UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES -■ ■'t.J ■^AJV(, Ali?/ ENVIRONS OF MEXICO. OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES /v/r A JOURNEY IN ' MEXICO, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, AND ARIZONA BY WAY OF CUBA Bv WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP AUTHOR OF ^_- ' "detmold" "the house of a merchant prince" "the goldex justice" , '•choy susan asd other sioeies" etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS NEW AND ENLARGED EDITJOS NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANK LIN SQUARE 1887 \^ \A- Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Copyright, 1887, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. r \^\ 5 PREFACE. In my opinions about Mexico I am glad to have been sanguine, because it is now seen that there was excellent ground for it. But I am glad also to have been a little sceptical, for the results have by no means equalled the highest expectations of the time of "the railway inva- sion." I have summed up now all the important changes since my early visit, and, as in most other human affairs, it is found that the realization is in a happy medium be- tween the views of the extremely hopeful and of those who look always only upon the darkest side of any project. I am not able, like several contemporaries, in whose ac- curacy, after all, the cynical pick flaws, to offer elaborate thanks to various notables and dignitaries " for valuable assistance in the preparation of this work," either the new edition, or the book as a whole. I wish, as a matter of interest, I could take the public into my confidence as to the number of letters written to, or interviews held with, minister resident, consul, and other persons, and the curious apathy with which these have often been met. I beg it to be believed that if there still be serious errors or omissions, they are not for want of continued and pains- taking effort, which the modest result might not seem to have demanded. I may say that the book has been brought out also in England, and it has up to this time vi PREFACE. met with considerable favor. It has had the good-fortune to receive the commendation of leading journals in the city of Mexico — the more satisfactory in the place itself, where the most rigid tests of criticism are naturally to be looked for. Just as this goes to press I receive a letter from the editor of a prominent English paper there, con- taining these gratifying lines, which — though far too com- plimentary — I venture to quote : " I do not like to flat- ter," he says, " but I cannot refrain from saying that yours is the best book on Mexico in recent times." Washington Heights, June, ISS?. CONTENTS. Part I.— OLD MEXICO. PAGE 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. Tlie Projectors 54 VI. Hie Ferro-carriles 70 VII. Tlie Raihoays at Work 80 VIII. The Question of Money, and Shopping 96 IX. Social Idfe, and some Notable Institutions lOY X. Tlie Fine Arts and Literature 120 XI. Some Traits of Peculiar History, and the Mexican "IFarwici" 134 XII. Cuatitlan, and Arou7id 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, aiul Cordoba Revisited 192 XVII. Puebla, Cholula, Tlaxcala 210 XVIII. Mines and Mining Traits, at Pachuca and Regla 227 { XIX.\d Week at a Mexican Country-house 245 AX. On Horseback and Muleback to Afiapulco 263 XXI. Conversations by the Way with a Colonel 275 viii CONTENTS. Part II.— THE LOST PROVINCES. PAOK XXII. San Francisco 295 XXIII. San Francisco (Continued) 324 XXrV. The Villas of the Bonanza Kings 343 ^ XXV. The Vintage Season, and Monterey 359 XXVI. A Wondrotui Valley, and a Desert thai Blossoms like the Rose 380 XXVII. Visalia, Bakersfidd, 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. Tomhstom 482 XXXII. Camp Lowell, Tucson, and San Xavier del Bac 496 XXXIII. 3fexico Revisited 610 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAOK MEXICO, SHOWING PRESENT AND OLD FRONTIER 5 CATHEDRAL OF MEXICO 9 DOMES OF VERA ORTIZ 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 TENE5IENT-H0USE 51 OLD SPANISH PALACE IN THE CALLE DE JESUS 56 SEMI-VILLA ON THE PASEO OF BXJCARELLI 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 MEXICiVN RESIDENCE Ill MEXICAN COURTSHIP 113 LAS CASAS PROTECTING THE AZTECS. By Felix Parra 120 THE DEATH OF ATALA. By Louis Momoy 133 1* X ILL USTRA TIOXS. PAGE GENEKAL PORFIRIO DIAZ, EX-PRESIDENT OP MEXICO 139 GENERAL MANUEL GONZALES, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO .... 143 ENTTRONS OF MEXICO 150 SUNDAY DnrERSIONS AT SANTA ANITA 158 CREW OP "LA NINFA ENCANTADOHA" 165 THE "find" 169 in tierra caliente 186 the hill op el borrego, at orizaba 196 prisont:rs weaving sashes at cholula 217 old pont at tlaxcala 223 the first christian pulpit in america. tlaxcala . . . 223 part op content op san francisco. tlaxcala 224 superintendent's house AT REGLA 241 PLOUGHIVLAN IN GRASS CLOAK 243 THE HACIENDA OF TEPENACASCO 246 THE THRESHING-FLOOR 249 THE TLACHIQUERO 251 NTJRSE AND CHILDREN AT THE HACIENDA 261 THE "diligencla" 267 OUR cavalcade at iguala 281 the bells op san blas 290 alcatraz island 297 "nob" hill, from the bay 299 CALIFORNTA street, SAN FRANCISCO 305 LONT; MOUNTAIN 309 "HIGH JTNKS" 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 JOSE 363 ILL USTRA TIONS. X 1 PAGE A BIT OP 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 PRrV'ATE RESIDENCE AT FRESNO . 393 FIRST BUILDING IN VISALIA 400 AN OLD-TIMER 401 LOGGING, BACK OP VISALIA 403 CHINATOWN, BAKERSFIELD 409 GYPSY CAilP AT BAKERSFIELD 411 A TYPICAL RANCH-HOUSE 414 SAN LUIS OBISPO 416 A RODEO 418 THE KERN RIVER CANON 419 TEHACHAPI PASS 423 MAIN STREET, LOS ANGELES 425 DON PIO PICO 428 MONGOLIAN AND MEXICAN 430 PARADISE 437 A MEXICAN WEDDING AT SAN GABRIEL 441 THE MINTAGE, SAN GABRIEL 443 IRRIGATING AN ORANGE-ORCHARD 445 A SYLVAN GLIMPSE AT RIVERSIDE 449 ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE 451 ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE 453 OLD MISSION AT SANTA BARBARA 455 PLAZA OP SAN DIEGO, OLD TOWN 457 OLD anSSION AT SAN DIEGO 460 don juan forster 461 senora forster 462 forster's ranch 463 san luis rey 465 xii ILL USTRA TIONS. PAGK A«TICirBORNE CLAIMANT 466 the colorado uiveh at yuma 473 pasqual, ciuef op the yumas 476 ytima indians at home 477 distant view op tombstone 484 "ed" sciiieffelin 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 op church of san xavier del bac 507 PART I. OLD MEXICO. OLD MEXICO. I. £Y WAY OF CUBA AND THE SPANISH MAIN. Boom ! Two rnddy old castles doinineering a narrow liarbor 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, Cam- peachy, Frontera, and Vera Cruz, Others, perchance, more adventurous, and fond of mix- ing as much hardship as possible in their pleasure, might have crossed the frontier at Texas, and, the new railroads 1 2 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. being yet ui)finished, been bumped and thumped a thou- sand miles to the capital in the wretched dlUgencias (stage-coaches) of the country. I did none of these. I shall not be guilty of the ego- tism 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 Santan- der to Yera Cruz, and bringing much of the French and Spanish migration ; or a British steamer from South- ampton, 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 con- nections are expeditiously made, should be about eleven days. 11. 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. BY WAY OF CUBA AND THE SPAiVISH MAIN. 3 There are those of us whose conception of Mexico lias 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 other- wise 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 lired by brigands, and high-sounding pronunciamientos a,nd cvnol fusillades accompanying the overthrow from the Presidency of General this by Gen- eral that, who would be served in the same way by Gen- eral 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, re- maining from Prescott's history of the Conquest. One of the most captivating of volumes, this had seenied al- most 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 be- come 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 Amer- ican capital and enterprise, and aided by a Government of liberal ideas, were traced over every part of the land, 4 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. and some of tlieiu in ])rogress. The locomotive screamed along-side the troops of laden donkej'S 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 ma}' be sentimentally consid- ered a kind of Alsace-Lorraine — a part of the sister re- public when it was well-nigh as large and powerful as ourselves. It was naturally cold on the 31st day of March, and l)lustering weather followed us down the coast as far as it dared. Then I awoke one morning early, at the BY WAY OF CUBA AND THE SPANISH MAIN. 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 ])lacid blue sea of the tropics. Fra- grant 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 perfec- tion of weather for piracy. If the " long, low, suspicious- 6 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. lookiiifv craft, with raking masts," which nsed 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. AVe had on board a Cuban who had married a Connect- icut 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 astonisliment awaited her. The captain, a merry and entertaining soul, had prom- ised 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 N^orthern 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 eg^g, 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 Ha- vana ! 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 BY WAV OF CUBA AND THE SPAXISII MAIX. 7 a cluster of coaling-sheds. Some harbor boats took us ashore. We landed at broad stone steps pervaded b}' smells, passed into the Custom-house (which had been an old convent), and out of it into paved lanes full of donkej's, 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? lie buys regularly a certain amount of hope in the Government lottery. " A demoralizing sys- tem indeed !" I said, as I frowned over the wares of a dealer who had lost a \eg 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 sliould have tried just as hard to repent had I won. The Havanese were exercised just then over the dis- covery of great frauds in their Marine Department. Forty million dollars had been stolen, by collusion be- tween contractors and the commissariat, since the out- break of the rebellion in 1S6S. 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 prin- cipal 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST rJiOVINCES. ten years' insurrection had been pui'poselj kept alive by rings of contractors for purposes of spoliation, and by ambition for military advancement. Dulce, they said — going throngh the list of Captains-General — had married a Cuban wife, and was secretly a traitor ; De Kodas, when asked for re-enforcements at a certain place, withdrew a portion of the troops already there ; Pieltan was occu- pied in intriguing for the republican cause in Spain, and the easj^-going Concha for the cause of King Alfonso. Finally, Martinez Campos and Jovellar were sent out, and, yielding to the demand of the universal M'eariness, 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 w^ere wretched, and there was the wild manigua, as it is called, lialf forest, half swamp, with which a good part of the island has abounded from the date of Christopher Co- lumbus down. It was in the manigua that the insur- gents found refuge from pursuit. V. It so happened that the Yille 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 Ma- tanzas, the second city. I saw on the way the manigua, which is sentimentally prettj", from a distance, with ' T|i|'i'|i ,' "I'll ii|i|i I flife'f>-portcd. The country might seem, at first sight, the most glori- ous place for I'eal estate speculation in the world. Iteal property is not taxed except upon such income as it pro- duces. 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 embar- rassing restrictions, devised through fear and jealousy of the foreigner, which make the prospect much less attrac- tive. The traveller of means cannot follow his whim, as he might almost anywhere else in the world, of buy- ing 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, with- out previous permission of the President of the Hepub- lic, acquire real estate in the frontier states or territory within twenty leagues of the frontier." And " it is ab- solutely 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 look- ing after it. If he be absent fron'i the country for two years, his property may be denounced and entered by the first comer, the same as if it were a mine. lie 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, can- not acquire real estate on any condition. THE PROJECTORS. 69 All this is set down in the Code in the most explicit terms. The most driving improvement company, there- fore, 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 counti-y, may or may not do, since the construction of the term "• corpuration" 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 foot- ing 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 recog- nized standing in a court of justice, in cases of difficulty. Without this formality even his foreignness is not nec- essarily conceded to him as a protection. 70 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST riiOVINCES. VI. THE FERRO-CARRILES. The ferro-carriles, the caminos de fierro, or railways, were the business of the hour. In speaking of tlie com- ing greatness of the capital I mentioned glibly the prin- cipal 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 adop- tion 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 w4io 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. '% THE FERRO-CARRILES. Yl 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, trust- ing to influence to procure the proper extensions and renewals of time, if needed. Stories were afloat of practices employed in the obtain- ing 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 ]iut a shameless greed for gain before the public in- terest 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 np 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 noth- ing of the kind. The first thing they ask about a new- 72 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOUT PROVINCE.S. comer is, 'How inncli can we make out of liim ?' They want pay for permitting him to do sometliing 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 privi- lege would be granted to a committee of Mexican sena- tors, 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 Albanj' and elsewhere, and whether the cor- ruption ever really reaches to head-quarters. At any rate, it was said that some part of the aid devoted to each sev- eral enterprise was diverted in this way to private bene- fit. 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 authori- ty, 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. THE FERRO-CARRILES. 73 II. There were entered in the convenient statistical hand- book known as tlie " Annnario Universal," for the year, a list of forty-one railways as in explotacion (running), or under construction. But after many of those enu- merated 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, tiiough technically begun, little or no labor had been expended, there was still an nnlooked for array of constructed roads. Taking out the Eng ish road from Vera Cruz, and what had been done by the American con)panies, almost at the moment, these \vere 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 afilicted 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 4 74 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST FliOVINCES. clmrtcrcd in 1878, and tlie Mexican National in 1880. Tlie first cliarter under tlie modern movement dates from October, 1867; and since tlien the Mexican Govern- ment lias 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 sul)sidies 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 Grcss and Jay Gould) 1,200 Topolobambo (Senator Windom, President) 1,200 International (Frisbie and Pluntington) 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 Te- huantepec, it may be remembered, was secured (at the same time with the lower belt of Arizona) by the Gads- den 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, how^ever, and the project, taken up and droj^ped from time to time, has since had but a lingering existence. Captain Eads proposes to transport bodily ships of THE FERRO-CARRILES. 75 76 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 4000 tons, 190 miles, bj 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 abun- dantly 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 pop- ulous state of the same name) and the frontier of Gua- temala, 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, birt-hplace of General Por- firio Diaz, the Mexican power behind the throne, and un- doubtedly the weightiest person in the countr3^ 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. THE FERRO-CARRILES. 77 This coinpai)}^ liowever, has latel)^ effected a consoli- dation with the Mexican Oiiental, and botli will hence- lorth be known nnder 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 be- tween 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 Qf 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. That of the Columbia River of Oreo^on is the hiijliest np. Then, 600 miles south, comes San Francisco ; 441 I miles below this is San Diego; 650 miles farther on, in a direct line, or 936, doubling Cape St. Lucas, is Topo- lobampo; and 740 miles south of this again is Acapnlco. 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 pa- ] per 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, Flor- ida, by New Orleans and Topolobampo, which is indi- cated as a route of the future. If some of these rep- resentations 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 Maz- atlan, 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, THE FEKR0-CARRILE8. 79 grass, and cotton, witli 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. 80 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. VII. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 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 Guajmas, 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 Fe, from Benson, through Calabasas, to the border at Nogales ; and another is proposed, from the Southern Pacific at Tucson. Tlie management of this enterprise, as well as of the Great Mexican Central, is practically that of tlie Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. 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 Ilermosillo, with its plantations, irrigated by aqueducts, in its course; and its port of Guaymas is commodious and sheltered. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 81 II. I have purposely reserved to the hist — the better, per- Imps, to present them to view — tlic two gi'cat tniiik lines of principal importance, the Mexican Central and tlie 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 employes of both, were constantly in sight at the capital, and were tlie principal evidences by which the manner of the rail- way invasion of Mexico could be judged. Energy of movement, ingenuity in planning, and an ;ihnost limitless expenditure, all indicated here conscien- tious work, and not simply railroad building on paper. The Central begins at El Paso, the terminus of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, as well as a station on tlie Southern Pacific, at the frontier of New Mexico. It extends to the capital, a distance of thirteen hundred miles, tap])ing 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 Mex- ico, through the cities of San Luis Potosi, Lagos (the junction with the main line), and Guadabijara, to San r>his, 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 Chi- huahua, with about eighteen thousand inhabitants. The line is already running to this point, and is completed in all three hundred and thii'ty-one miles southward from Paso del Norte. The visitor bj^ rail may already have in Chihuahua a glimpse of a place presenting most of the 4* 82 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. typical Mexican features. It lias 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 insurrec- tion against Spanish rule, was shot, having been treacher- ously beti'ajed 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 Ul- tima Thide of civilized Mexico, the barren plains to the north— which are, indeed, very common in all these up- permost 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 inhabi- tants have had to depend considerably upon themselves for defence, as is seen in the occasional fort-like hacien- das, with walls turreted and pierced for musketry. Zacatecas, moving onward now into a country of rec- ognized 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; Ce- laya, 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 indus- try 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 Quere- taro, which has a population of 48,000. It is the site of flourishing cotton-mills, an aqueduct which is compared THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 83 with the works of the Romans, and it saw the final re- sistance and execution of Maximilian. Mexico itself has 250,000 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 acces- sible on every hand, to show that there is nothing inher- ent in the race itself to debar it from the highest devel- opment with increase of opportunities. And if any sup- pose that they do not like to travel, let him simply in- spect the excursion trains where third-class cars are sup- plied 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 cnt — the Tajo of Nochistongo, before mentioned, designed for keeping the lakes from inundating the valley — was be- gun 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 pemis, or Indian laborers, in the course of construction. Wliy this should have been, and how they died — whether by slipping in and 84: OLT) MEXICO AXD HER LOST rROVINCES. beiiii^ buried, or utider the exactions of cruel taskmasters, and whether those who passed away simply of old age (for which it will be seen there was ample time) are in- cluded — does iiot 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 woi'k, in white cotton shirts and di'awers, 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 favor- able to the contractors at first, has been gi-adually 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 Sat- urday night to spend Sundaj^ at Qiieretaro, and returned Monday morning. On the haciendas they are generally in debt, and as thej^ 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 THE RAILWAYS AT WO UK. 85 TUK GRKAT SPANISH DKAINAGE CUT. each mail he controls. The Cabo is a i^reat man amoiii^ tlie railway laborers, and oat of cabos arise the Benito Juarezes, and hopes in- definite for the evolu- tion of the race. I spent the night at Tula. It was the capital of tlie Toltecs before the day of the Aztecs. I climbed tlie Hill of the Treasure, to inspect some ruins over wliich archas- ologists have made a stir. Tliere are no sculptures nor carved stones, nothing but some opened cellars and heavy walls, with patches of a red plaster, as at Pompeii, ad- hering to them. But we stayed our horses, and looked 86 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. down, from a tliicket of organ-cactus and nopal, npon 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 w^alls 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 com- ments. 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 hotica (or drug-shop), kept by OTie Perfecto Espinoza ; a Hotel de las Diligen- cias; and a little jail, at one corner of the plaza, where a couple of soldiers walked up and down, and the pris- oners 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. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 87 IV. Tlie Mexican National, or " raliner-Sullivan," road is due to the same enterprise which establislied the success- fid Denver and Rio Grande system in Colorado and New Mexico. It is, like that, a narrow gange, 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 stop- ped 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 Ce- laya 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 ex- tension (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 tern- 88 OLD MEXICO A XI) HER LOST PROVINCES. perature; Colima is distiuetlj' in the tropics; but Mo- relia affords tlic happy medium, and its whole state of Michoacan has charms upon which the appreciative never iiave done expatiating. Humboldt speaks of the lake found at Patzcuaro as one of the loveliest on the jjlobe. Madame Calderon de la Barca, in her journey liere, could hardly refrain from regretting the lavishing by Natui-e of what seemed (so few were there then to enjoy it) almost a wasted beaut3\ "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 Ciiapala. 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, com- bined 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 3'ears, 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 tliem 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 donunation left. The modern movement, since 1821, is to be credited with very little in the way of new build- ings. Such compliments as are paid in the course of these descriptions to the architecture belong chiefly to that re- maining from a much earlier date. The reputation of the I'l'lMiblic 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. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 89 In all, the National has completed four hundred and sixty miles. It is said of late to have been sold to an I'^nglish compan3\ We need not forego our American l>i'ide in its early achiev^enients, even if this be so. Per- liaps such a transfer might be of benefit, in allaying the di'ead 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 after- ward. No less than seventeen bridges, of solid construc- tion, had to be thrown across the little stream of the Kio 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. Be- liold 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, whicli are placed in the centre. A troop of Hurales (the efficient force orgatiized by Porfirio Diaz for the better protection of the rui-al districts) takes the van. A numerous retinue of armed mozos of the com- pany, with ourselves, bring up tlie rear. The young engineers, paymasters, and contractors, well mounted, with long boots and revolvers, present a handsome, half- military aspect. "We hav'e presently lost sight of the city, and are upon 90 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PEOVINCES. hiffh rolliiio: 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 re- turned from an ancient fora)'. Tlie Rurales have some- thing in their cut — tiie buff leather jackets, crossed by ample sword-belts, and wide, gray felt hats — of the troop- ers of Cromwell. Each has a rifle in his holster at the saddle-bow, and a gray-and-scarlet blanket strapped be- liind 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 tlieir names, or that of some hacienda, as " Santa Lucia," to whicli they have belonged. It is understood that an individual with a crimson handkerchief around the back of his head, under his sil- ver-bordered sombrero, is the titular cacique of San Bar- tolito by descent from ancient chiefs. He precedes us, being employed by the company to look out for plots and ambuscades. AViien we have passed what he con- siders 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 con- I THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 91 92 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. siderable 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. At the pay-stations we breast our way through crowds of the peons so thick that the horses can hardly be pre- vented from trampling upon them, always with their narrow foreheads, bristling hair, staring, wild ej^es, and large, undecided mouths. Their money is jingled out to tliem through a pay-window into their shabby soiubreros. Venders of small commodities aud 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 bar- rows. Whetlier here, in their construction-car, or tents, they extend the stranger a cheerj' 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 THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 93 nervousness. At any rate, all companies organized un- der 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 Gov- ernment 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 Na- tional 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 re- ceipts at the custom-houses. Certificates for the several NOT HERE FOR THEIR HEALTH." 94 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVINCES. amounts as they become due are issued to the companies, which must wait for collection till tliere 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 ab- sence. 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 compet- ing 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 \\\q 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 wari- ness which lie very much on the surface. The conditions to be conformed to must not be sought in a parallel situ- ation 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 THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 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 sub- sistence 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 railwaj^s are spread over what were once the old Mexican provinces of Califor- nia, 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. \¥hat 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 ? 1 96 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PliOVIXCES. VIII. THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. It is perhaps thought that the work of improvement ig to be eiiected 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 for- eigners. 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 re- pute 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 employe, 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 THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. 