and trees, and when foliage
is missing from hills its lack is doubly notable. An
utterly parched, verdureless surface, with a texture like
that of gravel, here follows all the inequalities of the
ground, up hill and down dale, to the savage and splintered
granite gorge.

We fell in with an isolated sheep ranchman, “Captain
Jack Barker,” an enterprising man, who had created a
garden spot in the waste, and showed what even this is
capable of. He was engaged on a project for leading the
[420]water, by means of a flume and ditches, from the river at
the cañon’s mouth down upon several thousand acres of
land under cultivation. In the spring-time, he told us,
all this bareness is hidden by a perfect carpet of flowers,
chiefly a small orange-scarlet poppy. His sheep at present
seemed living on air. He had among them some
Angora goats, a hardy animal, once very profitable, but
now, since the decline in alpaca-goods, being used by
him for food.

The Kern River tumbles down a gorge four miles in
length, between granite walls six hundred feet high.
Its water is translucent green in deep, untroubled pools,
again churned into milk-white floods, with black bowlders
among them. The cañon is all but impassable. It
acts like a funnel, and produces a local disturbance of its
own on the atmosphere. While all around is still, a column
of air will blow out of it, and, striking the table-land
a quarter of a mile away, raise a chronic dust at the
point of contact, like a cannon-shot.

Driving across the front of it we were nearly blown
out of our wagon. We descended into it, nevertheless,
and upon this experience returned to dine on ribs of
Captain Jack Barker’s Angora goats, and then take the
railway and cross the Tehachapi Pass.

---

[421]

XXVIII.

LOS ANGELES.

I.

Over the Tehachapi Pass, we are in Southern California
proper. We have met already, it is true, with pretty
Spanish names, old missions, leather breeches, jingling
spurs, vineyards, raisin-making, and occasional orange and
palm trees. But when the dividing mountain-range, four
thousand feet above the sea at Tehachapi, is passed, all
these are found in their greatest development. The country
is older, the Spanish names are more musical; orange
and lemon are not grown for ornament, but as a
principal crop; and the climate is of that genial mildness
which is most to the taste of seekers for health.

Famed Los Angeles, City of the Angels, is the terminus
of the first day’s journey which brings us into it.
The watering-place of Santa Monica and the important
points of San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara are not
far distant to the west, while San Diego lies at a moderate
remove to the southward, near the Mexican frontier. In
the intervals scatter colonies of vine and orange growers,
the numbers and dimensions of which are rapidly increasing.

The mountain barrier across the State is deemed by
some to be of such importance that it should be a political
as well as a natural division. They call for the construction
[422]of a distinct new State, to be called South California, its
capital at Los Angeles.

“We are
different peoples,”
writes
one of them
in the Californian.
“We are different
in pursuits, in tastes,
manner of thought, and
manner of life; … our
hopes and aspirations for
the future are different.
The restless, uneasy population of the North, ever drifting,
without local attachments, has no counterpart in
Southern California; neither has the wild spirit of mining
[423]speculation ever flourished here. With this peaceable
life, possibly in part as a result of it, there has
grown up in the people an intense love of their land.

“And it is for their own section of the State,” he goes
on, “that this love exists. They call themselves, not Californians,
but Southern Californians. The feeling is intense.
I can only liken it to the overmastering love of
the old Greek for the sunny shores that lay around the
Ægean.

“For myself, I feel more and more each time that I
visit the upper portion of the State that I am going into
a strange land. And the impression never leaves me till
upon my return I look down from the crest of the Tehachapi
over the warm South-land.”

I have thought it worth while to quote these passages,
partly because they are amusing, partly because they accentuate
the topographical situation, and also because
they attribute a character almost the opposite of that
which exists. Everywhere is bustle, push, and enterprise.
This people will sell you a corner lot or quarter-section
of land with as great a gusto as any other, and at its full
value. Whatever effect lapse of time may have upon
them, the present inhabitants, few of whom are born
here or even drafted from indolent climes, if lotus-eaters,
are of a very wide-awake sort.

II.

The City of the Angels is, in general, only another
San José, upon a more hilly site. Its population must
be about fourteen thousand. The long thoroughfare of
Main Street proceeds, from the depot, at first through a
shabby Spanish quarter, locally known as “Sonora,” consisting
of one-story, whitewashed, adobe houses. Passing
[424]a small Spanish plaza, set with pointed cypresses, and the
principal hotel, the Pico House, it becomes lined with excellent
buildings of the modern pattern. Of these the
handsome “Baker Block” is most notable. Continuing to
the ornate “Los Angeles Bank,” Spring Street diverges
at a small angle, and contributes, with Main Street, to
give the commercial skeleton of the town the shape of
a Y with a very long stem.

On Spring Street you find a common little post-office,
the municipal offices, and a brown, Dutch-looking, brick
building, standing free, originally constructed for a market,
and now the Court-house. If you look into the lobby
of the small adobe jail you will find that some leisurely
prisoner of the frescoer’s trade has converted it into a
resemblance to a dungeon scene at the theatre. These
two streets, with a shorter one, Los Angeles Street, parallel
to Main, containing fruit and produce commission
houses, comprise the commercial portion of the city.

New buildings are seen going up; the shops are large
and well-appointed, and placards offer, in the usual shibboleth
of trade, “To Reduce Stock!” “At Wholesale
Slaughter,” and “For the Next Sixty Days.”

A serious depression afflicted Los Angeles in 1875, at
the time of the general depression throughout the State,
but that has been succeeded by a new reign of activity.
Trim, large residences of the more prosperous merchants
are seen in the outskirts of the town. Farther out yet
these become villas, in the midst of plantations of orange
and lemon, ruled off into formal plots by ditches for irrigation.
The class of modest means abide in the side
streets, in frame cottages. The German Turn-hall serves
also the purpose of theatre for such companies as come
this way.

It is held that Los Angeles, with its port of Wilmington,
[425]thirty miles
away, should be
now, upon the completion of the
Southern Pacific railroad, the entrepôt
and Pacific terminus of a
new commercial departure. San
Francisco, it is said, has too long
sat at the Golden Gate “levying
toll on every pound of freight that passes through,”
and this selfish greed is to be properly rebuked by the
diversion of a part of its trade. Enthusiastic San Diego
expects also to have its share. The wickedness of the
proceeding would seem to depend largely upon who it is
[426]that takes the toll. Los Angeles, it is held, is to be the
Lyons, and San Diego the Marseilles, of the State, San
Francisco still remaining its Paris.

The pepper-tree, with its scarlet berries and fern-like
leaves, forms the leading shade and ornament of Los
Angeles streets. Apart from these a clump of palms
grows on San Pedro Street, and, before an odd, octagon-shaped
house on Main Street, a Mexican nopal of the
size of an apple-tree. In the court-yard of the principal
hotel droops a single ragged banana. Tropical features
in the vegetation are scarce, but it is evident that this is
not the fault of the climate, but of failure to encourage
them. In the door-yards are the Mexican aloe and the
Spanish bayonet, from the adjacent deserts of Mohave
and Arizona. The castor-oil plant grows a tall weed in
neglected places. The extraction of castor-oil was at one
time an industry of the place, but is now abandoned.

III.

The Mexican element must be something like one-third
of the entire population of the place. In the Spanish
town, “Sonora,” the recollection of Mexico is revived,
but a very shabby, provincial Mexico. You find mescal
and tequila, the two varieties of intoxicating liquor distilled
from the maguey, or aloe. The dingy little adobe
shops contain samples of dingy little stocks of goods in
their shuttered loop-holes of windows. A few swarthy,
lantern-jawed old-timers hang about the corners, and gossip
in patois, and women with black shawls over their
heads pass by. Much of the quarter is in a ruinous condition.
There remain vestiges of the arcade system of
the kind known in some form to all tropical or semi-tropical
climates. The arcades of Sonora are not of massive
[427]brick and stone, but are wooden roofs, such as are put out
by our corner grocers, on light wooden posts. Here and
there only the battered skeletons remain, attached to
ruinous houses. Most California municipalities have
borrowed something of this Spanish idea. At Sacramento
the thriving but flat and not attractive capital of
the State, you can walk nearly all over the business part
of town under cover.

There is a very respectable-looking restaurant—a vine-embowered
cottage—opposite the Pico House, where the
familiar tortillas, or pancakes, and frijoles, or stewed
beans, may be had. Along-side is an adobe church,
quaint in pattern, but modern and devoid of farther interest.
From its belfry the chimes jangle loudly several
times a day in familiar Mexican fashion. Out of Sonora
emerges, on the 16th of September, the Juarez Guard,
which escorts a triumphal car bearing the national colors
of red, white, and green, and, aided by a cortége of dark
little maidens, in white muslin and slippers, proceeds to
celebrate with appropriate ardor the anniversary of Mexican
independence.

This people, who have gone so much to the wall,
wear no very pathetic aspect in their adversity. They
are for the most part engaged in coarse labor, are improvident,
and apparently contented. It is only rarely
that a Spanish name—a Pacheco, a Sepulveda, or Estudillo—rises
into prominence in the public affairs of the State
of which they were once owners. Old Don Pio Pico, the
last of the Spanish Governors, resides here, impoverished,
in a little cottage, in sight of property of great value
which was formerly his, and of the plaza once the centre
of his authority.

Don Pio is one of the picturesque features of Los Angeles,
and with his history would be esteemed interesting
[428]anywhere. Above eighty years of age, with stocky figure,
square head, and bright eyes, contrasting with his bronzed
skin and close-cropped white hair and beard, he has a certain
resemblance to Victor Hugo. He has a rather florid
taste for jewelry. He carries himself about town, in his
short overcoat with velvet collar and cuffs, with a bearing
still erect and stately. It is strange to tell, but true, and
it is evidence of the conservatism and lack of adaptability
of his race, that the old gentleman, though once Governor
of the State, and a continuous resident of it, as an
American citizen, since he surrendered it to Fremont and
Stockton in 1847, does not yet speak a word of any other
language than Spanish. The talk of this historic personage
gave but a rude picture of the state of society in his
youth. Was there anything in the world so remote as
the California of the years 1810 to 1848?

[429]

“I am but a plain and unassuming person,” he said to
me. “My father did not leave me a mule nor a vara of
ground. I worked for the padres at the San Gabriel
Mission when I was a boy, and I had little opportunity
to learn book knowledge.”

He disclaimed being an authority even on the events
of his own fall and the encroachments of the Americans.
“There are many,” he said, “who have a better head for
those things than I, and who will tell you better than I.”…
“I was a just man, however. I treated the rich
no better than the poor. Hence when they asked who
was lo mas justo y honrado—the most just and honest
man—for Governor, it was answered with one accord,
‘Don Pio Pico.’”

There are differences of opinion about those ancient
officials. Some of them have been charged with a wholesale
issue of land-patents after the American occupation,
which patents ostensibly belonged to their respective administrations.
Edwin M. Stanton, sent out to look into
these matters by the Attorney-general of the United
States, reported at the time that “the making of false
grants, with the subornation of false witnesses to prove
them, has become a trade and a business.”

The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1847, by which
the war with Mexico was concluded, made valid and of
full force whatever had been done before the American
occupation. Spanish governors were numerous in those
last days, and went in and out of office with extraordinary
frequency, by reason of plots, counterplots, and the inability
of the home government to enforce its own will.
Alvarado, Carillo, Micheltorena, and Pio Pico reigned
separately, or together, or by turns, in a revolutionary,
confused, and overlapping way, which furnished excellent
opportunity for fraud. One prefers, however, not to linger
[430]upon unpleasant suspicions, but rather to esteem these
fallen dignitaries, few of whom now survive after their
misfortunes and romantic histories.

Even the Chinese, singularly enough, show greater enterprise
than the Spanish. Perhaps they may have a
somewhat better warrant for coming in here than elsewhere,
since a Chinaman is found in the list of the twelve
original settlers of the town, in 1781. They have pushed
into the best of the old Spanish adobe houses, once the
best of their kind in the State. They occupy all those
which flank the little plaza with an entire street, others
debouching from it.

