VIEW ON THE KIO MOTAQTTA.

[Frontispiece.]

[See page 414.]

SUMMERLAND SKETCHES,

OR

RAMBLES IN THE BACKWOODS

OF

MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.

" Man's gardens blossom in the north,
But Nature's in the south." — Camoens.

BY , \
C
FELIX Lf^SWALD.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
BY H. f. FARNY AND HERMANN FABER.

PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1880.

Copyright, 1880, by J. B. Lutincott & Co.

L I ) j

PREFACE.

In the winter of 1867 I Avas stationed at Medellin, near
Vera Cruz, as director of an overcrowded military lazaretto.
With accommodations for sixty men we had to take charge
of two hundred, besides feeding and nursing a considerable
number of destitute civilians, both Indians and whites, who
had been quartered in the loft of a neighboring cotton-press.
Our white charity patients were neither charitable nor pa
tient; they clamored for the expulsion of their Indian
countrymen, denounced the French steward as an Oriental
barbarian, and bemoaned the departed glory of the Repub
lic when I stopped their rations of smoking-tobacco. The
scum of the Guachinangos, or homeless Creoles of the ad
jacent seaport-town, they were a lot of graceless scamps,
with the apparent exception of a heroic old 'longshoreman
who had been brought in an ambulance by a detachment
of the harbor police, having nearly bled to death from two
wounds which looked very much like French bayonet stabs.
But the supposed exception confirmed the rule when our
hero turned out to be a Tabasco, indigo planter who had
been forced to join Rion's guerillas, and after the defeat of
his corps and the confiscation of his property had made his
way to Vera Cruz, wounded and penniless, in the hope of
gaining admission to the City Hospital. His recovery was
slow, but from first to last he behaved with a fortitude that
won him the respect of his military nurses, and by and by
the sympathy of our city visitors. A Vera Cruz merchant 6

6 PREFACE.
sent him a fine saddle-horse, and before I discharged him
we collected money enough to help him over the first six
months, or across the ocean if he should prefer to leave the
country. He was a native of Reus in Western Catalonia.
Mexico was on the eve of a general revolution, and the
State of Tabasco was still under martial law; but the
ranchero decided to stay.
" Twelve years ago I crossed the ocean of my own accord,
and I do not repent it even now," he said, when he mounted
his horse at the hospital gate. " Mexico is the freest country
on earth, after all. They may blockade the valleys, and
change their President for a Sultan, for all I care; but there
is freedom in the mountains, and I know a place of refuge
where neither monarchs nor demagogues will bother me."
After the restoration I transferred my medical apparatus
to the Vera Cruz City Dispensary, and the health officer of
the quarantine having tendered his resignation, the foreign
residents recommended me as his successor, with a view of
testing the efficacy of a system of sanitary precautions,
whose adoption I had urged for many years. But the fal
lacy of that system was demonstrated, to my personal satis
faction at least, by the collapse of my own health. Neither
surf-baths nor dietetic sacrifices would avail me ; the climate
refuted the most cogent pathological axioms ; and I was on
the point of embarking for a less paradoxical latitude, when
I remembered the man of Reus and his solution of a simi
lar dilemma. Learning that there was a junta of inspecting
officers at the fort, I called upon a former colleague, now
Surgeon-General and member of the Government Immi
gration Committee. Soon after his return to the capital I
received a communication from the Department of the In
terior, and on the same day I exchanged a sea-water proof
trunk for a Mexican pack-saddle. The coast range was

PREFACE. 7
shrouded with the mists of the rainy season, and my coun
trymen dismissed me with sore misgivings, and gave me
up for lost when they learned that a congestive chill had
arrested my progress at Puebla, but my next letter reassured
them. " Mexico is the healthiest country on earth, after all,"
I wrote from Tacubaya, the Montmartre of the Mexican
capital ; " the fever may blockade your seaports and terror
ize the lowlands from Matamoros to Yucatan, but in the
mountains is freedom, and I have found a place of refuge
where miasmi and mosquitoes will never bother me."
In the course of the next eight years I explored the high
lands of Jalisco, Oaxaca, Colima, and Vera Paz, for the
benefit of my own health or that of my employers, but like
the Catalan farmer, I found more than I had sought. In
dependence, in the political sense, and a healthy climate
might be found in the mountains of Scotland, and even of
old Spain ; but the New Spanish sierras can boast of a
virgin soil with primeval forests which offer a sanitarium to
all who seek refuge from the malady of our anti-natural
civilization, from the old marasmus which has spread from
the Syrian desert to the abandoned cotton-fields of Georgia
and Alabama.
We vaunt our proficiency in the art of subjugating na
ture, but in the Old World the same ambition has led to a
very dear-bought victory, which the countries of the East
have paid with the loss of their forests, and the Eastern
nations with the loss of their manhood ; their wild wood
lands have been tamed into deserts, and their wild freemen
into slaves ; the curse of the blighted land has recoiled upon
its devastators. In our eagerness to wrest the sceptre from
our Mother Earth we have invaded her domain with fire and
sword, and instead of increasing the interest of our heritage

8 PREFACE.
we have devoured the principal ; the brilliant progress of the
vain god of earth is tracked by a lengthening shadow, the
day-star of our empire is approaching the western horizon.
Where shall it end ? Mould, sandy loam, and sand is
Liebig's degeneration scale of treeless countries ; the Amer
ican soil may pass through the same phases, and what then ?
Will the sunset in the west be followed by a new eastern
sunrise ? Shall Asia, the mother of religions, give birth to
an earth-regenerating Messiah, whose gospel shall teach us
to recognize the physical laws of God '? Or shall the gloam
ing fade into the night of the Buddhistic Nirvana, the final
extinction of organic life on this planet ? It is nftt much of
a consolation to think that in the latter case the nations of
the higher latitudes might count upon a protracted twilight.
The westward spread of the landblight will drive the fam
ished millions of the Old World upon our remaining wood
lands, but the resources of the last Oasis will probably be
husbanded with Scotch canniness and Prussian systematism,
and before we share the fate of the Eastern nations we may
see the dawn of the bureaucratic millennium, when all our
fields shall be fenced in with brick walls, all rivers with
irrigation-dykes, and all functions of our domestic life with
official laws and by-laws. My trust in the eternal mercy of
Providence lets me expect another deluge before that time,
but the recuperative ageticies of unaided nature seem power
less against the greatest of all earthly evils. National and
territorial marasmus are incurable diseases ; the historical
records of the Eastern continents, at least, prove nothing to
the contrary. The coast-lands of the Mediterranean were
the pleasure-gardens of the Juventus Mundi, the Elysian
Fields whose inhabitants celebrated life as a festival ; and
now ? Spain, Southern Italy, Turkey, Greece, and Persia
have been wasted to a shadow of their former self; ghouls

PREFACE. 9
and afrits haunt the burial-places of the North African
empires ; and no invocation can break the death-slumber of
Asia Minor. Acorns perish in the soil which once nour
ished the oaks of Bashan; outraged nature refuses to be
reconciled. With the glory of the Orbis Romanus the
spring-time of our earth has departed, and what America
mistakes for the prime of a new year is but the lingering
mildness of an Indian summer.
The career whose swiftness is our national boast has led
us upon a road which has never been far pursued with im
punity ; the rapidity of our tree and game destruction is far
more unpa/alleled than the growth of our cities ; the misery
of the Old World has not taught us to avoid its causes, and
the history of the effects will not fail to repeat itself. On
the frozen shores of Lake Winnepeg and the inaccessible
heights of the central Rocky Mountains a few remnants of
the old forests will probably survive, but the great East
American Sylvania is already doomed ; if we persist in our
present course our last timber-States, Maine, Michigan, and
North Carolina, will be as bald as Northern Italy in fifty
years from now, and our last game will soon retreat to the
festering swamps of Southern Florida.
The temperate zone of America will soon be the treeless
zone, with a single exception. In the sierras of Southern
Mexico large tracts of land still combine a generous climate
with a rich arboreal vegetation. Mexico, like our own
Republic, has her backwoods States, but their security from
the inroads of the destroyer is guaranteed by better safe
guards than their remoteness from the great commercial
centres. The ruggedness of the surrounding sierras, the
supposed or real scarcity of precious metals, and the inde
pendent character of the aboriginal population, all conspire
to make the alturas or mountain forests as unattractive to
l*

10 PREFACE.
the imperious Spaniards as they are inviting to freedom-
loving visitors from the North.
To my rambles and adventures in these alturas, to their
scenic charms, their strange fauna and vegetable wonders, I
have devoted this volume ; but I have rarely touched upon
the mineral and agricultural resources of a region which
should remain consecrate to the Hamadryads and their wor
shippers. The cities of the intervening " civilized" districts,
too, I have only mentioned as wayside stations for the benefit
of non-pedestrian tourists. New Spain makes no exception
from the general rule that the nations of Europe have trans
formed their American dependencies after the image of their
mother-countries, and only he who leaves the cities far
behind can forget that Mexico was colonized under the
auspices of St. Jago and Ximenes.
This collection of " Summerland Sketches" is therefore
neither a record of a pilgrimage to the shrines and cathe
drals of Spanish America, nor a bid for the patronage of
Southwestern land-agencies, but rather a guide-book to one
of the few remaining regions of earth that may give us an
idea of the tree-land eastward in Eden which the Creator
intended for the abode of mankind. In the terrace-lands of
Western Colima and Oaxaca, near the head- waters of the Rio
Lerma and the mountain lakes of Jalisco, and in the lonely
highlands of Vera Paz, we may yet see forests that have
never been desecrated by an axe, and free fellow-creatures
which have not yet learned to flee from man as from a fiend.
Let us make the best of that last chance, for the time may
be near when princes and sages shall envy those who have
managed to get a glimpse of Paradise before the gates were
closed forever.
FELIX L. OSWALD.
Cincinnati, March, 1880.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Southward Ho! — The "Gila City" — Fellow-Passengers — Vigils
on the Pilot-Deck — Climatic Reflections — The Birthland of the
Human Race — Southern Homesickness — The Saturnian Age —
Paradise Theories — America Felix — Arrival in Guaymas —
The Morgan Transport Company — Prairie-Schooners — Boss
Davis — A Mexican Caravansary — Departure from Guaymas —
The Vega — Our First Camp — Don Jose's Advice — Paso del
Cabo — The Chieftain's Ford — An Indian Brutus — Sand-Hills
— The Gila Desert — Pays de la Muerte — The American Tim-
buktoo — An Embryo Sahara — Origin of the Treeless Table-
Lands — Professor Buckland's Conjecture — The Plateau of En-
cinal — A Natural Game-Preserve — The Oriyas — Night Camp
in the Ruins of Azatlan — Disagreeable Visitors — The Rio
Mayo — Buffalo Hunters — Aragon Shepherds' Dogs — A Do
mestic Beast of Prey — Pronghorn Antelopes — The Sergeant's
Wager — A Match for a Greyhound — Exciting Chase — Cha
parral Cocks — The Phasianus Alector — Chickasaw Plums —
Wild Jessamine — Butterfly Swarms — De Leon's Land — The
American Italy — Val de Cafias — Don Pancho's Ranch —
Mexican Hospitality — New Texas — Northern Colonists —
Chronique Scandaleuse of a Mule-Farm — A Horse-Breaker's
Secret — Taming a Bison — A Wooden Briareus — The Cafias
Valley — Are Hogs Snake-Proof? Don Pancho's Theory —
Woman's Rights Limited — Toxioological Precautions — The
Oasis of Enoinal — Camp in a Mulberry-Grove — Locust Or
chestra — Coyote Concerts — Vox Clamantis in Deserto . 21
11

12 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
COLIMA. PAOJE
Republican Highways — The Geyser of Aguas Calientes — Valley
of the Rio Fuerte — The " Tree- Alligator" — Meeting a Country
man — A Linguistic Exile — Camp in a Bignonia-Grove — Arid
Mountains — The Unpardonable Sin of Forest-Destruction — •
Ygdrasil — A Wayside Tavern — News from the Frontier —
International Banter — San Luis Potosi — Witch-Hunters — Dr.
Rambert's Experience — Departure for San Bias — The Virgin
Woods of the Rio Balsas — A Sierra Incognita— The Old Mili
tary Road — An Entomological Paradise — The Papilio Castor —
Cow-Riders — Rustic Prejudices — Camp in a. Pine-Forest — Di
etetic Experiments — Dr. Rambert's Dilemma — Our Indian
Purveyor — A Persistent Peddler — Chile Blanco y Colorado —
A Patriotic Handkerchief — Bat Colony — Ferae Nature — The
Night-Tiger — A Mexican Bugbear — Juan Rivera's Fate — A
Hunter Hunted — Tackling a Tartar — Mountain Forests — The
Voices of the Wilderness ...... 54
CHAPTER III. i
THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO.
Lake Chapala — A Tropical Switzerland — View from the Sierra'
Madre — The Alturas — Mountain Woods — Juventus Mundi —
The Lake-Shore — Black Herons — Wooded Islands — The Cas
cades of the Rio Blanco— Val de Paraiso — A Vanilla Planta
tion — Casa Morena — Don Martinez — Walton Redivivus —
Aquatic Curiosities — A Private Museum — The Hog-Tapir —
An Expensive Pet — Its Paroxysms of Appetite — Hot Sulphur-
Springs —The Fountain of Eternal Coughs — Indian Gluttony —
Fried Eels and Sulphur-Water — Evening Rambles — Camping
in Eden — Camp-Fire Stories — Don Martinez's Adventure —
Curious Phenomenon — Cross-Examination — An Unscientific
Witness — Moonlight on the Lake — The Rio Lerma — Travel
ling Companions — Wild Hogs — Long-Range Arrow-Shooting
— Migratory Quadrupeds — The Coast-Hills — In Sight of Ma-
zatlan— Arrival at San Bias— Spanish Characteristics — A Mexi
can Hotel — Pepper-Pots — Dietetic Abuses vs. Intemperance —
Hint to Travellers in Spanish America — A Negro Polyglot 
Sunset on the Pacific— At the Mouth of the Rio Lerma — View
from the Promontory . . .... 83

CONTENTS. 13
CHAPTER IV.
THE WESTERN SIERRAS. PAGE
San Bias — Engage a Guide — Mexican Stage-Coaches — A Tolerant
Conductor — Dogs and Goats as Inside Passengers — Dust-Clouds
of the Vega — Ascent of the Coast-Range — The Granite- Alps of
Jalisco — Bombax Forests — Climatic Paradoxes — Val de Cule-
bras — A Serpent-Colony — Vivora Parda — Historical Serpents
— A Conjecture — Night-Camp in the Sierra de Inua — Starlight
— The Regio Septentrionalis — Wild Scenery — Bighorn Sheep —
Mountain Antelopes — Their Confidence — The Volcano of Cu-
liacan — Inaccessible Peaks — Home of the Jaliseano Indians —
A Pagan Reservation — Defile of Santander — The Plateau of Las
Charcas — Arctic Vegetation — Ascent of the " Altar" — Bird's-
Eye View of a Volcanic Phenomenon — A Land of Flowers
— Pot-Hunters — Desperate Charge of a Wild Boar — Adonis —
A Lucky Shot — Hacienda del Monte — The Governor of Jalisco
— A Mexican Philosopher — His Opinion on Woman's Bights —
On the Religion of the Future — Bachelor's Hall — Question
able Pastimes — Breaking a Grizzly — A Famous Bull — Padre
Felipe's Pets — Trip to the Val de San Juan — An Indian Wal-
halla — Temple Ruins of Mayapan — Christian Iconoclasts —
The Marvel of Atocha — A Symbol of the Moon — Lapidary
Inscriptions — A Problematic Statue — The Jaliseano Indians —
Curious Customs — Adherence to Pagan Rites— Traditions —
A Famous Chieftain ... . .113
CHAPTER V.
THE SIERRA MADRE.
Ascent of Mount Orizaba — Black-Tail Deer — Lonely Heights —
The Snow-Line — Excelsior — An Unrivalled Panorama — The
Two Oceans — Gulf Islands — Our Mediterranean Sea — The
Peak of Perote — Glaciers of the Sierra de San Juan — Mountain
Scenery — Terrace-Lands — Contrasted Vegetation — The Con
iferous Belt — Forced March — Pine-Forests — Alpine Flora —
Mountain Grouse — The Canon of the Rio Blanco — Deserted
Mining-Works — Camp in the Old Quartel — Fireside Com
forts — A Free and Easy Symposium — Ease rs. Luxury — Jose's
Ghost Story — La Llorona — Origin of an International Super-

14 CONTENTS.
PAQE
stition — The Tuxpan's Testimonial — A Cold Night — Fire-
Worship — Sunrise in the Sierra Madre — Morning Air — The
Valley of the Rio Blanco — Barrancas — Limestone Caves — A
Colony of Vultures — Winged Kidnappers — Ganymede — Tres-
montes — Monastery of San Rafael — A Mountain Convent . 151
CHAPTER VI.
LA TIERRA FRIA.
The Convent of San Rafael — A Museum in a Church — Padre
Ramon — A Self-taught Mineralogist — Crudities of Spanish
Science — Scientific Curiosity — Deficiencies of the Modern Latin
Races — The Night of the Middle Ages — A Strange Curiosity-
Shop — Secular Ornaments — A Free and Easy Convent —
Privileged Friars — Villa Amorosa — The "Children of the
Convent" — Precocious Depravity — Pablito's Experiment —
Can Squirrels be Killed by a Fall ? — Salto Mortale — Mountain
Vegetation — Turpentine Works — Bewitched Bats — A Curious
Problem — Val de Perote — New-Spanish Robber Castles —
Mountain Air — A Lung-Test — Don Jose M'Cann — A Car
nivorous Hermit — La Trampa — An Eating Match — The
Charms of Solitude — Dumb Companions — Voices of the Night
— The Pinal de Loreto — Pine- Jungles — Indian Outlaws —
Eagle's Nest — Mountain Weasels — Spineseent Trees — Vegeta
ble Instinct — Val de Perote — The Old Fort — Classic Pastimes
— The Vegos Brothers — A Foot-Race — Juancito's Stratagem —
Gymnastic Emulation — The Olympic Games : What Nation
will Revive Them ? . . . . . .182
CHAPTER VII.
THE VALLEY OF OAXACA.
Tehuantepec — Aspect of the Coast — Dissolving Views — Mist-
Shrouded Lowlands — The Rainy Season — A Strange Pano
rama — Cloudless Heights — The Llanos Ventosos — Landing in
a Squall — Tehuantepec Guides — A Travelling Companion —
Rain-Bound— Blockade-Running — Horrible Roads — The Mud-
Belt of the Tierra Caliente — The Hummock Region — Wild
Orchards — A Forced Night-March — Mosquito Jungles — A

CONTENTS. 15
PAGE
Place of Refuge — Night-Voices — The Happiness of Contrast —
Reveille — Sunrise in the Foothills — Air de Mille Fleurs —
Woodland Odors — Bird-Voices — A Morning Hymn — The Val
ley of the Rio Verde — Reptilian and Entomological Bugbears
— Harmless Snakes — Vegetable Wonders — The Cypress of
Maria del Tule — Val de Morillo — Orange Gardens — The
American Daphne — Tropical Butterflies — Catching Butterflies
for a Living — New Bern — Swiss Colonists — Enviable Home
steads — The Climate of the Llanos Ventosos — Pastor Wenks's
Weather List — Creature Comforts — Wild Fruits — Cheap
Venison — Market Quotations — A Winter Resort for Consump
tives — Resources of the Tierra Caliente — Falcon Hunters —
Valuable Dogs — Treeing a Puma — Las Cascadas — A Private
Zoo — Pet Reptiles and Carnivora : Their Ridiculous Tameness
— How to Break Dogs from Chicken-Stealing — Supposed Case
of Hydrophobia in «, Monkey — A Test of Courage — Cicuta
Poison — A Strange Tipple — Fuddling with Water Hemlock —
Can all Poisons become a "Second Nature"? — Capuchin
Monkeys : Their Obstinac}' — A Beast-Tamer Nonplussed — The
Limestone Caves of the Sierra Honda — Las Tunas — A Convent
Festival — Monastic Bonvivants — Fete Champetre — A Spanish
Hercules — The Padre Vicario's Wager — Tropical Moonlight
— "LaVirgen del Pilar" — Nocturnal Dances — A Sanitarium
for Pessimists . . . . 219
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DELTA OF THE SUMASINTA RIVER.
A Shoreless River — Tanglewood — The Swamp-Labyrinth —
Strongholds of the Wilderness — Animal Reservations — Man's
Power and its Limits — Inundated Forests — Driftwood Chaos —
The Raft Faluca — Dangerous Navigation — The Negro Pilot —
Floating Islands — A River-Lake — Land at Last — Camp on
Terra Firma — Courting Sleep under Difficulties — Mosquitology
— Heroic Remedies — Can the Human Skin become Gnat-Proof?
— Under Weigh — The Swamp-Otter — Its Curious Burrows —
Sweetwater Dolphins — Indian Superstitions — Swarms of
Water Fowl — Corrientes — A Queer Depot — Pinto Wigwam —
Trapping an Alligator — A Surprised Saurian — Settling Old
Scores — Vae Victis — The Wigwam Belles — The Costume of

16 CONTENTS. i
the Nereids — Pepita's Bonnet — A Casus Belli — Inconvertible
Bipeds — Father Cristoval's Lament — Rio Gordo — Aquatic
Hunting-Grounds — Habits of the Jaguar — Baiting a Trap with
a Corpse — A Curious Case of Blood-Poisoning — The Mission
of San Gabriel — Major Casales — A Swamp Oasis — Lago de
Patos — River Pirates — Their Inaccessible Retreats — A Chron
icle of the Wilderness — Mysterious Visitors — A Four-Legged
Lothario — Curious Instinct of a Tame Monkey — Boa-Shoot
ing — A Pinto Patriarch — Indian Renegades — Impious In
scriptions — Roasting a Bna — Gastronomic Reflections — The
Delta of the Sumasinta River — Lago de Terminos — A Pathless
Wilderness — Jack o' Lantern — Carmen Harbor

CHAPTER IX.
RAMBLES IX YUCATAN.
The American Hindostan — Indestructible Forests — Yucatan
Indians — A Belligerent Peninsula — Free-Soilers — An Ethno
logical Problem — San Joaquin — Tropical Fruits in Midwinter
— The Teamster from Tenne.-see — A Water-Cure — The Arena]
— Evergreen Forests — A Summerland — Arboreal Quadrupeds
— El Hormiguero — A Gypsy Camp — The Tabascanos — Shoot
ing Frugivorous Bats for Supper — De Gustibus, etc. — Macoba
— Plum-Pudding Day — An Elaborate Feast — Victimized by
Indian Hogs — The Avenger — Lynching a Lunch-Fiend —
Christmas Eve — Kettle-Drums — Indian Converts — Heavy-
Armed Missionaries — Dogs as Tax-Collectors — Reclaiming an
Apostate — Don Pedro Santo — The Dangers of Unbelief —
Striking and Shooting Arguments — Cerro de Macoba — Vestiges
of Former Civilization — Summer Diet — Frugality — Christmas
Dinner — In the Greenwood Shade — Arcadian Pastimes — North
and South — Day-Dreams — The Camino Real — Weather Proph
ets — Ominous Sounds — Chased by a Tornado — The "Tower-
House" — Just in Time — A Tropical Thunderstorm — Jupiter
Tonans — Von Haller's Conjecture — A Mountain-Farm —
Monkey Traps — Carnivorous Squirrels — An Unlucky Pet —
The Banana Zone — Spontaneous Orchards — Wild Honev —
Cheapness of Happiness in the Tropics — Our Lost Garden-
Home ... . . . . 290

CONTENTS. 17
CHAPTER X.
THE AMERICAN POMPEII. PAGE
Ruins of the New World — Man and Nature — Fate of the Aryan
Empires — A Strange Contrast — Redeemed Deserts — Prehistoric
Cities — Chichen — Macoba— The Discovery of Uxmal — Baron
Waldek's Account — An Archaeological Treasure-Trove — Don
Yegro's Guest — A Lueky Accident — Arrival at Uxmal — The
Majordomo — Our Cicerone — The " Governor's House" — El
Palomal — Spanish Nomenclature — The Nunnery — A Sculp
tured Coliseum — Startling Frescos — The House of the Dwarf—
"Altar of Abraham" — Gigantic Ruins — The Oldest Inhabitant
— A Problematic Quadruped — The "Town-Crier" — Curious
Inscriptions — Sculptured Nondescripts — The Sphinx — Camp
ing in a Palace of Unknown Kings — Fireside Tales — La
Rebosada — Outwitting a Night-hag — A Narrow Escape —
Indian Traditions — Legend of the Nunnery — Nocturnal
Dancers — Sensitive Spooks — A Disappointed Treasure-Hunter
— Historical Enigmas — The Malady of Civilization — Nature's
Remedy — Redeemed Ruins . , . . 320
CHAPTER XI.
THE BACKWOODS OF GUATEMALA.
The American Siam — Nature's Botanic Garden — The Palm-
Forests of Vera Paz — A Transcontinental Bridie-Path — A
Pleasant Companion — The Spider-Monkey — Monkey-Lore —
Don Ruan's Theory — Bird- Voices — Ornithological Curiosities
— Among the Parrots — The Purple Macaw — Outshining a
Peacock — Rio Moseon — Camp in the Tree-tops — Excelsior —
Tree Rats — An LTnsolved Mystery — Grass Fog — A Snake-Panic
— Spider-Monkeys — Monkey-Shooting — A Half-Homicide —
Baby Monkeys — Love after Death — A Logwood Camp — Dark
ness during a Rainstorm — Do Animals enjoy Rain ? — Sloths and
Monkeys — Their Indifference to a Pelting Shower — A Slothful
Family — My Indian Guide — Walking Barefoot in a Jungle —
Natural Sole-Leather — Advantages of a Hardy Education — Is
Health the Summum Bonum ? — The Charms of Savage Life —
Hunting-Grounds of the Casca Indians — Forest Nomads —
Casca Wigwam — A Precocious Muchacho — Knowing Babes
in the Woods — Precocitv of the Inferior Races — Animal

18 CONTENTS.
PAGE
Analogies — Capture of a Young Ant-Bear — Its Awful Shrieks
— Arboreal Nosegays — The White Blooming Cecropia — Gor
geous Butterflies — Edible Fruit of the Quercus Ilex — The
Gusano Infernal — A Dwarf Rattlesnake : Effects of its Bite
on Dogs ; on an Indian Child — Queer Remedies — First View
of the Sierra Negra — Val de Tortugas — Mountain Lakes —
Turtle-Egg Hunters — A Visit to their Rendezvous — Wayside
Stores — A Bucolic Instrument — Tortugas — An Indian Patri
arch — Cutting a Third Set of Teeth — Unimpeachable Testi
mony — Parched Corn Bread vs. Sozodont — Ethnological Re
flections . . 362
CHAPTER XII.
THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA.
Daybreak — Sun-Gilt Peaks — Ascent of the Sierra Negra — The
Weather-Saint — Mountain Forests — El Animalote — Boa-
Shooting — Tenacity of Life in a Snake — The Canon of the
Rio Motagua — A River dissolved into Spray — A Tropical
Yosemite — Pine Woods^-A Highland Ranch — Gil Mateo's
Boys — A Self-Reliant American — The Casueha — A Hunter's
Castle — Living in an Arbor — Indian Pot-Hunters — A Game-
law-less Land — Value of a Squirrel-Gun — A Humble Visitor —
The Guachinos — Indian Remedy for Lovesickness — A Youth
ful Suicide — The Eastern Slopes of the Sierra Negra — Their
Beauty and Loneliness — Wild Pineapples — Alpine Pastures —
Fragrance of the Artemisia Alpina — Psychic Influence of
Mountain Air — Blue Skies vs. Blue Glass — Chances for a
Swiss Colony — Edible Acorns — Colossal Fir-Trees — Squirrel-
Monkeys— Connecting Link between the Rodents and Quad-
rumana — Facts for Darwin— La Zapateria — Cerberus — Pre
datory Monkeys — Monkey-Hounds — The Wages of Sin 
Vicarious Atonement — The Pantaneros — A Musical Escort 
The Austrian Sergeant— An Eventful Career — In Sight of
Port Isabel — Transparent Atmosphere — Optic Illusion  The
Sun of Mexico — An International Seaport Town — Mexican
Garrison— The Harbor of Port Isabel— Barra del Padre  On
the Wharf— Passengers of the New Orleans Steamer— Sunset
—The Coast-Range— Sunlight on the Sierra de San Tomas—
The Last Bell — Valedictory — The Signal-Gun — Adios a
Mexico  395

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

1. View on the Rio Motagua

Frontispiece

2. Puerto de Guaymas

25

3. "Boss Davis"

27

4. Sonora Indians

29

5. Ruins of Azatlan

33

6. The Ranchero

36

7. Plateau of Encinal

42

8. Val de Cafias

45

9. On the Road to San Luis

55

10. Aguas Calientes

57

11. "Tree-Alligator" (Iguana)

59

12. On the Lerma River

09

13. An Indian Raneho

72

14. Colima Peasants

76

15. Lake Chapala

84

16. The Hog-Tapir

91

17. Chechemeca Platanero

103

18. Chechemeca Bowman

105

19. A Negro Polyglot

lO'.l

20. San Bias

114

21. The Tuxpano

12::

22. Peak of Culiacan

12*

23. Jose

. 137

24. Hacienda del Monte

140

25. Temple Ruins of Mayapan

140

26. Mount Orizaba

153

27. Slopes of the Sierra Madre

157

28. Crater of Orizaba . . . .

159

29. In the. Pifial

165

30. Deserted Mining-Works on the Rio Blanco .

171

31. Convent of San Rafael .

177

32. " Dolce far Niente" ...

