CHAPTER XIV.

THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLE-FOOT.

But the pulque farmer does not permit the plant to blossom. When it shows indication of shooting up its central bud as large as a cabbage, the same is cut out, leaving a cavity capable of holding four or five quarts. Into this cavity the sap collects and is sold as agua miel or honey water. After twenty-four hours fermentation it becomes pulque, the national drink of Mexico, for, of the 350,000 inhabitants of the capital, 250,000 are pulque drinkers. A single plant can be milked five months and in that time will produce one hundred and sixty gallons of pulque. Each morning a small army of pulque gatherers will enter the field with long calabashes or gourds, through which they suck up the pulque on the siphon principle, and inject it into the pig-skin bottle held on the back by a band around the forehead. This skin-bottle is the same that is mentioned in the New Testament and is secured entire from the animal, and with the ends at the hoof tied and loaded with pulque, has the exact semblance of a hog on a man’s shoulder. The pulque must reach market the same day it is gathered, as it becomes vinegar within twenty-four hours, so special pulque trains run on all roads entering the city.

Seventy five thousand gallons is the daily consumption in the City of Mexico, and the railroads make a thousand dollars a day for carriage, and the custom houses collect on each gallon as it enters the garitas or city gates. When the sap first appears it is greenish in color and sweet, hence its name of agua miel, or honey water. Carbonic acid soon collects as fermentation advances, and then it is called pulque. Pulque has the color of soapsuds, almost the consistency of molasses and a compound taste not found in the dictionary nor listed in Materia Medica. As to smell, it is a cross between a slaughter house and a compost heap of decaying vegetables. Fermentation is so rapid it would explode a cask in a few minutes, so the gatherers empty it from the pigskins into tinnacals or ox hides strapped to a wooden frame. To retard fermentation, it is poured into vats and a little milk and rennet are added, which do not quite coagulate it, but give it the aromatic odor of Limburger cheese. From these vats it is loaded on the trains and hurried to the city where it is again transferred in pigskin to wagons loaded with hogsheads with the bung open. In front of the retail pulqueria, the wagon stops and the final unloading begins. A hogshead is turned on its side at the rear of the wagon and the spigot is pulled, and the ropy liquid is passed through a large funnel into a pigskin on the ground, by passing through a leg. This pigskin holds as much as a beer keg, and when full, the huge porter replaces the spigot, wraps a string around the leg and shoulders the pig which looks natural enough to squeal. The porter empties this into five or six huge casks which are setting on the counter, where the dealers dole it out at a cent a glass to the hundreds who push and fight for standing room until the last cask is empty, and a similar scene will take place every day in the year.

Just opposite my window I watched a crowd for hours that had overflowed the sidewalk struggling to get inside and they did not thin out till ten barrels had been emptied, which means five hundred gallons. And the same is true for every pulqueria in the city from the time the first train load arrives till every cask is empty. Pulquerias have no written sign, but over each door is a plaited awning of green maguey leaves which has all the power that an electric lamp has to swarms of night insects. At one cent a drink, even the paupers can get gloriously inflated, and it takes half the police force to drag off those who find the streets too narrow for their new style of perambulating.

The ordinary simon pure pulque is just liquid filth, no more, no less. Private families remove the Limburger essence by means of a harmless chemical and add sugar and orange juice, but the dealer at the pulque joint knows better; he adds a quantity of marihuana to the cask, and presto! he has the regulation Kentucky tangle-foot, warranted to kill at forty rods. With one or two drinks of this, the Mexican’s eyes look two ways at once, and he just spoils for a fight, and at once hunts some one to disagree with him. He will walk up to a stranger and look him over in a zigzag way and say: “Viva Mejico.” The other fellow was just out hunting ducks himself, so he replies: “Viva Espania,” or “Viva Cuba Libre,” and then their heads and feet change places, and when they come to their senses they are lying on the soft side of a stone floor in the “husga” and wondering “Who struck Billy Patterson.” After witnessing the surging, seething mass of frenzied men and women with their savage Indian nature all ablaze with pulque, no one longer wonders at the large number of police he meets. The government is absolutely powerless to stop the sale of drugged pulque, and the number of deaths annually from pulque fights is incredible. In one year, the number of fights with knives alone was over six thousand in the capital. I know of no more dangerous animal than a Mexican loaded with pulque and marihuana, face distorted and blood-shot eyes aflame, and a knife in his belt. Blood is his glory and he loves a long knife which he can throw thirty feet with the accuracy of a pistol bullet.

Outside the cities the duello is the code of honor and the long knife the peacemaker. Among the cow boys and miners the friends of each tie their left hands together and stick a bowie-knife in the ground by each and walk off. The one that lives longest may cut the cords and come back to camp. If neither returns the boys know that they crossed the Styx together. Pulque is not the only drink made from the maguey, it is only the swill of the great unwashed. For the more epicurean tastes the root of the plant is roasted and distilled and from the product is a fiery liquid, which for courtesy is called mescal, but in reality is molten lava, and its nearest kin is another distillation called tequila, which is almost pure alcohol. They are sold in saloons at three cents a drink, and the American who attempts to wrestle with the monster takes a glass of mescal and a glass of water and tries to swallow them both at the same moment in order to keep the lining of his throat from scalding off as the lava goes down. The native, to show his contempt for the method, will look you in the eye and drink the fiery liquid without water. It brings water to his eyes, and the clotted blood-shot spots appear almost as rapidly as the shades of a chameleon on a rose bush. I saw a maniac suffering with delirium tremens from mescal, and a more pitiable object I have never seen. How he pleaded and begged for three cents, offering his soul in exchange just for one more drink before he died. I went to a restaurant and got him some soup and it had the effect of water upon a hydrophobia victim and I can only liken him to a caged hyena.

The maguey must not be called a profligate because it gives birth to five different intoxicating drinks; it serves other purposes as well. From the leaves the natives thatch their houses, and the spines make needles and pins. The fibre of the leaf is used in making rope, wrapping-twine, hammocks, sisal, mats, carpets, hairbrushes, brooms, baskets, paper and thread, firewood, and from the roots a very palatable food is made, and upon its bountiful leaves there feeds an army of green caterpillars about the size of your middle finger, and epicures do say that when they are properly stewed and set before you that you forget all about clam-bakes and gumbo soup and shrimp-pies and edible birds’ nests and just concentrate your mind upon the gusanos de la maguey, to all of which I say amen. I had to concentrate all of my attention and other things, too, to prevent a violent volcanic eruption just looking at the tempting morsel. I do not doubt the epicures in the least; on the contrary, I had so much faith in their judgment that I was willing to take their word without the caterpillars. But I did eat one dozen—by proxy, that is paying for them and enjoying that consumptive Mexican’s appetite as the whole dozen followed each other down the chute, but I might add, I had to put a weight on my stomach to avoid—well a catastrophe.

