When Juarez shot Maximillian he also smote the Roman Church. The Archbishop of Mexico, and the church of which he was virtual primate, had backed the Austrian invader. Even Pope Pius IX had shed benedictions on the plot. When the Republic crushed the conspirators, the Roman Church was at once deprived of all visible power. Every foot of land, every church edifice, every monastery, every convent the church owned in all Mexico was confiscated by the Republic. The lands and many buildings were sold and the money put in the National Treasury. Monks and nuns were banished. Priests were prohibited from wearing any but ordinary garb. The Roman Church was forbidden ever again to own a rod of stone or a foot of land.

So now it is, that the priest wears a “bee-gum” hat and Glengarry coat, and the state takes whatever church-edifices it wants for public use. The church of San Augustin is a public library. Many churches have been converted into schools. Others have been pulled down, and modern buildings erected in their stead. The cloisters and chapel of the monastery of the Franciscans are leased to laymen, and have become the hotel Jardin. What churches the Republic did not need to use, it has been willing to rent to the Roman hierarchy for the religious uses of the people. So many have been these edifices that, despite the government’s appropriations and private occupations, there yet remain church buildings innumerable where the pious may worship and the priesthood celebrate the mass. But the Roman hierarchy has no longer the wealth and will to keep these buildings in repair and in all of those I visited there was much dilapidation.

While it is true that the stern laws of the Republic debar the Roman Church from owning land, yet, it is said, this law is now evaded by a system of subrosa trusteeships, whereby secret trustees already hold vast accumulations of land and money to its use. And although the church cannot go into court to enforce the trust, yet the threat of dire pains in Purgatory is seemingly so effective that there is said to have been extraordinary little loss by stealing. The promise of easy passage to Paradise also makes easy the evasion of human law.

VI
Vivid Characteristics of Mexican Life

Hotel Iturbide, Mexico,

November 22d.

This limpid atmosphere, this vivifying sun,—how they redden the blood and exhilarate the spirit! This is a sunshine which never brings the sweat. But yet, however hot the sun may be, it is cold in the shadow, and at this I am perpetually surprised.

The custom of the hotels in this Latin land is to let rooms upon the “European” plan, leaving the guest free to dine in the separate café of the hotel itself, or to take his meals wherever he may choose among the city’s multitude of lunch rooms and restaurants. Thus I may take my desayuno in an “American” restaurant, where the dishes are of the American type, and my almuerzo, the midmorning meal, in an Italian restaurant where the dishes of sunny Italy are served; while for my comida, I stroll through a narrow doorway between sky blue pillars, and enter a long, stone-flagged chamber, where neat tables are set about and where the Creole French of Louisiana is the speech of the proprietor. Here are served the most delicious meals I have yet discovered. If you want fish, a swarthy Indian waiter presents before you a large silver salver on which are arranged different sorts of fish fresh from the sea, for these are daily received in the city. Or, perhaps, you desire game, when a tray upon which are spread ducks and snipe and plover, the heads and wings yet feathered, is presented to you. Or a platter of beefsteaks, chops and cutlets is held before you. From these you select what you may wish. If you like, you may accompany the waiter who hands your choice to the cook, and you may stand and see the fish or duck or chop done to a turn, as you shall approve, upon the fire before your eyes. You are asked to take nothing for granted, but having ascertained to your own satisfaction that the food is fresh, you may verify its preparation, and eat it contentedly without misgiving. In this autumn season, flocks of ducks come to spend their winters upon the lakes surrounding the city. At a cost of thirty cents, our money, you may have a delicious broiled teal with fresh peas and lettuce, and as much fragrant coffee as you will drink. The food is cheap, wholesome and abundant. And what is time to a cook whose wages may be ten or fifteen centavos a day, although his skill be of the greatest!

The city is full of fine big shops whose large windows present lavish displays of sumptuous fabrics. There is great wealth in Mexico. There is also abject poverty. The income of the rich comes to them without toil from their vast estates, often inherited in direct descent from the Royal Grants of Ferdinand and Isabella to the Conquestadores of Cortez, when the fruitful lands of the conquered Aztecs were parceled out among the hungry Spanish compañeros of the Conqueror. Some of these farms or haciendas, as they are called, contain as many as a million acres.