The populace, however, have not always been the better
[431]reconciled to the hapless Mongolians. In an outburst
of deadly prejudice, in the year 1871, they were dragged
out of their Spanish houses and hung to lamp-posts, wagon-tongues,
and their own door-ways, to the number of
eighteen, of all ages and sizes. The riot was occasioned
by their resistance to some process of a deputy-sheriff.
My informant described them to me as hanging like
bunches of carrots.

At present they were putting up, near the site of these
sanguinary scenes, an ornate open-air theatre or temple,
for a triennial religious festival, to last a week or more.

IV.

One of my pleasantest days at Los Angeles was that
which I spent in a drive with the Zanjero.

The Zanjero, indeed! who or what is a Zanjero?

His title is derived from the Spanish zanja—ditch—continued
down from the times of the original settlement,
and he is the official overseer of water and irrigation.
He took me about with him to observe this
important and entertaining part of the economy of civilization
in these thirsty regions. Not that Los Angeles
is so dry in comparison, for it has thirteen inches of rain
against two at Bakersfield, but it is in abundant need of
irrigation.

The Zanjero is elected by the City Council annually.
Six deputies aid him in the summer, reduced to three
in the winter, when the rains render irrigation hardly
necessary. All are invested with the authority and
badges of policemen.

The city, the Zanjero tells us, as we ride along, controls
in its corporate capacity all the waters of the Los
Angeles River. The Los Angeles River is a Southern
[432]California stream of the typical sort. It has a wide,
shallow bed, almost dry at the moment, but in spring
and winter it brawls in dangerous fashion, and often
carries away its bridges. We ride up to the point near
a certain railroad bridge where the water is first diverted.
It is taken out by two small canals, one for the city
proper, one for the thriving suburb of East Los Angeles.
We find that the dam by which the river is checked for
this purpose is constructed of earth, with a facing of
stout posts and planking. At the beginning of winter
the planking is removed, and the stream allowed to
sweep away the rampart of earth, which is replaced by
a new one, the succeeding spring. Chain-gangs of convicts
from the prison are set upon this labor.

A canal is taken out of the same river twelve miles
above, which supplies water for drinking and irrigating
the higher levels. There are two very different levels
in the configuration of the city, one rising from the
other with great abruptness, as at Santa Cruz.

Upon the height are remains of the fort built by Fremont
when he entered the city. Directly at its foot is
the cottage of Pio Pico; the big hotel, still bearing his
name, in which he sunk a handsome share of his fortune;
the little cypress-studded plaza; and the shabby white
quarter of Sonora. The mass of the city lies to the right,
without striking features. Beyond it, toward the river,
stretch breadths of a russet bloom which we know to be
vineyards, together with lines and parallelograms of
orange and eucalyptus, as formal as the conventional
trees in boxes of German toys. Across the river,
“Brooklyn Heights” and “Boyle Heights” rise to a
wide, rolling table-land (mesa), which extends back to the
blue Sierra Madre Mountains. Toward most of the
horizon stretch expanses of a garden-like vegetation of
[433]a mysterious quality—the dreamed-of orange-groves in
mass.

The city has created a considerable part of its debt
by its water system, in which it has spent probably
$200,000. The works are of an ephemeral character,
which will in time be replaced by something more substantial.
The simple trenches and wooden flumes permit
of wasted water, and are costly to keep in repair. One of
the principal ditches, however, is carried through a hill
some three-quarters of a mile in a tunnel of six feet in
section. There have been formed also numbers of durable
reservoirs or artificial lakes for the storage of additional
water in winter to supplement the river at its
lowest.

We rode out among the villas and gardens and observed
the practical application of the water. The main
ditches are three feet by two, the lesser about two by
one. The “head” is the nominal standard of measurement
of the babbling fluid. The head should be a section
of one hundred square inches, delivered under a
certain uniform pressure, but it is in practice loosely
administered.

“The irrigators want their work done” says the Zanjero;
“that is the main point. Some lands take more,
others less, according as they are sandy or hold water.
A head of fifty inches on the east side will do as much
as one hundred and twenty around the city.”

Fan-palms, India-rubber-trees, and tall bananas grow
freely on the lawns where a little pains is taken. You
stop now to exclaim at a comfortable home embowered
in myrtle, orange, and vines, the dark, glossy foliage
starred with golden fruit and red roses, a spot for any
romance. Again, it is a long arcade or temple of arborvitæ,
extending across the whole front of a garden, and
[434]framing in its arches delicious views of distant blue
mountains, their tops now powdered with snow.

This land of running brooks should be a famous place
for the children to sail their boats, though as a matter of
fact we do not see them doing it. Perhaps there is a law
against it. There are laws, at any rate, against stealing
the water, wantonly raising the gates to waste it, or transferring
it to irrigators outside the city limits. These
latter are entitled to it only upon an extra payment and
after those within the city have been supplied.

As all irrigators cannot be supplied at once, the manner
of serving it out is as follows: Applications have
to be made in the last week of each month. The Zanjero
then apportions the supply so that it may go round
among the applicants in the most convenient way. The
complete circuit takes about twenty days. The applicant
receives a ticket, on the payment of a fee, entitling him
to receive the water on such a day at such an hour. The
right for that time is exclusively his. The rates are so
fixed as to reimburse the public treasury, and are not
intended as a source of profit. The average charge for
water is about fifty cents an hour, two dollars a day, and
a dollar and twenty-five cents a night.

The subscriber has the water delivered to him by the
deputy at his connecting-gate. At all other times the
gate must be kept fastened with a padlock. The wooden
gate, sliding smoothly in its grooves, is like a little guillotine.

Chop! goes the guillotine, when it has been raised
long enough, and off goes the head, as it were, of the
little stream. Thus surprised on its way among the
orchards and gardens, it writhes and twists a while,
rises again in its confining box, and is soon ready to
begin life again on a new basis.

[435]

V.

Los Angeles is the metropolis of the orange trade, but
the greater part of the culture itself is in tracts of the
surrounding country, each with a thriving settlement as
its nucleus. The lands are usually laid out and subdivided
by capitalists, under the “colony” system, as described.
Ten or even five acres in a crop of such value
are a comfortable property. On Lake Guarda half an
acre in lemons is sufficient for the support of a family.
It is in evidence here that returns of from $500 to $1000
an acre are had from orange, lemon, and lime, after the
trees have arrived at full bearing.

The piazzas of the orange-planters command attractive
views; rose and heliotrope bloom round them; and specimens
of all the fruits are offered for our tasting with
lavish hospitality and honest pride in their perfection.

We begin with Pasadena, which is reached by a drive
of ten miles from Los Angeles. Pasadena, the Indiana
Colony, San Gabriel, the Lake Vineyard tract, the Alhambra,
Santa Anita, and Sierra Madre tracts, and others,
all of the same general character, adjoin one another.
The dwellings in them are those of people of means and
a certain taste. Even the least show ambition. There
are pretty chapels in the Gothic style, and neat schoolhouses.
Well-dressed children of a city air are met
with on the roads. The roads are excellent. No violent
storms or thawing snows in this climate tear them
up, and they are kept in order with little trouble.

The door-yards are enclosed with hedges of lime, arborvitæ,
or rose-bushes. Curious small circles from time to
time attract attention, either filled with water, or dry,
like the rings of a departed circus. These are reservoirs,
supplementing the irrigation system. They are usually
[436]filled by artesian wells, which flow from iron pipes a
few feet above the ground, the water overspreading the
top in a thin film, like a globe of glass, reflecting neighboring
objects. Such globe-like films, sparkling from a
distance, are a frequent item in the prospect. As there
has never been any forest, no unsightly stumps indicate
recent clearings. The country, in consequence, does not
look new. Where settled at all, it has a surprisingly old
and civilized air.

The temperature, this late November day—on which
there are telegrams in the papers of snow-storms at the
North and East—is perfection. It is neither hot nor
cold. A sybarite would not alter it. Bees hum in the
profuse clusters of heliotrope about the porches. A single
Jacqueminot rose on a tall stem, a beauty whose sway
will not be gainsaid, makes its vivid crimson felt from
the greensward a long way off. Among the older estates
this is pointed out as the home of “Don Benito,”
that of “Don Tomas,” so and so, the family name being
usually American. Audacious in love as in other things,
enterprising Americans have married into the Spanish
families, both before and since the conquest, and succeeded
to their acres. Very few of Spanish stock still
retain any property of note.

If there be or ever existed any real earthly Paradise, I
think it might bear some such complexion as that of the
Sierra Madre Villa, on the first bold rise of the mountains
at San Gabriel. I cannot vouch for it as a hotel, for hotel
it is, but I vouch for it as a situation.

The air was heavy with the fragrance of extensive avenues
of limes as I came up to it. The orange-trees were
propped up, to prevent their breaking under their weight
of fruit. Forty oranges on a single bough! I saw it with
my own eyes. Some of the trees, by the freak of a recent
[437]gale, had been denuded of their leaves, which left only the
globes of golden fruit, a lovely decorative effect, on their
bare stems. A view of thirty miles is had across the garden-like
San Gabriel Valley, to a strip of blue sea on the
horizon. On the strip of blue sea rests a slight brown
spot, the jewel of Santa Catalina Island.

Flowering vines clustered along a piazza, part enclosed
in glass. In a warm nook a couple reclined in steamer-chairs,
one reading aloud a novel in a gentle murmur.
They were a couple of recent date, and as the place for a
[438]honey-moon it was ideal. The orange bears a close resemblance
to the formal tree which the mediæval painters
used to represent as the “tree of the knowledge of good
and evil” of Genesis. It is appropriately placed, therefore,
in our earthly Paradise.

Hist! The young woman who had been reading takes
her stand archly at one side of such a tree. The man
who had been listening rises also, and, with a slight yawn,
places himself on the other. Oh, what is this? Is she a
new Eve? She plucks a fruit, and hands it to him. Oh,
this is terrible! Is there to be a fall again in Eden, and all
its direful consequences? There should be some Cranach
or Dürer here to take down once more the particulars of
the distressing scene. What does Eve wish Adam to do?
Perhaps she wishes him to buy lands—above their value—and
go into orange-planting himself. Alas! he will be
lost forever to the higher financial life. Perhaps Satan
is the invidious real-estate man.

But really there is no pressing need of such a display
of fancy because a young matron offers her husband a
fresh orange before dinner.

Certain drawbacks—drawbacks attending upon an injudicious
entering into this apparently fascinating kind of
life—should not be overlooked. The orange-tree grows
all the time, and calls for incessant care, winter as in summer.
Not a few invalids who had looked to its culture
as a pastime have broken down through this cause, and
through having taken up more land than they could manage.
The lesson of such cases is, not to attempt too much,
but to keep to the five, or ten, acres, as the case may be,
within one’s capacity. Nor has it been politic to put
everything into the single crop of oranges. The smaller
fruits—peaches, plums, and especially apricots—for canning,
which come into bearing quickly, are useful in tiding
[439]over the tedious period of waiting for the orange-trees
to mature, and are always in profitable demand. To start
existence comfortable here the new-comer should have a
capital of from five to ten thousand dollars, though peculiar
energy may do with less.

It requires about nine years to bring an orange-tree
from the seed into full bearing. On the other hand, it
is found that by deftly inserting an orange-bud into the
bark of a lemon-shoot slitted in an X, and setting this in
the ground, a tree can be obtained which bears marketable
fruit after the second year. The controversy rages
as to whether it is worth while to do this, since the product
is dwarf, like the dwarf pear-tree. Though it yield
early it will never yield much, and its fruit does not stand
shipment as well as that of the seedling. Against this it
is maintained that it lives longer than the seedling, and
yields choicer varieties of fruit, and that the fruit is more
uniform in size and quality, and not subject to a singular
form of destruction which sometimes overtakes that of
the seedling—being dashed upon its own thorns.

