Bret Harte may come down here with his mandolin and pick that same tune in Spanish and he will receive an encore.

The Mexican will sell you “antiquias” from a pyramid that he made last month, and he will sell you a coffee-wood walking stick that was made from an old railroad crosstie and loaded with lead, and he will sell you a blanket he stole from you last night, but when you call for coffee you get the real article, and it is not prepared in either iron or tinned vessels, but unglazed pottery. They fill your cup half full of coffee and half full of milk and pass you the sugar, and when you have done, like Oliver Twist, you call for more.

CHAPTER XVIII.

GUADALAJARA IN THE VALE OF LERMA.

The Degollado Theatre is the largest on the continent, with the possible exception of the Metropolitan in New York. The only academy of fine arts in the country outside the capital is here. It is a great manufacturing city, but not a column of smoke or the noise of a wheel breaks the Sunday quiet. It is entirely what the word means—manufactures, hand-made. Pass across the little river among the humble adobe dwellings and every house is a work-shop for cotton and silk and wool and leather and musical instruments. Seated upon the dirt floor with a distaff in her hand, I saw Penelope weaving rebosas after the manner of the ancient Greeks. Two doors further I saw young girls with foot-power looms weaving cotton goods, and hard by were a score of young women weaving hosiery with small hand-worked machines. Leather and straw hats and baskets were all done by hand, and what a busy city! For squares and squares, every doorway revealed a hive of busy workers, for Guadalajara must supply the country a hundred miles around, and forever, and forever, the pack-trains from the Pacific country and the mountains come and go with the exchange of commerce. It is the busiest city I have yet found here and the people are happy. Saddles and hats and hammocks and baskets and pottery and shoes are made by the thousand tons and all by hand or the crudest of foot-power machinery. It is wonderful to see the skill of mere boys, who seem to inherit the trades of their ancestors, like the watch-makers of Switzerland or the wood-carvers of Germany.

Of necessity, hand-made articles come high in price, and that forces other thousands into the trade to make rather than to buy. A manilla hat will sell for four dollars right in the shop where it is made, and woolen sombreros without ornament are from four to ten dollars, and a pair of French suspenders costs a dollar and a half. A curious custom is the grouping together of all similar industries. In seeking a pair of shoes I was sent to a quarter of the town where for an hour every open door gave forth its leather odor, and the wall outside was lined with leather articles. There is no mooted question about shop-made shoes. Every workman sits in front of his door with his kit of tools on the sidewalk and works and waits for custom, and if he does shoddy work it is done under your gaze. All the rope and hemp dealers and workers in sisal are grouped in like manner, and the far-famed Guadalajara pottery can be found all in one square. Guadalajara is the home of the chocolate industry. The botanical name of the chocolate tree is Theobroma cacao, and on account of the theobromine the seeds contain, it is one of the most nourishing foods in the country. The cacao tree grows about 20 feet high. The leaves are large and the flowers small, and the fruit is a long purple pod similar to the yellow locust pods of our forests. The pod contains from twenty to forty beans, each very similar in size and color to the shelled almond. Butter made from these beans has an agreeable taste and odor, and rarely becomes rancid. The principal constituents are stearin and olein, and is much used in surgery, and in France is used in pomade. The chocolate of commerce is prepared by roasting the seeds, which establishes the aroma and changes the starch into dextrin. The seeds are then crushed, winnowed and molded, and are ready for export. For instructions in the art of preparing the steaming beverage, consult your cook. I do not know.

The most noted point in the city is the Hospicio de Guadalajara. This building covers eight acres of ground, and within its walls are twenty-three patios or open courts where fountains play and flowers bloom in the open air, and mangoes, oranges and bananas grow in the very doors. This is a public institution for foundlings and orphans and the deaf, dumb and blind. Girls and boys occupy opposite sides of the building, and are grouped according to age. A matron in white cap led me through the entire establishment, beginning with the nursery with its long rows of cribs with infants of all ages and in all stages of humor. Some are orphans by necessity and some by desertion, but they have a better home than thousands with healthy parents. Life here is not a sinecure and the children are all taught valuable trades. Crippled and deformed little girls were embroidering and embossing laces and silks upon patterns so intricate it looked impossible to follow without machinery. I shall never again believe that the Irish and Venetian lace-workers have a monopoly of this wonderful and painfully intricate knowledge. There is a bazaar in the front where these finished articles are offered for sale, and that is the main channel through which they receive gratuities. A direct gratuity would be respectfully declined as it is a state institution and well supported, but you would be told that to purchase these articles would be directly helpful to the poor unfortunates who were weaving their lives into those wonderful patterns.

I asked the matron as to their final disposition. She said that the afflicted ones would of course stay still death. The healthy girls would be helped to places of self-support, and the boys would all go to the army, if they had not mastered some trade. The children have a beautiful chapel in an open court and decorated in the most pleasing manner. I learned more of the nobler side of the Mexican people by a day spent here than in all my wanderings elsewhere. Sorrow and affliction are like to bring us in a more sympathetic union, and the hundreds of patient and afflicted children trying to solve the problems of life under difficulties, force home the truth that all human nature is the same. Except for the Spanish language, these neatly dressed attendants and wards could not be told from any similar institution in our own land, and they will compare as favorably in any line of conduct or results achieved, and the moral tone and timbre of the institution is a paragon of excellence. The Hospicio San Miguel de Belen is a similar institution for afflicted adults with hospital, lunatic asylum and school attached.

