TO MEXICO

PALACE CAR.

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A CORNER OF THE MARKET PLACE.

TO MEXICO
• BY
PALACE CAR
INTENDED AS
A GUIDE
To Her Principal Cities and Capital, and Gen
erally as a Tourist's Introduction
to Her Life and People.

By JAMES W. STEELE,
Author of" Cuban Sketches," " Frontier Army Sketches,'
Etc., Etc., Etc.

CHICAGO:
JANSEN, McCLURG, & COMPANY.
1884.

Copyright,
By JANSEN, McCLURG, & CO.
A.D. 1884.

i"~KMISHT a LEOttAH-D I

CHAPTER I.
Preliminary  u
CHAPTER II.
Mexican Scenes and Characteristics ... 17
CHAPTER III.
Going There  32
CHAPTER IV.
Through Mexico  47
CHAPTER V.
The City of Mexico  72
CHAPTER VI.
The Valley of Mexico  84

PREFACE.

MEXICO, save to the very few, has until
very recently been an almost unknown
country. Among the latest and most surpris
ing achievements of American energy must be
counted the construction and final opening of
the Mexican Central Railway, forming a con
tinuous line through the heart of the country
from Paso del Norte to the Capital. The
republic is now open for the entrance of
whomsoever will, and her chiefest cities are
connected by a continuous line with the entire
railway system of the United States.
It is unquestionably the greatest event,
save one, in the stormy and sombre history
of our sister State, and to Americans them
selves is of only secondary importance.

8 PREFACE.
Fenced by impassable barriers for some three-
hundred years, this old, rich, quaint and iso
lated empire has suddenly become the coming
country of the capitalist and the tourist; a
land in which, by the invitation of its people,
we have already begun an endless series of
beneficent and bloodless conquests.
The Mexican Central would be almost val
ueless alone. Other gigantic enterprises on
our own soil preceded it and made it possi
ble. Energy, money, and foresight are the
prophets of a practical age, and the long
lines of steel that were laid across plain and
mountain, through uninhabited silences, and
amid danger, hardship, and Indian hostility;
which had their beginnings in the populous
towns of the Missouri Valley, and an un
known ending in the far Southwest, have now
demonstrated some striking reasons for their
being. Among these, undoubtedly, is that
which is continuous with the Mexican Central
from its northern end, the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa F6, itself among the longest lines

PREFACE. 9
of railway in one direction ever built, or that
will ever be built, on the American continent.
The northern side of Mexico is her nearest
side in all senses. Her most valuable neigh
bor is our own country. Differing from her
in everything but form of government, inter
nally strong, enterprising, advanced in ideas
and education, wealthy and adventurous, we
are yet akin to her in national sympathy,
allied to her by strong commercial interest,
and intensely interested in her advancement.
We are, in sober truth, the only neighbor
from whom she has aught to hope. To us,
Mexico is the coming country, if there be any.
She is accessible, as she has never been be
fore, hopeful, expectant, cordial with a sin
cerity the wisest had scarcely hoped for in
this century, and seemingly fearless of the
magnified and unreal dangers of political
alliance, and abandoning all the ancient an
tagonisms of race and custom, asking for no
passports and making no . enquiries, she in
vites every comer from the land of her ideals

10 PREFACE.
and hopes, to the palms and pyramids, the
gray towers and tropical gardens, of a capi
tal that may be as old as Thebes, is as quaint
as Tangiers, as foreign as old Spain, and as
new as the newest American territory to all
modern things.
It is, finally, but fair to recall the well
known fact that a brief characterization of a
people is a difficult task. What is here set
down is but the condensation of hundreds of
impressions, but they are stated de buena Fe,
and after having eaten salt with nearly all
classes of a heterogeneous population, who
were, however, while the brief association
lasted, all Mexicans and Americans, all cour
teous, and, I am in duty bound to add, among
the most agreeable of good fellows.

TO MEXICO.

CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
THE American is reputed the great mod
ern adventurer. There is no civilized
country to which he has not gone or to which
he does not intend to go. Every year he
pours himself out upon Europe like the
swarms of Attila, with his women-folk and
personal belongings.
But, as yet, he has not extensively visited
Mexico, though probably the most interesting
of all regions, and to be seen with the least
inconvenience. The country has heretofore presented many
obstacles to even the adventurous American
mind. With his usual astuteness, he has dis-

12 TO MEXICO.
missed the subject with the quick conclusion
that it would not " pay." It was the land of
countless revolutions and political uncertain
ties. It was colored with memories of San
Jacinto, The Alamo, Buena Vista, and the
exploits of General Santa Anna. All Mexi
cans, judging from the few specimens seen by
us, were innocently but very erroneously
deemed to belong to the variety called "greas
ers." We all recall certain sentences from the
speeches of Thomas Benton, and certain half-
forgotten narratives of the surviving veterans
of that unnecessary series of brilliant skir
mishes called by us the Mexican war. And,
until very lately, the country could boast of
but one railway, — from Vera Cruz to the Cap
ital, — and that single evidence of internal
enterprise necessitated a sea voyage to the
fever-haunted port which has no harbor, and
has long been distinguished for clumsy light
erage, " northers," and watery accidents. The
country has been fenced in by rocky barriers,
mountain chains, and immense distances more

PRELIMINARY. 1 3
impassable than any sea ; by lack of informa
tion concerning it, and by all the differences
of race, language and custom.
This has been so far changed that the
requisites now of a most delightful journey
are merely a through ticket and return, and
a sleeping-car berth. The time required is
about the same as that stated from any given
eastern point to San Francisco, possibly a few
hours less.
In people, climate, scenery, and a strange
ness that is astonishing as pertaining to the
North American domain, the country un
doubtedly repays a visit. It is not going to a
"resort," and in no reasonable sense can a
journey thither be called a visit. It is not a
locality, but a country. Winter and summer
trje climate remains nearly the same, a region
of tropical latitude, but immense elevations.
There are senses in which Florida, the West
Indies, the Bermudas, offer no comparisons.
Saying nothing of the Capital, there are cities
in Mexico whose very names are unknown to

14 TO MEXICO.
Americans, hitherto fenced in by the barriers
of nature, only now accessible even to the
majority of Mexicans by rail, containing from
forty thousand to ninety thousand inhabitants,
where palm trees grow in the plaza, tropical
fruits are the usual products of every month
in the year, and yet where blankets are com
fortable every night. All the delicacies of the
garden, and every product of the field, grow
almost side by side with cotton, cane, limes,
bananas, and a hundred differing fruits, whose
very names are unknown to the majority of
mankind. Yet there are no tropical diseases,
and none other than those common to hu
manity everywhere, while a light overcoat is
desirable every evening.
Mexico is preeminently the land of moun
tains. Near and frowning, or blue and ethe
real with the haze of distance, they are every
where before the eye, until the senses become
accustomed to grandeur, and tired of inac
cessible majesty. Ragged sierras, towers,
castles, cones, seamed and scarred veterans of

PRELIMINARY. 1 5
the age of fire, fence the horizon in. Among
them lie valleys where the vertical sun shines
scarce half the day, where villages nestle and
mysterious waters flow, and where the only
aspiring thing is the tower of the inevitable
church, shapely and beautiful even in the
most squalid village.
Notwithstanding, the changes are almost
infinite. You may go from the Capital, which
to all Americans, as to all Mexicans, is the
centre of a system, by rail to Cuautilla or
Yantepec, or to Amecameca, at the foot of his
serene and smoky majesty, Popocatapetl. If
you are adventurous you may even climb that
elevation of some nineteen thousand feet, and
for once in all your life, standing amid eternal
snows, you may look down into the fervid
heart of our common mother.
But everywhere you will encounter a
quaint, primitive, slow and picturesque peo
ple. The Mexican at home stands as the sixth
• race; unlike all others in appearance, gait,
language, and probably blood itself. Street

16 TO MEXICO.
and village scenes afford the stranger a pan
oramic amusement which does not fail him
in weeks of association. Customs, industries,
habits, mechanical operations, with industrial
contrivances unknown to all the world beside,
are everywhere. You may surprise your inner
man with strange beverages, and accustom
your palate to dishes hitherto not included
among your necessaries of life. You may
witness the decaying exploits of the bull-ring,
the excitement of the cock-pit, or hear the
strains of Italian opera. But everywhere and
always, you are wrapped in a climatic brill
iance that never fades, save when it gives
place to the flashes of stars that seem nearer
and brighter than ours. It is the perpetual
glow of a land where winter never comes, and
whose people, time immemorial, worshipped
the sun.