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 ener- vating climate, considerations on the other side are to be looked at. In the first place is the revolutionary condi- tion 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 uiie or another of the contending parties. Such immuni- ties and advantages as there were, were enjoyed by for- eigners 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 ab- ject, 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 w^iich Unancial 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 compre- hend 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 5 h 98 OLIf MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. handle them witli skill. The street railways of the capi- tal, an extensive and excellent system, are under native management exclusively. It is as successful in mining. It was only when the great Keal 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 backward- ness of the Mexican is not the result of a native incapac- ity 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 en- ergy " objects : " How long is it since we had no railroads ourselves? And yet did we not reach a very pretty de- gree of civilization without them?" But Mexico not only had no railways, but not even rivers nor ports. It was waterways which made the pros- perity 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 pdjaros (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 compli- cated tariff, already referred to. Americans should not let a new-born enthusiasm for a promising market hurry THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOri'INU. 99 MODERN SHOI'-FKONTS AT MEXICO. them into consignments without a thorough understand- ing 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 appre- ciated more and more as time a"oes on. 100 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 oppor- ; tunities will increase with the growth of transportation. ' Labor is cheap. The peons have little inventive but suf- ficient imitative talent, and make excellent mill-hands. Thej work for twenty -live 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 govern- ment has taken but its first rudimentary steps toward the encouragement of immigration, and the path is beset with difficulties. A commercial treaty is nov/ 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 re- duction of duties as to put us on the same footing at least as England (in favor of which there is a certain discrimi- nation), 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 (includ- ing both exports and imports) can be made $100,000,000. The Mexicans, on their side, desire admission for their sugar and hernp. The treaty has met with its chief op- position thus far from our Southern sugar -planters. Their fear of competition is hardly reasonable at pres- ent. Our own product seems more likel}' to go to Mex- ico 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.* The total * Detailed figures of our trade with Mexico, and other useful mat- ters, will be found in the "Border States of Mexico," by Leonidas Hamilton. Chicago, 1883. THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPINO. 101 value of the exports from Mexico for tlie 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 18S1 were somewliat over $11,000,000. II. • At present Mexico is perhaps tlie most difficult coun- try in which to do business in the civilized world. A customer four or live hundred miles off, even on the best roads, is Hve 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 commer- cial relations with his customer. lie is more or less his banker at the same time, not fur 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 con- voys, the conductas,w\\\Q\\ 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 tliese 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 tlie 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. and poured out in prodigious streams at tlie banks and commercial houses, is one of tlie 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 poi-t of San Bias, just as a part of that from Za- catecas goes to Tam- pico through San Luis Potosi. The country north of San Luis to the east ships its funds to Matamoras ; those of Durango are di- vided between Mata- moras and Mazatlan ; while Puebla, Oaxaca, and the rest of the south find their nat- ural outlet at Yei-a Cruz. The importance of the great conducta in these times is dimin- ished 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 wholl}^ to town, but took the Central train at the first feasible point, at Ilueliuetoca, the Spanish cut for the drainage of tlie> valley. Its place as a spectacle is filled i)y the pay conductas of the railroads. THE "POUTALKS" AT MEXICO. THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. 103 A revision of these accounts is needed almost from moment to moment as I write, to kee]) pace with the rapid changes in affairs. A National Bank and banks of foreign incoi'porators have been established in the mean time, with anthoritj' to issue large amounts of but inefticiently se- cured 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 governaient, but not from the government to individ- uals, nor between individuals. One of the arguments in favor of this bank, our minister M-as assured, was that it would counteract in some sort the influence" of the Utiited 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 circula- tion; so that, while the traveller may be now able to carr}^ 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 nnusnal pecuniar}^ 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 rail- ways. III. Shops and shopping in Mexico follow much more Eu- ropean than American traditions. A fanciful title over the door of the shop takes the place of the name of a firm 104 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. \ 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 Explo- sion." A jeweller's is apt to be called " The Pearl," or " The Emerald ;" a shoe-store, " The Foot of Venus," or "Tlie 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 pati'on 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 con- siderable 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 occu- pations 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 enter- prises. It was not etiquette of late for ladies of the upper class to do shopping in public, except from their carriages, the ijoods beino; brought out to them at the curb-stone. Now they may enter shops. A considerable part of the buy- ing, 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- THE QUESTION OF MOXEY, AND SHOPPIXG. 1()5 cars. The point of cereuionj, it appears, was founded somewhat upon the ditficulty of getting about. Americanism now appears in the streets with increas- ing frequency, in the signs of dealers in arms, sewing- macliines, and otlier of our useful inventions. i)\\v in- surance companies, too, are a novel idea, to which the Mexicans seem to take with much readiness. The ])rin- cipal 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 sto])page of affairs for din- ner. It is but a short time since that enterprising per- son, the commercial traveller, was unknown in the coun- try, but now he begins to flourish hei'e 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 pro- ])ortionate value of each item of a foreign invoice, but "lumps" the profit he thiid-cs he ought to receive on the whole. Some articles, in conse(puince, can be bought at less than their real value, while others, in com[)ensation, 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 )>ictnresque mar- ket 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 commodi- ous and well built, are hidden under fruits, grains, cocoa sacks and mats, striped blankets and rebosos, sprawling brown limbs, embroidei*ed 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 5* 106 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. goods, sales-people, and ciistoiuers alike might all be put upon canvas only with the most vivid of hues. I ffive some ex- amples of tiie s^_^ j street architecture of the more im- portant 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 be- ing adapted to their present use. I transferred to my sketch-book a bit from tlie lead- ing inerceria (dry- goods store) of the important minor city of Puebla which I thought particularly inter- esting. It was called, after tlie prevailing fash- ion, " 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 I'cst an nmrlazed ^fround of red. A "MERCERIa" at I'rEBLA. SOCIAL LIFE, AXD SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 107 IX. SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. The persons who once lived in these old Spanish pal- aces, and descendants of the titles of nobility existing be- fore the Independanee, are still much esteemed in a certain small circle in the country. There are pointed out to yon tliose who should by right be marquises and counts, and tlie titles are occasionally given them. The Mexican no- bles, from the time of Cortes down, lived in magnificent style in their day. The Count of Regla, who has leff^fe 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 al- most every clime. He fitted out two ships of the largest size, building them of mahogany and cedar, and pre- sented 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. ^:j A remnant of the old noblesse rallied around Maximil- ian 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Faubourg St. Germain. They are sometimes stigmatized as "Mochos," literally hypocrites. They are rich, pass much of tlieir time abroad, protest against the sequestra- tion of the Church property, and exhibit a refined liorror at the vandalism of these later times. "The government," they tell you, " is in the hands of the populacho, the rabble ; the g&nte 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 con- versations 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 hlase 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 regime of President Juarez that the scene is laid — or in any other convulsion that may promise to again mend his fortunes. SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 100 II. I do not quite know Avhicli 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 pattei'n 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 revo- lutions since their own overthrow, leaving them rather to be fought out by ])rofessional soldiers of fortune. They temporize a little; attend, perhaps, the wedding of some rich railway contractor's daughter, in order, as they sa^', not to draw upon themselves a direct entnity; 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 societ}'." 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 enter- tainments 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. to see a social movement wliicli, by the general testimony, was quite plienomonal. There was, among the rest, a fashionable wedding, attended by the President and his cabinet. A " reception " and banquet were given in the evenino^ on the occasion of the siifniuij 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 theujselves palatial- ly to the festivity, as they always do. The banquet was spread along the bases of the columns of tlie arcade. The 3'oung Mexican women are still kept apart from the other sex, and made love to chiefly on their balconies in the good old-fashioned, romantic stvle. Their man- ners when met with in public, however, are not so un- usual as might be expected. They seem neither more nor less diflident 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 marringc above- mentioned were by no means young, and in general the ex- ceeding precocity of development and early age of enter- ing into the marriage rehition supposed to be characteristic of the tropics were not a])parent. It was said that mei'ce- nai'y considenitions 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 upoti a simple and honest affection, is one of those things that reuuiin 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 ditticult. She is hard to suit." Ill the country the match-making is often taken charge 1 SOCIAL LIFE. AXD SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. Ill nil M nilMM iiiiiimnBin 112 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVINCES. of bj tlie village priest, who brings the parties together linally at dinner. As a general remark, the manners of the lower class of the country ai"e much better than ours, and those of tlie I 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 Ameri-- can is not without his faidts — the moi'e'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 gi-oup of foi-eign residents, -lis the French, Germans, and Spaniards, has its handsome casino, or club-house, whicii is a standing resource for the diver- sion 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, ai'e aware that the theatre and the cafe, with people of the Latin race, largely take the place of the social visiting and entertain- ing at home prevailing among Anglo-Saxons. Our next- door neighbors, after all, may oTily have followed, making a little more severe, the traditions of Old Spain. Ladies do not often appear at the cafes, but they are often at their boxes at the theatres, to which they subscribe by the season ; antl tliey would go more frequently yet. SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIOXS. 113 J 1 MEXICAN COCRTSniP. 114 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. no doubt, were tlie pieces as a rule better wortli their consideration. There are three large, well-built theatres, the Nacional, Principal, and Arbeu, and minor ones for the working-class. The entertainments esteemed of chief importance are those of the French oj)era couipanies which come over from Havana, on their rounds. A native Spanisli opei'a- bouife 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 honie, or occasionally of some native dramatist, announced with an exti-a 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. Leo- poldo Cano, authoi- of the precious comedy, ' La Mariposa,' entitled 'La Opinion Publica.' " This sublime work of the distinguished poet, D. Leo- poldo 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 choos- ing it fur 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 de- pending 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 Fii'sr Patient." There was a young SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE IN8TITUT10XS. 115 doctor on the stage, and an acquaintance of his liad 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 iiad gone blind. Before the Lo- thario could protest, a bandage was clapped over his eyes, medicaments given to make him believe in his own mis- fortune, and he was put under a course of onerous treat- ment. After a series of absurd situations he M'as finally re- leased, persuaded by degrees that he was cured. The patient raised the bandage, '■'•Yeo! veo P'' — "I see!" — he exclaimed, in wild delight. " Yery well, then — see that !" said the husband, thrust- ing 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 com- panion 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 gram- mar and dictionary. He resented in his ambition any interpretation of passages whicli he did not himself orig- inate, and constructed such a theory of the play as its author would by no means have recognized. When the denouement came, in the bold ''''Yeo P'' he seized upon it with avidity. " ' Yeo^ c'est bien trouve ga — ' veo,'' " he said, reflect- ively, digesting it at his leisure, "t/t? vais le retenir ce ^ mo f vous-allez voiry And so he did, and proceeded to use it vigorously in the restaurants and the like on the following day. 116 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. \ IV. Though so much more be still proposed, there are cer- tainly 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 admi- ration and surprise. The primary schools are least looked after, but the pupils who pass through these with a dispo- sition 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 na- tional schools respectively of engineering, law. medicine, agriculture, mechanic arts, and trades (for both sexes), a conservator}^ of music, an academy of line arts, and a library, provided with an edifice that New York well might envj'. It maintains a museum, institutions for blind, deaf and dumb, and insane, for oiphans, and young crimiiuils, 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 condi- tions. The students in agricultui'e pass some months of the year at the haciendas to observe different crops and cli- mates. The graduates of the School of Arts and Meas- ures go out into the world prepared to make theii" living as carpentei'S, masons, photographers, electro-platers, and at numerous other trades. Before an opinion is passed upon Mexican civilization the accoinmodatiuns 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. SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 117 sunny class-rooms, embroidery -rooms, dormitories, and drawing-rooms of the Viscapias, the national college for girls; and the arcades and charming central garden of the National Preparatory School (in the professions) for yonng 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 foun- deries, and cotton-mills. Each state of the republic, again, lias 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 defi- ciency. As at present arranged, they can present but 118 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. moderate terrors to evil-doers. The really fine peniten- tiary at Guadalaxara is the only one in which modern ideas of penal discipline are followed. There is no death penalty for political offences — nnder which head the worst bandits wonld often seek to shield themselves — but the number of offenders is kept down by semi-official lynchings, shooting on capture, into which nobody ever inquires, and transportation to Yucatan. One cannot but look with uneasiness on the slightness of the means of restraint here and there 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 con- fined. 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, thej^ 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, gos- sip, 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, what- ever 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 furni- ture of black walnut upholstered in Russia leather; but President and Cabinet ministers here walk upon thread- bare carpets in the National Palace. The chamber of the Senate is a modest little hall ; and the Deputies sit in SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 119 shabby quarters in anotlier part of town, wliieli were once simply a place of amusement, the Theatre Itnrbide. The museum, chiefly of Aztec antiquities, to which one turns with interest, is not of the extent or informin<^ character that may have been expected, and is under by no means brilliant managen)ent. Its greatest attraction is the arrangement of some of the larger fragments, par- ticularly the great sacrificial stone from the ancient tem- ple 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, pro- duces some charmino; effects. 120 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST I'ROVINCES. X. THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. I. The school of fine arts, on the otlier hand, the Acade- my of San Carlos — which was to celebrate with a special exhibition tlie one hundredth anniversary of its founda- tion — 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 exei'cise, they are cer- tainly not in the habit of doing so. Nor were they at all equalled by those of the prize competition of the students LAS CASAS PROTECTING THE AZTECS. By Felix Parrs. V THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 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 Ores- tes, 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, tjenre, 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 Mexi- can houses. The predictions at Havana were not veri- fied. The abundance of native talent receives little en- couragement. 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 chronologi- cally. 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 ah'eady, and it was high time that art should arise when Baltazar Echave began, somewhat after the year 1600. There is a romantic tra- dition 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 6 122 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 bnrnt sienna, and these warm red hues, relieved by cool whites, are repeated throughout. There is a group of six angel heads com- posed 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 intelli- gence. Arteaga has a noble St. Thomas; Jose 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 Rodri- guez, 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 cen- tury. 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, E.i- bera, Carrerio, 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 pur- chased by the Academy to illustrate modern Mexican THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 125 art. The religions tradition still prevails to a large extent, though the subjects are now taken from the Scriptures instead of the Bollandists. They are Hagar and Islnnael, the good Samaritan, the Hebrews by the waters of Baby- lon, and Noah receiving the olive-branch, and the like. 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 do 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 direc- tion of Senor 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 slay- ing of the sons of Niobe ; an arch and dainty Cupid poi- soning 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 Komo, 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. Yelasco 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST lUiOVINCES. and Puebla ; and some few in the cathedrals of the same |)hices, though scarcely to be seen, from their disadvan- tageous positions. Good pictures need not be looked for ill 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^xmfcw?.?, lends itself to sculpture and furnishes opportunities which with us are relegated to the commonplace tombstone- makers. The j^frnfeo?*- 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 Man- uel Islas, at the Pantheon of San Fernando, to Benito Jnarez, "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 no- body can deny to tiiis 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 curiositj', 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. THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 127 Tlierc were tio tlowers ou this one to-d;iy, 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 lY. 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 thorough- fare 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 fight- ing, no inconvenient elbowing, no drunkenness. In the evening the lanterns were lighted, and the great square was filled with venders of fruits and knickknacks, 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 imag- ine 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. III. Scarcely the same improvement is to be got from Mex- ican 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 Bepuhlicano, by far the most [j important, may circulate from six to eight thousand. The problem of existence for many of them would be diffi- cult 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 83'stem of subventions to the press was begun by our old friend of school history, Santa Anna, and has been con- tinued 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 vio- lence 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 appear- ance as at Paris, and includes a daily section of a serial story. A Sunday edition is published, with literary selec- tions, 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. THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 129 as a rule, not of tlie 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, Altimi- rano, Justo Sieri-a, 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, liowever, lias written a book of his travels in the United States, in which some amusing things will be discovered. He tinds that with ns "the totality \lo colectivo] is grand and admirable, but the individual egoistic and vnlgar." He saw Booth's Theatre, which is all of white marble {el Teatro de Both, todo de marmol hlanco); and, besides our hotels, the es- tablishment 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 quan- tity 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 plen- tiful 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 iiery 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 6* 130 01J> MEXICO ANT) HER LOST PROVIXCER would like to l)e Iloratiaii, sutnmoiis nymphs to disport with him in the shade, and abounds in florid terms, with- out thought. Carpio is inspired more or less by Biblical subjects, as Pharaoh and Belshazzar. In De Castro, Zaragoza, Gus- tave 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, affil- iated 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, bringin.g 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, " W'ill break forth my grief. Then weightiest will the air be laden with my sighs." The gem of the Lyra Mexicana is undoubtedly a cer- tain fugitive sonnet, " A Bosario," by an unfortunate young man, Acuna, who ended by taking his own life. The poem expresses the charming ideals in love and the bitterness of its disappointment, in a 3'outh of fine and sensitive nature. It has a poignancy and realism which have, perhaps, never been surpassed. lie returned from a long journey, as the story is told, and found his be- trothed the wife of another. The shock proving imen- THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 131 durable, 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 j'ou still, that I worsliip 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 ob- livion, 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, fare- well !" IV. If one try to select the most obvious trait in the na- tive 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 Ma- teos, 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 Campafias," and " The Sun of May," of Mateos, are re- spectively more or less authentic accounts of the final defeat and execution of Maximilian, and the defence of I 132 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Pnebla, slightly disguised. In " 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, Altamira- no, 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 pro- feta insjpirada de nuestra nacionalidad'''' (the inspired prophet of our nationality). I pick out from the same book this paragraphic men- tion 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 sepa- rate 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 Ncb- cionales^'' aim to sugar-coat a didactic exhibition of the events of the War of Independance. 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 so- ciety, preferring books from abroad. Their favorable reception may be accounted for in part by the lack of THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 133 regular histories and of newspaper intelligence, so that the populace may to some extent be getting their infor- mation for the first time. Riva Palacio has written also, with Manuel Payno, a large work appropriately called El Libra Rojo (The Kcd 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 over- taken 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 jBghting curates of the early insurrection, Hidalgo, More- los, and Matamoras begin the series; and Maximilian, Mejia, and Miramon, standing with bandaged eyes at the Hill of las Campanas, 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. 134 OLD MEXICO AND II KR LOST PROVINCES. XI. SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, AND THE MEXICAN ''WARWICK:' I. It would seem that history in Mexico might be a some- what 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 witli 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 con- founds itself, among so many plans and 'pronunciamien- tos; but we will follow the thread as best w^e can." The period referred to is that of the revolt of Texas, which proceeded to constitute itself "The Lone Star Re- public." Looking a little farther with interest to see how this is accounted for, we find : " The settlers were North Ainericans, 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 SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 135 fascination in being behind the scenes, and I confess tliat this little opportunity of finding out what was tiiought of itself b}' a country which has jarred so much with our own was one of the attractions of being in Mexico. The Anjcrican 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 his- torj^ that they terrorized our frontier, and oppressed an industrious and enterprising province? Why, then, per- haps both sides were wrong; and let us aspire for the day when all such quarrels may be settled by an interna- tional arbitration. II. The young Mexican learns first about his Aztec ances- try, 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 tli(? features of a servile uprising, drove out the Spaniards in 1821. Grasping and incon- siderate in their colonial management as their w\ay has always been, the Spaniards had probably only themselves to thank for it. Iturbide, who commanded the revolt at the end, made 136 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. liimself briefly Einperor. Ilis generals, notably the irre- pressible Santa Anna, who first here conies 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 central- ized 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 re- tains 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 repub- lic 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 re- ligion 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 du- ties, and constitutes a state of society where the rights of all are guaranteed and people go about their avocations without interference. III. AVould 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 liv- ing in banishment in the "West Indies, to Maximilian, and endeavored to take service under him. His aid was re- jected, whereupon he turned to Juarez, only to be re- "SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 137 pulsed 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 pro- nounced against forty-two years before. The court-mar- tial, however, spared his life, "in consideration of the ancient services done to his country in Texas, at Tam- pico, 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 ques- tions and answers of the little history. Of. the gallant generals who fought so well for the Independence, Vic- toria was the first President. Bravo pronounced against him, and was exiled to South America. Guerrero, de- feated as a candidate for the succession by Pedraza, took up arms and seized it by force. He repelled, while in oftice, a new attempt by the Spaniards to recover the country. " Question. — I suppose that with this triumph the gov- ernment of Guerrero was firmly established? '"''Answer. — This was to have been hoped, but that happened which always happens in Mexico — just the contrary." Bustameute, 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 ? "^. — The most terrible that can be imagined. The Government at Mexico, feeling that it could not over- come Guerrero . . . bought over, for $70,000, a Geno- ese named Picaluga, wdio commanded a vessel anchored in the harbor of Acapulco. Picaluga invited Guerrero 138 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. to dine on boai-d, and this manifestation of liospitalit}'^ was accepted in good faitli. WJien tliey had dined the Genoese signified to Guerrero tliat he was a prisoner, and set sail with him to tlie port of Iluatulco and delivered him into the hands of his enemies. This great and good man, valiant and worthy of the respect and grati- tude of the nation . . . was shot in the pueblo of Cui- hipa, 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 Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada directed a letter to the authorities in 1840, pro- posing, as a measure of relief, that a monarchical gov- ernment 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 scan- dal nevertheless, but Gutierrez Estrada stuck to it tena- ciously, 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 Max- imilian. If 1 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 SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 139 encouragint^ 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 predeces- sors, and do not constitute a declining ratio. GENERAL POUFIRIO DIAZ, EX-PRESIDEN'T OF MEXICO. General Porfii-io Diaz occupied unmolested a full term, from 1870 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 fol- lows 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 Porfi- rio," let us see how he entered upon office in the be- gin nine:. 