The maguey is absolutely independent of rain or moisture. It grows on the mesa that does not get a rain in six years. It is a bulbous plant and multiplies by suckers set in holes. The usual method is to take a crow-bar and dig a hole among the rocks and give it just enough earth to hold the roots and it will do the rest. There is nothing more beautiful than a maguey farm on the plains of Tlaxcala, with the plants set ten feet each way and spread over the plain for forty or fifty miles. The plants are so green they seem to have a blue tint, and the rows are so symmetrical, no matter which way you look, your vision will focus to a point in the distance where all rows converge to the vanishing point like the rails of a railroad on level ground. For a hundred miles south of the capital, every available rod of ground is planted in maguey which grows without any cultivation whatever, and will yield to the farmer ten dollars to the stalk during the single five months of its productive period. No field gets ripe at once. An acre with several hundred stalks may not have two dozen to come to maturity this year, and as soon as they are exhausted new bulbs are set in their stead, which makes a perpetual orchard. A plant that is to mature this year is easily known by the bleaching of the leaves as it yields its last vitality to the central bud.

Whenever the train stops, hordes of women gather around to sell to the passengers from earthen-ware vessels at a cent a drink. As the passenger lifts the putrid liquid, the dripping vessel leaves a trail of viscid streamers, like the gossamers of the bridging spider, or the saliva from an ox under the yoke, and especially if the wind is blowing, the network of sticky pulque streamers from car windows is just about as pleasant as the opening chorus of a candy-pulling, or the closing scene at a turpentine still.

In the families of the Spanish and French, pulque is never taken, but wines, champagne and sherry, are the household drinks, and the great national drink of America, lager beer, is slowly adding the dignified William goat and the overflowing schooner to the pictorial decorations of the Mexican house-fronts. The amount of liquid refreshments these people, especially the women, can embrace within their anatomy is astonishing. The dinner hour is prolonged from one to two hours in conversation and guzzling, and when a gentleman sees a lady’s glass empty at any part of the table, it is customary for him to walk around to her chair and fill the glass from his bottle; and these opportunities are eagerly sought by the watchful men, as it indicates a lack of attention to permit a lady’s glass to become empty. But I have never seen this class of people drunk or tipsy. The liquor must be very weak to permit so many bottles being emptied without a knockout.

A young Mexican at Guadalupe attempted to make his national drink aristocratic by giving it a lofty name. He asked me if I would not seal our good friendship by joining him in a glass of vino blanco. I told him I did not know what white wine was, as red was the only fast color the Americans patronized, but I would seal the friendship all right and let him drink for both of us. To this he raised not a particle of objection. I doubt if any such magnanimous windfall had ever come his way before when he could drink for two. He landed me in a pulque joint and this was my awakening to the vino blanco.

I had come in search of knowledge, and found it by means of my nose, which I had to hold while I grandiloquently told him to “tank up.” The proprietor brought him a half gallon rancid soapsuds, which he first offered me. I backed off and told him I had not done a thing to him to deserve such punishment, and besides, soapsuds more than a week old always went against my constitution and by-laws, and that I was subject to heart-failure anyway, and had to guard against undue exertion, such as vomiting, etc. He said it was not soapsuds, but “vino blanco,” (pulque nueva), and if I did not believe it was new pulque, just smell. I told him that was exactly what ailed me now, I had smelled and was leaning against the counter on account of it, and if he would just let me off I would burn a candle to his choice saint. After my friend had “tanked up” and swallowed most of the fragrance, I was able to stand up once more, and then I very kindly asked that proprietor if he did not think that stuff was ripe enough to bury. I said, “Sir, in my country when a corpse is kept till the flies swarm in the house, it is a sure sign that it is time for the funeral. Now sir, just look at the flies.” “O yes,” said he, “los muscos love vino blanco also, and they come because they know a good thing when they se—smell it.” Now what was the use of wasting logic on this logician? So my friend and I entered the street. It was a warm day, and while we had argued, I think the heat had contracted the street. At any rate it was much too narrow for my friend and his vino blanco, and he and a lamp-post had quite an argument about who had the right of way.

I think the post must have hit him below the belt from the way he fell out, and with the guilt of the act resting so heavy on my conscience I fled from the scene and vowed I would never buy soapsuds any more for my poor, martyred Guadalupe guide.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CITY OF THE ANGELS.

“Once upon a time,” as all good stories should begin, the Indians saw angels hovering over the place when it was an Indian village, before the Conquest, and hence its name. Another version is that one of the good bishops was looking for a site on which to build a town, and in his dream saw a vision of two angels measuring town lots on the border hills of a beautiful plain, and went right out and found the place where Puebla now stands to agree with his dream, and forthwith founded the city. Still a more recent explanation is given, that when they were building the church, angels built as much wall by night as the workmen built by day; and if you are disposed to doubt the statement, why, they show you the church itself, which ought to convince the most skeptical.

The cathedral is built of massive basalt, and is thought by many to be much finer than the cathedral of the capital. It fronts the Plaza Mayor, and is built upon a platform of porphyry with Doric and Ionic superstructure. The inside is bedizened with glitter and tawdry jimcracks as usual, entirely out of keeping with the beauty and magnificence of the building. The main altar is gilded with gold to the value of a hundred thousand dollars, and before Maximilian’s time there hung from the ceiling a famous chandelier of pure gold, also valued at a hundred thousand dollars. The church party was backing Maximilian, so the lamp was melted into coin to pay the army. In the towers are eighteen bells, the largest weighing ten tons. Why these churches have so many bells that are not rung, and have no chimes is another of the unanswered questions, and must remain so until the last call. The pulpit is of pure onyx, and the floor of glistening marble, and over the door-way is the insignia of the Golden Fleece. The two grand organs are encased and decorated with as fine work of sculpture as can be found anywhere, and the walls are lined with costly paintings. Of course here is shown a piece of the original crown of thorns.

In the church of San Francisco is a doll brought over by Cortez and carried by him through all his campaigns. It is an image of the Virgin, and the benighted natives venerate it as though it were a god, and this is but an index to the christianity of the country. The name of Christ is rarely heard, and the name of Jesus is so secular that you may go into a hotel corridor and say$1‘Jesus!’ and a half dozen men will answer and come to you. Go into any crowd and say the same word, and there will always be some one named Jesus, and possibly several. It is rather painful to your piety to have some bandit try to pass a pewter quarter on you or to keep the odd cents in a trade, and then to know the rascal is named Jesus Maria Magdalene. There is not a Christ Church to be found in all this land of churches, and as a means of saving grace, Christ is not counted. In the Mexican Catholic Church, the people pray to the powers in the order of their importance; first to the Mother of God, “Most Holy Mother,” second, to the saints, and lastly they mention the name of the Infant Jesus as being the son of Mary. In the prayers and in the sermons and in the paintings he is always figured as an infant in the arms of the Virgin, or the Man of Sorrows with his heart on the outside of his anatomy. After looking at a thousand such pictures one is tempted to believe that the X-ray is not such a modern innovation after all. In the case of the twelve stations on the march to Calvary, with the aid of red paint all the horrors and mental anguish that the human frame can endure are displayed in life-size as a scourge to the laggard believer.