CHAPTER II.
MEXICAN SCENES AND CHARACTERISTICS.
FOUR-FIFTHS of the people of Mexico
are Indians; that is to say, pure Aztecs,
totally unlike the " noble Red Man " of our
latitudes. The remainder are of mixed de
scent, and, in a few cases, Castilians. The
common and natural idea is, that being a
Spanish conquest, Mexico, like Cuba, should
have few or no Aborigines left, and that Mex
icans are the descendants of the conquerors
and of Spanish blood.
But the Indian blood is not the cause of
any social or other distinction, save that it is
considered, if anything, somewhat better than
the Spanish. Benito Juarez, the most la
mented of their presidents, was an unmixed
Aztec. Porfirio Diaz, the strongest Mexican
of his times, and in many respects the Gen-

18 TO MEXICO.
eral Grant of his country, is of mixed blood.
Everywhere the Aztec face, unmistakable in
its pathetic features, goes with the best and
worst types of Mexican character. Spain,
her glory, her tyranny and her dominion, have
seemingly left but the faintest marks upon
Mexican personal characteristics. Religion,
somewhat modified, language, and the Moor
ish architecture, are her bequests to Mexico,
and are apparently all that is left to mark the
brilliant conquest of Cortez.
Of the whole number, a larger proportion
of the population than of any country except
Italy, seem to be very poor. This has grown
to be largely personal habit, but is also due
to the stress of circumstances in a country so
isolated that she has lived over and over
again within herself, producing what she
could consume, and no more. There are
other causes, destined to be discussed in all
their fulness very soon, one of which un
doubtedly is a system of laws which permits
the holding of vast bodies of land by one

20 TO MEXICO.
individual or family, exempt from taxation.
There has been for some sixty years, and un
til within a limited time, an almost continu
ous internecine dissatisfaction, sometimes
accentuated by an uprising first in one dis
tant community and then in another. Affairs
in this respect have greatly changed. Troops
may now be very quickly sent to districts
which they would not formerly reach in a
year, if at all. Nobody seems to have any
great apprehensions. There is now great in
terest in outside affairs, and a general desire
to imitate all that is good in our own repub
lic. The railways have immensely stimulated
the desire to make, to sell, to ship, to travel,
to see with the natural eye the country that
has shown sufficient confidence in forsaken
Mexico to expend her millions there. The
conversation of the intelligent Mexican on
these subjects is sometimes almost pathetic.
Inaction and laziness, at least, are not, as has
been so often imagined, the cause of finan
cial stress on the part of the masses. Every

MEXICAN SCENES. 21
Mexican toiler is so from early youth. Boys
are stone cutters and burden bearers from
twelve years. The peasant's gait is quick
and all his movements active. He is a noto
riously fast walker. Slight in figure and
thick set, he will, and often does, carry a bur
den of three hundred pounds, and go off with
it at a jog trot that I had always imagined
the Chinaman held an exclusive patent upon.
There are no drays. To be a " cargador "
seems to be an ambition of Mexican peasant
youth. Three men, and sometimes two, will
carry a piano a dozen squares.
In truth the ordinary Mexican seems un
daunted by tasks that would be undertaken
by no other man. A crate of crockery, of
vegetables, of fruit, of anything, may be dis
cerned jogging rapidly up some steep road,
so huge that the bearer is quite invisible, and
he has tirelessly borne it across mountain and
valley in a country where leagues are noto
riously long. Long trains of donkeys wind
through the country, laden with sugar, cot-

22 TO MEXICO.
ton, wool, hides, wood, stone, and a single
native plods behind the train. He has come
perhaps a hundred miles, and eaten for a day
what would not furnish the average American
a single meal. Loafing, except of the abso
lute variety, and systematically in the sun, is
quite unknown. Frugality is not a virtue,
but a thing of lifelong practice and necessity.
Every Mexican, of every grade and class,
is a courteous man. Ask him a question, and
he invariably gives you the best answer at his
command. He is generally willing to spend
time and effort for your accommodation. He
is never embarrassed. The girl by the roadside
never blushes and never runs away. Look at
a Mexican gentleman, and he is wont to smile
and salute you. Ask him a question on the
street, and he will shake hands with you at
parting. People whom you never saw before,
and will in all probability never see again,
will willingly show you through museums
and libraries, give you their time for an hour,
shake hands and bid you good-by, merely

MEXICAN SCENES. 23
because you are a stranger, and during the
whole time never ask you a personal question.
The stories with which every new-comer is
regaled and enlightened upon his arrival, are
seldom borne out by the experience of three
weeks. The author has been among some of
the hardest crowds in the byways of the Cap
ital, where the yeasty odor of pulque mingled
itself with indescribable smells to which the
two-and-seventy of famed Cologne were as
roses, and was never molested, threatened,
touched, or even looked at sidewise. Never
theless, every traveller will be duly informed
of the hatred of all natives for the " gringo,"
and warned that they will steal the ring from
his finger and the cigars from his pocket.
There are thieves, and some very ingenious
and inveterate ones. I would myself, and per
haps so would the reader, like to be informed
where there are not. You may come as near
tempting fate in Mexico as in any country.
Americans are in certain things the most
inconsiderately impatient of all people. Mex-

24 TO MEXICO.
ico is the slowest country on the globe, with
the exception of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Rus
sia, and all South America. There are about
sixty millions of people on this side of the
Atlantic who speak the Spanish In all Amer
ica the English tongue is in the minority. If
you go there you will have all the better time
if you do not try to reform the country.
Avoid the impatient gesture, the disgusted
look, and the pushing demeanor which ac
complishes nothing. It is the land of manana
and luego. You must wait more or less; since
you must, it is as well to do it patiently.
On the other hand, order, neatness, system,
regularity, are not studies in Mexico. There
are no chambermaids, no American brooms,
no private boarding houses. Male servants
clean your room and make your bed. You
pay so much per diem for a room and one
candle, and are expected to furnish your own
soap, which is an article of luxury not the
cheapest. You may eat where you choose,
regularly, irregularly, or not at all. Living

MEXICAN SCENES. 25
in the Capital is not cheap, nor indeed very
dear, averaging something like four dollars
per day, for all necessaries. By rule, break
fast comes at 12 m., and dinner at about six.
There is a cup of coffee in the morning.
There are many good hotels of their kind,
the Iturbide being a magnificent building,
and the San Carlos, in the same square, good
enough. There are also a large number of
bad ones, which state of things is not con
fined to Mexico entirely. A stranger can tell
as much by the price as by anything; a good
room can hardly be got for less than two dol
lars per day. In towns like Cjueretaro, Aguas
Calientes, or Zacatecas, hotel bills, including
everything, are about three dollars per day.
Beds, always for a single person, are good
and clean, but if one cares for a soft pillow,
it is well enough to carry a small one in all
journeys through the country. In outlying
towns the idea of what constitutes a hotel is,
to say the least, unique. In most places the
chances are the tourist must camp, or wish he

26 TO MEXICO.
had done so. The ancient meson exists in
many places. It is a building into whose open
court the diligence drives through a castellated
gateway. Mules, pigs and domestic fowls
occupy the place together. A water-tank is in
the centre. Around the sides are the rooms.
Each has one door, no windows, no beds, no
furniture of any description. The antique
wayfarer furnishes everything and carries it
with him, and rents the room for a single
night. It reminds one of the scenes in Don
Quixote. There are now too many lines of railway
to interesting places, for the visitor to be
under the necessity of often using either dili
gence or meson. If it becomes absolutely
necessary to go to some out-of-the-way place
where the pilgrim may become a social dis
coverer, it is best to hire the universal burro-
train and Mexican, "camp out," be your own
purveyor of distances and fare, and, aided by
the novelty and the kindly climate, have a
time to be remembered,

MEXICAN SCENES. 2J
Nearly all of Mexico that the tourist will
wish to visit has an elevation of from five to
seven thousand feet, and though far within
the tropics, may be said to be never oppres
sively hot, and never really cold. There is
never a need of great variety in clothing. One
may almost wear the same garments for as
long as they are whole, for all seasons. It is
best to bring with you the same clothing,
including underwear, you would use in the
autumn months in the Northern and Middle
States. It will be found that it is better too
heavy than too light, better of solid material
than of texture particularly fine, better of
light colors than of black or very dark. There
are nevertheless days in midsummer when it
is quite too warm for comfort. The rule may
be fairly stated thus ; always warm in the sun,
always cool in the shade, always chilly at
night-fall. There is no day in the Mexican
year when light flannel underwear ought not
to be worn.
In the matter of gayety, the city of Mexico

2b TO MEXICO.
presents a striking contrast to that other
tropical capital, Havana. She has flowers in
numerable all the year; a climate of inde
scribable brilliancy, and yet is a sad city.
Mexican shops close at seven o'clock in the
evening. The conventional bride's dress is the
gayest I have ever seen in Mexico. The striking
colors of the sunlit street arise altogether from
the sunshine and the universal serape. It is quite
as well to leave off the usual American custom,
and come to Mexico with but little baggage.
If it is desired above all to enjoy oneself and
see the contrasts of Mexican life, a slight
equipage makes it all the easier. An ordinary
business suit is all that is required. Ladies,
of course, are expected to have more luggage,
but the railways all charge a rate for baggage
that is not carried in the hand, and the street-
dress of northern cities, or a travelling suit, is
all that is really required.
It may be at first a matter of surprise that
the average Mexican seems to know so little
of his own country, and to have so little local