Mexico is to all intents and purposes a free trade country, and the fabrics and goods of Europe mostly supply the needs and fancies of the Mexicans. The dry goods stores are in the hands of the French, with here and there a Spaniard from old Spain; the drug stores are kept by Germans, who all speak fluent Spanish, and the cheap cutlery and hardware are generally of German make. The wholesale and retail grocers have been Spaniards, but this trade is now drifting to the Americans. There are some fine jewelry stores, and gems and gold work are displayed in their windows calculated to dazzle even an American. The Mexican delights in jewels, and men and women love to have their fingers ablaze with sparkling diamonds, and their fronts behung with many chains of gold. And opals! Everyone will sell you opals!

In leather work, the Mexican is a master artist. He has inherited the art from the clever artificers among the ancient Moors. Coats and pantaloons (I use purposely the word pantaloons) and hats are made of leather, soft, light and elastic as woven fibre. And as for saddles and bridles, all the accoutrements of the caballero are here made more sumptuously than anywhere in all the world.

The shops are opened early in the morning and remain open until noon, when most of them are closed until three o’clock, while the clerks are allowed to take their siesta, the midday rest. Then in the cool hours of the evening they stay open until late.

Over on one side of a small park, under the projecting loggia of a long, low building, I noticed, to-day, a dozen or more little tables, by each of which sat a dignified, solemn-looking man. Some were waiting for customers, others were writing at the dictation of their clients; several were evidently composing love letters for the shy, brown muchachas who whispered to them. Of the thirteen millions constituting the population of the Mexican Republic, less than two millions can read and write. Hence it is, that this profession of scribe is one of influence and profit.

I have once more visited the famous cathedral which faces the Plaza Grande. From the north tower of it, to the top of which I climbed by a wonderful convoluted staircase, ninety-two spiral steps without a core, I gained a view of the city. North and south and east and west it spread out several miles in extent. It lies beneath the view, a city of flat roofs, covering structures rarely more than two stories high, of stone and sun-dried brick, and painted sky blue, pink and yellow, or else remaining as white and clean as when first built, who knows how many hundreds of years ago? For here are no chimneys, no smoke and no soot! To the south I could descry the glistening surface of Lake Tezcoco, and to the west, at a greater distance, Lakes Chalco and Xochomilco. Never a cloud flecked the dark blue dome of the sky. Only, overhead, I noted one burst of refulgent whiteness. It was with difficulty that I could compel my comprehension to grasp the fact that this was nothing less than the snow summit of mighty Popocatepetl, so distant that tree and earth and rock along its base, even in this pellucid atmosphere, were hid in perpetual haze.

It is said that peoples differ from one another not merely in color, in form and in manners, but equally so in their peculiar and individual odors. The Chinese are said to find the European offensive to their olfactory nerves because he smells so much like a sheep. The Englishman vows the Italian reeks with the scent of garlic. The Frenchman declares the German unpleasant because his presence suggests the fumes of beer. Just so, have I been told that the great cities of the world may be distinguished by their odors. Paris is said to exhale absinthe. London is said to smell of ale and stale tobacco, and Mexico City, I think, may be said to be enwrapped with the scent of pulque (Pool-Kay). “Pulque, blessed pulque,” says the Mexican! Pulque, the great national drink of the ancient Aztec, which has been readily adopted by the Spanish conqueror, and which is to-day the favorite intoxicating beverage of every bibulating Mexican. At the railway stations, as we descended into the great valley wherein Mexico City lies, Indian women handed up little brown pitchers of pulque, fresh pulque new tapped. Sweet and cool and delicious it was, as mild as lemonade (in this unfermented condition it is called agua miel, honey water). The thirsty passengers reached out of the car windows and gladly paid the cinco centavos (five cents) and drank it at leisure as the train rolled on. Through miles and miles we traversed plantations of the maguey plant from which the pulque is extracted. For pulque is merely the sap of the maguey or “century plant,” which accumulates at the base of the flower stalk, just before it begins to shoot up. The pulque-gatherer thrusts a long, hollow reed into the stalk, sucks it full to the mouth, using the tongue for a stopper, and then blows it into a pigskin sack which he carries on his back. When the pigskin is full of juice, it is emptied into a tub, and when the tub is filled with liquor it is poured into a cask, and the cask is shipped to the nearest market. Itinerant peddlars tramp through the towns and villages, bearing a pigskin of pulque on their shoulders and selling drinks to whosoever is thirsty and may have the uno centavo (one cent) to pay for it. When fresh, the drink is delightful and innocuous. But when the liquid has begun to ferment, it is said to generate narcotic qualities which make it the finest thing for a steady, long-continuing and thorough-going drunk which Providence has yet put within the reach of man. Thousands of gallons of pulque are consumed in Mexico City every twenty-four hours, and the government has enacted stringent laws providing against the sale of pulque which shall be more than twenty-four hours old. The older it grows the greater the drunk, and the less you need drink to become intoxicated, hence, it is the aim of every thirsty Mexican to procure the oldest pulque he can get. In every pulque shop, where only the mild, sweet agua miel, fresh and innocuous, is supposed to be sold, there is, as a matter of fact, always on hand a well fermented supply, a few nips of which will knock out the most confirmed drinker almost as soon as he can swallow it.