In the same way conflicting theories of irrigation prevail.
A person who bought grapes in large quantities for
the purpose of making them into wine told me that over-irrigation
was rendering them watery and insipid. He
proposed to meet this by establishing a standard. He
would pay twenty dollars a ton for grapes containing twenty-three
per cent. of sugar, and for those below standard
less. Plentiful irrigation, however, is relied upon to counteract
that fatal pest of the vine, the phylloxera. Some
advocate the theory of irrigation in the winter or rainy
season only. All the water possible is to be conducted
upon the land at the time it naturally falls, leaving the
soil to act as its own reservoir, and store up a portion for
the dry season ahead. Others even deny the need of irrigation
[440]altogether. They write to the papers that it is
only necessary to keep the surface well scratched with a
cultivator, and a supply of moisture will always be found
a few inches below it. It is certain that crops both of
grapes and the cereals have been produced from unirrigated
ground, even for a series of years. But then comes
a dry year, in which everything, animals as well as plants,
is scorched from off the face of the earth.

“Certainty is what is wanted,” says a lively informant.
“You may not need water, as you may not a revolver,
all the time; but when you do, you need it awful bad.”

VI.

In the plain, just under the mountains, lies the old village
and mission church of San Gabriel. The mission
dates from 1761. It was founded, like the other missions
of California, by friars sent out from the college of San
Fernando, in the city of Mexico. I recollect well the
original San Fernando. It stands on the street which
was the scene of Cortez’s disastrous retreat from the
city, and is marked with an inscription commemorating
the famous Leap of Alvarado.

[441]

[442]

The Mission of San Gabriel is worthy of its picturesque
origin. It has the same massiveness, color, and quaint rococo
details, including the peculiar battlement, or Spanish
horn of dominion. Six old green bronze bells hang in as
many niches together. The fern-like shadows of a line
of pepper-trees print themselves in the sunshine against
the time-stained wall. No more than the church edifice
now remains. Great agricultural establishments connected
with all these missions were swept away, years
before the American occupation, by edict of the Mexican
government. Some bits of broken aqueduct, and a
few orange-trees, above a hundred years old, in what was
once the mission garden, are the only vestiges of former
prosperity. The interior of the church contains a few
battered old religious paintings, the worst of their kind.
It is doubtful if the luxury of really good pictures was
ever superadded to the excellent architecture, for which
there was a natural instinct. It is a commentary on the
popular estimate in which the poor old masters are held,
I fear, that I was told by the neighborhood:

“You must see them. They are all Raphaels and
Michael Angelos.”

The village is piquantly foreign. Its single street is
composed entirely of white adobe houses. One of them,
with a tumbling, red-tiled roof, is so full of holes that it
looks as if it had been shelled. All the signs are in
Spanish. Here is the zapatero, or shoemaker, and here
the panaderia, or bakery. The south walls are hung
with a drapery of red peppers drying in the sun to prepare
the favorite condiment. The population are a humble
class, who gain their livelihood for the most part by
day-labor on the surrounding estates. They are not too
poor, however, to retain their taste for festivity still. On
the occasion of some notable wedding among them they
will manage to mount on horseback, and, surrounding a
bridal carriage, driven postilion-fashion, return from the
ceremony, at the old mission, whooping and firing pistols
in the air, in the most gallant and hilarious fashion.

Near by is the large estate of Sunny Slope, known as
one of the most successful instances of the putting in
practice of the sanguine theories about the country. It
has been acquired, and developed, from very small beginnings.
It consists of some nineteen hundred acres of
land, most of it in vines and oranges. There is a large
wine and brandy making establishment. Eight thousand
[443]boxes of oranges and lemons, four hundred thousand gallons
of wine and one hundred thousand of brandy, have
been produced in a year.

The dwelling-house was approached by a stately avenue
of orange-trees, in double lines, three-quarters of a mile
in length. The road to the large, substantial buildings
of the winery was bordered by an orchard of orange on
one side and olive on the other. The vineyards stretched
out in distant effect like vast reddish-tawny meadows.
At the winery, blacksmithing and cooperage were going
on on a large scale, and a deft Chinaman was constructing
the orange-boxes. The rich juice of the grape
poured in floods, and its more concentrated form as
brandy came from its still as clear as water. All distilled
spirit is naturally colorless, and the hues it obtains
[444]for market are given by burned sugar, to gratify an artificial
taste.

The hands are Chinamen and Mexicans. The superintendent
tells us that the former do the most work and
get less pay, but that there are certain things which they
cannot do. They cannot plough, nor prune the vines,
and they are awkward in the management of animals.
Indeed, a Chinaman on horseback, or even in a wagon,
seems almost as incongruous as Jack Tar.

We visited, one evening, the Chinese quarters, and it
would have been hard to find a more clean, domestic-looking
interior among men of any other nationality in
the same circumstances of life. They seemed much
more orderly in their arrangements than the Mexicans,
either those from the village or those who had a settlement
on a bold slope of the estate above.

There is much native Indian blood among these latter,
and their dwellings were half wigwams, patched up of
rubbish. Mongrel dogs, a donkey, and a foundered horse
wandered at ease among them. A reddish-brown urchin,
with large, liquid eyes, coming out, paused to gaze at us.

“Cor-r-re, demonio de muchacho!” (R-r-run, demon of
a boy!) cried a slatternly mother, who appeared behind,
endeavoring to urge him upon some errand of peculiar
expedition.

But the demon of a boy, exemplifying the traits of his
race, had no idea whatever of being in a hurry. On the
contrary, having removed to a safe distance, he dawdled
in the most exasperating way, and continued to stare
round-eyed during all of our critical tour of inspection.

[445]

[446]

The work of the year was now the pruning of the
vines. Stripped of every superfluity, the rugged little
stocks, regimented veterans, were to stand bare till the
exuberance of a new spring should again break forth in
leaves. Faustino, Gaetano, Incarnacion, and the rest, for
so they are called, appear to picturesque advantage in
this work. Their swarthy faces are framed in slouch
sombreros. They wear red-and-blue shirts, and bright
handkerchiefs about their necks. They move forward in
a line, pruning-knife in hand, and a small saw at the belt
for the tougher knots. The spots of color twinkle upon
the russet of the vineyard; the pruning-knives flash as
they turn to the sun; the ground has a gentle, agreeable
fall; and splintered granite mountains, with deep cañons
among them for exploration, softened by a veil of atmosphere,
back up the whole.

The orange-tree, even at a great age, is not as large as
one may have expected. Even those of a hundred years
in the mission garden are not above two feet in diameter.
It is gratifying to be at full liberty to examine this
attractive vegetation, known heretofore only in its tub
in the conservatory, or on the staircase at a ball. There
seems but one drawback to an orange-grove, and that is
that it cannot have greensward below to lie upon. It is
very exacting—requires all the nourishment the soil can
give, and the soil must be kept loose and open around
the roots. It is irrigated about once a month, and the
surface gone over with a cultivator afterward, to prevent
baking up in the sun.

The orange-grove is lovely at all times, mysterious
when the long alleys are dark against the red sunset, the
fruit glimmering like a feast of lanterns at twilight; and
in the pleasant mornings sparkling among the glossy
leaves like little suns newly risen; while we catch the
perfume of blossoms heralding in a new crop, though the
last still hangs upon the bough. Here and there is an
example of the enormous shaddock, which resembles the
orange in appearance but the lemon in character. The
[447]lemon is less hardy to rear than the orange, and is not
cultivated on as large a scale. Chinamen, with ladders
and baskets, gather the fruit, and chatter to one another
from the trees like magpies. It is irrigation-day, and
all at once the water is let on. Twisting and turning
this way and that, it runs out upon the thirsty soil, as if
with an eager curiosity in the embrace. Chinamen with
hoes follow it, here throwing up little dams, which it tries
to evade; there, when it runs sluggishly, opening little
channels, and leading it where it should go. The whole
orchard is soon babbling musically with running water,
and in process of being thoroughly soaked.

---

[448]

XXIX.

TO SAN DIEGO, AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER.

I.

These and kindred scenes are to be met with in fifty,
I know not how many more, localities of a similar sort.
San Fernando, Florence, Compton, Downey City, Westminster,
Orange, Tustin City, Centralia, Pomona, and
Artesia may be mentioned as leading examples. The
“colony” government is of a simple sort, and consists
of a justice of the peace, constable, water overseer, and
school trustees. Anaheim, settled by Germans, was
one of the first established colonies, and has become a
town of importance. Santa Ana had a special bustle
at present, as the terminus, for the time being, of the
railroad in process of building from Los Angeles to San
Diego.

Perhaps, however, the greatest general air of distinction
is worn by Riverside. This colony seems to have been
sought to an exceptional degree by persons in good circumstances.
It is fifty-seven miles lower down than Los
Angeles, and reached by a drive of seven miles southward
from the Southern Pacific Railroad at Colton. Four
miles north of Colton, on the other hand, takes you to
San Bernardino, an important place of six thousand people,
originally settled by Mormons. The regular Mormons
withdrew to Utah by order of Brigham Young on
the threat of the coercive war there in 1857, and only
a few “Josephites” now remain, whose practices do not
differ greatly from those of other people.

[449]

[450]

At Riverside is found a continuous belt of settlement
and cultivation twelve miles long, by two miles in average
width. It will be twenty long when all complete. The
population is not large, but revels in a great deal of room.
The general situation is a valley of about forty miles
square, at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the
sea. The access to this valley is by four several passes,
one each on the north, south, east, and west, as if so many
doors had been providentially left open in the encompassing
mountain ranges. The settlement forms an oasis
in the midst of the desert, after the general plan. Its
fresh greenness, and canals of clear water, along which
sylvan glimpses, almost English, are met with, derive
added charm and interest from the desert. The rest of
the high, quadrangular valley, capable, no doubt, of as
great development, if water can be brought upon it, remains
in its natural condition.

A lovely drive, called Magnolia Avenue, planted with
double rows of pepper and eucalyptus trees, extends
through the length of the place from north to south.
It is bordered with homes, making pretensions to much
more than comfort. The best of these are at the division
called Arlington, four miles below the post-office of Riverside
proper. The native adobe, or sun-dried brick, supplemented
with ornamental wood-work, has been used as
material with excellent effect. In the interiors are found
rugs, portières, Morris’s wall-papers, and all the paraphernalia
of the latest Eastern civilization; and there is an
archery club and a “German.”

Invalidism is heard of with considerable frequency as
an excuse for the migration hither. Certainly many advantages
offer to the invalid. The climate permits him
[451]to be almost constantly out-of-doors. The sky is blue, the
sun unclouded, nearly every day in the year, and he can
go into his orchard and concern himself about his Navel
or Brazilian oranges, his paper-rind St. Michaels, and his
Tahiti seedlings, with little let or hinderance. Orange
culture affords him both a career and a revenue. If the
unchanging blue of the sky grow sometimes monotonous,
there are other distractions in the noble mountain ranges.
Riverside has in this resource a touch of the charm of
Switzerland. Your entertainer points out to you from
his piazza the great peaks of Greylock, San Bernardino,
and San Jacinto, from ten to twelve thousand feet in
height, and crowned with snow for a considerable part
of the year, just as the Jungfrau is pointed out from
Interlaken and Mont Blanc from Geneva.

It is a description that applies to all of Southern California,
that, however great the heat by day—in midsummer
often a hundred and five in the shade—the
[452]nights are always cool and refreshing. Sunstroke is not
known. Nor are the violent thunder-storms with which
Nature, with us, endeavors to restore equilibrium after
having exhausted its most oppressive warmth. The
great drawback here, as there must always be some
drawback, consists in occasional heavy “northers,” which
gather up the dust from the dry surface and produce
painful dust-storms of two or three days’ duration.