MEXICAN SCENES. 29
pride in its history and interesting antiquities.
It is not strange to him; he has always been
there, and has never thought much about it.
It is not yet a show country. When this
feature changes, it will, as usual, change too
much. Another strange thing is, that with an
advancement in art that surprises every
visitor, the country has no literature. The
galleries of the Capital are filled with speci
mens of the old and new schools, many of
which would be masterpieces in any country.
Yet, so far as I have been able to discover,
there is not a publishing house in the re
public, and the three or four book-stores of
the city are filled with French works, either
scientific or novels.
The railways are a new thing, except the
Vera Cruz line, which was some twenty years
in building, and, finished, is less than three
hundred miles in length. As yet the average
citizen has no adequate appreciation of their
fateful results to him and his country. While

30 TO MEXICO.
intensely interested, and very hopeful, he is
yet a man who has no thrills, and dreams no
dreams, who in times past has frequently
broken out and done something politically
desperate, but who usually accepts the inevi
table with that peculiar fatalism fortunately
quite unknown to the Saxon. Many of his
ways are such as will not strike the visitor as
those that are to be imitated with profit, and
many of them are admirable instances of the
adaptation of man to fate. But he is a man
who is by nature picturesque, even in rags,
and a Mexican crowd is a brilliant assemblage
in the white sunshine of the Mexican street,
without regard to the quality of the decora
tions. The tourist comes upon the native
now, in all his villages and by-ways, in the
condition in which he has been for two hun
dred years. Such an instance of primitive-
ness is not to be met with elsewhere. He is
awakening from his siesta; but the quaintness
of his race and kind will probably never
entirely leave him. The deep peace which

MEXICAN SCENES* 3 1
broods upon all his hills can never entirely
depart, and the yellow glory will never be
dimmed. He is the still vigorous descendant of
a powerful race whose idols he has abandoned
and whose language and history he has for
gotten, but whose ancient dominion he still
holds; the Mexican, almost the pathetic last
man.

CHAPTER III.
GOING THERE.
THERE are at least two classes of travel
lers into whose hands this little volume
may chance to fall: first, those whose time is
not especially limited, and who desire to see
Mexico for the gratification of the highest
form of curiosity of which men are capable,
and for the novelty and change to be found
in its climate and people. Second, those who
go there for business purposes, whose release
from other business is temporary, and who
desire to pass by all secondary points, "taking
in" only the most prominent. Yet there is
one thing unavoidable by anybody, and that
is the journey thither. It therefore seems
necessary, in any effort to convey information
about Mexico, to begin at the beginning. In
this connection the author begs leave to state
facts as he believes them to exist, and as they

GOING THERE. 33
have occurred in his own experience, regard
less of the claims of other routes than the one
taken by him, any and all of which may have
their points of just distinction. The all-rail
route is, as a matter of course, the preferable,
and the more nearly all-rail a journey is, in the
immense distances now traversed by thou
sands of travellers, the better. The Pullman
car has been made in late years to attain to
immense and hitherto impossible distances,
without delay, accident or repair. Systems
of baggage-checking that are complete be
yond anything known in other countries,
make the change from one car to another a
matter of little inconvenience when it does
rarely occur. Vera Cruz, as a port without
harbor or landing, and the railway line run
ning thence to the City of Mexico, have been in
existence many years without greatly affect
ing the travel to or from the country, and
without, in any sense, changing that isolation
which has made Mexico for hundreds of
years the remotest corner of Christendom.
3

34 TO MEXICO.
The line which, in an almost direct course
to the southwest, has for its chief est object
the Mexican Capital, is the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe. Though not directly, its course
is general toward El Paso for the whole of
the immense distance between that point and
Kansas City, which is its eastern terminus.
To the latter place it will be necessary to
come some day, in any event. The town is
not a beauty. It was, some twenty years ago,
nothing more than "Westport Landing," on
the unpicturesque banks of the Missouri.
From that miserable hamlet it has grown to
be the most important city of the West — not
so much in size, though rapidly attaining that,
but as the depot of a great industry, the re
ceiver and distributor of countless thousands
of cattle and swine, the absorbing nucleus of
a trade that in a few years will be able to sup
ply the world with beef.
Soon after leaving Kansas City, and becom
ing fairly settled in one's section for a journey
that is more like a voyage than a tour by rail,

*¦ '*.

• :,

A COMPETITOR OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.
35

36 TO MEXICO.
the enormous distance covered by the Atchi
son, Topeka and Santa Fe becomes a matter
of reflection. It has a strange story. It was
definitely projected and persistently built
through a howling wilderness that, as a re
sult few men of that day would have been
bold enough to prophesy, it has made to blos
som as the rose. For years it continued its
westward course, forgotten almost by the
stockmarket and the newspapers. It extends
from Kansas City to the port of Guaymas on
the western coast of Mexico, and to El Paso
del Norte upon the northern and nearest side
to us of that republic, where its track is con
tinuous with that of the Mexican Central,
which is, in effect, the extension of its line
unbroken to the City of Mexico. Its length,
including its Colorado line, and other
branches built by it, is about two thousand
four hundred miles. Its line directly and
continuously travelled in a journey from the
eastern terminus at Kansas City to Mexico,
extends across the farms and orchards of

GOING THERE. 37
eastern Kansas, traverses the Arkansas Valley*
for nearly four hundred miles, crosses the
southeastern corner of Colorado, traverses the
entire length of New Mexico from north to
south, and finally places its passengers across
the southern boundary of the United States
and upon foreign soil, and behind a locomo
tive whose headlight glares still southward
across the limitless meadows of Chihuahua.
It is natural that the ancient, the tradi
tional, the moss-grown, should attract the
interest, and affect the sensibilities of the
average American. We have not many of
those things to display, and seek them in Ger
many, Italy and the mother country. But we
have, in compensation, those most wonderful
pictures of human progress, th-at are impossi-
* Some fourteen years ago the Arkansas Valley in Kansas was
traversed by the writer, principally accompanied by an intelligent
mule. Through its whole length there was not a soul or sound.
There was not while this line was building. It was the grass-
grown "American Desert," — useless, irredeemable. There are
now living there more than half as many people as the famed, rich
and beautiful Valley of Mexico contains after a civilized occupation
of some three centuries.

38 TO MEXICO.
ble to any but Americans, and to any century
but this. Hundreds of us who have been
everywhere else have never seen it; thousands
more have no just conception of it. Students
of history, to whom the epocha of the world
are as familiar as the alphabet, take no note
of the times in which ten years make a cen
tury, and the days of a single generation
change all the features of a life that has no
traditions and no past. A single crossing of
the vast theatre of these affairs, a single view
of the widening edges of this human flood, is
almost enough to change one's conception of
his relations to his age, and modify his firmest
views of the capacities of his race.
In this sense, not regarding views of moun
tain scenery, and the wide expanse of plains
that are like solid seas, and looking only upon
that spectacle denied to men until this age, —
the magnificent processes of the erection of
an empire, — a journey through the West for
the first time is a wonderful thing, and the

GOING THERE. 39
tourist to Mexico may congratulate himself
upon its being included in his passage.
The journey upon which the traveller has
entered is, as stated, as much a voyage as a
journey, lacking only uncertainties, sea-sick
ness, and general unsteadiness. The city of
Mexico is south of latitude twenty, Kansas
City is north of thirty-nine. It is a journey
of near two thousand miles if it lay in a line
as directly north and south as the course of
the wild goose. There is not a break in the
line of about two thousand three hundred
miles. A section of a Pullman car becomes a
residence, and the companions of the journey
are as those who have lived upon the same
street with you for years.
It is cold: the storms of the northern win
ter have locked the world within those icy
bars that are the similitude of death. In two
days you may be beneath a glowing sun,
whose rays, at an altitude of five to seven
thousand feet, illuminate a world of blue
mountains, silent valleys, and distances whose

40 TO MEXICO.
immensity is lost in purple haze. It is warm,
glittering, and gives you the impression of
changelessness, and that it never rains. You
are far above the highest mountains of home.
The top of Mount Washington is something
you would not note, and might look down
upon. There are mountains around, and still
above you, and their tops are scarcely distin
guishable from the clouds that sail in the alti
tudes of another world.
In those two days you have had unrolled
before you some of the most extraordinary
aspects of American civilization. You have
passed through those gigantic progresses that
are more wonderful than the tale of Aladdin's
lamp. You have seen in new lands and un
tried fields a wealth, intelligence, and content
that in the first half of the century, and the
last quarter of the eighteenth, would have
been a marvel if accomplished in fifty years.
The white walls of school houses ; the roofs,
and monstrous architecture of elevators ; cit
ies, little and ambitious, or big and indepen-

GOING THERE. 41
dent ; streets crowded with the wagons of the
country folk ; smoke from tall chimneys ;
hedges, orchards, herds, homes, are upon
every hand. There is the sound of bells and
the screaming of whistles, and human crowds
that are all Americans, with the same lan
guage, laws, ambitions and hopes that other
Americans have, yet are no more like eastern
people than eastern people are like French.
You have crossed the Great American
Desert ; at least if you have not there is none.
It is so much a desert that it is the great graz
ing country of the United States, teeming
with enormous and growing wealth. It com
prises all northwestern Texas, western Kansas,
southern Colorado, and eastern and southern
New Mexico. It is dotted here and there
with immense herds, owned by companies
whose capital stock runs most frequently into
the half millions, and who must in a short
time control the cattle market of the world.
The line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
F6 seems to cross this immense space from