185

33. Mount Perote ....

189

34. Precipice of the Rio Blanco .

. 191

35. El Tigrero .

197

19

20 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

36. La Trampa . . 199
37. Val de Perote and the Old Fort 209
38. The Foot- Race 212
39. Falls of the Rio Verde . 220
40. Jungles of the Rio Verde . . 232
41. Cypress of Maria del Tule 235
42. Indian Falconer 241
43. Don Carl's Pets . . 244
44. Limestone Caves of the Sierra Honda 249
45. The Wigwam Swing . 253
46. The Swamps of the Sumasinta 257
47. The Raft Faluca . . 258
48. Settling Old Scores . 272
49. Mission of San Gabriel . 277
50. A Pinto Patriarch 283
51. Skinning a Boa . 285
52. Carmen Harbor . . 288
53. " Sauve Qui Peut" . 297
54. Tabascano Indians . . 301
55. Lynching a Lunch-Fiend . . 305
56. Reclaiming an Apostate 307
57. Don Pedro Santo . 308
58. Christmas in Yucatan ... . . 311
59. The Ruins of Sacrificios . 319
60. South Wall of Casa de las Monjas 341
61. The Palomal 343
62. The Town-Crier . 345
63. The House of the Dwarf . 347
64. The Oldest Inhabitant . . 352
65. A Disappointed Treasure-Hunter . . 357
66. Obelisk of Uxmal . 360
67. Excelsior . 368
68. Village of the Casca Indians 371
69. In the Toils . 373
70. Love after Death . 379
71. An Ant-Bear at Bay . . 387
72. The Highlands of Vera Paz . . 400
73. Boa-Shooting . 403
74. A Hunter's Castle . 409
75. Enfant Perdu 419
76. Port Isabel 421

SUMMERhAND SKETCHES.

CHAPTEE I.
SOISTORA.
Mi pays y los montes me llaman,
Los montes airosos del Sur. — Manuel Villegas.
Our boat had left Fort Yuma on a cold October morn
ing, and a little before sunset we entered the Gulf of
California. Either the weather had moderated during the
afternoon, or the first ten hours of our voyage had brought
us to a latitude where October is still a summer month, for
some of my fellow-passengers appeared on deck in their
shirt-sleeves, and even the Mexican sailors had folded their
ponchos into pillows and slept or smoked under the lee of
the caboose.
Before the twilight disappeared from the mountain-sum
mits of the Californian peninsula I had spread my couch
on the pilot-deck, and tried to remember what omens a
professional augur would have found in the swarms of mi
gratory birds that accompanied our vessel on her way to the
South, when the evening stillness was broken by that ingen
ious instrument whose sound combines the harmonies of a
fog-horn and a steam slate-factory — a genuine Chinese gong.
" Those things will be safe enough up here," I told
the cabin-boy, who had just brought my overcoat and a
2 21

22 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
travelling cushion : " I shall be back in ten or fifteen
minutes." The passenger-list of the Gila City included some char
acteristic specimens of an ethnological class who, in reference
to their behavior, can hardly be described as Pacific Amer
icans. There were two excited Sacramento politicians, hot
from a ratification-meeting; a troop of miners, on their
way to the Sonora diggings, who swore that they were
"flush enough to afford it," and threatened to treat all
round ; there was a commercial traveller, who insisted on
talking ungrammatical Spanish; and a little lawyer from
San Bernardino County, whose anecdotes would have been
interesting contributions to the border chronicle of Southern
California if he had been sober; and when a deep-mouthed
butcher from Los Angeles became vocal under the influence
of the vino de mezcal, I stole away to my cabin, got a couple
of blankets, and returned to my freehold on the pilot-deck.
I wanted to enjoy the luxuries of silence, especially a feeling
of growing exultation which my spirit somehow evolved
from the consciousness that every hour brought me ten or
twelve miles nearer to a land of perennial summer. Are
there any germs or remnants of the bird-of-passage instinct
in the human soul ? I think the phenomenon admits of a
different explanation.
This earth of ours is at present ruled by a race of valiant
Northmen, and some fur-clad philosophers have assured us
that not only valor, but civilization and science, as well as
virtue — and consequently happiness — are plants which can
only thrive in the snow. It would be more correct to say
that science and civilization, which flourished in open air
during the golden age of the Mediterranean nations, have
become hot-house plants in the nineteenth century. The
ripening of their fruits still depends upon a certain amount

SONORA. 23
of caloric, only with this difference, — that the maturative
warmth which once emanated from the central body of the
solar system has now to be paid for in the form of sea-coal
and kindling-wood. But happiness, and that physical be
atitude of which health is only the principal condition,
have never prospered in the atmosphere of the conserva
tory. Sunlight cannot be entirely superseded by coal-gas.
In the intervals of our noisy Northern factory-life there
are moments when echoes from the land of our forefathers
become audible in the human soul ; and I think that at such
times many of my European and North American fellow-
men become conscious of a feeling which I might describe
as a Southern homesickness. For man is a native of the
tropics, and, like the shell that still murmurs its dreams of
the sea, the spirit of the exiled human race has never ceased
to yearn for our lost garden-home in the South. In his
essay on the hereditary instincts of the human animal, Her
bert Spencer remarks that the strange charm of what we call
a romantic landscape — i.e., a wild chaos of rocks and forests,
the more savage the better — probably dates from a time
when that emotion had a practical significance and filled
the souls of our woodcrafty ancestors with visions of hidden
game and a successful chase. In a similar way, our Para
dise traditions, the myth of the Elysian Gardens, the ever
green meadows of the Talmud, as also the Northern saga
of a land without winter sorrows, have probably been
transmitted from a time when all mankind enjoyed such
privileges of the blest on this side of the grave. We may
never know if the cradle of our primogenitor stood on the
banks of the Indus or in Southern Armenia, or, as Mauper-
tuis tells us, in the mountain-gardens of Arabia Felix ; but
all historical and mythological indications point to the South,
as well as all tenable theories a priori. What imagination

24 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
could locate the Garden of Eden in a Russian peat-bog or
in a Manitoba beaver-swamp ? Neither Adam and Eve
nor Darwin's four-handed ancestor could have survived a
Canadian winter, and even the Saturnian age of the first
agricultural nations could hardly be reconciled with the
climate of Old or New England. With all the calorific
artifices which the experience of the last hundred gener
ations has transmitted to our century, with well-warmed
workhouses and hospitals for consumptives, the burghers of
Manchester and Boston may manage to counteract the worst
effects of a low temperature, but the nations who " celebrated
life as a festival" have inhabited a different latitude.
" Los montes airosos del Sur" — " the airy mountains of
the South" — imparted the same charm to the crusades of
the Knights Templar as to those of the Conquistadores ;
the migration of the wild Asiatic hordes carried them to
the Southwest; the New England tourist departs for the
Southeast ; and the Italian hegiras of the British poets, the
chateaux d'Espagne of the French romancers, and the old
lament of the children of Israel for their lost Promised
Land, are not inspired by a predilection for any special
country, as much as by an undefined Southern homesick
ness. "Every mile toward the noonday sun," says the
returning exile in the Mega JDhuta, " brings us nearer to
the home of our fathers, the land of sweet tree-fruits and
everlasting summer."
The cabin of the Gila City was much infested with
co.ckroaches and cocktail odors, and the pilot-deck was too
damp to be altogether lovely ; but I remembered that
every revolution of the paddle-wheels diminished the de
gree of Northern latitude, and the starry hours have not
often brought me happier dreams than those in .that Octo
ber night on the Gulf of California.

SONORA.

25

The sea-coast of Sonora, with its rocky promontories,
abounds in coves and natural breakwaters where the feluccas
of the Mexican fishermen may find shelter in any kind of
weather. The unrivalled seaport of Acapulco alone ex
cepted, the mouth of the Rio del Toro, near Guaymas, is

probably the finest harbor of
the Northern Pacific, but the
trade of the mountainous
province is nearly monopo
lized by an inland market,
and the little seaport-town has not much improved since
the Spaniards fortified the Boca del Rio in 1685. There
are only three posadas or hostelries where the traveller can
find lodging as well as food, and I had no difficulty in
ascertaining the rendezvous of the Morgan teamsters.
The " Morgan Trade and Transport Company" of San
Francisco sends a monthly caravan of " prairie-schooners"
from Guaymas to San Luis Potosi, and their east-bound
freight is generally landed six days in advance of its de
parture from the sea-coast. As the captain of the Gila

26 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
City informed me that his boat had delivered the last
cargo a week ago, I lost no time in making my way to the
caravansary. Several mules, ready harnessed and saddled,
were hitched to the gate of the corral, and the bustle and
hubbub in the wagon-shed admonished me to prepare for
immediate marching orders.
" How are you, senor ?" the company's little clerk hailed
me from one of the tent-wagons. " You are our passenger
for San Luis, are you not? Can you tell me if there is
any mail for us on the Gila?"
" The mail-boy was inquiring for you at the hotel," I
replied. "How's Boss Davis, the wagonmaster? He's
nearly done loading, it seems ?"
" He's not done swearing yet," said the youngster : " I
think I hear him back there in that second shed. He in
quired for you at different times."
"Glad to see you, doctor!" cried the "Boss," jumping
to terra firma from a pile of swaying dry-goods boxes. " I
was just going to send for a good interpreter : it takes a
dozen curses of sixteen syllables apiece to start a Mexican
muleteer, and I was near the end of my vocabulary. Let
me get the axle-grease off my fingers before we shake
hands. You are just in time : I am going to fix you a seat
in my own wagon, unless you prefer otherwise. There will
be plenty of room. Do you know that old Fatty Heuinger
left us last month ?"
" I thought so. It seems you've got a brand-new clerk
since I saw you at headquarters ?"
" Yes, quite a boy : he can ride in my lunch-basket or
anywhere. But did you let him weigh your baggage?"
"No: my things are at the posada. Shall I get them
right now?"
" You will be left if you don't," said the Boss : " we

SONORA.

27

shall start in half an hour. I want to get across the Vega
before night."

'BOSS DAVIS.'

The terrace-land of Western Sonora is divided by a ram
part of steep hills into two well-defined regions, — the Vega,
or coast-plain proper, a marshy jungle diversified with open
lagoons and occasional banana-plantations; and the En-

28 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
cinal (literally " Oakland"), the park-like plateau that ex
tends beyond the southern border of Sinaloa and rises in
the east toward the foot-hills of the Sierra Madre. There
had been no heavy rains for a couple of weeks, and the
ground was so dry that we managed to pull through twenty
miles of bottom-land in less than eight hours, and sighted
the Yaqui River a good while before sunset. We entered
the ford in single file, and in spite of the colossal blasphe
mies uttered in transitu our teamsters reached the opposite
bank in good order, and wheeled in succession to the right
into their first camp, an open live-oak grove at the river
side, where each carretero was permitted to pick his own
camping-ground within a very liberal circuit; we were still
in the tierra mama, the country of the tame Indians, where
horse-thieves and begging friars were the worst visitors we
had to fear.
Our rank and file consisted of the Boss, his clerk, two
American teamsters, the cook, an old mestizo of all work,
and five Mexican carreteros, or brevet teamsters, as one of
the Americans, an ex-sergeant of the United States cavalry,
called them. I was the only passenger, but Don Jose Bar-
reto, a coffee-planter of the neighboring Vega, had accom
panied us from Guaymas, and accepted an invitation to
supper. Before he left he shook my hand with all the unreserved
cordiality of a North Carolina country squire. "To re
quite your kindness, I will give you a bit of advice, sefior,"
said he in a rapid patois which he knew to be Greek to the
Boss. " Do you know what makes your American team
sters so inferior to our old Mexicans on the march ? It
isn't want of practice, for some of them have been at it all
their lives, and their physique is all that could be desired.
The matter is this, — they eat too much : I mean they eat

SO NORA.

SONOKA INDIANS.

too many meals. A Mexican teamster takes a big meal in
the evening after going into camp, but he hardly eats any
breakfast at all. The habit could be formed during a single
trip, and the advantages would be lifelong ; for such meals
as I saw your countrymen swallow at the posada this morn
ing are sure to make the stoutest man torpid for the next
five or six hours, no matter how many drams he puts down
to stimulate digestion. A carretero hardly drinks a drop
of water all day long : a Yankee teamster pumps himself
full whenever he gets a chance. It's not the heat of the
sun that makes him thirsty, but the inward heat, the stack
of beefsteaks under his belly-band."
Paso del Cabo (" the Chieftain's Ford") the natives call
the place where we crossed the river, and the origin of the
name is explained by an old tradition of the Sonora In
dians. When the Spanish conquistador Valdez established
himself at Guaymas, his freebooters used to go adventuring,
singly or in troops, into the interior of the country, but they
could rarely extend their forays beyond the Rio Yaqui, a
deep and rapid river that runs parallel to the coast for a
good many leagues, while on account of the shoals near the

30 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
boca none of their heavy boats could ascend from below.
They had reason to suspect that there was a good ford some
where near Guaymas, but the Indians of the neighborhood
refused to specify the locality, and finally confessed that El
Cabo, a powerful chieftain on the other side of the river,
had threatened and sworn that if any man should dare to di
vulge the secret he would cut his throat and throw his body
into the Yaqui River. The Spaniards did not like to meet
the cabo on his own ground, but during a dark night of the
rainy season they surprised a village on the north side of
the river which the chieftain honored with his occasional
visits, and were lucky enough to capture his son, a youth of
eighteen or twenty years. The prisoner was arraigned and
questioned in regard to that ford, but he pleaded ignorance,
and was sent back to jail with the hint that they would
permit him to cross the river at any time if he would just
be kind enough to find that shallow place.
About that time, or a week after, a Spanish hunter biv
ouacked on the bank of the Rio Yaqui at a place where
certain indications let him hope that deer would come to
drink after dark. He fell asleep, but after midnight he
was waked by a loud splash in the river a little farther up,
and, hurrying to the spot, just caught a glimpse of a human
figure disappearing in the bush. The bright moonlight
enabled him to see that there were wet footprints in the
sand, as if the nocturnal traveller had emerged from the
river. He could hardly trust his eyes, for the current was
strong and swift at that place, but when he met a troop of
horsemen the next morning, and was informed that Cabo
junior had effected his escape during the night, he told his
tale and conducted them to a spot which he could identify
by those footprints, and where, with the aid of a sounding-
pole, they found the long-sought-for Paso del Cabo, the

SONORA. 31
only ford of the lower Yaqui River. The rapidity of the
current at the ford makes the water turbid, and thus con
ceals its want of depth. But the story of the Cabo has a
disagreeable sequel : the truculent old chief ascertained the
circumstances of the discovery, and a few days after the
Spaniards found the jugulated body of their ex-prisoner in
a pile of driftwood near the mouth of the river.
When we crossed the foot-hills of the Encinal on the
following morning I stopped repeatedly to take a look at
the northern horizon, where the Gila Desert spread its sand-
waves over an apparently boundless expanse of fallow plains.
El Pays de la Muerte (" the Land of Death") the Spaniards
called this region ; and the name is certainly appropriate.
If Northern Africa can boast of any worse desert, the fiercer
heat may justify the claim, but the most desolate portions
of the Central Sahara can certainly not surpass the barren
ness of the Death-Land. The morning air of that October
day was so clear that I could distinguish the rocks and ra
vines of a group of hills in the distant northeast, and even
the bluish-green shimmer of the cactus-hedges on the table
land beyond, but, turning my eyes to the north, I could not
discover the faintest trace of vegetation, though the view
was only bounded by the outline of an airy mountain-range
at the edge of the horizon.
The Gila Desert extends, in fact, from the Rio Yaqui to
the foot-hills of the Sierra de Pinos in Southern Arizonsi,
and its eastern spurs form an almost continuous chain of
sand-hills to the valley of the Concho River, where the
American Timbuktoo, the city of Chihuahua,* with her
gardens and orange-groves, lies like an oasis between two
dreary table-lands.
* Pronounced in three syllables, almost like Chee-wa'wa.

32 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Professor Buckland asserts that there is no such thing as
an original desert on earth : the destruction of forests, he
says, has converted the garden-spots of the northern hemi
sphere into sand-wastes ; and his view is certainly supported
by the remarkable circumstance that the most treeless re
gions of four continents are found on the sides turned toward
Asia, — Southeastern Europe, Northern Africa, Western
America, and Northwestern Australia, — where the early
advent of man may be inferred from the proximity of the
common cradle of the human race. That deserts do not
spread — i.e., blight the vegetation of adjacent districts —
seems proved by the fertility of regions which are not only
bordered, but almost surrounded, by the most hopeless sand-
Avastes. In Eastern Persia forests alternate with alkali-
steppes; in Fez and Algiers gardens bloom on the very
edge of the Sahara ; and the Encinal, at the border of the
Death-Land, teems with vegetable and animal life, though
it is a wilderness indeed if only tillage can redeem a country
from that stigma. Its human population is exclusively pas
toral, and I do not think that the vast plateau that stretches
from Guaymas to Southern Sinaloa has ever been touched
by a plough ; but its spontaneous flora comprises nearly all
the species of the subtropical zone, and, seeing the multitude
and variety of game which our dogs started during the next
forty-eight hours, I could credit Xenophon's account of a
Thessalian chase. Pheasants, prairie-chickens, and rock-
partridges whirred up whenever we approached a mimosa-
thicket, and the crack of a whip or .the vociferous profanity
of a Mexican teamster started the rabbits across the hill-
country in every direction. Black-tail deer, chaparral -
bucks, and turkeys were seen at longer intervals, and at
night the yelping of the hill-foxes and the occasional scream
of a wild-cat proved that the rocks and ravines were not

SO NORA. 33
altogether tenantless. What zoological gardens such regions
must have been in the good old time of animal liberty and
equality, before the power of the scientific biped became too
irresistible !

RUINS OF AZATLAN.

Sunset found us still on the road, and the oriyas, a species
of whippoorwill, were repeating their watch-song in the
mezquite-thickets when we reached the ruins of Azatlan,
near an old rock-well that has never been known to fail in

34 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
the dryest seasons. The night was calm and warm, and
after a glance at the cloudless sky the Boss pitched his tent
under a leafy walnut-tree near the well, while the teamsters
took camp in one of the deserted buildings, whose stately
dimensions and well-preserved roof have earned it the
name of the Casa del Oiira, " the parsonage." The Span
iards, who destroyed many cities and nearly all the temples
of the old Aztecs, are not responsible for the ruins of Aza
tlan ; the four casas, with their sculptured walls and broken
colonnades, are relics of that problematic nation which in
habited, and perhaps desolated, the western table-lands of
our continent, and disappeared before the earliest dawn of
aboriginal tradition. The origin of the Casas Grandes on
the Gila River and the ruins of Northwestern Mexico is as
obscure as the significance of the Sphinx and the purpose
of the Pyramids.
Soon after midnight the dogs in the casa began to bark,
and, peeping from under the folds of my blanket," I noticed
that the little clerk was getting uneasy about the noise.
He raised his head and was looking wistfully, first at the
Boss and then at me, and finally stretched out his hand in
a diffident way, but drew it back, as if unwilling to incur
further responsibilities. I lay motionless, waiting for the
second act of the dumb show, but the barking became
furious, and when our big greyhound joined in the chorus,
I jumped up and walked over to the casa.
One of the American teamsters met me at the gateway.
" I can't keep them quiet, sir," said he. " I was just going
to take a look at the courtyard, or what d'ye call it, back
there: I think there must be cats or thieves somewhere
round here."
We went to the north side of the casas and walked over
a heap of debris and through a dilapidated building, but

SONORA. 35
when we stepped out on the moonlit terrace at the opposite
end, two light-footed animals leaped over the broken stones,
whisked noiselessly across an open field, and disappeared
like shadows in the night-mist.
" Coyotes : I thought so," said the teamster. " I hope
they won't come back. We had a late supper last night,
and those long-legged thieves had smelled the bacon, I
guess. I had a good mind to let the dogs loose, but it
won't do ; we have to keep them tied up, or they would
hang around the mules and get kicked to death."
" What was it ? robbers ?" whispered my little bed
fellow, who had picked up a pistol and followed us from
a distance. " Yes, sir — six of 'em," said the teamster ; " but they
galloped away like race-horses when they saw you cock
that six-shooter."
Ten miles south of Azatlan we crossed the Rio Mayo,
ascended a steep ridge on the opposite shore, and found
ourselves on the table-land of Sinaloa, the southern and
grander portion of the Encinal. The rolling hill-country
swells here into mountains and valleys, and the chaparral
alternates with stately and extensive forests, — cork-oak
forests, some of them, and open chestnut woods that form
an agreeable contrast to the impenetrable tanglewood of the
Vega. Our cook had been still-hunting in the chaparral
while the train crept up the ridge, and said that he had
seen buffaloes from the summit of a grassy knob, — a state
ment which jeopardized his reputation for veracity ; but
our doubts were removed by an argumentum ad hominem
before noon. On approaching a grove of hackberry-trees
on the bank of a little mountain-creek whose windings the
road had followed for some time, our greyhound gave
tongue, and was answered by a quartet of strange dog- voices

36

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

so much deeper and louder than his own that the foremost
team came to a full stop, when a broad-shouldered ranchero

THE RANCHERO.

stepped from the grove with a merry halloo, and bade
" Advance and draw our meat-rations, and bring all
friends along."
There was, indeed, meat enough to ration a cavalry regi

us
our

SONORA. 37
ment with numerous veterinary surgeons and attached
officers with their respective families. On the shady side
of the hackberry-trees a party of hunters had hitched their
horses and relieved them of their burden, — five full horse-
loads of fresh buffalo-meat, including a bagful of livers and
kidneys and a ponderous string of tongues. They told us
that, without firing a shot, they had bagged six bulls and
four calves with the aid of their Aragon shepherd dogs,
gaunt, shaggy, and long-legged brutes, that stood around
the beef in a semicircle, and leered at us as if calculating
the amount of meat our rump-steaks and livers would add
to the pile.
The Aragon hound exceeds the mastiff in size, and the
greyhound in strength though not in swiftness, and resem
bles nothing so much as an overgrown, long-headed, and
hirsute wolf. On account of his ferocity he is seldom em
ployed as a watch-dog, but his strength and his reckless
courage make him a useful domestic beast of prey. He will
rend a mountain-goat as a terrier would kill a rat, and two
or three of them will keep a buffalo at bay till the hunter can
despatch him with a lance or even with a long knife, for a
trained Aragon flies at the throat of the strongest bull and
disables him in spite of his heavy dewlap and matted mane.
The Boss declined the offer with thanks, but the ranchero
would not be fobbed off, and every one of our teamsters
had to stuff his mess-chest with gratuitous beef.
" How did you like the looks of those ' shepherd-dogs' ?"
asked the Boss when we had resumed our march.
" Sheep-stealing must be a risky trade in these parts," I
replied ; " but, now you remind me of it, I am sorry I did
not ask them for a pup of that breed. In some of our
buffalo territories such a hunting-wolf would be worth his
weight in silver." 3

38 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
"Yes, in a country where beef is cheaper than powder,
but where you have to pay a butcher's bill they would be
expensive pets; one of them eats as much as three hard
working blacksmiths. They earn their rations, no doubt;
but, to say the truth, I would not give my greyhound for
a dozen of them. A good venison steak is worth all the
bull-beef in creation ; and I should like to see one of those
lubbers try to catch a chaparral-buck or a cotton-tail deer.
You will see Nepo (the greyhound) do it before night, if
I am not much mistaken."
Another steep up-grade, and we kept along the level
ridge of a long-stretched mountain that afforded a fine view
of the park-like valleys below.
"Say, Boss, here's a chance for your galgo" (hound), said
the cook, who had overheard our last conversation. " You
see that mezquite-coppice on the slope down there ? Those
black things a little to the left of it are cobras (antelopes),
or I'm a blind-worm."
The Boss stopped his team. " Say, sergeant !" he hailed
one of his American teamsters ; " come here a minute, will
you? I know you have eyes like a chicken-hawk: can you
make out if those are antelopes, those black things near
the mezquites down there ? I should like to give Nepo a
chance, but it's too far to go there on a wild-goose chase."
" Yes, I see them," said the sergeant ; " they are cabras,
— genuine pronghorn antelopes, — but it would be a wild-
goose chase for all that. There's too much cover here : a
greyhound can't follow them through the bush, you know.
There's timber all around, and Nepo couldn't begin to
overtake them before they got across that open prairie."
"He couldn't, eh?" said the cook. "That's all you
know about it. I tell you they are lost if you get him
half-way down before they start."

SONORA. 39
" What do you bet on that ?"
" I bet you my cuchillo (dirk-knife) against a plug of
tobacco that he will catch a cabra within ten minutes from
the word go !"
"Much obliged," laughed the sergeant; "my old bull-
sticker is getting played out. Who's going to steer the pup ?"
" I leave that to his boss," said the cook, " but I'm going
to saddle one of the spare mules and get my meat-bag
ready." " You may as well get your cuchillo ready too. Shall we
stop the train for a few moments, Mr. Davis ?"
" Well," said the Boss, " you may pull slowly ahead, but
don't make any more noise than you can help ; it wouldn't
be fair play, you know. Come on, doctor : let us take our
guns along, anyhow."
We kept the galgo in leash till we reached the lower end
of a bushy ravine, at a point from where the antelopes were
in plain view. There were eight of them, — five does and
three bucks, one of them a fat old fellow with the grayish
upper neck that distinguishes the full-grown specimens of
the Antilope americana, — all browsing quietly and evidently
unconscious of any danger, though two of the old does faced
the ravine and seemed to look directly into our eyes when
ever they stretched their necks for digestive purposes.
" Confound the dog ! he hasn't seen them yet," said Mr.
Davis ; " but it's a lost game if we go any nearer. Just hold
his head a moment."
Nepo had understood the meaning of our manoeuvres for
the last five minutes, and, fully conscious of being the cause
of the perhaps fatal delay, had wrought himself into a state
of nervous excitement; but after straining his neck and
eyes in all possible directions, he still turned his head and
looked at us in a helpless and deprecatory way.

40 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" That's it ! hold him steady," whispered the Boss.
" That will do now ; he has seen them — by Dios he has seen
them ! Now take care ! keep hold of him till I get that
leash off. That's it ! What do you say ? shall we try to get
a little nearer? It can't do any harm now. Let me go
ahead." He grabbed the hound by the collar and walked,
or rather crept, toward a juniper-bush some twenty yards
farther down; and still the cabras browsed in profound
peace. He reached the bush, and after a little pause crept
around it, more slowly and surreptitiously than before ; but
he had not advanced the length of his own body when two,
three, four sibilant snorts from the coppice gave the signal
for the beginning of the race. One of the does led off with
a dashing caper, and the troop wheeled around the coppice
and went down the slope at a rattling gallop.
I have seen English race-horses on the home-stretch and
a wolf in full pursuit of a roe, but the career of the galgo
reminded me more of the rush of some long-necked water
fowl sweeping down a river with that impetus that sends it
flying through the surface-water for ten or twelve yards if
it tries to alight. With his head, neck, and breast stretched
forward, he shot ahead in a direction that was well calcu
lated to intercept the fugitives if they should try to take to
the timber on this side of the lower valley, and headed
them off before they had passed the bottom of the ravine.
They turned to the left then, now fully aware that they
had to run for their lives, and went over the undulating
hillocks of the opposite slope at a rate that would have
defied the pursuit of the best rider in North America.
Hedges, gullies, and rocks they cleared with flying leaps
which only a kangaroo could emulate, while the greyhound
had to break through such obstacles or get around them the
best way he could.

SONORA. 41
There was an extensive forest on the ridge of the oppo
site slope, and, though still at a distance of half a league,
the chances seemed even that the cabras would get there in
time. But before they reached it they had to cross a level
plateau where neither rocks nor bushes gave them any ad
vantage over the pursuer ; and here the race for life began
in earnest. The antelopes strained every nerve, and their
flying leaps became wilder and more frequent, but the
galgo's chance had come. No intermittent flying could save
them from that steady rush, and just when the foremost
cabra dashed into the wood the troop flew asunder like a
pile of pebbles under a sudden blow : the greyhound was
in their midst, and a loud hurrah from the ridge above told
us what we could not see from our lower stand-point : the
cook had won his bet, and Nepo was throttling an antelope
in the outskirts of the forest, which she had reached a second
too late. The race had lasted a little more than ten minutes,
but the plug of tobacco was duly paid.
When we returned to the road the Boss took a detour
through the coppice-wood, and soon after I heard the report
of his shot-gun.
, " Look at this fellow !" said he, when he rejoined me at
the train, pulling a long- tailed gallinaceous bird from his
hunting-pouch : " do you know any English name for this
kind of chicken ?"
" It is a pheasant, isn't it?" said I, after a glance at the
long neck and feathered tarsi of the nondescript.
" Looks like it," said the Boss, " but a pheasant can fly,
and these creatures can't : at least, I never saw them do it.
Chaparral-cocks, we call them in Texas : I don't know the
Latin for it, but if there is any word for a shy bird, that
would be his right name. Holy smokes ! can't they run !
They go off like a flash if they spy a human being in the

42

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

next county. I tell you, where you can get one of these
long-tails within shot-gun range, you may be sure that you
are a long way from the next Methodist Episcopal church."
The chaparral-cock (Phasianus alector) inhabits the
wooded highlands of North America from Arkansas to
Yucatan, and is probably the shyest bird of our continent.
He can fly, but is so sensible of his deficiency in that ac
complishment that he takes to his heels at the most distant
intimation of danger, except where lifelong peace has made
him careless. The sportsman who bags his first chaparral-
cock may sacrifice it to ^sculapius : he can be sure of
having escaped from the malady of civilization into the
healthiest wilderness of our old planet.