I suppose penitentiary life is never pleasant, but prison life here is the most pleasant I have seen. The outer walls look grim enough, but within there must be two acres of flower plots all under care of the prisoners. The guards are all upon the walls and can see all that goes on below. The penitentiary is arranged like a turbine wheel, or rather like a wagon wheel, with avenues from all parts of the ground converging to a central arena without roof, and where the prisoners may be all assembled under inspection if need be. There is here also a reformatory for boys with dungeons for refractory ones and books and lessons for the ignorant ones. While it is called a penitentiary, there are no long term men there; they are all in the army, where they do all the drudgery work of the barracks. They wear a distinctive uniform and would be instantly shot if they attempted to escape. It is very easy to gain admission here, because the visitor is on the wall forty feet above ground and every part of the wall is traversed by narrow bridges across the amphitheatre over which the guards constantly travel. The prisoners are allowed to come to the office and sell anything they manufacture, and their friends may bring them the raw material, so a man may be a prisoner and yet support his family. The building contains a court of justice and prisoners from the patrol wagon are brought directly here and tried and turned into their wards.

Monopolies have no chance here; the government controls everything. The slaughter house is a model of cleanliness and water is freely used. A hundred or more animals are slaughtered daily and the butchers buy as the animals are quartered. Prices go according to the grade of meat and as it is a state affair there is no swindling and no bidding on prices. The animals are slaughtered without cruelty. One is drawn up a gangway by a windlass and fastened so it cannot struggle, and a knife is driven behind the horns, severing the medulla oblongata, and another into the heart, and the blood drawn off by a conduit while the carcass falls into a car and is drawn to the skinning room and in six minutes is quartered and sold. The city market is a wonder all by itself. It covers an entire square and the roof is supported by 196 arched portales on the outside, and the number within the mazy interior are too many to count. Underneath is sold everything that is common to the country.

Across the San Juan River, five kilometers away, is the suburban town of San Pedro. The tramcar passes through the city gate under a huge arch and enters a beautiful avenue of giant elms and camphor trees, and finally stops at a shaded plazuela in the midst of the little town. The town for the most part consists of mud-colored adobe huts with no comfort or convenience, but you soon discover that this is a residence town of the merchants of Guadalajara. You discover this by the lofty stone walls shutting out the eyes of the vulgar. One of the first indications of wealth is a desire to be seclusive, and to wall the great world out from one’s own little selfish world. Even the church is walled in and the cemented coping stuck with jagged glass, and the entrance guarded by heavy iron gates.

But San Pedro is known by one thing alone worth notice—pottery. Guadalajara pottery is known all over the world. Here is found a peculiar clay that gives it a priori advantage, and for generations the making of pottery has been the business of the town, and the knack of the thing is inherited. The delicate and artistic painting is done by people who never had a lesson in art or pigments. Everything in the shape of a vessel is made in San Pedro, from the huge urns that hold your largest lawn plants to the minute toy that may be covered with a button. Not only vessels, but every thing the Mexican has ever seen he can reproduce in clay, be it horse or man or procession or bull-fight or building, and he will make it as true to life and color and purpose as a photograph. But in San Pedro they do more than that. You can sit for a statue or a bust, six feet or six inches, and the workman will take his clay and produce a likeness your own mother would know. They are absolutely true to life in every respect, and will be colored as to eyes and clothes to the fractional part of a division of a tint, and I refuse to abate one jot or tittle of the statement.

But everybody in San Pedro can do that, so we have not yet reached the celebrity. To find the artist of Mexico, of Guadalajara, of San Pedro, you must walk two squares east on the street that leads from the southeast corner of the plaza, turn down to the right half a square till you come to a little tumble-down adobe house on the left. The latchstring is on the outside and you are always welcome. Within is Juan Pandero, the Indian sculptor, a genius if there is one. To be exact there are two, father and son. If you want a statuette of your beautiful self it is made while you wait, or will be built and sent to your hotel, or he will go to your room and do it. But more than that, send him your photograph and he will do the same, and herein lies his genius. Only these two can produce statues from photographs, and they will be as true to life as though he made them from models. And the tools. Such tools! Seated on the floor with a lump of clay and an old case knife, and the outfit is complete.

From the hill of San Pedro, the City of Guadalajara and the Vale of the Lerma lie before you, and you notice what you have noticed a hundred times before, how like the hills of Palestine are the landscape. Take any series of pictures of the Holy Land and of Mexico, and no person who had not traveled in one or the other could tell the difference. The houses low, flat-roofed and painted white, the absence of trees and the naked plain force the resemblance every time a vista is opened.

Back to the city among those magnificent elms and to the Paseo. The Paseo! what would any Mexican city be without its Paseo, where fashionable people take their outing with such system and abandon? This Paseo extends for a mile along both sides of the Rio San Juan de Dios. There are also the Botanical gardens, and the Alameda, and the mint and state buildings with the finest of architecture, so unlooked for in this far-away place. Churches! ah yes, same old thing, even to the earthquake brand, and they are costly and beautiful. The cathedral was begun in 1561 and completed in 1618. Both towers were thrown down by an earthquake in 1818. Paintings without number adorn the wall. The Assumption, by Murillo, is a genuine master-piece. All the saints in this part of the vineyard have been remembered in the christening. There are El Sagraria, San Francisco, San Augustin, San Felipe, La Campania, Guadalupe, Mexicalt-zingo, Jesus Maria, Capuchinas, Santa Monica, El Carmen, San José de Analco, San Sebastian de Analco, La Parroqua de Jesus, San Juan de Dios, Aranzazu, La Soledad, San Diego, Belen, La Concepcion, La Trinidad y la Parroqua del Pilar, and I am tired of naming them; but if you will get an almanac and call off all the saints in the calendar, I will agree to find their churches christened and waiting for them in Guadalajara.