I was passing a pulque shop this afternoon when I noticed a tall, brawny Indian coming out. He walked steadily and soberly half way across the street, when all of a sudden the fermented brew within him took effect and he doubled up like a jackknife, then and there. Two men thereupon came out of the self same doorway, picked him up head and heels, and I saw them sling him, like a sack of meal, into the far corner of the shop, there to lie, perhaps twenty-four hours, till he would come out of his narcotic stupor.

Riding out to the shrine of Guadeloupe the other afternoon, I passed many Indians leaving the city for their homes. Some were bearing burdens upon their backs, some were driving donkeys loaded with goods. Upon the back of one donkey was tied a pulque drunkard. His legs were tied about the donkey’s neck and his body was lashed fast to the donkey’s back. His eyes and mouth were open. His head wagged from side to side with the burro’s trot. He was apparently dead. He had swallowed too much fermented pulque. His compañeros were taking him home to save him from the city jail.

The Mexicans have a legend about the origin of their pulque. It runs thus: One of their mighty emperors, long before the days of Montezuma’s rule, when on a war raid to the south, lost his heart to the daughter of a conquered chief and brought her back to Tenochtitlan as his bride. Her name was Xochitl and she gained extraordinary power over her lord, brewing with her fair, brown hands a drink for which he acquired a prodigious thirst. He never could imbibe enough and, when tanked full, contentedly resigned to her the right to rule. Other Aztec ladies perceiving its soothing soporific influence upon the emperor, acquired the secret of its make and secured domestic peace by also administering it to their lords. Thus pulque became the drink adored by every Aztec. The acquisitive Spaniard soon “caught on” and has never yet let go.

The one redeeming feature about the pulque is that he who gets drunk on it becomes torpid and is incapable of fight. Hence, while it is so widely drunk, there comes little violence from those who drink it.

But not so is it with mescal, a brandy distilled from the lower leaves and roasted roots of the maguey plant. It is the more high priced and less generally tasted liquor. Men who drink it become mad and, when filled with it, sharpen their long knives and start to get even with some real or imaginary foe. Fortunately, mescal has few persistent patrons. It is pulque, the soporific pulque that is the honored and national beverage of the Mexican.

VII
A Mexican Bullfight

Mexico City,

Sunday, November 24th.

A feeling first of disgust and then of anger came over me this afternoon. I was sitting right between two pretty Spanish women, young and comely. One of them as she came in was greeted by the name Hermosa Paracita (beautiful little parrot), by eight or ten sprucely dressed young Spaniards just back of me. The spectators with ten thousand vociferous throats had just been cheering a picador. He had done a valiant deed. He had ridden his blindfolded horse around the ring twice, lifting his cap to the cheering multitude. He was applauded because he had managed to have the belly of his horse so skillfully ripped open by the maddened black bull, that all its vitals and entrails were dragging on the ground while he rode it, under the stimulus of his cruel spurs and wicked bit, twice around the ring before it fell, to be dragged out, dying, by mules, gaily-caparisoned in trappings of red and gold, tugging at its heels! Paracita clapped her pretty bejeweled hands and cried “bravo!” And so did the scores of other pretty women; women on the reserved seats, elegant ladies and pretty children in the high-priced boxes on the upper tiers! The howling mob of thousands also applauded the gallant picador! Would he be equally fortunate and clever and succeed in having the next horse ripped open so completely, all at one thrust of the bull’s horns? Quien sabe?

The city of four hundred thousand inhabitants, capital of the Mexican Republic, had been profoundly stirred all the week over the arrival from Spain of the renowned Manzanillo and his band of toreadors (bullfighters). Their first appearance would be the opening event of the bullfighting season.