140 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST FROVINCES. 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 ns inquire a little also who he was. " His influence in the country," says the llonitor, " is decisive, incontestable. Something more than Ben- itez 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 in- stead. 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 studied with romantic in- cidents, 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 de- light 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. By the Mexican system one elector is supposed to be chosen for each dis- trict of five hundred inhabitants. In actual practice the bulk of the inhabitants hardly know when the election takes place, and the electors represent scarcely more than themselves of the 12,361 votes of the electoral college thus constituted. Juarez received 5837, Diaz 3555, Lerdo 2874, and 95 are recorded as "scattering." " Q. — Eelate to me what happened thereafter. " JL. — General Porfirio Diaz issued, from his hacienda of La Noria, a manifesto, hence called the Plan of La SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 141 Nm'ia, 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, pre- sented himself at the capital, and was affably received by Lerdo, who assured him, on the part of the Govern- ment, that he might live tranquil without fear of perse- cution or harm. "JSTothing," 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 Tuxte2)eG, and rose against Lerdo, M'ho had succeeded Juarez. He captured Matamoros by a bold stroke of strategy ; was himself captured on shipboard ; and es- caped from the Lerdists by leaping into the sea, through the connivance of an American purser, whom he after- ward made consul at St. ISTazaire. 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 peda- gogue spirit to which he had been used. He lost favor, too, by his lack of military talent, and fled when his fort- unes 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. against tlie 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 jDerson neither talk- ative 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, j9?/Zy?<(', taiaales, 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 sug- gest 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 Treviiio, his companion in arms and strong auxiliary in his pronunciamientos. Treviiio has married the daughter of an American general, Ord, SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 143 and it may be supposed that American interests will not suffer in his hands. Porfirio is romantic even in his Machiavellianism. The only soui'ce from which he mijj^ht have had any- thing to fear was perhnps a lingering Lerdist sentiment. GENKRAL MANUEL GONZALES, PllESIDENT OF MEXICO. 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 senti- ment. 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 Ro- mero Rubio. liumero Ruljio 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: OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. the Presidency of tlie 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 Amer- icans 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 at- tendant and courteous host. A certain resemblance was traced between them. Both had been illustrious gener- als, both presidents. When Grant returned a second time, and was now less popular, on account of his inter- est 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 tlie northern confines of th« re- public. ' 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 con- duct for some time, and asked him, in a bluff way, " Why do you continue to talk against the Govern- ment, and pass your time in idleness — you who were once so good a soldier?" "Sir," he replied, "you know my sentiments, and the SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 145 cause for which I fonght. 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 regi- ment. 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 ham- mer-and-tongs method has been so long in vogue that it is a delightful relief. The chicanery of matrimonial al- liances, and assumption of frank and soldierly manners, will be welcomed by all the foreign capital in the coun- try as a great improvement upon throat-cutting. From vast estates in Oaxaca, w^hich with a commend- able 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 tliB interim to be governor, and commander of the forces, of this fighting state. In the absence of any eflScient electoral system the country is under his abso- lute 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 Cffisar. They are not very free agents, 7 146 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. to tell tlie truth. They are really sent by the governors of the respective states, and these governors have been manipulated in advance. Poi-iirio can undoubtedly make threats as well as promises ; and an unlucky representa- tive, if content to forego a better place, may even lose the one he has. He cannot depend upon adequate sup- port, 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 Csesar, 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 gov- ernment than a Csesarism 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 rail- ways that a nation so disorganized as ours can reconsti- tute 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 obedi- ence 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 SOME TRAITS OF TECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 117 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 gov- ernments, 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 polit- ical 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 speak- ers. No organized opposition exists. Such opposition as there is is purely personal. All contests for office are .A personal, and not a matter of principles. The Govern- ment — 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 a"ccount 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINdSS. 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? CUATITLAN— LAKES XOVHIMILCO AND VIIALCO. 149 XII. CUATITLAN, AND AROUND LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND VHALCO. The saying is current that "Outside of Mexico all is Cuatitlan." It shows that the capital entertains a true Parisian es- teem for itself, and a corresponding contempt for the rest of the country. Cuatitlan is a little village twenty-live miles to the northward, reached by a narrow-gauge rail- road, built by Mexicans, but purchased by the Mexican Central. It w^as 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 en- tirely. 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 predeces- sor, and ran at the streamers with a playful air. You felt like scratching his back and calling him "good old fel- low," instead of waiting to see presently his pained aston- ishment 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 150 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. CUATITLAX— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AXD CHALCO. 151 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 "j&eZ/o/" ^'■BelUsslmo!^'' in frenzied delight. The gray old walls of the parish church, immense, and of excellent design (as they all are), rise above the amphi- theatre. Within are figures of saints grotesquely adorned, or realistically horrible, in the usual style. The devout Indians are not archaeologists, 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 tlie Saviour of the World in a twent}'- dollar hat, chajoarreras (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 neighborliood 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 pro- vided for them free, on the national festival of the 5th of Ma}'. There were charcoal dealers and such persons, with their women, and they had not taken the pains to 152 OLD MEXICO AND UEli LOST I'ROVLXCEfi. remove a single smudge of their working-day condi- tion. Cuatitlan \vas tlie birth-place of the simple peon Jnan Diego, who in 1531 saw the miraculons apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He was passing the barren hill where her elaborate pilgrimage church now stands, and she gave liim roses which had flowered where no flower had ever been seen before. A banner with the ima^e of this miraculous Yir^jin was carried all throue:li 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 secur- ity 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. Xo 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 nntasted in the orange and myrtle gardens. The vil- lagers 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. The Viga Canal, as far as Santa Anita, is a livelier and CUATITL AN— LAKES XOCHLMILCO AND CHALCO. 153 7* 154 OLD MEXICO AXD II ER LOST PROVINCES. more unique resort. Santa Anita is tlie St. Cloud or Bongival of Mexico. Thither go, especially on Sundays, lively persons to disport themseU'es 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, M-itli private water-gates, might belong to the Brenta. Af- terward 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 dis- tance. 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 en- sconced 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 liberallj^ 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 charac- ter 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 Sunda}^ festivities here is to provide themselves with large, thick wreaths of lovely poppies and blue and white corn- flowers, 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 CUATITLAX— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 155 prepared on little cliarcoal furnaces without and primi- tive fire-places within. "Come in!" the busy venders cry ; " come in, senors, senoras, and senoritas, and be seated! Aqui los ninos ! Here is the place for the chil- dren ! 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 cab- man in want of a job will call you imtroncito^ " dear little patron," though you may be as large as a grenadier. They decorate their little stands with turnips and rad- ishes 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 patron- age. Dancing is going on in almost every court-yard; the ballad-singers strike up lazy refrains ; and in the Car- cel, 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 Ameri- can 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 tliat actu- ally float, according to the tradition ? Was all that, then, a myth ? Not at all. The soil hereabouts is solidified now, an- chored down, as it were; but it has in its time floated, and in that condition borne crops. Farther on wliole expanses are found only kept in position by stakes, with four feet of water below, and yet strong enough to sus- tain grazing cattle. An expedition was organized, in 156 OLD MKXILO AM) IIKH LOST riiUVIXVES. which I was privileged to set off, under the hospitable guidance of the Dii-ector of the Drainage of the Vallej^ 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,* 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 six- teen miles, is the outlet of Lake Xochimilco into Texcoco. Chalco and Xochimilco are practically the same lake, be- ing separated oi\\y 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 Desaglie 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 occa- sion. 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 accom- plish 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, accord- ing to Prescott, were rekindled the extinguished fires and the beautiful captive sacrificed at the end of each of the cycles of fifty 3'ears, when the Aztecs thought the existence of the world was to be terminated. * Brockleliurst's "Mexico To-day." John Murray: London, 1883. CUATITLAX— LAKES XOCIUMILCO AXD VHALCO. 157 We found nothing on tlie 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 memoi'ies 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 debris^ supporting a verdant meadow. Pas- sage 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 Jirma 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, handoleros (ban- dits), 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. Contra- bandists, robbers who occasionally beset the market-boats, and political refugees have sometimes found this a favor- able place of refuge, and escaped pursuit by diving under the illusive area and coming up elsewhere. We dined alfresco at Mas Arriba, a place named quite 158 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. in the American style, literally Farther On. The margins were full of yellow water-lilies, and the clear spaces re- flected 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 brido^e, which barely accommodated the boat. Here was Tlahuac, an an- cient island town or village, at the centre of the cause- way. 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 per- son 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 car- pets 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 risinof in the centre had one of the usual shin- CITATITL AN— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 159 ing tiled domes, and was preceded by a court and arched gateway. Its outer walls were covered witli a large pat- tern of quatre-foils in red and yellow. I do not recol- lect 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 re- citing 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 alwaj's safe to judge by appearances. From here the view of the two great snow-clad vol- canoes is uninterrupted and glorious. We were told to feel with the oars at one place in the canal the pave- ments of a submerged Aztec city. Cortez mentions such a one in his letters. In 1855 the rumor of a new Pom- peii spread abroad, based upon the finding of a few sub- merged Aztec huts in Lake Chalco, but no remains of any real importance have ever come to light. V. On this da}', 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 sum- mit, which, they say, are kindled by the witches. We climbed it, notwithstanding, and found a gently sloping crater, tilled with maize- fields, which could easily have been approached from the other side. 100 OLD MEXICO AND IIEIi LOST rROVIXVES. The water began to be charmingly clear, and the bot- tom was full of a red weed like coral. We gathered ferns, lilies, the fragrant little white flower of St. John — Jloj^ de San Juan, sold in large bunches in the market — and other flowers, yellow, purple, and vivid scarlet, of un- known names. The clouds still hnng 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 land- scape 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 M'hich wreathing mists throw changing lights and shadows. Ixtacihuatl, the "White Woman, though the lesser, I con- tinually 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 Compania, on the Morelos railway, and took the train back to town. We were just in time to hear of a dis- turbance 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 — liad been CUATITLAX— LAKES XOVIIIMILCO AM) CHAU'O. 161 wrested from their ancestors by the Spanish conquerors — and it was hioh time to ffet 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." 162 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. XIII. TO OLD TEXCOCO. My next journey was by lake across Texcoco to the old capital of that name. I liad hoped to take El Nez- hualcoyotl, 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 ilhistrious; 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 En- chanting 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 J9eto^^,s, 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." Thej' offered a part of their lunch, as travelling companions were continually doing wherever I went, and the skipper offered \xs> pulque. Two older women, in blue rebosas, sat like statues, hold- TO OLD TEXCOCO. 163 ing tlieir 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 Yenetian-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 har- ness 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 teo- calli-like Penol, 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 wiien we set out, and four when we reached the mouth of the short branch canal which makes up to Tex- coco. 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 ef- fect, ^'■Alabo al gran poder de Dion! Ave Maria pu- 164 01^1) MEXICO AX/) HKR LOST I'liOVIXCES. rissimaf" — "Hail to the almighty power of God ! Hail, Mary the purest !" Unexpectant of anything of the sort, I Imrried out from the cabin, taking it to be some detiance at enemies, or disturbance among ourselves. We met other packets like our own, loaded with people. A considerable part of the cargoes M'as 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 pal- atable. 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 don- keys, 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 grow- ing and cows feeding. II. I spent nearly a week at Texcoco assimilating the quiet interior life of the country. I dined at the Restaurante TO OLD TEXCOVO. 1G5 lOG OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Universo, both cheaply and better as a rule than at Mex- ico, and found a chamber with the keeper of the princi- pal t'lenda, there being no inn. I even became some- thing of an expert \n pulque. The true connoisseur takes it mitad y m'dad : half of agua Tniel 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 con- tented himself with a mere fine it was a sounding one. The pidquerias 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. Crack- ers 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 Texco- can. He had lately brought out a very strong distillation of pulque, a kind of patent medicine, and asked my ad- vice about introducing it in the United States. He evi- dently 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 pro- tection next to a few internal improvements. Hamlets TO OLD TEXCOCO. 167 cluster near together in a fertile area round about. I noted one day two peons soberly carrying on their shoul- ders, among the niagueys, 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 pot- ters. 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 ac- quire 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^ Senor 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 San- tiago," who told me that he was pulling down, in his garden, the largest pyramid of the place, to sell the ma- terial for building purposes. This was of real interest. 168 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PEOVIXCES. 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 Teoti- huacan. There was present in the place with me an archaeologist — a newspaper archaeologist, I should call him. lie termed himself an " expedition ;" he had an omnivor- ous taste for unearthing things, without knowledge of the language, or apparent acquaintance with any previous re- searches 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 sec- tion 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 re- galia, possibly that of old Nezhualcoyotl himself. The archaeologist, 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 sur- face off the rest of the soil in the vicinity, for the re- maining 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 prac- tices, 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 TO OLD TEXCOCO. 109 down in a drawing the peculiarities of the "find" we had made. I do not profess myself an archasologist, except from the picturesque point of view. It is my ])rivate 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 China- man. Writci's on the subject have generally represented 170 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. America as originally peopled from Asia, the Asiatics having crossed over, perhaps, at Behring's Straits, and made tlieir way south. One Mexican writer stoutly maintains that Mexico was the cradle of the race, and the migration was in the opj)osite 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, there- fore, 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-hm! ti-hui! — let us go! They listened intently and took counsel together. " This is really very singular," we may suppose Huitziton saying, while Tecpultzin sage- ly 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 inex- orably, and that there seemed nothing for it but that the Aztec people should move southward, which they pro- ceeded to do. They overwhelmed the civilized Toltec capital at Tula . \ TO OLD TEXCOCO. 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 Monte- zumas. 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 archi- tectural 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, bathipg 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 moun- tain, 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. lie 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. " Mitl, the venerator of the gods ; Tolpiltzin, last of the Toltees ; 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 tliey represented something very tangible and solid. " Very brief is the realm of flowers," he continues, "and brief is human life. . . . Our careers are like tlie streams, which but run on to excavate their own graves the more surely. . . . Let ns look, then, to the immor- tal life. . . . The stars that now so puzzle ns 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 Cer- vantes 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 jjlaf/i- arios did not secure the large ransom they demanded, after all, but were finally apprehended, and shot — three TO OLD TEXCOCO. 173 of tlicm — against tlic wall of the house, the Callejon Za- eate, No. 8, where they had detained their victim. The Molino del Flores was not only charming in itself, hut may serve as a text for mentioning the very different sentiment thrown around anything in the shape of a man- ufactory 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 arc a hundred fantastic jets and surprises. Thei-e is an out-of-door bathing tank, for instance, at the end of a se- cluded 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 adven- ture as that of Susannah and the Elders. In the novel of " Maria," one of the most charming of stories, with which I lirst 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 fres- coed, rock-cut mortuary chapel, where, among others, the last titled ancestor of the house lies buried. lie had ten distinct surnames — was Marques de Flores, a General of Brigade, signer of the Declaration of Independance, Cap- tain in Iturbide's Guard, Cavalier of the Order of Gua- dalupe, Regidor, Governor, Notabile under Maximilian, and more; from which it will be seen that the pomp of the hidalgos well survived in Mexico. 174 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. The same caressing way of looking at industrial estab- lishments 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 haci- endas, " beneficiating" liaciendas, 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 tlie 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 moun- tains, frequently crossed our course, indicating the sub- stantial 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. POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 175 XIV. POPOCA TEPETL A SCENDED. 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 ad- venturous. Few accept it, however, though among those who have done so are said to be ladies. I should some- what 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 liave all the par- ticulars 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 Popo- catepetl 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 liave 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 stock- ings. 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. traveller ciin be made so uncomfortable as to quit the asceut 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 arrange- ment 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 W'ill 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 Mili- tary School. We were put in charge of one of his super- intendents, who was to see that we had every conven- ience, 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 en- counter the needed hardships on his own account, for certain it is that in the sequel we were left short of many elementarj'^ necessities, and there was no raalacate for the descent, nor any reference to it. Yon 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 POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 17Y 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 Chal- 00, 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 negoti- ations 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 Car- doba, 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 undulat- ing slopes, yellow with barley, out of which projected liere and there an ancient pyramid, planted with a crop also. By the roadside grew charming white thistles, tall blue lupines, and columbines. We crossed arroxjos^ brooks, and harrancas, gorges. The aspect changed to that of an Alpine pasture. There were bunch grass, ten- der 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 \\\t and down and 8* 178 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. bit at the heels of the herds in the most wasteful man- ner. 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, con- trived a score of sage and amusing devices to attract an attention to himself be^-ond his deserts. The horses were frescoed on the flanks with a kind of Eastlake dec- oration made up of the brands of successive owners. The English landed proprietor in our small party occu- pied himself with collecting specimens, and soon had a kind of geological and botanical pudding in his satchel. The American engineer took observations with his ba- rometer 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 inter- stices, 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 fur- naces 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- POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 179 hacks. One was choked by the fumes, if near the fur- naces, and penetrated by the drauglits 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 iiffht 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 com- pensation 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 subti-acted from the total. Shall we ever meet with a good, honest mountain rising its whole 19,673 feet at once, without these shnflling evasions ? 1 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 in- sists 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. 1 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 5100 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 moun- tain 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. III. We left the Rancho, at six in tlie morning, on horse- back, and rode three liours toilsomely over rocks of basalt, and black sand. The poor animals suffered pain- fully, but we needed all our own strength for the later work, and could not spare them. They were left at a point called Las Crnces, wliere a cross tops a ledge of black, jaggedly- projecting volcanic rock. The lines of composition in tliis 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 cas- tellated 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 val- j ley 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. Tiie climb now began on foot, in a soft black sand. One of the leading difiiculties of the climb is said to arise from the exceeding thinness of the air, which makes breathing difficult. I cannot say that I discriminated be- tween this and the shortness of breath due to the natural fatigue. POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 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 tilled up the valley with a symmetrical arrange- ment like pavement. Such bits as appeared through fur- tive openings recalled the charming lines of Holmes's, in which a spirit, "homesick in heaven," looks back on the earth it has left : " To catch perchance some flashing glimpse of green, Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl." 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 con- sists of jagged snow-pinnacles without cessation, an end- less staircase of them reaching up into the sk)'. Some- times, 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 scoriae 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. are no crevasses to fall into, as in tlie 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 a jpoco'''' (lit- tle by little) ; so that we paraphrased our mountain as " Poco-a-poco-catepetl." Finall}', with sighs and groans of labored effort, instead of the lightness with which one might be expected to sa- lute a point of so extreme high heaven, we staggered over the edge of the crater at about two o'clock in the after- noon. I had doubted at one time whether the English lauded 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, hless 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 mina- rets 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 s'^ilfatnras^, or POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 183 pources, from which the native sulphur is extracted. The liauds 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 con- tiivance they call a caballo de oninas — horse of the mines. The sulj^hur is hoisted in bags and slid down a long ijioove 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 w^as not adjusted. If it had been, and we had descended, we might have found the warmth for which we were well-nigh perish- ing. 