Nothing but a conscientious duty makes me go around among these old paintings, and what do I know about them? I stood in an art gallery once before a picture called “The Transfiguration;” my companion asked me how much was it worth. I sized up the gilt frame and measured the space it covered and said it must have cost ten dollars. He pointed to the name in one corner and said in disgust: “Don’t you see Raphael’s name on there? that picture is worth forty thousand dollars!” I dropped my catalogue to hold my palpitating heart in place and told him I knew better. Why, there were not ten yards of canvas in the whole thing, and the molding was not much over eight inches wide and there was not fifty feet of it, and I knew the price of molding and canvas too. Forty thousand dollars! who ever heard the like? “But it is not the frame, goosie, look at the picture!” I looked at it, and then I told him to look at the picture on the other side, at that Stag Fight, or at that fellow on the beech-log fishing, and “there’s a picture to look at.”

He cast a withering glance at me and said some words which sounded like this: “——!—--!!—--!!! natural born fool.” I stayed an hour trying to get educated enough to see the forty thousand dollars. Hundreds of people came, looked in the catalogue at the price and then showed their superior education. “Now, that’s what I call art.” “Just look at the expression.” “What an ensemble!” “Note the radiance of that halo!” I merely asked them what was it anyway. Some said it was the price, some said it was an original old master, and some said it was both. I saw hundreds of pictures I liked better, but I was out of style. I saw a beech forest with silver bark and purple and brown leaves that I thought was a gem, and some one turned up his nose in disgust and pointed to the price; only $25! bah! And then I wept because my art education had been so sadly neglected, and so I never miss an opportunity now to improve it. Now, when the guide strikes an attitude and proudly points to a painting and says: “Murillo!” I throw up both hands and step back a pace or two and say: “Murillo! Murillo! Ah, Murillo! Just look at that expression! What an ensemble!” Then I look at the guide’s face to see how I am getting along, and he looks happy, and then we pass on. Then he stops. “The Entombment, by Titian, $50,000.” Then I go into ecstacies and strike another attitude: “The Entombment! $50,000! Titian! $50,000! Ah, Titian! $50,000! That’s art!” When we stopped again I was just about to raise my hands again, and looked to him for my cue, but he said: “By a Mexican, $25.” “Oh!” I said in contempt. “Just a daub! Why in the name of Saint Peter doesn’t that man learn to paint!” That guide said I ought to make art my calling, and I do not know till this day what he meant.

Of course excursions outside of the city are in order. The cars lead to Tlacotalpan, about five kilometers away, a quaint old town that looks like Rip Van Winkle’s summer residence. The Falls of Juanacatlan are farther. You go by rail twelve miles to Castillo, and go by horse-car one league farther to the River Lerma. The river is over a hundred yards wide and the cascade is seventy-one feet high. In high water the falls are beautiful, but a huge flour-mill has been erected which draws most of the water through a flume when the river is low, at which time it is possible to walk across the rocks the entire distance above the falls. The mill was not completed when I was there, but judging by the name it bears, it will be a very correct and moral mill. The part of the name as completed reads: “The Mill of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary Magdalene;” and when the annex is added to the mill, I was assured that the rest of the name would be added, as at present there was not enough room. Between Castillo and the falls is a rich valley covered with fine beef cattle for the city market, and here can be witnessed some of the finest work of roping cattle to be found among cowboys. While in full gallop they can rope any foot of the animal that may be desired.

Above here the river Lerma passes through Lake Chapala, and as it emerges from the other side it bears the name of Rio Grande de Santiago. Surely baptism is a wonderful alembic that can make a saint of a muddy little river by one emersion only. But its good works follow it, and where it empties into the Pacific, behold the Bay of San Blas! It was from Lake Chapala that the Aztec migration began, 648 A. D., for the valley of Mexico, and on this march their name was changed from Aztecs to Mexicatls, in honor of their war-god, Mexitli. Soon after the river leaves the lake, and just beyond Guadalajara, it forms a wonderful canon, which for grandeur is not surpassed on this continent. The chasm is a narrow barranca two thousand feet down its perpendicular walls.

You stand on the brink in the tierra templada and behold the tiny, silver stream a full half mile below you in the tierra caliente, the hot lands of the Pacific. You will never see elsewhere such a work of nature as the canon de Rio Santiago. No, not even in the Colorado Canon. It seems as though the great Titans in play had spaded this great block of the continent from those perpendicular walls, and hurled it at the Cyclops in the sea.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.

This is the home of the Chihuahua dog, a beautiful nervous little creature that is smaller than a squirrel and can easily be carried in the pocket. It somewhat resembles a marmoset, and is bought by people who are inclined toward pets. I have heard it darkly hinted that the Mexican hot tamale was largely made up of Chihuahua dogs, but after seeing the animal I do not believe it, as it would not pay dividends. Judging by the size, a person with an ordinary appetite could easily misplace two of them, and as tamales sell for a cent a piece or twelve cents for a square meal, the dearest principle of speculation would be sacrificed with a dollar dog cooked up with a plebeian mongrel. It is true I have never known what was in the scores of tamales with which I have made a personal acquaintance, but I will never believe that a Chihuahua dog was actually killed for that purpose. With the armadilla it is different. His market value is only rated by the number of steaks or tamales he will make up, and of him I can believe anything.