Manzanillo, the most renowned Toreador of old Spain! And bulls, six of them, of the most famous strains of Mexico and of Andalusia! Señor Limantour, Secretary of State for Mexico, spoken of as the successor to President Diaz, had just delighted the jeunesse dorée by publicly announcing his acceptance of the honor of the Presidency of the newly founded “Bullfighting Club.” Spanish society and the Sociadad Española had publicly serenaded Don Manzanillo at his hotel! A dinner would be given in his honor after the event! Men and women were selling tickets on the streets. Reserved tickets at five dollars each, could only be obtained at certain cigar stores. The rush would be so great that, to secure a ticket at all, one must buy early. I secured mine on Thursday, and was none too soon. The spectacle would come off Sunday afternoon at three o’clock, by which hour all the churches would have finished their services, and the ladies would have had their almuerzo, and time to put on afternoon costume.

By noon the drift of all the street crowds was toward the bull ring, a mile or two out near the northwest border of the city. All street cars were packed and extra cars were running; even all carriages and cabs were taken, and the cabmen commanded double prices. I had retained a carriage the day before. At the restaurant I could scarcely get a bite, the waiters and cooks were so eager to get through and escape, even for a single peep at the spectacle. As I drove out, young ladies were standing in groups at the gateways of many fashionable residences waiting for their carriages to take them to the ring. As I approached the arena, the throngs upon the streets and sidewalks blocked the way.

Hundreds of Indians and Mexicans, mostly women, had set up temporary eating stands along the roadside. Fruit, tortillas, steaming broth and meat roasting over fires, tempted the hungry. These stands would feed a multitude. It was early, but the city fire department was already on hand with apparatus to extinguish any possible blaze among the wooden tiers of seats. A battalion of mounted police sat on their blood-bay horses at intervals along the road, their gaudy blue and gold uniforms setting off effectively their dark brown skins. We entered a large gateway, gave up half of our tickets, and then passed in to a broad flight of steps. We ascended to the tiers of seats and chose good places. Presently, two companies of infantry with set bayonets also entered and took up their positions. Often the mob becomes so mad with blood-lust, that bayonets are needed to keep order, sometimes also bullets.

It was an hour before the set time, but none too early. The crowds, all well dressed on this side, every one of whom had paid five dollars for a ticket, kept pouring in. Across on the other side swarmed the cheap mob. Behind me was a row of young Spaniards. They stood up and called nicknames to all their friends who entered within reach of their vision. They cheered every pretty well dressed woman. They howled like mad when the band came in, they fairly burst themselves when, at last, Manzanillo, the toreador, the matadores, picadores, the valiant gold-laced company of bullfighters, entered and marched around the ring.

Manzanillo sat on a superb Andalusian charger which pranced and threw up his forefeet as though conscious of the illustrious character of his master. Then Manzanillo dismounted and took his place, the picadores stationed their horses on either side and pulled over their eyes the bandages to blindfold them, others carrying big gold-embroidered red shawls, stood all attention, the band struck up, the door opposite me was thrown open and a handsome, black-brown bull trotted in. As he passed the gate he received his first attention. Two rosettes of scarlet and gold ribbons were hooked into his shoulders, with steel teeth, enough to irritate him just a little. He stood there amazed. The crowd cheered him. A man in gold lace promptly flaunted a red shawl in his face. He charged it. The man stepped lightly aside and bowed to the audience, who cheered vociferously. “Bravo! Well done!” Then one of the blindfolded horses was spurred toward the bull. The bull was dazed and angry. He charged right at the horseman. The horseman lowered his spear and caught the bull in the shoulder. The bull flinched to one side. The audience cheered the picador, but the bull dexterously turning, charged the horse on the other side, and, before the poor beast could be turned, drove his sharp horns into his abdomen, ripped it up and upset the rider and horse in a cloud of dust. The audience now cheered the bull. A dozen men rushed to the rescue and dragged the picador away. The horse lay there and the bull charged it again, and again ripped out more entrails. The audience cheered the bull, and the bull, encouraged by the applause, took another turn at the dying horse. Just then a dexterous footman slung the red sheet in the bull’s face and he turned to chase it. But all in vain! Charge the red vision all he would, he never caught anything but thin air! He could never catch the man.