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 con- tempt. "A certain kind of lignite in the bottom, re- quiring that length of time to form, establishes it." "So much the more reason, then," said the alarmist: " it is high time there w^as 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. slightly more comfortable than the other. The next day "we rode back to Amecameca. When Senor 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 wa^ np 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 singu- lar cause, that he had fancied that ardent spirits would have no eifect in the peculiarly attenuated atmosphere, and had emptied nearly a whole bottle of brandy. Senor Llandesio was told by the Indians that they be- lieved 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 discov- eries of Cliarnay, who unearthed about the foot of the mountain much interesting pottery. A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 185 XV. A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, AT CUAUTLA-MORELOS. I. When I saw Arnecameca again it was to pass it on board a gala train going down to celebrate the completion of the Morelos railway to Cnaiitla, 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 Pres- ident Juarez, was rushed forward with great expedition, in order to secure valuable premiums, added to the regu- lar 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 lat- ,ter 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, litterateurs, and, greatest of all, Porfi- rio 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 in- stead, the Republic of Mexico would have needed to be reconstructed from the bottom upward. A locomotive exj)loradora, a look-out 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 detach- 186 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 187 ment of Eurales reined up at the station. At Ameca- meca there were as many as iifty of the hitter, with drawn swords, all on white horses, which the firing made plunge with great spirit. At Ozninba was a battalion of mounted riflemen, under command of a handsome young officer in an eye-glass, who might have come fresh from the mili- tary 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 over- come the three-quarters of a mile grade perpendicular from Amecameca to Cuautla. Cuautla has seven thou- sand 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 car- ried through chiefly by the exertions of a Senor 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 earthenware with an effect like that of old Roman mosaic. There was a dis- tinctly 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. II. The extremely civilized company pouring down to this shabby little place had a grand banquet in an old con- vent now adapted to the uses of a railway station, and plentiful speech-making afterward. There were a num- ber 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 some- thing curiously illogical in. the Mexican mind that in fes- toons 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 ad- joined Bravo and Guerrero, by whom he was shot as a usurper and enemy of the public peace; and Lerdo Por- firio Diaz, by whom he was ousted as traitor and tyrant. In the same way these pei'sonages, alternately one anoth- er's Csesars 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 sucii a share in the early in- surrection. They recall those warrior ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages, who used to put on quite as often the secu- lar as the spiritual armor. Probablj' the oppressions of I the Spaniards were often too intolerable even for ecclesi- astical endurance. Morelos, strangely enough, when the revolt broke out, was curate under Hidalgo at Valladolid, in Michoacan, and followed him to the field. lie came, A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 189 in Ins turn, to be generalissimo of the Mexican forces, and to have the name of Valladolid changed to Morelia in liis honor. He had undoubtedly the military gift. His defence of Cnaiitla is considered one of the most glorious deeds of Mexican history. It was the third in the trio of priests, Matanioras, his intimate and lieuten- ant, who broke the siege with a hundred horse and aided his retreat when it linally became necessary. Matamoras in due course was taken and shot, at Yalla- dolid, 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 insni-gents, and the excessive cruelty of which he made use on fi-equent occasions." He routed Matamoras at Puruapan, took him prisoner, and put him to deatli, as has been said. To repay this, Morelos butch- ered 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 in- quiry 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, in- vokes 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 Amer- icans should invoke the sacred name of Benedict Arnold. Arnold, too, rendered excellent services to his country. . '% 190 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Nobody was a braver or better soldier than he before lie attempted to betraj 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 impa- tience 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 suf- ficient for the purpose. On other flat cars was a freight of barrels of aguardiente. The start was made in the af- ternoon. 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 ofiicer 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 car- A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 191 tridges in the belts exploded ; the swollen torrent claitned 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 white- washing 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. 192 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. XVI. SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. I. The impressions of the first journey upward from the coast are too vague to satisfy, yet it is better to push on to tlie 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 lie had com- prehended what I meant) ''^710 hahlamos Americano aquV — " 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 en- tertained Americans. He had a doe: to which he had SAiV JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 193 given, in pleasant recollection of one of them, as he said, the remarkable name of " Levis," which afterward proved to be " Lewis." Adjoining was a barracks of Rurales, whose bugles sounded a cheerful reveille in the morning. The central plaza is perhaps three miles from the station. On the way jou 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 inliabitants 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 satis- factory 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 zig- zag 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 " C(Z7•^to*," 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 9 194 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. have erected a cross here, where an idol, with a bur- nished 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 ceren)onial 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 spar- kling afar, like another sacrificial fire. The country round al)out is garden -like, abounding in maize and maguey, sheep and cattle. I observed some large straw -ricks, fashioned by leisurely employes, 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 magnificent- ly ; 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 thera again with great pleasure at lluamantla, in the state of Tlaxcala. It is a shabby place of un painted 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 Amerian guerilla, Walker, was killed in personal combat by an intrepid Mexican of- ficer, Eulalio Villasenor." Near by is Malinche, a moun- tain 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 SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 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 charm- ing; 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 Diligen- cias was white and attractive. Next to it a torrent tum- bled 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 atmos- phere, and wet clouds, dragging low and occasionally dropping their contents, kept the vegetation of a fresh, vivid green. At the hotel tcihle d^hdte 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 hus- band was a general oflicer told me that she had been in 100 01.] ) MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. THE HILL OF EL BORREfiO, AT ORIZABA. the United States — -at New Orleans — accounting thus for a little knowledgje of Eno;lish. That meant that she had shared her husband's exile there. One comes to under- stand and smile at it after a while. '■''Tomo el ruinbo d la costa.) y salio de la Re_pubUca, enibarcandose jpara Or- leans'''' — "He took the road to the coast and sallied from the Kepnblic, embarking; himself fur 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. SAX JUJy, ORIZABA, AX I) CORDOBA REVISITED. 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 tlie 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, "iViy Aay" — "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 lirst make of those of the tropics. My acquaintances in the place were the family of the Licenciado — let us say — Ilerrera y Arroyo. The names of both masculine and feminine progenitors are thus usually linked together by the "3/" — 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 Mex- ican 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 Ori- zaba. Boys ran out from thatched cottages in the edge of town to pick flowers and offer them to the senoritas, expecting to be rewarded, of course, with a little consid- 198 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. eration. 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 lo- custs 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 aque- duct the seuoritas 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 crush- ing 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 6 Margarita de Borgogna ;" 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 ro- SAy JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA RE VISITED. 199 COCO into wliicli 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 bet- ter corrected. Vamos ! 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, 1 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 detach- ments, as 18° de Infanteria,^° Compana de Grenaderos^ which have occupied it. In the smoke-stains, the damp, 200 OLD MEXICO ANL HER LOST PROVINCES. to which patches of gilding still adhere, and the vestiges of scaling fresco, dim, mysterious visions are made out. The bare chancel dais, still surviving, gives to the inte- rior 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 wheelbarrow 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 ar- chitectural gateway, 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 se- ries of fines is prescribed, in printed rules, for the hands coming late in the morning and falling into other misde- meanors. The sum of these makes up a fund for chari- table 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 SAiV JUAX, ORIZABA, AXI) CORDOBA REVISITED. 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 fi'oni the ec- clesiastical authorities, allowing work to go on, on most of them, as usual. IV. From Orizaba the next stage was to Cordoba. Cor- doba is in the full tropics, and there I first made acquaint- ance 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 conven- ience 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 banajias ; 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 cof- fee 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 culti- vation. 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 thi-ee ounces on an average. Some few Americans, and other foreigners, have estab- lished themselves at Cordoba, and lead a dreamy existence in the shade. At one time it was the scene of an exten- sive coffee-planting by ex-Confederate generals, but these attempts were not successful. I was fortunate enough 9* 20 2 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 liand a machete from the wall, and we set forth for a walk, with mncli improving discourse by the way, in tlie fields and plantations. Tiie DiacJiete., a long half cleaver, half sword, opens you a path through a tliick- et, 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 atid an improved market. When transportation becomes cheap- er we shall have introduced into the United States from Mexico also many choice fruits, notably the ^fine Ma- nilla 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 mel- on, pine-apple, peach, and pear, is the most delicious of them all. Other fruits are the chirimoya, guava, mame, granadita (or pomegranate), zapote, chazapote, tuna, agua- cate, 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, ca- pable 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, SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND COIiDOBA REVISITED. 203 which are then dried five or six weeks, and barked ; or are barked earlier by a machine. The chief labor con- sists 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 rec- ommended for shade are the fresno, or ash, cedro (cedar), the huisache, aguacate, maxcatle, cajiniquil, and tepehuaje, 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 ba- nanas, 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 propor- tionate amount of nourishment from the soil. Is it not beaten down, too, in every storm ? And the ravaging liedgehog comes in search of it, and, while he is about it, destroys the coffee as well. No, indeed, no combina- tion 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, bj'-the-vvay, 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 "shoe- maker's children" again, I suppose. On the contrary, I 204 OLD MEXICO A XI) II KR LOST PROVINCES. 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 clois- ter 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 com- parison. 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 nigiit, 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 SAA' JUAN, ORIZABA, AXD CORDOBA REVISITED. 205 the views of one of these M^atchmen. lie showed me the Eeiiiington rifle with which he was armed. He said that he went on dnt3' 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 enongli. There are no cahs 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 any- body 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, eat- ing and drinking, marriage, and the burial of the dead, all yield entertainment. The traveller who spreads before us only the outre 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 outre. 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. at this writing wliich came from Water Street, in New York. Tljis agent had taken his last order (having can- vassed 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 compre- hending for the lirst 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-ap- ples are the finest in the state of Yera 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 tl^je 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 na- tives 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 famil- iar acquaintance. Church, the painter, finds the prefer- able point of view farther up the railroad, using the wild gorges of Fortin as a foreground. Tiie 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 SAN' JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 207 certain minor directions. They make long, swift jour- neys, for instance, acting as beasts of burden or messen- gers, so that, seeing their performances, the words of Buf- fon 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 Amat- lan differ from others, or perhaps the general reputation may not be wholly deserved, for the Cordobans tell you that Aniatlan 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 ava- rice and delight in simply piling it up. There was a project at one time to build a tram-road hence to Cor- doba, 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 re- turn, 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, with- 208 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVIXCES. out 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 build- ings and costume. M}' commercial traveller, by way of arousing greater enthusiasm in this, represented that it was to be "put in a macliine" 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 ef- fected 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 ti'ee-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 moi-e than animal life that is feared. We forded three pretty brooks, and came to an upland where cows were pastur- ing, and the steeples of Cordoba were again in sight. Our young guide lassoed a cow, led her to a shed where SAiV JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 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 tiiere at pasturage in charge of his uncle. I trust that this was so. 210 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLA XC ALA. I. You turn off from the junction of Apizaco, on the Yera Cruz railway, to go to the large, line city of Puebla. It is the capital of the state of the same name, and has a population of about seventy-seven thousand. Many ^\-o&- \)evous fcih/'icas (factories) are seen along the fertile val- ley of approach ; then the forts, attacked and defended on tlie great Cinco de Mayo, appear on the hills, looking doM^n, like Mont Yalerien 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 capi- tal. I thought our hotel, De Diligencias, which was very well kept, by a Frenchman, much better than the Itur- bide. 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, whicli 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 eartlienware 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 rUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 211 frieze. Plaques, representing saints, which yon take at first for hand-bills, are let into walls. These tiles are made at Puebla, where there are as many as ten fdhricas of them, the best in the country. I visited one of these, found the manufacture cheaj), and brought away some specimens. The workmanship is rude and hasty, but the effect artistic and adapted to its purpose. The most lib- eral 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. En- trance, 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 w^ell ordered; and — curious feature to note — departments for allopath and homoeopath arranged in)partially 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 charm- ing 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 OJJ) MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 niatei'ial, 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 ba- zaar, where they are principally displayed, were not soon exhausted as a spectacle. The men are usually bare- legged, and in white cotton. In the w^arm part of the day they carry their bright-colored scrapes folded over one shoulder, and when it is cooler put them on, by sim- ply 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 scrape. To all this is added a profu- sion of necklaces of large beads, amber, blue, and green, and large silver ear-rings, or others of glass, in the Mex- ican 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 PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 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 them- selves, 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 ad- vent 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 pecul- iar excellence. Of those that remain still of great in- terest 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. ^'■Voild! 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 n)ight be fancied. It rains principal- ly at night, and the succeeding day is bright and clear. 214 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. In Mexico, as in California, the rainy season means that in which rain falls about as with us, while the dry sea- son 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 thou- sand. He had discovered an artful plot among them for the destruction of his army, and it was his aim in this waj' to strike such a terror into the country that he should have done with such things once for all. The god wor- shipped 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 djxs, 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 repre- sented with painted shield, jewelled sceptre, and plumes of fire. Could Cortez have w\aited 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 tram-way, 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 PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 215 States and Europe, and picked up several languages. He called upon us afterward at our hotel, to politely inquire our impressions of his tram-way. The principal features of the trip were exquisite views of Popocatepetl and Ixtaciliuatl across yellow grain-fields; a dilapidated convent turned to an iron foundery ; an old aqueduct crossing the plain ; a Spanish hridge, sculpt- ured 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 sculpt- ured 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 vil- lages, in any country that surpasses it. An American was there that day with the purpose of buying a haci- enda, 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. San Pablo Mexicalcingo ; San Diego ; La Madalena ; Santa Marta ; Santa Maria; San Isidoro ; San Juan Cal- vario ; 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 I 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 ex- quisite cultivation with the regularity of market-gardens. We dined, at Cholula, at the clean Fonda de la Re- forma, 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 pos- itive 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 cen- tre 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 Ayuntamiento, 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 fuH blast ! PUEBLA, CnOLULA, TLAXCALA. 217 PRISONERS WEAVING SASHES AT CHOLULA, 218 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST FliOVINCES. I cannot sa)' just why I visited so many prisons. Per- ]iai)s becanse they were always under tlie eye, adjoining the public offices, and the prisoners were a cheerful lot, who did what they could to attract attention. At Cho- lula we found them weaving, on a primitive kind of liand-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 liave 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 hun- ger, 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 I of Mexico. The recollection had involuntarily given me rather dark and depressing ideas of Tlaxcala, as a place of PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 219 gloomy forests and gorges suited for martial resistance. Who that has not seen it, I wonder, has the proper con- ception of Tlaxcala? IV. It is not gloomy; there are no forests; the country is open and rolling ; and the name " Tlaxcala," it now ap- pears, is fertility, the " Land of Bread." I left at 11 a.m., and arrived at the village of Santa Ana, on the raih'oad to Apizaco, in a couple of hours. After a time a convey- ance 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 coupe, 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 alto- gether 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 Tlaxca- lan ally, a very rapid-talking small boy, with the air of one niuch in the habit of dodging missiles. 220 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. "It will be two reals" (twentj-five cents) "the niglit, 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 Tlaxealan 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, "J/?/y huena cama^ senor P'' '•'■ Miiy h&nito espejoP'' — "A very fine bed, seiior!" "A very charming mirror, senor 1" — 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 add- ing 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-miile. 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 PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 221 otherwise, at Tl;ixcala. And to that extent I may eay I do so consider hiiu 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 "The fiery eyes of Pauguk glaring at him through the darkness," as one awoke to them in the early morning. An- other 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 1 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 ofiScer. The morning was bright and beautiful. Hucksters were putting up their stands in the arcades for the day's busi- ness. 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 employes. It is the capital of the smallest of the states, the Riiode Island or Delaware of the Mexican federation. I entered the quarters of the Legislature, and found there the Gov- ernor, 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 legisla- tive 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Other, ill 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 Ayuntamieuto 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-bonnd books from the convents. This is a common enough sight in Mexico. Treasures are abun- dant 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 con- tains, 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 with- in it are the first baptismal font (the same in which the Tlaxca- lan 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 approacli 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 OLD FONT AT TLAXCALA. PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 223 town plaza was cracked and unfitted for use by an earth- quake in the year 1800, and its ruins stand untouched, with the bells still hanging in the steeple. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN PULPIT IN AMERICA. TLAXCALA. 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 pros- pect. Women and girls were going up to the sanctuary with bunches of roses, on some religious 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 22 i OLD MEXICO AND JIEli LOST PROVINCES. PAKT OF CONVENT OF SAN FRANCISCO. TLAXCALA. to be a compact little place, flat-roofed, low, almost ex- actly 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 PUEBLA, VIIOLULA, TLAXCALA. 225 gentleman confided to me, mysteriously, that, since spend- ing 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 ycuvs, ago," he said, "brought to the padre of one of the churches two pa- pers containing a fine dust. It was jpoudre 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 aban- doned by the Spaniards in the terrors of the War of In- dependence, 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 convey- ance, 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 ac- customed 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 chil- dren, with a Chinese look, holding babies, and peering at us out of rifts in palisades of organ-cactus. Bright skeins 10* 226 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. of wool in door-yards, and glimpses of peasants weaving scrapes 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 excep' tional eagerness. MINES AND MINING, AT I'AQHUVA AND REOLA. 'Z^l XVIII. MINES AND MINING TRAITS, AT PACHUCA AND REGLA. I. We bonglit tickets for Pachnca at the Hotel Gillow, in Mexico. Pachnca, one of the earliest, and richest, of the mining districts in the country, notable for botli its earlier and later history, is, fortunately, also one of the most accessible to tlie traveller from the capital. We took the train, from Buena Yista Station, at six in the morning. At Ometusco, 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 exe- crable 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 coun- try was covered with magueys. The driver, by whom I sat, on the box-seat, for the better view of what was pass- ing, asked me, in a patronizing way, "Have the Norte Americanos also pulque? and do they se horrachan (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 sce- nery, historically, and from the point of view of its re- turns, Pachuca is rivalled among mining districts perhaps '228 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST FJIOVLXCES. only by Guanajuato; but tlic place itself is shabby, and, lying nine thousand feet above the sea, its atmosphere is raw and penetrating even in Jul}'. Regularly every after- noon blow up a breeze and a dust like those which have attained celebrity at San Francisco. Tiiere were said to be ten thousand miners at work in the district. Perhaps live hundred are British subjects, originally from the tin mines of Cornwall. They n)ani- fest in their new surroundings a rude independence of character amounting to surliness. 1 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 circum- stance 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 compar- atively modern period, while Real del Monte, adjoining, once more important, vStill remains a village. The Eng- lish 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 aban- doned and ruined in the disasters of the long struggle. • illNES AND MINING, AT PACUCHA AND REOLA. 229 The idea was seized upon with especial avidity in Eng- land. It was represented that but two simple things were needed: the pumping-out of the water which had ac- cumulated in the disused shafts, and improved machinery for working at lower levels, than those which liad been within the reach of the primitive appliances of the coun- try. Seven great English companies were formed, which proceeded to pour out millions upon millions of pounds, distributing the money among the several mining dis- tricts of chief repute ; and these half depopulated Corn- wall for laborers for the new interests. The idea was in itself a good one. Mexico had produced in three hnn- dred years of mining, according to the estimate of Hum- boldt, $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 tlie Revolution this source of w^ealth was exhausted and dried up. The new Congress of the country felt the imperative need of doing some- thing 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 'in- vestors did not sufficiently estimate the difficulties of their undertaking, the novelty of the country, language, per- sons, and processes, and the physical obstacles with which they had to deal. Almost without exception they lost 230 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. money. Tlie "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 be- came his heir. In 1762 Tei'eros 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 him- self a castellated palace, and rode out with a body-guard of fifty horsemen. A magnificent road was built to Reg- la, six leagues away. The only access thither, for the six hundred mules of the Count of Regla, had been by a dan- MINES AND MINING, AT FACIIUVA AND REdLA. 231 gerous bridle-path. Five large steam-engines and lesser machinery were dragged up from the coast at Yera 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 ap- pearing instead in new mines. After struggling hope- lessly 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, Seiior 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 can- dle, 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 gray- 232 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. isli discolocatioiis with a look of professional pride, but you do not exactly fall down in ecstasy over these. There are no folks 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 mal- acate, or skip, full of ore in bags of maguey fibre. In some of the old mines, at Guanajuato and San Luis Po- tosi, they tell us, peons still tote the ore np the intermi- nable ladders on their backs; but this, I think, must be rare. The depth of the Santa Gertrudis is about six hun- dred 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 ran- sacked 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 w'ith- di'awn 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 M-as moving in the c(Mii't-ynr(l made in accordance with his principle, which MIXES AND MINI NO, AT PACIIUCA AND REGLA. 233 substituted lai"ge 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 ar- rastra. The last is the most primitive, cheapest, and still most in use. The crushing is done b}^ 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 w^ater 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 to- gether. It is then brought in wheel-barrow loads to wash- ing-tanks, where men and boys puddle it bare-legged till the metal falls to tlie bottom and the detritus runs away. "Rebellious" ores are treated by first calcining, then sep- arating 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 sixtj'-seven mines in the dis- trict, seven are worked by the Ileal 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. romance; but it mnst be reinerabered 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 tlie mean time. The Mexicans themselves are good miners. It will not do to look on with arnused con- tempt even where very primitive processes are largely retained, for these are often better adapted to the pecul- iar 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 ap- pears 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 un- wary 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 imagi- nary equal parts, harras, and fractional parts of these are bought and sold as its stock. IV. As to the mining laws of the countrj^, I have heard them described by some Americans as better than our own. In certain respects tliis is true. The reprehensi- ble looseness with which our American " district recoi'd- ers" receive conflicting claims covering the same property many times over is unknown. An official goes to the MINES AND MINING, AT PACHUCA AND REG LA. 