All of this country for almost a thousand miles is devoted to mining, which forms almost the only industry. At Lerdo, near the Nazas River is the choicest cotton-growing section of the country. This is the Laguna region and is very similar to the Nile. It rarely rains, but with irrigation, wheat and corn grow all the time, and cotton has to be planted only once in seven years, as it grows that long from one planting. Eight hundred miles from the Rio Grande and four hundred and forty miles from the city is Zacatecas, a city of eighty-five thousand and the capital of Zacatecas. Nothing grows here but rocks and silver, and I believe they do not grow any more, but they have a great deal of the old stock still on hand. In the heart of the Sierra Madres, this old town is built upon a silver mine which was discovered in 1546 and since then has disgorged a billion dollars.

The sight of the town from the north is startling. You have climbed to a height of 8,000 feet and see no indication of a city until the train crosses the crest. At night when the city is a blaze of light it surpasses anything seen outside of Fairyland, as the train winds in a spiral down into town, dropping 136 feet to the mile. At the station the mules have pulled up the street cars and gone back to town, and as you get aboard the driver loosens the brake and lets the car roll into town by gravity. Like the nests of swallows clinging to the cliffs are the houses of Zacatecas, perched far up where it seems only a goat could climb.

And Zacatecas also has its Guadalupe, upon whose summit is the church of Los Remedios, and up the road, as narrow as the one which leads to righteousness and as rocky as the one up from Jordan, lined with sharp stones and crull cactus, crawl devotees on bleeding knees to do penance for their souls’ salvation, at the behests of priests who grow rich from their savings. Of course all the saints have churches named for them, and here is probably the oldest Presbyterian Church in the world. It was once dedicated to San Augustin, but has now become the property of the Presbyterians. In the old church of Guadalupe is probably more to interest the stranger than in any other church in this land of churches. In the main altar are life-size figures of the crucifixion, and behind these is a painting of Calvary with the Jews and Roman soldiers, drawn to affiliate with the statues in front with startling effect. The church is filled with people kneeling at the altars and whispering in the confessionals. The old art gallery is filled with pictures of the saints in all gradations of trials and temptations which prepared them for immortality. The new chapel is the gift of a maiden lady of great wealth, and is the finest chapel in Mexico. The floor is inlaid with hard woods in different colors, and the altar is rich with silver and gold and gilding and wax figures, and silk and satin hangings. The altar rail is of onyx and solid silver. The walls are finely frescoed, and arched to a dome fifty feet above the floor. Everywhere are mines, mines, and from their yawning mouths the Mexican laborers climb ladders all day, bearing on their back canvas sacks holding two hundred pounds of ore, and receive the princely sum of thirty-five cents a day. The richest churches and the poorest people in Mexico are always found in the same town and are correlative. The very fact that the people are poor, is because they have made the church rich. A million dollar church whose portals are filled with a hundred ragged paupers begging alms is an every day occurrence.

As the train leaves Zacatecas going south, it climbs a grade one hundred and seventy-five feet to the mile, and ere long reaches Aguas Calientes, “Hot Waters,” and the town runs riot in smoking, steaming, hot waters that burst from the mountain side and offer free baths and prepared laundry facilities free gratis for nothing to all who wish them, and they are thoroughly appreciated. Men, women and children paddle in the water and bathe and dress and undress with no worry at all about the small conventionalities of privacy, etc. Now and then you will see a baby tied to a string, who paddles to the length of his tether while his mother is busy with her laundering. The town was built in 1520 and is worthy of a visit at any time, but to see it in its glory you must come to La fiesta de San Marcos. Saint Mark is the patron saint of the city, and from April 23 to May 10, all the turkeys in reach are slaughtered to grace the festal board and the business houses close for a holiday. There is a fine old bell in the great church by the plaza, and whenever it is heard the peons uncover their heads, cross their hands and engage in prayer. People from all over the country come here to bathe in the hot waters and take life easy. It is better than heating water at home. Fruit is abundant and cheap, oranges selling two for a cent in Mexican money, or four for a cent in Uncle Samuel’s coin. Flowers grow so luxuriously in this warm moist atmosphere, that geraniums and oleanders grow to the height of trees.

Below Aguas Calientes is the city of Leon, on the river Turbois, in the state of Guanajuata. It contains a hundred thousand population and is the third city in importance in Mexico. It has five hundred and seven streets, two hundred and thirty-six manzanas and ten plazas. Nearly everything in use by the citizen is made here, but the leather industry prevails. There is no machinery whatever, but everywhere are handlooms for weaving rebosas, shops for the making of bridles and the cruel spade-like bridle-bits, saddles, leather clothing and sombreros, so much prized by cow-boys and haciendados.

Guanajuata is the capital of the state and is pronounced “Wah-nah-water.” The original name of the town was Guanashuata, “The Hill of the Frogs” in the Tarascan tongue, on account of the fanciful shape of the overhanging mountain. For three hundred years mining has been the business of this city which contains sixty crushing mills to reduce the quartz. The richest silver mine in the country is here, the Veta Madre, which has already produced $800,000,000 by the crude methods in vogue here, which never secure over sixty percent of the real value. Owing to the scarcity of fuel and water, machinery is impractical, so the usual method of extraction is as follows: the rock is ground into a fine powder and made into a paste with water, and spread upon the floor of a large court a hundred feet square, after the manner of a brick-yard mortar-pit; then certain preparations of salt, sulphate of iron and quicksilver are added, and for three weeks a drove of broken-down donkeys and men tramp leg-deep in this huge mud-pie. When the amalgamation is complete and the quicksilver has collected all the silver, it is taken in wheel-barrows to washing tanks, where half-naked men and boys puddle it till the metal falls to the bottom and the refuse washes away. It is barbarous treatment for men and animals, and a slow method, but the only practical one where coal sells for $20 a ton and wood $11 a cord. Wading naked in quicksilver and vitriol is not calculated to lengthen life, and the life of mules in this business is generally four years and of the drivers eight, and yet they never lack for drivers. The mines average $33 to every ton of raw material handled, and the silver is so plentiful and the profits so satisfactory that the forty percent. loss does not trouble the owners. The 85,000 people all get a living and are happy and what more is needful.