But the Encinal is a
semi-tropical wilderness.
Wild plums (Chickasaw
cherries, they call them
in Texas) and mulberry-
trees abound along the
, ... „ water-courses, and the
hill-forests are full of edible nuts. On southern slopes
even on the higher mountains, we found wild citron-trees'
now m then- second bloom, and diffusing an aromatic at-

SONORA. 43
raosphere that swarmed with butterflies and humming-birds.
The southern Encinal is crossed by the twenty-seventh de
gree North, — the parallel of Cashmeer and of the Bay of
San Lucas in Florida, where De Leon landed in his search
for the Fountain of Eternal Youth. He could not foresee
the extent of the swamps and the other obstacles that barred
his way to the west, but his instinct certainly guided him
to the right latitude, if freedom from such cares as hunger
and frost can prolong the term of our existence. The wind
Euroclydon can never pass the northern bulwark of the
Encinal, — the main chain of the Sierra Madre, that stretches
its cloud-capt ramparts from the head-waters of the Rio
Yaqui to Eastern Durango and shelters the American Italy
against the ice-winds that sweep from Labrador across the
territory of the United States.
" That means rain," said the Boss, when I called his at
tention to the electric twitches in a big bank of clouds on
the eastern horizon. "But we needn't mind if it does not
come this way before sunset," he added. " Now I think of
it, there is a jolly old greaser living on the Cafias River, six
miles ahead, and if you have any preference that way we
might as well sleep under- a good roof to-night."
"Some kind of a country inn, is it?"
" Not exactly : it is a stock-farm, but with our antelope
and the bull-beef, and a plug or two of tobacco, we are sure
to be welcome."
Hospitality is the virtue of sparsely-settled countries,
and Don Pancho Garcia, the proprietor of the Cafias stock-
farm, received us with that hearty affability which mercen
ary politeness imitates in vain. " I knew there were stran
gers coming this way," said he : " this afternoon I heard a
shot on the Rio Mountains that did not sound to me like a
Mexican shooting-iron. Well, I'm glad you found the old

44 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
place, capitano : my squaws are gone to a wedding at Mr.
Ichar's place, and I felt kind of lonely this afternoon. It's
a good job for that boy of yours" (meaning the clerk) " that
you did not meet them on the road : they would have lugged
him along and danced him to death. But just wait : we
are going to have a war-dance of our own if one of your
men will help me to get the cider-barrel but."
On the pavement of the corral a fire was lighted : the
galgo and we Americans, as strangers par excellence, got
reserved seats on the veranda, while the rest of the biped
and quadruped guests formed the pit in the background of
the corral. After supper a guitar and a keg of cider (the
Boss had vetoed the barrel) completed the happiness of the
gypsy camp, and Senor Garcia invited us to make ourselves
comfortable on the piazza, and set us a good example by
throwing himself at full length upon a pile of white wool
which his wife had probably deposited there for different
purposes. " Mas que bien, senor," he said in reply to a compli
mentary remark of mine, "but I am afraid you would
have had a very poor supper if it hadn't been for your
own cook."
" The cook himself," I replied, " prefers truth to glory,
and says that your corn-meal is superior to the finest North
ern quality. Do you raise much corn on your hacienda ?"
" No, thank you," laughed the ranchero : " I get it from
Trinidad, with the rest of my grub. I don't believe in
farming." " It is a stock-farm," explained the Boss : " stock-raising
pays better hereabouts than any kind of agriculture."
" Yes, and it's less trouble," said the Mexican. " How
many days' work do you think it would take a man to raise
a full crop of corn ? Sixty or seventy at the very least,

SONORA.

45

wouldn't it ? Now, I can drive my cattle to market and be
back with a stack of provisions in less than sixty hours.
Besides, I can get my work in on horseback ; and that is
more than a poor planter can say." The sophistry of the
unsophisticated is sometimes hard to answer.

VAL DE OANAS.

The Cafias Valley, we learned, is pretty well settled.
There used to be a colony of Confederate refugees twenty
miles farther southeast— New Texas they called it — who
lived there in a free-and-easy way, and quite comfortably,
for five or six years ; but when times got sunnier in Dixie
they left like birds of passage, and their pretty cottages are
now tenanted by Durango Indians. A year before they left
a pious old Scotchman came from Los Angeles to buy land
in the Cafias Valley, and established a mule-farm, — i.e. a
stud for breeding and breaking mules, — which he tried to
work with a lot of imported hands, North Californians

46 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
most of them. When he first came to the Cafias he was a
most dignified-looking old gentleman, long-haired like a
missionary, and remarkably choice in his language, but
when Don Pancho saw him again, some nine months after,
he had only a handful of hair left, and the profanity of his
remarks appalled even the Mexican experts. As soon as
his Texas neighbors left he returned to California, a heavy
loser by his rash experiment, though his commonplace-
book had been enriched with two aphorisms : First, that
Mexican mules can only be managed by Mexican muleteers ;
and, second, that under certain circumstances emphatic lan
guage becomes an imperative necessity.
" Do you employ any travelling horse-breakers in this
part of the State ?" asked the Boss.
" In certain cases we do," said the ranchero. " There are
some brutes that defy all fair means of bringing them to
terms ; but, as a rule, I try everything else first. There
are plenty of monteros in this country who can break any
horse, but the question is how long the horse will survive
the operation. There is no word too ugly for the sort of
tricks which some of them use in that business."
" They make a trade-secret of their methods, I suppose ?"
" Yes : nearly every one of them has a system of his own,
and they often manage to keep it secret for a lifetime. I
knew a fellow down in Sonora who had a recipe for curing
runaway horses, and he had a monopoly of such cures for
more than fifteen years. He would take a wild broncho
out in the prairie, and bring him back as steady as a pro
fessor, — nobody knew how till his own son betrayed the
secret. And what do you think it was ? He had contrived
a headgear with a sort of copper eye-flap that shut down
like a spring and blinded the creatures completely. He
frightened them on purpose, and as soon as they started he

SO NOR A. 47
pulled a strap, when down came the copper like a clapboard,
and the wildest mustang came to a full stop. Then he
opened the lid, reset the trap, and went through the same
manoeuvre till the brutes got satisfied that daylight depended
on their behavior."
"That man was a Yankee, wasn't he?"
" No, sefior, — a native, homebred Mexican ; but you are
right in supposing that the Americanos of the North are
hard to beat at such tricks. You know that our young
bucks once in a while manage to lariat a buffalo, — just for
fun, of course, for St. Samson himself could not tame an old
buffalo bull, — but a Yankee rancher near Mazatlan showed
us that you can make them behave for a day, anyhow.
His vaquaros captured a monster of an old bull and dragged
him to the hacienda, where they chained him to a tree, but
the length of the chain just showed exactly how near a man
could come to that tree without losing his life. But Don
Yankee was too much for him. He got four lariats around
him, and made his men hold him steady for a while, and
then went to work and hitched one end of a rawhide strap
to his tail, and the other to his horns, and then tightened
the strap. Now, you know a bull cannot gore you without
lowering his head first; and in the fix he was this one
couldn't nod without pulling his own tail out."
Our little clerk, whose knowledge of Spanish was con
fined to the written language, had fallen asleep on the hard
boards of the veranda ; but before the ranchero retired he
put an armful of wool under his head and covered him up
with a knee-high stratum of the same material.
Toward morning the long-expected rain began with a
chilly gust, but without any of the electric phenomena
which usually accompany a transient shower in the tropics,
and after a short council of war we anticipated the ranchero's

48 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
permission to take refuge in the interior of his house. He
met us in the hall with excuses and a lighted candle, a
cera santa, remarkable for its odoriferous rather than illumi
native qualities. These candles, composed of a mixture of
beeswax and frankincense, are prepared by the Mexican
ladies for the exclusive use of the church ; and after a con
fession to that effect Don Pancho ushered us into the next
room, shut the windows, and left the ecclesiastic candle on
the table.
The residence of the average ranchero is one story, and
contains four apartments, — the bedroom (reserved for the
members of the family) ; the kitchen, used also as a dining-
and sitting-room ; the almacen, or larder ; and the silleria,
or harness-room, where the ranchero keeps his saddle, his
tools, and often his dogs. Strangers sleep in their own
blankets, — in fair weather on the portico, in stormy nights
in the sitting-room. Besides the long dining-table and
kitchen furniture, the apartment contained a clothes-press,
and upon it a cage full of turtle-doves, the favorite pet of
the Mexican farmer; two looms, a spinning-wheel, and a
contrivance that would have created a general sensation in
a Northern industrial fair, — a combination of concentric
cudgels, not unlike a forty-legged saw-horse, which the
Mexican women use in the manufacture of polychromatic
ponchos and bandannas. They entwine the arms of the
wooden Briareus with as many different patterns of woollen
yarn, and need only to twirl the implement to get any de
sired shade uppermost and handy for immediate use. The
cera santa began to fill the room with a resinous odor of
sanctity, but every now and then it sputtered like a blazing
sausage ; so we put it out.
Before we left the stock-farm the kind ranchero presented
us with a bagful of wild pineapples which his daughters

SO NORA. 49
had gathered in the sierra, and had already commenced the
valedictory handshaking when he remembered that one of
his sheepwalks up on the river needed looking after, so
that he might as well accompany us for a couple of miles.
We followed the windings of the Cafias Valley for some
distance, and then turned to the right into a deep moun
tain gorge at a point where a wayside tavern displayed its
red-and-white flag as a sign that the posadero had pulque
(aloe-sap) for sale. But good wine needs no bush, and the
gayest pulque-flag cannot redeem the reputation of the
vender of an inferior article; so we took the ranchero's
hint and pursued our road, which led us gradually up hill
and back to the main plateau of the Encinal.
"You never feed those hogs, do you?" asked the Boss,
apropos of a sow that hastened across the road with her
litter of pigs.
" I don't, for one good reason : I have nothing to give
them," laughed the Mexican ; " but they find all they want
in the woods and creeks the year round. Creatures that
can digest snakes need not starve in this country."
" If I may ask, sefior, have you ever ascertained if it is
true that only black hogs can eat poisonous snakes with
impunity ?"
" It's strange now, isn't it ?" said the Mexican. " I sup
pose you heard that in your own country, and the same
belief is very common in many parts of Mexico. The
truth is, that all full-grown hogs are snake-proof; the
thickness of their hide and bacon protects them, for snakes
do not bite very deep, — anyhow, not deep enough to pen
etrate the callous upper skin of a pig. But it is true that
black hogs are more active as a general thing : the white
ones, you may have noticed, have reddish eyes : they are a
sort of pallotes (albinoes), I think, and not very quick-

50 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
witted ; but catch a live rattlesnake and throw it right in
front of a white hog, and you will see if he doesn't make
short work of it. A dog or horse in such a case would
jump aside as if it had seen the devil."
"Are there any wild hogs in the sierra?"
" No hogs, but you find plenty of wild goats in any of
the mountains around here."
" Cabras (antelopes), you mean ?"
" No, sefior, — cabras reales, genuine bearded white goats ;
I shot five of them last winter."
" They must have run wild, — descended from our com
mon domestic goat, I mean."
" I think so, but it must have been long ago. I re
member my father telling about his dogs killing them by
dozens in the Altar Mountains. They are not very differ
ent from our domestic goats, but they run like deer if they
get sight of a human being."
" Would it not pay to hunt them for their hides ?" asked
the Boss.
" Hardly, unless you have a tannery of your own ; but
I tell you what does pay first-rate, — wolf-hunting. The
government pays five pesos for every wolf-scalp and two
for every coyote, and before they abolished the State bounty
a man could ' kill vermin for his livelihood.' "
" You don't use strychnine, do you ?"
" No : that can only be done in a free country like yours :
our people cannot buy or sell any kind of poison without
a special permit. It would make matters too easy for our
dear squaws. That's my sheep walk, gentlemen," said the
ranchero, pointing to a black-and-white dotted slope on a
neighboring mountain-side. " I must leave you where that
road turns off to the right."
" I wonder," said I, " if English prize-sheep could ever

SONORA. 51
get up that mountain? Just look at these fat monsters,
caballero," handing him a copy of the Illustrated London
News : " have you ever seen the like in this part of the
world ?"
While he inspected the paper I nudged my companion
and whispered in his ear, " Try to make him accept some
compensation." " He wouldn't do it."
" Try, anyhow."
" The English would take our wethers for antelopes, if
that's what they call sheep," laughed the ranchero. " Here
is your paper, sir."
"Caballero," said the wagonmaster, "would you do me
a favor ?"
" If I can."
"You know I am a tradesman, and I should like to es
tablish a market for our smoking-tobacco in this part of
the country : would you oblige me by accepting this sam
ple ?" offering him a four-pound package. " Please keep
it, and let your neighbors try it, and let me know how they
like it if I come this way again."
" What is it worth ?" asked the ranchero.
" I don't remember just now, but I shall let you know
before Christmas. Prices are changing continually, you
know. Please keep it in the meanwhile."
" No, that would not do, senor. Be kind enough to tell
me the average price. This is nearly five pounds, I should
say ?"
" Oh, that package you mean ? Why, that's a sample :
they are always free to reliable parties."
Don Pancho's eyes twinkled under his broad-brimmed
sombrero. " You are very kind, sir," said he. " Well,"
with a good-humored smile, " you may always rely on one

52 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
thing, — that my old house-door will be open whenever you
or your companions return to the Val de Cafias. Let me
have another one of those apples in your lunch-basket.
Thank you ; and now good-by, amigos."
He shook hands all round, and made us a respectful
parting bow, as if we had put him under some great obli
gation, instead of having been feasted and lodged at his
expense, for when he was gone we found the four-pound
package in the lunch-basket.
The horizon cleared up before night, and when we
reached a mulberry-grove on the bank of the Rio Fuerte
the sun set behind a streak of that fleecy white mist which
is a surer presage of fair weather than a perfectly cloud
less sky. I do not know if the cicadas of ancient Greece
were identical with the West Mexican species, but the en
thusiasm of the classic poets would appear less inexplicable
if the locust orchestras of their woods were not quite so
monotonous as the katydid concerts of our Northern sum
mer nights. I think I distinguished a dozen different
notes in the insect-music that came from the tree-tops of
our mulberry-grove, — the well-known chirp of the locust
proper, a long-drawn whir, a twang, a low whistle, a singu
lar bell-like ring, a combination of a click and a squeak,
and a variety of insect-diphthongs for which the English
alphabet yields no equivalent. Singly repeated, they would
have been tiresome, but their combined effect was quite
entertaining. The smallest of the Mexican tree-locusts
(Cicada dryas), a thing about as large as a castor-bean, chirps
louder than a sparrow; and if it is true that it produces
those sounds by rubbing its hind legs against the edge of its
wings, the energy of the tiny fiddler is truly astonishing.
I could not help admiring the wisdom of a merciful
Creator, who has not increased the vocal power of animals

SONORA. 53
in proportion to their size, when the overture of a coyote
serenade sounded over the hills about an hour after sunset.
It commenced with a slow crescendo, so irresistibly lugu
brious that two of our dogs at once raised their heads and
swelled their voices into a responsive tremolo, which may
have been heard and appreciated by their distant relatives.
A kick brought their antiphones to an abrupt finale, but
every now and then their irrepressible feelings found vent
in a low whine.
It cannot be hunger that makes the Mexican coyotes
howl, for the forests of the Encinal are inexhaustible store
houses of animal food, and the occasional disappointments
which may attend their predatory enterprises would hardly
furnish an excuse for such loud and protracted laments. It
is rather an elegiac tendency, which manifests itself in all
the varieties of the genus Canis, for even the dingo, the
voiceless dog of the Australian wilderness, breaks forth into
sympathetic grunts if he hears a puppy whine. It is the one
touch of Nature which makes all canines kin, and has prob
ably been inherited from their common ancestor, the wolf,
once "a mighty hunter before the Lord," but who may
have learned to howl when his business declined under the
competition of Nimrod & Co., till the hunter became the
hunted, unless he preferred to enter the service of his rival
at dog-wages.

CHAPTER II.
COLIMA.
Know ye the secrets of the nether sea,
Or what the pathless virgin woods conceal ?
Chamisso : The God, of Earth.
Absolute monarchs must be absolutely abolished, but
it can do no harm to confess that they were generally good
roadmakers. The great highways of Hadrian were mili
tary march-routes, and those of Peter the Great all con
verged upon his pet capital ; but, whatever may have been
King Philip's private motive, it is certain that he and his
successors expended a large portion of their bonanza rev
enues on the construction of broad and imperishable wagon-
roads throughout their Transatlantic dominions. The
Mexican republic has found no time to extend or repair
the " royal roads" (caminos reales) of their territory, but
the public works of the vireys can stand neglect, and, like
those of Appius Claudius, will not be much the worse for
the wear and tear of a series of centuries.
Sixty miles north of San Luis Potosi we struck one of
these ante-republican roads, and thenceforth were sure to
find a solid bridge at every creek and a massive safety-wall
along every precipice. The bird's-eye views from a slippery
bridle-path often suggest possibilities which only a bird can
contemplate with equanimity, but the bulwarks of our ca-
mino enabled us to admire the abysmal valleys at our feet
with more than the safety of travellers over a Pacific Rail-
54

C0L1MA.

55

ON THE ROAD TO SAN LUIS.

way viaduct. While my eyes wandered through the cloud-
land of blue heights that border the eastern horizon of the
Val de Potosi I noticed repeatedly a curious column of
white smoke that seemed to ascend from a lateral valley
in the southeast, and stood in sharp relief against the back
ground of dark-blue pine-hills when our road brought us
opposite a gap in the intermediate mountains. Right over
the valley hung a streak of grayish clouds from which
the white pillar seemed to depend like an icicle, but its
upward rotatory motion and the immobility of its lower
end proved its terrestrial origin. What could it be? My
pocket-telescope failed to solve the puzzle, so I put it back
and looked at my companion, who had watched me with a
cunning smile.
" Can't you guess ?" said he, anticipating my question.
" No ; but it looks like a large steam-factory, — unless it's
a volcano." " You came nearer the truth the first time," said the
Boss : " it isn't smoke, but pure steam. That's the geyser

56 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
of Aguas Calientes, near Los Bafios. We are only forty
miles from San Luis now."
" A geyser ? Why, that column must be at least four
thousand feet high !"
" If you mean the steam, that goes up on cold days
higher than the highest clouds ; but the water itself spouts
up from a pond at the head of a little creek not more than
ten or twelve feet over the level of the banks. If it didn't
come up through the pond you would not see any water
at all, they say; it is superheated steam, hotter than the
hottest springs, and the noise it makes reminds you of a
copper-furnace in full blast. A sheer waste of fuel wher
ever it comes from : I saw the place four years ago, and I
do not think there is as much as a bath-house there."
" Is there anything like a watering-place at the bafios
over yonder ?" I asked an intelligent-looking caballero who
overtook us a few minutes after and appeared to be in a
communicative mood.
" There ought to be," said he, " but the place has some
how failed to become fashionable. We have a hotel at
the springs, besides a dozen taverns in the village, but it
doesn't pay : the valley is too far out of the way, and the
poor people of the neighborhood can bathe anywhere below
the hotel : three miles this side of the pond the creek is
still warm enough to be pleasant in winter-time."
" Excuse my curiosity," said the stranger, after half an
hour of topographical small-talk; "are you not from
France or of French descent?"
" Almost, sefior : I was born in the French Nether
lands." " Didn't I guess it ?" laughed the caballero. " I was a
good while on the Rio Grande, and I can recognize the
pronunciation of a Yankee or an Italian before he has

COLIMA.

57

spoken a dozen words. There's a countryman of yours
owning a pretty farm a few miles above my place, on the
other side of the river. I could never remember his name,
or I should advise you to stop there to-night ; he would be
the happiest man in Mexico to have a paysano under his

AGUAS CALIENTES.

roof. We have a horse-fair at Montellano to-day, and if I
should meet him there I would bet my spurs that he'll
overtake you somewhere between here and San Luis."
The Belgians, and French abuse each other as rancorously
as the English and Scotch, but, like the English and Scotch,
they fraternize if they meet in Spanish America, as they

58 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
would fraternize with a Spanish American if they made
his acquaintance in Samarcand. " Pour aimer votre voi-
sin," says Montaigne, " il faut le rencontrer dans un pays
etranger ;" and I fully believe that Muktar Pasha would
embrace a Russian general if he should meet him in the
Mountains of the Moon. More than once after the cabal
lero had left us I looked back, as if I expected a message
from my unknown half-countryman ; and toward evening,
when a Mexican boy came tearing after us on a naked
horse, I somehow knew his errand beforehand.
" Mr. Laurent is coming this way with a tent-wagon,"
he gasped when he reached the wagonmaster's team, " and
if you will please to slow up a little, he will overtake you
on this side of the ford."
"Who's Mr. Laurent?"
" I suppose it's some acquaintance of that gentleman we
met on the ridge this morning," said I : "he told me some
thing about a farm on the other side of the river, where he
advised us to stop to-night."
" Yes, sir, — that's Mr. Aime Laurent's place," cried the
boy. " Well, then, tell Mr. Emmy Laurent to hurry up," said
the Boss : " we're going into camp before the sun goes
down." The banks of the Rio Fuerte are lined with stately big-
nonia-trees ; and here I saw for the first time the singular
reptile which the Spaniards call iguana and the Portuguese
cayman do matto, — i.e., " tree-alligator." The latter name
may have been suggested by the formidable appearance of
an animal which attains a length of seven feet and a weight
of sixty-five pounds, and jumps from tree to tree with the
impetus of a tiger-cat ; but there is no doubt that the igu
ana is the most harmless creature of that size which ever

COLIMA.

59

jumped or flew or swam on this planet of ours, — the most
harmless creature of any size, we might say, for the little
goldfish and the robin redbreast are beasts of prey com
pared with the tree-alligator ; they will hurt a fly, but the
iguana is a strict vegetarian, and like an orthodox Hindoo

" TREE-ALLIGATOR" (IGUANA).
endeavors to prolong his life without shortening that of a
fellow-creature. Still, with its saurian beak, its preposterous
claws, and the row of bristles along its backbone, this giant
lizard is a scandalous phenomenon ; and a big green one,
with a head like the seventh beast of the Apocalypse,
plumping down from a bignonia-tree and scampering into
the underbrush, had provoked me to snatch up a tent-

60 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
pole and start in hot pursuit, when the monotonous rumble
of our freight-wagons was interrupted by the rattling of a
lighter team that seemed to approach at a lively trot. As
I emerged from the thicket a pair-horse country-wagon
passed our rear teams and the wagonmaster tightened his
reins. " Oh, here he is now," said the Boss when he caught
sight of me. " Please come over here, sir ; here's a cabal
lero from the other side of the river wants your casting vote
on a point we can't agree upon. He wants us to camp in
this bottom or else on his farm on the other side, but I'm
afraid we must forego that pleasure ; it's only a mile and a
half to Mr. Carmen's place, and I have to stop there either
to-day or to-morrow."
The " caballero from the other side" was leaning against
the front wheel of our team, — a black-haired farmer with a
semi-Mexican hat and shawl, but in the unmistakable black-
trimmed leather jacket of the Pays de Vaud. Our eyes
met, and monsieur saluted me with a gesture that es
tablished his nationality before we had exchanged a single
word. " I am sorry that you passed the ford," said he, in toler
able Spanish, " but my rancho is right across there, and if
I can supply you with anything you expected to get at Mr.
Carmen's place  "
The Boss made no reply, but looked meditatively at the
western horizon.
" If you permit me a vote on the subject, Mr. Davis,"
said I, " it seems to me that we could do worse than camp
under such trees as these. There's any amount of firewood
in that thicket, — good water, too; and what else do we
need?" " Well," replied the Boss, "the truth is, we are short

COL IMA. 61
of corn ; but if this gentleman can sell us four or five
bushels I guess we could camp here as well as anywhere
else." " If you stop anywhere in this bottom," said the farmer,
" the corn shall be here before you have unharnessed your
horses." His boy galloped toward the river and our caravan
wended its way to the bignonia grove.
These preliminaries settled, Mr. Laurent took me aside
and the floodgates of his vernacular then opened. He had
purchased his farm fourteen years ago, and lived here ever
since, twenty-eight miles from the next sympathizing fel
low-Frenchman, a linguistic exile which only hope and a
volume of Beranger's Chansons had enabled him to sup
port. .Mexican conversation, Mexican gossip, Mexican
sermons, and untranslatable Mexican blasphemies from
morning till night, — his very children vexed his ears with
their Spanish volubility. He had launched them in the
right direction, hoping that the inherent force of the langue
de France would make head against wind and tide, but the
surrounding elements had prevailed. " I give them up,"
said he : " it takes a headstrong man to hold his own against
the current, but if it comes to pulling a whole family the
other way, you might as well try to paddle a raft against
the stream."
" Who is your next countryman ?" I asked, after answer
ing a number of direct and indirect questions.
" The next one is Monsieur Vallier, the nurseryman, two
miles this side of San Luis, but there are four more in the
city." " I suppose you know Dr. Rambert, the superintendent
of the city hospital ? How is he getting along now ?"
"Old Jacques Rambert? Oh, he's all right. I see him

62 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
almost every month : he's got a large practice outside of
the hospital among the rich burghers."
" It's a wonder how he can manage that in such a holy-
saints place as San Luis."
" Now, isn't it, sir ? It seems you know him, then, the
godless old heretic ! It's an everlasting puzzle to me that
they haven't cut his head off yet, nor even his nose : they
hate him like a were-wolf, and he tells me that they suspect
him of witchcraft; but that's his salvation, maybe: they
let him alone because their superstition gets the better of
their spite. Still, he ought to be more careful : his best
friend, the alcalde, died last summer, and I have an idea
that the black rats are getting ready for him. I should not
like to be in his boots next Christmas when the town is
full of mounted Indians : somebody ought to warn him."
" Never mind. Those Indians must come well mounted
if they expect to catch him next Christmas : I am going to
relieve him to-morrow."
"You are? Well, sir, that accounts for it that he was
in such good-humor last week. Where is he going to ? —
back to Europe ?"
" No, he is going north, to Upper California. I was on
his brother's farm near Los Angeles a month ago, and I see
they have everything ready for him : they are going to cure
him with California honey and country milk. His brother
will meet him in Guaymas next week."
" Ah ! that's the reason he was so anxious about that
rumor from Sonora. By the way, what's the news from
the rebel army ?"
" They are still at El Paso, so far as I know ; but the
Eastern mail was over-due when we left, so there's no
saying what they may have been up to since. But who
cares ?"

COLIMA. 63
"Not I," said my courteous landsman, "since you got
through all right. But what's the matter with your Amer
ican friend? Listen : there he goes again. Is that a sick
ness or an English song?"
"A supper-signal, I suppose."
" Good-night, then, mon voisin a venir," said Mr. Lau
rent : " I owe you a visit, and I shall pay it in San Luis
next Sunday."
Our teamsters trimmed their horses and trappings the
next morning, and I tried to indulge in the luxury of an
hour's sleep after sunrise, but the neighborhood of the large
city announced itself too audibly. Wagons and carts rum
bled along the camino, mules trotted to market with a load
of squealing pigs, a fulling-mill in the valley commenced
its noisy work, and from three different mountain-sides I
heard sounds which affect me more than other discords in
the harmony of Nature, — axe-strokes, preluding a splinter
ing crash and a fall, followed by the sympathetic shudder
of the surrounding hills. In a thinly-wooded country those
echoes always sound in my ear with a sad significance, like
a dirge of the wood-nymphs or a lament of our Mother
Earth for the loss of her first-born. The tree-felling axe
is the sword that has expelled the children of the East from
their Paradise, and which in the West too has struck deep
into the root of Ygdrasil, the Life Tree of the Edda, whose
downfall will involve the final ruin of gods and men.
Mr. Carmen's place proved to be a turnpike tavern with
a large corral, where ten or twelve horses were haltered in
a row. The veranda was crowded with muleteers and trav
ellers, and one of them stepped down and met us at the
turnpike. " I think I passed you last night at the Rio,
caballeros," said he : " do you come from the frontier ?"
" Yes, from Guaymas, sir," said the Boss.