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 with- out being subject to the obligation of residence, as in re- spect 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 paj's for it. The legal theory is that the title to a mine is only that of "conditional possession," and in the nature of usu fruct, 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 pro- mulgated 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 ad- vantage, 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 23G OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. it is confirmed to liiiii whose case is best established. Abandoned and forfeited properties are "denounced" by a similar formality. Veins or mines may be de- nounced not only on common lands, but those of any ]>rivate individual, on paying for the surface occupied. In order, however, to obviate malicious or 'idle destruc- tion, 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 reduc- ing 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 inter- rupted, on any principal vein which is absolutely new. The ijerteiiencia 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 per- son, 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 Tri-bunal of Min- ing for New Spain, and gave it cognizance of all mining matters. It was composed of a President, Director-gen- eral, 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 ofiice "were, that one should have been engaged in practical mining for ten years, that he shonld be an American, or European Spaniard, free from all inferior blood, and that he should agree to "defend the niystery of the Immacu- late Conception of Our Lady." It would seem that offices were not always in as active MINES AND MINING, AT FACUCHA AND REG LA. 237 demand as in our days, for heavy fines are enacted for non-acceptance on election, besides being con)pelled to serve afterward. An honest and straightforward purpose appears in the rules of procedure quite worthy of imita- tion 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 Hoyal Ti'ibunals . . . to institute any action, they (the tribunals) shall not ad- mit 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 hun- dred dollars, petitions in writing will be admitted, pro- vided they be not drawn up, arranged, or signed by law- yers. ... 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 some- times misleading justice, it is seen, even so far back as this. There appears to have been a Consulado, or Tri- bunal of Commerce, upon pi-etty^ 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 ordi- nary civil courts and political authorities. 238 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 con- sisted of the Indians, apportioned to proprietors as repar- ta7nientos, 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 beneficlating hacienda of Regla, say eigh- teen 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. Senor 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 on- MmES AiVD MINING, AT PACHUCA AND REOLA. 239 ward, 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 wit-h 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 dis- mounted 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 togetlier along the road, and the country continued bold and generously wooded. At the abandoned Moran Mine, one of the Count of Regla's prin- cipal treasure-stores in its time, we found picturesque re- mains of walls and columns, Avith 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 th.e mouth of the gen- eral 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 M^ater. 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 OLD .]fL'.\7C0 AND HER LOST PROVINCES. snperiiitcfulcnt at Paclnica sometiiiics came there to pass a fortnight's vacation. The innnediate approach to Kegla is along tlie side of a deep tropical barranca. Bananas grow generonslj within it, and a palm-thatched Indian vilhige crowns its opposite verge. The liacienda itself is set down in a most impressive natural formation. It is encompassed hy grand colnmniated cliffs of basalt, like those of the Giant's Causeway. The columns are hexagonal in shape, Avitli an average diameter approaching three feet. At phices 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 fui'nishes 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 atti-active scene to be treated. Troops of horses were going round in the usual way in a great walled patio, making the tortas. Con- nected 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 enchant- er, for his own purposes. Mediaeval- looking towers, gateways, terraces, a chapel, and prison garnish it. Op- posite 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, Seiior MIXES AND MINING, AT PACHUCA AND REG LA. 241 Llandero. He dwelt in his talk upon the lack of ambi- tion among the Indian laborers. He said, among other tilings, that in the Tierra Caliente the women were better workers than the men. superintendent's house at RECiLA. 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. Ilegla 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 cas- cade was blood -red with soil torn out by the swollen 11 242 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVINCES. stream. The storm abated at first, but we encountered it in renewed furj 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 dan- gerous in this region, as naturally on open plains every- where, and crosses mark places where herdsmen have been stricken down among their flocks. One of these victims had been found recently, with his animals gath- ered 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 succes- sion we took shelter under the sheds of isolated ranchitos which we fell in with. We were joined here by an occa- sional 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 neighbor- hood. 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 pres- ently, 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- MINES AND MINING, AT PACHUCA AND REG LA. 243 PLOUGHMAN IN GKASS CLOAK. washed, and Lad 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST FROVINCES. It was now toward evening. The sunset glowed warm npon the little hatnlet of Acatlan, through which our road was seen winding below. In its midst lay a dismantled convent, with belfries still standing, which from a dis- tance 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. ,.JL. A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 245 XIX. A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. With a taste for coiintiy 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 approach- ing it you pass first through fields of maguey and blos- soming 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 facade of about six hundred feet. A belfry, with two tiers of bronze bells hung in arches, sets off tlie 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 cliapel. In a gable above the main entrance is inscribed this motto — which lias not, however, prevented the hacienda from being the scene of more than one sack by revolutionary forces : ^^ En aqueste destierro y soledad dlsfruto del tesoro de la jpaz " — " In this retirement and solitude I enjoy the treasure of peace." Immediately in front of the buildings is laid out, after 240 (ihl) MEXICO AND HER LOIST I'liOVlXCES. A WEEK AT A AfEXWAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 247 a usual custom, a substantially paved and enclosed area, seuiicircnlar at one end, used as a threshing-floor. Troops of running horses are driven around here upon the grain, like those in the jjatio process, only in a very much live- lier fashion. The long facade was made up in part of massive trojes, or granaries, comprised under the same roof as the house. Each f)'oJe has a special name of its ^wn 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 Nuestra Sejiora 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 count- ing those detached, covers perhaps from four to Ave acres. Mountiuir to the roof and lookiiioj over its ex- pause, 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 prem^ or artificial pond for irrigation, which stretches away like a lake. Beyond this rises a citarming grassy hill, called the Cerro. We climbed the Cerro, and lounged away more than one afternoon there in sketching, and contem- plating the beautiful level valley of Tulancingo, spread out below. The white hacienda with red roofs lay in front, re- flected 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 ba- 248 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. saltic 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 past- ure, 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 ha- cienda, 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 har- ness ; young horses and mules not yet put to work ; railch-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 espe- cially 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 impa- tient demonstrations while awaiting the conclusion of the process. A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 249 1^ mm' J 11* 250 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVINCES. I sat down one day with " Don Rafael," the administra- dor, or sahiried 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 great- est 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 7nagueyale8, or maguey fields, were of considerable extent. The making of the pulque from their product was confided to a special functionary called the tlachi- quero. 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 sev- eral 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, ujade of undressed sheepskin, like the wine-skins of Old Spain, on his back ; again, lie is accompanied by a donkey loaded with a number of these skins. lie transfers the sap to these bags, and returns with it to a department of THE TLACHIQCERO. A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 253 his own, called the Tinecal. There he pours it into shal- low vats of undressed skin, where it is allowed to ferment. Without describing the process farther in detail, in a fort- night it is ready for sale or for home consumption. 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 indus- try 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 disman- tled fountain in the centre. Offices and store-rooms occu- pied 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 im- ported 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 turn- ing 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. 25i OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVJXCES. II. We happened, among other aceotnraodations, in our ex- ploration of the corridors, upon a prison, described as for use in locking up the refractory peons when thej will not work. " Can you do that ? Have you, then, such an absolute power over them?" I asked our host, in some surprise. " Whj', no," he replied, in effect, deprecatinglj, " I sup- pose 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 wnth 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 Avretched 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. A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 255 The laborers on the pay-roll were of two classes : those employed by the week, and those employed by the year. Tlie 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 2^ iMstero^ who had charge of the pastures. The jpastero it was who in- dicated the condition of the various areas of pasturage, that tlie 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 ami- ble persons as need be wished for. One, " Don Daniel," supervised tlie 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. lie 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 con- tempt 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. " 1 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 pock- et what is a man good for? He might as well take him- self over to the cemetery yonder at once and have done with it." Don Angel was young, mild, tacitnrn, 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, bnt large, handsome, rosy, and had excellent teeth, with coal-black hair and beard. He was a model of ro- bust health and lively spirits. He too had a wife at Tn- lancingo, whom he visited every Sunday, returning before daylight on Monday morning, to be in time for the milk- ing. He was given to strumming on a guitar in the even- ing, and assembled around him in his room such conviv- ial spirits as the hacienda afforded. Nonsensical refrains like "Amarillo si, amarillo no, Amarillo y verde, me ho pinto," were heard proceeding from there long after more staid and decorous persons were in bed. A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 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 horse- back. Pie dressed, like Don Rafael, in a substantial suit of buff leather. He was a very garrulous and communi- cative person, and, as our attendant and guide — in which capacity he offered himself, I think, somewhat as an ex- cuse for escaping more onerous labors — he furnished us much useful information. His elders took a tone of rail- lery with him, rejjresenting 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 affect- ing 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 pad hien ditf'' he cried to ns, across the gen- erous 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 Hum- boldt 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 ob- jective points the various crops, a dam undergoing re- pairs, 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 wa- 258 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. ters, when it is desired, bj the primitive device of lift- ing up one cross-beam after anotlier from a narrow gate in the centre. In some of the maize-fields are look-out 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 dande- lion, but prettier. IV. The room first entered from the main corridor in the house itself was devoted to the uses of a despacho, or of- fice. 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 de- tail, 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 'f' 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 jpiece de resistance for his feast. " You are always wanting a gnajolote, you people. You don't need anything of the kind. However, let us say $1.50 — twelve reals — for the guajolote. What next?" A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 259 " The jpulque — about forty cuartillas of pulque.'''' " Twenty cuartillas of pulque,^'' says the master, ruth- lessly cutting down the estimate by half. "Well, what next? Speak up !" The jDeasant, one of the laborers by the year, perse- veres, in his humble, soft voice, regularly making his estimate for each article twice the real figure, and having it as regularlj' cut down. He caps the whole by demand- ing four reals for a sombrero, well knowing — and know- ing 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 christ- ening, 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 tene- ments and made a complaint of a neighbor with Avhom she had had a row, but got no great sympathy, and hardly seemed to expect any. They are admirably po- lite, 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 dlas, senores ! Como han pasado, ustedes, la 7ioche f Adios, senores .'" — " 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, inother, and two small children, and their Indian nurses. They were in the habit of spending but a small portion of the 260 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. year here, and, when they came, lived in quite informal style. Servants and employes, equally with her inti- mates, 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 trav- ersed 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, dim- ly-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 pro- ceeded to the lake at Zupitlan for a picnic. The provis- ions 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 cere- mony. 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 A WEEK AT A MEXICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 261 NURSE AND CHILDREN AT THE HACIENDA. the two principal bedrooms the bed is raised upon a dais, 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 ; tlie fourth is taken for a door. It so hap- pened that I had not read Madame de la Barca before leaving home. Perhaps I had but a rather disparaging 262 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 pat- tern, 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 thresh ing-fioor, 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. ON HORSEBACK AND MULEBACK TO ACAFULCO. 2G3 XX. ON HORSEBACK AND MULEBACK TO ACAFULCO. 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 feasihle things. It was now August, and the rainy season had begun in town itself. It began one afternoon with a .ush. I had been reading at the National Library, and, :^oming 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 sev- eral 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 im- agined. If this were to be added to the other embarrassments of life every afternoon, it was not interesting to think of 264 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. remaining longer at tlie capital. And jet, 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 huen cainino de pdjaros — 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 steam- er, 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 nov- ice on the score of danger to property and person in en- tering 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 ON HORSEBACK AND 3IULEBACK TO ACAPULCO. 2G5 the idea, and my decision was precipitated by the sud- den 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 pa- tron 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 tlie day occupied in going down by stage-coach to the provincial city of Cu- ernavaca, where the bridle-path begins. Considering all the circumstances as stated, there were many companions one would mucli 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 re- sult 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 govern- ment of Lerdo against Porfirio Diaz. To the party of the latter he was, however, now reconciled, and he was go- ing 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 bar- racks had been set apart, by the War Department, for this proceeding. Army duelling, as on the Continent, is con- nived 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 agree- able of travelling com})anions. He was much wrapped 12 266 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. up in his own affairs at first, and later displayed some traits of a certain cliildish 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-nigli 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 arrie- ros," 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 ap- pearance 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 ad- vance, 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. IIL My colonel was accompanied down to Cuemavaca in the dillgencia — in which we were all extremely jolted, ON HORSEBACK ANU MULEBACK TO ACAVULCO. 2G7 2G8 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. dnsty, and uiicomfoi'table together — by two generals. They had a})parently 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, wliile com- manding in Yucatan, he had ordered to be shot, on some of the oi'dinary revolutionary pretexts, a member of the powerful family of Gutierrez Estrada, a family with com- mercial 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, brouglit 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. Cu- ernavaca presents one of the most thrilling of these. What is yonder singular detail in the valley ? A haci- enda set in the open side of an extinct volcanic crater, of which the whole interior has been brought under smil- ing 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 Tehuantcpec, and an estate comprising twenty large towns and villages, and 23,000 vassals. Xowhere 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 ON HORSEBACK AND MULEBACK TO ACAPULCO. 209 porcelain tiles; and they are all clustered together, with tombs and a battleniented 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 gar- den 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. "lie had altos pesos,'''' replied the man, which is Span- ish for "a pile of money." Bushels of delicious man- goes 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 inde- fatigable 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 flour- ishes lower down. Behold us ready to set forth on the trail ! Vincente Lopez is not present, strange to say, to cast about ns the fostering care he has promised. On the contrary, he has quietly sold out liis contract and gone back to the Parque del Conde with his profits. We arc in the hands of a new muleteer, " Don Marcos," who has never made the journey to Acapulco before, and a fourteen-3'ear-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 coloqel, a tall, spare 270 OLD MEXICO AND IlER LOST PROVINCES. man, in military boots, wide liat with silver braid, and a linen blouse, through which project the handles of hnge revolvers. lie is aiming, not at display, but comfort. Of myself I shall say nothing. It is a privilege of the narra- tor to let it be supposed that he is always gallant and im- posing in appearance, and exactly adapted to the circum- stances of the case. I rode the rather large bay horse " Pajaro." Don Marcos, a deprecating, tricky person, ■with a purpose, soon evident, of making np 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, thougli 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 " Nina," and mine upon "Aceituna." Vin- cente, the boy, ran barefoot most of the way to Acapulco behind the mules, crying, ^'- Eh! machos P'' 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 out- side 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 re- mains of one ruined in the wars. At noon the mules were unpacked at some favorable point, and the expedi- tion 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 O.V HORSEBACK AND MULEBACK TO ACAPULCO. 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, w^erc arranged for us along-side, or in open piazzas. These, in the warm nights, were more agreeable than might be supposed. A la guerre wmme a la guerre! Sleeping almost under the Ijelle etoile, you could study' the constellations, the out- lines 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, lionest, and not much less comfortable in their circum- stances 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, wuth fried bananas as the most frequent vegeta- ble 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 jpar de hlanquillos, which can hardly be translated, but is as much as to say, "A pair of little white 'uns." lie declared it "a miserable popula- tion " 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 ani- mals. It was with the reserve I had retained, doled out 272 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. little by little, that this necessary purpose was thereafter accomplished, and the arriero perhaps kept from leaving us in tlie lurch. It was a 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 equa- nimity ?" "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 Pock. 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 reg- ular 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 insur- gent troop. Morelos operated here, with his bandit hand- ON HORSEBACK AND MULEBACK TO ACAPULCO. 2T3 kerchief round his head, and kept the district clear of Spaniards down to the sea at Acapulco. By one of tlie rivers still lies the massive stone- work for a bridge, the construction of which was abandoned in the War of In- dependence, 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 guar- antees — Religion, Union, and Independence — to the cap- ital, to make himself, for a brief season, Emperor, This brilliant figure, of such an ignominious end, is still great- ly honored in Mexico, and there is something rather typ- ical 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 insur- rection of his country, from its outbreak, in 180S, till 1820. Sent in command of an army against the rebel chief Guen-ero 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 con- temporary. 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 Eegent of the same date. 12* 274 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. In August he imprisoned some Deputies, and in October, still following his illustrious prototype, put his trouble- some 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. lie returned again in Julj^ of the next year — another Napoleon from Elba ; but, in- stead 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 main- tained (and there was not a little truth in this) that a peo- ple 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 act- ual fighting had been against it. Yet he is commemo- rated in the national anthem,* and a certain hold, in the Napoleonic way, which he had upon the popular imagina- tion, was relied upon by the French when they endeav- ored 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 awa3\ This was finally effected through the mediations of Secretary Sew- ard and Mr. John Bigelow, then Minister to France. * " Si a lo lid contra bueste enemiga Nos convoca la tronipa guerrera, De Iturbide la sacra baudera, Mexicanos valiontos, scguid !" CONVERSATIONS WITH A COLONEL. 275 XXI. CONVERSATIONS BY THE WAY WITH A COLONEL. I. Itukbide 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 exe- cution at the tragic Cerro de las Campanas. "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 pliysical fortitude which is es- teemed a part of the heritage of princes. But he was better fitted for many other things than the task of fast- ening 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 1 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 Portirio Diaz, during his presidency, who first broke it down and brought this invasion upon us." 276 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. " We, on the contrary, incline to make it one of his merits," I said — "a pi'oof of his superior enliglitennient. He stepped over the boundaries of narrow prejudice and jealousy, and allowed a beginning to be made of develop- ing the country by those who were ready to do it, with- out waiting farther fur 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 ar- rears, 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 pun- ished. When I see a case of that kind treated with se- verity 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 aggrandizetaent is not one of our national traits. Spoliation might rather be feared at the hands of some ambitious princo, 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 VONVERSATIOXS WITH A COLONEL. 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 ai'e 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 Sax- on race will do it. You are a strong, commercial people, and commerce is the bi'eath 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 Mex- ico!' 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? AVe 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 ratiier fan- tastic ? 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 Mex- ico, or Canada, without force, but in its own judgment of what was for the good of its people, should desire to be- come a part of the Union, maintaining its organization in 278 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. states and its local solf-governinent as now, and merely sending delegates to Washington to represent it in na- tional 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 ad- vantage, the object of a rational being? Is there any virtue in an essential Mexicanisni, Americanism, or An- glicism, that it should be preserved at all hazards? And, having asked many such-like questions, I endeav- ored, farther, to explain a view that we may be all ap- proaching 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 de- spised. " 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 opin- ion ; 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 tiian 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 hfive as many as they wished." •C0NVERSA7U0NS WITH A COLONEL. 279 The colonel was rather fond, as stated, of dwelling upon the soldier's point of view. One da}', 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 cha- grins. 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 liighly considered ; in return, he must be ready to spill his blood whenever his employer demands it." II. The display of childisli 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 tlie whole preferable to liis 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 cool- ness 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 rap- idly here, and from the estimates of casual informants I 280 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. liad miscalculated the distance. ^'- Adelantito, senor^'^ they said, after the inaccurate way of such informants — "Just a little way ahead ;" "J[c« hajito, no mas'''' — "Right down here ; 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 encom- passing its little valley. A small lake sparkled in its vi- cinity, and {)lantations 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 occa- sionally 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 dojjs, 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. 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 iiiquirj' than the house in which the Plan of Iguala is CONVERSATIONS WITH A COLONEL. 281 2S2 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. said to have been signed — the oldest, as it is one of the shabbiest, in the place. It is of one storj, like most pro- vincial Mexican houses, with the whitewash badly rubbed oif 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 colon- nades, made up of square pillars of masonry, supporting red-tiled roofs, extends around a central plaza. The win- dows of the better residences are closed, not with glass, but projecting wooden gratings of turned posts, painted green. Tlie 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 no- ble, 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. Sucli a park, such a church, and such a market could be conscientious- ly recommended as worth}^ of any populace in the world. The heads of palm-trees star the heavier, j^orthern-look- ing foliage. Grass sprouts plentifully between the cob- ble-stones, and gives a rural air, A band played in the zocalo in the evening, though there was but a small scat- tering of persons to hear it. As I was making a sketch of the zocalo from a portal some very well-dressed j'oung men and a professor came out. It proved that this house was a school, and a pleas- ant one it seemed. ^^Amigo^'' — friend — they said, in a rather patronizing tone, " what is your interest in this place? "What is 3'our picturing designed for?" Three days farther on is Chilpancingo, to which also complimentary terms— in a k\sser measure than Iguala — CONVERSATIONS WITH A COLONEL. 