Then the bull saw another horse blindly sidling towards him, for though blindfolded, the old horse could yet smell the bull and the blood, and only went forward under the pressure of savage spur and bit. The bull stood gazing at the horse and rider a moment, then he charged right at them with head down. He caught the horse in the belly and ripped out its entrails, which dragged on the ground, while the brave picador continued to ride it about, and sought yet again to engage the attention of the bull.

But the bull was now tired. He thought of his mountain pastures and the sweet, long grass of the uplands. He would go home. He would fight no more. He wanted to get out, he wanted badly to get out. The now hissing mob scared him worse than when they cheered. He ran about the ring trying all the locked doors. He couldn’t force them. Then he tried to climb over the high wall, to jump over anyway. He was frantic with pathetic panic. But shouting men stood round the parapet and clubbed him over the head. So he gave up and returned to the center of the ring, panting, his tongue hanging out, foam dripping from his jaws. He was altogether winded.

Now was Manzanillo’s opportunity. He carried a small purple gold-fringed scarf over his left arm, and his long, straight naked sword in his right hand. He stood directly in front of the bull. He caught its eye. He waved the purple banner. Almost imperceptibly he approached. The bull stood staring at him, legs wide apart, sides panting, tail lashing, head down, tired but ready to charge. Then, quick as lightning, Manzanillo stepped up to the bull, straight in front of him, and reaching out at arm’s length drove the sword to the very hilt right down between the shoulder blades. It was a mortal stroke, a wonderful thrust, perfect, precise, fatal. Only a master of his craft could do just such a perfectly exact act. And as quick as lightning did Manzanillo step aside, fold his arms and stand motionless, not ten feet from the bull, to watch him die. He gave only one sweeping bow to the audience. The Spaniard is a connoisseur in all the delicate and subtle masterstrokes in this duel of man and beast. Manzanillo had sustained his reputation as the greatest living bullfighter of old Spain. The nerve, the agility, the lightning-like act—too quick for human eye to follow—the perfect judgment of time and distance and force, all these he had now displayed. The vast audience broke out into one simultaneous “Bravo,” rose to its feet and then, like the matador, stood silent and breathless to watch the bull die,—to see the hot blood pour from mouth and nostrils, the sturdy thighs and shoulders shake, the powerful knees bend. The nose sank to the dust, the knees trembled, the bull rolled in the sand, quite dead. Manzanillo drew out his reeking sword. Again he bowed to the vast multitude, and no human being ever received a more overwhelming ovation than did he. Flowers were thrown him in heaps. Sometimes women even take off their jewels and throw them, and kiss the hero when they later meet him on the street. So great is the joy of the blood-lust! So has the frenzy of the Roman arena descended to some of Rome’s degenerate sons. Mules in gay red and gold trappings now dragged out the bull as they had the horse. There would be cheap stews for the multitude in the city to-night.

The next bull was jet-black, big, sturdy, ferocious. He scorned to charge or gore a blindfolded horse, but he chased a man wherever in sight. Such a bull is according to the Spanish heart! The audience cheered him wildly. He ripped up three or four horses just because he had to, in order to get at the man on their backs. One of the horses had been ripped up by the first bull, but his dusty entrails had been put back, the rent sewn up, and under cruel spur and bit he had been presented to the second bull to be again splendidly and finally ripped wide open, ridden around the ring by his bowing rider, bloody entrails dragging in the dust, and applauded to his death by the blood-hungry multitude! The second bull was game! The banderillas were placed with danger and difficulty. These are two beribboned sticks tipped with steel gaffs that are jabbed into the bull’s shoulders, adding to the irritation of the rosettes, and increasing his desire for revenge. In the first bull they were perfectly planted and three pairs set in. In the second only one was got in at first, then a pair, then one again. Each setting of the banderillas is a dangerous feat! The bull must be approached from the front. Just as they are stuck into the maddened animal, the banderillador must step aside. He must be quick, very quick, as quick as the toreador in planting his fatal sword thrust. And not infrequently the banderillador gets tossed, and perhaps gored and killed by the bull. Hence the act, well done, receives deafening applause. Despite his fierce courage, this splendid black bull also met at last his inevitable fate, beneath the perfectly skillful thrust of Manzanillo.