In autumn and winter the temperature is chilly enough
to make fires a necessity morning and evening, and even
all day long in apartments shut off from the influence of
the sun. I was astonished to find the air so keen at
these times, and a scum of ice forming upon water in the
mornings even as far down as San Diego. The cold has
a penetrating quality beyond its register by the thermometer.
This, though usually overlooked, is important,
since fuel is very scarce and correspondingly dear.
[453]Fagots of the prunings of the cottonwoods, sycamores,
and mesquit-trees along the beds of the streams are the
principal resource. Such coal as can be obtained is both
costly and of poor quality.

The water for the irrigation of Riverside is taken from
the swift little stream of the Santa Ana River, which
falls so rapidly within a short compass that it is feasible
to take out two separate canals with a difference of thirty-five
feet in their levels. On all sides lands are held at
$200 and $300 per acre, and when the orange-trees have
come into good bearing, at $1000, which but a few years
ago were purchased at a dollar and a quarter an acre.

All these places have their local rivalries, though
Southern California as a whole is ready to unite in vindicating
its peculiar claims, against the outside world.
All have their pamphlets to distribute, containing their
tables of mean temperatures, altitudes, analyses of soils,
and claims to regard, as based upon nearness to, or absence
from, some particular natural feature. Thus the
coast counties take leave to pride themselves upon a
genial average of temperature, owing to their proximity
to the sea. They are free, they say, from the extremes
of heat and cold afflicting those which are shut in behind
the mountain barriers. The inland counties, on the other
hand, congratulate themselves that their lot is cast where
the mountains form an efficient defence against the raw
fogs and gusts which must necessarily afflict those directly
exposed to the chilly ocean.

These petty rivalries are a part of the history of all
new countries, and pass away with the development of
population and trade. There seems no need of jealousies,
since there is encouragement enough for all in
their several ways. The Territories of Arizona and New
Mexico have just been opened to transportation by rail
[454]from this quarter. The lands suitable for the cultivation
of the “citrus fruits” are limited in extent. The market
is much more likely to improve than decline, even
when production shall have largely increased beyond its
present rate. High railroad freights were at one time a
cause of alarm. The making of an “orange wine” was
proposed as a resource for using up the surplus crop of
this kind. The experiment was not a success, but it is
not likely to be needed. Freights have declined, and
will decline more with the building of projected new
roads. Shipments of oranges have been successfully
made from this section as far away as Denver, Chicago,
and St. Louis.

II.

Great things are predicted for Wilmington, a little
port twenty-two miles to the south-west of Los Angeles.
The extensive works undertaken here by the railroad and
the United States government are still incomplete, and
it is but a dreary little place in its present condition.
However, great ports have never been selected primarily
for picturesqueness, but in accordance with such commercial
necessities as short lines of transit, easy grades, and
convenience for shipping. Wilmington had few natural
conveniences to offer. There were originally but eighteen
inches of water on its bar. This has been increased
to ten feet. An enormous jetty, 6700 feet long, extending
out to what is called Dead Man’s Island, is under
construction. It is to force the tide itself to do the duty
of scouring out the bottom, so that a ship channel several
miles long will eventually be secured.

Santa Monica is another small port at the end of a
branch railroad from Los Angeles, sixteen miles directly
west, and somewhat famed as a sea-side resort. It has a
[455]hotel of considerable size, and a bold situation on a pretty
horseshoe bay. The beach is of fine, hard sand; and
the temperature admits of bathing, if one be inclined for
it, all the year round. The hopes which were at one
time entertained by capitalists, like Senator Jones, of
Nevada, of making the place a great shipping point,
have been for the present abandoned. It was to have
been the Pacific terminus of a new through line from
the East, coming by way of the Cajon Pass. A wharf
1500 feet long was built, and a breakwater proposed.

From here, or from Wilmington, you sail up the coast
to San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara—favored by invalids.
These places have as yet no railroad, but must
before long come into the general system. Both are on
that sheltered stretch of the coast which, from Point
Conception, makes a sharp turn to the eastward, and has
direct southern exposure and a view of the islands of
[456]Santa Barbara Channel. Santa Barbara, on its practical
side, has devoted more attention than most places to the
culture of the olive—an industry still much in its infancy.
Some of the cultivators have provided themselves
with a machinery, which costs about a thousand dollars,
for expressing the oil. As a condiment the fruit is not
pickled green here, like the Spanish olive, but ripe and
black. It may be that a special education is needed for
liking each variety of olives, as it is for acquiring the
taste in the beginning. Those here are of a small variety,
descending from the old mission times, and it is hard
not to find them either insipid or bitter. The leading
shipment from San Buenaventura is honey. A million
pounds per annum from Ventura County, of which it is
the capital, is not an unusual product.

III.

I sailed from Wilmington to San Diego. I embarked
in the evening in a small tug, which steamed down the
tortuous windings of the channel, past black lighters that
Whistler would have liked to etch, and past Dead Man’s
Island, and transferred us on board a coast steamer waiting
without. Next morning we were at our destination,
a hundred miles below. San Diego, rising on a gentle
slope, makes a pretty appearance from the water. A
United States barracks (yellow), with a flag-staff rising in
the centre, is the most prominent object in front. You
round an immensely long, narrow sand-spit of a peninsula,
which contributes to form the excellent small harbor,
and make fast to an immensely long mooring wharf.
It is a feature of all California ports to have immensely
long wharves. To the left is “Old Town,” its beach
where Dana once loaded hides in his famous “Two
Years Before the Mast,” now the site of a Chinese fishing
village. To the right is brand-new “National City,”
the location of the shops and extensive depot grounds
for the new railway. In the centre, at about four miles
from either, lies “New Town,” San Diego proper. All
together have a population of about five thousand.

[457]

[458]

As we came up to the wharf a locomotive, starting
from National City on the new track, made the circuit
of the water-front, with one long, shrill scream, which
was taken up by the hills and echoed back. Gods and
men were no longer to remain ignorant that San Diego
had at last caught up with its future and had its railroad.

It was cruelly disappointed when it was to be the terminus
of the Texas Pacific, transcontinental, road. The
panic of ’73 prevented the capitalist “Tom Scott” from
negotiating the foreign loan which was needed for its
completion. That enterprise was abandoned, and a half-mile
of graded road-bed alone remains as a sort of tumulus
to the blighted hopes and bitter memories of the
time. The name of the unfortunate “Tom Scott”—since
defunct—remains also a byword and a reproach.
Now, however, the “California Southern” is actually at
work, and under contract to complete the one hundred
and sixteen miles necessary to meet the Southern Pacific,
at a point near San Bernardino, within a short time. It
is to be a link in the new “Atlantic and Pacific,” which
is to follow the thirty-fifth parallel, and become a transcontinental
road by means of connection with the Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fé.

The capital and management of the California Southern
are largely supplied by the same Boston company directing
the Mexican Central, the line to Guaymas from the
Arizona frontier, and others. A farther road is projected
[459]by them eastward from San Diego to Calabasas, passing
through Port Ysabel, at the head of the Gulf of California.
This can be more cheaply built below the Mexican
frontier than on this side, owing to special exemptions
there to be had from taxation, and the lower rates of
labor. It is thought that the Southern Pacific will also
be compelled by competition to build across from Yuma.
Hopes are still entertained also of the derelict Texas Pacific.
With all this in prospect, it will be seen that San
Diego has justification for making a good deal of stir. It
claims to be hundreds of miles nearer, than San Francisco,
to New Orleans and New York, on the one hand, and
the Orient on the other, and is correspondingly cheerful.

A hand-car on the long wharf conveyed our baggage
into the town while we walked beside it. The town, being
reached, is found a place of loose texture. It has a
disproportionately large hotel, the Horton House, built in
anticipation of the rapid arrival of its future greatness,
and a loss to its original proprietor. The blue shades
were down and the plate-glass windows dusty also, with
an expectant look, in much of the “Horton Block,” opposite.
After ’73 half the shutters in San Diego were
put up. They have come down now, however, and probably
to stay.

There is a charming view of the harbor and blue ocean
from the upper slopes of the town. Part of the view is
a group of bold Mexican islands, the boldest of these,
Coronado, a solid mass of red sandstone, which Americans
have tried to get for a quarry, without success.
Yes, here is Old Mexico once more; we have come back
to it. The high, flat-topped peak of Table Mountain marks
it unmistakably. It is customary to drive down to “the
Monument,” set up on the dividing line of Baja (Lower)
California, but the excursion is without special interest.

[460]

The chronic condition of shutters in San Diego “Old
Town” is to be “up,” that is, so far as it can be said
to have any shutters yet remaining. It dates from
1769. Disadvantageously situated in regard to the bay,
it began to be deserted in favor of the newer site about
ten years ago. Nothing could seem more desolate than
it is now. The usual old mission, with a few palms and
olives about it, stands in a valley, up the pretty San Diego
River, and the earth-works of Commodore Stockton, who
threw them up one night before the enemy knew he was
ashore, are seen on a hill. Rents should be cheap in Old
Town, but, according to the gossips who still sit around
the decayed old plaza, they are not. The owners hold
them stiffly yet, on what theory Heaven only knows.
The plaza has a toppling flag-staff, a decayed music-stand,
and vestiges of a number of burned edifices, which have
never been worth anybody’s while to build up again.
The “Merchants’ Exchange” will never supply cocktails
to thirsty soul again; the Cosmopolitan Hotel is without
a guest; whole rows of weather-beaten adobes—whole
quarters—stand vacant. It should be a great place for
ghosts. But perhaps they do not care for one another’s
society. The children, coming from school—for there is,
[461]it seems, a school—amuse themselves with knocking at
and rattling the vacant doors; then they peer in at the
broken window-panes and shout, and run laughing away.

IV.

In leaving San Diego I traversed the surveyed line of
the new railroad almost due northward. A thirty-mile
section of the railroad was already built. The rest of the
journey was made by wagon, with an occasional half-day’s
pedestrianism, for which the dry, smooth surface of the
ground is well adapted. It afforded opportunity of making
the acquaintance in a leisurely way of some of the
ranchmen, small and great, of the old school. The principal
one of these was Don Juan Forster (deceased since
[462]this visit), well known in his section. He was English by
birth, but sailed with his father in a trading vessel, and
became a Mexican subject and resident of California long
before the American conquest. It was so long before
that he had well-nigh forgotten his English, and had to
learn it over again when the Americans arrived. The
Señora, a sister of Governor Pio Pico, never learned it
at all, any more than her conservative brother.

Don Juan’s estate, the Santa Margarita Ranch, comprised
an area of twenty-seven miles by fourteen, or one
hundred and forty-five thousand acres of land. There
was one fence seventeen miles in length, and another
ten. The owner had made two distinct efforts to colonize
a portion of his land, without great success. He
had offered in London to give forty acres and the use of
three cows and two horses to whoever would put upon
the land improvements, in the shape of houses, vineyards,
etc., to the amount of $1000.

[463]

[464]

The Santa Margarita ranch-house is of adobe, very
thick-walled, with a terrace in front, and an interior
court. The waiting at table was by a broad-faced Indian
woman in calico. All the domestic service was performed
by mission Indians, except the cooking, for which
a Chinaman had lately been secured, with the view of
having meals on time. The manner of living on these
great places was found comfortable, but without the
“princely” features attributed to it in some of the highly
colored narratives of former travellers.

The greater part of the available land in the section
was devoted to pasture. The cereals were cultivated, but
not much fruit. Barley is the favorite cereal, as less liable
to “rust” and spoil than wheat. Hay is made, not of
grass, but of wheat and barley straw, cut green, with the
milk still in it. Bee-culture is an important industry. A
number of varieties of wild sage, wild buckwheat and
sumac, furnish the bees exceptionally good provender.
Rows of the square hives, painted in colors, were often
seen districted into little streets on the hill-side, or at
the mouth of some small cañon, like a miniature city.