64 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" From Guaymas ! Why, on what day did you leave
there?" " Let me see  "
" We left there on the nineteenth of this month," said
the sergeant.
" Is it possible ?" cried the traveller. " Look here, ca-
balleros !" he hailed his friends on the veranda : " this con-
ducta has left Guaymas on the nineteenth of this month !
Santissima ! just at the nick of time !"
A crowd was around us in a moment and fairly bewil
dered us with a flood of questions and congratulations. Did
we hear the news ? Pedro Mendez had captured Guaymas
on the twenty-first and avenged his late defeat by plunder
ing every house in Western Sonora.
" Ye have more luck than sense !" yelled a little arriero :
"you must have a good-sized guardian saint about you, or
is there a friar in your crowd ?"
" No, sir," said the sergeant, " we are heretics, every one
of us : at midnight you can smell the brimstone for a mile
and a half around ; but, you see, we are Americans, and old
Pedro knew better than to tackle the town before we were
out of the way."
" There wouldn't have been much time for prayers if he
had catched ye," laughed the landlord ; " but never mind,
you're all right now : we will attend to the old man if he
comes this way."
We reached Potosi an hour before sundown. The city
was agog with rumors and political demonstrations, and one
of the teamsters had to help me get my baggage to my
room, the landlady of the hotel informing us that all her
male employes had run off to join the mass-meeting on
the plaza. Even Dr. Rambert marched me up-stairs into
his studio and handed me a newspaper as soon as he had

COLIMA. 65
answered my first questions. There seemed to be no doubt
about the fate of Guaymas. The insurgents had defeated
the government forces near El Paso, the garrison of San
Miguel had capitulated, and the rebels held every important
town in Western Sonora. Sixteen regiments of regulars
under General Parras were advancing from Monterey, and
a brigade of loyal volunteers from Chihuahua, so that the
suppression of the rebellion seemed only a question of time ;
but the fortified towns on the coast might protract their re
sistance for a month or two, and in the meanwhile all traffic
vid Guaymas must be suspended.
" Well, I have got you the place," said the doctor, return
ing at last from politics to personal affairs, " but with a sine
qua non : you have to pilot me through to San Bias. I was
in conclave with the agent of your trading company yester
day, and the matter is settled so far that the caravan is going
back by way of Jalisco and San Bias instead of Guaymas,
and he has to provide us transportation from here to San
tiago : from there I can take the stage to Mazatlan, or let
your teams lug me to San Bias and wait there for the Pan
ama steamer."
" But I thought Dr. Patterson was going along ?"
" So he was, but he has to go by way of Guaymas : in
other words, he has to wait for a month or two. I got him
to relieve me till New Year, so you needn't report for duty
before Christmas. No excuses, amigo : it's my last week in
Spanish America, and it shall be a pleasant one."
" You are over-kind, but was it worth while — worth the
expense, I mean — to  "
" Yes, it was. Your agent's terms are devilish high, and
the roads are wretched, but all that goes for nothing : we
shall see Lake Chapala, and be reconciled to an earthly pil
grimage that has led us through Paradise. It's ' the scenic

66 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
masterpiece of the Creator :' that is the phrase of a man who
never used a superlative in vain, — poor Colonel Holty of the
Austrian volunteers, — though he only saw it on that unfor
tunate expedition to Pascarro, and after Rion's guerillas had
riddled him with buckshot. ' If St. Peter turns me off I
shall ask him for a pass to Jalisco,' he told me when he got
his last marching-order."
" It wouldn't be much of a pleasure-trip for you if you
are not used to prairie-schooner voyages ; but, as you say,
I suppose we are in for it. I am sorry, though, we cannot
postpone it for a couple of weeks."
" So am I, but I am due in Los Angeles. And as for
your prairie-schooners, I shall be thankful for any kind of
locomotive contrivance that moves me from this town. My
time is up : the place is getting too tight for me."
"Why? Are the saints getting the better of you, after
all?" "Yes, amigo, I'm going to the wall: they're too many
for me. Do you know that I had to pay those ten dollars,
anyhow ?"
" What ten dollars ?"
" For that saddle-horse I wrote you about : don't you
remember ?"
" I can't say that I do."
" Bon Dieu ! Didn't you get my last letter ? You re
collect that I used to hire a horse once or twice a week : they
have no regular livery-stables here, but I had made an ar
rangement with a baker down on the plaza, who generally
lent me the same old mare every Saturday. About a month
ago the brute had a sort of seizure ; I think it was nothing
but what our veterinary surgeons used to call ' blind stag
gers,' but my worthy neighbors put their heads together and
seemed to have a good mind to mob me. It was a preter-

COLIMA. 67
natural disease, they said : the mare must have been be
witched ; and no wonder, if she had to carry a monster who
kept his pockets cramful of heretical books ! They talked
about searching my room for necromantic implements, and
the owner of the beast left me an alternative between a
compromise and a lawsuit."
" Would a Mexican judge actually commit you on such
a charge ?"
" He would not acquit me in his heart, whatever he might
do for fear of the European consuls ; and the wretches threat
ened to cure my infidelity with a potato-masher ; so, for the
sake of holy peace that surpasses all reason, I let the fool
have his ten dollars and kicked him down-stairs."
"Do they only pretend to believe such things, or is it
possible that they are in earnest about it ?"
" Their faith recognizes no impossibilities at all. If you
think that their stupidity has any limits, that affair of the
Protestant miner in Belcarras should undeceive you. Did
you ever read the account of his trial ?"
" I read the report of the English consul : they sentenced
him for ' witchcraft in the first degree' — ten years, wasn't
it ? — and three months extra for contempt of court because
he attempted an argumentum ex absurdo."
" You would not mention such trifles if you had read the
' circumstantial evidence,' " laughed the doctor. " I will
show you a copy of the proceedings : it's valuable from
a medical standpoint if you have a taste for the study of
mental diseases."
The Rocky Mountains of the United States cross the
Mexican frontier in two main chains, which gradually con
verge toward the south till they unite near the head-waters
of the Rio Lerma, about fifty English miles northeast of

68 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Acapulco. Near the Rio Grande their water-sheds are at
least two hundred miles apart, and the intermediate region
is comparatively arid ; but as the ridges converge the central
valley becomes more humid and fertile, till south of Potosi
the cornfields, the orchards, and finally even the chestnut-
groves are supplanted by the rankness of the spontaneous
vegetation. The forest-trees of the temperate zone grad
ually give way to luxuriant evergreens, and where the two
sierras coalesce they enclose a forest-delta of three thousand
English square miles, which white men have but rarely
entered, and which no human being has ever attempted to
cross. This delta is drained by the Rio Lerma, which far
ther down expands into a glorious lake, and carries more
water to the sea than the Rhine or the Rio Grande ; but no
human eye has ever seen the source of that river. Fisher
men from San Bias and the Jalisco turtle-hunters have as
cended it in their canoes to its j unction with the Rio Balsas,
but there the virgin woods of the delta begin to interpose
their barrier of driftwood, bush-ropes, and aquatic trees,
and the upper course — perhaps the upper half — of a broad
American river is as unknown as the fountain of the Nile.
The eastern slope of the mountain-range which borders
the Rio Lerma below the lake is extremely steep and rugged,
and farther south, where its height sinks from fourteen
thousand to six thousand feet, its western foot-hills are
flanked by the thickets of the delta. The roads which unite
Mazatlan and San Bias with the cities of the table-land have
therefore to take a strangely circuitous route. The air-line
from Potosi to San Bias, for instance, would run due west,
but terrestrial travellers have first to go south to Cuerna-
vaca in the valley of Anahuac, thence west up to the back
bone of the sierra, due north along the ridge toward the
lake, and again west to a pass in the coast-range, from where

CO LIMA.

69

ON THE LERMA RIVER.

points on the Pacific can be reached by a less tortuous
route. We followed the highway as far as Queretaro, where we
engaged a professional guide, and then launched our prairie-
schooners on the old military road to the west. Our cara
van had passed through seven degrees of latitude since we
left Guaymas, and near the tropic of Cancer that polar dis
tance makes an appreciable difference. We had entered the
summer zone. The river-sides were covered with rhexia-
thickets, intermingled with wax-palms and wild fig-trees,
and the southern slopes of the foot-hills flamed with yellow
orchids and the long red pipe-flowers of the Salvia splendens,
and even exhibited some good-sized varieties of arborescent
5

70 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
ferns. The valleys of Eastern Michoacan produce a thorny
shrub of the genus Lycium that is covered with a profusion
of apparently perennial white flowers of a nauseous sweet
ish smell, which seem to exercise an irresistible attraction
on all honey-loving insects. They swarm with beetles, blue
bottles, and formidable black wasps, but they are veritable
butterfly-traps, and enriched my collection with a number of
tropical swallow-tails and a fine specimen of the dark-blue
Papilio castor. We saw iris-crows and different parrots, and
wherever cattle grazed they were attended by flights of the
black cow-rider ( Crotophagus ani), which benefit themselves
and the cows by relieving them of numerous troublesome
parasites. The southern Mexicans are strangely prejudiced
against these birds, and a Jalisco farmer, after requiting
their labors with an effective discharge of his old trabucco,
informed me that they were a worse pest than weasels and
chicken-hawks. " They flay our stock alive," said he : "a
black rascal of that race seems to think that I keep my cattle
for no other purpose but to furnish him with cow-hairs."
On the evening of the second day after our departure
from Queretaro we crossed the Rio Balsas on a rope-ferry,
and encamped near an abandoned maderal, or lumber-yard,
in the opposite foot-hills. The darkness of the night, in
creased by the gloom of the cedar forest, made it at first
rather difficult to collect the material for a camp-fire, but a
blaze of dry grass and furze revealed abundant pineapples,
and when the flame rose high enough to illuminate the out
skirts of the maderal we found that the ground was strewed
with chips and good-sized logs, and that we had all the
wherewithal of a first-rate barbecue.
The teamsters had exchanged some of their superfluous
bacon for a six-gallon keg of pulque, and while we watered
our horses at a prairie-creek the sergeant had shot a pig : a

COLIMA. 71
sick peccari (wild-hog) he preferred to call it, though he
trusted that its flesh might be eaten with impunity, — in the
absence of the owner. Only Dr. Rambert was out of luck :
in unloading the baggage-wagon the men had dropped his
mess-box and converted its contents into a mass of smashed
eggs and cohesive flour; and as he disapproved of pork
and all stimulants, including tea and coffee, he had to bor
row a handful of soda-crackers from the cook and soak
them in water with a little brown sugar.
"Try some of these spare-ribs, doctor: be persuaded,"
said the Boss : " we have the sergeant's word for it that it
isn't pork, but venison."
" No, thank you," laughed the doctor : " I should soon
be a great deal sicker than the peccari. I used to puff the
temperance movement as a sanitary gospel of salvation,"
he continued, " but I have made up my mind that its chief
purpose is defeated unless it goes hand in hand with a
dietetic reform."
" That's all well enough," said the Boss, " but you can
make up your mind that you're not going to starve in my
camp. Look here, boys : doesn't one of you know a ranch e
or something hereabouts where we could raise a few eggs
or a potful of milk ?"
" Yes, there's a cabana (log shanty) over there on the
creek," said the guide. "I sent one of your men down
there a while ago : he will soon be back."
Ten minutes after one of the Mexican teamsters returned
from the cabafia with a hatful of leaf tobacco and a string
of onions. " Mean as Jews !" said he. " They wouldn't
take any sugar : I had to give them money."
" Do you know if they sell any eggs ?" asked the Boss.
" No, sir, but they have chile Colorado and milk, and
some green chile."

72

SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.

AN INDIAN RANCHO.

" Never mind the chile. Here" — handing him half a
dollar — " take this pot and get as much milk as they will
give for three rials."
We had to wait more than twenty minutes before our
delegate returned with half a quart of skim-milk and a
bunch of yellowish-green leaves. " They couldn't make
the change," said he, " so they send you some chil6 bianco
(pepper-cress), since you don't like the other kind."
While Ave ate our supper a ragged Mexican — probably
the proprietor of the cabafia or one of his neighbors —
emerged from the darkness, and, upon the invitation of his
countrymen, took a seat at our fireside.

COLIMA. 73
" I had a good mind to make him eat his pepper-grass,"
muttered the Boss. " Confound his impudence ! he might
as well have sent us a handful of bulrushes. It puzzles
me what he wants here."
Our visitor, after a whispered conference with one of the
mestizo wagoners, at last solved the puzzle by drawing a
dirty little package from his bosom and handing it to his
neighbor. " Excuse me, gentlemen," said the teamster, " but this
paysano wants to know if you would like to buy a cake of
fine beeswax. Nearly two pounds, he says, — enough for a
big church-candle, and good for ten years of gracias (pur
gatory-indulgences) at the very least. It's first-rate for
harness-leather too, especially in rainy weather," he added
after a pause and a sotto-voce suggestion from his prompter.
" Would you like to look at the cake ?"
" Never mind," said the Boss : " tell him we are fire-
and water-proof here."
The paysano nudged his interpreter, and exchanged the
package for a larger article.
" Maybe you would prefer a panuelo," said the teamster,
displaying a large red cotton handkerchief. " Look here !
as good as new, and he says he lets you have it at less than
half price, Mr. Davis."
" Take that rag away, or I  "
" Never mind him," said the doctor. " Listen ! what's
going on in that tree up there? It can't be birds at this
time of the night ?"
In different intervals of the camp-hubbub we had heard
a shrill twitter from the summit of a large pinabete, or
mountain-larch tree, as if a multitude of swallows were
chirping in unison. But the invisible vocalists had either
disagreed on some private business, or the glare of the

74 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
camp-fire began to excite them, for their twittering was now
intermingled with a vehement flutter and piercing squeaks
that sounded through the cackle of our Mexicans like a
boatswain's whistle.
" Goatsuckers perhaps, or some other kind of night-bird."
" They must be squirrels," said the Boss : " birds couldn't
squeak like that."
" But squirrels can't flutter : they must be bats or birds,"
insisted the doctor. " Let me get over there : now watch
if you don't see them fly away." He picked up a billet,
and, after flinging it repeatedly against the upper branches,
inspected the trunk of the pinabete, and owned himself
puzzled when he returned. " There is a twenty-inch
stratum of animal excrements under that tree," said he.
" You may be right, after all, or there must be something
else up there besides my birds, — maybe cats or monoschicos"
(tree-raccoons). " They are murciegalos" (a large kind of bats), said the
guide, guessing at the context of the English conversation
by the last word : " that tree is chuckful of them."
" What makes them flutter so ?"
" I don't know, sir : they keep coming and going, and
some of them are as large as wood-pigeons."
But the fluttering in the larch-tree was as steady as the
flopping of a fan-ventilator; and after propounding and
rejecting a variety of other theories, we came to the conclu
sion that the upper branches of the pinabete must be the
flying-school of the bat colony, where their youngsters were
exercised in the rhythmic movement of their membranous
wings. Smaller bats and a swarm of moths and beetles hovered
about the camp, and in the light of our fire we could see
night-rats chasing each other through the grass and flying-

COLIMA. 75
squirrels flitting from tree to tree ; and the near and far
voices of the forest made it rather doubtful which part of
the twenty-four hours could here be called, par excellence,
the wide-awake time. The business of animated nature is
carried on by relays in the tropics.
We had almost forgotten our Indian visitor, when his
interpreter resumed his functions : " With your permission,
caballeros, this paysano asks me to mention that the panuelo
can be used as a neck-cloth. It is a patriotic handkerchief,
with a Mexican eagle on it : all it needs is a good washing,
and a little starch  "
" Doctor, you had better attend to that man ; he must
be seriously sick," laughed the Boss.
"A little starch, caballeros, would make it as good as
new," he says ; " and you needn't pay him in money : he'll
take it out en alimento, — in comestibles."
" Aha ! we are coming to the point now. Say, Pancho,"
to the guide, "just ask him what he wants, or he'll auc
tioneer his breech-clout next."
" I needn't ask him," laughed the guide ; " he wants a
little ground coffee, sir."
" That's talking sense, now. Here ! fill him this pint
cup. Now ask him if he wants anything else."
" He says he is very sorry to trouble  "
" Never mind ; what is it ?"
" A little bacon, sir : that's all."
"You relieve me. Here ! I guess this chunk will grease
his way to heaven if he should lose his beeswax. Give
him his pepper-cress back, too."
Cresses, coffee, and bacon were wrapped up in the
patriotic handkerchief, and our Indio hopped off rejoicing.
"Indians are very fond of coffee, sir," explained the
guide. " It doesn't grow here, and they've got no money

76

SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.

hardly. There was no necessity, though, for giving him
as much as all that."

COLIMA PEASANTS.

"Oh, he's welcome. But what's the reason the lazy
loafers can't raise their own bacon ? Don't they keep any

pigs

9"

" It's very hard to raise any hogs here, sir. The Indians
are too poor to keep them in pens, and out in the bush they

COLIMA. 77
get snapped up as fast as you turn them out. The woods
are full of panthers and bears, and God knows how many
alligators down in the bottoms. Besides, they are liable to
get sick, and  "
" To be mistaken for peccaris," suggested the doctor.
"Yes, and they are so worried with vermin, — leeches
and bush-lice, and ticks as large as your finger. The same
with chickens. The wild-cats eat them in the bush and
the pulgas (sand-fleas) in the stable ; so the Indians have
to live on vegetables and milk."
" Why don't they go hunting, if the woods are so full
of game?"
"They don't dare to, sir; they might run across the
wrong kind of game, or lose their way, as has happened
more than once. You have no idea what sort of tangle-
wood they have along this river ; the best hunter can't find
his way without a trained dog."
" There are no hunters at all here, then ?"
" Only a Gfuero* here and there, but very few of the
colored people. They told me about a deaf-and-dumb
Indian lad down on the Balsas River yyho used to wander
about the woods in every direction for days together, and
somehow always found his way back. But one day he
came flying home in the wildest excitement, and gesticu
lated as if he was out of his senses altogether; and he
would hardly trust himself out of the rancho after that.
They think he must have met a renegrdn."
The backwoodsmen of Southern Colima believe in the
existence of an animal which, according to their accounts,

* Quero, in Spanish America a generic name for all non-Spanish
Europeans. The European Spaniards are called Castellanos, but
more frequently Gachupines (Tories).

78 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
must be a large, black-haired feline, of extraordinary
strength and ferocity and of strictly nocturnal habits. The
renegrdn — blackamoor (carraguar, or night^tiger, the In
dians call him) — has broken into adobe cabins and torn
their inmates into pieces before a puma could kill a cow ;
and neither a bear nor a jaguar would follow a fisherman
and capsize his boat in the middle of the stream, which
feat is ascribed to a renegron of the lower Balsas. In warm
nights the rancheros of the Colima backwoods have often
heard a peculiar howl which they could not mistake for
that of any known beast of prey, and seen footprints in
the river-sand which prove that the jungles harbor a brute
whose size far exceeds that of the puma. They have found
the mangled carcass of the hormiguero, or large ant-bear,
an animal which from its mastership in the use of its long
claws is never molested even by the jaguar. The jaguar
also visits the tierras frias, the summit regions of the Sierra
Madre, while the voice of the night-tiger is only heard in
the river-jungles.
I was told that only a year ago the appearance of a car
raguar in the Indian wigwams on the Rio Pinas created a
perfect were-wolf panic ; and the description of the brute,
which was then seen and heard by a number of persons
at the same time, though differing in details, agrees in the
above-named essentials with the accounts of other forest
tribes. But the renegron sensations are by no means con
fined to the Indian settlements, and all the farmers of the
Balsas Valley remember the tragedy of the Cazador Guero
(the "white hunter"), a sturdy ranchero of Portuguese
descent, who had different rencontres with the murderous
night-walker, and at last sealed the truth of his accounts
with his life.
Juan Rivera was a cattle-herder and trapper of the

COLIMA. 79
Val de Mascalo, near San Nicolas, and proprietor of a
clumsy but very efficient old trabucco, or Portuguese army-
musket, which had freed the valley from so many wolves
and panthers that he was generally known as El Cazador,
the champion hunter of the Rio Mascalo. Among his
trophies was a large shred of black fur torn by his hounds
from the hide of a renegron, which their master had crip
pled by a shot through the haunches, but which neverthe
less effected its escape after disabling two of its would-be
captors ; and more than once had he seen the sable form
of a " night-tiger" when he visited his beaver-traps in the
morning twilight. But since the inundation of the Balsas
bottoms, in 1869, his rauche had been more frequently
harried by other enemies, and when he missed a fine white
milch-cow he ascribed the loss to a puma that had carried
off one of his goats a month before. The carcass of the
cow, minus the entrails and one of the hind-quarters, was
found near a salt-lick in the river-jungles, and the Cazador
resolved to watch the next night and pay the butcher in
heavy currency. He loaded his trabucco with two handsful
of chopped lead, and started at sundown for the salt-lick,
accompanied by his son Miguel, a fearless lad of fifteen
or sixteen, who had lately been presented with a shot-gun
by the Cazador's father-in-law, and wanted to prove himself
worthy of the gift.
They watched behind an ambuscade of brushwood till
the moon rose above the ridge of the Sierra de Mascalo,
when Miguel heard a low rustling in the neighboring
thicket and the click of the trabucco of his father, who
motioned for him to cock his own piece and keep very
quiet. After waiting in dead silence for ten or twelve
minutes, during which the rustle was heard at intervals,
but without coming any nearer, his father whispered to

80 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
him to stay in the hiding-place and keep a sharp lookout,
while he went to reconnoitre the jungle. He slipped away,
trabucco in hand, and Miguel waited nearly a quarter of an
hour, when he thought he saw a dark form creep upon the
white carcass, which began to shake and roll in a way that
satisfied him that the long-expected guest had commenced
his supper. Bundles of brushwood had been deposited
along the ground between the bait and the ambuscade, and
Miguel could creep near enough to distinguish the whole
outline of the cow-killer, and thought he recognized the
broad head and long tail of a puma. His father had warned
him not to fire at anything larger than a wolf, for his piece
was only loaded with buckshot ; but the brute presented a fair
broadside, — the left side, too, — not a pellet could miss, and
no such opportunity might ever occur again. Miguel raised
his shot-gun, and, resting it in the fork of a bush which
completely hid him, covered the ribs of the supposed puma
a little back of the left shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
He remembers that he dropped his piece and ran off,
screaming for help, with the tiger at his heels, and that he
was awakened from a stunning fall by the crunching of his
shoulder-bones and a fierce tugging at his shawl, as if the
murderer was trying to get at his throat. But in that
moment he heard his father's trabucco go off like a thun
der-clap close to his ears, and staggered to his feet. The
brute had recoiled, and in the next instant received a blow
por tumbar un toro (that would have felled a bull), for it
splintered the butt of the heavy musket like a walking-
stick. He saw his father swing up the gun-barrel for a
second stroke, but before it descended the brute had made
a spring at his legs, and in the next second had him pros
trate on the ground.
" Corre, muchacho ! por tu vida ! por tu vida !" yelled

CO LIMA. gl
the hunter between his screams of agony, — " Run, my boy,
for your life ! It's a renegr6n !"
Miguel stood stupefied for a minute, and even the death-
shriek of his father brought him only half to his senses,
for he dashed into the woods at random, and arrived at
midnight, not at his mother's ranche, but at an Indian wig
wam on the river-shore, where a former vaquero of his
father's bandaged his shoulder, and carried him home on
a mule the next morning. The boy's excitement and his
frightful wounds attested the truth of his statements, and
before night the battle-ground was visited by a large party
of armed rancheros. The corpse of the hunter had disap
peared, but they found his hat and shreds of his clothes,
and the two guns. On a spot where the sods were torn up
by the rough-and-tumble fight, and on the butt of the
broken musket, they discovered tufts of coarse black hair,
which could not have belonged either to a jaguar or a cuguar,
as the Indians call the yellowish-gray puma or Mexican
lion. The next morning we resumed our journey at sunrise,
and passed through a majestic forest of pinabetes (Larix
montana), which covers a considerable portion of the lower
foot-hills. Even coniferous trees do not monopolize the
soil of the virgin woods, and in the shade of dense and
widespreading mountain-firs many bushes and arborescent
shrubs — sassafras, chrysosplenium, or monkey-pot trees, and
white-blooming oleanders — manage to dispense with sun
shine and rain.
But the selvas bravas — the primeval forests proper —
begin only beyond the foot-hills of the Sierra de Jalisco,
where the erythrina thorns and wood-myrtles spread their
thickets through the underbrush, while the upper foliage

82 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
is interlaced with a network of wildering lianas. The road
through these mountain jungles cost the vireys millions of
dollars and untold human lives, and is kept in tolerable
repair at the expense of the Mazatlan merchants ; but the
overhanging boughs of the giant trees and the swaying
tendrils of the bush-ropes, that reach out like eager hands
toward the bush-rope tangle on the other side, convey the
impression that if the road was left to its fate the forest
would swallow it and close above it in a single year. Here
and there a creek issues from a dusky archway that leads
into the penetralia of the tree-labyrinth like a tunnel into
the bowels of a mountain. The arcades of the wild fig-
trees, too, open vistas into leafy vaults where owls and
goatsuckers commence their plaintive cry long before sun
set, and the gloom of the deeper recesses is unlike anything
we see in our densest pine-groves in daytime.
The experience of a lifetime teaches the Jalisco hunter
to distinguish the strange animal voices of these mountain
forests, — the cries of yelping birds and whistling quad
rupeds, the shrill piping of the squirrel-monkey from the
note of the crested curlew, and the hoarse bark of the
toucan from the coughing scream of the tree-panther. But
the remoter depths of the selvas now and then send forth
sounds which puzzle even the natives, like voices from an
unknown world, and awaken a suspicion which the theo
retical completeness of our natural histories cannot wholly
remove, — namely, that the Forest has kept some of its
secrets as well as the Ocean.

CHAPTER III.
THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO.
Yet would you scale those mountains if you knew
That they enclose the vale of Paradise? — Camoens.
When we reached the plateau of the first — i.e., the east
ern — range of the double mountain-chain that encloses the
lake-region of Jalisco, the valley at our feet was shrouded
by a misty veil, but the mountain-heads had doffed their
hood, and the ridge of our own sierra was sunlit for many
miles ahead. Our road meandered between boulders of cal
careous tufa, but along the centre of the plateau the main
stratum had cropped out in a ledge of massive granite,
which approached the western brink at different points,
forming as many headlands of dark-gray cliffs.
" We could see the lake now if it wasn't for that wretched
fog," observed our guide, " but I guess we shall have the
south breeze before long if the sun gets a little higher."
We saw the breeze in the tree-tops of the lower moun
tain-regions before it reached our plateau; and when we
approached the western slope the next time the cloud-
masses had actually got under way, and a gap here and
there revealed the blue forests of the opposite sierra, and
even a dazzling though only momentary glimpse of the
great lake below. But when we reached the third head
land our caravan stopped and the teamsters dismounted,
and one by one our men stepped up to the brink of the
projecting cliffs. The veil had been lifted.

84

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

The river at our feet was as wide and quite as blue as
the Susquehanna at Harrisburg; but its banks were not
gentle slopes, but savage cliffs rising abruptly into tower
like foot-hills and mountain-walls that approached the re-

LAKE CHAPALA.

gions of everlasting snow. But
as the mountains diverge the
river widens into a lake whose
shores follow the zigzag line
of the foot-hills, till, in the far west, where the two sierras
part at right angles and forever, the lake expands into a

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 85
boundless sea, glittering like a mirage and studded with
hundreds of wood-covered islands that fade into light-
blue hillocks at the edge of the horizon. Just below our
feet the river was hidden by a grove of balsam-firs, the
home of a colony of black herons, and the open lake was
crossed and recrossed by swarms of waterfowl, which, at a
greater distance, seemed to drift slowly along like a streak
of silver-white clouds.
It has been said that the world in general knows nothing
of its greatest men, but it is more certain that men in gen
eral are unacquainted with the fairest regions of their world.
I am almost sure that there are towns of ten thousand in
habitants in the United States, and much larger cities in
Western Europe, where it would be impossible to find one
man who ever in his life heard even the name of Lake
Chapala, while every other village schoolmaster in Europe
and North America could write a treatise on Lake Leman
or Loch Lomond. Thousands of North American school
boys have read about the Lago di Como, and many illiter
ate Western farmers know that the Boden-See is drained by
the Upper Rhine, but not two men in a cityful of European
professors would be able to say if the fairy lake of the Rio
Lerma is in Mexico or in the Philippine Islands. Yet this
fair lacus incognitus is ten times as large as all the lakes of
Northern Italy taken together, and forty times larger than
the entire canton of Geneva, — contains different islands
whose surface area exceeds that of the Isle of Wight, and
one island with two secondary lakes as big as Loch Lomond
and Loch Katrine !
" Well, boys," observed one of the American teamsters,
" it's no use to deny the truth if you can see it in broad
daylight : this beats California."
" It does indeed," said the sergeant, who had stood at
6

86 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
my side as immovable as a fugleman on parade. "Well,
sir, I have often wondered how that Maximilian of yours
could be so foolish as to leave all those castles he had in
the old country and come here and get himself shot like
a highway robber ; but I see now that his head was level
enough, after all. He was right to risk his life for a country
like this."
I walked over to the other side of the cliff, where Dr.
Rambert stood, hat in hand, pensive and mute. " Que dit
Monsieur le Docteur ? You wouldn't find such a lake in
California? Don't vou feel like going back to San Luis,
in spite of your heresy?"
" Retourner f Yes," said the heretic, turning suddenly and
gimleting me with his keen eyes — " Yes, I do feel like going
back a long way, — back to the fourth or fifth century B.C.
There it is, my friend : that's the world we have lost for
the privilege of exchanging a pantheon for a charnel-house,
— a company of happy gods for an assembly of tearful
saints, who ruined their bodies to save their souls and ce
monde-ci pour I 'amour du del. Have you ever wished to
know what Southern Europe was like in the times of
Homer and Xenophon ? Circumspice. That's Greece with
all its ancient forests and happy islands, and without its
modern deserts and convents. Take a good look at it. I
have an unfortunate talent for historical clairvoyance, a
sort of inverted second-sight, and I can see it : I see a
Mediterranean Paradise getting from year to year more
desolate and Semetic, but  "
" Go on."
" No, I won't. The guide tells me we are going to have
fried salmon-trout for dinner, and I don't like to spoil my
appetite." The forest thickened around us as we descended, and

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 87
before we reached the lake our road shrank to a narrow
senda, a mere trail through the wild tanglewood. The
jungles of the foot-hills, our guide told us, swarm with game
of various kinds which are but rarely seen in the alturas,
as the natives call the open forests of the summit-regions.
In the matted thickets of styrax and myrtle-wood they
find safe retreats from the arrow of the Indian hunter ; and
even the panther visits their haunts only at midnight, for
fear of the maranos, or wild hogs, that charge him with
headlong fury if they spy his freckled hide in daytime.
The foliage was fairly drenched with dew, and the
morning wind diffused a medley of most astonishing odors ;
but the weather was already too warm to be agreeable, and
when we emerged from the bottom-jungles opposite a peb
bly beach our mules jostled and kicked each other in the
press for precedence. The shores of Lake Chapala had not
borrowed their enchantment from the distance of the view.
Sturdy hemlocks and bignonia-trees crowd the impertinent
underbrush out of the way, forming natural avenues along
the beach, which slopes so gradually that the water-line is
almost everywhere accessible. The water is steel-blue and
wonderfully transparent, in spite of the algse and pond-
weeds that weave their tangled tendrils wherever the bot
tom is a little less obdurate. From the racks of an open
wagon we could see the mountain-forests of the opposite
shore glittering with a moist and tremulous light and a
thousand hues, — all possible shades, variations, and combi
nations of green and blue, darkened here and there by the
gloom of a mountain-gorge or the floating shadow of a
cloud. But on the eastern shore the sierra presents a
mural front to the lake, and discharges its drainage in the
form of dripping springs and cascades, tiny rivulets mostly,
except at the northeastern extremity of a triangular bay,

88 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
where the falls of the Rio Blanco come down with a thun
der that can be heard and felt for leagues around. A mile
below the falls a few jagged rocks rise from the water, form
ing the southern outposts of the motley archipelago of cliffs
and islands that extends along the eastern shore for at least
sixty English miles. A meadow of pond-reeds near one
of the mid-lake islands seemed to be a rendezvous for all
possible kinds of waterfowl. Moor-hens, surf-ducks, fla
mingoes, a long-legged bird that looked like a stork, but
might be a species of white heron, coots, and black divers,
arrived and departed from and in all directions ; and a little
apart from the rest a flock of gansas, or swamp-geese,
disported themselves in the open water, — grayish-white,
long-necked fellows with black heads, floating at times in a
sleepy way till some old gander craned his neck, and then,
as if suddenly stirred by the spirit of locomotion, shot
ahead with flopping wings for a hundred yards or so, and
excited the whole flock into a fit of aquatic gymnastics.
" How would this suit you for a camping-ground, cap-
itan ?" asked the guide when we passed a grassy slope at the
foot of a styrax-coppice.
" There isn't much tent-room here," said the Boss. " I
guess I shall steer for that mangrove-thicket over yonder :
it looks like a nice level place. When are you going to
that hacienda you were talking about ?"
" If the gentlemen are ready we had better go now," said
the guide, with a chronological squint at the sun : " it's very
near noon, I should say. Can't you manage to join us?"
"Not now," said the Boss, "but I guess Billy here
could." The clerk assented, and we crept into the cabin of our
prairie-schooner to supply some essential defects of our
toilet.