42 TO MEXICO.
northeast to southwest. You may see occa
sionally beside the track a little ranche, the
queer structure known as a "chute," a cowboy
in his paraphernalia, and on all sides cattle,
the plain, the hills, the sky and loneliness.
Then comes New Mexico. It is easily said,
but it is by no means new. These rambling
villages were named before the American rev
olution, and the capital is the eldest town of
North America. You have exchanged your
leagues of plains for the smell of pines, and
the sharpness of mountain air. Queer vil
lages nestle in the valleys, and bronzed and
weather-beaten faces and an unknown tongue,
nondescript garments, and an ancient routine
of life, indicate the oldest civilization under
the American flag. It is an incongruous mix
ture. The Yankee town has grown up beside
the track, while the rambling adobe one lies
sleepily behind it. The burro train divides
the highway with the red-and-green American
wagon. The Mexican woman, hiding her fea
tures in the time-honored rebosa, creeps tim-

GOING THERE. 43
idly beside the jaunty northern girl along the
street, presenting the most opposite of femi
nine contrasts. The old life is not changed
and the new life is not hindered. Adobe takes
upon itself glittering door-knobs, glass win
dows, and shingle roofs, while the civilized
mansion has for its nearest neighbor the pri
meval dwelling, whose earthen roof has shel
tered successive generations.
There is too, the unchanged dwelling of the
Pueblo, that hive of communistic industry
that seems indifferent to all that comes, per
petually changeless. Between the ashen
stream beside whose banks he has lived a
thousand years, and the long lines of railway*
track, his village stands, a changeless memen
to of a time so old that its years are uncount
ed. Through all that time may bring, the
ancient man seems composed and serene, the
victim, through hundreds of years, of the
Apache, the Spaniard, and finally of American
civilization. But it is not a voyage in which there is no

44 TO MEXICO.
touch of tierra firma, unless the voyager so de
sires. Near at hand are at least two places
where one may rest for a day, a week or a
month. One of them is Las Vegas Hot
Springs,* a charming watering place and
health resort, the grounds and hotels of which
are owned by this company, and the other of
which is the ancient city of Sante Fe\
The stopping place for Las Vegas Hot
Springs is the little city of Las Vegas, from
which there is a train of the same line, con
necting closely, and going to and returning
from the hotel several times per day. The
distance is only some six miles, by the valley
of the little river Gallinas.
Just below Las Vegas, and immediately be
yond the famous Glorieta range, is a station
called Lamy, after the bishop of Santa Fe.
* The fine hotel at Las Vegas Hot Springs was burned in Janu
ary, 1884. The same company is now engaged in the erection of a
new one, with, if that be possible, some improvements upon the
old. Before this accident, in which the loss, except as insured, fell
entirely upon the company, these Springs had attained a wide rep
utation, both for beauty of situation, and health-restoring proper
ties.

GOING THERE. 45
From here there is a ride of seventeen miles,
often said to be one of the finest in America,
up the mountain and among pinons and
cedars, to Santa Fe.
This old and most interesting city is a fore
taste of Old Mexic'o. For near three centuries
it has been the political and religious capital
of the picturesque territory which the old
country did not lose until yesterday, — say
about 1850. For a few days it is interesting,
full of adobe palaces and crumbling churches,
of legends and reminiscences. Tesuque (Ta-
soo-kee), a village of the Pueblos, lies a few
miles away, and is well worthy of a visit.
Long before this the voyager will have left
the eastward flow of waters, crossed the
mountain barrier through the tunnel and
steep incline of Raton pass, and entered the
valley of the Rio Grande — the Rio Bravo del
Norte of the Spaniards. To one who visits
the region for the first time, the scenes are
quaint, almost comical. Burro trains, adobe
castles, higgledy-piggledy villages, are every-

46 TO MEXICO.
where. Sunshine of the yellowest variety
seems to shine always. It is a world of black
lava blocks, gaunt cacti, frowning ranges of
sierras, and profound and unbroken peace.
There are sometimes running streams that
seem to have been mysteriously coaxed up
hill, and gardens whose green luxuriance sur
prises the eye.
After these scenes, occupying more than
two days of uninterrupted travel, and so
quickly passed by a train whose incongruous
noise seems to awake echoes that were forever
sacred to Aztec gods, the sun sets upon Jorna-
do del Muerto, for the last time, in this journey,
under the American flag. In the morning you
are in El Paso, and before you lies the wide
domain of Mexico.

CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH MEXICO.
THE ancient and sleepy town of El Paso
del Norte is the utmost northern point
of the Republic. . It lies, an agglomeration of
adobe houses embowered in vines and trees,
on the southern bank of the Rio Bravo del
Norte, — known to us as the Rio Grande. In
ancient times the stream may have better de
served its designation, and have really been
the "Mad River of the North." Owing to
the drainage of its rolling flood for the uses
of irrigation, a view of it from the rail
way bridge shows the modern traveller only
glimpses of yellow water lying between bars
of brown sand. Mexico happens to own only
about seventy miles of navigable stream, and
only one shore of that. A little grandilo
quence in the matter of naming what she has
must, therefore, be excused. 47

48 TO MEXICO.
But the Rio Grande is not the only thing
at El Paso; the other striking feature is con
trast. The old town on the southern side lies
dreaming. The modern one on our side has
a "boom." Another thing is climate. Situ
ated neither far north nor extremely south,
with an elevation of some five thousand feet
above sea level, the invalid or semi-invalid
who is tired will find here that almost perpet
ual brilliancy for which these latitudes are
famous, with an average winter temperature
of about 650, and an air which, in summer, is
always cool at night and in the shade. Fruits
abound, especially the Mission grape, apri
cots, plums and pears. Mountains lie on
every hand, and the scenery, while not strik
ing, is pleasant and not tiresome. It is a
brisk place, and there is always the ancient
and sleepy town across the river to visit by
way of change; always the queer admixture
of the old civilization with the new.
Lastly, there is the comfort of a first-class
hotel. The " Grand Central " is modern, new,

LA SENORA DEL HACIENDA.

50 TO MEXICO.
and very complete. Expecting very little in
that line, the tourist will find here the best
hotel, excepting that at Las Vegas Hot
Springs, west of Kansas City.
As to the old town across the river, reached
by street cars, the visitor who stops over will
be impelled to go there. It is nothing to
what comes after in Mexico, but is at least a
first striking specimen of Mexican primitive-
ness. It has always been a neglected fron
tier, a crossing-place for the ox teams of the
ancient traffic, and a great place for the prose
cution of the legitimate Mexican industry of
smuggling. Its cathedral is the only adobe
one I know of in all Mexico; was undoubt
edly skipped in the age of church building,
and is only interesting from its association
with the faith of primitive worshippers for
about two hundred years.
Here, of course, the tourist must " pass "
the custom house, — fit beginning for the en
ticing pilgrimage which lies still to the south
ward; unnecessary adjunct to the jealous por-

THROUGH MEXICO. Si
tals of every nation. But no passports are
necessary; nobody asks you for an)r docu
mentary evidence that you are not a bandit,
and there seem to be no annoying restric
tions as to personal baggage.
Except where, by a series of remarkable en
gineering gymnastics, it climbs the mountains
at Zacatecas, and the notched rim of the Val
ley of Mexico, the Mexican Central road
seems, strangely enough in so mountainous a
country, to traverse a vast plateau. The sen
sation in this respect, from Paso del Norte to
Chihuahua, about two hundred and twenty-
five miles, is peculiar. Cones, peaks, castles,
ridges, lie on every hand. The train heads
straight for some huge bulk, and always qui
etly slips by, uninterrupted for the most part,
by cut, fill, or steep grade. Almost the whole
distance, studded with such knobs and pro
jections as have been mentioned, and some
times diversified by glassy-looking lakes, is
covered by a heavy growth of gramma grass,
and is a pastoral country on an enormous

52 TO MEXICO.
scale. Many thousands of cattle are passed,
grazing near the track; the telegraph poles
are rubbed until they are sometimes smooth
and oily, and trails run in all directions. The
country really does change its character at
the Rio Grande. The peculiar plateau forma
tion is not characteristic of the northern side.
Yet, in this first stage of a journey in which
the traveller is to be so forcibly reminded that
he has left the United States, there is no no
ticeable difference in personal surroundings.
Every moment the star-spangled banner is
growing more dim and distant in the North.
You are under the red, green and white of a
country that it is an unfortunate part of your
education to believe antiquated, uncertain and
capricious. But cars, passengers, conductor,
rails, locomotive, are all American. They
have "come across," to use the current ex
pression, and do not seem particularly to
regret it. Perhaps, however, if you go into a
forward car, you may find some of your fellow
Americans, with brown faces and excessive