Before reaching Don Juan Forster’s the old mission of
San Luis Rey is encountered, in the hamlet of the same
name. It is almost Venetian in aspect. The whole exterior
was at one time faced with a diagonal pattern recalling
that of the Ducal Palace. The pile was ruined
by a Mormon contingent of the American forces engaged
in the conquest of the State. Parts of the heavy adobe
walls and buttresses have fallen in, and resolved themselves
back into their original element as mere earth-heaps.
The images have been shot and hacked down,
and a yawning cavern was excavated behind the main
[465]altar in search of fancied treasure. Upon a floor strewn
with such débris and with fragments of red tiles the daylight
falls curiously, through holes in the broken roof
and dome.

The railroad traverses some striking natural scenery.
Most notable is the Temecula Cañon, a gorge of a wild
and grand description, ten miles in length, through the
Coast Range. A brawling stream runs down its centre.
The gorge was filled with a busy force, as we passed, terracing
up the track along its sides, sometimes on the
natural rock, sometimes on a cyclopean retaining-wall of
immense bowlders. Toward evening every day the firing
of heavy blasts reverberated up the defile like a cannonade.
The main part of the laboring force consisted of
Chinamen. They had utilized the shelving ledges and
random nooks by the stream for their tents and cooking-ovens
with great ingenuity. The Mexicans and Indians,
who formed the contingent next in importance, were in
every way less provident. The surveyors were found
pleasant and hospitable fellows, as surveyors at the scene
of their labors are apt to be. Compactness and convenience
[466]had been reduced to the lowest terms, but a pleasant
existence seemed possible in their small tents. A Chinese
cook was attached to each camp, and the provisions
and fare were excellent.

While coming up in the construction-train over the
section of already completed road we had the distinction
of being waited on by a servant of rather uncommon
pretensions. This was a certain “Charley,” a shock-headed
boy of fourteen, son of a later Tichborne claimant,
who had strangely arisen at San Diego just then,
and announced his purpose of again contesting the title.
[467]Though serving in a menial capacity—while his father,
who claimed to have good and sufficient reason for having
kept quiet till now, was taking the necessary steps to
secure the long-lost title and fortune—“Charley” was
deaf to all banter on the subject. He was supercilious
and firm in the faith that he too was a Tichborne.

“And don’t you forget it,” he threw out to us by way
of a parting injunction.

Out of the cañon, at the van of the construction work,
we were on the Temecula Plains, a part of the Upper
Santa Ana Valley. The course of the road was marked
henceforth only by an occasional surveyor’s stake. We
rode over fifty miles of absolutely treeless, verdureless
desert. It was desert, however, with a certain fascination
in its sterility. It had a distinct beauty of coloring.
The brown, drab, and blackish waste, catching sparkles
of light on its flinty surface, shimmered in the sunshine.
The heat was tempered by a gentle breeze. Crags of
black, water-worn rock, which had once been reefs in
an inland sea, rose in bold, fantastic shapes, and noble
mountain ranges stood up along the distant horizons,
their rugged harshness softened into blues and purples
by a delicious veiling atmosphere.

Half-way across we fell in with a single sign of human
life, in the shape of an abandoned pine shanty. On going
around to the rear the boards were found to have
been knocked off, probably to be used for fuel. Some
former travellers, halting here like ourselves, had occupied
a part of their leisure with writing inscriptions in
lead-pencil. One had written a direction about drinkable
water in the neighborhood. Another, apparently
finding this erroneous, had inscribed below it, with much
more vigor than regard for adopted usages in spelling,
“Lyor!!”

[468]

The sole piece of furniture remaining was a rusted
cooking-stove, standing on three legs. It had a certain
almost diabolic, knowing air. You suspected it of having
lost its other leg in waltzing about and holding high
carnival, as no doubt it did, with the coyotes, gophers,
tarantulas, and lizards who dropped in to pay it visits.

---

[469]

XXX.

ACROSS ARIZONA.

I.

If there be anything politically disrupting in mere topography,
the section cut off by the range below the Los
Angeles and Riverside country should also be made a
separate State. It should clamor at any rate to be joined
to Arizona, since it is Arizona that it follows in climate,
and not California. South-east of the low San Gorgonio
Pass the seasons are the same as those of Mexico; that is
to say, the rains fall in summer, while northward they fall
in the winter and spring. Thunder-storms on each side
of the mountains may be plainly visible from the other,
but do not pass the limit.

I myself saw, from the Arizona side, in December, in
hot, clear sunshine at the time, murky clouds billowing
above the range, and the lightnings playing in them, and,
on returning to Los Angeles, found it drenched in its
first showers of the season.

There is one excellent reason why the inhabitants of
the section do not raise such a clamor, which is, that there
are no inhabitants worth mentioning. For a hundred
and fifty miles, from the pass, to the Arizona frontier at
Yuma, the railroad hardly knows any local traffic. Its
route is over the celebrated “Colorado Desert,” in comparison
with which previous deserts are of small importance.
There are various stopping-places, with designations
[470]on the map, but these are rarely more than signal-stations
where the locomotive, like the passengers, stops
to slake its thirst at a series of artesian wells.

The plain is not of great extent laterally. Black and
purplish mountains are always in sight, and spurs cross
the track. Bowlders and pebbles are scattered thickly on
the surface at first, among patches of bunch-grass. Then,
near Seven Palms, the jaws of the black and purple mountains
open and receive us into the genuine desert. It is
strewn with bowlders still, but is itself a waste of drifting
white sand, with large dunes and hills of sand. One might
be riding on the shores of Coney Island or Long Branch.

A singular depression below the level of the sea for a
hundred miles, and at its lowest point nearly three hundred
feet, is traversed. At Dos Palmas, in the very bottom
of it, a board shanty, covered with signs in amateurish
lettering, indicating that it is a saloon, stands entirely
alone. Surely the bar-keeper must consume his own
drinks, and lead an existence unprecedented among his
kind. No; a horseman in Mexican accoutrements dashes
across the plain—though where he should dash from,
and how he should ride anything, here in the bottom of
the sea, but the skeleton, say, of a dolphin or a sea-horse,
is a mystery—pulls up, and enters.

And it appears, on a better acquaintance with Dos
Palmas, that a stage starts every other day for points
on the Colorado River, and Prescott, the capital of Arizona
Territory, and that this is but a faint survival of
bustle which once reigned here before the advent of the
railroad. The route of the Southern Overland Mail then
came this way, and long trains of immigrant and freight
wagons, carrying water in casks for two and three days’
supply, were passing continually over these wastes.

Nothing, on general principles, would appear more depressing
[471]than such a country, but as a matter-of-fact it is
a stimulus to the curiosity, and furnishes real entertainment.
One would not wish to be abandoned there without
resources, it is true, but he does not tire of looking
at it from the car-window. Its blazing dryness is disinfectant
and preservative. There can never exist the
last extreme of sadness where the element of decay by
damp and mould is not present. Chemical processes
are those which are principally going on. Wonders of
almost any sort may be expected, and you almost look
for phantoms not of earth among the shifting mirages.

A considerable part of Arizona, as well, is of the same
character, but it is estimated by competent authority that
with irrigation thirty-seven per cent. of that Territory can
be redeemed for agriculture, and sixty per cent. as pasturage.
It will be called to mind that even the apparently
hopeless Colorado Desert, which is below the level of the
sea, is also below the level of the Colorado River, from
which water might perhaps be spread over it with comparative
ease.

The truly patriotic Arizonian in their neighborhood
is not ashamed of his encompassing deserts, but rather
proud of them, and with a certain reason. The desert is
in reality a laboratory of useful products. Paper is made
from the yucca, or Spanish-bayonet, which abounds in
parts of it. There are tracts of salt, borax, gypsum, sulphur,
asbestos, and kaolin, and quarries of pumice-stone,
only waiting shipment. It is maintained, also, that it
has deposits of the same precious metals which, mined
in places where water is more accessible, have given the
Territory most of its present fame.

Our train runs out upon a long wooden drawbridge,
across the Colorado River, and we arrive at Yuma. The
company has placed here the first of its series of hotels
[472]of uniform pattern. It is both station and hotel. Such
provision on an equal scale of comfort would hardly have
been judicious yet as an investment for private persons.
These structures therefore become not only a typical
feature of the scenery, but an indication of the extent to
which the railroad has had to, and has been able to, by
reason of its ample resources, take this bare new country
into its own hands. They are of the usual reddish-brown,
two stories in height, and surrounded by piazzas of generous
width—an indispensable adjunct under the dazzling
light and heat of the country.

II.

The heat of Yuma is proverbial. The thermometer
ranges up to 127° in the shade. There is an old story
of a soldier who died at the fort and went to the place
which Bob Ingersoll says does not exist, and, finding it
chilly there by comparison, sent back after his blankets.

Great heat, nevertheless, is not equally formidable
everywhere. It is well attested that there is no sunstroke
here, and no such suffering as from a much lower
temperature in moister climates. Distinct sanitary
properties are even claimed for this well-baked air. So
near the sea-level, it is said to be less rarefied, and to
comprise, therefore, a greater quantity of oxygen to a
given bulk, than that of mountain districts, which, in purity
and dryness, it resembles. It is thought to be beneficial
in lung troubles. Yuma, among its arid sand-hills, has
aspirations to be a sanitarium. Civilized people also may
yet resort there to engage in a sensible sun-worship, basking
in the genial heat, and then plunging into the river,
after the fashion of the resident Indians, who make of it
in this way a kind of natural Turkish bath.

[473]

[474]

A transition state may have disadvantages, even when
a step toward something better. Yuma has now its railroad,
and is to have a shipping-port of its own, by the
construction of another to Port Ysabel, on the Gulf of
California. Still, it laments a greater activity it once enjoyed,
as chief distributing point for the mines and upper
river towns. It expects the Port Ysabel Railroad to have
the effect of doubling its population in two years. It will
not be a very stupendous population even then, as it is
but fifteen hundred at present.

The town is a collection of inferior adobe houses, a few
of the very best being altered from the natural mud-color
by a coating of whitewash. The ordinary part of it resembles
more the poor tropical hamlets on the trail to
Acapulco than even the ordinary villages of Mexico.
The houses consist of a framework of cottonwood or
ocotilla wattles, plastered with mud inside and out,
making a wall two or three inches thick. The roof is
thatched, the floor is the bare ground. Around them
are generally high palisades of ocotilla sticks, and corrals
of the same adjoining.

The waiters in a Yuma hotel are of a highly miscellaneous
character. You are served, in the same dining-room,
by Mexicans, Chinamen, Irish, Americans, and a
tame Apache Indian. One and all had a certain astounded
air, ending in something like confirmed depression,
on finding that we were to remain, would dine at our
leisure, and did not wish to have the dishes shot at us as
if out of a catapult, after the practice with the ordinary
traveller pausing here his allotted half-hour. One does
not expect too much of his waiter in Arizona, however.
There are reported instances in which he makes you eat
your steak with his hand on his pistol-pocket, and the
threat of wearing it out on you if you object.

[475]

The Colorado at Yuma makes about the same impression
as to width as the Sacramento at Sacramento, the
Ohio at Pittsburg, or the Connecticut at Hartford. It
is a turbulent yellow stream. It cuts into high sand
bluffs on the Arizona side, and spreads out their contents
in wide bars on the California side. It is without wharves.
The light-draught, high-decked steamboats, or barges,
that ply up and down its interminable reaches tie up
when necessary to the banks.

Mountains of a jagged, eccentric formation follow its
general course northward. Peaks impressively counterfeiting
human work, Castle Dome, Chimney Peaks, Picacho,
and Cargo Muchacho, loom up along the horizon,
a fitting prelude to the marvels of Arizona.