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 89
" Please don't go out too far that way," cried the clerk
when he jumped down, " or else we sha'n't be able to find
you to-night."
" Don't you fret," shouted the cook : " you'll know the
place by the smell if you don't see the camp-fire : we are
going to fry all those Dutch bananas of yours while you are
gone," meaning the bologna sausages, of which the young
gentleman kept a full stock on hand.
" How far is that hacienda from here, anyhow ?" asked
the doctor after we had followed the windings of a meadow-
brook for some time.
" We are on the hacienda even now," replied the guide,
" but the dwelling-house — the Casa Morena, as they call it
— is about half a league from those mango-trees over there.
That orchard has grown into a regular forest with all the
new trees they have set out, and they are still at it."
" You have been here before, it seems ?"
" Yes, sir, many a time ; and the Senor Vidas is an old
friend of mine : he used to live in Queretaro, and I knew
him a long while before he ever came here."
"He has only purchased this place lately, has he?"
" He doesn't own it, sir, but I guess he will before long :
the proprietor, old Mr. Martinez, is his father-in-law, and
lets him boss the place as much as he likes. He might as
well be dead : he has never a word to say."
" Bedridden, I suppose ?"
" Lord bless you, no, sir ! he could ride a wild buffalo.
But he is hardly ever home : he's fishing from morning till
night. That's all he cares for ; and I really think he could
beat a fish-otter at its own game."
The Casa Morena was a two-story, flat-roofed stone house,
constructed of a kind of brown syenite of great durability,
but of a color that gave the stones the appearance of over-

90 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
grown bricks : the house, the corral, and half a dozen out
buildings were enclosed by a citron-hedge whose flowers
shone like drifted snow against the background of dark-
green mango-trees.
The sefior was not at home, but the housekeeping mestiza
informed us that she expected him for dinner, and promised
us a superlative potful of trucha con papas — broiled trout
with potato-chips — if we would tarry a little while. In
the mean time one of the stable-boys volunteered to show
us the sights of the hacienda, — the flower-plots, the chapel,
a pyramid of alligator skulls, the Shanghai cock recently
imported from Mazatlan, a little wind coffee-mill, and the
skeleton of a big swamp-boa. But a greater curiosity, at
least to our eyes, was the tame porcasso, or hog-tapir, the
fattest, laziest, and, with the single exception of the tree-
alligator, the ugliest habitant of the Tierra Caliente, and
the first of his tribe I had ever seen in a state of captivity.
He was confined in a pig-pen of solid construction, though
in his present condition he seemed hardly able to use his
legs for migratory purposes. When we approached the pen
he surveyed us with a misanthropic — nay, pessimistic — ex
pression of his jaundiced eye, and even when the stable-boy
offered him an armful of water-cabbage he turned away
with a weary look and grunted protest against the vanities
of this world. But by and by the aroma of the succulent
vegetable seemed to revive his secular propensities : the
wrinkles of his proboscis began to work ; he turned his
head gradually, and with crescendo sniffs eyed the garbage
with the mien of a connoisseur, and suddenly broke forth
into an exultant snort that contrasted painfully with the
moral tone of his previous utterances. I think there were
about sixteen pounds of cabbage, which vanished in as
many seconds, and after smacking his chops meditatively

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO.

91

for two or three minutes he raised his head to apply for a
second instalment. The functions of his mental apparatus

THE HOG-TAPIR.

seemed, indeed, quite as sluggish as his visible movements.
The stable-boy handed him another bundle, larger and
heavier than the first, but, after allowing him to devour a
hatful or so, he jerked the rest away, leaving him nothing
but a few scattered leaves. While the tapir gobbled these
leaves he kept his eye on the main stake, but a full minute
elapsed before he realized the magnitude of his bereave
ment. When the truth flashed upon him it seemed to
strike his brain like an electric shock : he jumped around
as if possessed with all the hog-goblins of Gadara, snapped
at his own buttocks, and finally stood still, leaned his head

92 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
back, and uttered screams that continued for a long while
after his property had been restored.
A bell sounded from the kitchen-window, and we re
turned to the casa. "You must excuse my appearance,
gentlemen," said the sefior when he came in, wet and mud-
bespattered. " I have a lot of Chechemeca Indians at work
in the swamp getting the vanilla-crop in ; and you know
you cannot trust them round the corner : you might as well
rely on a troop of monkeys to behave in your absence. Had
the caballeros a pleasant trip ?"
" Yes, sir, from the moment we sighted your mountains,"
said Dr. Rambert ; " but the pleasure will end here too :
it's hard on a man to have to crawl back to the humdrum
Tierra Caliente after having been in heaven."
" How's the old man ?" inquired the guide.
"Thanks: oh, he is all right, — still at it, of course,"
laughed the sefior : " he wouldn't care for any other heaven
either unless he could take his angle along. — Well, help
yourselves, caballeros, and excuse me for a few minutes."
When Don Vidas returned in his black jaqueta we found
him " a gentleman in dress and address." He had been an
alcalde of the court of session in Queretaro, and could not
only read, but had evidently put that accomplishment to
some account.
" I understand my honored guests are versed in the med
ical sciences," said he, after dinner, "and I have often
wished for an opportunity to hear a competent verdict upon
the value of a hot spring in this neighborhood. Would
you like to take a stroll down to the creek ?"
We took our hate, and the clerk, who had only under
stood the last two or three words, followed our example.
The thermal springs of this region deserve a hotter
name. The weather was so warm that we envied the broad-

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 93
brimmed sombrero of our companion, but in spite of the
heat and dryness of the atmosphere Mr. Vidas's little spa
smoked like a Canadian waterfall on a cold winter morning.
Where it joined the creek, and for some distance below,
the water emitted curling little wreaths of steam that soon
dissolved in the upper air, but to our surprise we noticed
the same vapor in the creek-water above the junction. The
mineral thermse proper were farther up, explained the
sefior, and he took us to a place where a number of tiny
fountains welled up from a smoking puddle at the edge of
the creek.
"Whew! that's a sulphur spring, it can't be denied,"
said Dr. Rambert, rubbing his nose. " Very popular with
the natives, I dare say, — miraculous cures effected, lepers
restored to health, etc., eh?"
" Well, I don't know," laughed the sefior. " It's a popu
lar maxim, though, that whatever tastes bad must be healthy ;
and if that's true the sanative efficacy of this puddle must
be preternatural indeed : it tastes like a mixture of rotten
eggs and turpentine. The Indians call it the pestazote"
(stink-hole) — "your nose testifies to the fitness of the term,
I suppose — but they worship it, nevertheless, though it all
but suffocates them. I have often seen them take a mouth
ful and wait to let it cool off, and then swallow it with a
sort of resignation ; but the moment they get it down they
explode like fermenting beer-bottles, and never stop sneezing
and hacking for hours together. A clerical friend of mine
calls it the ' Fountain of Eternal Coughs.' It's no eternal
fountain, though, I'm afraid : the creek keeps encroaching
on its left bank, and will swamp the spring — maybe both
of them — before long, unless I can stop the mischief with
a dike or something."
" Save the lower spring, then, the one without brimstone.

94 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
A warm spring, sir, is a great blessing in winter-time, — as a
bath I mean, not as a beverage."
" That's what I often suspected," said the sefior. " If I
understand you right, you mean to say that it doesn't matter
much whether this puddle gets swamped or not?"
" Not one straw. If that stuff were healthier than pure
water, the Creator would have covered the face of the earth
with pestazotes. The truth, sefior, is what you hinted at a
while ago : that people in general have an unhappy rever
ence for out-of-the-way things, — hartshorn, miracles, cod-
liver oil, mandragora, and such like. If some wretch should
discover a spring of sulphuric acid, he would be hailed as
a benefactor of mankind. Thousands of cures ascribed to
our mineral springs are in reality effected by open-air exer
cise, climatic influences, music, and other incidental ad
vantages of a watering-place, but especially by the dietetic
restrictions which are commonly involved with a sentence of
sulphur-water. And the power of faith can even dispense
with such adjuncts."
" Our Indians are saved by faith then," said Don Vidas,
" for they certainly dispense with dietetic restrictions. I
have seen them put down potsful of sulphur-water and
broiled eels, turn about, or a greasy mess of cabbage with
lard oil and red pepper. Their digestive apparatus is dif
ferent from ours, though. There's a chap on this farm who
can devour an arroba of sweet potatoes with pansful of
bacon-fat and onions at a single session ; and my Cheche-
mecas have regular eating-matches that last four or five
hours, and do not prevent them from walking as many
leagues the same night, puny monkeys as they are. My
only explanation is this : they are strict teetotalers ; fer
mented and distilled drinks are almost unknown in their
settlements ; and I have often thought that a stout white

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 95
man or an African could digest almost anything if he would
just leave alcohol alone."
As we sauntered back to the casa the senor informed us
that he had to meet a cattle-dealer in the village of Barrios
that night, but that he would return in the course of the
next morning, at all events before noon. " In the mean
time," said he, "the house and the hacienda are at your
disposition, and I think you will find the proprietor a man
of excellent good-humor, though the same cannot be said
of his manners."
" What in the name of witchcraft can this be ?" whis
pered the doctor when we were alone with our guide, — " this
unearthly smell, I mean : it gets worse every minute."
The guide chuckled : " It's the vanilla, sefior ; they have
just brought a load of fresh-cut in, and they are spreading
it on the veranda. It can't be done in the hot sun — it
would spoil all the aroma, you know — so they have to wait
for a dry night ; and about an hour before sunset is the
right time to spread it."
" It's the right time for us to be off, then," laughed the
doctor : " let's go. Yes, come on : here they bring the
second load."
" Me too ?" asked the guide.
" If you like. On second thought, no : you had better
stay here, my friend, till the old gent comes home, and
make up an excuse for us, like a good fellow."
Flocks of white herons were returning to their roosts in
the mountain-forests, and the reed-frogs struck up the pre
lude of their evening concert when we reached the lake-
shore. On an old pasture at the foot of the hacienda the
children of the farmers and day-laborers were at play with
that vociferous mirth which only the evening hour awakens
in boys and rooks. The little Indians looked at us with

96 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
shy curiosity, but their less naked, semi-Caucasian playmates
gathered around us when they saw us stop near a group of
guava-trees ; and they had no sooner understood that we
wished to get some of the madreselvas (yellow honeysuckles)
in one of the top branches than six or seven of them
swarmed up the tree like squirrel-monkeys and pelted us
with a golden shower of blossoms and flowery tendrils.
When we left we treated them to a penny scramble, while
their comrades were chasing a tame antelope around the
pasture or rolling in the dry grass in a very ecstasy of frolic
and exuberant health.
" Wasn't poor Holty right ?" said the doctor ; and then
muttered, as to himself, "A man might live here like a
wood-god and forget that there are such things on earth as
tobacco-smoke and an anti-natural religion."
Before we sighted the mangrove timber the guide overtook
us and informed me that Don Martinez — " the governor,"
as he called him — would join us at the camp to-night.
" So he was not offended at our leaving the casa?"
" Not in the least. I told him you'belonged to a sect of
Protestants that have to be baptized every Saturday night,
and he was determined to see the fun."
" Why, what made you tell such  "
"Don't get mad, now : let's hurry up, and I'll tell him
you have just got through when he comes."
After sunset the clerk had repeatedly called my attention
to the gigantic bats that steered their fitful flight through
the trees at the lake-shore, and, finding our cook still at
work, I took my shot-gun and sauntered along the beach
in the vain hope of bagging one of the prodigies before
pitch-dark. On my return I found my friends squatting
around the camp-fire, and in their midst an old gentleman
whom I should have taken for a Hollander if I had met

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 97
him in a seaport-town. He shook my hand without stirring
from his seat, and even without interrupting his conversa
tion with Dr. Rambert, who, knowing his hobby, had
already got him astraddle and was listening to an account
of his recent piscatorial exploits.
" Gar-pike," said he, " do not spawn in this lake, — they
come from below, — but I caught an old slick-tailed one this
morning whom I've seen for weeks and weeks, and who
knew me too well to try any of his tricks on me when I
pulled him home. It made me laugh to see the way the
dog winked at me."
" I hear this lake is full of alligators ?" said the Boss.
" No, no : we can't complain. My father used to hunt
them unmercifully, but I have been living here nigh on
sixty years, and I do not think they ever did me sixty
shillings' worth of damage. .They stick to the south side,
where there are plenty of swamps, and few people living :
we shouldn't know there were any about if we didn't hear
them splash in the night-time."
" Do they ever come ashore ?"
" Only in the rutting season : in March and April I have
seen the males chase each other across the beaver-meadows
near Cape Ranas. There's one exception, though," he
continued : " whenever one of those big lagartos" (caymans)
" comes up from the coast-swamps our alligators combine
against him and run him down, coMe que coute, though they
should have to follow him through the jungles and up
stream for miles. I went down to San Marica about five
years ago, and near the ford I met some countrymen flying
up the road almost out of their senses ; and they told me
there was a snake in the creek as long as my picket-fence,
— i.e., about sixty-five yards. I told them they must be
crazy, but when I got down to the creek I thought there

98 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
must be something in it, — not in the creek only, but in the
snake-story. For a considerable distance up and down the
opposite shore the water was in motion as if an everlast
ingly long snake kept turning over and over, and when it
came a little nearer it struck me all at once that it was quite
natural for those Indians to run away. But before I turned
my horse I happened to notice that the critter seemed to
have three or four tails, and when I watched closer I
thought it must have at least a dozen. And what do you
think it was ? A string of alligators after a lagarto that
must have led them a six-mile chase from the lake till they
got him up to the rapids ; and there they had him foul, —
a current like a mill-race ahead, steep banks on both sides,
and no place to hide. I can't say if they killed him or not,
but I know that somebody got hurt in that corner, for after
they left the water was as red as a puddle behind a butcher-
shop. A lagarto can go against the stream like a surf-duck,
but the fool should not have run into a little creek with a
cul-de-sac: if he'd gone up the Lerma, he might have
laughed at all the alligators in North America."
" What is your theory about the Rio Lerma, sefior ?
Where do you think it comes from ?"
" From a greater distance than any of our sierra-creeks,
— that's all I am sure about, — for it isn't possible that it
could collect all that water on this side of the juntura" (the
junction of the two mountain-ranges) ; " so I think the In
dians were right, after all. The Indian chiefs of this valley
told the Spaniards that the Rio Lerma is fed by subterra
nean affluents, by creeks that take their rise in the Orgas
Mountains beyond the sierras, and that the limestone-caves
near Toluca are the upper end of these tunnels. I suppose
you have heard of the great mica-cave near Temascaltepec,
where you can walk for half a league alongside of a deep

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 99
river that goes to nobody knows where ? Well, the Indians
have a tradition that a Toluca chieftain once entered that
cave with sixty warriors, and asked which one of them had
pluck enough to jump into a canoe and commit himself to
the current of the cave-river ? Fifteen or twenty volun
teered, so he made them draw lots, and it fell to a naked
spearman of his body-guard. The chief gave him his red
mantle and a cargo of provisions, and the man pushed off.
They say the current carried him to the farther end of the
cave and into the interior of the mountain, and that was
the last they saw of him. But two months after his canoe
and the red mantle were found near Benjamo on the Rio
Lerma." '' I have heard of that cave," said Dr. Rambert ; " and
I'm sorry we did not take a look at it when we passed
through Toluca. Have you ever visited that neighborhood,
senor ?"
" No, sir : I've passed my life in this State," said the ha-
ciendero, — " never was farther east than Celaya. I haven't
even seen the ocean yet, though it is only forty leagues to
San Bias, and I guess there are greater wonders in the sea
than a little underground water-course. Tell me, caballeros,
— though you may laugh at me for repeating such stuff, —
is it true what I've been told once and again, that there are
ludernas" (lightning-bugs) "in the sea that live under water
the year round and don't get extinguished ? It's a sailor's
yarn, isn't it ?"
" Not quite," answered the doctor : " you can see them
in warm nights, but only where there are millions of them
together, and even then it's only a green shimmer. The
sea doesn't extinguish them, but nobody would miss them
if it did ; and who could say that of your luciernas ? Just
look at them, all of you !"

100 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
The Mexican lightning-bugs seemed, indeed, to have
turned out with all their colleagues and relatives that night.
Fire-flies, fire-midges, and fire-bluebottles drifted and
dodged through the branches of the mangrove-thicket, the
skirts of the forest behind us scintillated like a reflection of
the Galaxy, and even the scattered trees in the valley could
be distinguished by a blaze of circling sparks. The lake-
shore too glittered with intermittent stars, mere luminous
points at a greater distance, but in the canebrake on the
south shore a larger light flared up every now and then —
like a sudden flash, rather than like the continued flicker of
a will-o'-the-wisp. What could it be ? Not the tropical
lantern-fly, which I had seen in Yucatan and Panama, and
again near Tampico, and which nowhere exceeded the bril
liancy of the common luciernas more than two or three
times, while the flashes in the canebrake fairly illuminated
the reeds for yards around. Was it an electric phenomenon,
or what in Florida they call " bush-fire" ?
" I couldn't tell you," said the planter. " I have often
seen it on the beaver-meadows near the boca, and sometimes
in the vanilla-swamps, but never near enough to find out if
it's a living thing or something else, — something the heretics
don't believe in. Say, Coco," turning to his Indian attend
ant, "just look at those bulrushes: do you see that light?
Wait a moment : there it goes again. Now, what would
you call that ?"
" That's a luz huanal," said Coco, combining a Spanish
noun with a Chechemeca attributive.
"A— what?"
" A juego huanal" sticking to the doubtful adjective.
" Describe it : is it an animal or something else?"
"Si, sefior."
" How do you mean ? Is it alive ?"

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 101
" Yes, sir, but — " after some reflection — " it hides in the
daytime." " What is it like ? A bird, a bug, or a fish ?"
" Oh no, sir."
"What, then? Can it fly?"
" Yes, but not like a bird."
"Describe it, then, can't you? What is it, anyhow?"
" A luz huanal, sefior."
We gave it up. The art of definition does not belong
to the primitive faculties of the human mind.
" Whatever it may be," said Don Martinez, " I have
never seen it after December, but often in August, and
generally towards midnight or early in the morning. But
that reminds me it's getting late, at least for people who
have crossed the sierra this morning. I shouldn't have
bothered you anyhow, I suppose, but you have no idea how
much I should like to have you stay here for a couple of
weeks. My neighbors are mostly Indians and hog-tapirs,
and it's so rarely we see any strangers in this valley ! Well,
it's my own fault too. Fifteen years ago a French com
pany wanted to build a railroad from here to San Diego,
and I was against it, like every other fool in the country,
because I thought we might as well do the job ourselves
and pocket the profits. Now we can wait a long while for
another chance like that. Mexico is ruined, and the French
seem to have got rid of their loose change during that last
war." " We'll attend to that, sefior," said I : "my friend here
will be in California this day week, and he will take orders
for any desired number of railroads. There's plenty of
time : we sha'n't start before nine A.M. to-morrow."
" To-morrow !" cried the Mexican. " Santissima ! you
are not going to travel on Sunday, are you ?"
7

102 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" Yes, they are," said the guide. " I told you they were
heretics : they always travel on Sunday, especially on
Easter-Sunday and Whit-Sunday : it's their merriest day in
the week."
" Don't believe it, sefior," said Dr. Rambert : " it will
be a sad day for us if we have to bid farewell to Lake
Chapala. But, as my friend says, there's a remedy for it :
we'll build you a railroad down here at our earliest con
venience and invade you with an army of commercial trav
ellers. It isn't fair that you should have a ParadLse all to
yourself." " All right !" laughed the planter. " I'll let you go on
those terms, even on Sunday. But before you leave the
lake you ought to baptize that guide of yours : he's in need
of it, I'm afraid."
We went to our tent. A night-chill had stolen upon the
air, and the candle in the doctor's field-lantern was flicker
ing rather low in the socket, but before we put it out we re
turned to a little hillock behind the tent to have one more
look at the great mountain-lake. The camp all around was
fast asleep, and so still that we could hear the low creaking
of the tent-poles and the half bark of a dreaming dog whose
soul was perhaps roaming through the thickets of the al-
turas. The camp-fires and stick-torches had burned down
to the last chip, but the deepest night was already past.
Above the heights of the Sierra de Inua the moon was
rising, and all along the eastern shore the dark forests of
the foot-hills began to gleam with a magic light that seemed
to spread with the night-mist till it glittered through the
tree-tops of the coast-islands and painted the lake with
silver streaks and spangles. From the dark north coast
the scream of a waterfowl came now and then like a dis
tant trumpet-note, but the chorus of the lake-frogs had

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO.

103

CHECHEMECA PLATANERO.

subsided into a minor key, and even the booming of the
Rio Blanco had a muffled sound, as if the water-spirits
were yielding to the slumberous spells of the night-wind.
We stood silent till my companion tapped me on the
shoulder : " This evening you said something about inveig
ling a railroad company into the valley. You will have to
do it yourself, amigo: I don't want the weight of such a
sin on my soul."

The Rio Lerma enters the lake as a rock -bound moun
tain-river, and leaves it a broad stream with low shores and
sedgy shallows ; but before it reaches the coast it contracte
once more to force its way through the tortuous defiles of
the Sierra de Santiago, while the road takes a short cut

104 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
through the Porta Marina, a deep gap which intersects the
mountain-range about fourteen miles north of the river-
cafion and hardly eight hundred feet above the water-level.
From the apex of the pass we could see the south shore of
the lake in all its grandeur ; also a lateral valley with dif
ferent smaller lakes, one of which, the Ojo del Cayman,
became " bottomless" a few years ago, when an earthquake
overthrew a steep rock on its western shore and swallowed
a little island which, as our guide told us, had been culti
vated by one of Don Martinez's neighbors for many years.
The western slope of the sierra stretched away to the very
edge of the Pacific, whose coast is indeed an almost con
tinuous mountain-slope from Oregon to Patagonia, while
the west shore of the Atlantic is flanked with equally per
sistent swamps. On a headland of the coast that looked
like the northwestern extremity of the continent we could
see the church-steeples of Mazatlan, but the direct distance
could not be less than sixty leagues ; so we decided to follow
the road to San Bias, a little seaport at the mouth of the
Rio Lerma and hardly twenty English miles from the ridge
of our mountain-range.
About three miles beyond the pass we overtook a gang
of Indian plataneros, or banana-hucksters, who trudged
along manfully under loads that would have staggered a
mule, and attested their gratitude with unintelligible but
not less expressive exclamations when we permitted them
to deposit their burdens in one of our empty wagons. One
of them, an ex-mail-carrier, could talk a little Spanish, but
his five comrades were unqualified Chechemecas, and wore
the turban-like head-dress which distinguishes the bush
Indian from his half-civilized city cousin. They carried
long bows of bignonia-wood, and gave us a sample of their
skill when we passed a swampy lagoon at the foot of the

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO.

105

mountain. We heard a rustle in the canebrake and a
splash or two in the open water behind it, but the pool was

CHECHEMECA BOWMAN.

screened by a hedge of hackberry-trees, and we were about
to pass by, thinking of the common swamp-turtles that
frequent such lagoons, when one of the Chechemecas peeped
through the hedge and beckoned to us to stop. The front
teams had already turned a corner, but our wagon was one
of the last, and four of us jumped down.
" Maranos!" (wild hogs) cried the Indian : " hurry up !
you can see them yet."

106 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
A herd of peccaris had been rooting in a reed-thicket in
the middle of the lagoon, and were now swimming for the
opposite bank with an energy that stirred the little pond
from shore to shore.
" Why don't you shoot, compafiero ?" I asked the mail-
carrier : " they are not out of range yet, are they ?"
" No use, sir," said he ; " not water enough to swim, and
too much mud to wade it ; but we can try it for fun. Be
quick, boys," reaching for his bow with an exclamation in
the vernacular : " Here goes !"
The first volley scattered among the swimming heads,
but a big sow that landed on a peninsular mud-bank re
ceived two arrows at the same moment and almost in the
same place ; and one of her pigs was crippled in a way
that would have ensured its capture if we could have
reached the other shore. The rest were cautious enough to
swim around the peninsula, and landed on the safe side of
a mangrove-coppice. The peccary (Sus torquatus) is one of the few migratory
quadrupeds of our continent, and roams from the Rio
Grande to the Orinoco in search of swamps and inundated
forests, and in wet seasons often appears en masse in upland
regions where it has not been seen for a half-century. It
is smaller and uglier, but much more active, than our
domestic hog, — the sow we saw in the lagoon cleared a
broad sand-bank at a single leap, and rushed into the man
grove-thicket with heroic disregard of the prickly under
brush. Some of her pigs seemed to have been littered in
the preceding summer, — i.e., three or four months before,
— but they swam like ducks, as, indeed, all young animals
do, at least as soon as they can run, the children of man
alone excepted. Have we incurred such disabilities by our
abnormal habits ? Now and then I cannot help suspecting

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. 107
that Jean Jacques Rousseau was right : non est quod fuit
Natura. One of our Indians seemed to be sick or weak-minded :
he tramped along without ever raising his head, and re
peatedly stumbled over obstacles which even a short-sighted
man might have avoided. " What's the matter with that
comrade of yours ?" I asked the mail-carrier : " can I help
him in any way?"
" No, sir; it can't be helped, I guess : he is blear-eyed
and nearly blind. Eel-hunting did it."
"Hunting— what?"
" Barcas eels or eel-snakes," explained the guide : " they
come ashore in moonlight nights, you know, and the In
dians often collar them by the sackful."
" What has that to do with his eyes ?"
" I do not know, sir, but they ascribe it to the moon, like
a good many other diseases. If their children are playing
out-doors in the evening, the old ones are sure to drive
them in as soon as the moon rises. Moonlight makes them
anochido" (night-eyed), "they say, and unfit to work in
daytime." The last four miles of our journey brought us in sight
of, and finally back to, the banks of the Rio Lerma, a
happy river that passes from the hills to the sea without
muddling its waters in an intermediate swamp-estuary, after
the fashion of our Atlantic streams. We entered the town
through a double gate that forms the main sallyport of a
fort and gives the place something of a mediaeval appear
ance; and San Bias is really one of the oldest Spanish
towns of the New World, — nearly a century older than New
York and New Vera Cruz, for the seaport where Hernan
Cortez landed in 1518 was abandoned some ninety years
after Ruiz Lacerdo fortified the mouth of the Rio Lerma.

108 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
While the custom-house officers inspected the doctor's
baggage, I accompanied the wagonmaster to the Morgan
agency, and our first question was after our old mail-boat,
the Gila City, whose schedule we knew to have been
changed since the capture of Guaymas.
" She went up this morning," said the clerk, " but you
can take the Panama steamer. Yes, to-morrow is Wed
nesday: she will be here in the evening at four or five
o'clock, if she is on time."
Going back to the custom-house, we met the agent him
self, a very intelligent young Scotchman of the Mackenzie
clan, who gave us all the particulars of information we
could desire, and offered us the hospitality of his own
quarters in the agency building. But Dr. Rambert was
suffering from his old complaint, chronic rheumatism, and
preferred the dreary solitude of a posada; and I joined
him in order to spare him the delays and chicaneries of a
Mexican hostelry.
On the following morning Mr. Mackenzie called upon
us at the Posada de la Cruz, and, finding the doctor dozing
after a sleepless night, asked me to come down town and
take a look at the harbor. " It's down in the geometrical
sense of the word," he added : " this old hole is carved out
of a mountain-side like a slate-quarry."
We inspected the wharves, the American warehouses, and
the old Spanish fort, where we witnessed the guard-mount
of a ragged regiment with an excellent regimental band, and
then sauntered along the beach to the mouth of the Rio
Lerma, where the coast assumes a rugged and cavernous char
acter and harbors countless gulls and a colony of nutras, or
sea-otters, that sport in the surf like porpoises, and seem to
have their nests in the penetralia of the honeycombed cliff.
From there we returned to the harbor by a circuitous route,

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO.