Queretaro with its fifty thousand population is especially noted for opals. It is a remarkable fact that every industry in Mexico is distributed by towns. Irapuato for strawberries, Celaya for dulces, Lerdo for cotton goods, Leon for leather, Puebla for onyx, Orizaba for fruits, Saltillo for Zerapes, Guadalajara for pottery, Jalapa for beautiful women, and so on from Dan to Beersheba. And so Queretaro contains the mines which produce the fiery opal which brings so much ill luck to the owners, according to the reigning superstition. This was an Aztec town, captured by the Spaniards in 1531. It was here the treaty of peace with the United States was finally ratified in 1848, and where Mr. Seward was met with so much honor in 1869. The Hercules Cotton Mill is the greatest attraction of Queretaro and one of the greatest in the country. It has an over-shot waterwheel forty-six and a half feet in diameter, and also a Corliss steam engine which burns wood costing sixteen dollars a cord. One thousand eight hundred employees work here twelve hours a day with wages from thirty-seven and a half to fifty cents a day, and weavers get six or seven dollars a week. The premises are walled in by a fort, and in front is stationed a company of thirty-seven men with Winchester rifles. All large establishments have to do this, as the large amount of money changing hands on payday is but an invitation to desperate men of the Jesse James persuasion to make an informal call. This mill has twenty-one thousand spindles and seven hundred looms, and manufactures the unbleached cotton which the common people wear. In the midst of a profusion of flowers stands a statue of Hercules which cost fourteen thousand dollars before it left Italy. Protective tariff in favor of this mill against imports is nine and three quarter cents per square metre, which enables it to sell its cloth at thirteen cents per square yard wholesale. A better grade of goods is sold in the United States for five cents. Free Trade is yet a long ways off in Mexico.

Maximilian and his two generals were shot here, and the saddest thing connected with the history is the fate of poor Carlotta, his wife. She was very dear to the people of Mexico, and when Maximilian was taken prisoner many people pleaded for his life. The governments of Europe protested against his execution, and the United States asked a stay of his sentence. The princess Salm-Salm rode a hundred and sixty miles on horseback and on bended knee prayed Juarez to spare his life. The next day after his capture, Carlotta hurried to Vera Cruz and set sail for France and begged Napoleon III to keep his word and uphold the treaty of Miramar, and Napoleon insulted her for her trouble. She then went to Rome and prayed to Pope Pius IX., but fared no better and distracted by her failures she became a raving maniac, and for these thirty years no light of reason has ever returned, but in the Austrian capital she sits in gross darkness, babbling the name of Maximilian. As for the Indian president, Juarez, he listened to all petitions but gave but one answer; that war was war, and as for sickly sentimentalism, he had gone out of the posing business, and they who lived by the sword should die by the sword.

While Maximilian was in power, he issued a decree that every officer taken in arms against the government should be shot without trial, and he executed that decree with every Mexican officer he captured. Now Juarez was in power and the law had never been repealed, and he decided it would work as well with Juarez as with Maximilian. Aside from all this he decided that one dead Austrian Emperor on Mexican soil was worth a hundred live ones, and Juarez always lived up to his convictions.

P. S. Maximilian was shot.

Pachuca is the capital of Hidalgo, eight thousand feet above the sea, and overcoats are needed the whole year. There are three hundred mines here and the business has been carried on four hundred years, and the quantity of silver taken out will never be known. The Trinidad alone in ten years yielded fifty million dollars. The other principal mines are the Rosario, Caridado, Xacal, Santa Gertrudis, Caxyetana and Dolores. At Acambaro we change cars for the Lake Region, through the beautiful towns of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan and the residence of the Bishop. In olden times when the Tarascan Kings got tired acting King, they took their boats, and leaving Tzintzuntzan, their capital, paddled over to Patzcuaro, “Place of Pleasure.”

The town is very old and the streets are very crooked, with shrines and saints set in the walls at every corner, but the old settlers were right when they called it a place of pleasure. After a good night’s rest it is the proper thing to see the sunrise, that will leave its impression with you forever. Up the street to the Hill of Calvary you pass fourteen stations of the Cross where the faithful pray. You hurry on to Los Balcones, a stone parapet in front of the church of Calvary and what a sight meets your eye! From your elevation of a mile and a half above the sea, the world is spread before you like a panorama. Spread at your feet is Laguna Patzcuaro, “Lake Beautiful,” with its green islands and giant trees, and as the sun comes up out of the Sierras he discloses to your enchanted gaze a level plain with forty-three towns with a setting of mountains and valleys worth a journey to see. Lake Patzcuaro is the highest navigable water on the globe, being over seven thousand feet high. It is a thousand feet below you on Los Balcones, but its thirty miles of length and twelve of width are before you as a mirror. On its bosom is the quaintest little steamboat that ever paddled a wheel, the Mariano Jiminez, and it will take you among all the beautiful islands, and to the old town of Tzintzuntzan. This was once the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Tarasco that resisted to the last the sovereignty of Montezuma, and after the Conquest was the seat of the Bishopric of Tarasco. This Bishopric was held in such high esteem by Philip II of Spain that he presented the cathedral with the finest creation from the brush of Titian, “The Entombment.” The old church is crumbling down, but the Indians venerate the painting so much the Bishop has forbidden its removal. Art lovers have offered immense sums for it, but the church authorities refuse to entertain offers in any sum, and so it hangs where it was hung over three hundred years ago.