The third bull was the biggest and oldest yet. Horses were ripped up by him in exciting succession and one picador was caught under his fallen horse and badly bruised. Nor was it so easy to kill this bull. The matador lost a trifle of his nerve. The sword only went in half way. It took the bull some time to bleed internally and die. With the sword-hilt waving between his shoulder blades, he tried to follow and gore the matador, but his strength began to fail. He stood still, his head sank down, his knees bent, he knelt. And the vast audience stood in hush and silence to watch with delighted expectancy the final oncoming of death. When he rolled over quite dead, the pretty women in the box behind me shouted and waved their dainty hands in mad delight.

The fourth bull was just ushered in when the brutality and cruelty and horror of it all quite nauseated me. I rose to go. My friend told our neighbors that I was “ill.” Otherwise they could not have understood my leaving in the midst of the fight. Afterward I heard it declared to be a very fine performance, for, as a little Mexican boy exclaimed delightedly, “they killed six bulls and thirteen horses! It was magnifico!”

As I sat and looked out on the ten thousand faces of all classes, rich and poor, all radiant and frenzied with the blood-lust and the joy of seeing a creature tortured to the very death, and then heard the clang of the multitudinous church bells, calling to Vesper services, even before the spectacle was ended, I realized that, surely, I was among a different people, bred to a different civilization from my own; a civilization still mediæval and still as cruel as when the Inquisition sated even fanaticism with its cultivated passion for blood! I also shame to say that I met to-night two young American ladies, school teachers at Toluca, going home with two bloody banderillas plucked from one of the bulls—“Trophies to keep as souvenirs.” They “Had so much enjoyed the fine spectacle.” Thus do even my countrywomen degenerate, thus is the savage aroused within their hearts!

VIII
From Pullman Car to Mule-back

Michoacan, Mexico,

November 25th.

After the bullfight we had difficulty in finding a cocha to take us to the railway station. In fact, we could not get one. We were compelled to depend upon cargadores, who carried our trunks and bags upon their backs, while we jostled along the crowded sidewalks. And here, I might remark, that there is no such thing as a right-of-way for the footfarer on either street or sidewalk. You turn to the right or left, just as it may be most convenient and so does your neighbor. You cross a street at your peril, and you pray vigorously to the saints when you are run down.

We left Mexico City about five o’clock in the evening, taking the narrow gauge National Railway to Acambaro and Patzcuaro, where horses and a guide were to be awaiting us, and whence we would cross the highlands of the Tierra Fria and finally plunge into the remote depths of the Tierra Caliente, along the lower course of the Rio de las Balsas, where it forms the boundary line between the states of Michoacan and Guererro, on its way to the Pacific.

As we departed from the city, we passed through extensive fields of maguey, and began climbing the heavy grade which would lift us up some four thousand feet ere we should descend into the valley of Toluca, more lofty, but no less fertile than the basin of Anahuac. Before we crept up the mountain very far, darkness descended precipitately upon us, for there is no twilight in these southern latitudes.

We were at Acambaro for breakfast, and all the morning traversed a rolling, cultivated, timbered country much like the blue grass counties of Greenbrier and Monroe in West Virginia. Here we travelled through some of the loveliest landscapes in all Mexico. This is a region of temperate highlands amidst the tropics, so high in altitude lies the land,—seven to eight thousand feet above the sea. There was much grass land and there were wheat and corn fields many miles in area. Here and there crops were being gathered, and yokes of oxen were dragging wooden plows, the oxen pulling by the forehead as in France. Several successive crops a year are raised upon these lands. No other fertilization is there than the smile of God, and these crops have here been raised for a thousand years—irrigation being generally used to help out the uncertain rains. We passed vineyards, and apple and peach and apricot orchards, forests of oak and pine, several lakes, Cuitzeo and Patzcuaro, being the largest of them—lakes, twenty and thirty miles long and ten to twenty wide. Never yet has other craft than an Indian canoe traversed their light green, brackish waters.

These high upland lakes of Mexico are the resting-places of millions of ducks and other waterfowl, which come down from the far north here to spend the winter time. It is their holiday season. They do not nest or breed in Mexico. They are here as migratory winter visitors. Mexico is the picnic ground of all duckdom. On Lakes Tezcoco, Xochimilco and Chalco, near to Mexico City, the destruction of the wearied ducks is an occupation for hundreds of Indians, the birds being so tired after their long flight from sub-Arctic breeding grounds, that it is often many days before they are able to rise from the water, when once they have settled upon it. The Indians paddle among them with torches or in the moonlight, and club them to death, or gather them in with nets or even by hand, so easy a prey do they fall.