I do not fancy the poetry of Burns, but these grewsome images of wax and papier mache with the real thorns on his head and the red paint gore dripping everywhere, always recall the lines:

The impression it always makes on me is that the threat is always implied: “If you do not repent, you will be treated in the same manner,” and I honestly believe the Indians so interpret it. In the nave of these churches are hung the twelve apostles, in all stages of ancient martyrdom and modern dilapidation. Statues with broken or missing legs and streams of red paint gore pouring in congealed rivulets from Roman scourges and spear-points savor more of the bull-ring than of a sanctuary. On the altar is a copy of the Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments, translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised; but out of its lids of solid silver bedecked with ribbons and symbols, they hear not a word of christian living, nor of the beautiful life of Christ, nor of their duty to their fellow man, but prostrate before these gory statues the worshipers go round and round, counting their beads and crossing themselves and gazing upon the ghastly anatomies before them, and this is their worship. If they are oppressed with the weight of earthly sins they are told to pray to the Holy Mother of God to intercede with St. Peter in behalf of the afflicted one, and in addition to burn candles upon the altar of Saint Francis or Saint Xavier, who have the contract to use their good offices in behalf of the sinner, said sinner guaranteeing to burn so many candles in acknowledgement, which candles can be had from the church commissary two doors to the rear on the right. And this is the substitute the Aztecs got by renouncing their idolatry. They asked bread and received a stone.

Puebla is called the City of the Angels, but it ought to be called the City of Churches. This was always the bulwark of the Church of Rome in the New World and was the last to succumb to the new order of things under Juarez. This is the city that backed Maximilian in his fight against the patriots and quartered the French army for seven years, and where the auto-de-fe of the Inquisition was pushed with all the zeal of Torquemada. When Juarez destroyed the church party, Pueblo had a dozen nunneries and as many monasteries, with all their concomitant cess-pools of vice, as Maria Monk so vividly describes in her Montreal experience. Under the liberal educational crusade of President Diaz, the people are becoming too enlightened to ever revert to the old regime.

Puebla is a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants and ranks as the fourth city in importance. It is the market for the beautiful onyx which is mined near the city. It is in a fertile valley, and for miles and miles to the rim of the mesa lies one of the most beautiful scenes within the Republic. Three volcanoes and three other snow-capped peaks overlook the city. From Mount Malinche the city I think gets its pure water brought by aqueducts. Puebla is the key to the country in time of war as it commands the approach to the sea. It was captured by Iturbide, Aug. 2, 1821; by Scott, May 25, 1847; occupied by the French, May 5, 1862; captured by the French, May 17, 1863; Recaptured by the Mexicans, Apr. 3, 1867. The old fort on the Hill of Guadalupe must be visited. Here the Mexicans under Porfirio Diaz defeated a veteran French army May 5, 1862, and earned their right to the national holiday of “Cinco de Mayo.”

Though the city is over seven thousand feet above the sea, the valley produces everything, wheat, rye, cochincal, maize, cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, coal and iron, stone quarries, and lime and kaolin for porcelain, dye woods, and all kinds of tropical fruit in luxuriance, and the valleys of alfala feed the finest beef steers it has ever been my good fortune to see. The city was built in 1532 and is a model of neatness, and as no animal matter decomposes at this altitude the presence of disagreeable odors is unknown. Six railroads enter the town and the tramvias lead to many interesting suburbs. Twenty-five miles away is Popocatapetl, but with no forest or hill between the city and the volcanoes to proportionate the distance, it hardly appears five miles. If you wish to ascend the volcanoes, the Inter-Oceanic train stops at the small station of Amecameca at the foot, where guides and a two days’ supply of provisions are furnished.

Here upon the second highest mountain in America, and the third highest in the world, you may sit in the snow and cool yourself off after the exertion of the climb. I cooled off at the bottom and climbed it by proxy. My proxy said the view from the crater was magnificent and I felt satisfied. The street-car line that leads to Cholula passes over the Atoyac near the city across a very quaint, old arched bridge, built when the city was born. About five hundred yards to the right of the track is the natural wonder of Coxcomate. From the car window it looks like a pile of white stones or a well bleached haystack, but on a nearer approach it proves to be a tumulus of white calcareous stone, evidently of water formation, about fifty feet in height and a hundred in diameter at the base, and the form is that of a truncated cone. At the apex is an elliptical opening, twenty-five feet along its minor and fifty along its major axis. It is a bell-shaped cavity and lined with ferns of various descriptions. The depth is about a hundred feet, and its width along the bottom about sixty. On one side of the bottom is a mass of gorgeous ferns, and on the other a pool of water.

Of course Coxcomate has it legends. One is that the Aztecs were wont to worship the genius of this spot, and occasionally to throw in human victims to appease his subterranean majesty. It is also said that the Spanish Inquisition used to cast in heretics and leave them where they could calmly meditate upon the controverted points of doctrine. Whatever its former use, it is a curious freak of nature, situated in the midst of a level plain. It seems to have been a volcanic bubble, of which there are many in this country.

From Puebla a branch road takes us to Santa Ana, and a tram-way from there to ancient Tlaxcala, the capital of Tlaxcala. Tlaxcala was a republic in ancient times, as were also Cholula and Huexotzinco, and these were life-long enemies of the Aztecs; and it was by fanning this blaze that Cortez united them to conquer the Aztecs, and to the Tlaxcalans is due the credit of the Conquest. They were faithful to the uttermost to the Spaniards, and in the first defeat gave Cortez a home and haven until he could collect another army, and again followed him, this time to victory. Cortez always appreciated this kindness, and it is here in squalid little Tlaxcala, degenerated into a village of five thousand diminutive people, that more relics of Cortez are found than at any other place.