THROUGH MEXICO. 53
hats, and wrapped in crimson-barred serapes
until their faces are scarcely visible.
Nor will there as yet be any necessity of
resorting to tortillas and chile con came. At
noon there is a dining station very much like
those you have always been accustomed to,
and a very good dinner is served in the Amer
ican style.
Chihuahua may be regarded as the first
Mexican city. It contains some 18,000 inhab
itants, and is a permanent departure from the
adobe style of architecture, which has always
been regarded by us as the inevitable and un
avoidable building material of the Mexican.
When you come back, and intelligent people
ask you if the city of Mexico is built of adobe,
you will privately smile, and wonder how it
was that you yourself once had the same
notion. Chihuahua, for various reasons, deserves a
brief visit. It is, in the matter of public spirit
and enterprise, a good deal Americanized,
and all the ideas of the place are advanced to

54 TO MEXICO.
a notable degree. There is a handsome plaza,
an aqueduct of some two-hundred-and-twenty
years' standing, many mines of paying rich
ness, a cathedral whose elaborately carved
front has been much admired, and a vast vari
ety of Mexican scenes and ways, very sugges
tive of what is yet to come.
The place was once captured by the Ameri
cans, and held as long as suited their conven
ience. If it be daylight, the traveller may see
just north of the city, and close to the track, a
shelf of ground above the plain where the
three brown mounds still stand which were
the Mexican earthworks at the battle of Sac
ramento. This, in the light of later days, was
not much of a skirmish, but it is very well that
it was no more than that.
The place was also captured by the French,
which is the same thing as saying that it was
made to come under the rule of Maximilian.
There is a bell in the tower of the cathedral
which, during some one of these military vicis
situdes, was pierced by a ball. It still rings,

THROUGH MEXICO. 55
and is not considered as having its usefulness
greatly impaired. The tourist, after hearing
all the bells, and before finally emerging from
Mexico, may question within himself whether
it has not been really improved by the acci
dent. After Chihuahua the line of the road lies for
some two hundred and fifty miles through a
region that is, in a sense, a desert. Rugged
mountains fence in stretches of cactus-grown
plain. Long vistas of level lands stretch away
among the peaks and ridges almost as far as
the vision extends. Occasionally, appearing
in a most unexpected manner, are districts of
cultivated fields, green in midwinter with
growing grain, and having in view at any sea
son all the antiquated and curious processes
of Mexican agriculture. Pastoral country on
an enormous scale is not wanting, and the
seeming desert is grazed by innumerable
goats. You wonder what they do with so
many, the goat being very far from your idea
of the representative of abounding wealth, in

56 TO MEXICO.
his best estate. Well, they are killed by the
thousand for their hides. The hides are
dressed in a manner that makes them look
like fine brown cloth, and used in the making
of the Mexican breeches.
Occasionally rivers are crossed, of which the
Nazas is a fair example. Where such is the
case, it does not take much of a district to
hold and support ten thousand people. As
has been stated, the country has few rivers,
and all are drained almost dry by huge acequi-
as. Surrounded by chains and ridges, the
valleys of Mexico lie like green gems in a set
ting of bronze. Their products exceed per
acre anything known of fruitfulness in the
North, and the population they support is
enormous. It begins to be perceived first in these re
gions, that corn, cotton, wheat, cane, barley,
grow almost side by side. In most cases con
tinuous crops of a kind follow each other in
rapid succession through all the year. A crop
of barley is harvested and another is sown.

THROUGH MEXICO. S7
Cotton will never compete with that grown by
us, because the plant is a perennial, and be
comes a tree, shortening its staple every year.
It is cut down and the field replanted once in
six or eight years.
A hundred miles south of Chihuahua, is
Santa Rosalia, famous among Mexicans for its
sanitary hot springs. It is reported by the
few foreigners who have yet visited it to be,
as to the quality of its waters, probably the
finest health resort in America.
In these regions the population is almost
entirely gathered in communities. There is a
ridge, or sierra, or some vast agglomeration
of sterility, and then, with the suddenness of
turning a curve, appears a densely populated
valley, which seems to have dropped from
some other world.
In this region, and in the course of a few
hours, are passed the Florida Valley, the ranch
region of Jimenez, the laguna country, Lerdo,
and Jimulco. It is in a Mexican sense, a. ffne
country; to the traveller a constantly recur-

58 TO MEXICO.
ring puzzle as to whether it is rich, poor, or
merely indifferent. It is to be remembered
that the process of irrigation solves all agri
cultural uncertainties. Ranches, far and near,
sometimes attaining to the dignity of respecta
ble towns, sometimes only a cluster of hovels,
are seen in mountain glimpses. Sometimes
the country, as far as one can see, is an ap
palling desolation, untenanted by even the
ravens. Yet even here the faint lights which
indicate human habitation are seen twinkling
through the night, and in daytime groups of
Mexicans rise like ghosts among the mezquite
and cactus. Trains of donkeys, bearing curi
ous loads, plod patiently along white roads.
Here and there around the horizon are seen
the tall and slender columns of white dust,
undulating and contorted, but never broken
by the mysterious wind, that mark as an es
pecial feature every Mexican landscape.
In these solitary fastnesses vegetation takes
upon itself the most unusual and fantastic
forms, There is nothing that is not thorny.

THROUGH MEXICO. 59
The little pear cactus, so often seen in gar
dens and pots with us, becomes here a tree
that is the desert Caliban of vegetation, with
a trunk and branches as large as those of an
oak, and with huge green lobes, two feet or
more in diameter, for leaves. It is as thorny
as ever, and more so, but bears a blood-red
fruit which, once plucked and peeled by the
horny and accustomed hands of the Mexican,
is called "tuna," and is good.
The bunch of slender green lances which
everyone remembers who has ever been to
New Mexico, called by us " Spanish bayonet,"
and which is the " soap weed," or its near rel
ative, is here a tree sometimes forty feet
high, on whose huge and scaly branches the
" lances " stand in grotesque tufts for leaves.
It becomes, indeed, a member of the exten
sive family of palms, — a kind of poor rela
tion. Mezquite, known all over the Far West as
a plant whose gnarled and crooked roots are
used as fuel, is here, upon tens of thousands

60 TO MEXICO.
of acres, a not unhandsome tree, the groves
of which remind one of an abandoned or
chard of immense extent. There is, where
these grow, a thick sod of grass, green or
brown according to the season, no under
growth, and a gently undulating landscape.
It will never, in all probability, be the fate of
the reader to encamp in these solitudes. If he
should, he would be surprised to hear the
songs of innumerable mocking birds in the
early morning, in the leafy covert of the mez
quite desert. Jackass rabbits, out of gun
shot, quizzically regard you, and the tufted
heads of the mountain quail glide from cover
to cover like small spectres. Sometimes, but
rarely, the antlers of a black-tailed buck ap
pear above a clump, or his tawny hide goes
like a flash past an opening.
In any village in these regions one is aston
ished to find piles of yellow oranges, ban
anas, limes, and fruits one does not even
know the names of. In no case may it be
predicted what a range of rugged hills may

THROUGH MEXICO. 6l
hide, or what green valley lies unseen in the
heart of apparent desolation.
Tanks, excavated by hand to catch the
rains and hold water during the dry season,
are common. One of the resources of the
country is shown in immense herds of "bur-
ras," with colts, sometimes numbering many
hundreds. Often, where the silence of the wilderness
seems to close around impenetrably, the
shapely tower of the universal church may
be seen above the hills, and a visit thither
would disclose a town, its rule of life the tra
ditions of two centuries, and all its hopes
bounded by the church door and the gate of
the little campo santo which ends all. Through
such scenes, destined to be entirely unnoticed
and unknown by the railway traveller, now
pass the rattling trains waking the primitive
silences with a shriek, — a flash of the present
century across primeval dreams and shadows.
It is rather a queer sensation to look from
the railroad station down into Zacatecas. It

62 TO MEXICO.
is about half way from El Paso del Norte to
the City of Mexico, a mining town of about
80,000 inhabitants, compact, closely built, the
houses seemingly an immense number of red,
green, blue, and yellow bricks set on edge.
For it is necessary always to look down into
it, and to see it requires not only elevation
necessarily, but distance. It is wedged so
closely into its narrow valley that it has
foamed over the edges, and crept up the hill
sides in little terraced clusters of adobe. It
swarms with people of the true and ancient
Mexican type, sombreros, serapes, sandals,
buttons and all. All around it lie piles of
slag, openings into hills, square inclosures,
tall chimneys, indicating the ancient and
present industry of the place, which is silver-
mining. On Sundays, should the visitor hap
pen there on that day, he will find the streets
almost impassable because of the crowds,
and every corner of the place turned into a
market. Every man is busy chaffering with
his neighbor, and all the world is in good