283 inaj be applied. It is the capital of this rugged Guerre- ro, 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 detach- ment of cavalry guarding the countr}', gotten up in such dapper civilian riding-dress as if for a promenade in Cen- tral 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 orig- inal Declaration of Independence of Mexico was pro- claimed, 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 Chilpan- cingo 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 moun- tains. 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 val- ley, smiling and fertile, with wagon-roads for a little space around; but their inhabitants can hardly be con- ceived as going over the wild trail to supply themselves with the fashions and comforts they possess. Candid judges from without would pronounce it im- passable, 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. slioiilders. The colonel had a way of dangling his niilitaiy 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 Cana- da.^ or gorge, of Cholitla, over a sandy bed of which the Hood had not yet taken possession ; another day, the Caiiada 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 trans- ported 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 CONVERSATIONS WITH A COLONEL. 285 town on tlie northern frontier, to wliicli it was driven. Eating and sleeping seem hardly to liave been the custom at all till, by an unremitting guerilla warfare, the tide M-as turned. When we came to "the Cajoncs," however, he admit- ted that this was a little like war. We slipped and slid all one day down the Cajones — natural, or rather mof^t 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 bot- tom ; 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 deluo;e were cominc: to overwhelm us. It was full, also, of patches of pale-green light upon jnoss-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 beck- oning Undine. Among vegetable growths on the way was the gum- copal, not unlike our white birch. There was a tree, the cuahnete — if I may trust the pronunciation of JMarcos — smooth, bronze-colored, ajid 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 amajye, found in the villages, and somewhat like the 2SG OLB MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVIXCES. chestnut, was tlie finest shade-tree. There was a notable absence throughout the journey of what we are accus- tomed to deem the essentially tropical features. Very often one might have been riding in the woods of Con- necticut. 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 gruits) 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 ]iis aim. The organ-cactus, however, should be exempted from the complaint of a Avant 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 tlie 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 conserva- tories, 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 Avhat 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 concludin MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. front is full of shipping. French and Russian and British frigates, and a Mexican gun-boat, are Ij'ing 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 thou- sand 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. 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 set- tlement 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 e^'es, 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 SAN FRANCISCO. 301 Palace Hotel, the Market Street shot-tower, and the homes of some of the great millionnaires who have made such a stir iti 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 prin- cipal building efforts in the country. "Nob" Hill is three hundred feet high, plebeian Telegraph Hill nearly as mucli, and Enssian Hill, to the west — the latest pre- cinct taken into favor for line 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 Croesuses get up to their habitations, which cut the sky-line so imposingly? We shall see. 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 south- ward 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 de- parture 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 be- 302 OLD MKXICO AXD HER LOST PROVINCES. longings seem all of a piece with our light-running ma- ' chinery, 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. IIow 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 lat- est 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 up- town in charge of friends come down to meet them. Others trudged stoutly on foot, with their effects depos- ited 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 trav- elling 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 Oak- SAX FRAXCISCO. 303 land, insnflScient depth of water; at Saucelito, where whalers, Russian and other, had been aecnstonied to reiit, Tarnalpais, 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 the greatest attain- able expedition. Such ships as these were, according to the accounts we have of tiiem ! The most antiquated and dangerous hulks were furbished up once more for this last voyage. The eager huinanity they carried took little heed of per- ils 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 ac- count of nautical difficulties, but partly because they had no return cai-goes, 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, rot- ted at their moorings, and to-day form " made ground." The remarkable city to which they came, M'hich had eight hundred and fifty souls in 1848, and twenty thou- sand in '49, has now, in an existence of thirty -four years, three hundred thousand. The buildings on the level made ground stand gener- ally on foundations of piling. The practice prevails, too, of tying them well together with iron rods, agaitist the jar of the occasional earthquake, which is among San Francisco's idiosyncrasies. It is proposed to improve the 304 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVINCES. water-front with a continuous, massive sea-wall, and a portion of this is already built. Extensive yards of at- tractive redwood lumber, which resembles cedar, and warehouses for givain, 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 lai'ge wholesale dry- goods houses similar to those in the greater Eastern cities. Montgomery Street shows stately office buildings, ex- changes, and hotels. Kearney Street has been hitherto the chief site of the more elegant retail trade. Its pres- tige is passing, however, to Market Street, a wide thor- ouo^hfai'e wliich recalls State Street, Chicao;o. Ilavina; unlimited room for extension in the north and south di- rection of the peninsula, wliereas the others named are contracted, Market Street is to be San Francisco's Broad- way of the future. The financial centre is contained in the area of two blocks, between California and Bush, Sansome and Mont- gomery Streets. Here are those institutions whose great transactions and singular history are unknown now to but few parts of the world. Tiie Nevada Bank, financial lever of the Bonanza kings, and point from which has been supposed to em- anate all the weightiest influences connected with raining 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 18G7, is a verj' ornate, town-liall-looking ■S'.-I.V FRAXCisro. 3(>7 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. The large and agreeably proportioned Stock Exchange, on Pine Street, is of gray granite, with numerous pol- ished columns. The board-i'oom within is an amphithe- atre, and a bronze railing protects the circle of seats. With its agreeable illumination and neat furniture, in- cluding 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 prohibitorj^ ; 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 move- ment 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. " Sier- ra Nevada " fell from $27,000,000 to $825,000. But the 308 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. greatest slirinkage of all was in " California." This un- happy 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 re- main. The stock-gambling mania possessed the commu- nity without distinction of station, and hardly of age or sex, and when the bnl)ble 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 un- ornamental, were obtained at expense quite out of pro- portion. The stone for the old City Hall was brought expressly from Australia ; that of the Wells-Fargo build- ing, 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 Zea- land, where a cannibal population was lately eating mis- sionaries, 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 Shangliai 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 Corastock Exchange," and "The New Idea" — to which the hastening: business men SAJV FRANCISCO. 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 un- der 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. I,ONK MOUNTAIN. 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 OLD MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVINCES. a place where the timid seek refn2;e when entangled in the throng of vehicles. Market Street extends to the Oakland Ferry one way, and past the Mechanics' Insti- tute and pleasnre 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 res- taurants, 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 Mont- gomery terminates but a few steps below. The Palace Hotel, vast, drab-colored, of iron and stuc- coed brick, looms up nine stories in height on Maiket 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 communi- ties, 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 SAN FRANCISCO. 311 to coinplain 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 pict- ures 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 gradu- ated 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 unexceptionai)le refinement. Its most bizarre side, too, is certainly approved of in Europe, where its magnates en- tertain kings and give their daughters in marriage to lofty titles. The European traveller who visits " the land of Bar- num " 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 ele- ments, 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 diamoTids, 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 ineans, 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 OLD MEXICO AND llER LOST I'liOVINCES. 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 anuiteurs in these branches in its membership — and entertains and welcomes distinguished strangers. A monthly entertain- ment 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 fantas- tic 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 cer- tain things which make San Francisco cosmopolitan be- yond its actual size. An entirely new commercial situa- tion 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 sepa- IIKill jinks" OV TIIK nOllKMIW CI.UI! AMONfi THK BIG TREKS. SAiY FRANCISCO. 315 rated by water, and demanding each other's productions, cities arise at the places of transfer, and jjroportioiied to its volume ; and for all this San Francisco has one of the most remarkable of situations. The Oriental trade is but a small item in the total. It has ships, besides those bound for the Eastern and Euro- pean ports, going out to the British and Russian posses- sions in the North, Mexico, Central and South Amer- ica, 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 desira- ble quality, it must be confessed — which come from the coast once characterized by the poet in the line — "The wolfs long howl on Oonalaska's shore." 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 Australa- sia, and our coming relations with it, that awaken admir- ing 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 flour- ishing 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 ''jump- 316 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. in<^-ofI place," tlic final verge of the latest of the conti- nents. 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 Kocks, 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 mj^s- tery, tarnished the blue of distant mountains with his feet, he may begin to think of another world." Yery 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 iden- tical, 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 safe t}''- 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 at- tained, weaker types dying out in front to make room, till it shall become in its march a dazzling army of light? SAN FRANCISCO. 319 Is a millennium, perchance, to be reached in this cumu- lative way, as the power of a magnet is increased by the number of turns of the helix ?" "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 lauds 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 un- stinted 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 hy- draulic 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. I liavG seen a poor saloon called the "Auction Lunch," on Washington Street, near the Post-ofKce, 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 per- sons 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 Com- stock 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. lie 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 Bill}' 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 quies- cent air now, it has hardly ever done anj'thing like any other place. It began with the wild Argonauts of '49, whom Bret Ilarte 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 3'ear 1856, by a vig- ilance committee, which rid it of eight hundred evil-doers of one sort and another, the worst by summary execution, the rest by banishment. SAJ^ FRANCISCO. 321 The polities of tlic State before tlie war were Demo- cratic, witli a rather strong Southern bias. There was a long feud between the two great Senatorial paladins, Broderick and Gvvin, 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 deliv- erance 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, wdiile 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 dis- appointment 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 institu- tions which were somehow to blame. Upon this basis a singular new party, wild and half-communistic in charac- ter, 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 con- stitution, which was thought to be a ])relude to universal confiscation, and capitalists fled before it in alarm. And, finally, this remarkal)le city, having become the 14-x- 322 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. recipient of a Chinese immigration wliieli has given to a part of it the aspect of a portion of the Flowerj Kingdom, has been agitated by fears of complete subversion under Orientalism, and has originated new problems for politi- cal 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 con- ducted 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 enter- tain 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 lit- tle that is dangerous, but so much in a high degree com- mendable. It does not harm property. Frightened cap- ital may return with entire safety. I profess myself so far a person of incendiary opinions as to hold that an SAN FRANCISCO. 323 lionest directness of purpose in tin's new constitution, its effort to simplify legislation and sweep away embarrass- ments, often maintained much more in the interest of leg- islator 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 less- er rank. Agriculture and manufactures come eveiy 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 Fran- cisco is the entrepot. 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. 324 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. XXIII. SAN FRANCISCO {Continued). I. Kearney Street (shaving its distinction now with Market Street) is, in sunshiny weather, the promenade of all tlie leisurely and well-dressed. It abounds in jew- ellers, who often combine tlie 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 Cliinese and Japanese goods, though this is not the reg- ular quarter, and "AssiamuU'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 Kus- sian princes — on their way round the world, are not more numerous than in New York, but they seem more nu- merous 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 por- SAN FRANCISCO. 325 tion of town you have to begin a back-breaking climb. The ascent is like going np-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 tramwa}^, useful also on a level, but in- vented 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 com- ment 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 pusliee, 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 tlie hill. The fore- most 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; wlien 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 resi- dences of the cit}'-, are of wood. It seems a pity, consid- ering the money spent, tliat this should be so. It is 82() OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 rea- son, the San Francisco Crcesuses have reared for them- selves 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 chateau, car- ried out also in wood — may be excepted from tliis descrip- tion. The basement stories, however, are of stone, and there is enough work in tiiese 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, ter- races, and staircases is extraordinary. The merest wood- en cottage is often prefaced by works which outweigh its own importance a dozen to one. When a peerage is drawn np 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 cir- cumstances. 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 tun- nels or vine-covered arbors within these ; or zio^zag from landing to landing of long, wooden stairways, without. Odd little terrace streets and " places," as Charles Place, with bits of gardens, are found sandwiclied between tlie SAN FRANCISCO. 327 regular formation. A wide thoroughfare, Second Street — cut throuirh liincon Hill, the Nob Hill of a former day, to afford access to water for vehicles — has been the oc- casion 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. fA / HIGH-GRADE EESIDENCKS. 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 tlie Cable road you hang in the air above the body of the city, and above the harbor and its envi- ronment. 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 Ciiinese Consulate-general, flies, a bright bit of color in the foreground. The bay, far below the eye, has an opaque look. On some i-are days it is very blue in color, but oftener it is of slate or greenish gray. Pass- ing 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 momentari- ly 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 devas- t.iting fire in the woods of Mount Tamalpais. Its dark SAN^ FRANCISCO. 329 smoke rendered the sunsets lurid and ominous, and at nigiit tiie burning mountain, reflected in the bay, was a more terrible Vesuvius or Ileela. II. One is hardly supposed to "travel" as yet in America as in Europe. We make our journeys here for definite objects, ciiiefly 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 atten- tion 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 Po- trero, 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 nutnerons, 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 cheap- ness. A considerable Mexican and Spanish contingent mingles also wnth the Italians, along Upper Dupont, Yallejo, and Green Streets. Shops with such titles as 330 OLD MEXICO A XI) HER LOST PROVIXCES. Jji Sorirrcsa ;uilace with a romantic Spanisli name — a place to which you are recom- mended to come in search of the elixir of life. And so have the small picket-fences an x\merican 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-boai'ds, 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 pub- lic green, but the trees are yet too small and low. It is a clean, prosperous city, the centre of a rich agri- cultural 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 througiiout 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 hun- dred feet, to contain an electric light and illuminate the town. The white Court-house, in the chissic style, though not large, is agreeably proportioned, and quite a model of its kind. The week's doings at the Fair Grounds resolved them- 850 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST rUOVINCES. selves chiefly into trotting-matclies. 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. Anotiier popular feature of these county fairs was "firemen's tournaments," in which differeut 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 sus- picion 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 de- parture 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 cor- responding 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 ex- tends. There remains at Santa Clara the chapel of the mission, with its adobe walls, five feet thick, and flat THE VILLAS OF THE BONANZA KINGS. 351 wooden ceiling, rudely painted. It is now a part of a jflourishing 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 moder- ate showing for their age, and can hardly be rated equal to New ILiven elms, for instance. Behind them, along both sides of the road, are houses of a hourgeois comfort, as in the town. There are said to be residents of wealth and leisure who have been attracted here to pass the re- mainder 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 su- perior 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 m 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 willinglj' 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 con- tentment does not ini})]y taste in architecture and land- scape gardening. III. One had expected a good deal of novelty and pic- turesqueness from these towns, of romantic " San " and "Santa," and "Los" and "Del," and feels rather ag- 352 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. grieved not to get so much of it. Its absence is explained in part by the fact that there were rarely original settle- ments corresponding to the present names. These are taken rather from ranches, springs, or mines in the neigh- borhood. On the arrival of the Americans in Califoi'nia there were but tliirteen thousand Spanish, or Mexicans, all told, while the territory was as large as New York, Pennsylvania, and the six New England States put to- gether. 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 Jose, and in the country at large, resulting from a second visit a month later, were more agreeable. Something like the pi'oper point of view had then been attained. The face of natui'e 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, Avith long, graj' Spanish moss depending from them. If there are no wild flowers, thei'e are plenty of the cultivated sort, with lawns kept green by fountains and hose. AVhere there is watei', the winter, or brown season, need never extend. As a rule, long stretches of wliite 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 sump, it is ti'ue, but a reduction THE VILLAS OF THE BONANZA KINGS. 353 slionld 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 ob- tained for the money than an equal expenditui'e 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 «es of eucalyptus^ pine, tamarind, with its black, dry pods; the pepper-tree, with its scarlet berries; large clunjps of the najxil cactus^ and an occasional maguey, or century-plant. All is glowing now with the tints of autumn. Poplar and cotton wood are yellow. The peach and almond, the liavvton black- berry, 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 clus- ters, all growing from the top. They quaintly suggest the uncouth little men of llendrik 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 precau- tions. 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. Three to four tons of grapes to the acre are counted THE VINTAGE ^EAiiOX, AXD MONTEREY. 363 A BKANDY CKI.LAR, SAN JOSK. 364 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVIXCES. upon ; wliile farther south, where irrigation is used, they expect from eight to twelve. l>ut it is claimed, in the standing controversy on the subject, that the irrigated grapes are watery, wliile those of lesser yield excel them in quality. The best results, we were told, ai-e got fi-om such vines as the Mataro, Carignane, and Grenache, im- ]»orted cuttings from the French slope of the Pyrenees. There Avere at Le Franc's not less tiian sixty varieties, under probation, numy of which will, no duuijt, 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 Sumething suited to our peculiar conditions. II. I left San Jose 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 tnine 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 al)ove, and a superintendent's house sui-rounded by flowers •hangs upon the hill-side. A weii'd-looking flume conveys the sulphurous acid from the calcining furnaces to a hill- top, upon which every trace of vegetation has be^n blasted, by its poisonous exhahitions. Then I made a little tour by rail southward through the iminense " Murphy " and "Miller and Lux " ranches, comprising a grain country as flat as a floor. We turned west through the fei'tile little Pajaro Vsd- ley, the emporium of which for produce, and flue red- M'ood lumber, cut in great quantities on the adjoining Santa Cruz Mountains, is the thi-iving town of Watson- 'niK VINTAGE .SEASOy, AXD MOXTEIiEY. ;^G5 ville. We ran along a rugged coast, past wooded gorges and wliite sea-side cottages, at Aptos and Soqnel, to the nmch-freqnented resort of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz lias bold variations of level, the usual commonplace buildings, a noble di'ive alono: cliffs eaten into a hundred fantastic A BIT OF OLD MONTERET. shapes i)y 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-an- ticipated Monterey. Here at last was something to commend from the point of view of the picturesque without reservation. Mont- erey has a population which still, in considerable part, speaks Spanish only. It retains the impress of the Span- ish domination, and little else. When you are told in 3'our own country that somebody does not speak English, you naturally infer that it is brokenly, or only a little. 300 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. But at Monterey it means absolutely not a word. There are Spanish si<>;ns on the shops, and even Spanish adver- tisements, as, for instance, the Wheeler cfc Wilson Maqui- nas d Cosei\ on the fences. Mj Mexican experience was a liberal education for Monterey, and I made the most of it. I was taken to call upon an ancient senorita^ in whose history there was some romance. '■''Las rosas son tnny 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. iShe 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 senorita is far too gentle for that. There is, perhaps, no reason beyond a general mental inertness by virtue of which the Mexican survivors have snffered all their other interests as well as this to go by the board. The senorita is a little, thin old lady of ^iiy. Her ro- mance was with an American officer, it is said, thii'ty years ago, and she has never since married, but has with- ered, 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. THE VINTAGE SEASON, AND MONTEREY. 367 At frequent inter\alb is encountered too some cibaniloned LOOKOUT STATION'. oUl adobc barracks, or gov^ernment lionse, or military prison of historic fame, witli its whitewasli gone, lioles in its walls, and bits of broken grating and balcony hanging aimlessly on, wait- ing 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. Adobc is bricks made of about twice the usual size, and dried in the sun instead of beino^ baked. Walls are made of Ll> MEXICO AXI) UKR LOST PROVIXVES. iioss, ill order that, thongli outside and inside crumble ••(T, there may be a good deal left. Like a number of other thinji^s, it stands very well while not assailed; and in this climate it is rarely assailed by violent extremes of tem- peiatni'c. The typical adobe house of tlie best class is stuccoed and whitewashed. It is lari^e on the ground, two stories in height, and has verandas. Again, it is of but one story, with an intei-ior court-yard. It has green doors and shut- ters, and green, turned posts, in what we now call the "Queen Aiine style," and it is comfortable and home- like to look at. One of tiiem 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 or- der to reap the greater prosperity which was thought to be waiting upon Monterey. Two old iion giius stand planted as posts at the corners of the dwelling. In front of others are some walks neatly niade of the verterbrse of whales, taken by the Monterey Whaling Company. The com- pany is a band of hardy, weather-beaten men, chief! 3' Por- tuguese, of the Azores, who have a lookout station on the hill by tlie 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 fa- ther, Junipero Serra, came here from Mexico in the year 1770. It was next a Mexican capital under eleven suc- cessive 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 THE VIXTAGE SEASON, AND MONTEREY. 809 370 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. plenty, I liavc heard tell, that store -keepers hardly stopped to count it, but threw it under the counter in bushel fills. 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 Ivylfhiiuser 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 tiie 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 condi- tions of the old caj)ital are most likely to tell. The sum- mer 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 whicli 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, arti- ficially warmed, instead of in the sea itself. THE VLXTAGE ISEASOX, AND MOXTEREY. 373 CLIFKS AND FOREST AT MONTEREY. In otlier respects the place seems nearly as desirable at otic time of the year as another. The quaint town is always there; and the wild rocks, with their i^ossiping gulls and pelicans; and the drives through the extensive forests. There ai'e varieties of pine and cypress — the latter like the Italian stone-pine— peculiar to Monterey. 374 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST rUUVhWES. The more venerable trees, hoary with age and hanging moss, are contorted into all the fantastic shapes of Dore's " Inferno." They grow by preference on the most savage points of rock, and the wild breakers toss handfals of spray up to them high in the air, in amity and greeting. Along the beach on this far-away point of the Pacific Ocean we find a Chinese fishir)g settlement. Veritable Celestials, without a word of English among them, have pasted the usual crimson papers of hieroglyphics on shan- ty residences. They burn tapers before their gods on the rocks, 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 delight- fully 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 fa- thers 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. The Mexican traditions in design and proportion ac- companied 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 win- dow in the front has very irregular points. The interior does not yield, as a picture of sentimental ruin, to Muck- ross Abbey or any broken temple of the Koman Cam- pagna. The roof, open now to the sky, with grasses and THE VINTAGE SEASON, AND MONTEREY. 375 37<') <)[.[> MEXICO AXD HER LOST PROVIXCES. wild tiinstanl growiii*^ from its crevices, was of stone arches, supplemented witii timber-work tied with raw- liides. The vvhole body of the church — pilasters, capi- tals, frieze, and all — is set on a curve springing from the floor — a peculiarity I have never seen elsewhere. SAN CAKLOs'ti-DAY AT THE OLD MISSION. There ai'e grasses growing witliiii, stnilptni'cd 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. THE VINTAGE SEASON, AND MONTEREY. 