The municipal palace contains four oil paintings bearing the date of the Conquest, and the banner of Spain which Cortez carried throughout his conquering career. The material is of heavy brocaded silk which sadly shows its age. It is nine by six feet, cut swallow-tail and is nearly perfect, though approaching four hundred years old. The iron spear-head bears the monogram of the rulers of Spain, and the original staff, now broken, is kept with it. Immense sums have been offered for it from Spain, but the Tlaxcalans refuse all offers. Here are also the arms of Tlaxcala, illuminated on parchment, and bearing the signature of Charles V., and the standards presented to the chiefs by Cortez, as well as the robes in which the chiefs were baptized. Here also are a collection of Tlaxcalan idols and the treasure-chest of Cortez, which was locked by four different keys and could be opened only when all four guardians were present together. Here is to be seen the oldest church in Mexico, San Francisco, built three hundred and eighty years ago, under plans furnished by Cortez himself. The roof is supported by carved cedar beams brought from Spain, and in a little chapel is the original pulpit from which the Christian religion was first preached in the new world.

Here of course you see the crude figures of bleeding saints and sublimated martyrs and harrowing crucifixions, painted in all their mangled horrors to hold in awe the superstitious native. As the Greek boasts forever of Marathon and Thermopylæ, so with the Tlaxcalans in their departed glory. A more squalid lot cannot be found than upon the sun baked mesa of Tlaxcala. Living in adobe huts and filth and rags, it requires the light of history to convince you that these were once warriors second to none in the valley, who boldly met the Spaniards in open battle when first they saw each other.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PYRAMID OF CHOLULA.

With his usual exaggeration, Cortez said that from its summit four hundred heathen temples could be seen. At present the town of Cholula contains about six thousand inhabitants, and I counted only fifty-four church steeples seen from its summit, of course omitting those visible in Puebla. Naturally Cholula has its legends, and what ancient edifice has not? The Aztecs knew nothing of the history of the pyramid. According to Toltecan tradition, it was built by the followers of Quetzacoatl. Among all nations of Anahuac, the god of air was Quetzacoatl, “Feather-decked-serpent,” the great, good and fair god. He had been a high priest in old Tollan, and according to all the statues representing him, was bearded and had a white skin. He was a god of peace and discouraged war and animal sacrifice, and introduced the culture of maize and cotton and the smelting of metals and the working of stone. When he wished to promulgate a law, he sent a hero whose word could be heard a hundred leagues away to proclaim it from the summit of Tzatzitepetl, “The mountain of clamors.” Under his tutelary care, maize grew to such a size that a single ear was all a man could carry, and cotton grew with all the colors already in it. In a word, the Aztecs believed that the reign of Quetzacoatl was the golden age of the country.

Tezcatlipoca (shining mirror) was the principal god next to Teotl, having descended to earth by means of a spider’s web. He fought with the high-priest Quetzacoatl, and then told him it was the will of the gods that he journey to the ancient kingdom of Tlapallan. Quetzacoatl was escorted out by a number of people singing hymns, and finally reached Tolula. His gentle manners and integrity won the hearts of the Cholulans, so he dwelt with them and taught them the arts of civilization, the smelting of metals, the weaving of cloth and the making of delicate pottery. After a sojourn of twenty years at Cholula, Quetzacoatl decided to continue his journey to Tlapallan and departed toward the sea, saying he would return. Gradually the report spread that he was dead; he was then proclaimed a god by the Toltecs of Cholula, and was afterwards proclaimed protector of the city, in the center of which they reared the pyramid to his honor and crowned the top with a temple. In this temple was an image of the “god of the air,” wearing a mitre on his head waving with plumes of fire, and around his neck a resplendent collar of gold, in his ears pendants of mosaic turquoise, in one hand a jeweled sceptre, and in the other a shield, curiously painted, the emblem of his rule over the winds. The sanctity of the place and the magnificence of the temple spread, until the worship of Quetzacoatl was shared by all the nations of Anahuac, and Cholula became a Mecca, the Holy City of the Valley.

Quetzacoatl created a new religion based on fasting, penitence and virtue, and he belonged to another race than the one he civilized, but what was his country? In all the Aztec writings and on all his statues he is called “the fair god,” and when Cortez landed in Mexico, Montezuma refused to make war upon him, saying, “It is the return of Quetzacoatl.” The Cholulans forgot the art of war in the pursuit of the arts of peace as taught by Quetzacoatl, and Cholula became the great emporium of the plateau. Cholula became a dependency of the Aztecs, and this gave offence to the Tlaxcalans, the bold Swiss mountaineers of Anahuac, who were the enemies of the Aztecs. So when Cortez arrived and conquered the Tlaxcalans, they were only too willing to join him against the Cholulans. It was in 1519 that Cortez selected six thousand Tlaxcalans and a large number of Cempoallans and marched against the city of Cholula. Cortez had been invited by the ruler to visit the city and was the guest of the nobility, but here is shown one of the blackest spots in his entirely perfidious character. Cortez left the main part of his army outside the city with instructions to rush in when the signal gun should be fired, and to weave sedges around their heads so as to be distinguished from the Cholulans in the slaughter. The next morning he had his men to conceal their arms and assemble around the great square. He then sent word to the princes and all persons of distinction in the city that he desired a conference with them in the square, and they came to do honor to their invited guest, followed by the thousands, curious to look upon the strange horses and fair-skinned strangers. Then Cortez, to make a pretext for his deed, accused the chiefs of plotting treachery against him, and at the signal, his army closed in the three sides of the square and began the slaughter of the unarmed inhabitants. All the accumulated hatred of the Indian allies was let loose in this hour of vengeance. All within the square were slaughtered, including all the persons of distinction of the republic, and then the butchers with fire and sword spread through the streets of the city, and to the summit of the pyramid.

The statue of Quetzacoatl was thrown down and robbed of its treasures. The temple was fired, and in the blaze of its destruction the savages, both Spanish and Indians loaded themselves with booty from the thrifty Cholulans, and with his sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other, the missionary bandit, Cortez, offered the remaining inhabitants a respite if they would accept baptism and acknowledge the King of Spain as their sovereign! Under the guise of friendship, and while accepting the hospitality of his host, this Christian savage stooped to a perfidy which the natives scorned.

This sacred city whose court magnificence rivaled the pomp of Montezuma’s capital became a Golgotha. Upon the top of the pyramid where was the temple, stands a catholic church, and in front an ancient cross which the priest told me was almost as old as the Conquest. At the northeast of the plaza where the massacre occurred stands the Church of Seven Naves, which was built by the special order of Cortez from models of the Cathedral Mosque of Cordova in Spain. The chapel has sixty-four supporting columns, and the small mullioned windows and Moorish frescoes give it a repose of perfect harmony with its peaceful environments. I sat in the plaza that had once flowed in blood. It was July 18, and the populace was celebrating the anniversary of the death of the patriot Juarez, and as the glare of fire-works cast unnatural shadows among the stately trees, I was reminded that Cholula once furnished the toys and fire-works for the whole valley. This industrious people was called in derision “the race of traders;” and even as I sat, the keen-eyed boys detected the presence of strangers and scented a trade in “antiquias.” After throwing a few stones at a tree, they leisurely drifted by me, and finally returned, and mysteriously drew from their pockets curious toys and fragments of pottery in a pattern different from any now made, and declared them to be “antiquias viejas de Cholula.” These people are up to date and can make you a relic to order if they only know what you want, and will date it back as far as you wish; but these were the simon-pure article of Cholula as she was in her halcyon days.

