William Edwards - On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

In the car with me sat a Mexican youth, who had evidently been studying and traveling in the States. He was dressed in the height of American fashion, and bore himself as a young gentleman of means. As he stepped from the train he was enveloped in the arms of another youth of about his own age. They clasped their right hands and patted each other on the small of the back with their left hands, and kissed each other’s cheeks, and then he was similarly embraced by a big stately man, over six feet in height, with a long gray beard, who carried himself with great dignity. The two were dressed in full Mexican costume, with tight-fitting pantaloones flaring at the bottom and laced with silver cording on the sides, short velvet jackets embroidered with gold lace, high felt hats with gold cords and tassels, and their monograms six inches high in burnished metal fastened on the side of the crown. Several peons seized the young man’s bags and American suit-case, and the party moved toward a six-mule carryall, set high on enormous wheels. The traveler was evidently the son of one of the great haciendados , whose estates lay perhaps fifty miles away. Only grandees of the first magnitude travel by carriage in Mexico.

Our colored porter, black as jet, was also in a happy mood. The first of his series of Mexican sweethearts had come to greet him, bringing him a basket of fruit. She was comely, with fine dark eyes, her long hair coiled beneath her purple rebozo . There is no color line in Mexico and Sam proved himself to be a great beau among the Mexican muchachas .

Sitting in the smoking compartment of my car, during the morning, I found myself in company with three Mexican gentlemen who entered at Monterey. They could speak no English. My Spanish was limited. But as we sat there I became conscious of a most friendly interchange of sentiment between us. They were demonstratively gracious. One of them offered me a fine cigar, the other insisted that I accept of his cigarettos , and they would accept none of mine until I first took one from them. They sent the porter for beer, and insisted that I share with them. They even got out at one of the way stations and bought fragrant light skinned oranges, and pressed me to share the fruit. I could not speak to them, nor they to me, but I became aware that they were members of the Masonic order. I wore my Master Mason’s badge. They displayed no outward tokens, but their glances and friendliness revealed their fraternal sentiments. They treated me with distinguished courtesy through all the journey to Mexico City, and at last said good-bye with evident regret. At a later time, I learned that a Mexican of the Masonic Fraternity wears no outward sign of his membership, owing to the hostility of the yet dominant Roman Church, while the Masonic bond is of peculiar strength by very reason of that animosity.

After leaving San Louis Potosí, the great inland plain which we had all day been traversing grew more and more broken. We came among small hills, with here and there deep ravines, and we began turning slightly toward the west and climbing by easy grades toward distant, towering mountains far upon the horizon to the south. Water now became more plentiful. We followed the course of a stream, wide, between high banks, where were long reaches of sand interspersed with well filled pools. There were adoby villages in increasing numbers, and here and there were little churches or chapels, each surmounted with a large cross. I counted more than a hundred of these chapels in the course of a few miles. It was as though the whole population had for centuries devoted its time to building these shrines. Some were dilapidated and in ill repair, others looked as though recently constructed. Each has its Madonna, and each is venerated and cared for by the family who may have erected it. It was eight o’clock and dark when we reached Acambaro where a good supper awaited us in the commodious station.

Just as the train was starting, I asked some questions of the American conductor and, after a little conversation with him, was surprised to find that he was a West Virginian from Kanawha. “ Señor Brooks,” he said, who had grown up near “Coal’s Mouth,” now St. Albans. He was delighted to learn from me of Charleston and the Kanawha Valley, and hoped some day to return and see the home of his childhood. He now loved Mexico. Its dry and sunny climate had given him life, when in the colder latitude of West Virginia he would have perished.

During the night, while crossing the summit of the Sierra , at La Cima, – nearly eleven thousand feet above the sea, – it became intensely cold again, even colder than when we crossed the mountains near Saltillo. The chill again awoke me, when I discovered that we were rolling down into the valley of Anahuac toward the City of Mexico. We were soon below the mists and beneath a cloudless sky, yet I felt no undue heat, but rather, a quickening exhilaration in the pure, dry air. As we curved and twisted and descended the sharp grades, many vistas of exceeding beauty burst upon the eye. We were entering a wide valley of great fertility surrounded by lofty mountains, and to the far south, fifty miles away, the burnished domes of Popocatepetl and Ixtacciuhatl, lifted their ice crests into space, eighteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. Far beneath us glittered and glinted the waters of Lakes Tezcoco, Xochimilco and Chalco, once joined, but now separated, by the rescued land on which stood Tenochtitlan , the mighty capital of Montezuma, even yet to-day a city exceeding four hundred thousand souls (when Cortez conquered it, it is said to have held more than a million). Everywhere the eye rested upon fruitful land, tilled under irrigation, containing plantations of maguey, orchards of oranges and limes, and pomegranates, and groves of figs and olives – all forming a landscape where spring is perpetually enthroned.

Along the roads, trains of pack mules and burros, heavily laden, were toiling toward the great city, and many footfarers were bearing upon their backs enormous packs, the weight resting on the shoulders, and held in place by a strap about the forehead. When the Aztecs were lords of Mexico and Montezuma ruled, the horse, the ox, the ass, the sheep were unknown upon the American continent. All burdens and all freight were then carried upon the backs and shoulders of the Indians, who from their forefathers had inherited the hardy muscles and the right to bear the traffic of the land. And from these ancestors the Indian cargadores of to-day have received the astonishing strength, enabling them to bear these great loads with apparent ease; the Indian, with his jog-trot gait, carrying a hundred pounds upon his back a distance of fifty miles a day. A large part of the fruit, vegetables and tropical products displayed each day in the markets of the city are thus brought up from distant lowland plantations upon the backs of men. As we approached the city, nearer and nearer, the highways we ran beside or cut across were filled more and more with these pack trains and cargadores , and with men and women faring cityward.

We finally drew into a large newly-built station of white sandstone. Pandemonium reigned upon the platform alongside which we stopped. Men were embracing each other, slapping each other’s backs and kissing either cheek. Women flew into each other’s arms and children kissed their elders’ hands. We passed along through wide gateways and into a paved semicircular courtyard, where were drawn up carriages with bands of yellow or red or blue across the door. Those with yellow bands are cheap and dirty, those with blue bands mean a double fare and those with red bands are clean and make a reasonable charge, all of which is regulated by the Federal government. I entered one of the red-banded vehicles. The driver called two cargadores , who seized my steamer trunks, loaded them on their backs and ran along beside us. The horses started on a half gallop and when we reached the hotel, the cargadores , with the trunks upon their backs were there as well, less out of breath than the panting team, and each was gratified with a Mexican quarter for his pay (equal to an American dime), while my cochero swore in profuse Spanish because I did not pay him five times his legal fare.