•THROUGH MEXICO. 63
humor. The list of articles bought, sold,
peddled, supposed to be wanted, considered
too high, bought at two prices, swapped for
something else, would make up a list not
found classified in any custom house of the
known world. There are no wheeled vehicles
to be seen. What is not carried on the na
tive's back is relegated to his brother carrier,
the donkey. Altogether it constitutes a scene
not to be found elsewhere in any land.
The contortions of the railway line in reach
ing Zacatecas add something to the interest
of the visit. "Mule shoes," as bends of that
form are called in the West, are not only
common, but in one or two instances double.
The oddity of the Mexican scenes below,
which are but hinted at here, combined with
a railway mountain climb which has few
equals, makes Zacatecas a point of interest,
even if the tourist should spend but a day in
its curious environs.
The best hotel is called the " Zacatecano, "
and the visitor is inevitably the occupant of

64 TO MEXICO. . *
the cell of some departed nun, as the fine
building was once a convent, the beautiful
chapel of which is now used by the native
Presbyterians as a house of worship.
All Mexico is street-car crazy, but^the most
remarkable branch of the "tram-via" system
undoubtedly will be found in operation here.
Its grade up to the railroad station is some-"
thing near eight per cent., and on the opposite
side of the town about six per cent. Through
these narrow and crowded street", six good-
sized mules to the car are made to go at a
keen gallop. There are two drivers, a brake-
man, and two conductors, besides, I think, a
man whose extra-official functions are some
how connected with the management of a
long whip. Once at the top of the hill, the
mules are taken off and the car is turned loose
laden with passengers, running down the steep
incline at something like twenty miles an
hour. From the crest of the hill, on the opposite
side of the town from the railroad, is the fin-

THROUGH MEXICO. 65
est view possible of the wide and characteris
tic Mexican landscape, a view which, once
impressed upon the mind, is not likely ever
to be forgotten.
Aguas Calientes comes some four hours
below Zacatecas, and is reputed justly one of
the attractive places of Mexico. There are in
all likelihood about forty thousand people
here. The streets are wide, the plazas hand
some, the architecture good, and the climate
not so cool as places near by of higher eleva
tion. The principal attraction is the aguas calien
tes, from which it takes its name. The oldest
and best of the baths are reached by street
cars through the Alameda, a shaded walk.
The springs have a temperature of 106°, and
rise strongly through the black sand in the
bottom of the old-fashioned square stone
baths. The arrangements are primitive, but
clean and comfortable.
There is a newer and more pretentious
bathing establishment in the town called, by
¦>

66 TO MEXICO.
way of distinction from the first, the Banos
Chicos. The buildings are quite pretentious,
but the bathing arrangements are bad, and
the water in its course through the pipes be
comes too cold.
The cathedral, on the plaza, contains the
most sonorous bell in the republic. Consid
ering the almost studied dissonance of the
bells of Mexico, the visitor will remember
with no small degree of satisfaction La Cam-
pana de San Pedro.
The old and somewhat dilapidated church
of Nuestro Senor de Los Encinos, on the out
skirts, contains fourteen pictures, life-size,
painted by Lopez, about one hundred years
ago. They are well worth a visit, though
neither priest nor people seem to be aware of
the fact.
From Aguas Calientes downward, or up
ward actually, the valleys are wider and more
numerous, and the arid tracts grow more in
frequent. Rushing streams of water, coming
from some unknown head, frequently surprise

THROUGH MEXICO. 67
the eye. Many districts are of evidently
enormous richness, and in midwinter are as
green as June in the northern States.
Some sixty miles below Aguas Calientes is
the little town of Encarnacion. Here is the
only iron truss bridge on the line of the Mex
ican Central road. It spans a chasm of great
depth, through which runs the Encarnacion
River, — the most diminutive streamlet ever
called by the name of river.
Silao is a place where the tourist begins to
see something of the agricultural beauties of
Mexico. The town sits placidly in the midst
of a smiling valley, green always, and culti
vated like a northern garden. The neatness
and resulting success of Mexican agricultnre
are here exemplified.
The amiable custom of the citizens of Silao
is to come every day to the depot when the
train passes, as they would go riding or visit
ing. There are many pretty women among
them, if the fact is considered important by
the average American visitor, and it is sin-

68 TO MEXICO.
cerely hoped that no arrangement of the time
tables will cause the trains to pass in the
night. QuerStaro comes next as a place of inter
est, the last one directly upon the line north
of the Capital. Leon and Guanajuato inter
vene, though not immediately accessible, or
without some delay. Leon is probably the
next largest city of the republic after the Cap
ital, and is wholly given up to manufactures,
principally of leather. It is an exceedingly
interesting place to visit, though it boasts of
no picturesque features. Guanajuato is dis
tant some leagues from the main line, and is
reached by branch from Silao, lacking some
four miles. It is entirely a mining town, often
stated to be the most important one in the
country. It divides that distinction with Zac
atecas. Referring again to Queretaro, it will be
found by the visitor to be in a peculiar sense
worthy of an inspection. Bathed perpetually
in an atmosphere almost tropical in midwin-

THROUGH MEXICO. 69
ter, plentifully supplied with all the products
of perpetual summer, neither the railroad nor
anything new seems to have the effect of mod
ifying the character for which it has always
been famous. It is in Queretaro always about
a.d., 1640, and four o'clock in the afternoon.
The narrow streets may or may not lie at
right angles with each other. They are nar
row, dense, and with so few windows that they
come near seeming to be long streets of blank
walls. It is the reputed conservative town of
Mexico, and the tower of defence of the church
party. The place has a lasting memento of
this peculiar reputation in the little barren
hill in the suburbs, where Maximilian, Mira-
mon and Mejea were shot together. It is as
lonely a spot as lies anywhere under the sun,
this Cerro de las Campanas, and that particular
spot on its brown slope which is marked by
three little wooden crosses, saw the end of a
brilliant scheme to strangle an established
government and plant a European empire on
transatlantic soil. I chanced to walk thither

70 TO MEXICO.
beside a donkey on which rode an old woman
and a huge basket. She was garrulous of the
event, and gave the details of the doings of
that time with a vividness the histories do not
attain to.
From Quer6taro there is a general up
ward tendency of the track until you attain
the edge of the rim that bounds the famed
Valley of Mexico. The scenery is by turns
grim in its brown ruggedness, and smiling
with perpetual roses. The valleys are full of
orange, lemon and plantains. The line makes
some surprising turns, and there is another
" mule-shoe," or more than one. The one din
ing station that is yet to be passed is delight
ful of its kind, at San Juan del Rio, and the
only one on any American line where the din
ner is served in courses, with thirty minutes
to eat it in, and with an abundance of tropical
fruits for dessert.
Passing the crest which is the rim of the
valley, the line is cut in the wall of the ancient
canal which was digged to drain the waters of

THROUGH MEXICO. 71
the lake, in, or on the edge of which the city
which is now Mexico stood. It is useless and
dry now, but remains a curious relic of the
time when there was a Venice in the heart of
Mexico, and when the streets of the Capital
were traversed in canoes.

A PERPETUAL GRIND.

CHAPTER V.
THE CITY OF MEXICO.
ON the authority of so distinguished a trav
eller as Bayard Taylor, the City of Mexico,
with its surrounding valley, may be pronounced
to be one of the loveliest scenes of the civ
ilized world. The same places do not always
produce the same impressions upon every in
dividual, but it is safely to be concluded that
there is at least no similar scene. No ade
quate description of it has ever been written,
and the reader is advised not to expect one
here. Extensive reading on the subject fails
to give any impression like that obtained by
the first glance at the reality. The only even
partial embodiment of it I know of, is con
densed into two paintings in the gallery of
the School of Arts, at the Capital, and they do
not include any view of the city itself.

"-*'Vi>J-VA\Vt ft£i/W»

MEXICAN PLOUGHMAN.

74 TO MEXICO.
The City of Mexico, with a population vari
ously estimated at from 225,000 to 300,000, is
situated upon ground that was once the bed
of a lake. The lake was what is now the Val
ley of Mexico. It was never intended by
nature to be other than a body of fresh water,
and nature is constantly rebelling against the
inadequate plans of making it what it is; the
site of one of the most beautiful capitals of
the modern world. The lowest part is still
Lake Texcoco and her sisters. Some of the
finest buildings bend downward in their cen
tres, owing to want of solidity in their founda
tions, and there is not the means of efficient
sewerage. Lake Texcoco at low water is only
some six feet lower than the city streets.
Chapultepec, Tacubaya, Peflon del Marques,
Guadaloupe, are but rocky islands whose tops
once protruded from the shallow waters.
The city is small in area, stands on per
fectly level ground, and from any of the emi
nences named above, presents the remarkable
view which has elicited the encomiums of

THE CITY OF MEXICO. 75
every traveller. The same effect is produced
by a view from the roof of the College of
Mines, or that of the National Library, and is
supplemented by the seemingly near and snow
capped peak of Popocatapetl, and the glassy
waters of the lake.
The streets are some sixty feet wide, with
wide sidewalks, and the city lies closely built
in regular squares. The buildings are mostly
of two, though sometimes of three or four
stories. The square in front of the Cathedral,
called the Zocalo, is the place of universal
resort, though there are two or three others,
handsome and clean, but not so well kept nor
so expensively ornamented.
It is the city of churches, as Mexico is un
questionably the land of churches. Their
towers, always handsome, assist very much in
making up the general view. . It was also once
the city of nunneries and monasteries, all of
which are now suppressed, and the buildings
used for schools and other purposes, all sec
ular.