Near Cholula are smaller pyramids very similar to those of the Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley. Stretching across the fertile valley the shadows point to Popocatapetl, only six leagues away, but the diaphanous atmosphere would make you believe it only one. The ancient capital is now a compact village of six thousand people, as silent and bereft of enterprise as though it dwelt under the spell of the Enchanted City in the Arabian Nights. The young men were discussing the independence of “Cuba Libre;” the women were at church, and the Indian women from the hills with their babies strapped to their backs and their bare feet upon the pavement, glided more like phantoms of a vanished race than realities of the present. Though 380 years have passed since that awful remembrance, its every aspect seems to accent its Bartholomew’s day. The silence is oppressive, so we climb the pyramid to view the valley, and such a view! To the north six leagues is Tlaxcala; to the south and reaching the horizon an endless valley; to the east, Puebla and the gateway to the gulf; and to the west the two snow-capped volcanoes, and within these boundaries a garden spot that equals the valley of Mexico.

Throughout this broad expanse are hamlets and orchards and pastures and fields of evergreen maguey and cochineal, cactus and tropical fruits. The scene is like a picture or the mirage of some unseen habitation. The animals and men in the distance creep like insects in a pantomime. Not a column of smoke to denote the presence of a factory nor the revolution of a single wheel of commerce. A blast of a tin horn from the horse-car tells us this is the last car to Puebla tonight, and we leave the beautiful sunset glistening from the snow-clad peak of Popocatapetl, and leave the unsolved riddle of the pyramid to the ages.

CHAPTER XVII.

LAS TIERRAS CALIENTAS.

A few shepherds wrapped in serapes were constantly on the watch to keep the gaunt and restless wanderers within their imaginary boundaries, for it was contrary to custom to allow one flock to eat the sand that belongs to another. The miserable huts of the natives are measured by the length of the discarded cross-ties of the railroad. A quadrangle of these stuck a foot in the ground and thatched with maguey leaves and the citizen is “at home.” So is the donkey or whatever other animal he possesses. Sometimes he has several razorback pigs tethered by a foot to the end of a rope and they root in the ground and hone their backs against the cross-tie that answers for a door-post and are happy. As the train approaches a station, scores of women and girls press around the car windows beseeching the passengers to buy fruits at the first class cars, and cooked provisions at the second and third. The most of the first class passengers are Americans, and as a rule they do not invest heavily in Mexican provisions. They say it requires too much faith to eat them.

And pulque. How could we get along without the fragrant pulque? With a large earthen jar in her left hand, and a small one without handle in her right, she anxiously seeks purchasers. When a purchaser is found, down goes that right hand, fingers and all to the bottom of the jar, and as it comes up full, the white, ropy fluid frescoes with its sticky streamers everything in reach. In their anxiety to out-sell each other, the anxious eyes are scanning every window for engagements while the right hand mechanically is immersed to the wrist in the larger vessel. At one cent a drink, and often as many vendors as purchasers, two or three cents is the average revenue these people make from a train that passes only twice a day. It is sad to see the hungry pleading eyes of these half-naked women as they in vain offer their scanty wares to people who do not buy. I have bought food from one of these beggars and given it to another just to see them eat, and no starved beast could have shown greater hunger and zeal with which they picked up every crumb from the ground.

In the cities beggars are kept scarce by the police, but on these plateaux they swarm, and grown men and women will crowd around the train, and their clothing would not average two yards to the person. Only twice did I see beggars attempting to offer an equivalent for the alms they begged—at La Barca on the Mexican Central Road where two blind beggars with cracked voices and rheumatic guitars inflicted the painful combination upon the unoffending passengers. I think the grimaces were given without charge, and only the music was expected to be paid for, but I am sure my coppers were given for the heroic efforts of that face to reach the sublimity of the music. The face was always about three and a half flat keys below the instrument, and the much abused instrument made no attempt to catch up with that wonderful voice, but plodded along with her “reglar steady” for all pieces. Those three organizations covered the whole baseball diamond in their progress, but they all got together at the home base, and while the worthy Mrs. Beggar collected the pennies, the crowd cheered the first warbler and called for the second. Each one had the pitch that belonged to the other fellow’s songs, but the crowd got it all anyway so what was the difference? Anyway they were the only beggars that offered a quid pro quo and the crowd forgave them much, even as they had sinned much against the musical profession in traveling on the high C’s without any chart.

Out of pure charity I took one of the Mrs. Beggar aside and very softly asked her if she did not think an ordinary three-cornered file would help her husband’s voice and also his throat. The word “throat” was my Waterloo. Lifting her coal black eyes to mine she looked the thanks she uttered as she said: “Lord, señor, a thousand thanks, that is the very thing, he has not had a square meal today.” When will people learn that everything intended for the throat is not to be eaten? Such gross ignorance discourages my good Samaritan impulse and seriously interferes with my work as a reformer. The same thing happened at a restaurant where the same dish of butter had kept guard on the table so long that it was being consumed by its own inactivity, and was making itself felt further and further from its base of operations. Out of pure charity for my fellow boarders, I heroically made a martyr of myself and relieved the old guard which “died but never surrendered,” so the other fellows might have a fresh dish, and what was the result? Bismillah! that eagle-eyed waiter reported that I just actually made my living off that brand of butter, and next meal the old guard had been replaced by a whole pound of the same vintage but more vigorous and loud. Such ignorance leads people to misinterpret my noble motives. Now, here I was trying to make good music for coming generations, by offering that old lady a file to rasp down the nightingale’s fog horn, and she thinks I am so entranced with the unearthly music that I want to show my appreciation by giving them a cubic meal. Alas this thankless world! It was ever thus.

I said they were the only beggars that paid for their alms, but I make one exception. Between Guadalajara and San Pedro a beggar has a gold mine. Not what you would call a gold mine, but it is one for him. He has a fortune in his knees, which got on the wrong side of his legs, and as the street-car stops to change mules he painfully hobbles on crutches to the car, makes his exhibit, collects the coppers and hobbles back to his seat to wait for the next car, and he never utters a word. He has what ordinary people call “a sure thing.” He always made me think of the tramp and the dog. The dog found the tramp in the hay-mow and growled. The tramp said: “Good doggie, good doggie,” and the dog wagged his tail but kept growling. The tramp said: “It may be all right, but I don’t know which end to believe.” So every time my beggar friend turned his face away from the car, his knees and feet seemed to try to come back, and I did not know which end to believe. This beggar question is too large and has made me wander away from my subject. I was talking about the women sousing their dirty hands into the pulque, but small matters like that do not count. The old saw is still in vogue, that we must all eat our peck of dirt before we die, and so we in Mexico just eat our peck and get the dreaded duty from our minds.