For many miles our train skirted these lovely sheets of water, and so tame were the waders and swimmers along the shores that they rarely took to flight, but swam and dove and flapped their wings and played among the sedges as though no railroad train were roaring by. Among them I looked for the splendid scarlet flamingo and roseate spoonbill, but happened to see none, although they are said often to frequent these shallow waters, but pelicans, herons and egrets I saw in thousands.

The first town of importance we reached, after leaving Acambaro, was Morelia, a city exceeding thirty thousand inhabitants, and the capital of the important state of Michoacan. The people gathered at the incoming of the train were rather darker in color than those in Mexico City, which seemed to indicate a greater infusion of Indian blood. Here we first beheld a number of priests garbed in cassock and shovel hat, a costume now forbidden by the laws.

At this station, too, we came upon a curious tuber which seemed to be cousin to the yam and the Irish potato. The Indians bake it and hand it to you bursting with mealy whiteness of a most palatable taste. The Mexican eats as opportunity occurs, and as opportunity is incessantly offered, he is always eating. At least, so it is with the Indian. Cooked food and fruits are sold at all times along the streets and highways everywhere. The hot tamale, and a dozen kindred peppered and scorching foods, are always to be had. Oranges and lemons, limes and pomegranates, figs and bananas, cocoanuts and sugar cane are sold at a price so low that the poorest can buy. Candied fruits are abundantly eaten, and delicious guava paste is handed up to the car windows on little trays.

Our sleeper went only as far as Morelia. After that we traveled in the day coach. Our traveling companions had been three or four Mexican gentlemen, who kept closely together, incessantly smoking cigarettes. In the day coach we were now traveling with people of the countryside. A tall, white-haired priest, in cassock and shovel hat, with bare feet thrust into black, leathern sandals, sat just in front of me. A large, brass crucifix, six or eight inches long, hanging about his neck, suspended by a heavy brass chain, was his only ornament. He was much interested in my kodak and watched me taking snap shots at the flying panorama. He indicated that he would like to have his own picture taken, arranging himself gravely for the ordeal. No sooner had I snapped the padre than several of his parishioners moved up and intimated that they also would be pleased to have me take their portraits. The film on which these pictures were taken was afterwards lost, or I should be able to present these friends to you.

As we drew near Patzcuaro, the car filled up, and among the incomers were a number of pretty señoritas of high-class Spanish type. Their skins were fair, their facial outlines were softly moulded and their large dark eyes were lustrous beneath their raven hair. Most of the ladies smoked cigarettes, for every car is a smoking car in this Spanish-Indian land. Very few Indians rode upon the train. The railway is too expensive a mode of traveling for them.

It was past the midday hour when we came to Patzcuaro, a city of perhaps ten thousand souls. For many miles we had followed the shores of the lake of that name. Far across the light green waters I noted many islands. Upon one of these stands the Mission Church, where is preserved the famous altar painting supposed to be by Titian—a picture so sacred that it has rarely been looked upon by white men, much less by a heretic gringo. I had hoped to be able to voyage across the lake and see the precious painting, despite the jealous care with which the Indians are said to guard it, but the hurry of travel has made this impossible.

A crowd of almost pure Indians was gathered to meet the train. They watched us closely, while we bargained for our trunks and bags to be carried upon the backs of eager cargadores two miles up the long hill to the town. We passengers entered an antique tram car, drawn by six mules. It was packed to suffocation, most of the occupants being ladies of the city, who had ridden down to see the train arrive and were now riding back again. Among them sat one whose cracking face, I was told, disclosed leprosy, a disease here not uncommon. Not many gringos visit Patzcuaro, and our strange foreign clothing and unknown speech were matters of curious comment. Our mules clambered up the hill at a gallop, urged by a merciless rawhide. We halted finally before a quaint and ancient inn, La Colonia. Through a big open doorway, into which a coach might drive, penetrating a high, white wall, we passed to an ill-paved interior courtyard, where our host, the landlord, greeted us with formal ceremony. He then led us up a flight of stone steps to a wide, stone-flagged piazza running round the interior of the court. We were there given rooms opening off this open corridor, each door being ponderously locked with a big iron key. I had scarcely reached my quarters before the cargadore brought in my trunk. He had carried it two miles upon his back in almost as quick time as we had traveled in the six-mule car. I paid him twenty-five cents (Mexican) for this service (ten cents in United States money). He bowed with gratitude at my liberal fee.