76 TO MEXICO.
The following memoranda of places of
interest in the city itself are offered more as
hints or suggestions to entire strangers, than
as a complete list of all places worth a visit.
One might spend an entire week in the
streets, and feel at no loss for entertainment.
When time does not press, it is decidedly
better to be in no great haste. It must be
understood that even where scenes are not al
ways picturesque, or even agreeable, they are
quite strange, and new to all American con
ceptions of life. There is an endless proces
sion of them, and coupled with the charms of
sunshine, quiet, and rest, the visitor will find
that from three days to three months may be
profitably spent without any great anxiety
about dates, history, or exact information. Of
interesting public buildings, there are:
The Cathedral. — A description of which
is hardly necessary, as it is almost in the
centre of the city, and open always. Against
the western wall, and close to the ground, is
built the celebrated Aztec Calendar Stone,

THE CITY OF MEXICO. 77
figured in every book of travel. To say truth,
it is not precisely known whether it was a cal
endar stone or intended for some other purpose.
The greater wonder is that it was ever pre
served, as all the emblems and paraphernalia
of heathendom and all the written and pic
tured records of the natives were destroyed in
holy zeal during the first years of the Con
querors. It may be of service to add that this
Cathedral is conceded to be the largest eccle
siastical edifice in America.
El Palacio del Poder Ejecutivo da la
Nacion. — Which would be in English the
national White House, or the Executive Man
sion; is the largest building in the city,
occupying one entire side of the Plaza Mayor,
or Zocalo. It is ancient, but not particularly
prepossessing. It was not by any means con
structed for its present uses, for it belonged to
the family of Cortez until 1562, and was then
purchased by the king of Spain for the use of
his viceroys. Nevertheless it has, in one way
or other, been the government building

78 TO MEXICO.
through all the vicissitudes of some three
hundred and fifty years.
Colegio Minerea. (College of Mines). — Is
the most elaborate and expensive edifice
ever constructed by the Mexican government,
and one of the most sumptuous of educational
buildings. Begun in 1784, it was not finished
until 1813. It is quite completely equipped,
has extensive and interesting mineral cabinets,
and is well worthy a visit.
El Museo Nacional. (The National
Museum). — Was established in 1822, and is de
voted to Natural History, Archaeology, and the
Ancient History of Mexico. The collections,
antiquities, and cabinets of natural history,
are large and curious. Aztec remains, and
large photographs of the ruins of palaces or
other public buildings existing to this day at
Uxmal, Mitla and Chitzen Itza, would seem to
indicate that the Aztec tribes at the time of
the conquest were almost or quite as advanced
in civilization as the Conquerors themselves,
and yet practised to an extent desperate and

THE CITY OF MEXICO. 79
exterminating, all the rites of human sacri
fice. For in the court yard lies the huge stone
that could have been intended for no other
purpose. It is a block of volcanic rock shaped
like an enormous mill-stone, and about nine
feet in diameter by some four feet thick. It
is as elaborately carved as though done by the
best modern tools. There is in the centre
of the upper surface a basin to catch the
blood, and a deep gutter to carry it off. Much
use must have been given it, as one side is
worn perceptibly smoother than the other.
But among all the gods, tools, instruments,
and other grotesque things that lie in the
court-yard, the best piece of carving is only a
domestic utensil, apparently meant to be used
for the unromantic purpose of boiling meat.
It is a kettle holding some twenty gallons,
shaped precisely like our modern cast-iron
ones, with ears for pot-hooks on each side, and
a lug-for convenience in tilting it on one of
the opposite sides. The whole is cut in stone

80 TO MEXICO.
as hard as iron, and the thickness of the
vessel is not more than twice or thrice as
great as that of cast metal. It required years
of work to make that one kettle. It is a curi
ous illustration of the cheapness of toil and
time among the Aztecs.
El Conservatorio de Musica. (The Con
servatory of Music). — It occupies the build
ing of an ex-Jesuit university, which was
begun as long ago as 155 1. It is an institu
tion for governmental instruction in music
of a high order, and a very great credit to
the country.
La Academia de San Carlos. (The Acad
emy of San Carlos). — This is dedicated to
instruction in the fine arts, and is also an
extensive and interesting gallery of paint
ings. There is nothing in Mexico that will
better repay several visits. What is called
the ancient school of Mexico (of art), fills the
visitor with surprise; surprise that a country
so crude, isolated and generally atrasado in
all the advances of modern times, should

THE CITY OF MEXICO. 8 1
have produced such pictures, and more than
a hundred and fifty years ago„ There is also
the escuela moderna, very fine, but with the
exception of a few that are exceedingly good,
seeming to the visitor to have somewhat the
modern French tone.
It ought not to be omitted, while briefly
upon the subject of art museums, to state
that these galleries also contain an original
each of Murillo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ingres,
Carreno, Ribera, and Teniers the elder; also
supposed and probable Vandycks and Rem-
brandts. La Biblioteca Nacional. (The National
Library). — This is established in what was
the church of San Augustin, a fine building,
and perfectly suited to the uses of a great
library. The feature which especially strikes the
visitor is the great number of parchment-
bound volumes, some of them in manuscript.
The dates of a few, casually taken up, were
1639, 1570, 1708, 1562. Many, if not all these
6

82 TO MEXICO.
books were once private property, and some
of them are curiously branded with a hot
iron upon their ends, and with a variety of
devices, the same in system, though not in
extent, as the branding of cattle in Texas.
El Aqueducto. (The Aqueduct). — This
has been, almost time immemorial, the water
supply of the city. The system is the same
all over Mexico, and a memento of the times
when pipes had not been made, and people
did better without them than they seem to do
with them. Through its whole extent the
arches are low, because the source also is,
and as there is no pressure, the ancient and
honorable guild of the water-carriers takes
upon itself the hydraulic function. But each
house of any pretensions to modern ideas
has a force-pump in the area, by means of
which to get a supply up stairs.
Throughout its whole extent, there seem
to be no evidences of alterations or repairs,
or that they have ever been needed. The
ancient end of it is located in a most unpre-

THE CITY OF MEXICO.

83

possessing part of the city, and the stones of
the basin are worn smooth and thin with the
touch of human hands. The last arch seems
to have ended in the street, and to have been
left so, — 1677. But a hundred and two years
afterward it was concluded to end the work
in a fitting manner, and they added an orna
mental piece, — 1779. Time was not then of
much value in Mexico, and by the current
opinion, is not yet. If we had built the same
aqueduct, such a thing would never have oc
curred; it would not have stood long enough.

OLD CHOLULA.

CHAPTER VI.
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.
THE list immediately following is intended
to comprise points that may be reached
by short and pleasant excursions by street car
or railway, usually in one day from and back
to the city.
The system of street cars in the Capital is
very extensive and complete, and reaches all
suburban points such as Tacuba, Chapultepec
Guadaloupe, etc. Other places, as Ameca-
meca, at the foot of Popocatapetl, require a
night's absence.
To strangers intending to make excursions
to these places, and unable to speak the Span
ish language, it is suggested that it would be
advisable to be accompanied by an interpreter
to show the places of interest that might be
missed, and make bargains with hackmen,
boatmen, etc. 84

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 85
As a passing remark, it may be observed
that the street hack system of the city is under
certain regulations that might be advanta
geously copied elsewhere. Each vehicle car
ries a small flag, either blue, red, or white.
The color designates the quality of the hack,
and its price per hour. When it is engaged
the flag is taken down. You may tell at some
distance, and without inquiry, quality, price,
and whether it is already hired.
The mere mention of places gives the visitor
very little idea of the interest attaching to
some of these suburban visits. The glimpses
of the true inwardness of Mexican life afforded
by them are far more valuable and pleasant to
think of afterward, than are the show places
regularly kept in stock in most countries, and
are by no means to be missed in a land so
original and quaint as Mexico.
Chapultepec. — It is reached by street cars,
but it is best for the first time to go by way of
the Paseo; a drive which in the course of a
few years will be one of the finest on the con-

86 TO MEXICO.
tinent, filled with groups of colossal statuary,
some of which are already in place, and lined
with trees. The hill and woods of Chapulte-
pec, quite indescribable in words, add to the
interest which naturally attaches to it as a
point of historical interest to all Americans.
It was captured by assault September 27, 1847,
and was an ugly hill to climb under fire, rocky
and steep, and then as now, overgrown with
thorns and brambles. It was originally a
country residence, is now the national military
school, and is under extensive alteration and
repair, as destined to be the Executive man
sion of the Mexican Presidents.
All around it was once a swamp, which the
cypress trees took advantage of to grow to a
phenomenal size. Some of them, double or
treble, are about forty feet in circumference.
Nearly all of the extensive forest of them are
adorned with fantastic hangings of gray moss.
The monument to Juarez in the pantheon
shows a genius for sculpture in the Mexicans.
Another tasteful evidence of an appreciation