The lake is dotted with innumerable fisher boats and timber rafts and large flat-bottom boats hewn from giant trees. The fishermen simply dip their nets in the water at random and catch the fish, which here form one of the chief articles of food; but we started out to study art, and not fish, so we land on the opposite side to see the famous painting which is so zealously guarded. You are admitted through the outer wall into the patio where sit a number of Indian women braiding mats, and the padre said they were doing penance. With a lighted candle the padre leads you through a dark corridor to a grim door, barred, chained and padlocked. This door leads into a chamber dark as night. The padre opens a grated window and lets in a flood of light and the picture lies revealed with its life-size figures. You know you are in the presence of the great master, because everybody says so.

Artists from every part of the world have come to see this painting and they all say it is a genuine Titian, and I knew this was the proper place and time to expiate on art as I had heard those learned critics do before the Transfiguration. I had finished nearly all the phrases they said when the padre closed the window and the flood-gate of my eloquence. Ah, but it was grand! After the padre had blown out the light, barred, chained and pad-locked the door, a new idea came to me. The bishop of Mexico has offered these Indians fifty thousand dollars for the picture and they laughed at him, and ten times that figure cannot buy it. All the figures are life-size and it is large enough, but fifty thousand dollars will plaster both sides. My idea is to go down there to Tzintzuntzan and get a job of doing penance in that old church and finally get myself elected guardian of the keys to that room, and then I will write this letter to the bishop of Mexico: “Dear Bishop: I hear that you have money to burn; also that you have fifty thousand dollars to invest in old canvas, especially the brand that adorns the dark alcove in the old cathedral at Tzintzuntzan. If you mean b-i-z, meet me at the Rialto on Lake Beautiful this P. M., just as the moon is rising in China, and we will give that old canvas the first fresh air bath it has had in three hundred years.

“P. S.—Come prepared to move in light marching order, because the state of Michoacan will hardly be large enough for you and the picture after morning mass.

“N. B., P. S. No. 2.—Don’t forget the fifty thousand dollars, for

“Yours Truly.”

If ever I get to be doorkeeper down there I shall certainly vote to use that fresh air fund to the best advantage, and there will still be profit enough to give all those enthusiastic art lovers a square meal after I have started to Canada, and I certainly would do that much for them. In coming years when the Tzintzuntzan poets shall say, “What are the wild waves saying?” they will answer, that they saw the only hustling doorkeeper that old church ever had, cross that lake between two days once, and before Aurora, child of the morn, had awakened from her sleep, he had reached the other side of the mountains and lit running.

CHAPTER XX.

DIVES AND LAZARUS.

THERE is probably no other country where the gulf between the rich and poor is so wide. Six thousand people own all the land in Mexico, and eleven million people have to live upon terms made directly or indirectly by those six thousand. The same six thousand are also the governing class, and make all laws to favor their own interest. For instance, all the land of the rich is exempt from taxation, and this compels the poor laborer to pay the tax for the support of the government. It is hard for a man to acquire land here, as the holders will not sell, and the laws against foreigners are very strict. Mexico has never forgotten 1848, when California, Arizona and New Mexico were seized by the United States, and she now sees to it that Americans get no more. Thus, no American, without consent of the president, can acquire land within twenty leagues of the border. This precaution is based upon the experience of Texas. Mexicans allowed the Americans to settle in Texas, and so soon as they felt strong enough they struck out for independence and got it. If Americans were allowed to buy along the Rio Grande, it would be but a few years till the Rio Grande country would declare independence and join Texas, just as Texas joined the union.

The rich have also made a law that a man may become a slave for debt, and the property of the creditor. As a legal enactment the law has been repealed, but as a matter of fact, the law is as operative today as it ever was, and this class of slave labor is known as peons. The peon may owe the creditor a hundred dollars. He is paid such low wages he never cancels his debt, but continues till it is doubled. Should he become dissatisfied with his master, he can get some one else to buy him by paying the debt, and he thus becomes the slave of the second, but this is always done legally. The original owner must write out a statement of the amount of debt, and allow the peon three days for each hundred dollars to seek a new master. Once in debt, always in debt, so the poor peon is never free, and his wife is included in his contract, and the haciendas will have no other kind of labor. The Mexican by nature is averse to work, and where land is so fertile and fruit is so plenty, it is hard to get a free Mexican to work, and harder to hold him. The peon, on the other hand, has both a moral and legal compulsion to work, and the fear of the law compels him to work every day but Sundays and feast days. So this is the kind of labor the haciendados seek.

In opening a new plantation, instead of hiring men, the owner spends six or eight thousand dollars in buying peons from other farms, before his new place has earned him a dollar. When he becomes the property of his new master, a contract must be made as to time and wages. The peon agrees to work on all days except feast days, and to receive in wages two dollars and a half a month, plus a ration of corn, beans and salt, or four dollars a month without rations. The rations consist of six almuds (6½ quarts each) of corn, half an almud of frijoles (beans) and one pound of salt. If a peon refuses to pay his debts in money or work, the law places him in close confinement. Life on these haciendas is peculiar to itself. The buildings are in the form of a huge rectangle surrounded by high walls and entered by massive gates which are closed at night. The walls are mounted by towers and pierced by loop-holes for muskets, and generally surrounded by a moat. All these precautions have been necessary in a land infested by bandits and subject to the annual raids of the revolutionists who could get horses and supplies to furnish a regiment.