There are many more miles of desert and pastures where the cattle still feed upon sand, and then we come to the fortress of San Juan de Los Llanos. In the midst of the desert where it never rains, and where there is no green thing in sight, lies this huge fortress of St. John of the Plains. For four hundred years this has been the King’s highway from the gulf to the capital, and all the treasures of gold and silver to Europe, and of merchandise from Europe have had to pass along here in caravans of pack-animals and armed escorts. This road was a veritable Captain Kidd’s treasure-house to the hundreds of bandits that have swarmed through this country, so it is no more of a policy than necessity that the soldiers are here.

We are now nearing the rim of the plateau and pass through miles of rich mining country until we leave the state of Puebla and enter the state of Vera Cruz. We are a hundred miles from the sea and eight thousand feet above it on the backbone of the Cordilleras. Around us is white frost, and in four hours we shall be in perpetual summer. We are above the clouds and everything is invisible. The clouds envelop the train like a pall, and we are conscious of only one thing; we are plunging down the mountain with breaks down, and with the descent of one hundred and thirty-three feet to the mile. A rift in the clouds discloses a semi-tropical forest, and upon every tree are myriads of beautiful orchids of blue, red, scarlet, orange—every color and in the greatest profusion. A thousand feet below is a little town we are trying to reach. The train approaches it first on this side and then on that, and winds down the mountain in a kind of spiral, and at last stops at the station. Above us is the track we have just left, and if a rock was loosed from it, it would fall upon the roof of the train at the station. There is one place on the road where a stone dropped from a car window would hit the track at two separate levels. It is a journey one never wants to take twice by daylight. If you pass the dangers at night you save the nervous speculation as to what would happen if a wheel should break on the brink of a chasm a thousand feet deep, and a floating cloud conceals the nature of the rocks you would land upon in the awful depths below.

Every few hundred yards by the track are wooden crosses and stone cairns. I ask my neighbor: “Porque las cruces?” He devotedly crosses himself and mentions them as unfortunate meeting places of travelers and bandits, and after the meeting the traveler still remained. Every one who passes considers it his duty to add a stone to the cairn.

At the stations the half-clad natives, shivering in the chill mountain air, offer food and beautiful flowers for sale. Orange blossoms from the valley and a dozen other rare blossoms the foreigner has never seen, and the beautiful orchids with the roots done up in leaves are offered for a real, (12½ cents) which would cost five or six dollars at an American florist’s.

Down, down we go, through dark canons and over spider bridges and below the clouds. Now our wraps are uncomfortably warm and we lay them aside and open the windows. From every where comes the odors of rare tropical flowers and the iridescent rays of beautiful butterflies, and we are half down the mountain at Jalapa (Halapa). Jalapa is a city of fifteen thousand population, and was once the capital of Vera Cruz and has much to endear it to the tourist. As the train stops you enter a street-car drawn by six mules which will carry you to town on the hillside of Meniltepec. When you wish to come back to the train, the brakes are set and the car will bring you back itself, and the mules will be down after a while to draw it back. It is a regular toboggan affair, and you feel as if you were shooting the chutes, were it not for the heavy bumpers that would stop you were the brakes to give way. I think the Mexican style of carrying the babies slung over the back must have originated in Jalapa. If a nurse should undertake to roll a baby carriage, and while talking to a policeman should let the buggy get a start down any street, it would shoot the chute for Vera Cruz on an incline of thirty degrees.

Before the Inter-Oceanic Rail Road was completed the street-cars ran to Vera Cruz, seventy miles away, and all the company had to do was to mass their mules in Vera Cruz and their cars in Jalapa and start the cars on schedule time with enough brakemen to prevent a hot box. The streets are not quite as crooked as a corkscrew, and not quite as straight as a cow-trail when she is grazing, and starting from the top, each first floor window looks out upon its neighbor’s house-top. It rains here about eight days in the week. The town is four thousand feet above sea level, and just behind it is the Copre de Perote peak, thirteen thousand four hundred and three feet high, and plenty high to catch the rain clouds from the gulf. When they strike the jagged edge of this toboggan slide which holds Jalapa, they simply disgorge and go back for another load. They seem to be a very faithful, conscientious set of clouds that put in a good day’s work and never grumble about working over-time or the agitation of an eight hour system. I got tired carrying my umbrella. It would rain half an hour and sunshine half an hour till the next cloud got snagged on that mountain, and so between them there was no rest for my umbrella. I am always full of good motives and advice, and the same work a lawyer wants ten dollars for, I distribute with a lavish ha—mouth. Armed with my good intentions and my dripping umbrella, I called upon a member of the city council and suggested the idea of filing off the rough edges of the mountain so it would not snag the clouds and drench the people so often, but my words and good intentions were all wasted. Those citizens have been sliding down hill so long and been drawn up again by mules, they have no energy whatever, and would never climb that mountain till they got street-cars up there. And besides, if the cloud system was altered they would have to establish a different sewer-system, and that means work, and of course they would not.

These clouds have done one thing though, they have banished the thatch roof, and every house is built of stone and roofed with half-cylindrical brick tiles which project a full yard over the eaves. This constant drizzle has killed the usefulness of the old and tried friend—the almanac. You don’t have to ask when it will rain for you know it will rain in half an hour. Then it is no pleasure looking in the almanac to see when the first frost will fall so we can gather chestnuts or pecans, because frost never comes, and fall never comes, and winter never comes, but it just stays one eternal spring. The trees are always green and if a leaf falls another grows in its place, and if you pluck an orange another blossom springs out immediately, and if you cut a bunch of bananas, a new shoot starts up for another stem, and as fast as you pick the coffee berry, a perfect shower of snow white blossoms appear.

There is absolutely no season. Four crops of corn can be grown, allowing ninety days to each crop. Sugar and coffee and tobacco are the main crops. The state of Vera Cruz borders the gulf for five hundred miles with an average width of seventy-five, and in all that territory, the soil does nothing but push things out. The Indian takes a sharp stick and makes a hole in the ground and drops a grain of corn, covering it with his foot, and ninety days afterwards he gathers his crop, and that is absolutely all he does in the way of labor. A banana stem will spring up eight or ten inches in diameter with several bunches of bananas and eighty to the bunch. He gathers them and knocks the stalk down and presto! another springs from the roots, and this he does perpetually.