109

A NEGRO POLYGLOT.

and took a look at a licensed gambling-house and at the
" Suburb of the Chinamen," who, finding no shirts to wash,
have devoted themselves to the manufacture of fish-pies
and iced lemonade. Among the living curiosities of the
town is a tame alligator, the property of an English agent
and a great pet of the 'longshoremen, and a negro polyglot
who speaks two American and four European languages,
and has even mastered the principal monosyllables of Hop-

110 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Wang-Lee. His industrial talents are still more versatile.
He acts as runner for two hotels and one stage-coach com
pany ; peddles relics to the native Christians, Chicago jew
elry to the heathen Chinee, and sea-shells to foreign ration
alists, with impartial eloquence and effrontery ; keeps magic
oils and yellow-fever pills for the benefit of mankind in
general, and a deck of Spanish monte cards as a side-show.
" He has numerous native rivals," observed Mr. Mackenzie,
" but they do not find it very easy to compete with a man
who can lie in seven languages and cheat at fourteen differ
ent trades."
The agency clerk in the meanwhile had found room for
our caravan in a suburban corral, and Mr. Mackenzie quar
tered our teamsters in a private posada.
" Travellers in Spanish America," said the practical
Scotchman, " should never put up at a public hotel unless
they are saddled with invalids or ladies, but should take
rooms at a posada" (lodging-house), " stipulate beforehand
for such extras as drinking-water and errand-boys, and take
their meals wherever they find a sensible dish ready made.
By doing so they will avoid the inflated bills and inflamed
pepper-pots, as well as the noise and the kitchen fumes, of
the public meson."
I spent the afternoon with Dr. Rambert, and had just
persuaded him to send for a little lunch when a messenger
from the agency brought us word that the San Salvador
had been signalled in the offing and would reach her land
ing at about four o'clock. The doctor grabbed his hat,
but I prevailed on him to stay and break his fast while I
escorted his luggage to the wharf.
Since the completion of the Pacific Railroad the vid-
Panama steamboat line has to fight the struggle for exist
ence against desperate odds, but it has spared no efforts to

THE LAKE-REGION OF JALISCO. \\\
maintain its old popularity by novel devices. The San
Salvador steamed up the harbor like a floating opera-house,
her deck on fire with music, flags, and gorgeous uniforms,
and the suavity of the employes could not have been sur
passed by the ushers of a new metropolitan meeting-house.
They got all the baggage aboard in a trice, and then waited
with respectful deference till the last of their passengers
had shaken hands for the last time with the last of his be
reaved friends. Dr. Rambert looked a little glum when
he trod the last furlong of Mexican soil, but once on the
plank he stuck his hands into his pockets and marched
aboard with all the nonchalance of a Gallic philosopher.
" You are now going to find what you need most, home
comforts and perfect rest," said I, "but your Protestant
friends in Potosi will be selfish enough to miss you sadly,
for all that,"
"Oh, they'll get over it," said the doctor, gayly, " but it's
rough on the orthodox party : they're quite disconsolate.
I really cannot think of them without feeling like a run
away debtor."
" What do you owe them ? You paid for that bewitched
horse, didn't you ?"
"Yes," laughed the doctor, "but I cheated them out of
a first-class solemnity : they'll have to burn me in effigy
now." The San Salvador had landed some Mexican pas
sengers, who had hardly left the wharf-boat before the
proprietor of a neighboring restaurant began to hammer
his supper-gong. The day was indeed far spent, but
the merry sports of the sea-gulls promised a fine evening,
and Mr. Mackenzie invited me to take a stroll to the
promontory. San Bias is a humble pueblo, and cannot boast of any

112 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
city parks with flowery promenades and monumental hotels;
but a lonely sea-shore can dispense with such embellish
ments : at least, I am sure that we did not regret their ab
sence when we reached the cliffs that overlook the otter-cave
and the murmuring surf at the headland, where the Rio
Lerma confides the secret of his birth to the Pacific.

CHAPTER IV.
THE WESTERN SIERRAS.
Their ways are not like ours, but wild and rugged j
And, unlike ours, they lead to happiness. De Mora : El Nuevo Mundo.
The stormy September equinox of the American tropics
is followed in Southern Mexico by a halcyon season of
three or four months, during which even the Tierra Cali
ente, the sultry lowland of the coast-regions, enjoys suc
cessive weeks of that genial and absolutely cloudless
weather which sometimes precedes the midsummer heat of
our Northern clime, while the skies and breezes of the
sierras are only equalled by the happiest October days of
the North Carolina Alleghanies.
There is a boat-house at San Bias where sailing-yawls
can be hired at six reals (seventy cents) a day, and my
rambles in the Coast Range were so much more pleasant
than the dust and racket of the caravan-journey that I was
almost sorry to learn that the Gila City had landed her
cargo, and that the teams would start in a couple of days.
I had half a mind to stay and take my chance of reaching
Potosi in time by the next trip, but Mr. Mackenzie informed
me that the same boat had brought such favorable news
from Guaymas that the Morgan teamsters might possibly
resume their old route with the next month.
"Are you in earnest about that?" he asked, when I told
him that I should even prefer to cross the mountains afoot
113

114

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

if I could find a re-
V liable guide, though
my arrival in San Luis
might thus be delayed
two or three weeks.
"Why not? They
do not want me before the end of next month, and certainly
not before Christmas."
" No, I mean in regard to that pedestrian project," said
he ; " because if you have a mind to rough it for a couple
of weeks I could recommend you a guide who would put

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. H5
you on your mettle, — a chap that took us overland to
Vera Paz last spring, — my brother Aleck and me. When
my brother was sixteen years old he could beat our Lanark
shire guides at their own trade, and I would have backed
him against any living American mountaineer; but I
modified my opinion when we tried conclusions with this
Mexican in the Sierra de Colima last March. He is honest,
too, — at least for a Greaser, — and a personified gazetteer of
Western Mexico : he and his father used to belong to a
company of operadores, who travel around prospecting for
silver ore, and they took him all over the country from
California to Honduras. He is a native of Orizaba, near
Vera Cruz."
" So he is acquainted with the eastern slope, too ?"
"At least with the State of Puebla. Yes, I should
advise you to take in the eastern Coast Range : the Sierra
Madre between Puebla and Perote is, after all, the Switzer
land of this continent. You could take a detour through
the Val de San Juan and back to Potosi by way of Que
retaro." " What does he charge for a three weeks' trip ?"
" Oh, anything you will give : he is very poor. His
prospecting company broke up some years ago, and he's now
peddling pastry for a second-class confectioner. I suppose
you will need a portador (a carrier) for your blankets and
comestibles : we had two of them, and paid them and the
guide ten reals per diem. If you find the tortillas, he will
guide you all over Mexico and furnish an Indian portador
at a dollar a day."
" What ! portador and all ?"
"Certainly. There are Indian adobe-carriers in our
suburbs that work like mules from morning till night for
three reals, without a crumb of board : they enjoy such a

116 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
trip as much as the travellers do, and make money besides.
But before you start you ought to stipulate for the amount
of baggage they are to carry, and promise them a few dol
lars extra at the end of the business if they behave well."
" Where can I find that guide ?"
" I'll find him for you : just let me know how much time
you can afford to spend on the trip."
I completed my mountaineering-gear with a couple of
rubber blankets, two hatchets, a coil of pellejos, or rawhide
ropes, and a Mexican army- tent with a set of joint poles.
The wagonmaster promised to deliver my trunk and a
couple of letters in Potosi.
" I have got one of your men here now," said Mr. Mac
kenzie when I passed his office in the afternoon : " I was
just going to send my clerk to your posada. You can start
as soon as you are ready. Step in, if you like to take a
look at your man. This is Jos6 Milano, the guide I told
you about."
A barefoot mestizo rose from his seat on the balustrade.
" No mira mi mugre, caballero, — please overlook my
squalor," said he, with a deprecating glance at his feet : " I
have been out in the dust all day, and was just going home
when the sefior called me in."
The original color of his trousers seemed rather doubtful,
and a well-worn and somewhat greasy serape constituted
his only upper garment ; but he was clean-built, lithe, and
black-eyed as an Hungarian gypsy, and prepossessed me by
a certain graceful frankness of speech and manner that con
trasted agreeably with the usual cringing submissiveness of
his countrymen.
" I am in business here," said he, pointing to his cake-
basket, " and I ought to stick to it, but I couldn't resist
when Don Ricardo told me that you are going to visit mis

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. H7
, monies naturales, — my native mountains : it's perhaps the
last time I shall see them. My time is nearly up, — got
just five montlis of free life left : I'm going to be married
next March."
He engaged to find an expert portador before night, and
to report the next morning at eight o'clock in full marching
order. In order to avoid the dust and the tedium of the Vega,
Mr. Mackenzie advised me to take the Mazatlan stage as
far as San Pedro, where a spur of the Balsas Mountains
connects the Coast Range with the main chain of the
Sierra de Inua. From there Jose knew a ridge-way — or,
as a California teamster would say, a high-level road — to
the plateau of Eastern Jalisco.
The harbor was veiled by a sea-fog the next morning,
but the upper town was light, and a look at the mountains
satisfied me that the sky would clear up again before noon.
On my way to the officio de correos, or stage-coach depot, I
was joined by Mr. Mackenzie and one of his clerks, and a
few minutes before eight the guide made his appearance
with a stout Indian carrier, ready packed and strapped for
an immediate anabasis. Jos6 was equipped in correct mon-
tero costume, — pressed-leather sombrero, leather breeches,
sandals, and a short jacket covered with a brand-new serape.
He carried a kit with sundry camping and cooking utensils
and a portion of the comestibles, which Mr. Mackenzie had
been kind enough to furnish us from the agency store, and
had brought a little terrier along, which he assured me
would prove a very useful watch-dog in our sierra-camps.
The carrier was a stolid but good-natured-looking old
Tuxpano or mountain-Indian, barefoot and almost bare
legged, with an arm-hole serape that displayed a bull neck
and a pair of powerful arms. At the d6p6t we met his

118 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
wife, an emotional old Tuxpana, who insisted on carrying
my gun and shawl to the coach ; and when Mr. Macken
zie's clerk happened to splash his boots in the muddy
corral, the poor old body knelt down and cleaned them
with all the spitting and rubbing eagerness of a Castle
Garden bootblack. Before we could get rid of her she
showed me a piece of paper folded and tied up with bits of
red yarn, handed it to the guide and patted his shoulder
to coax him into a faithful interpretation of her comments.
" That's his testimonial," explained Jose : " she says her
husband's last boss wrote this for you to read."
" All right ! just keep it : I'll read it by and by. How
far is it to San Pedro from here ?"
"You'll get there before noon," said Mr. Mackenzie.
" San Pedro lies at the foot of the black hill just below
that double-peaked mountain," pointing to a range of sun-
gilt hills in the northeast.
" Are they not beautiful ?" said the clerk. " They just
remind me of the Stirlingshire Grampians, and that cluster
of mountains in the middle has nearly the shape of Ben
Roonis, near Levendale."
" Hush up, you rascal !" laughed the agent, " or I join
the ' party and leave you in the lurch. Indeed, sir," said
he to me, " I can stand it only by sticking to the lower
part of the town, where the sierra is out of sight. It
makes me homesick, though it's a libel on an alpine range
like that to compare it to our Caledonian molehills. You
will see wonderful scenery, and the Jalisco highlands are
full of curious ruins, temples, teocallis and cairns, and a
still more interesting ethnological relic, — two tribes of
pagan Indians, the Jaliscos and Tuxpans, who have pre
served their religious and political freedom in spite of
monks and muskets. You must pass through Mayapan,

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. \\%
and get Josey to show you the great rock-temple in the
Tuxpan village. Oh ! and I almost forgot," taking a
paper from his breast-pocket : " If you stop at the Hacienda
del Monte, as they call it, you will do me, and perhaps
yourself, a favor if you will forward this letter to Jimmy
Cardenas, the ex-governor of Jalisco. Give him my best
respects. He is quite an exceptional Mexican : you will
understand what I mean if you make his acquaintance."
The coach started, and, after rumbling through the
debris of the old Spanish city-wall, took the Mazatlan
camino real, a sand-road, through the open Vega. There
were only two inside passengers besides Jos6 and me, but
the Tuxpan had deposited his pack and himself on the
pescante, the roof-seat behind the coachman's box, from
modesty rather than in accordance with any established
rule, for the conductor of a diligencia tolerates not only
Indians, but dogs, and, as Jos6 assured me, even goats, on
the reserved seats.
The Pacific glittered through the tree-tops of the mango-
plantations when we reached San Pedro, but the same wind
that had dissipated the sea-fog swept blinding sand-clouds
across the Vega that became almost suffocating where they
mixed with the dust of the un paved pueblo.
" We shall soon be out of this," said Jose. " Look
there ! Half a mile above that little gap we shall strike
the Saltillo trail and a mountain-meadow, to where no dust
ever reached."
The first ascent was rather steep, and made more difficult
by the multitude of jagged stumps, half hidden in weeds
and brambles, for opposite, and for some distance northeast
of the village, the slopes had been cleared; but after
reaching the next terrace the trail improved, and, as we
kept along the ridge, I saw that farther north the foot-hills

120 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
were covered with dark-green Bombax forests, and that
the main chain of the Coast Range was densely wooded
almost up to the steep cliffs of the summit regions.
South of the twenty-eighth degree of latitude the Cor
dilleras of Western America are generally boscados, or
forest-mountains, in strange contrast with the western
coast of the old continent, where the same climatic, if not
geometrical, parallel marks the boundary of the northern
forest-lands. South America has an African sun, but no
African deserts; Colorado, the climate of the Alps, but
no Alpine forests : in other words, our continent has a
fertile Morocco and a virgin-wood Sahara, but a desolate
France and a barren Switzerland. According to the tra
ditions of the Aztecs and Toltecs, as well as of the Western
Peruvians, their ancestors came from the North, — very
likely across Behring's Strait, where Western America
approaches the fatherland of all tailless monkeys, — but
before they reached the tropics they tarried north of the
Rio Gila for a millennium or two, and probably committed
the same outrages against the vegetable kingdom by which
the Numidian sylvania was changed into a sand-waste.
We halted at a dry arroyo to pick a cupful of small
yellow raspberries, and, finding them well-flavored, I fol
lowed the creek as far as it ran parallel with our trail.
Half a mile farther up it connected with a broader valley,
where we found a, running stream and larger raspberries,
but also an appalling number of venomous snakes. The
grass wriggled with dwarf rattlesnakes and vivoras pardas
(gray vipers), and whenever we came near the creek a score
of water-moccasins dropped in with a simultaneous splash
that reminded me of the broadsides of bullfrogs plumping
from the reed-islands of the lower Potomac at the approach
of a canoe.

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 121
" Why, that's nothing," laughed Jose. " Do you see
that swampy bottom back there where the creek comes
from ? — the Val de Culebras, the Serpent Valley, they call
it : that's the place where a Semasquito (snake-eating
Indian) could put up a year's provisions in two or three
hours. There's a viper-nest in every bush and every
bunch of Spanish moss up there,"
" What do the snakes all live on ?"
" Tadpoles, I believe," said Jose. " In the rainy season
that bottom is full of water, and the marsh it leaves breeds
vermin of all sorts. In the dry season they have to starve,
I guess, except the tree-snakes and vivoras pardas : they
are smart enough to find a square meal every day in the
year." I killed and dissected a large blacksnake, but found
nothing to indicate that it had broken its fast for the last
week or two, but the autopsy of a fat vivora revealed two
half-digested birds and tufts of hair that looked like the
fur of a young red squirrel. A sluggish reptile that can
raise such tidbits where the swift blacksnake has to starve
must indeed be " more subtile than any beast of the field
which the Lord God has made ;" but the specimens I saw
were as slimy as leeches, and so disgustingly fat that they
could only have tempted an Eve of the most depraved
taste. By persistent climbing and short halts we managed to
reach the upper ridge before sunset, and on the eastern
declivity of a narrow plateau, capped with wild currants
and cedar-bushes (Juniperus spicatus), the granite alps of
Jalisco and the jagged peaks of the Sierra de San Juan
rose suddenly to view. The mountain-walls of the eastern
highlands, which glittered like snow where their cliffs
reflected the horizontal sun-rays, I found, on examination

122 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
with the telescope, to consist of white limestone or granular
quartz ; but those of the Coast Range, as well as the inter
mediate sierra, are of volcanic origin, and present the most
fantastic outlines, as if the gaps between their summits had
been escarped with a splintering instrument, rather than by
the hollowing and rounding influence of the mountain
waters. Some of their pinnacles resembled the minarets
of a fanciful mosque, and it needed the circumstantial evi
dence of perspectives from different points of view and the
gradual extension of the evening shadows to convince me
that a group of turreted peaks in the main chain of the
San Juan range were not a mirage or a cloud counterfeit.
I have often found that in clear nights the air of an ele
vated plateau is perceptibly warmer than that of the valley
regions. The evening seemed very mild when the wind
subsided together with the sun, and as our canned provi
sions would last us for a day or two, I thought we might
as well dispense with a camp-fire ; but when we approached
a grove of cork-oaks in a hollow of the eastern slope, we
all agreed that a little fuel-forage M'ould promote our com
fort as well as our appetites.
While we collected brambles and dry twigs, the old
Tuxpan dragged up a good-sized fallen tree, chopped it
into handy billets, helped me to pitch my tent, and then
retired with a strip of dried beef and a chunk of wheat
bread — por en-mascarse — to chew himself to sleep, as the
guide expressed it. To judge by his deep breathing, the
old chap was comfortably asleep half an hour after, though
his serape was not much heavier than a good-sized bed-
sheet. He was a native of the Jalisco highlands, and had
preserved his hardy habits through twenty years of town-
life. His younger comrade was rather a mozuelo — a city
lad — in manners and tendencies, an expert in opening

THE WESTERN SIERRAS.

123

preserve-cans and wide awake as to the merits of oiled
sardines and the superiority of catchup over the finest chile
Colorado. After helping himself to the best our mess-bag

THE TUXPANO.

afforded, he spread his couch with his feet to the fire, and
collected a large blanketful of Spanish moss for a pillow.
" According to what you told me about vipers and tree-
snakes," I observed, " you must have about a two-bushel
bagful of them in that pile."
" Ya no hay cuidado" (No danger of that now), said he :
" we are twelve miles above their head-quarter valley. Up
here you wouldn't find anything bigger than a cedlia

124 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
(blindworm) ; they can't make half a living in these
rocks." "How big will they grow in their head-quarters?"
" In the Val de Culebras ? Oh, there's no limit to their
fatness and length, sir. I saw a blacksnake there as long
as a lariat, and a vivora parda with a head like a good-
sized pug-dog's."
" What's the biggest snake you ever saw, Josey ?"
"I could hardly tell you, sir. When we crossed the
Sumasinta River, in Yucatan, they offered us the carcass of
a boa with a belly on him like an English shipmaster ; but
down in Honduras they have water-snakes that could
swallow such boas alive. They told me about a party of
turtle-hunters that came across a monster of that sort on
the Belize Bayou, — a river as broad as the Rio Lerma, —
but the snake crossed it as a blacksnake would a little
creek, and when its head reached the opposite bank the tail
end was still trailing through the canebrake on the shore
on which they stood."
I thought of Don Martinez's alligator phenomenon, and
it occurred to me afterward that the great historical serpent
which (as Pliny assures us) disputed the passage of the
army led by Regulus along the banks of the Bagrada
belonged probably to the same composite order.
The night was almost cloudless, and after the moon went
down the stars glittered with a brilliancy which is rarely
seen in our Northern lowlands. When I awoke, at about
four o'clock the next morning, I saw for the first time a
distinct zodiacal light in the northeast, its axis passing
through Cancer and Gemini, with the apex of the pyramid
nearly touching Alpha Leonis. The planet Mercury rose
soon after, and I could comprehend the morning-star wor
ship of the ancient Peruvians, but also the meaning of the

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 125
Regio septentrionalis. The seven chief triones of Arcturus
loomed through the mist of the northern horizon with a
ruddier and more remarkable light than the largest fixed
stars of a higher latitude, and were thus probably seen and
named by the shepherds of Southern Italy. In the higher
North, where they never reach the horizon, their arctic
position is much less obvious.
We took our breakfast at the next spring, and followed
our trail nearly due east into an ascending valley of the
Inua ridge. Our little terrier ranged the gullies and cop
pices with indefatigable energy, and flushed at least twenty
different coveys of prairie-chickens in the first two hours,
and started a flock of bighorn sheep, which bounded into
a ravine with an impetus that made the stones fly in all
directions. A little farther on the same ravine widened into
a broad valley, and we passed different cedar-groves with
an undergrowth of wild plum-trees alternating with fine
mountain-meadows. " This would make a good place for a settlement," said
I, as we crossed a meadow of stone-clover and buttercups
at the bank of a pebbly stream.
" It might," said Jos6 ; " there are Indian villages in
much poorer valleys ; but a settlement of white rancheros
would hardly have farming-land enough up here, and a
single man might find it rather lonesome. He wouldn't
hear any chickens crow but his own : the farmers around
the pueblo we left yesterday morning would be about his
next neighbors."
Men and dogs seemed, indeed, to be rare guests on these
heights, for while we ascended a little bluff at the head of
the valley a troop of berendos, or mountain-antelopes,
approached us from the left, crossed and recrossed the trail
hardly forty yards in front of us, and escorted us across the

126 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
bluff, trotting at our side and eying us with evident sur
prise. When the terrier charged them the next buck leaped
aside with a loud bleat, and the troop seemed on the point
of stampeding; but as soon as we recalled the dog they
returned and followed us at a trot, mincing their steps when
they had reduced the distance to thirty or forty yards, as
if fearful of incurring our displeasure by any nearer ap
proach. During the next half-hour I could have killed
any two of them before the rest could get out of range, but
we preferred their merry company to their meat, which, as
Jose — perhaps in the interest of his heavy-loaded country
man — assured me, was tough and rank, and " peor por el
chingatdl" — worse now on account of the rutting season.
In the course of the same afternoon we saw different bands
of bighorn sheep, which gave us a wider berth ; but their
notions of danger were evidently founded upon bow-and-
arrow data, for they permitted us to approach within easy
rifle-shot range. I also noticed that they let a gray wolf
( Canis nubilus) get within ten yards of their outpost before
they scampered away. I suspect that the shyness of our
European and North American game is something quite
abnormal and unnatural. The aspect of an armed Hoosier
must inspire an Indiana deer with a terror of which no
emotion of the human breast would give us any adequate
idea, unless we should stumble upon a country whose tigers
could leap upon us from a distance of five or six hundred
yards. Our road led along the base of a steep ridge of argilla
ceous limestone, which obstructed the view to the north and
northwest, but the scenery became more interesting when
we at last reached the valley of the Rio Raton and ascended
it into the defile of Santander, the gate of Eastern Jalisco,
and the main pass of the Sierra de Inua. The mountain-

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 127
walls on both sides become steeper and higher as the defile
narrows, and at the eastern gate, where they rise to a height
of four thousand feet above the trail, the tiny stream almost
fills the bed of the canon, and a full-grown man might touch
its rocky banks on both sides at the same time. Where they
recede, they open abruptly upon a broad and level lawn,
and a resolute defender of such a Thermopylae could only
be crushed by unimaginable odds, and would be safe against
all flank attacks, for the eastern front of the sierra for
many miles to the left and right is an almost perpendicular
precipice. Our trail now turned to the left, winding along the de
clivity of a mountain-spur, but with a deep valley at our
right, which would have attracted my attention by its cha
otic cliffs and exuberant vegetation if a sudden turn of the
road had not opened a vista to the north and revealed the
grandest scenery of Western Mexico, — the Coast Range of
Sinaloa, with the giant-peak of Culiacan.*
It is an old French saying that every high mountain is
a sermon which directs the human soul to heaven ; and
Lamartine remarks that a peak adds point to the sermon.
He is right: at least I think that a nil-admirari philoso
pher who could view this mountain without surprise might
consider himself emotion-proof. The extinct volcano of
Culiacan rises thirteen thousand feet above the level of the
Pacific and about seventy-five hundred above the ridge of
the Coast Range from a wild mass of pine and cedar crags,
while the upper peak is covered with snow, streaked farther
down with jet-black basaltic ribs. But it is not so much
* Pronounced Cool-ya-can' ', an Indian word signifying flint-head
or arrow-peak. The volcano of Culiacan is fifty miles north of Maz-
atlan, nearly opposite the southern extremity of the Californian pen
insula.

128

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

the height or color of the volcano which distinguishes it
from all neighboring summits as ite form, which makes it,
indeed, incomparably grander than almost any other moun-

PEAK OE CULIACAN.
tain of that altitude. As
viewed from the Sierra de
Inua, the cone rises in a
jagged slope, whose steepness for the
first three thousand feet does not exceed that of the Great
Pyramid, but the peak tapers towards the top, so that the
sharp outlines of the upper four thousand feet form an angle
of hardly thirty-five degrees, and, being flanked by no other
summits of more than half its height, the great mountain

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 129
towers up against the sky like the spire of a stupendous
Gothic cathedral.
The Peak of Teneriffe is a blunt knob by comparison,
though its perfect isolation makes it almost equally con
spicuous, and the sharp pinnacle of the Matterhorn is hidden
in a cluster of rival heights. So far as I know, the shape
of the Pic de Culiacan can only be compared to one other
mountain on earth, a much smaller peak, — the Col du Midi
in the Southern Cevennes, which, as seen from the head
waters of the Aveyron, looks, indeed, more like a pointed
turret than a natural mountain.
Towards the northwest the Coast Range subsides rapidly,
and presente an even or slightly undulating outline, but ite
eastern continuation, the Sierra de San Juan, abounds in
inaccessible peaks and alpine ranges, capped with precipi
tous white cliffs. Yet these heights are inhabited, and, on
the whole, better cultivated than any portion of the fertile
terrace-lands. The guide called my attention to a column of milk-white
smoke that seemed to rise from the edge of a lofty ridge
bordering the valley of the Rio Raton in the northeast.
" That's a limekiln in the wigwam of Villapaterna," said
he: "the Jaliscanos will soon have a regular village up
there." " Have they permanent wigwams on top of a sierra of
that height?"
" Yes ; it's their reservation, where they have pastures
and orchards of their own, and do not permit any white
man to settle among them unless he promises not to tax
them for roads and diezmos" (church-tithes).
" They do not want any roads, then ?"
" They don't need them, sir. Look at Benito here" (the
carrier) : " he could tote that load of his up the steepest

130 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
slope in the sierra, and he's nothing but an old granny
compared with some of his countrymen. There are only
three or four thousand of them, and they keep all Chris
tendom at bay."
The savage Jaliscanos have accomplished what the gentle
Waldenses attempted in vain, — made the rocks of their
mountain-home the bulwarks of personal and religious
freedom ; for the Mexican government — which permits the
Comanches and Apaches to defy its authority on the plains
of Sonora — has never even tried to meet the warlike moun
taineers in their own fastnesses, and, in spite of their reck
less bigotry, the Mexican priests have been daunted by a
stronger fanaticism than their own. The Jalisco Indians,
like the Pintos in Yucatan and the Cocharcos in Peru,
adhere to the religion of their fathers, are privileged from
civil and military duties and pay no direct taxes, and, so
far, have contrived to preserve an armed peace with their
neighbors without permitting them any interference in their
municipal affairs. Their homes, in the literal sense, are
their castles, for the tribe, which once was scattered over
a territory of fourteen thousand square miles, has been
isolated by its chiefs on the most inaccessible plateaux of
the highest mountain-range, though there are valleys at
their feet where they could raise abundant crops with one-
fourth of the labor which now only wins them a bare living.
They are hated and envied by their priest-ridden neighbors,
but men deserve their liberty who are ready to purchase it
at such a price.
We met two of their bag-carriers that evening, — stout,
broad-shouldered men, with fists and knee-bones that might
have excited the jealousy of a Gaelic moss-trooper. Their
only piece of apparel was a short jacket or waistcoat, with
a pair of shoulder-pads to support the cross-straps of their

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 131
burdens, two capacious leather bags full of a whitish sub
stance which I supposed to be flour or salt. They came
up with swift, steady strides, answered my greeting with a
grunt and their countryman's jest with a laconic repartee,
and pursued their road at a pace that would have braved
the field at an international walking-match.
" These fellows earn their bread, and no mistake," said
I, " but I should starve for a good while before I would
shoulder a flour-bag of that size."
" You wouldn't carry it very far then," laughed Jos<3 :
"it's saltpetre from the Mayapan rock-caves, — about twelve
dollars' worth in each bag."
" They sell it, I suppose ?"
" Yes, or exchange it for shot and trinkets or a new
rifle once in a while : that's about all they need, — every
thing else they make or raise themselves."
" Gunpowder too ?"
" Certainly : they have all the ingredients for it. They
keep cows and bees too, and raise big crops of yams and
brown beans. They have no corn, but they make bread
from polenta (chestnut-flour). They need no shoes and
hardly any clothing."
" What do they drink ?"
" Nothing at all : I mean, nothing that could do them
any good. They are terribly down on wine and aguard
iente, because they believe the Spaniards invented them to
poison them and get the better of them in that way. If
they catch one of their young bucks drunk, they tie him
to a tree and let him stand in the hot sun for a day or two
to give him a relish for fresh water."
" They keep no horses, it seems ?"
" No, they do their own horse-work. Those two fellows
that passed us a while ago are going down to Carcamos,

132 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
forty miles from here, and must have crossed the Inua
range since morning. It will be the roughest piece of our
trip, about fifteen miles steadily up hill."
We were now approaching a part of our journey much
dreaded by the Indians of the Tierra Caliente, on account
of the icy winds that sweep over the backbone of the sierra
the year round. Wishing to have our carrier fresh for the
passage of the mal pays, we made a short day's march,
encamping at the mouth of a deep canon that winds up
through the mountains to the plateau of Las Charcas.
We kept up a good fire, and started before daybreak the
next morning, but found the ascent more arduous than I
had anticipated. We had to climb over boulders and
fallen trees, and the canon is a veritable wind-trap, a gate
of the north wind, that drives and whirls through the
winding gorge with the force of a furnace-blast ; but the
worst was over when we reached the plateau about eleven
A.M. The Inua range forms the dividing ridge between
the Rio Raton and the happy mountain-valleys of Eastern
Jalisco watered by the streams of the Sierra Madre and
the northern tributaries of Lake Chapala.
We were now more than four thousand feet above our
last camp, and at least ten thousand above the sea, which
was hidden by the Coast Range, and farther north by a
yellowish haze, probably the dust-clouds of the Vega.
The vegetation of these heights is almost arctic, — broom-
furze, lichens, and rock-berries ( Vaccinium boreale). In
sheltered places I saw hedges of dwarf rose-bay, and here
and there a few larger birch-trees. The birch, rather than
the pine, is the polar tree par excellence, for the plurality
of our Northern Coniferse grow in the tropics as well, or
better, while north of the last dwarf-fir regions the hills of
Siberia are still covered with birch forests.