The inn faces upon a wide plaza around which are many ancient stone and adoby buildings, for Patzcuaro is an old city and was the chief Tarascon town before Cortez and his conquestedores made it the capital of a Spanish province. On one side of the plaza is a large and towered church, while beside it stand the extensive, crumbling walls of a dismantled convent. Upon the opposite side are many little shops, and upon the other two are inns of the city with their rambling courtyards, within which gather and disperse constantly moving streams of horsemen, mule drivers and pack beasts. Patzcuaro is the gateway through which a large commerce is borne by thousands of pack animals and Indian carriers to all the country in the southwest, even to La Union upon the Pacific, a hundred miles away. Until recently, through here also passed a large portion of the traffic which crossed the Rio de las Balsas and the Cordilleras to Acapulco.

My companions for the journey are three. There is “Tio,” as we have familiarly named him, who is leader of our company. He is a giant-framed mountaineer of the middle west, who has spent a life-time in prospecting the Rocky Mountains and the Cordilleras from Canada to Central America. Like all those of that fast disappearing race, the lone prospector, he is visionary and sanguine of temperament, and a delightful companion for a plunge among the wild and lonely regions of the Cordilleras. His imagination is eternally fired by the ignes-fatui of mineral wealth, and he has discovered, exploited and lost a hundred fortunes with no lessening of the gold-silver-copper hunger which incessantly gnaws his vitals. His muscles are of iron, his voice is deep and resonant. Kindly by nature, his solitary life has made him reticent and self-contained. Only incidentally do I learn of his past. A slight scar upon the back of his right hand is all that witnesses the smashing of a mescal-infuriated Indian who once went up against him with murderous two-bladed cuchillo; a bullet graze upon his brow is his only reference to a duel-to-the-death, where, it is whispered, the black eyes of a señorita were once involved. Grim and rugged and silent he declares himself to be a man of peace, and none there are who care to disturb this tranquility. But despite his austerity, Tio has a weakness. He is not a little vain of his mastery of the idiomatic intricacies of the Iberian tongue. Nothing delights him more than to dismay a humble peon by the sonorous bellowing of a salutation put in vernacular Spanish or Tarascon. He rides beside me and acquaints me with the history, geography and probable mineral riches of the land we traverse.

Then there is “El Padre” as we call him, who joins our party as our guest and for the pleasure and profit of seeing the wilder, remoter sections of the great state of Michoacan. He is virtually the Presiding Bishop of the Baptist Missionaries of Mexico, for as General Secretary he visits their different stations, handles the funds sent down by the General Board from Richmond, Virginia, and does invaluable work in organizing and directing the common propaganda. He is a native of Tennessee, a graduate of the University of that state, a cultivated, scholarly man who speaks classic Spanish and is master of local dialects as well. I find him greatly respected by the leading Mexicans whom we meet, and withal a most delightful and intelligent comrade. He is an adept at adjusting all those little comforts of the camp which only the practiced traveler can know, and by his bonhommie and courtesy wins the good will of señor and peon alike, while even the Roman padres we fall in with return his salutations with friendly greeting.

Izus Hernandes, our mozo, completes the party. He lives in Patzcuaro, where Señora Hernandes brings up his numerous brood, for he is father of eleven living children. He is short and slender, with dark black beard covering his face. His color is pale brown, and like most of the population hereabouts, he has in his veins much Tarascon blood. His manners are gentle and courteous, even suave to Tio and El Padre and myself, but his orders are sharp and peremptory to the horseboys and stablemen of the ranchos and fondas where we stop. He has spent his lifetime traversing these trails between Patzcuaro and La Union and Acapulco, driving bands of pack animals and acting as escort for parties of Dons and Doñas when trusty guards have been in demand. He supplies his own pack animals, is past master in cinching on a load, and makes all bargains and pays all bills in our behalf. He is our courier and valet of the camp combined. And he proves himself worthy of his hire—two silver pesos (80 cents United States) per day—for he never fails us throughout the trip.

Our horses have been picked with care and newly shod. Tio bestrides a mettlesome white mare, while El Padre rides a chestnut sorrel, lean and toughened to the trail and gaited with giant stride, a famous horse for fatiguing days of mountain travel. For myself has been reserved the choicest of the mount, an iron-limbed black mule—the mule is the royal and honored saddle-beast in all Spanish lands—a beast well evidencing Isus’ discerning choice.