The hacienda of Jaral once controlled 20,000 peons and furnished a full regiment for the Spanish army in the war of independence. Within this enclosure on one side is the residence of the bosses, as the owners nearly all live in Europe. On the other sides, in adobe huts with dirt floors, live the peons with their families and dogs, while in the center or in a separate enclosure are the animals. It reminds one of the feudal days to hear the signal bell rung and see the hundreds of people hurrying to the hacienda and closing the ponderous gates and preparing for a siege. Revolutions and bandits are not as frequent now as formerly, but the haciendas have no faith in Utopia, so they still build in accordance with past experience. The universal work animal is the ox, and he is worked just as he was on the Nile four thousand years ago. The plow is a sharp stick with an iron point that does not turn the soil but only opens a furrow. The beam is fastened to the yoke, and the yoke is fastened to the animal’s horns by means of raw-hide thongs, the universal hammer and nails of the country. The people mend, repair and make everything by means of raw-hide. The plowman holds the single handle with his left hand, and in his right he carries a goad with a steel point on the end with which he persuades his team. The driver never speaks to his team, but if he wants the team to go to the left he silently prods the right hand ox, and vice versa. The cruel method of fastening the yoke to the horns compels the oxen to pull by their necks instead of by their shoulders, and with a heavy two-wheeled cart loaded with a ton of stone, their necks soon become so stiff they cannot bend them, and cannot graze nor drink water unless they stand in it leg deep.

Innovations? O no, the Mexican wants no innovation. An enterprising Yankee shipped some plows down, and the natives sawed off one handle of every one. He had always plowed with one handle and always will. In making excavations for building, no wheel-barrow is seen. A piece of raw-hide stretched between two poles and carried by two men is the only wheel-barrow they will ever use. The only ladder in the country is an upright pole with cross-pieces tied on by ropes. To saw lumber a pit is dug and the log laid across the top, then with one man in the pit and one on the log, it is sawed into lumber. For wagons they use only two-wheel carts, and in loading, sometimes three or four hundred pounds will overbalance on the forward side and crush the mule to the ground, but with whip and lash he is made to get up and move.

I have seen these two-wheel carts come from the mines loaded with over two tons of silver, and drawn by eight mules, and only one mule in the shafts, and his back would be bent into the segment of a circle and his legs spread like a cotton toy.

To thresh their grain, it is spread in the yard and the oxen and donkeys are driven over it two or three days to tramp it out, just as they did in Egypt in Pharaoh’s time. After ten yoke of oxen had tramped over the wheat for two days, I fear there are fastidious people who would refuse to eat it, but we can get accustomed to many things when we have to. Even the green scum on the stagnant water of the canal makes a fine dish when you cannot do any better.

There came a Yankee to this country once who saw a Mexican threshing machine, which consisted of about thirty sheep, goats and burros, that were wading knee-deep in grain and threshing it out; so when he got home, he sent that farmer a Yankee threshing machine almost as a present, and it was put to work. The grain was threshed clean and it performed the work of a dozen men and twice that number of animals, and seemed a great success, but it got bruited to the priests. They came and saw the machine and stood in amazement. From their standpoint it was too great an innovation, and what might it not lead to? They declared that the devil was in the machine, and positively forbade the peons to use it! The threats and warnings frightened the poor ignorant peons out of their wits, and that machine was sent back across the Rio Grande.

When railroads were first introduced, the priests had the tracks torn up, and for a long time the rubber hose of the air-brake was continually cut open, because it was said to be the work of the devil. Wise priests they are in Mexico. Well do they know that where intelligence and invention find their way among those Indians, the power of the priesthood is gone, so it is not a matter of ignorance with them. They are well-educated—too well to permit innovations that will lessen their influence and shekels. I have met these priests outside of their official capacity, and found that many of them were educated in Europe and America and were well posted in the affairs of today, all of which proves that their teaching what they know to be false is the most transparent humbug.

The tools and manner of working is shiftless to the last degree. I have seen plantations planted in corn, and it was done by men digging holes with short handled grubbing-hoes, in which to plant, and when it was large enough to cultivate, take a short paddle or a board, and on their knees rake the dirt to each stalk.

The corn has been inbred until it is of the most stunted growth, when a few bushels of Texas corn would give new life to it. It is a rare thing to see a stalk on the plateau over five feet high, while the conditions of the soil ought to produce a height of twelve feet. For irrigation they still use the old well-sweep, a long pole balanced in a fork, and as the weighted end goes down, the laden bucket rises at the other, and all day the laborer draws this water to slake his thirsty field. A suction pump would do the work of six men, but I have not seen such an innovation as a pump in all this land. In making a cart the native will take his ax and hew him out one complete, and there will be no particle of iron about it.

With the woman, life is a continual tread-mill until she dies. From girlhood to old age her business is grinding corn, and it takes her entire time. In the entire country I have seen no other corn mill. The usual method is to put the corn to soak in lime water to soften the grains, and then they are laid upon a stone a dozen at a time and crushed by another stone roller made exactly like our kitchen rolling pins; and when it comes to grinding corn for a large family, a dozen grains at a time, it means a day’s work. In large cities of over a hundred thousand population, the public mill is the same. I visited a number where meal was ground for sale, and on the floor were thirty or forty women down on their knees grinding corn; the metata, or nether stone is held against the stomach like a washboard, and the rolling-pin stone is worked up and down to crush the corn, but always she is on her knees. This constant labor gives the peon woman a stolid look of resignation that never departs from her features. For use, the grated meal is dampened and made into thin cakes the size and thickness of a saucer, and cooked by placing on a hot stone or piece of sheet-iron.