It was at the close of an Indian war that this visit was
made. It had been said, in rumors much exaggerated,
that the whole white civilization of the Territory was in
danger by the outbreak, and troops—but now on their
return—had been hurried thither from all sides. The
first view of Indians, therefore, at Yuma was of a double
interest. They were not Apaches, it is true, but a
subsequent acquaintance with the general field proved
them to be even more picturesque. They are of that
highly satisfactory style of savages who wear but little
clothing, and none of it European. They are to be seen
in numbers about the railway-station by the most casual
passenger. The railroad is still new to them, and they
have not satiated their curiosity. They bring friends
from a distance to see it, and are observed describing to
these visitors how the drawbridge swings, and how the
cars are switched from one track to another.

They are met with coming across this bridge from the
patch of river-bottom near the fort on the California side,
where their principal settlement is. The young men run
[476]or stride at great speed, so as to throw out behind them a
long red sash or band, depending from the breech-cloth,
which is, in summer, the principal part of their attire.
To this is added, in winter, a close-fitting gray or crimson
under-shirt. They wear their thick, coal-black hair
“banged” low on their foreheads, and bushy about their
necks. The effect at a little distance is not unlike that of
the Florentine period, when the young gallants wore jerkins
and trunk hose fitting them like their skins, and just
such bushy locks, which they crowned, however, instead
of going bare-headed, with jaunty velvet caps.

The fort is without guns, other than a howitzer for firing
salutes, and has no strength, as it no longer needs to
have, except from its position on a commanding bluff.
The military policy of the government now is to station
its troops along a railroad or other easy line of communication,
where they can be quickly massed for mutual support.
All the Arizona posts, such as Camp Lowell, with
its grassy parade and fine avenue of cottonwoods; Camp
Grant, on its table-land; and Camp Apache, at the junction
of two charming trout streams, in the White River
Cañon; and the others, have only this strategic importance,
and no intrinsic strength. The barracks at Yuma
consist of a series of comfortable, large, adobe houses, plastered,
and painted green, around an oblong plaza. They
have in front a peculiar screen-work of green blinds,
which shuts out the glare arising from the yellow ground,
and makes both a cool promenade and comfortable sleeping
apartments for the summer.

[477]

[478]

The chief of the Yumas, on whose settlement the fort
looks down, chooses his sub-chiefs, but is himself appointed
by the military commandant. The last investiture was
made as long ago as 1852, by General, then Major, Heintzelman.
He conferred it upon the now wrinkled and decrepit
Pasqual, described at the time as “a tall, fine-looking
man, of an agreeable disposition.”

Pasqual’s people cultivate little patches of vegetables
and hay in the river-bottom, fertilized by the annual
overflow. Their principal sustenance, however, is the
sweet bean of the mesquit-tree. This they pound, in
mortars, into a kind of flour. Sometimes, when on the
move, the Indians float their hay across the river on rafts,
which they push before them, swimming. They propel
the small children in the same way, placing them in their
large, Egyptian-looking ollas, or water-jars.

The crop of mesquit beans was so large one year as to
be beyond their unaided capacity to consume, and they
hospitably invited in their friends, the Pimas, to aid them.
Old Pasqual describes with graphic gestures how haggard
and lank were these visitors on their arrival, and
[479]what an unctuous corpulence they had attained in the
end, when, after nearly eating their hosts out of house
and home, they were only got rid of at last by force.

III.

Few things are more curious at this time of day than
to look back at the old maps of our Western possessions
previous to the annexation of Texas. Texas was not then
ours; nor were a considerable part of Indian Territory,
Kansas, half of Colorado, all of Utah, Nevada, California,
Arizona, and New Mexico. All of this belonged
to our sister republic of Mexico, which, as I have said,
was within an ace as large as ourselves, and, except for
its internal dissensions, could by no means be considered
a puny antagonist.

An impressive vagueness attended the delineation of
most things west of the Mississippi. There were great
tracts hardly more known than the centre of Africa.
The upper regions of Mexico were distinguished as Interna;
New Mexico and Arizona were simply Apacheria—Apache
Land. Our frontier ran along the line of the
Sabine River to the Red, from the Red to the Arkansas,
and from the Arkansas, on the 42d Parallel of latitude,
straight west to the Pacific Ocean. By the peace of
Guadalupe Hidalgo our frontier became the Rio Grande
and Gila instead, and the line had dropped from Parallel
40° to Parallel 32°.

I have called this territory heretofore, by way of figure
of speech, an Alsace-Lorraine of Mexico, though it is not
probable, vacant as it was, and Americanized as it now is,
that a serious grudge is still borne us for it, or that there
will ever be momentous wars for its recovery. However
this may be, it has been the making of us. We
[480]should be in but sorry shape indeed had we to go back
to the limits of the thirteen original British Colonies,
or even to these with Florida, purchased from the Spaniards,
and Louisiana, purchased from the French, added.
The Mexican acquisition gave us one-third of our domain—that
which is now most open to the teeming millions
of Europe and that which avails us our repute for
essential Americanism abroad. It gave us the field of
the Bret Harte school in literature, our chief marvels
and wonders, our mines of the precious metals, and the
command of the Pacific Ocean.

The lower belt of Arizona was not even comprised in
this. An area of 460 miles by 130, below the Gila River,
was not obtained till “the Gadsden Purchase,” in 1853.
By the payment of the sum of $10,000,000 under this
treaty we obtained a number of decided advantages.
We rectified our boundary line, confused through the inaccuracy
of the map of one Dwinelle, on which it was
based. We got rid of an embarrassing engagement, of
the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, to protect the Mexican
frontier from Apaches—leaving them to regulate this service
for themselves. We secured the right of way for a
railroad across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which was
thought desirable for speedier communication with our
new possessions of California.

But above all we acquired, in the easy levels below
the Gila, the natural route for a Southern Pacific transcontinental
railway. The files of the Congressional
Globe of that date are full of the necessity of binding
our Pacific acquisitions securely to the rest of the country,
and the most effectual of all the means proposed was
considered to be a transcontinental railway.

Well, we are bowling at last along that now actually
constructed Southern Pacific Railroad, once discussed
[481]in musty debates of the Congressional Globe. It increases
our respect for predecessors to whom we may not have
given any great consideration heretofore to find how
sagacious they were. We reach Stanwix, with its lava
beds; Painted Rock, named from huge, mysteriously-decorated
bowlders; Casa Grande, from its architectural
ruins of the Toltecs; and Tucson.

Adopting the policy of leaving Tucson to be examined
on the return, let us push on to the extreme end of the
Territory—to the eccentrically-named Tombstone. Benson,
the point of departure, from the railroad, for Tombstone,
is 1024 miles from San Francisco, and probably
2500 from New York.

---

I.

Tombstone is the very latest and liveliest of those
mushroom civilizations which so often gather around a
“find” of the precious metals. They live at a headlong
pace; draw to them wild and lawless spirits; confer great
fortunes here, the grave of the drunkard, the suicide, or
the victim of violence elsewhere. A school of literature,
with Bret Harte as its exponent, has arisen to celebrate
their doings. At the present rate of advance of population
and conventional usages westward they must shortly
disappear as effectually as the dodo of tradition. While
things go well with them the prices of commodities are
hardly considered. Nobody haggles. The most expensive
of everything is what is most wanted.

“Diamonds—two-hundred-dollar watches and chains—Lord!
we couldn’t hand ’em out fast enough,” says an
ex-jeweller, describing his experience at one of the camps
in its palmy days. “Champagne wasn’t good enough
for me then,” says a seedy customer, recalling his doings
after the discovery and sale of a rich mine. He sighed
for a repetition of the event, not to make provision for
his old age, which sadly needed it, but that he might
have “one more glorious spree” before he died.

Oftentimes this rush of life departs as quickly as it
came. Some fine day the “lead” is exhausted, there is
[483]found to be no more treasure in the mines. The heterogeneous
elements scatter, and the town, be it never so
well built, is left as desolate as Tadmor of the Wilderness.
In a certain Nevada mining town, which once
numbered some thousands of inhabitants, Indians are
living in rows of good brick houses, having adapted
them to their peculiar conditions by taking out doors
and windows and knocking holes in the roof.

A six-horse Concord coach carried us, not too speedily,
over the twenty-five miles of dusty road to Tombstone.
It was called the “Grand Central,” after one of the
prosperous silver mines of the place. A rival line was
named the “Sandy Bob,” from its proprietor; who preferred
to be himself thus known, instead of by a conventional
family appellation such as anybody might have.
We should certainly have taken the “Sandy Bob Line”
for its greater suggestiveness, except that it seemed to be
coming down when we wanted to go up, and always coming
up when we wanted to go down.

Our own proved to have plenty of suggestiveness too.
A guard got up with a Winchester rifle, and posted himself
by the Wells-Fargo Express box, and the driver began
almost at once to relate robber stories. His stage
had been stopped and “gone through” twice within the
past six months. The affair had been enlivened on the
one occasion by a runaway and turnover, and on the
other by the shooting and killing of the driver. Of this
last item his successor spoke with a natural disgust. If
the line could not be drawn at drivers, he said, things
had indeed come to a pretty pass. He respected a man
who took to the road and robbed those who could afford
it. At least, he considered it more honorable than borrowing
money of a friend which you knew you could
never repay, or than gobbling up the earnings of the
[484]poor, like a large
firm lately suspended
in Pima
County. But as
to shooting a driver,
even in mistake
for somebody else,
he had no words to
express his sense of
its meanness.

He threw stones
at his horses, as in
Mexico, that is, at
the leaders, beyond the reach of his long lash. The
same stone was made to “carom” from one to the other,
such was his skill, and startle them both. Long string-teams
of mules or Texas steers, sixteen to a team, with
ore-wagons, were met with along the road. Mexican-looking
drivers trudged beside them in the deep, yellow
dust, cracking their animals lustily with huge “black-snakes.”
Mesquit-bushes, and long grass dried to hay—not
as good as it looked—covered portions of the
surface; the rest was bare and stony.

We rode for a certain distance beside the branch railroad
[485]in course of construction between Benson and Tombstone.
A series of lateral valleys along the tributaries of
the Gila, north and south, as the Santa Cruz, Salt River,
San Carlos, San Pedro, and San Simon Valleys, afford excellent
stock ranges, promise of a flourishing agriculture,
and easy routes for tributary railways. They have already
begun to be utilized. The San Pedro has the Southern
Pacific branch above mentioned, and the Santa Cruz will
have the Arizona Southern, connecting the centre of the
Territory at Florence, on the Atlantic and Pacific, with
Mexico at Calabasas. The transcontinental road—or
roads, when the Atlantic and Pacific shall have been
built—will draw through these tributary valleys, as the
Gila draws its waters, a trade from Northern Mexico,
where mining enterprises in particular, in the hands of
Americans, are making great headway.

The route began to be very much up-hill. We changed
horses and lunched at Contention City. One naturally
expected a certain belligerency in such a place, but none
appeared on the surface during our stay. There were
plenty of saloons—the “Dew-drop,” the “Head-light,”
and others—and at the door of one of them a Spanish
señorita smoked a cigarette and showed her white teeth.

Contention City is the seat of stamp-mills for crushing
ore, which is brought to it from Tombstone. The latter
place is without an efficient water-power. The stamps
are rows of heavy beams, which drop upon the mineral,
on the mortar and pestle plan, with a continuous dull
roar, by night as well as day.

“That’s the music I like to hear,” said our driver, gathering
up his reins, “poundin’ out the gold and silver.
There ain’t no brass bands ekils it.”

The route grew steeper yet. On the few wayside
fences that exist were painted flaring announcements, as
[486]“Go To Bangley and Schlagenstein’s At Tombstone.
They Are The Bosses, You Bet.”

Then over the edge of bare hills appeared Tombstone
itself, a large, circular water-tank, big enough for a fort,
painted with advertisements, the most conspicuous object
in the foreground.

II.

At the beginning of the year 1878 there was not so
much as a tent at Tombstone. One “Ed” Schieffelin
and his brother started thither prospecting. It was supposed
to be an adventure full of dangers. At the Santa
Rita silver mines, in the Santa Cruz Valley, for instance,
nothing like so far away, three superintendents had been
murdered by Indians in rapid succession.