The coffee plant is the most beautiful plant in this region, and bears till the slender branches touch the ground. The fruit is like our cherries or plums, and the natives eat it as we do cherries, and only the seed is sold for drinking. All around Jalapa in the forest grows the vanilla vine so dear to the cake and ice-cream fraternity. The vine grows all over the forest like grape vines, and is not cultivated. The flowers are greenish yellow with spots of white, and the pods grow in pairs like snap-beans, six inches long and as large as your finger. They are first green and then yellow, and when fully ripe are brown. The pods are dried in the sun and then touched up with palm oil to make them shine. The Indians make a good living by gathering the pods and selling them in Jalapa, which is the chief market for vanilla. They also gather from these woods sarsaparilla, which has its home here. All druggists keep on their shelves a drug called Jalap, which grows here and gets its name from the old town of Jalapa. With pine-apples and plantains and limes and apricots and pomegranates and bread fruit and sugar and coffee and tobacco all growing at their doors, what wonder is it that the people all say, “Jalapa is a bit of heaven dropped down to earth.” All they need is a tree to grow hammocks ready-made and swinging, and the millennium has come. It is situated near the foot of the volcano of Orizaba, the second highest mountain in America outside of Alaska, and the rich hills and valleys are covered with vast heaps of volcanic tufa and ashes which are natural fertilizers.

The American army on its march from Vera Cruz stopped here to shoot the chutes—and the natives—and exchange hospitality with them. The natives have a very vivid recollection of that visit, and on the principal street stands a tall granite monument with this inscription:

“SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE NATION’S HEROES
WHO DIED IN DEFENSE OF THEIR COUNTRY
AGAINST THE AMERICAN INVASION IN 1847.”

The thing is so absolutely true and incisive that most Americans who read it like to quietly slip off to another street where there is no grim accuser. Every time he looks dispassionately back at that war he feels like the big bully who slugged the little boy in the street just because the boy had spunk enough to fight back, and then took all his apples. California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona must always feel like blood money to the American people, as they were taken from Mexico to extend slave territory.

Santa Anna was born in this town, and the reckless traveling up and down these toboggan streets must have given him his dare-devil spirit which marked every stage of his eventful life.

Jalapa is the summer resort of the moneyed people of Vera Cruz. Every May when the Yellow Fever awakes from his sleep in Vera Cruz, the brave citizens in a body back up the hill to Jalapa and shake their fists at him and dare him to cross the line, and the fever does not dare. They would simply pull a plug out of one of their special clouds and flood him back to the sea. There must have always been a city here: behind the present city are stone pyramids fifty feet high, and countless foundations of stone walls laid in cement. There are oak trees four feet in diameter growing through pavements laid in hewn stone and cement. The architecture is different from that of the Aztec, and there is neither language nor tradition as to who built these ancient ruins. They lie towards the coast between Jalapa and Orizaba.

Tell it not in Gath, but they do say that the most beautiful women in Mexico live in Jalapa. “Bewitching, alluring are the women of Jalapa,” is what the natives mean when they say: “Las Jalapenas son halaguenas.” Perhaps this accounts for the saying that Jalapa is a part of paradise let down to earth. The prevailing type of beauty here is the blonde with blue eyes and brown hair, while elsewhere it is the brunette with black eyes and hair. After one has seen las Jalapenas halaguenas, the old churches and the musty paintings lose their interest. The old town shows its age probably more than any other in Mexico, and if these old stones could speak they might tell us of the building of Cholula. Whatever is old in Mexico is still older in Jalapa. Excursions to Coatepec and Jelotepec, about six miles away, may be made on horse-cars through tropical forests and coffee groves, and then we continue our tobogganing to Vera Cruz. On the down slide we pass Cerro Gordo, where General Scott defeated Santa Anna, April 18, 1847. He must have defeated the town too, for it is not there. A few mud huts are patriotic enough to remain and continue the name, for which they deserve much credit. Perhaps they are guarding the place to preserve Santa Anna’s wooden leg which was lost here in battle. They have not yet learned that it is in Washington City.

We finally stow away our thermometer to prevent its melting and running away. They say that straight down in the ground underneath Vera Cruz to an indefinite depth it is really hotter than Vera Cruz. Perhaps. Vera Cruz is a good place to stay away from. From May to October it is the summer residence of his majesty El Vomito Negro, a black vomit, familiarly known as Yellow Fever. This is not only his summer residence, but his permanent home, but during the winter months he is “not at home;” but May 1st., on house-cleaning day, his residence is open to all comers, be they light-weight, middle-class or sluggers. He gives all odds and guarantees a knockout in the first round or forfeit the championship.

During 1868-4 the French army planted four thousand soldiers in a little cemetery which they facetiously called “Le Jardin d’Acclimation.” The Mexicans call it “La Ciudad de los Muertos,” the City of the Dead. The population of Vera Cruz in 1869 was 13,492 and the number of deaths for the ten years ending in 1879 was 12,219. The average duration of life by these figures was eleven years! The annual deathrate is ninety per thousand population, while in the United States it is 22.28 per thousand. The safest way to see the city in the summer is to go in on the train, go out to the old castle of San Juan d’Ulloa about a mile out in the harbor, climb to the light house and take a good look, then get on the same train and get up and out, or rather out and up. The town covers about sixty acres and has no suburbs but sand and water. An avenue of palms on the main street is the principal feature. If you stay till night you will see the raven hair of the Mexican ladies sparkling with gems, but they are only fireflies or “lighting bugs.” Three or four of these tropical fireflies placed under a tumbler will give light enough to read by. They have a natural hook on their bodies, so they are fastened in the hair by this hook without pain to themselves. Our American cities are troubled about their street-cleaning department; but Vera Cruz has a street-cleaning commission that is a commission. Here they work without salary and only ask bed and board. The only other bonus they ask is that the city fine any person five dollars for killing any member of the commission; which seemed only reasonable, so the city gladly consented, and now the agreement is entirely satisfactory to employer and employee.

The city council, on the city records, calls these commissioners Zopilotes, but ordinary people just call them turkey-buzzards.$1‘Their contract calls for bed and board—or tree. They find their board in the garbage piles and refuse heaps of the streets, and their bed on the church steeples and on the city hall and on your gate post or any other soft place where it is comfortable to rest after a hard day’s work. The city has not yet appointed a commission to clean up behind the commissioners, and if I should suggest the thing to them they would misunderstand my ideas of reform, so I will leave them to their fate and the heavy death roll which they will still charge to El Vomito and exonerate the Zopilotes. Owing to an oversight in drawing up the contract, no mention was made of nesting-places for the commissioners, and so they had to make other arrangements elsewhere, but where it is the deponent sayeth not.