379 Once a year, on St. Charlcs\s-daj, in early Noveni])er, a nienioi'ial service is held, attended by all the shabby Spanish -Indian life reinaiiiiiig in the country round about. The place is nnique. It seems even more lone- ly 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 wavini:: in the wind of the lonj"- o-nisses on its walls and listen to the plash of the sea on the shore, but a few steps distant. 380 OLD MEXICO AM) IIKU LOST rROVhWEiS. XXVI. A WONDROUS VALLEY, AND A DESERT THAT BLOSSOMS LAKE THE ROSE. The Yoseniite, cuiTcntlj spokoii of ms the "Valley," is comprised in the belt formed \>y drawinii' lines across the State from San Francisco and Monterey I'espectivelj. 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 ])roper enough that our eaithly Pai'adise of Southern California should have such a region of enchantment also adjoining it. I reached it by stage-ride of sixty miles, fi'om the South- ern Pacific Hailroad, at Madera, to Clai-k's Station, and thence by stage and horseback of twenty-five miles to the Vallej'. The autumn days were lovely there. The foli- age, turned by a local climate quite as severe as that of New England, glowed with a vivid richness. The Mer- ced River, a gentle stream, pursuing a devious way in the bottoin, 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- A WONDROUS VALLEY. 381 eiglitli of a mile in width. It is rather a chasm than a valle}'. At night the radiance of a full j'ellow moon in- vested all its wonders with an added enchantment. The cliffs are exactly what we think cliffs onght to be, but what they seldom are. The}' are of the hardest granite, pleasantly gray in color, and terminate in castle and dome like forms. Tlie precipices are sheer and unbroken to the base, with almost none of those slopes of debris that de- ti-act from precipices in general. It is a little valley suit- able, without a hair's-breadth alteration, to the purposes of any giant, enchanter, or yellow dwarf of them all. It is such scenery as Dore has imagined for the "Idyls of the King." One lialf feels himself a Sir Lancelot or Sir Gawain, I'iding along this lovely and majestic mountain trail; and as if he should wear chain-armor, a winged hel- met, and a sword upon which he had sworn to do deeds of redoubtable valor. It was the coast vallej's and some coast towns that we took on GUI' 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 aloiiir the c^reat central vallev known as the San Joa- quin, on a line nearly midway between the Sierra Neva- das 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, bnt pursued a direct course through a country where all had to be opened up. As some of tlie 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 ti'aveller through Southern California. Some of the neglected places even maintain that they would have been lietlcr without anv raih^ad at all. Rcf- 3S2 OLD MEXICO AND llEJl LOST LT.OVIXCES. erences are tlirown 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 ordinar}^ observer it would appear that the introduc- tion of a splendidly eqnijiped 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 every- thing remote as well as near. For the first time an ade- quate means has been afforded for the transport of im- migrants and supplies through the whole length of the State. The Southern Pacific Kail way has completed connec- tions 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. Tlie fares to California heretofore have been almost prohibi- tive, 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 settle- ment. The Chinese are certainly not rivals in the mat- ter 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 inter- est in white immigration. A committee of some of the most prominent persons in the State has opened an in- quiry 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 set- A WONDROUS VALLEY. 3S3 tiers, whetlier offei'od by the government, the railroads, or the great ranches, its advantages and the methods of reaching it. It 8een)s 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 advan- tages of which so much has been said. It can only be un- derstood bj taking into account the unusual atmospheric dryness, and the important part played by water, which has to be brought upon the soil by costly conti'ivances. The locations where there is sufficient natural moisture for the maturing of crops are of small extent. They were among the iirst taken up. In much of the central and southern portions of the State the annual i-uin-fall is almost infinitesimal in quantity. At Bakersville, the capital of Kei'u County — whither our joui'ney presently leads us — it is no more than from two to four inches. Light cro]>8 of grain and pastui'age for stock may occa- sionallj' 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 counti-y, valueless except as watered from these sources. These tributary tracts are used chiefly as cattle and sheep ranges. A per- son 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 sin- gle ownership is a tradition from the Spanish and Mexi- can times. It has been much decried, as a great evil, and it is said tliat the State wt.)uld be uiiifh uinre i>rtisper«)us ;38J: OLD MEXICO AM) llEll LOST PROVLXCES. ill 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, di'ainage, and tree-planting, on an effectual scale. Perhaps the State will have to lend its assistance, and establish a public system of irrigation and di'aitiage, before the land can be fully prepared for the small settler. Water! water! water! How to slake the thirst of this parched, bi'own country, aiid 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 eady November that we begin to traverse the long San Joaquin Valley from Lathrop Junction, just be- low Stockton, southward. The side tracks of the railroa(i 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 ranch- es. A man will plough but a single furrow a day on his farm, but this may be twenty miles long. There is suffi- cient rain-fall for the cereals, but not for the more exact- ing crops. The land gives but few bushels to the acre under the easy system of farming, Init it must be remem- ijered that thei'e are a great many acres. The stubble of the grain-fields is whitened with wild-fowl. At a way- station a snuill rustic in an immense pair of boots goes over to a ])()()1 and hlazcs away with a shot-gun. Prcs- A WONDROUS VALLEY. 385 cntly he returns, dragging by tlie necks an innnense pair of wild-geese, almost beyond bis 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 tlie mild, dry climate of California. The prosperous ranches have, in consequence, a some- what thin, unfurnished appearance compared with East- ern 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 im- mense 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, stretch- es 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, es- sentially American work as a parody of the broken aque- ducts 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 17 386 OLU MEXICO AXJJ HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 particu- larly desolate tract, know'n, up to a very recent period, as the San Joaquin Desert. One should alight here. There is no better place for examining the marvellous capabili- ties 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, Tem- perance Colony, Washington Colony, and others of simi- lar names clustered around Fresno. It is advertised as one of those genial places, alluring to the imagination of most of lis, 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 cultiva- tion 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 3'ears. It is set down on the east side of the railroad highway, with a thin scat- tering of foliage slightly veiling the formality of its lines. It consists of a few sti-eets of two-story wooden and brick buildings. The streets cross one another at nght 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 A WOXDROUS VALI.hJY. 387 couRT-norsE at fuks.no. in pattern, so that it is botli typical of its kind and evi- dence 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST rROVlNCES. the desert as bathiiig-bonses on a beach. This is the Chi- nese quarter. It tells at a glance the story of the pecu- liar people who tenant it: the social ostracism on the one liand, 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 pene- trated it, in seai'ch of labor and opportunities. Every settlement of the Pacific slope has its Chinese quarter, as mediaeval 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 Ori- ental 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, distinguish- ing 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 AVa 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 salH, rice-brand}^, dried fish, goose livers, gold and silver jewelry, and pack- ets 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 A WONDROUS VALLEY. 389 brown-paper books, with a bi-iish for a pen. Women — much more numerous in ])roportion 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 nat- ural awkwardness of their short and ungainly figures. Up-stairs, in unpaiuted, 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. Pas- tilles burn before the idols, and crimson banners are draped about ; and there are usually a few pieces of an- tique 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 tliick with tobacco-smoke of the pecu- liar Chinese odor. Games of dominoes are played with magpie-like chatter by excited groups around long, wood- en 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, perliaps 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 tlie better class, track-layers and section hands on the railroad, and laborers in the factories and fields. What Southern California, or California gener- ally, 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 300 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST I'ROVLNCES. tliein with whicli lie may have started. Let ns hoj>e tliat laborers of the better class, by whom they are to be suc- ceeded, 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, begin- nino; within a mile or two of the town. The intervenino- 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, fhe jack-rabbits with kanga- roo-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 to- gether 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 un- A WONDROUS VALLEY. 391 dei'stood. The face of nature in all this district was a l)lank sheet of paper. The cultivator had absolutely everything to do. He discovered on trial that he had a soil of I'einarkable capacit}', 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 tl>€ 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 dra\7 a crop from cast-iron. The vegetation of Southern California is thoroughly arti- ficial. It consists of a series of scattered plantations cre- ated 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, onl}^ a small be- ginning 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 tin^e goes on, and canals and vegetation increase, no doubt important climatic changes may be looked for. In the end Southern Cal- ifornia may be as diffei'ent from wliat 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST mOVINCES. 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 esta])lishments for the drying of fruits and converting the munificent crops of grapes into wine. Many of the homes are as yet but modest wooden cot- tages. 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 Sj;ock Board, who has gone into the cultivation of grapes here on a large scale. It is a hand- some villa that would do credit to any town. The im- provements 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 irrigat- ing 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 otlier 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. 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 7now. He pronounces this hat " heap good " if com- plimented upon it. He prunes the vines or collects the generous clusters of grapes; or else he digs a vegetable A WONDROUS VALLEY. 393 394 OLD MEXICO AND II Eli LOST PROVINCES. garden by the side of a canal, in which himself, Ins vege- tables, 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 consid- erable distance, oleanders in flower are seen spaced be- tween 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 irrigat- ing canals of Northern Italy and drop their yellow leaves upon them in autumn like these. It might bp 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, how- ever, 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 com- bined 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 fa- cilities by an irrigation company, put upon the market at the disposal of whoever would buy. Ko doubt a certain general consistency rules them in keeping with the names respectively set up, but it is not rigorous. Probably noth- ing need prevent a native American from joining the Scandinavian Colony, or a Scandinavian the American Colony, should he desire to do so. A WONDROUS VALLEY. 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 perliaps 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 tlie 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 An- geles, 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 ex- traordinary 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 l)earino;'. It is estimated that an acre of 396 OLD MEXICO AND II ER LOST PROVINCES. 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 interest- ing. They have generally had some previous hard expe- rience 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 w^ere 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, how^ever, 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 contrib- uted 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 it- self. I had the pleasnre of making the acquaintance of the resident manager of the experiment. Her experi- ences, written out, would, I think, be interesting and in- structive. There was an open piano in the pleasant cot- A WONDROUS VALLEY. 397 tage interior, and lute books and magazines were scattered about. It was a bit of I'etined civilization dropped down in the midst of the desert. This ladj had come, she said, for rest. She took pleas- ure, too, in the country, and in seeing things grow. Siie liad made mistakes in her management at first, mainly through trusting too much to otliers, but now had things in good control. Four farm-hands — Chinamen — were employed. The eighty acres were distributed into vine- yard, orchard, and alfalfa, about one-half devoted to the vineyard. Its product Avas turned, not into wine, but rai- sins. 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 Egyp- tian 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 Josei)h and his brethren, and the })icture-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 tra3'S 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 dis- cern through the young and scattering plantations the bareness beyond, but in another ten years the scene can 398 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. liardly 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. VISAIJA, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 399 I XXVII. VISALIA, BAKERSFIELD, AND LIFE ON A SPACIOUS RANCH. ViSALiA, capital of Tulare County, thirty -four miles soutli of Fresno, is one of the older towns left aside by the railroad. 1 put it in the most obvious way, but a patriotic Visalian, on the other hand, said to me with warmth, "Left by tlie railroad ! Visalia left by the rail- road ! 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 twentj'-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 pei'son, 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 unsurvoyed, and not legally open 400 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. FIRST UriLDlNG IN VISAHA. to pre-emption. This irregularity was not discov- ered till years later, when the town had grown up on the site. It was brought to light by an em- ploj'e of the land- otiice, who there- upon ingeniously undertook to pre- empt the ground for himself. " And what came of this bold attempt upon vested in- terests ?" " The party was promptly fired out of town," was the reply. Yisalia is rather prolific in stories, if an "old-timer" of the right sort can be stirred 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 VIS A LI A, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 401 it all as liis OM'n, and obtained in this way snch consider- ation in her eyes — as a person exceptionally well-to-do in the world — that she advised her danghter to "set her cap" at him, and all was happily accomplished before the 7nise 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 tlie general acquaintance, by soft-soaping the log serving as approach to her cabin across a small stream. Having thus arranged, he sat calmly enjoy- ing the fair one's society, and lis- tening with ap- preciative ear to the splash of the successive victims as they slid off iM© the water. /'Stories are told of Spanish ban- dits and treasure of precious met- als in the mount- ains, and of the wild administra- tion of justice in early times, when offenders wei-e occasionally exe- cuted first and sentenced after- ward. AN OLD-TIMER. 402 OLD MEXICO AXI) HER LOST rilOVIXCES. Tlie 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, lie scattered these documents far and wide behind him, even to the confines of Utah and Arizona. At Visalia I first observed " Spanishtown," a commu- nity which begins to appear regularly alongside of "China- town" 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 tiie high Sierras, now powdered with the first snows of winter, are had. The surface is inore 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 stretch- I VISALIA, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 403 - , -=-»*^ •4*- ^ LOGGING, BACK OF VISALIA. 404 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. ing as rivers of gray or silvcrj sand through the general yellow of the desert. Though irrigation be yet in its infancy its belongings have attained great dimensions. Tiiere are three hun- dred miles of canals of the requisite size in Tulare County, and more than three thousand miles in Califor- nia all together. One main canal, that of the San Joa- quin 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 bus- tling, 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 situa- tion. 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. Offi- cers of the law, acting for new claimants, attempted to take possession of the land under a railroad title. Le- gally in the wrong, though perhaps morally in the right, the settlers organized to resist, put out stirring manifes- toes, which read like the declarations of oppressed people struggling for their liberty, and called on gods and men VIS ALIA, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 405 to witness the justice of their cause. In the fight that ensued tive settlers lost their lives, all at the hands of a single man — one Crowe, a United States marshal, who displaj'ed a prowess and coolness under fire never sur- passed in any of the narratives of sensational literature. Crowe himself was despatched. A number of the sur- vivors 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 tim^e 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 posi- tion 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 import- ant 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVIXCES. a dangerous breed of wild hogs, descended from vagrant deserters from the ranches. In such fragmentary glimpses as are had between and over the tulos 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 multitndi- nons chatter has a kind of metallic clang in it. Now white, now dark, as they are before or against the sun- light, 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 diver- sion of the surplus waters of the Kern River for the redemption of desert lands. This gave rise to a contro- versy, lately settled by a legal decision which is a step in the crystallization into shape of a system of water juris- diction for California. The great firm of real-estate men and ranchmen, Miller & Lux, owned the lands below ; the almost equally great firm of Ilaggin, 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 infi-inge- ment of their riparian rights. Riparian right, it will be remembered, in the English common laM^, gives to the resident on a stream the right to have it flow as it was wont through his grounds without diminution or altera- tion. 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 Ilaggin, Carr & Tevis were mustered in opposition to them, with orders to lasso and throw into the canal any- body who should interfere with the sluices. This deter- VIS A LI A, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 407 mined show of resistance prevented a conflict, and tlie 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 u um- ber is consulted. The point had been raised before in cop.troversies about the diversion of water for mining purposes. In these cases the ruling was, that the doc- trine 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 lield 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 re- spect, 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 hoi'ses, caparisoned in the Spanish style, tied to hitching-posts and awaiting their owners before the stores and taverns. The sheep-herd- ers, a lonely race, become morose and melancholy in their long wandei'ings with their flocks apart from the habita- tions of men and human speech. They are far removed from the shepherds of Boucher and Watteau. Some are I 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 fannly are found who, after trying their fortunes in Australia, India, and elsewhere, are eating the husks of repentance here in true Script- ural fashion. 408 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVLNCES. Tlio shops in Bakersfield, as throngliout 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 re- flected 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 Joses 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 Eng- lish, and have come from Australia, dropping their "li's" all along the way, no doubt, as liberally as here. They are like tj^pes 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 bellig- erent 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 fashiona- ble 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. VIS ALIA, BAKEBSFIELD, ETC. 409 410 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Mine, however, tlirongli un especial likiii"; slie affects to have taken to nie, and the dnhiess of trade, slie 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, liave at Bakersiield 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 hon mots of Lincoln. "I congratulate you," said our martyred President. " You have become monarch of about all you have sur- veyed." The oM'ners 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 w^ith its resident superintendent. The "Bellevue Eanch" 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 consid- erable settlement. There is a " store " of jrcneral mcr- VISA LI A, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 411 412 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. cliandisc unci supjilies. A donnitorj and a dining-hall have been erected for tlie laboring liands. A tower-like water-tank, surmounted bj a windmill, and accommodat- ing 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 imple- ments. It is worth while to take a walk past this collec- tion of reapers, threshers, sulky-ploughs, and rakes, and study out their uses. The immense "header and sepa- rator" rises from the rest like a leviathan. A whole department is devoted to " road-scrapers," " buck-scrap- ers," and ploughs of various sorts used in the construc- tion 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 wao;es 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 thor- oughly reclaimed. Tracts, however, are occupied on fa- vorable 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 VJSALIA, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 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. lie 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 employes 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 gen- tlemen 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 South- ern type. A typical ranch-house, that, for instance, of our hospit- able friend Major McGlung, on his section of the subdi- vided 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 irri- gating 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 apri- 414 OLD MEXICO A XL HER LOST PROVINCES. S? - ^ J. ftiiiP^ cot ti-ees. The jomii^ orange- trees were, as at Fresno, put up in muffliiigs of straw for the winter. •Savfe ^- - ..— The weatl i- er is very liotat noon-day, but so cool at morning and evening that wood - fires are burned. The cliill in the air is of a penetrating kind, felt the more by contrast with the heat of the day, and fire is a necessit3\ The house-servants were clean, white-aproned Chinamen ; those out-of-doors, Mexicans. One of these latter had 1 * iii^y"^ ^ 'X A TYPICAL KAXCH-HOUSE. VISALIA, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 415 trained a goose, " Dick," to follow him like a pet dog, and nothing was more curions than to see the pride of hpth master and biped in tiiis ridiculous relation. / Cattle-raising is the leading industry ; alfalfa, for carry- ing the stock over periods of scarcity, is the leading crop. / Stacks of alfalfa of great size, one containing seven hun- dred tons, were seen. It is the ordinary color of hay ex- ternally, but when cut into is green. A successful experiment has also been made in the ^-i^ising 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 vaqiLsros rode out in vari- ous 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 stamp- ing and lowing herds, driven toward the centre by the ca- reering vaqueros. When gathered in sufiicient numbers feats of lassoing the animals, by either leg or horn, sepa- rating special animals or classes, and the like, were under- taken, 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-dol- lar, 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 liosses, who often even excel them in pure horsemanship, are generally Americans. Tlie ranch known as the Livermore borders Xern 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. 416 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOiST rUOVINCES. VIS A LI A, BAKERSFIELD, ETC. 417 They pick up their subsistence at San Emidio till the middle of September, when tliej are conducted back again. Such migrations from plain to mountain past- ure, and back again, recall some features of the Nor- wegian pastoral life of Bojesen's charming romance, " Gunnar." At the Livermore Ranch you are at the apex of the San Joaquin Yalley. Here the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range effect a junction, and oppose a natural bar- rier to farther progress. The railroad has to cross this barrier by a wonderful piece of engineering, the Tehach- api (Te-/i«^cA-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 direct- ly 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 canon of the Kern River, and the mining towns of Kern- ville and Havilah. The raining 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 Kern- ville 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. The rolling country by which the Kern River Canon is approached is, if possible, even more desolate than the 18* 418 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. VISA LI A, BAKEKSFIELD, ETC. 419 plain. There is almost a necessary connection in our usual impressions between hills and trees, and when fo- liage 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 tlie niK kh;kn iuvkii canon. ground, up hill and down dale, to the savage and splin- tered 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. lie was engaged on a project for leading the 420 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. water, by means of a flume and ditches, from the river at the canon^s mouth down upon several tlioueand acres of land under cultivation. In the spring-time, he told us, all this bareness is hidden bj a perfect carpet of flowers, chiefly a small orange-scarlet poppy. His sheep at pres- ent 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 bowl- ders among them. The caiion 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 col- umn 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. LOS ANGELES. 421 XXVIII. LOS ANGELES. Over the Tehachapi Pass, we are in Southern Califor- nia proper. We have met ah'eadj, 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 coun- try is older, the Spanish names are more musical ; or- ange 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 termi- nus 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 in- creasing. / The mountain barrier across the State is deemed by /some to be of such importance that it should be a politi- ml-^fl-weH as a natural division. They call for the con- 422 OLD MEXICO AM) HER LOST J'ROVLXCES. struction of a distinct new State, to be called South California, its capital at Los AngeleSo " We are different peo- \ })les," wiites one of tlieni in the Call- fornian. " We are differ- ent in pursuits, in tastes, manner of thought, and manner of life ; . . . our liopes and aspirations for the future are different. The restless, uneasy population of the North, ever drift- ing, without local attachments, has no counterpart in Southern California; neither has the wild spirit of min- TKHACHAPI PASS. LOS ANGELES. 423 ing speculation ever flourished here. With this peace- able 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 Cal- ifornians, but Southern Californians. The feeling is in- tense. I can only liken it to the overmastering love of the old Greek for the sunny shores that lay around the ^gean. " 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 Te- hachapi over the warm South-land." 1 have thought it worth while to quote these passages, partly because they are amusing, partly because they ac- centuate the topographical situation, and also because they attribute a chai'acter almost the opposite of that which exists. NjEverywhere 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 Jose, upon a more hill}' 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," con- sisting of one-story, whitewashed, adobe houses. Passing •f 424: OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. a small Spanish plaza, set with pointed cypresses, and the principal hotel, the Pico House, it becomes lined with ex- cellent 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-oflBce, the municipal offices, and a brown, Dutch-looking, brick building, standing free, originally constructed for a mar- ket, 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, par- allel 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 shib- boleth of trade, "To Eeduce 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 ir- rigation. 