His friends therefore said to Ed, “Better take your
coffin with you; you will find your tombstone there, and
nothing else.”

But Ed Schieffelin—a young man yet, who has not
discarded a picturesque way of dressing of which he was
fond, nor greatly altered his habits otherwise—found instead
the Tough Nut and Contention Mines. He made a
great fortune out of them, and was so pleased at the difference
between the prediction and the result that he
gave the name of Tombstone to the town itself.

One of two well-printed daily papers has assumed the
corresponding title of the Epitaph. The unreliability of
epitaphs—if the remark may be safely ventured even at
this distance—is proverbial. Nevertheless, they may occasionally
tell the truth. From appearances it would
seem that this was one of the occasions. Almost any
eulogy of its subject by the Epitaph would seem justified.
The city, but two years old at this date, had attained
to a population of 2000, and a property valuation,
[487]apart from that of the mines, of $1,050,980. A desirable
lot of 30 by 80 feet, on Allen Street, between Fourth
and Sixth—such was the business-like nomenclature used
already in this settlement of yesterday—was worth $6000.
A shanty that cost $50 to build rented for $15 a month.
A nucleus of many blocks at the centre consisted of substantial,
large-sized buildings, hotels, banks—Schieffelin
Hall, for meetings and amusements—and stores stocked
with goods of more than the average excellence in many
older and larger towns.

[488]

The mining claims run under the city itself. From
the roof of the Grand Hotel you look down at the shafts,
hoist-works, and heaps of extracted ore of the Vizina, the
Gilded Age (close to the Palace Lodging-house), the
Mountain Maid, and other mines, opening strangely in
the very midst of the buildings. This circumstance has
given rise to disputes of ownership, so that whoever
would be safe purchases all the conflicting titles, both
above ground and below. On a commanding hill close
by, to the southward, are the Tough Nut and Contention,
and above them many others later discovered. The
larger mines had extensive buildings, of wood, and in
handsome draughting and assay rooms within were regularly
educated scientists, ex-college professors and the
like, in charge. The lesser mines put up in the beginning
with commoner sheds and poorer appliances of
every kind. About them all lie heaps of a blackish
material, resembling inferior coal and slate, the silver
ore in its native condition. A laborer above-ground
earned $3.50, and below-ground $4, for a “shift” of
eight hours, and the work went on night and day, Sundays
and all.

I leave to others to estimate the bulk of treasure in the
place. I was told that it was “the biggest thing since
the Comstock,” and there were forty million dollars in
sight. I was offered, daily, fractional interests in mines,
now by a young surveyor who was going to be married
and needed money for his wedding outfit; now by new
friends who were straitened for assessment funds to
carry out the provisions of the law; and again by others
who would kindly make any sacrifice for the pleasure of
associating a traveller from a distance with the interests of
the place; and yet it will be well for the novice to be wary
of these seductive openings at Tombstone, as elsewhere.

[489]

This I know, however, that I descended four hundred
feet or so into the Contention Mine, and found great
chambers hollowed out, from which mineral had been
taken, showing a generous width in the vein. The
yield, from its discovery up to March, 1881, had been
$2,000,000. The Tough Nut, with the Lucky Cuss,
Good Enough, Owl’s Nest, and Owl’s Last Hoot—the
racy vernacular of their names will be observed—had
yielded $1,000,000.

The outskirts of Tombstone consisted still of huts and
tents. A burly miner could be seen stretched upon his
cot in a windowless cabin, barely large enough to contain
him. There were some tents provided with wooden doors
and adobe chimneys. New as it was, the business portion
of the place had been once swept out of existence
by a devastating fire, which originated from a characteristic
incident—the explosion of a whiskey-barrel in the
Oriental Saloon. Within fourteen days all was rebuilt
far better than before.

I took the pains to count the number of establishments
in a single short block of Allen Street at which intoxicating
liquors were sold. There were the bar-rooms
of two hotels, the Eagle Brewery, the Cancan Chop-house,
the French Rôtisserie, the Alhambra, Maison
Doré, City of Paris, Brown’s Saloon, Fashion Saloon,
Miners’ Home, Kelly’s Wine-house, the Grotto, the
Tivoli, and two saloons apparently unnamed. At these
places gambling also went on without let or hinderance.
The absence of savings-banks or other opportunity for
depositing money, in these wild communities, and the
temptation arising from having it always under the eye,
no doubt has something to do with the general passion
for gambling. Whiskey and cold lead are named as
the leading diseases at Tombstone. What with the
[490]leisure that seems to prevail, the constant drinking and
gambling at the saloons, and the universal practice of
carrying deadly weapons, there is but one source of
astonishment, and that is that the cold-lead disease
should claim so few victims. Casualties are, after all,
infrequent, considering the amount of vaporish talk indulged
in, and the imminent risks that are run. The
small cemetery, over toward Contention Hill, so far from
being glutted with the slaughtered, is still comparatively
virgin ground.

III.

A farther element in addition to that of the miners is
to be cited as having a good deal to do with the exceptional
liveliness of Tombstone—the “Cow-boys.”

The term cow-boy, once applied to all those in the cattle
business indiscriminately, while still including some
honest persons, has been narrowed down to be chiefly
a term of reproach for a class of stealers of cattle, over
the Mexican frontier, and elsewhere, who are a terror in
their day and generation. Exceptional desperadoes of
this class, such as “Billy the Kid,” “Curly Bill,” and
“Russian George,” have been the scourges of whole
districts in Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, and
have had their memories embalmed in yellow-covered
literature.

I bought on the train, on leaving, a pamphlet purporting
to be an account of the exploits of Billy the Kid.
He had committed, it appeared, at least a score of horrid
murders, but “so many cities have claimed the honor of
giving him birth,” said my pamphlet, “that it is difficult
to locate with any accuracy the locality where he passed
his youth.” It was finally determined, however, in favor
of New York. “It was on the Bowery,” said the author,
[491]whose ideas of morality were peculiar even for a sensationalist,
“that his mates learned to love him for his daring
and prowess, and delighted to refer to him as Billy
the Kid.”

This promising life was cut off at the early age of
twenty-two. “Curly Bill,” also died young, and so did
“Man-killer Johnson.” I remarked upon this peculiarity,
of their youth, to a philosopher of the region itself.

“Yes,” he said, “they don’t seem to live to be very
old; that’s so.”

The recipe for a long life in this country was described
as being very quick and getting “the drop” on an antagonist;
that is to say, being ready to shoot first. Unless
this can be done, it is the custom even to put up with
some ignominious abuse at the time, and await a more
favorable opportunity.

The cow-boys frequenting Tombstone were generally
from the ranches in the San Pedro and San Simon
valleys. There were said to be strongholds in the San
Simon Valley where they concealed stolen cattle until
re-branded and sent to market, and where no officer of
the law ever dared to venture. They looked upon the
running off of stock from Mexico, as far as that was
concerned, only as a more dashing form of smuggling,
though it was marked by frequent bloody tragedies on
both sides.

Not to fix upon all the misdeeds of but a few, no
doubt there were on the streets of Tombstone plenty of
cow-boys of a legitimate sort, whose only faults were
occasional boisterousness and too free lavishing of their
money. There appeared to be something of a standing
feud between the miners and the cow-boys, and there was
besides a faction of “town cow-boys” organized against
the “country cow-boys.”

[492]

The leading cattle-men had a Southern cut and accent,
and hailed originally from Missouri or Texas. Some appeared
in full black broadcloth, accompanied by the usual
wide sombrero. The landlord of our hotel described
them as “perfect gentlemen,” some of them good at the
bar for as high as $20 or $25 a day.

The great object in life of the various factions, or of
individuals who arose from time to time in search of
notoriety, was to “run the town.” This consisted largely
in the privilege of blustering in the saloons, whooping
and firing occasional pistol-shots, if thought good, in the
streets, and having a moderate security from arrest, inspired
by dread of their prowess.

This was necessarily a very insecure preëminence.
New aspirants and rebels were continually piqued into
appearing against it whenever it seemed fairly attained.
Our visit happened upon the heels of a conflict making
the most tragic page yet written in the annals of Tombstone.
Opinions seemed divided about it—even official
opinions. The sheriff extended his sympathy to one
side, the city marshal, who was, in fact, its leader, to the
other.

City Marshal Earp, with his two brothers, and one
“Doc Holliday,” a gambler, had come down the street,
armed with rifles, and opened fire on two Clanton brothers
and two McLowry brothers. The latter party had
been practically first disarmed by the sheriff, who feared
such a meeting, and meant to disarm the others as well.
Three of the assailed men fell, and died. “Ike” Clanton
alone escaped.

The slayers were imprisoned, but released on bail.
The Grand Jury was now in session, hearing evidence
in the case. It was rumored that the town party—the
Earps—would command a sufficient personal influence
[493]to go free of indictment. The cow-boys were flocking
into town to await the result, and on a certain quiet
Sunday wore an ominous look. It was said that, should
justice fail to be done them, the resolute-looking men
conferring together darkly at the edges of the sidewalk
would take the matter into their own hands. The jury,
I have since learned, did not find an indictment, and the
remaining parties to the affair, with many others, I believe,
have since died with their boots on in the same
cause. If anything could reconcile us to the untimely
taking-off of these paladins, it would be partly their own
contemptuous indifference to it.

It would seem that we ought to have at least half a
dozen lives apiece, to account for such an indifference,
but to be ready to toss away the only one on any and
every pretext or no pretext is not at all so intelligible.
It is certainly not the desperation of poverty by which
it is occasioned. Many of them are in very good circumstances.
The younger McLowry, a boy under twenty,
had $3000 in his pocket, the proceeds of a sale of
cattle, the day he fell.

The elder Clanton had played cards most of the night
before with two of his deadly enemies, both parties keeping
a hand on their pistols meanwhile. When “Billy”
Clanton, a boy, like McLowry, lay prone on the ground
in the fight, dying of his mortal wound, he still managed
to get out a pistol, steadied it on a shattered arm, and
fired once more at “Doc Holliday,” saying,

“I’ll get one of you, any way.”

“You are a daisy if you do,” replied Doc Holliday,
continuing to advance as coolly as if at target practice,
and emptying another barrel of his own into him.

And the last words of Billy Clanton, in the Nibelungen-like
contest—which I am quite aware will not be quoted,
[494]in school-readers, with those of Lawrence, Nelson, and
Montcalm, since there was no sense at all in this frenzied
display of pluck and tenacity—were: “For God’s
sake more cartridges!”

Meantime the whistles of the mining works were shrieking
notes of alarm, the miners pouring forth from underground,
and the reputable citizens, who might have
exclaimed, “A plague o’ both your houses!” arming
themselves in hot haste, and coming to their doors, to
prevent the spread of general anarchy.

[495]

There is a grimly humorous element in it all. It
seems such an excellent joke to idly snuff out the most
precious of human possessions. A cow-boy shoots a tumbler
from the hand of another, just raised to his lips, saying,
“When you drink with me I will teach you to take
whiskey plain, and no mixtures.”

A group of others sit around in a saloon where lies
a fresh-made corpse. An officer of the law enters, and
says, “Who claims this man?” whereupon all jump to
their feet to dispute the honor.

There is a large supply of these amusing stories. To
kill your man seems a way of winning your spurs, as it
were, and establishing yourself on a proper footing in the
community. Even the defunct, in various cases, could he
be heard from, would probably find no great fault with
the manner of his taking off, but only with the “luck”
of it which had gone against him.

---

[496]

XXXII.

CAMP LOWELL, TUCSON, AND SAN XAVIER DEL BAC.

I.

The night journey returning by stage to Benson was
enlivened by more shooting stories. I heard, among others,
of the doings of the late Brazelton of Tucson, and
at Tucson I bought his photograph, taken, after death,
in his mask and other paraphernalia of his craft. He
robbed stages for years while apparently working quietly
as a hostler in a corral. He was finally tracked to his
fate through some peculiar marks of the horse he rode.