Their day’s work was done and we saw that all the resorters had resorted to their resorts, so we resorted to the train, unpacked our thermometer and hied us away. Vera Cruz has had a monopoly of the shipping business, but has a rival now in Tampico. When you go to Tampico, you must tar and grease your hands, face and neck, then wear a pair of leather gloves and muzzle your face with wire netting. You may keep the insects off but you will smell like a barrel of train oil. The entomologists must have got tired classifying insects and dumped all the remnants at Tampico. One sociable little fellow has a habit of crawling under your toe-nail while you sleep and digging a hole till he is out of sight and then going to sleep. He has no special reason for this except to make you cut off your toe to get him out or to make you sleep in your boots. The monkeys and parrots are very sociable too, but familiarity breeds contempt. If I must associate with monkeys I prefer those with two legs so when I abuse them they can understand my wrath.

For description of Tampico see Encyclopædia Britannica. Besides the Inter-Oceanic, there is another railroad entering Vera Cruz, the British road that was thirty-five years in building and cost forty million dollars. This road leaves the plateau at Boca del Monte (mouth of the mountain) eight thousand feet above the sea, and falls four thousand feet in passing over the first twenty-five miles of circuitous track, and it falls twenty-five hundred perpendicular feet in the first twelve miles, or two hundred and eighty feet to the mile. That tired, sinking feeling is very, very present when you start down. A double engine called the “Farlie,” having two sets of driving machinery and the boiler in the center, pulls this train, and when it starts up hill it has to stop every ten miles to rest. The Britishers who built that road had faith and plenty of it. Below Orizaba, the road crosses a gorge a thousand feet deep, and was blasted from the solid rock. To do so, workmen were suspended by ropes over the cliff, and worked for hours with hammer and chisel. One piece of track clinging to the wall is not over ten rods long and required seven years to build. So costly was this road that when it was first opened in 1873 first class freight rates from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, two hundred and sixty-three miles away, were $76 a ton on freight trains and $97.77 on passenger trains.

Since Tampico is now a rival port freight is only $45 a ton and still the road hardly pays for its outlay. We soon enter the beautiful valley of La Joya (the Gem) and down, down below the clouds we pass through evergreen foliage of ferns and flowers that surpass anything in beauty ever attempted by brush and canvas; mammoth ferns and tangled vanilla vines and other parasitic vines that coil around the giant trees and strangle them to death, and then feed upon the remains. Tropical birds of all colors and migratory birds from other lands are here without number. It is here the Indian hunter pursues his vocation of killing to make the wonderful featherwork, so salable in the capital, and just here we enter the beautiful city of Orizaba, the capital of Vera Cruz.

Behind the city is the snow-capped volcano of Orizaba, eighteen thousand three hundred and fourteen feet above the sea, three miles and a half high. Violent eruptions took place here in 1545-6 but it has been on a strike ever since. Being the second highest mountain in North America, perhaps it is putting on airs. At any rate it is chilly enough now and the melting snows form innumerable cascades and waterfalls; and so the Chicmec Indians called the volcano “Ahauializapan” or “Joy in the waters,” but the Spaniards had neglected their pronunciation in their early youth and this was their Shibboleth, so they called it Orizaba and let it go at that. Earthquakes have always been a specialty with Orizaba, and the largest church has had its steeples thrown down three times, and many others have a rakish, corkscrew perpendicular, which gives the impression that they have been on a jag or are trying to imitate the leaning tower of Pisa. A river runs through the town, and runs cotton and sugar and flour mills. Orizaba is exactly of the same altitude as Jalapa and what was said of the richness and fertility of that burg is true of Orizaba. Volcanic ash is the fertilizer which needs only moisture, which is abundant. The streets are paved with lava, and there are three schools for girls and two for boys. If you like mountain climbing, plenty of blankets, two days’ provisions—and some silver—will take you to the crater of Orizaba, if your lungs can stand the rarified air.

I also ascended Orizaba, and my proxy said he could almost see into the land of the almighty dollar, the vision was so grand. I felt happy. Delightful excursions through the pretty gardens to Yngenio, the lakes and mills of Nogales, to the innumerable cascades of Rincon Grande, Tuxpango, El Bario Nuevo and Santa Ana. On the way to these, the orchids and other floral beauties just beg of you to pluck them and thus make room for their companions. Down the mountain we glide with brakes set and enter the steel laces of the spider bridge across the Metlac and hold our breath to lighten our weight to the other side. We feel much better after we are over, and just beyond in the tropical vale of Seco is Cordova, on the border of the tierra caliente and tierra templada. We are in the same belt as Jalapa and Orizaba, therefore in the heart of the coffee plantations. The principal food of the lower-class is bananas. The banana is an annual that grows about ten feet high and about a foot in diameter before the bud appears, and then from the top springs a purple bud eight or nine inches long, shaped like a large acorn. This cone hangs from a long stem upon which a leaf unfolds, displaying a large cluster of young fruit. As soon as these have set, the leaf drops off and another unfolds, exposing another young brood of buds. When these set, the process is repeated until there are nine or ten circles of young bananas, and when complete the bunch has nearly a hundred bananas, and the stalk never has to be replanted. It requires less attention and produces more than any plant known.

If the coffee plant was allowed to grow with its own sweet will, it would become a tree thirty feet high, but then the berry would be hard to gather, so it is topped and pruned so as to spread laterally. The leaf is a shining evergreen, the flower is a snowy white star with the odor of jassamines, and the fruit is a bright red, turning to purple when ripe. The fruit looks much like a cherry and tastes as well, but this is not for what it is cultivated. Within the berry are two kernels or seeds with their flat sides adjoining, and enclosed in a thin pericarp. The fruit is spread in the sun to dry, and the outer surface is shriveled to a pulp, when it is removed by the hand. The pericarp or thin husk still remains, and this is removed by being broken between rollers and winnowed, and the coffee berry is ready for market. It must be shipped alone as it will absorb any and all odors with which it comes in contact, and a cup of coffee with a Limburger aroma is not a desired innovation. The Mexican prides himself on the superiority of his coffee bean, and all travelers praise the article as drunk a la Mexicana.

A president of France once visited a village hostelry, and asked the woman in charge to bring him all the chicory she had in the house. After she had proudly delivered all her chicory to him he said: “And now madam, I will thank you for a cup of good coffee.” The Mexican is not above deception, however. Parrots grow here by the million and paroquets by the billion, and in nearly all colors of the rainbow, but only the ones with the yellow head will ever learn to talk, and no color of paroquets will do more than chatter. But what is that small thing to a Mexican? He simply gets a number of parrots and a pot of yellow ochre, and in three shakes of a sheep’s tail he has a cage full of yellow-head parrots worth five dollars each before they learn to talk. They next spot the American “greenies” with money to burn, and the rest, is it not written in the book of a retributive Nemesis who recorded those blue streaks of profanity when that parrot got its first bath? Yea, verily.