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 Wilming- LOS ANGELES. mi mm; ton, thirty miles away, should be now, upon the completion of the Southern Pacific railroad, the en- irepot and Pacific terininus of a new commercial departure. San li Francisco, it is said, has too long sat at the Golden Gate " levvins: MAIN STUKKT, I.nS ANliia.KS. -I toll on every pound of freight that passes throngh," 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. Tiie wickedness of tiie proceeding would seem to depend largely upon who it is 426 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. tliat 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 dis- tilled 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 gos- sip in patois^ and women with black shawls over their heads pass by. Much of the quarter is in a ruinous con- dition. There remain vestiges of the arcade system of the kind known in some form to all tropical or semi-trop- ical climates. The arcades of Sonora are not of massive LOS ANGELES. 427 brick and stone, but are wooden roofs, such as are put out by our corner grocers, on light wooden posts. Here and tliere only the battered skeletons remain, attached to ruinous houses. Most California municipalities have borrowed something of this Spanish idea. At Sacra- mento the thriving but flat and not attractive capital of tlie State, you can walk nearly all over the business part of town under cover. There is a xary respectable-looking restaurant — a vine- embowered cottage — opposite the Pico House, where the familiar tortillas., or pancakes, and fr'ijoles^ or stewed beans, may be had. Along-side is an adobe church, quaint in pattern, but modern and devoid of farther in- terest. 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 cortege of dark little maidens, in white mnslin and slippers, proceeds to celebrate with appropriate ardor the anniversary of Mex- ican 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 im- provident, and apparently contented. It is only rarely that a Spanish name — a Pacheco, a Sepulveda, or Estudil- lo — 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 An- geles, and with his history would be esteemed interesting 428 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. anywhere. Above eighty j'cars 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 cer- tain 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 DON PIO PICO. it is evidence of the conservatism and lack of adaptabil- ity of his race, that the old gentleman, though once Gov- ernor 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 person- age 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 ? LOS AXGELES. 429 " I am but a plain and unassuming person," lie 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 liave been charged with a whole- sale issue of land-patents after the American occupation, which patents ostensibly belonged to their respective ad- ministrations. 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. Sjmnish governors were numerous in those last days, and went in and out of office witli extraordinary frequency, by reason of plots, counterplots, and the in- ability 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 overlap])ing wa}', which furnished excellent oi>portunity fur fraud. One prefers, however, not to lin- 430 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST ITiOVINCES. MONGOLIAN ANC MKXICAN. ger upon unpleasant snsi)ici()ns, Init rather to esteem tliese fallen dignitaries, few of wlioin now survive after their misfortunes and I'omantic histories. Even the Chinese, singnlarly enough, show greater en- terprise than the Spanish. Perh;ij)S they may have a somewhat better warrant for comin^ in here than else- where, since a Ciiinaman is found in the list of the twelve original settlers of the town, in 1781. They have pushed into the best of the old S[)anish adobe houses, once the best of theif 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 iu)t always been the bet- LOS ANGELES. 431 ter reconciled to the liapless Mongolians. In an ontLurst of deadly prejudice, in the year 1871, they were dragged out of their Spanish houses and hung to lamp-posts, wag- on-tongues, a!id 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 settle- ment, and he is the official overseer of water and irri- gation* lie took me about with him to observe this important and entertaining part of the economy of civ- ilization 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, con- trols in its corporate capacity all the waters of the Los Angeles Eiver. The Los Angeles River is a Southern 432 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. California stream of the typical sort. It has a wide, shallow bed, almost drj at the moment, but in spring and winter it brawls in dangerous fashion, and often carries awaj its bridges. We ride up to the point near a certain railroad bridge where the water is first diverted. It is taken out bj 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 con- victs 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 Fre- mont 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 Avhite 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 LOS ANGELES. 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 sub- stantial. 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 dura- ble reservoirs or artificial lakes for the storage of addi- tional water in winter to supplement the river at its lowest. We rode out among the villas and gardens and ob- served 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 measure- ment of the babbling fluid. The head should be a sec- tion of one hundred square inches, delivered under a certain uniform pressure, but it is in practice loosely administered. " The irrigators w^ant their work done,^^ says the Zan- jero ; "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 arbor- vitae, extending across the whole front of a garden, and 19 43'± OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST FROVINCES. 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 trans- ferring 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 man- /ner of serving it out is as follows : Applications have to be made in the last week of each month. The Zan- jero then apportions the suppl}^ 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, entitlijig him to receive the water on such a da)' 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. Th^ 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 guil- lotine. 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. LOa ANGELES. 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 subdi- vided by capitalists, under the " colony " system, as de- scribed. 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 spec- imens 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 Al- hambra, 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 school- houses. Well-dressed children of a city air are met with on the roads. The roads are excellent. No vio- lent 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, arbor- vitse, or rose-bushes. Curious small circles from time to time attract attention, either filled M'ith watei', or dry, like the rings of a departed circus. These are reservoirs, supplementing the irrigation system. They are usually 436 OLD MEXICO ANT) HER LOST rROVINCES. filled bv 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 neigh- boring 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 heliotrotpe about the porches. A sin- gle 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 es- tates 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 Amei'icans have married into the Spanish families, both before and since the conquest, and suc- ceeded to their acres. Yery few of Spanish stock still retain any property of note. If there be or ever existed anj- real earthly Paradise, I think it might bear some such complexion as that of the Sierra Madre Yilla, on the first bold rise of the mountains at San Gabriel. I cannot vouch for it as a hotel, for ho- tel it is, but I voueh for it as a situation. The air was heavy with the fragrance of extensive ave- nues of limes as I came up to it. The orange-trees were propped up, to prevent tlicir 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 LOS ANGELES. 437 I'AUAinsK. gale, had been deimded 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 gar- den-like San Gabriel Yalley, to a strip of blue sea on the horizon. On the strip of blue sea rests a slight brown spot, the jewel of Santa Cataliiui 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. lioney-moon it was ideal. The orange bears a close resem- blance to the formal tree which the mediaeval painters nsed to represent as the " tree of the knowledge of good and evil " of Genesis. It is appropriately placed, there- fore, 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 Diirer 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 inju- dicious 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 sum- mer. Not a few invalids who had looked to its culture as a pastime have broken down through this cause, and through having taken np more land than they could man- age. 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^:)eaches, plums, and especially apricots — for can- ning, which come into bearing quickly, are useful in tid- Z6>,S- ANGELES. 439 ing 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 froni five to ten thousand dollars, though pecul- iar 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 market- able fruit after the second year. The controversy rages as to whether it is worth while to do this, since the prod- uct 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 pre- vail. A person w'ho bought grapes in largo quantities for the purpose of making them into wine told me that over- irrigation was rendering them watery and insipid. lie proposed to meet this by establishing a standard. He would pay twenty dollars a ton for grapes containing twen- ty-three per cent, of sugar, and for those below standard less. Plentiful irrigation, however, is relied upon to coun- teract 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 ir- 440 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. riti^atioM altogether. They write to the jiapers tliat 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 uuirri- gated 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 inforniant. "You may not need water, as yon 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 vil- lage 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 wJiich was the scene of Cortez's disastrous retreat from the city, and is marked with an inscription commemorating the famous Leap of Alvarado. The Mission of San Gabriel is worthy of its picturesque origin. It has the same massiveness, color, and quaint ro- coco 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 con- nected with all these missions were swept awaj', years before the American occupation, by edict of the Mexi- can government. Some bits of broken aqueduct, and a LOS ANGELES. 441 \ K I 4A'2 Ol.l) MEXICO AND UKR LOST PROVINCES. few orange-trees, above a hundred years old, in what was once the mission garden, are tlie only vestiges of former prosperity. The interior of the church contains a few battered old reh'gious paintings, tlie 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 7nust 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 zajxitero, or shoemaker, and here the panaderia, or bakery. The south walls are linng with a drapery of red peppers drying in the sun to pre- pare the favorite condiment. The population are a hum- ble class, who gain tlieir livelihood for the most part by daj'-labor on the surrounding estates. Tliej' are not too poor, however, to I'etain 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 fi'om 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 tlie country. It has been acquired, and developed, from very small begin- nings. 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 LOS ANGELES. 443 boxes of oranges and lemons, four hundred thousand gal- lons of wine and one hnnelred thousand of brandy, have been produced in a year. The dwellingdiouse was ap})roaehed \\y a stately avenue of orange-trees, in double lines, three-quarters of a mile in length. The road to the lai-ge, 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-tawnj^ meadows. THE VINTAGE, SAN GABIUEL. At the winei-y, blacksmithing and cooperage were going on on a large scale, and a deft Chinaman was construct- ing the orange -boxes. The rich juice of the grape poured in floods, and its "more concentrated form as brandy catne from its still as clear as water. All dis- tilled spirit is naturally colorless, and the hues it obtains 444 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINVES. fur market are given "by burned sngai', to gratify an arti- lieial taste. The hands are Chinamen and Mexicans. The super- intendent tells us that the former do the most woik and get less pay, bnt that there are certain things which they cannot do. They cannot plough, nor })rnne the vines, and they are awkward in the uianagement of animals. Indeed, a Cliinaman 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 settle- ment 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. " Co7'-r-re, demo7iio de muchacho P'' (E,-r-i-un, 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. 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 LOS AXGELES. 445 446 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. leaves, Faustiiio, Gaetano, Inearnacion, 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 canons among them for exploration, softened by a veil of atmos- phere, 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 diame- ter. 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 LOS ANGELES. 447 lemon is less Iiardj 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 sluggislily, 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST FBOVIiVCES. XXIX. TO SAJV DIEGO, AND THE ALEXICAN FRONTIER. I. These .and kindred scenes are to be met with in lift}', I know not how inanj more, localities of a similar sort. San Fernando, Florence, Compton, Downe}- City, West- minster, Orange, Tustin City, Centralia, Pomonn, 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 colonj^ seems to have been sought to an exceptional degree by persons in good cir- cumstances. It is tifty-seven miles lower down than Los Angeles, and reached by a drive of seven miles southward fi-om the Southern Pacific Railroad at Colton. Ft)ur miles north of Colton, on tlie other hand, takes yon to San Bernardino, an important place of six thousand peo- ple, originally settled by Mormons. The regular Moi'- mons withdrew to Utah by order of Brigham Young on the threat of the coercive war there in 1S57, and only SAiV DIEGO, AXD THE MEXICAN FRO X TIER. 449 450 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. a few " Jose[)liites" now remain, whose practices do not d lifer greatly from those of other people. 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 encom- passing 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, quadi'angular valley, capable, no doubt, of as great development, if water can be brought upon it, re- mains 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 Riv- erside proper. The native adobe, or sun-dried brick, sup- plemented with ornamental wood-work, has been used as material with excellent effect. In the interiors are found rugs, j)ortie/'es, Morris's wall-papers, and all the parapher- nalia of tiie 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 ad- vantages offer to the invalid. The climate permits him SAN DIEGO, AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER. 451 ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE. 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 lieight, 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 Cal- ifornia, that, however great the heat by day — in mid- summer often a hundred and five in the shade — the 452 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. nights are always cool and refreshing. Sunstroke is no known. Nor are the violent thunder-storms with whic Nature, with us, endeavors to restore equilibrium afte: having exhausted its most oppressive warmth. The great drawback here, as there must always be some drawback, consists in occasional heavy " nortiiers," which gather up the dust from the dry surface and produce ' painful dust-storms of two or three days' duration. { ADOBE RESIDENCE AT RIVERSIDE. 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 ther- mometer. This, though usually overlooked, is impor- tant, since fuel is very scarce and correspondingly dear. SAiV DIEGO, AND THE MEXICAN FRONTIER. 453 Fagots of the primings of the cotton woods, sjciimores, and niesquit-trees ak)ng the beds of tlie streams are tlie principal resource. Such coal as can be obtained is both costly and of poor quality. The water for tlie irrigation of Riverside is taken from tlie 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 vin- dicating 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 ab- sence 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 direct- ly exposed to the chilly ocean. These petty rivalries are a part of the history of all new countries, and |)ass away with the development of poi)ulation and trade. There seems no need of jeal- ousies, since there is encouragement enough for all in their several wnys. The Territories of Arizona and New Mexico have just been opened to transportation by rail 454 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. from tin's quarter. The lands suitable for the cultivation of the "citrus fruits" are limited in extent. The mar- ket is much more likely to improve than decline, even Mhen production shall have lararate State. It should clamor at any rate to be joined to Arizona, since it is Arizona tliat 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 com- parison with which previous deserts are of small impor- tance. There are various stopping-places, with designa- 470 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. tions 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. Elack 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 moun- tains 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 hun- dred feet, is traversed. At Dos Palmas, in the very bot- tom of it, a board shanty, covered with signs in amateur- ish 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 dash- es 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 Piver, and Prescott, the capital of Ari- zona 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 de- ACROSS ARIZONA. 471 pressing than such a country, but as a matter-of-fact it is a stiiiiuhis to the curiosity, and furnishes real entertain- ment. One would not wish to be abandoned tliere with- out resources, it is true, but he does not tire of looking at it from the car-window. Its blazing dryness is dis- infectant 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 pastur- age. 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 com- parative 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, sul- phur, asbestos, and kaolin, and quarries of pumice-stone, only waiting shipment. It is nuiintained, 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. of uiiifonn pattern. It is both station and hotel. Such provision on an equal scale of comfort would hardly have been judicious jet 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 heiglit, and surrounded by piazzas of gener- ous 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 w^ent 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 sun- stroke here, and no such suffering as from a much low- er 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 pur- ity and dryness, it resembles. It is thought to be benefi- cial 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, bask- ing 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. ACEOSS ARIZONA. 473 474 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. A transition state may have disadvantages, even when a step toward something better. Yuma has now its rail- road, and is to have a shipping-port of its own, by the constrnction of another to Fort Ysabel, on the Gulf of California. Still, it laments a greater activity it once en- joyed, as chief distributing point for the mines and upper river towns. It expects the Port Ysabel Kailroad to have the effect of doubling its population in two years. It will not be a very stujDendous 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 re- sembles more the poor tropical hamlets on the trail to Acapulco than even the ordinary villages of Mexico. The houses consist of a framework of cotton wood or ocotilla wattles, plastered with mud inside and out, makino; 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 miscella- neous 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 as- tounded air, ending in something like confirmed depres- sion, 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. ACROSS ARIZONA. 475 The Colorado at Yuma makes about the same impres- sion as to width as the Sacramento at Sacramento, tlie Ohio at Pittsburg, or the Connecticut at Hartford. It is a turbulent yellow stream. It cuts into liigh sand bluils 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 counter- feiting human work. Castle Dome, Chimney Peaks, Pi- cacho, 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, tiiat 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 higlily 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. Tlie 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. or stride at great speed, so as to throw out behind them a long red sash or band, depending from the breech-cloth, whicli is, in summer, the principal part of their attire. To this is added, in winter, a close-fitting gray or crim- son 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 PASQUAL, CHIEF OF THE YDMAS. the Florentine period, when the young gallants wore jer- kins 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 fir- ing 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 communi- ACROSS ARIZONA. 477 478 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. cation, where tliej can be quickly massed for mutual sup- port. All the Arizona posts, snch as Camp Lowell, with its grassy parade and fine avenue of cottonwoods; Camp Grant, on its table-land ; and Camp Apache, at the junc- tion of two charming trout streams, in the White River Canon ; and the others, have only this strategic impor- tance, and no intrinsic strength. The barracks at Yuma consist of a series of comfortable, large, adobe houses, plas- tered, and painted green, around an oblong plaza. They Jiave 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 sleep- ing apartments for the summer. 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, Heintz- elman. He conferred it upon the now wrinkled and de- crepit Pasqual, described at the time as "a tall, fine-look- ing 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 rnesquit 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 hag- irard and lank were these visitors on their arrival, and ACROSS ARIZONA. 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 Territorj-, Kansas, half of Colorado, all of Utah, Nevada, Califor- nia, 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 In- terna ; 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. How- ever this may be, it has been the making of us. We 480 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. slionld be in but sorry shape indeed had we to go back to the limits of the tJiirteen original British Colonies, or even to these with Florida, purchased from the Span- iards, and Louisiana, pnrcliased from tlie French, added. The Mexican acquisition gave us one-third of our do- main — that which is now most open to the teeming mill- ions of Europe and that which avails us our repute for essential Americanism abroad. It gave us the field of the Bret Ilarte 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 400 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 in- accuracy of the map of one Dwindle, on which it was based. We got rid of an embarrassing engagement, of the ti'eaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, to protect the Mexican frontier from Apaches — leaving them to regulate this ser- vice for themselves. We secured the right of way for a railroad across the Isthmus of Teh nan tepee, 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 Southei'n Pacific trans- continental 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 coun- try, and the most effectual of all the means proposed was considered to be a transcontinental railway. Well, we are bowling at last along that tk»w actual- ly constructed Southei-n Pacific llailroad, once discussed ACJiOSS xiRIZOXA. 481 in mustj 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 hiva beds; Painted Rock, named from huge, mysteriously-dec- orated boM'lders ; Casa Grande, from its architectural I'uins 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 eccentricallj'-named Tombstone. Ben- son, the point of departure, from the railroad, for Tomb- stone, is 102-i miles from San Francisco, and probably 2500 from New York. \ 482 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST FROVINCES. XXXI. TOMBSTONE. 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 popu- lation and conventional usages westward they must short- ly 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 expen- sive of everything is what is most wanted. "Diamonds — two-hundred-dollar watches and chains — Lord ! we couldn't hand 'etn out fast enough," says an ex-jeweller, describing his expei'ience at one of the camps in its palmy days. " Champagne w^asn'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 TOMBSTOXE. 483 found to be no more treasure in the mines. The hetero- <2;cneous elements scatter, and the town, be it never so well built, is left as desolate as Tadmor of the Wilder- ness. 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 bj 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 pre- ferred to be himself thus known, instead of by a conven- tional 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 com- ing 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 him- self by the Wells-Fargo Express box, and the driver be- gan 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 bor- rowing money of a friend which you knew you could never repay, or than gobbling up the earnings of the 484 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. DISTANT VIEW OF TOMDSTONK. poor, like a large linn lately sus- pended in Pima County. But as to shooting a driv- er, even in mistake for somebody else, lie had no words to express his sense of its meanness. lie threw stones at liis 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 M-ith huge "black- snakes." Mesqnit-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 dit^tancc beside the branch rail- TOMBSTOXE. 485 i-oad in course of construction between Benson and Tuinb- stonc. 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 ex- cellent 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 liave 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 siiall 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 ])lace, but none appeared on the surface during our stay. There were plenty of saloons — the "Dew-drop," the " Ilead-light," and others — and at the door of one of them a Spanish seilorita 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, gath- ering 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 480 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. " Go To Bangley and Sclilagensteiii'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 sup- posed 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 in- stead the Tough Nut and Contention Mines. He made a great fortune out of them, and was so pleased at the dif- ference 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 E])itaph. The unreliability of epitaphs — if the remark may be safely ventured even at this distance — is proverbial. Nevertheless, they may oc- casionally 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 justi- fied. The city, but two years old at this date, had at- tained to a population of 2000, and a property valuation, TOMBSTONE. 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. SCIIIKFKKI.IN. A shanty that cost $50 to build rented for $15 a month. A nucleus of many blocks at the centre consisted of sub- stantial, 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Tlie mining claims run under the city itself. From the roof of the Grand Hotel yon look down at the shafts, hoist-works, and heaps of extracted ore of the Yizina, 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 Conten- tion, and above tiiem many others later discovered. The larger mines had extensive buildings, of wood, and in handsome draughting and assay rooms within were reg- ularly educated scientists, ex-college professors and the like, in charge. Tiie lesser mines put up in the begin- ning 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-o^round earned $3.50, and below-ground $4, for a " shift " of eight hours, and the work went on night and day, Sun- days 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. TOMBSTONE. 489 This I know, however, that I descended four hundred feet or so into the Contention Mine, and found great cliambers hollowed out, from which mineral had been taken, showing a generous width in tiie 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 chinmeys. New as it was, the business por- tion of the place had been once swept out of existence by a devastating fire, which originated from a character- istic 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 intox- icating liquors were sold. There were the' bar-rooms of two hotels, the Eagle Brewery, the Cancan Chop- house, the French Rotisserie, the Alhambi'a, Maison Dore, 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 Ojtportunitj' for depositing mone}', 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 21* 490 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 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 in- dulged 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 excep- tional liveliness of Tombstone — the " Cow-boys." The term cow-boy, once applied to all those in the cat- tle 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 purport- ing to be an account of the exploits of Bill}' 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 j-outh." It was finally determined, however, in favor of New York. " It was on the Bowery," said the author, 1 TOMBSTONE. 491 wliose ideas of morality were peculiar even for a sensa- tionalist, "that his mates learned to love hira for his dar- ing and prowess, and delighted to refer to him as Billy the Kid." This promising life was cut off at tlie e'<\\-\y age of twenty-two. "Curly Bill," also died young, and so did " Man-killer Johnson." I remarked upon this peculiar- ity, of their youth, to a philosopher of the region itself. "Yes," he said, "they donH 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 antag- onist ; 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 tlie San Simon Valley where they concealed stolen cattle until re-branded and sent to market, and wliCre 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-boj's 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 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. The leading cattle-iuoii had a Southern cut and accent, and hailed originally from Missouri or Texas. Some ap- peared 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 higli as $20 or $25 a