One of our passengers had just recovered from wounds
received in a fight over cards with a Mexican, whom he
had killed, and was now able, with the aid of morphine,
to pursue his journey toward his home in New Mexico.
The train men at Benson were chary of carrying their
lanterns about the depot yard, a habit having arisen, it
seemed, among the cow-boys of trying to snuff out these
moving targets with revolvers from a distance.

There seemed a certain tameness even in the Apaches
after this wild product of the higher civilization of the
whites. The principal group of prisoners taken after the
attempted massacre of General Carr’s command was found
in confinement at Camp Lowell, nine miles north of Tucson.
There were forty-two of them, with Sanchez, their
chief. They were of fairly regular features, and their
expression, with the war-paint washed off, not unamiable.
[497]They were handcuffed together in couples, their legs also
manacled, and now wore gray army under-shirts and cotton
drawers, the rags in
which they had come
having been taken from
them. Their long black
hair hung about their
ears, not frowzy, like
that of the Yumas, but
smoothly parted in the
middle, and brushed
back. A number wore
red bands or kerchiefs
around their heads.

[498]

Seen obscurely in the chief prison-room by side-light
from a grated window, they had a certain resemblance to
Greek insurgents, or the sans culottes of 1793, or, again,
the wild Vendean peasants who fought with Rochejaquelein
and Jean Chouan for religion and the king.

They were taken out for an airing in the mornings,
and allowed to squat in the sun at the edge of the pleasant
parade-ground, flanked by its well-shaded row of
officers’ dwellings. The recent rising had been the result
of a fanatical delusion. A medicine-man persuaded
them that he had received a revelation to drive all the
whites from the land. As soon as the corn was ripe, he
said, their dead brethren would arise and take arms to aid
them in carrying out the decree of Heaven. He had, as
many prophets have not, the courage of his convictions.
Though taken in charge himself by the troops, he gave a
signal agreed upon for the massacre of these to begin, calling
to his people not to be concerned about his fate, as
he would come to life and join them again in three days.

The bluff Arizonians are apt to indulge in a derisive
way of talking of the army and its relation to the savages.
They would make but short work of these latter, they say,
if they took the matter into their own hands. They imply
that the army does not wish to kill off, or even wholly
put down, the Indians, but rather to preserve them, as a
gentle stimulus to public dread, to hasten promotions,
and also to furnish occasion for profitable supply-contracts.
However this may be, it would seem that after
the repression of this revolt, and the rapid penetration of
railroads into the Territory, Indians need no longer be a
deterring influence of great moment with the intending
settler. This old historic source of apprehension seems
as good as abolished from its last stronghold.

Eight miles to the north brings us to a ranch called
[499]Fuller’s Hot Springs. This is one of the few places
where a beginning of systematic cultivation has been
made, and interesting besides as a typical Arizona summer
resort. There was a young orchard of twenty-five
acres, sheltered by a wind-break of three rows of ash-trees,
doing very well in an alkali soil. The buildings
consisted of a number of unpainted adobe houses, each
of a single large, comfortable room, roofed with strips of
cactus.

[500]

There was a “summer dining-room” made of ocotilla
sticks, the intervals open; and a “winter dining-room,”
with tight walls, and a fireplace, in which a wood-fire
was burned mornings and evenings. The hot spring, a
clear, pleasant water, said to resemble English Harrogate,
ran out from below a bath-house, consisting of a patched
canvas tent. It became, below, a pretty brook, a pond for
the cattle, and source of supply for irrigating the orchard.
The mountains behind the place, the Santa Catalinas, are
like the Sierra Madres behind Los Angeles. They are of
the same sharp fracture, but higher and grander, jutting
up here and there into as perfect castles as those of
Harlech, the Trostberg, or Rheinstein. Forests of pine of
large dimensions crown a part of their summits. South
and south-west, across the wide plain, appear the Rincons
and silver-bearing Santa Ritas.

There was a fascination in being able to examine at
leisure the strange growths of the plain, and not merely
to know them in glimpses from the car-windows. I
made haste especially to cut down for inspection an example
of the enormous saguara, the organ-cactus. Taller
than that on the hill-sides of Guerrero along the Acapulco
trail, it often rises to a height of sixty feet, bristles over
the landscape like masts or columns, or, again, like the
seven-branched candlestick of the Mosaic law. Inside it
consists of a white, juicy pulp, imbedding a bundle of
fibres in the form of long wands, which, when dried,
serve a number of useful purposes. It has a palatable
fruit, which the Indians collect from its top in August
with forked sticks.

The ocotilla is simply a shrub growing as a wattle of
sticks, fifteen or twenty together, only waiting to be cut
down and turned into palings. The bisnaga is a thorny
cactus like an immense watermelon growing on end. One
[501]need never die of thirst where it is found.
The cholla is a mass of spines, which are even
barbed, on the fish-hook principle. It is considered
funny to hear of somebody’s falling into a
cholla, and nothing could better represent the
traditional “bramble-bush” in which the
man who was so wondrous wise met with
the famous adventure of scratching out
his eyes. The “deer-brush” somewhat
resembles the horns of the animal. The
palo verde—green stick—grows as large
as an apple-tree, with the texture of a
[502]mammoth sea-weed. The “grease-wood” is a large bush,
said to burn just as well when green as dry. Most of
this vegetation is leafless, or rather the plant seems a
leaf itself, since coarse bark is lacking, and the green of
chlorophyll and the tenderness of structure seem equally
distributed throughout.

There are homely legends and superstitions about these
plants of the desert. A certain one, for instance, poisons
any white spot on a horse, but not one of any other
color. Another, eaten by horses, makes them lazy and
imbecile. The loco, or rattle-weed, on the other hand,
drives them raving crazy, and they try to run themselves
to death. I do not know whether this last be
wholly a superstition, for I rode in California a horse
whose eccentric proceedings could hardly be accounted
for on any other basis.

Tucson, from a distance, in early morning or late afternoon,
is level, low, square, and brown, with a mellow
light upon it and the castellated mountains behind it.
In the foreground you see lazy ox-wains, a prospector,
perhaps, with his pots and kettles, and a mounted Mexican
towing by a lariat a bull, which ducks its head in
vain resistance. From a distance it is thoroughly foreign,
and of attractive promise. There is something of
the Dead Sea apple in the realization of this promise.
If Ruskin be right in holding that a house should be of
the general color of the soil on which it stands, Tucson
may lay claim to great artistic merit. It is entirely of
adobe brick of the natural mud-color. Violent rainstorms
occur, to the detriment of paint and kalsomine,
on such a friable surface, and their use becomes a serious
question of economy.

[503]

[504]

Tucson has great antiquity as a mere corporate existence.
It was founded by one of the early Spanish expeditions
that came up the Santa Cruz Valley in quest
of the reputed treasure of the Aztecs in the fabled “land
of Cibola,” but retains no visible trace of age. If there
were ever any monuments of importance, they have effectually
vanished. Even the church is new. Such foreignness
as there is consists of a very provincial Mexican
squalor.

The considerations of interest about it are of a purely
utilitarian character, as: how it is to be paved, drained,
lighted, provided with an adequate water supply, so as
not to have to pay four cents a bucket for it, as at present;
and how it is to get rid of its malarial fevers and
shabby rookeries.

A writer in one of the papers one day paid a glowing
eulogy to its peculiar situation, in the desert. He held
that this was a matter not only of those material products
which I have mentioned, but also of the highest
moral and intellectual advantages. It was apropos of the
establishment of a public library. No great idea has ever
been evolved in the usual scenes of human habitation (so
the argument ran), and that there is no place for study
and contemplation like the desert. Christ, Mahomet, Zoroaster,
and Confucius all formulated their creeds in the
desert. I gathered that we are to expect from Arizona,
at the proper time, some new prophet or sage, to sway
again the destinies of men in the same way.

The correspondent was satisfied, at any rate, that, with
a public library, Tucson could shortly become another
Alexandria of the desert, “a seat of learning and fountain-head
of ideas, to be sought by students from Mexico,
from the Pacific Islands, from China and Japan, and the
mountains and valleys of the Rio Grande,” and I for one
shall be very glad to see it so.

[505]

[506]

It is the commercial centre of the important Southern
mining district, and has an eligible situation for future
development. It has derived in its time considerable
profit from furnishing supplies to the army, and from a
smuggling trade with Mexico. The goods for this latter
were taken out in teams, then “packed” over the mountain
passes, on donkeys, to the objective points of Altar
and Magdalena, in cactus-grown, arid Sonora.

The traders at Tucson, again, are largely Jewish. A
certain kind of “life” prevails freely, as at Tombstone.
Roulette, faro, and other games of chance are played in a
large way in the leading saloons, while the poor Mexicans
gamble for small stakes at fondas of their own, where
some wretched lithograph of Hidalgo or Zaragoza looks
down on them from the walls. There is lacking, however,
the choleric and dangerous air of Tombstone.
People make way for you to pass if you wish, and do
not seem exclusively occupied with looking about for
somebody to tread on the tails of their coats.

If Tucson be without historic remains of its own, it
has one of the loveliest possible in its vicinity, the old
mission church of San Xavier del Bac.

San Xavier is on the reservation of the Christianized
Papago Indians, in the Santa Cruz Valley, ten miles to
the southward. It is a new sensation even for one from
Mexico who may have flattered himself that he knew the
style completely. This ancient landmark of a frontier
civilization which, since its destruction, has not been even
faintly approached in its kind, is not surpassed either in
Mexico or out of it for the quaintness, the qualities of
form and color, and the gentle sentiment of melancholy
that appeal to the artistic sense. Old Father Time has
trodden with heavy step on green wooden balconies in
its front, broken out their floors, and left parts of them
dangling free. The original sweet-toned bronze bells
still hang in one of the towers. The space, terminating
in a scrolled gable, between the towers is enriched with
escutcheons and rampant lions, wreathed in foliage.
Niches hold grotesque broken statues, and complicated
pilasters flank the entrance door-way, the whole formed
in stucco upon a basis of moulded bricks. Where a portion
has fallen away it can be seen that the pilasters are
constructed upon or held together by a centre consisting
of a stick of timber.

[507]

[508]

The designer, whoever he may have been, was inspired
by Venetian-Byzantine traditions. It is roofed with
numerous simple domes and half-domes. The interior
of these, frescoed with angels and evangelists, the chancel
walls, almost covered with gilding, but stained and
battered, and the painted and gilded lions on the chancel
rails, recall to the least observant Saint Mark’s at Venice.
The style is not quite consistently carried out, however.
A later rococo decoration, as exuberant as the vagaries of
East Indian work, mingles with and at places overrides
it. A Henri II. candlestick will give a certain idea of
the pattern of the columns.

The date has disappeared from the façade, but it is believed
to be about 1768, and the present edifice was built
on the ruins of a former one, going back much nearer to
1654, when the mission to the Papagos was first begun.
Large angels, with bannerets, their draperies formed of
papier-maché or gummed muslin, are attached to the
main chancel piers; and a painted and gilded Virgin,
with a long face, and hair brushed up from a high forehead,
as in the sculptures of Jean Goujon, looks down
from a high altar niche.

All within is of a mediæval richness and obscurity.
All without is broad sunshine falling upon the peaceful
Papago village. A few old men trudge about, concerning
[509]themselves with their bake-ovens and some water-jars
and strings of dried squashes, and women pass by
with tall loads of hay and other produce carried in the
kijo, a singular hamper of sticks and netting, on their
backs. Nobody concerns himself about visitors, except
a foolishly smiling boy, one Domingo, who has brought
us the key.

To have come from that spasm of aggressive modernism,
Tombstone, and to be at ancient San Xavier del Bac—it
seemed to me that contrast could little farther go.

THE END.

---

---

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[4]

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[5]

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[6]

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. Edited by John Morley.
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