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 87
of the fitness of things, is the beautiful monu
ment at Chapultepec to the defenders of the
place who fell in the assault mentioned. It is
very simple, very unpretentious, and the plot
of ground around it is exquisitely kept with
banks of flowers and shorn grass.
Just beyond, and within sight through the
trees, is Molino del Rey. The building is still
there, but the place shows no marks of the
fierce little skirmish that took place there im
mediately before the storming of Chapultepec.
Beyond Chapultepec, and reached by the
same line of horse cars, is Tacubaya. This is
a favorite place of suburban residence, and if
visited during certain seasons of the year, will
be found to be entirely given over to gambling
and other orgies. At stated periods the au
thorities seem to think it best to turn the pop
ulation loose.
A place opposite in character, and on the
opposite side of the city, is the hill of Guada
loupe, and the village of Guadaloupe Hidalgo
where the famous treaty was signed. It is the

88 TO MEXICO.
home of Nuestra Senora de Guadaloupe, the
" Mother of Mexico." It is reached in half an
hour by horse cars, and people do not go
thither to gamble, but rather to pray. The
hill top is the scene of the Virgin's appearing
to the peasant. Everything here works mira
cles, though I suppose it is necessary to be
lieve it absolutely and beforehand, to have it
so. A corner of the fine church below, for
the largest edifice is below the hill, is given
up as a depository of canes and crutches,
votive offerings. There are several dozens of
tawdry little paintings, representing every
variety of accident by flood and field, each
with its misspelled inscription detailing the
miraculous cure worked by the direct and
instant interposition of " Our Lady of Guada
loupe." It is, consequently, quite a health resort of
the very faithful, and not least curious among
the votive offerings is a tall stone tower on the
hill, made to imitate a ship's mast and sails.
There is also a curious garden or grotto; em-

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 89
bodying a local idea of beauty. The walls
are entirely composed of broken crockery.
Interesting crockery of native manufacture
is also sold at Guadaloupe.
Tacuba. — This is a village in the neighbor
hood, and a place of country residence for the
more wealthy citizens of the capital. Near
the hamlet of Popotla, on the way thither,
stands the " tree of the Sorrowful Night "
(El Arbol de la Noche Triste), beneath which
Cortez sat during the whole of the night fol
lowing his defeat by the Aztecs. The legend
seems to be historic, and the remarkable tree
is almost worth a visit, even if the legend were
wanting. Near Tacuba is the famous church
of our Lady of Remedies, much visited. There
are also some interesting Aztec ruins.
Tacuba can also be reached by the trains
of the Mexican National Railway, leaving
city station both morning and afternoon.
Convent of Desierto. — This is a ruined
edifice lying among the mountain foot hills
some miles west of the city. It is not reached

90 TO MEXICO.
by the cars, but is a good place to go for a
picnic, the party hiring carriages as far as the
hill, then going up the hill either on foot or by
means of donkeys. The place is pleasant and
the view from the hill especially attractive.
San Angel is a handsome and picturesque
town popular as a country residence, and
famous for flower and fruit gardens from
which the city is largely supplied. There are
pleasant walks in the neighborhood, and a fine
view over the valley of Mexico. The factory vil
lage of Tizapan lies close by, and is interesting
to visitors who are from the manufacturing
communities of the United States. There is at
San Angel a good restaurant near the plaza.
The place is reached by horse cars leaving the
Plaza de Armas every half hour.
Canal de la Viga. — This ancient water
way is very well worth a voyage, as far as can
be gone in half a day, at least. It passes
through, or by, what were once the floating
gardens of Aztec times, and are yet almost
that. The means, of the journey is either a

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 9 1
scow or a canoe, preferably the former, upon
the bottom of which you sit or lie, while it is
" poled " up stream slowly by one or two Mexi
cans, who run up and down the slant of the
prow. There are several villages on the way,
and the jaunt usually ends at Mexicalcingo.
Here is a half-ruined monastery and church,
in front of which grow a group of enormous
olive trees. The charm of this little trip is
not quite explainable in words, but charm
there is, and the Viga is extensively patron
ized by all classes, though foreigners some
times come away without having heard of it.
It is recommended to start as early as con
venient in the morning, to buy fruit in the
market place which is on your way, then for
three cents a basket to put it in, wait there
until a car passes, and go to the quay, hire a boat
for the round trip, and eat fruit for dinner.
Penon del Marques. — This, from the city
roofs, is a round mound rising from the valley
some seven or eight miles away. There is an
ancient convent there, in which there are hot

92 TO MEXICO.
springs and a good bath. There is a fine view
of Lake Texcoco, and from the hill top also
a dim but interesting glimpse of the city.
There are various indirect ways of going
there. The best is to take a horse car for
San Lazaro in the Plaza de Armas and go to
the crossing of the line upon the canal ; there
hire a boat for the remainder of the journey.
Or you can remain on the car to San Lazaro,
and walk the remaining distance.
RAILWAY EXCURSIONS.
San Juan Teotihuacan. — There are here
some prehistoric Toltec (not Aztec) pyramids
and other interesting remains. As there is no
restaurant at San Juan, it is best to take lunch
or fruit, unless you prefer to go to the neigh
boring town of San Lucas for meals, where
there is a restaurant, — also a relic shop that
may repay a visit. The place is on the Vera
Cruz line and there are two trains every morn
ing. Tula. — This town is reputed among the

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 93
very oldest; an ancient seat of Indian rule.
Here is also the oldest Christian church in the
republic. There are ruins, presumed to be
Toltec and prehistoric. The climate is per
ceptibly warmer than in the city. A detailed
examination of the great Spanish drainage
cut is obtainable here. There are two or three
restaurants. Tula is a station on the Mexican
Central Road, accessible by daily trains both
ways. Amecameca. — This is a quaint and pictur
esque place at the foot of Popocatapetl, and a
favorite spot with tourists. There are many
charming walks, and a hill called Sacro Monte,
not far from the station, is covered with
enormous cedars. There is a chapel at the
summit and another upon the side of the hill.
Popocatapetl and Ixtoccihuatl — the White
Woman — overawe the place. There are res
taurants and every convenience, and owing to
time occupied in going, it is necessary also to
spend the night there and return on the fol
lowing day.

94 TO MEXICO.
It is reached by going to San Lazaro, and
there taking a train on the Interoceanic Rail
way, Morelos division. Trains leave in the
morning. Texcoco. — There are ancient ruins in this
town also, some mounds, and the site and
ruins of the palace of Nezahualcoytl.* A hill
some two miles distant holds the remains of
still another palace. A mile distant are the
beautiful gardens of Molino de Flores. There
is a fine old church. The place was in very
ancient times a rival of Mexico, and is sur
rounded and covered by the remains of ancient
magnificence. It is reached by the Interoceanic Railway,
Irolo division, taking street cars at the plaza
for Peravillo. Trains leave in the morning.
The necessarily imperfect sketch of an in
teresting country closes here, leaving many
things undescribed which it is hoped the
reader may sometime discover for himself.
Descriptions have been carried no further
* In these extraordinary names the author merely follows copy,
and knows no more of their fluent pronunciation than the reader.

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 95
than was deemed necessary for the conven
ience of the intending traveller. There has
been no attempt at tabular or statistical infor
mation. At best it is not uncommon for the
travelling fraternity to differ from each other
as to facts, to say nothing of impressions.
It is believed that as a field for the tourist
and health-seeker Mexico has no equal, and
there has been no attempt in these pages to
conceal that impression. The facilities for a
pleasant and economical journey thither are
not overstated, and all ancient stories of
danger, suspicion and semi-barbarism must
soon be exploded by the experience of hun
dreds. Not as a perfect specimen of the literary
art, and not as a competitor with innumerable
volumes published about Mexico almost
weekly, but as a brief compendium of hints
which it is hoped may be useful to the intend
ing tourist, this little volume is left with the
reader.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRAW-

3 9002 01462 8136
'A BOOK OF UNIQUE AND PECULIAR INTEREST." — The Times.

FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES.

By JAMES W. STEELE.
i2mo, extra cloth, black and gilt. Price $i 50.
"These stories are fragrant with the breath of the mountain and
the plain, with constant reminders of the saddle and the camp
fire." — Courier, Cincinnati.
" If Capt. Steele had written only the preface to these sketches,
we might well thank him for that one gem of poetic prose; and to
say that the book is worthy of it is but a hearty tribute to its
merits." — Tribune, Chicago.
" They are the writings of a man of culture and refined taste.
There is a polish in his work, even in the rough materials that
army officers find in our far Southwest, among Indians and white
frontiersmen, that reminds the reader of Irving's sketches." — Bul
letin, Philadelphia.
u They are written with a care and a nice precision in the use of
words quite rare in books of this character. * * * The author
brings to our notice phases of character practically unknown to
Eastern civilization, and withal so graphically portrayed as to give
the impression of actual life. * * * The book is worthy of
attentive reading." — The American, Philadelphia.
Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by
JANSEN, McCLURG, & CO., Publishers,
117-121 Wabash Ave., Chicago, III.