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 133
" There used to be a tavern up here when the Spaniards
had a garrison at Carcamos," said my guide. " Do you
see that trail up there ? That leads to the Altar, as they
call it, a promontory where you can see the hornitos (mud-
volcanoes) of Acubaya."
" Is it much out of our way, that promontory ?"
" Not more than half a league."
" All right : tell the Tuxpan to take it easy if he is tired,
and let's have a look at the hornitos."
The " Altar" is a projecting cliff on the northern de
clivity of the sierra, and affords a bird's-eye view of a little
tarn in the valley below. Close to the foot of the precipice,
and apparently at the head of the lake, are the hornitos,
five or six intermittent geysers whose outlets were hardly
visible from our standpoint. But every now and then one
of them emitted a puff of white steam which I should have
mistaken for I don't know what if I had seen it unex
pectedly. The declivity being almost perpendicular, we
could not perceive the vertical expansion of the cloudlets,
which dissolved almost as soon as they appeared, but for a
moment looked like little white balls which suddenly flat
tened out to the size of a big round table, and vanished
abruptly before the end of the next second.
We made up for lost time when our trail turned into a
grassy valley with an easy down-grade, and reached a good
wagon-road before dark at the bank of the Rio Parral,
and, as Jos6 believed, about fifteen miles from the Hacienda
del Monte.
Florida derives its name from Pascua Florida (Palm
Sunday), but the true flower-land of our continent is the
terrace-region between the Val de Jalisco and the high
lands of Western Zacatecas. The morning air was satu
rated with the perfume of wild jessamine, and the creeks

134 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
below our camp were almost hidden by a rank growth of
Veronica pungens, with flowers like those of a light-blue
variety of forget-me-not, while the slopes on both sides of
our road were covered with larkspur, foxgloves, white
euphorbia, rhododendrons, and orange-colored asclepias.
The blue elder (Sambucus pubescens) was still in bloom,
and, with an undergrowth of currants and wild licorice,
formed dense hedges along the creek. Game seemed to
abound in these thickets : we heard the whistle of plovers
and different varieties of partridges, and met a man at the
creek who had just gutted and cleaned a large bundle of
gazapos, or mule-ear rabbits.
" Que provecho ?" (What luck ?), said he. " Oh"—
seeing the carrier — "you are travelling, it seems, de por
abajo" (from down below), — " from the coast, I suppose ?"
"Yes, we left San Bias last Thursday," I replied.
" You are in luck this morning, to judge by that string of
gazapos." "Sin mejora" (Hobson's choice), said he. "My dog
started a fox this morning, and that's the last I saw of
him. These brakes are full of turkeys and peccaris, and
our Indians reported bear-tracks last week. Let's cross
this creek : there is a better road on the other side."
"That's Padre Felipe, the governor's major-domo,"
whispered Jose : " you have a good chance to deliver that
letter now."
" This valley of yours is the prettiest in the State," I
observed, — "just the place for a country-seat. Do you
know Governor Cardenas, who owns a hacienda somewhere
in this neighborhood?"
" I saw him half an hour ago : he's my boss, sir. Why?"
" Would you please to hand him this letter? It would
save me the necessity of troubling him at the hacienda."

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 135
" He will blow me up for not bringing you along. Are
you going east?"
" Yes, to the Sierra Madre by way of the Indian vil
lages." " To Cafiadas ?"
" That's where we shall stop to-night."
"Well, come this way, then: I'll put you on the direct
road, sir. Let's take a short cut through this bottom."
We followed a trail running nearly parallel with the
creek through a rank jungle of brambles and wild licorice,
interspersed with copses of alder and white mulberry trees.
I was making some inquiries about the security of the sierra
roads, when suddenly my Indian caught me by the arm
and pointed in the direction of a rambla or dry ravine at
our right-hand side. In the gravel-bed of the rambla, at a
distance of some two hundred yards, I saw an animal about
the size of a large hog engaged in rooting the ground below
a little copse of alder-bushes. The hunter, too, following
the direction of my gaze, had stopped and cocked his gun.
" That's a maranon boar," he whispered, " but too con
founded far for my shot-gun. One of your barrels is rifled,
I see : do you think it would reach there ?"
" I can try. Stand still, Josey," said I ; and, resting the
rifle on his shoulder, I covered the broadside of the mara
non and pulled the trigger. At the report the boar jumped
convulsively into the rambla, snapped at his haunches,
and glared around in a bewildered way.
Before I could give him the second barrel he made a
dash at the alder-bushes and plunged into the jungle to the
left, as if trying to reach the creek-bed a little ahead of us.
We heard his rush through the brambles, but almost at the
same moment a piercing scream and quickly-repeated cries
for help. As if seized with the same idea, we all ran

136 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
toward the creek at the top of our speed, and had hardly
emerged from the thicket when an Indian boy leaped into
the creek, followed two seconds after by the wounded boar,
who, happily, stumbled at the edge of the bank, and fell,
rather than jumped, into the gravel below. Before he re
covered his legs our guns went off like a single shot, and
the maranon sank back and rolled into the creek. The boy,
who had thrown himself headlong into the canebrake, now
recrossed the water and met us at the foot of the gravel-
bank, still sobbing and trembling with excitement. He
had been picking fox-grapes in the jungle when he heard
the first shot, and, looking up, saw the boar charging
through the bushes directly toward him, and, throwing his
basket down, turned and ran for his life. He stumbled
twice, and came within an ace of sharing the fate of Adonis
before he reached the creek, and by a lucky instinct leaped,
rather than climbed, down the steep bank.
" Do you think you could remember this place ?" asked
the major-domo, reloading his gun with great complacency.
" Yes, sir," still snivelling.
" Well, get your basket, then, and go home and tell your
father to hitch up one of the black mules and drag the
maranon home. You show him the way and I'll make it
all right with you to-night."
We resumed our path, and after an hour of devious
marching and chatting came upon a well-beaten country
road that led in the direction of the northern mountains.
" Well, sir, take care of yourself," said the major-domo.
" If I could get a day's furlough, I should like to pilot you
through to the sierra ; but you can't miss the way now as
far as Cafiadas, and it seems you have a good guide of your
own. Buen viaje ! Be sure now and send me a bottle of
wedding-whiskey, Don Jose."

THE WESTERN SIERRAS.

137

" All right, padrecito," laughed the guide, " but don't
forget that I want you to baptize my first child."

\SKSBSm, t^^s?1 I

" It seems you know that man, Josey ?" I asked when
we continued our way.
" Yes, he is the governor's overseer, — the funniest rake
you could find on this side the Rio Grande."
" What makes you call him padre ? Is he a priest ?"
"He's a runaway monk, sir, and that's the reason the
governor engaged him : it tickles him all over to have a
fighting and drinking padre on his place."

138 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" Doesn't that set the rest of the clergy against the gov
ernor ?"
"Yes, but what does he care? He owns six square
leagues of farming-land in this valley, and the priests
would break each other's necks to please him."
We had just deposited our traps under an old hackberry-
tree to take a little rest and a bit of dinner, when two
horses trotted around the corner of the hill, and we thought
we recognized our friend the major-domo on a pony, leading
a saddle-horse. " Yes, that's he," said Jos6 : " maybe he is going to ac
company us to the sierra."
" Never mind those cakes now," said he, reining up his
pony at our tree. " I knew the governor would read me
the lesson of the day for leaving you behind. He sees by
that letter that you are going to visit the Indian temples
near Mayapan. You are on the wrong road, then : the
ruins are only twelve miles from here, but more than twenty
from Cafiadas, so you might as well make the hacienda
your head-quarters. You had better take this horse if you
think that your men can find the way alone : the governor
is waiting for you at the bridge, not far from where I left
you." A lank and lazy-looking old gent was reclining on a
stone bench near the bridge, but rose at our approach and
greeted me with an off-hand military salute.
" I am very sorry, sir," I began, " that I was so unlucky
as to cause you all this trouble."
" No, you are lucky enough," said he, — " doubly lucky,
sir, that we have a priest here to absolve you, and that he
caught you so quick, for you may be very sure that I would
have fetched you back from the other side of the sierra.
No, sir, that would never do, — a travelling foreigner recom-

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 139
mended by my best friend in America, and going to pass
my place to sleep in a thundering hole of a Greaser wig
wam ! Besides, 'tis Sunday to-morrow, when a gentleman
mustn't endanger his Christian soul by any kind of labor,
such works of charity and necessity as cock-fighting and
gambling excepted."
The sefior seemed, indeed, to be as independent in his
habits as in his opinions. He smoked common tobacco in
what looked very much like a Kentucky corn-cob pipe, and
was the first Mexican I met who had sense enough to dis
card the cumbrous sombrero in the cool air of the high
land districts. He wore a sort of forage-cap.
I have often found that the scepticism of Northern Prot
estants has a deistic bias, while that of the Roman Catholics
tends toward pyrrhonism and cynicism, and I suspect that
the present century has been rather prolific of French and
Spanish apostates from the Thaumaturgic Church, who
would feel perfectly at home in the haunts of Diagoras and
Petronius Arbiter. Ex-Governor Cardenas, too, was a
couple of ages either behind or ahead of the speculative
standpoint of his countrymen, and astounded me by the free
dom of his remarks, though I had reasons to surmise that
Mr. Mackenzie's letter had indicated my dogmatic status.
The Hacienda del Monte had been built for a Spanish
fort, and the orthodox inhabitants of the scattered village
at the foot of the mountain might have subjective reasons
for postponing a crusade against a heretic who could answer
their argume'nte with a cross-fire from two howitzers at
either corner of his parapet; but the ordnance, though
apparently in good working order, was kept as a relic
rather than as an ultima ratio. The Jalisco pagans, who
should have valued the sceptic as a natural ally, avoided
him for political reasons, but his tenants worshipped him

140

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

HR

ML

^^^^gii

HACIENDA DEL MONTE.

as a liberal and indulgent master, and had attested their
confidence by electing him their corregidor, or justice of the
peace, and matters in general seemed to be conducted on
the live-and-let-live principle. From my window, which
overlooked the old parade-ground, I could see the prepara
tions for a gran function de toros (a solemn bull-fight) which
was to come off on the festival of Santa Maria de Guade
loupe in a week or two ; and the sefior's retainers all looked
healthier and more cheerful than the half-starved serfs of
the average hacienda, for he refused to take advantage of
the peonage law,* and paid his domestics and day-laborers

*The old Spanish and modern Mexican law, which authorizes a
creditor to enslave an insolvent debtor.

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 141
at the uniform rate of two reals a day. The major-domo
being a disciple of St. Dominic, and very apt to win at
cards, received no direct compensation, but was instructed
to apply for funds whenever his patron saint should fail to
anticipate his wants.
The hall was crowded with country-people, it being the
sefior's justicing day ; but he promised to join us before
supper, and in the mean time recommended me to the
spiritual guardianship of Father Felipe. After mounting
the watch-tower and admiring the panorama and the gover
nor's armory, we descended into the casemates, and by an
exterior stairway into the court-yard. Behind the bastion
there was a large water-tank, fed by a primitive aqueduct,
and supplying in its turn a fountain at the opposite end of
the parade-ground. The basin of the fountain had been
constructed from the foundation-walls of the old guard
house, and a rock-built cell between the guard-house and
the parapet was now occupied by a prisoner for life, a fat
grizzly bear, who seemed to expect his dinner when we
approached his den, for he turned round and round, licking
his jaws in an evident state of self-gratulation. He had
been caught very young, and during his minority had been
taught to posture on his hind legs, to play 'possum, and
various other tricks. He used to volunteer performances,
the major-domo said, but lately required an external stim
ulus. Whenever he omitted any essential part of the pre
scribed evolutions, or gave other signs of being in the sulks,
they softened, his heart by turning the squirt of the foun
tain upon him. He looked thoughtful, but by no means
very ferocious.
" No," said the padre, " chaining seems to spoil their
pluck. Do you see that little fellow there?" pointing to
an Indian lad who was filling a pail at the fountain. " The

142 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
grizzly broke out a year ago, and got through the sally-port
before we knew it, but that boy overtook him and kept
him at bay with a common cudgel till our montador" (horse-
breaker) " lassoed him and dragged him home like a calf."
"That little chap looks as if he would make a good
montador himself some day."
" He's the most impudent puppy I ever saw ; but we
can't get rid of him, he's the governor's pet."
" An orphan, I suppose ?"
" Worse than that. He was whelped in one of the
Jaliseano wigwams, and came down here every other week
or so with a gang of hucksters or wood-choppers ; but one
Easter Sunday they happened to come in with a load of
huckleberries, when we had a dance and music in the house,
and his comrades stayed all day to retail their berries,
and made something like five dollars before night. But in
the evening this boy got beastly drunk, and the rest of
them went away and left him asleep in the straw-shed, and
our foolish cook kept him full of brandy for three or four
days. We wanted to send him back that week, but — what
do you think ? — before we could start him off his mother
came in howling and crying, and asked the governor, for
all the gods' sakes, to keep her boy and not send him home,
because his father had loaded a musketoon and sworn to
shoot him at sight, and the chiefs confirmed him in his
purpose. That was three years ago."
" And you have had to keep him ever since ?"
"No 'had to' about it," grunted the padre; "but the
governor would not let him go. He's very sensible in
some ways, our boss is, but he has a queer penchant for
saddling himself with useless retainers. Of which pen
chant I myself am perhaps the most striking illustration,"
he added, seeing me smile. " Well, it takes all kinds of

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 143
pete to complete a menagerie. I could mention another
instance of his mania. We have a bull in that grass-garden
back there who has been smashing fences and frightening
our neighbors out of their wits for the last ten months, but
our boss refuses to shoot him. The brute was ruled out of
the arena for killing three bull-fighters in succession, — two
at Mazatlan and one at Carcamos, — so they sold him to a
butcher, but the governor redeemed him, and keeps him
for a scarecrow to frighten the ladies."
" He is a bachelor, it seems ?"
" No, but he is a widower, and he wants to die as a f reed-
man, he says."
" You ought to convert him from that purpose."
" Well, you may try it, but at your own peril : it is the
one thing that never fails to bring him on his hind legs."
" I should like to take a look at those ruins to-morrow,"
said I : "do you think he will seriously object to a Sunday
trip?" " No, no, not if your time is limited ; but I'm afraid
that he couldn't accompany you. You may have noticed
that he is almost lame : he got a shot through the knee-
joint during the French war, and his leg has got worse
again. But I could go if you want to take me along."
" Well, please to get me permission, then."
When we were seated at supper two visitors were an
nounced, — a horse-dealer and the Padre Timoteo, the village
priest. " Show them in here," said the hospitable sefior. The
trader excused himself after settling a little bill, but the
padre was persuaded to stay, and took a seat at the table
at the side of the ex-Dominican. Of the two padres, the
major-domo was decidedly the more respectable. He was
evidently trying to restrict the conversation to secular topics,

144 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
but his neighbor encouraged the governor's sallies by burst
ing every now and then into a fit of uncontrollable laughter,
or modified his repartees in a way that seemed to invite a
bolder attack.
" Never mind, you will change your opinions before you
cross the big ferry," said he, with his mouth full of pork-
pie : " you would have sent for a priest mighty quick if
the French had captured you that time, just as your father
did when the Spaniards boxed him up in Vera Cruz."
" You needn't keep throwing my father in my teeth,"
said the governor. " My father admitted that he believed
in a future existence, because he could not get a fair show
in this world, but you may be very sure that he did not
join any church. He did not part with his senses alto
gether." " Valgame Dios!" cried the padre, "que hombre tan ara-
strado .'" (God help me ! what an eccentric fellow this is !)
"Santa Maria Purissima /" and he laughed till the shaking
of his paunch threatened him with suffocation.
" Protestantism is the established religion in the States,
isn't it ?" asked the sefior.
" We have no established dogmas, sir, except universal
toleration and a Sunday law or two."
" Oh yes, I forgot : pantheonic and pandemonic liberty
and equality ; and that's the soundest plan. Let men and
gods stand and fall by their own merits."
" So you would prefer our system ?"
" Yes, as a man I would ; but, being a superhuman gov
ernor, I prefer an idolatrous country like our own. But
your institutions have always interested me more than those
of any other nation, because they alone afford an oppor
tunity of testing many curious theories by a practical ex
periment. Give every one a fair start : that's the way to

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 145
find out if Africans can compete with Caucasians and
women with men."
"Do you approve the woman's-rights movement?" I
asked, with a glance at Father Felipe.
" I can at least explain it," said the heretic. " Since the
world has got so full of effeminate men, he-coquettes, man-
milliners, and perfumed dandies, it is no wonder that the
girls think themselves able to beat us at our own game, and
want to profit by that ability. In a manlier age, like the
fourteenth century, when our forefathers hammered the
Saracens in the battle of Velez Malaga, and made the
sparks fly from their iron helmets como los giro el viento"
(as if the wind whirled them), " I suspect that their ladies
were not so very anxious to try their hands at masculine
trades." The major-domo waked me at five o'clock the next morn
ing, and a little after sunrise we mounted a pair of glossy
mules at the lower sally-port.
" You must take the consequences of your impiety,"
laughed the sefior when he limped to the gate to wish me
a good-morning. " I told Father Felipe that I wash my
hands of this business, but he assures me that I can rely
on his judgment in matters of casuistry. Well, I wish
you a happy trip," said he, "and I think you will be
pleased with the scenery. There is a famous view from
the ruins of Mayapan, and the Val de San Juan is said to
be the most magnificent in the State, though I do not doubt
that you have seen finer valleys in France and Italy."
" France has no sierras," I replied, " and Italy no forests.
No, sir : Mexico is the most beautiful country of the present
world, and it would be the happiest, too, if you would just
content yourselves with a reasonable number of revolutions,
— say one in four years or so."

146

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

" Yes," said the senor, " they
are a grievous nuisance, but" —
with a sort of shudder — " I must
confess that they are still the
lesser evil, though I am myself
of Spanish descent. Even ab
solute anarchy would be more
endurable than the yoke of a so-
called man* who embroidered a
petticoat for the Virgin Mary."
Before the Jaliscanos retired to their present strongholds
in the upper sierra they had a large village near the hamlet
of Mayapan, where their sachems resided and where their
priests assembled the nation after a successful war and on
other solemn occasions. Here also are the ruins of the

* Charles IV. of Spain, who employed his leisure in embroidering
gowns and chemises for an image of the Holy Virgin in the chapel
of San Udefonso.

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 147
great temple of Catascotl, the fire-god, the Pluto of the
Toltec pantheon, whose palaces are the volcanoes, and who
has his headquarters in the subterranean halls of the Sierra
Madre, where he dwells with the spirits of the Toltec war
rior-kings, and where his voice can be heard during an
earthquake. We reached the site of this temple after a leisurely ride
of five or six hours ; and I think that in extent, as well as
in the elaboration of the bas-reliefs and sculptured terraces,
its ruins surpass those of any single edifice in Yucatan or
Central America. It stands on the western brink of a
plateau that commands a magnificent view of the Tierra
Caliente, a portion of the Bay of Mazatlan, and the Coast
Range, with the two peaks of Culiacan and Penasco ; and
the broad platform of the upper terrace must have been an
exquisite place for a national assembly of mountaineers.
There seems to have been a vault under the terrace, for the
platform is full of crevices and holes that form regular
man-traps, so that the interior of the temple is generally
approached from the north, through a breach which the
guides or stone-robbers have opened through a rubbish-
mound of sand and broken columns. So far as I could
judge by the vestiges of partition-walls, the enclosure was
divided into three halls, — two smaller ones at the western
entrance and a larger one at the east end, where a recess is
blocked up with the fragments of a massive rostrum or
altar-platform. The friezes of a cluster of pilasters on
either side are ornamented with bas-reliefs and stuccoes
which I might describe as sculptured mosaic, the figures
being composed of close-fitting stones fastened with a vit
reous cement, which the crumbling of the main wall has
dislodged here and there. This platform, as well as the
niches in the south wall, were formerly full of statues, but

148 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
they have all been removed, and only torsos and broken
pedestals can still be found in the rubbish-heaps.
The smaller idols were carried off by clerical and anti
quarian vandals, and some of the larger ones may yet be
seen in the next lowland villages, stuck up in the flower-
gardens like termini or doing duty as easy-chairs and
hitching-poste. The masonry of the side-walls is a heap
of debris, and the facade is sadly demolished, but the south
wall is better preserved, the outside cornice being sculp
tured in its entire extent, while the lower part is covered
with lapidary inscriptions whose hieroglyphics, reduced to
the size of common print, would fill about two of these
pages. My cicerone described a rather problematic eidolon which
was taken from this temple and is now in the possession
of the alcalde or mayor of Carcamos, — a well-chiselled figure
four feet long and about a foot in diameter, cut apparently
out of a single block of magnesian limestone or coarse
marble, of which the one half is yellow and the other
almost jet black, the dividing-line running vertically and
along the profile of the face. Tradition says that in a still
more ancient temple six miles farther northwest the Jalis
canos had a sort of national palladium, known as the
" Marvel of Atocha," a large statue or column which
looked grayish-white and semi-transparent in daytime, but
became luminous after dark, and was supposed to be a
miraculous symbol of the moon.
The dwelling-houses I saw were generally stone-built,
but low, and with mere loopholes for windows, yet they
have one larger building in the hamlet of Villapaterna,
where they store the saltpetre produce of the neighboring
limestone caves and manufacture their own gunpowder,
while the Christian proprietors of private powder-factories

THE WESTERN SIERRAS. 149
are hounded by revenue officers like the nocturnal whiskey
distillers of our Southern Alleghanies. They pay no tithes
and raise a good deal of tobacco, which also is a govern
ment monopoly in the lowlands.
These and other privileges make them rather obnoxious
to their Christian neighbors, whom they scandalize besides
by their passionate adherence to the religious rites and
mysteries of their forefathers. When the south wind melts
the snow of Tierra Fria and the chestnut forests are in
bloom, they celebrate a May festival (fiesta de Mayo), a
kind of thanksgiving demonstration inspired by the re
awakening of Nature from her winter trance, like the
Feast of Tabernacles and the Roman Lupercalia. Later
in the year, either in September or the beginning of October,
they assemble for a grand carousal of three or four days,
followed by athletic games, wrestling, running, and spear-
throwing. Every village has ite wrestling-ring, where the contests
of the young men divert the chiefs and wigwam belles in
the cool of the evening ; and this passion for manly exer
cises, as well as their resolute abstinence from the seductive
beverages of their enemies, distinguishes them favorably
from other tribes of the American race, and is probably the
secret of their success in maintaining their religious and
political independence. Though they still occupy the
larger part of the great Sierra de San Juan, they have lost
at least nine-tenths of their ancient territory, but they have
preserved their health and their freedom, and, in spite of
their present poverty, are probably the happiest inhabitants
of the Spanish American highlands.
Two miles north of Villapaterna, on a level plateau of
about a hundred square yards, is the tomb of a famous
chieftain who checked the advance of the Conquistadores
10

150 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
for more than a quarter of a century, and, from his many
miraculous escapes, was long supposed to be bullet-proof.
He is said to have made a charge into a fortified Spanish
camp in broad daylight in order to recover a golden image
of Catascotl ; and when the enemy captured his son he
abducted the wife of the governor of Sinaloa, to hold her
as a counter-hostage.
Near the tomb was a wrestling-ring, and an obelisk-
shaped monument which the fire-worshippers of Jalisco
erected in honor of their god when the large pyramid of
Carcamos was destroyed by the Spanish fanatics, about the
end of the sixteenth century. The monument is in ruins
now, and the best sculptured stones of the pedestal have
been employed in the construction of the Franciscan con
vent of Las Animas near San Cristoval. The temple on
the promontory, too, was thus repeatedly despoiled by the
inhabitants of San Renaldo ; but it may console the wor
shippers of Catascotl to remember that the sacrilege has
been avenged by many a church-destroying earthquake,,
and that the god will not lack a monument while the vol
cano of Culiacan lifts his snow-capped pyramid above the
clouds and superstitions of the lower World.

CHAPTER V.
THE SIERRA MADRE.
The gods that left the lower world
Still haunt the mountain solitudes. — Chamisso.
During my absence Sefior Cardenas had ascertained
that the mountains of Queretaro were infested with the
fugitive guerillas of Pedro Mendez, who had retreated to
his native State after his defeat in the north. For greater
security, therefore, as well as to make up for lost time, I
adopted the sefior's advice to take the stage-coach to Cuer-
navaca and Tehuacan, and reach the Sierra Madre by way
of Orizaba.
We passed through the historic valley of Anahuac, where
the fate of Mexico was four times decided, — by the troops
of Cortes, Iturbide, Scott, and Bazaine, — and on the fifth
day reached the little mountain-village of Acolcingo, in
the Sierra Madre, where we readjusted our packs and
resumed our work before daybreak the next morning.
From the head-waters of the Rio Blanco to the Peak of
Santander the slopes of the sierra are diversified with grassy
terraces, holm-oaks, groves of larch-trees, cliffs of fantastic
shapes, and incipient valleys dotted with patches of straw
berries and flowering rhododendrons ; and in August, when
the berries ripen, and the days are warm enough to make
the shade of the larch-groves agreeable, these heights would
afford play-grounds for all the school-children and tourists
151

152 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
between St. Petersburg and San Francisco. In the park
like middle region between the continuous forests of the
foot-hills and the upper limits of all arboreal vegetation,
the fauna resembles that of our Southern Alleghanies ;
black -tail deer and rabbits prefer the fine grass and the
aromatic mountain-herbs to the rank vegetation of the lower
valleys ; the ravines are frequented by a long-legged variety
of mountain-grouse (Tetrao tetrix) that rely on their pedal-
istic agility and decline to take wing at your approach ;
black and gray squirrels divide the larch-nuts with a little
bird of the cross-bill kind, and the rhododendron thickets
swarm with a white-and-red spangled butterfly, similar to
the Papilio phcebus of the Southern Alps. To judge by
their confidence, the peace of these free monteros is rarely
disturbed by visitors from the land of gunpowder and
hunting-dogs. A bright-colored woodpecker, flitting about
the rocks in pursuit of his entomological researches, re
peatedly prolonged his sessions till I could have taken him
with my outstretched hand, and when we passed through a
small holm-oak grove a gray squirrel jumped upon a fallen
log and sat right in front of us, chattering and switching
its tail as if it had a good mind to refuse us the right of
passage. A few hundred yards farther up, from the top of
an overhanging cliff where we rested a few minutes, Jos§
started a big boulder and sent it bounding toward the foot
hills, but a projecting rock deflected it to the right and into
the little holm-oak grove we had passed ten minutes ago.
Not the boulder, but a band of black-tail deer, emerged
from the trees and went through the juniper-bushes and
round the corner like a whirlwind. As the grove did not
contain more than thirty or forty trees, we must have passed
within a few steps of the troop, and if they did not see us,
they certainly must have heard us talk ; yet they did not

THE SIERRA MADRE.

153

MOUNT ORIZABA.

think it worth while to interrupt their matinee on our
account.