Neither knives, forks, dishes or spoons enter into their household equipment. The tortilla is about the color and toughness of leather, and is baked and stacked away for future use. The frijoles are cooked in a small burnt clay vessel, then poured into or upon a frijola, which is then rolled into a cylinder and eaten. If by good fortune they have anything else to eat, the tortilla is used as a plate for this dainty and then the plate is eaten. Their adobe houses have dirt floors and no windows or chimneys. They never use fire except for cooking and that is done on the outside. Within are neither bed, table nor chairs. Sometimes there is a straw mat for a bed, and they sleep in the clothes they have worn all day, the men rolling in their zerapes and the women in rebosas. Shame and modesty in the usual amenities of life are entirely absent, and no privacy whatever is sought or needed. The men dress in white cotton and wear sandals on their feet, and each man is his own shoemaker. The women wear, often, simply a coarse chemise or at most a short petticoat reaching to the bare knees. Sometimes they wear coarse shoes, but never stockings. Their faces have a perpetual look of sadness. They are slaves for debt, and have nothing else in life to hope for. Marriage laws are almost unknown. They have not the money to secure a legal marriage, so the formality is dispensed with. In some of the largest cities in the country you may take a seat in a public park, and when no policeman is near some cadaverous looking woman will approach leading a daughter, and will offer to sell her for two or three dollars—to such stress are they driven by their condition.

Do not think for a moment that all this suffering and depravity will awaken sympathy from the rich. The rich are Spaniards, and being such, have neither sympathy nor charity for Mexicans and Indians. In trading with these poor people I have purposely paid them more than the price asked, when some Spaniard, thinking I had been cheated, would rush up and abuse the seller and attempt to restore my money.

Caste distinctions are drawn as tight as steel wires, and a peon would no more resent an insult from a Spaniard than if he were a superior being. They are fatalists, and accept their lot as their portion. Before the law they are all equal, but if the aristocracy should appropriate a particular park or street or sidewalk, the rabble would cower and huddle near the edge but would no more trespass than if it were an enchanted spot. The laws are made by the aristocracy, and in a lawsuit for damages the poor would have no show at all, and in most cases the leges non scriptæ are more powerful than the written. By common consent (of the aristocracy) the people have divided themselves into classes and they never transgress their acknowledged boundaries. No peon would think of asking a well-dressed gentleman for a cigarette light, and said gentleman would not use said peon for a door-mat.

The most remarkable feature is the zeal with which the police enforce caste rules. The railroads and street-cars are all divided into classes and the police are always present to see that the pilagua or poor class always go third-class. Even should one have a first-class ticket, the policeman would promptly eject him. At the bull-ring or theater the police assort them by their clothes, and I have yet to hear of a protest by the ejected. In the alamedas and promenades, if the aristocracy appropriate the inner circle next the band stand, the people immediately fall back to the outer circle, and a string of police will see that they stay there. But to all Americans, however dressed, barriers fall away like cobwebs, and with a tip of the hat the official bids you “Passe señor.” Ordinary servants are chosen from the great middle class, and employers require such exact obedience and homage that no servant of the United States would remain a day. No matter how often a servant is called, she must always answer with some deprecating remark denoting her position, such as: “Yes, your humble servant,” or “At your service, Señora,” and this formula must never be omitted. In nine cases out of ten no beds are furnished servants, and I have seen men and women spread themselves over the bare floor night after night and sleep in the same clothing they wore all day. For this faithful service women get five dollars a month, in a country where the cheapest cotton cloth is thirteen cents a yard. But Mexican servants are the best in the world. They know nothing of the comforts of life as we know them, so they do not grumble at their lot. Obedience and hardship are their inheritance, and like the caged bird that has never known freedom, they never chafe. It is this submission that makes the priesthood anxious to keep American innovation out; but let intelligence be once awakened to superior conditions, and automatic obedience to church and master will suffer a compound fracture.

The life of the great middle class woman is the happiest of the lot. Not being ground by poverty nor bound by the laws of aristocratic society, she enjoys life. The blue blood deserves our greatest sympathy. She must never appear without duenna or escort. If she engage in any occupation whereby she earns money or is drawn from her seclusiveness, she immediately loses caste. An educated lady may do missionary work or perform in music for some funcion; very well, but if it be known that she received pay for so doing, it would mean her Waterloo. In consequence most such places in the country are filled by foreigners who have no such restrictions to face. Sometimes gentility frazzels out to a very name with no income, and then the poor lady is in the strait whether she shall go hungry or lose caste, so she works by stealth. To the public she gives music lessons or art lessons for the love of it but on the quiet she collects tuition, and thus is able to live and still hold her own with the four hundred.

A Mexican lady has her world in two hemispheres, the church and the home. When she is not in one she is in the other. They neither visit nor receive calls. A Mexican’s home is for himself and he does not invite his dearest friends to it. This is not indicative of selfishness but the custom. If you want to see anyone you never go to their home, but to the plaza at eight when the band begins to play, and see your friends. That is what the band is for, to play while you visit. And so her life is spent. In her home all day peeping through iron bars, and on Sunday going to the bull fight, and three evenings a week going to the plaza to chat. Her home is furnished with elegance, but she has a peculiar custom. If her best room will hold forty chairs, then forty will be there. In nearly every home I have seen the walls held as many chairs as would set around the four sides, but their use was never revealed to me. Great is custom.