154 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
But the chief charm of such mountain-solitudes is their
primitive character, — their entirely unimproved condition,
as a Kansas farmer would say. No destruction of forests
and construction of fences proclaim here that the sceptre
of Nature has passed into other hands ; no deserts and ruins
remind you that the Juventus Mundi has departed with the
youth of the human race. Thanks to his blessed laziness,
God's vice-regent on earth has generally confined the abuse
of his power to the level lowlands ; and the immortals, who
wanted to keep their private paradise unprofaned, did there
fore very well to locate it in the summit-regions of Mount
Olympus. For those who can climb earth is as young as
ever. We had to make a considerable detour to the left to
reach the ridge that connects the volcano with the Sierra
Madre, for the western slope of the peak is dreadfully
steep, and we were unprovided with mountaineering-gear,
as the members of the Alpine Club call it, — ropes, claw-
shoes, and ice-axes. As we approached the ridge the rock-
chaos became intricate and obstructive, but the grade was
not very steep here, and at about nine a.m. we reached the
divide and beheld now, for the first time, the eastern slope of
the North American continent. The average height of the
Sierra Madre surpasses that of the Western Alps by more
than six thousand feet, and the greater elevation of the
snow-line makes the highlands far more accessible, but the
view from the summits of the Mexican Cordilleras owes
its peculiar grandeur to the wonderful transparency of the
air. Nowhere else on earth is the atmosphere at the same
time so humid and so free from consolidated clouds ; the
radiation of heat from the elevated table-lands seems to
transfigure all gaseous moisture into an aerial vapor that
reinforces the light it transmits and endows the eye with a

THE SIERRA MADRE. 155
strange telescopic power. That haze of the horizon which
limits the vistas from an Alpine height veiled the swamp-
coast of Yucatan, but in the north, the east, and the north
west the view was only bounded by the incurvation of the
globe, and the outlines of the peak of Culiacan, on the
coast of Sinaloa, appeared as sharp and distinct as those of
a jagged cliff at our feet. The gulf-coast, from Northern
Yucatan to the islands in the Bay of Tampico, is visible,
with all its harbors and white beaches ; the flag on the
citadel of San Juan d'Ulloa appears and disappears as the
sea-breeze moves it; the ruins of Fort Antigua, where
Cortes effected his first landing, can be plainly distinguished
from the surrounding tower-like cliffs ; and where water
and sky meet, in the northeast, the light-house on the
island of Bermejo glitters like a rising star. Farther to
the right the peak of Las Milpas stands on the horizon,
like an outpost of the sierra that crowns the plateau of
Eastern Yucatan, and which can be traced through a suc
cession of snowy crests to the highlands of Guatemala, in
the distant southwest. At your feet you see the terrace-
land of Vera Cruz, a vast chaos of gray rocks and sombre
pines, rising above the undulating foot-hills with their
tarns and pleasant groves ; farther down, the table-land,
intersected by deep ravines and dotted with settlements
here and there; and below that, the tierra caliente, with its
evergreen forests that stretch away to the north and south
west as far as the eye can reach, and border the land with
a frame of eternal summer. The numerous little mounds
that rise like light-green billows above an ocean of darker
foliage are groves of Adansonia, or monkey-fig trees, that
attain a height of two hundred feet and monopolize their
favorite soil by the vigor of their growth.
I looked around for a suitable camping-ground. The

156 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
ridge was dismally barren, but right below us, at the bottom
of an accessible ravine, I saw a cluster of small fir-trees,
some of them withered and apparently dry enough for
firewood. I showed them to my guide : " Look here, Josey !
wouldn't that make a good camping-place for the Indian,
where he could cook our dinner while we try the volcano?"
" Just the place," said Jose ; " and if you like we could
sleep here to-night : it seems to be sheltered all around."
" Tell him to go down, then, and make himself com
fortable. It would wear him put to drag his load to the
top, and it wouldn't do to take him along and leave the
blankets and things down here. Tell him we shall be back
by three or four o'clock."
After a short dialogue in the Tuxpan vernacular, the
Indian waved his hat, as if to emphasize his approval of
the programme, and we resumed our road toward the peak.
" I knew the old man would be glad to get a rest," said
Jose ; " but as for the blankets, it would have been per
fectly safe to leave them anywhere on the ridge. One vis
itor in two years is the average, I reckon, and they take
very different routes."
" Are there no hunters coming up here ? It would pay,
I should think."
" Well, yes ; but they find enough farther down. The
foot-hills are full of all kinds of game, except the dma-
rones" (big-horn sheep) : " they only come down in winter
nights, I am told, but it is too much trouble to follow them
up to the tierra fria."
" A man might live up here for years, then, and nobody
know anything about it."
" Certainly he might. I'll tell you, sefior, what hap
pened here four years ago. A company of operadores"
(exploring miners) "came up from San Patricio, and were

THE SIERRA MADRE.

157

grubbing aroimd on the Lookout Cliffs, as they call that
steep ridge over there, and when they crossed a ravine they

SLOPES OF THE SIERRA MADRE.

found the body of a man, lean and dried up like a piece
of leather, as if he had been lying there for a long time.
They reported the thing down in Val de Lucas, and the
alcalde got the ' stiff' down in the course of the week, but
it took them more than a month before they could identify
him. And who do you think it was? An outlaw that had
broken jail in Tehuacan when the French garrison left,
and had not been heard of for full six years. It was a
little before Christmas when he broke out, and they think

158 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
he tried to cross the sierra in the snow, and froze when he
slept in that ravine."
The backbone of the ridge got narrower as we approached
the peak, but toward ten a.m. we reached the volcano proper,
and then began the real ascent : we had to clamber up on
our hands and feet when we failed to find an oblique ravine
or a snow-field with a plastic crust. Where the snow com
mences the, last traces of vegetation disappear, and only on
the southeast side the rocks are clothed with a sort of red
dish moss, that helps to mitigate the dreary aspect of these
supra-mundane regions. I followed my guide in silence,
and took the lead now and then, for I noticed that Jose
trudged straight ahead with an apathetic disregard of com
ing obstacles, keeping his eyes on the ground as if he feared
an attack of the "mountain fever" — the mal de monk, —
that overcomes travellers at the brink of a steep precipice.
The last thousand steps of the ascent were up-hill work
in the steepest sense of the word, but a sharp north wind
and the spes finis sustained us, and ten minutes before noon
we reached the last barricade of jagged crags, helped each
other up, and stood upon the apex of the North American
continent. "0 Santissima! mis rodillas — my knees! my knees!"
laughed Jos6, throwing himself at haphazard upon the loose
rocks. " I should doubt that there were such a thing as
an all-merciful God if he had made this mountain any
higher! Santissima ! I could not go up another slope like
that if I knew it was leading derecho al cielo" (straight into
heaven). " Take care, amigo," said I, " or you might happen to
land in the other place : you are sliding right toward the
trap-door of it."
"No hay cuidado" (no danger), "sir," he laughed, lying

THE SIERRA MADRE.

159

down at full length in one of the ruts that diverge from
the crater : " the hole is stopped up. El diablo himself
could not get in if he tried to go home by that route."
After a closer inspection of the supposed crater, I arrived
at a similar conclusion. The rim of the summit still in
closes a circular cavity, about twenty yards across and five
or six feet deeper in the centre than at the circumference,
but the volcano of Orizaba had been extinct for immemorial
ages when the Conquistadores arrived, and has never since
shown any disposition to resume business. The walls of
the crater may have collapsed and obstructed the hole, or

CRATER OF ORIZABA.

the chief vent was somewhere in the deep gorges of the
northwestern slope, but the cavity at the summit shows
certainly neither a trace of volcanic ashes nor any aperture
that could be supposed to have been the chimney of a sub
terranean furnace. The hollow is filled with basaltic rocks,
decorated with icicles on the north side and grayish-white
streaks of snow in their horizontal crevices, and here and

160 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
there between the crags former explorers had left memen
toes of their visits, — broken bottles, a rusty pickaxe, shreds
of an old blanket, and a pile of charred sticks, — as if an
adventurous tourist had attempted to pass a night on the
summit, and had brought up the material of a camp-fire
from the sierra below.
The peak of Orizaba is perhaps the only mountain on
earth where, at an elevation of more than three miles above
the sea-level, the air can be breathed with impunity. The
lofty table-lands that surround its western and southern
base seem to send up a breathable atmosphere to a height
that would paralyze your lungs in Switzerland and South
America, while the tropical latitude has lifted the snow-line
to an elevation of more than fifteen thousand feet. Besides
a queer feeling about my knee-joints, nothing but the fact
that the noontide beams of a tropical sun were so utterly
devoid of warmth could remind me that I was standing
three thousand feet above the summit of Mont Blanc, and
at least twelve thousand above the "Tip-Top House" on
Mount Washington. My lungs were perfectly at ease, and
the dry cough that was provoked by every attempt at a
deep respiration might be ascribed to the north wind that
was sweeping over the summit in fitful blasts.
I clambered over to the south side, where the wind could
not strike me below the shoulders, fastened my hat with a
handkerchief, and looked around. The view from the
peak is a perfect panorama : nothing but an horizon as
sharp-drawn as the sky-line in mid-ocean bounds the land
almost all around. Almost, I say ; for in the west the only
North American rival of Orizaba, the volcano of Popoca-
tapetl, equally remarkable for the strangeness of its form
and of its name, rises like a huge white cloud above the
outline of the Sierra Madre, and slightly above that of the

THE SIERRA MADRE. 161
horizon. The rest is a map, rather than a picture, of Cen
tral America. The sublime glaciers of the Sierra de San
Juan appear like glittering dote on a background of dark-
green fir-woods, and behind the coast-range of Jalisco the
Pacific Ocean reveals ite islands and the smoke-trail of a
steamer, perhaps on her way to Australia. That little
mirror with an oval frame which reflects the rays of the
sun in the northwest is the Laguna del Cayman, in North
ern Durango, and that group of islands in the opposite
quarter of the sky belongs to Spain, — Las Islas Amarillas,
on the western coast of Cuba. Letting my eyes roam over
the valleys and table-lands of the continent, I could not
help wondering how greatly the area of the American wilds
still exceeds that of the cultivated districts. In comparison
with the Southern United Spates, Mexico can boast of a
pretty dense population, — nine million inhabitants to seven
hundred thousand square miles, — but a bird's-eye view of
the country shows that the yellow-green corn-fields and the
naked environs of the larger towns are only small islands
in a vast sea of virgin woods and savage mountains, and
only the trans-Cordilleras railroad, that extends a narrow
sparkling line from the coast to the centre of the continent,
impresses one with a sense of the power of that two-legged
insect whose aggregated dwellings — Vera Cruz, Puebla, and
the capital — appear like small whitish specks from these
heights. But from all their wanderings my eyes sooner or later
returned to the Gulf-coast. By an association of certain
geographical and historical ideas, I find a strange charm in
those rock-bound coasts and mountainous islands that give
this branch of the Atlantic a peculiar individuality. East
ern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and the entire
West Indian island-world bristle with mountains, and their

162 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
diversified coasts and those of the northern continent con
trast with each other as strangely as Southern Europe and
North Africa. In this happy alliance of land and ocean,
of waters navigable and coasts inhabitable to the very land-
and-water line, the West Indian archipelago is the only
parallel of the mare internum, the inland ocean, of the
classic nations ; the Gulf of Mexico is our Mediterranean
Sea ; and, remembering that the Old World saw ite golden
age when the westward progress of pagan civilization had
reached the shores of that wonderful midland gulf, I can
not help thinking that America will not celebrate her
happiest centuries till the Anglo-Saxon spirit shall have
reclaimed the countries that border this great mountain-lake
of the West.
I looked down, and was puzzled to account for the origin
of the long streaks of vapor that drifted along the cliffs at
our feet and away into the empty air, till I became aware
that they must be clouds, — clouds, too, perhaps, of that
fleecy, aerial kind which, viewed from the lowland, seem
hardly to belong to the sublunary world. They Avere the
only guests of these lofty heights. A couple of harpy
eagles circled around the rocks at the base of the peak, but
they had their eyries far below : they had no need to seek
refuge in the dreary rock-wastes that shelter the brood of
their persecuted European relatives.
" Look down here, Josey," said I : " the mountain throws
no shade, hardly, does it? The sun must be now exactly
overhead." " Yes, it must be full noon," he replied. " I wonder if
old Benito has got our dinner ready ?"
I took the hint, and sent a farewell look to the eastern
sky and the Gulf, whose silver plains I could not hope to
see again for many a year. " Yes, let us go," I said at last.

THE SIERRA MADRE. 163
" I begin to yearn for that long-haired blanket of mine :
it's getting rather chilly up here."
" There must be something wrong with our Indian," I
remarked, when we had got about half-way down : " that's
his cave below that cliff there, but I don't see any smoke.
I'm afraid the old sinner has swallowed our bacon raw and
thrown the crackers away."
" I can guess what's the matter," said Jos6. " The wind
has been getting pretty stiff, and he had only five or six
matches : I don't think he has been able to get a fire under
way." The Indian walked up to his countryman and opened his
hands in a deprecatory way when we reached his camping-
ground. " Just as I thought," said the guide : " he has been try
ing to light that wood with all the dry grass and pine-needles
he could find, but he used up his last match in vain. It's
too windy and the wood is too damp : it wouldn't be any
use to try again, he says."
" Hadn't we better go over to the south side of the moun
tain ? Or say, Josey : do you know any house or shelter
of some kind that we could reach before night ? — a cave or
a casucha ?" (a herder's cottage).
The Indian, listening eagerly, had understood the last
word, and the two natives looked at each other medita
tively. " Hold on," said Jose at last ; " there is a house down
here, now I come to think of it, but there is nobody living
there, — the old quartet" (storehouse) " of the Rio Blanco
silver-mine. But we can hardly reach there before night
if we want to cook our dinner first."
" That building you speak of — is it on our road to San
Rafael?"

164 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" Certainly, sir. The teamsters from Jalapa used to stop
there before the Perote pike-road was finished : it isn't
anything out of our way."
" What do you say, men ? Shall we let our dinner go
and try to reach that quartel before night, and have a big
supper there and a good night's rest?"
" If you ask me, I should be glad to start right away,"
said the guide.
" Shall we find any firewood there ?"
• " Any amount of it, sefior : it's right in the centre of the
pinal" (the coniferous belt).
"All right, then. Ask the Indian if he can rough it
out, or if he wants to take a cold snack before we go."
The Indian grinned.
" It seems he has attended to that already," said Jose :
" I'm afraid the old man has put himself outside of a ter
rific lunch."
"Hand me my gun, then. So here goes for the quartel
and a good supper."
After a somewhat risky scramble through the cliffs we
got back to the grassy slopes of the sierra, where we could
go down hill at a trot, so that we managed to reach the
forest-region of the eastern slope while the sun was yet
high up in the sky. Two lines, drawn at an elevation re
spectively of nine thousand and thirteen thousand feet,
would mark the vertical extent of the coniferous belt. In
full view of the palm-groves and sugar-cane fields of the
coast, one can breathe here the resinous odors of a Norway
pine-forest, and meet such flowers and shrubs of Old and
New England as hollyhocks, tiger-lilies, mayflowers, whor
tleberries, broom-corn, and hazel-nut thickets. The mead
ows, too, have a decidedly northern appearance : fine short
grass spotted with white clover and bluebells, and bordered

THE SIERRA MADRE.

165

by rushes and forget-me-nots along the mountain-creeks.
Following one of these creeks, we passed through sunny
glades and dark, rock-bound glens, till we entered a deep

IN THE PINAL.

mountain-gorge and heard below us the booming of the falls
of Val del Torre, where a large creek tumbles over a preci
pice of three hundred feet into the canon of the Rio Blanco.
Leaving the canon to the right, we followed the windings
of a rambla, or dry ravine, for half an hour, and emerged
upon a mountain-meadow that would have gladdened the
hearts of a New England picnic party, tempting us sorely
11

166 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
to abandon our quartel plan and go into camp under one
of the shady holm-oaks at the edge of the forest. What
chances here for summer hotels and sanitaria when the State
of Vera Cruz shall have added a star to a certain spangled
piece of cloth !
When we entered the woods again, a gallinasso (coq-des-
bois), a large bird of the grouse species, flew up into a pine
above my head, and, espying us, took wing again immedi
ately, but in flying through the open branches gave me a
chance for a snap shot. He dashed into the next tree and
came flopping to the ground, but at our approach fluttered
away and contrived to reach a laurel-thicket, where further
pursuit became hopeless. Our terrier had started a black-
tail doe when we crossed the divide, and we had never seen
him since. Another four hundred or five hundred feet
down hill and we reached a broader valley, at a point where
a mountain-creek had been bridged with a few rough-hewn
logs. " Gracias a Bios ! the worst of our trip is over," ex
claimed Jose. " Here's the old military road : only four
miles to the quartel now."
" Who owns that quartel, as you call it, or why has it
been abandoned ?"
" It used to be the storehouse of the Rio Blanco mine,
sefior ; but it doesn't belong to anybody in particular now :
it has been vacant for years."
" The company broke up, I suppose?"
" Why, no, sir. It wasn't a company : it used to be a
government mine. You heard of Captain Salinez, I sup
pose? Well, he  "
" Never heard of him. Whom do you say it belonged
to? The Mexican government?"
" No, the Spanish government, sir. Let me tell you how

THE SIERRA MADRE. 167
it happened that our people had to abandon it. A few
years before the revolution the Spaniards put an old Catalan
officer in charge of the mine : he used to be a sea-captain,
they say, and a very smart man, — the only one out of sixteen
captains who saved his ship when the English captured the
cargada" (the Spanish silver-fleet). "He got away that
time, and his ship was the only one that reached Spain out
of the largest cargada that ever sailed. So they made him
superintendent of this mine when he left the navy ; and
when the revolution broke out, this Captain Salinez was
again the only one who didn't get fooled like all the rest of
the mining-officers : he knew beforehand how it would end,
and saved his last year's bonanza in time. And what do
you think he did before he left ? He bribed all the plater os"
(ore-diggers) " who had ever entered the shaft to follow him
over to Spain, and the day before he cleared out he sent a
dozen of them up to the mine to play us a trick of the
meanest sort : when they came back he said the rebels were
now welcome to work the mine — if they could find it. He
had not been gone a week before the Liberals captured
Vera Cruz ; and a few days after the new government sent
officers of their own up here to take charge of the mine.
"They found the furnace and hammer-works in good
condition, but all the workmen were gone ; and when they
wanted a guide to take them up to the mine they had to hire
one of the rancheros that lived down in the Pefias valley.
He took them up the mountain as far as he could track the
ruts of the ore-cars, but then the trouble commenced : the
sierra was so rocky and full of caverns that the entrance of
the tunnel might have been anywhere and nowhere all over
a mountain-slope two miles high and forty miles long.
They had to go back, and tried to hunt up the engineer of
the mine or one of the plateros, but not a man could they

168 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
find ; and when they asked the farmers, they didn't know
anything about it, except that the mine was somewhere on
the southeast side of the Sierra de San Lucas. The officers
threatened and promised, but the old captain had been too
much for them : they didn't find a soul who could tell them
the one thing they wanted to know. Well, sir, ever since
that time there have been commissioners and private parties
up here nosing around and clambering all over the sierra,
but the professional operadores" (prospectors) " say that it
would be a great deal easier to find a new mine than this
old one. That rascal of a Salinez wasn't satisfied with
hiding the right place, but left no end of counterfeit senas"
(indications), " as the miners call them, that set the green
horns hunting for mares' nests in the ravines and limestone
caves." " So the right place has really never been found ?"
" That's what I was going to tell you, sir. About ten
years ago — a year before the French tackled us — an oper-
ador from Durango came up here and had a long conference
with a relation of his, — the old ranchero Hernandez, that
used to haul wood to the furnace in time of the Spanish
government. They went up to the sierra together and
crawled around in the rocks till the old man got tired, but
his relation didn't give it up, and went back alone the next
week with a good pile of tortillas and dried beef. He came
down again and got another supply, and so on, for a quarter
of a year, till his relation asked the neighbors not to sell
him anything after this : he was afraid the fellow would
ruin himself. But Mr. Operador bought his tortillas in
another settlement, and kept the game up till one evening
he came down after sunset, made his uncle get up and follow
him out into the woods, and told him there he had found
the old bonanza mine, — no doubt about it, he said,— told

THE SIERRA MADRE. 169
him how he had discovered the true indications, and the
way he had followed them up ; and at last asked his advice
how they should work the thing : should they keep it se
cret, or should they borrow some money and get a govern
ment license ? ' Make sure of the thing first,' said the
uncle. ' Did you go into the mine ?' — ' It's a tunnel,' said
the miner, ' and I went in for a quarter of a mile, saw the
timbers, the wheelbarrows, and all. What shall we do about
it?' They had a long talk, and on the following day the
ranchero applied to the alcalde of Redondo, a well-to-do
man, who lent him some money and wrote for a license.
As soon as they could get the necessary tools the uncle and
nephew and four of the uncle's neighbors went up into the
sierra to clear the obstructions away, so as to have every
thing ready by the time the license should come.
" But up near a place they call the Paso de Salsas" (Sas
safras Gap) " the young Hernandez got uneasy, made them
stop and went ahead alone, to make sure that they were on
the right road. The men waited and waited till near sun
down : some of them then went up into the rocks and hal
loed and looked for that Hernandez in all directions, but
they couldn't find him ; so they all went back home, won
dering if the man had gone crazy or what had become of
him. They didn't hear anything of him for a good while,
but four weeks after they found out that he had stopped at
a tavern in Cuernavacas, where he told the landlord about
his troubles, — that he had found the bonanza mine, and lost
it again after sending for a license and going to great ex
pense about it. He said he meant to come back and pay
the alcalde and his uncle what he owed them. He did so,
six months after, but with the money he had left he started
for the sierra once more, and swore that he had found the
mine once and would find it again. They say he sold all

170 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
his property in Durango and lived in the Sierra de San
Lucas like a hermit for the rest of his life ; and it is sure
that he has often been seen by the teamsters who crossed
the gap between Perote and Santander."
I began to fear that my guide too had lost his bearings,
but just before sunset we traversed a rocky cerro, or rib, of
the sierra, and sighted our destination in a forest of hemlock-
trees. From afar it resembled a ruined castle, but the stone
wall on the south side proved to belong to a separate struc
ture — the rebosso, or smelting-furnace — while the quartel
itself was built in the orthodox backwoods style, rough-
hewn logs laid crosswise and filled out with a mixture of
grass and adobe-mortar. The building was two-storied, and
after a glance at the ground-floor I ascended the staircase — a
massive ladder with a railing — and found myself in the bel
etage, where a plank floor and a rustic chimney offered de
cided advantages over the stable-like basement.
"Here we are, compafiero!" said Jose, slapping his
countryman on the back. " Put your freight in this corner
and make yourself at home."
Man is a domestic animal, and the feeling of having " a
roof overhead" has ite charm even for the natives of a rain
less clime. But the chilliness of the air reminded me that
we were still ten thousand feet above the tierra caliente.
" Hold on, amigos," said I : " let's have a fire before all
other things now, and supper and a ten hours' rest after.
You stay here, Josey, and attend to the cookery, and let me
and the daddy fetch you wood enough to last us all night."
With a short axe that constituted an item of the Tuxpan's
cargo, we sallied out into the pinal, chopped down a dozen
of the withered little pine-trees in the underbrush, and
broke a piece of timber out of the dilapidated furnace for
a home-log, as they say in North Carolina. Half an hour

THE SIERRA MADRE.

171

DESERTED MINING-WORKS ON THE RIO BLANCO.
after the smoke ascended from the chimney in a dense
mass. » Ay, que canta mi fuego tan claro .'" (" How strong our
fire is sino-ing!") Jose exclaimed again and again as he
crumbled his crackers into a panful of butter. " Now the old
man can't make us believe that pine wood wouldn't burn.
The Tuxpan fetched a tin bucket full of water from the
ravine, and we spread our blankets around the fire and sat,
or rather lay, down— more majorum— -to a supper of cracker-
pudding, cooked apples, tortillas with a little butter and
sugar, and water from the sierra creek. We had no simu
lants, but ease is a far more essential element of comfort
than luxury, and I felt that I would not willingly exchange

172 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
my free-and-easy repast in the chimney-corner of the old
quartel for a ceremonious supper at the table of Baron
Lafitte. " Halloo ! there he is !" cried Jose, apropos of nothing,
as I thought, and jumped up, and down-stairs into the base
ment. " Yes, it's him !" he shouted from below, the expla
nation being this time furnished by the joyful yelping of a
dog. " I thought I heard him whine around the house," said
he when he reappeared on the ladder, dog in arm. " Here
he is : look at him, as wet as a muskrat and full of burs. —
Come here, Sentinelita ! Poor doggy ! come to the fire."
There was no doubt of it : Sentinelita had come back, as
short-legged and long-named as ever.
" Give him all he wants to eat," said I. " I wonder how
the little fox tracked us across the Rio Blanco ? He must
have had a hard day's work of it."
" Mustn't he?" said Jose. " I bet you he followed that
doe clear across into the Sierra de Pascarro : when I heard
him give tongue the last time he was 'way on the other side
of the San Lucas Mountains."
" You were afraid you had lost him for good, I suppose ?"
" I wasn't sure about it," said Jos6, with an admiring look
at the gastronomic feats of his pet : " I know from experi
ence that he commonly manages to be back in time for
supper." " What is this ?" I asked, pointing to a little paper pack
age which Jose had shaken out of his pocket, with differ
ent buttons and bits of chewing-tobacco, in his search for
matches. "That?" with a furtive look at the Tuxpan. "Why,
that must be Benito's testimonial. It's very foolish : I
thought I had given it to you long ago."
" What is it, anyhow ?"

THE SIERRA MADRE. 173
" Oh, he has been working for Mr. Calgar, a ladrillero"
(brickyard-master), " and his boss wrote him a recommen
dation. Or I think Mrs. Calgar did the writing : she's
quite a scholar, they say."
" Let me see it."
The joint literary efforts of the ladrillero and his spouse
had achieved the following document :
"Una recomendacion por Benito Lucas trabaxo en mi
ladrilleria hace dos anios 5 meses otros 3 meses jornalero
por 4 Reales otros tres semanas y ahora 6 Meses dos semanas
a precio a dos medios por carga otras 2 semanas tres reales
Reales siempre diligente que le puedo encomendar Es esta
seguro siempre diligente puedo encomendar el dia veintidos
de noviembre 1875 manuel Calgar."
Literal translation : " A recommendation for Benedict
Lucas worked in my yard two years ago 5 months other 3
months day labor at 4 Reales other three weeks and last 6
Months two weeks job work two medios per carga other 2
weeks three reals Reals always industrious that I can recom
mend Is he is reliable I can recommend twenty-second day
of november 1875 m. C."
I walked across to the loophole in the opposite wall and
took a look at the sky. The calmness and clearness of the
air seemed to promise a cold night, so we put the home-log
on, spread our couches in a semicircle and prepared for fire-
worship. I had pulled out a volume of Calderon's Can-
ciones, and my companions were gossiping with that talent
for protracted confabulation which distinguishes the Indio
Manso from his taciturn Northern cousin, when we were
startled by a most uncanny sound — a long-drawn croak or
a shuddering gurgle, I might call it — that seemed to come
from the depths of the pifial, and made the terrier rise to
his feet with a suppressed growl.

174 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" What was that ?" was the question implied by our
puzzled looks at each other, till the Tuxpan offered a
remark in the language of his tribe.
"He says it's an onza de monte" (a female mountain-
panther), explained the guide : " that's the way they call for
their mates, he says."
We listened in silence for a couple of minutes, but heard
nothing but the low babbling of the mountain-brook.
" Virgen purissima !" whispered Jose, making the sign of
the cross : " if that didn't put me in mind of the Llorona!
We are lucky if it's nothing worse than what the Indian
thinks it was !"
The Llorona — a noun feminine from llorar, " to weep, to
mourn" — is an indigenous bugbear of the Mexican Cor
dilleras, a nocturnal lamia that haunts the rock- wastes of
the Sierra Madre and chills the blood of the belated traveller
with her boding voice. He who meets her face to face dies :
to hear her presages an imminent calamity.
" Did you ever see the Llorona, Josey ?"
" No, but my uncle in San Sebastian did : he saw her
coming towards him across the road when he came home
late one night. She had her mouth half open, and showed
a set of snags like a tiger, senor ; but he saved himself by
galloping away like a buffalo. He's a powerful runner, my
uncle is."
" Are there any other ghosts in the sierra ?"
" Why, yes, sir. There's the voz de luta" (warning voice),
" you know ; but that's a propitious spirit, and warns peo
ple who are going astray."
" Helps travellers that have lost their way in the moun
tains, I suppose."
A full orchestra of singing-birds awoke us the next
morning, and when we resumed our route along the banks

THE SIERRA MADRE. 175
of the Rio Blanco, I felt sure that neither sportsman nor
landscape-painter could find a similar paradise north of
the Rio Grande. Turkeys and euracos (pheasants) were
scraping the dry leaves all along the mountain-side, and
made the air musical with their calls. We found tracks of
panthers and black wolves, and Sentinelita started three
deer, but they hugged the river-bottom and would not
break cover. From the sandstone cliffs that overhung the
water we had a glorious view of the lower river-valley
and the terrace-lands beyond. As far as the eye could
reach, the country appeared like a boundless rolling ocean
of wood-covered hills, fading away to the eastern hori
zon and rising to the northwest, where the Sierra Mesilla
lifted her walls of sun-gilt cliffs and evergreen pines. I
durst not analyze the feelings inspired by the morning
wind that carried the fragrance and the greetings of this
mountain-world, but I could not suppress a growing con
viction that city-life is an unpardonable sin.
A little below its junction with the Yegua Creek we
crossed the Rio Blanco once more, and followed the wind
ings of a valley whose rock- walls became higher and steeper,
affording us an agreeable shade as the sun rose higher.
About ten English miles below the mouth of the Yegua
the canon expands to, or rather crosses, a circular valley of
more than half a league in diameter, whose western wall is
formed by an absolutely perpendicular cliff two miles long
and about six hundred feet high. This citadel is garrisoned
by an army of vultures, who have their nests among the
summit-rocks, where their tribe may have roosted in peace
since the end of the glacial period that escarped these
mountain-ramparts. " What are those chaps living on ?" I asked, pointing to
a long row of sentinels on the edge of the rock : " there

176 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
can't be much carrion in this part of the sierra, 1 should
think?" " I couldn't tell you, sefior," said the guide, " but they
always find something, I guess. They take long flits down
to the tierra caliente, and I have an idea that they make
carrion if they don't find it ready-made. They are harm
less, though," he added, " but on the south side of this rock
there is a nest of mountain-eagles that often make the set
tlers wish the thing wasn't quite so steep."
" They steal a good many kids, I suppose ?"
" Yes ; and farmer Garcia, down on the Olmos Creek,
suspects them of having kidnapped his boy."
" Carried him up into this rock, did they ?"
" Nobody knows. The boy and his sister — babies, both
of them — were at play in the garden behind Garcia's house,
and their mother, passing near the garden-fence, saw the
girl run toward the gate as fast as she could and just as if
she was scared out of her wits, and when she went into the
garden to look for the boy, he was gone. They didn't
know what to think of it, for they had never seen a pan
ther or puma in that part of the country, and a wolf couldn't
get over the fence ; but half a year after the girl got sick,
and her mother took her down to Doctor Gonzales's place,
near San Lucas, and when they came through the garden
the girl all at once gave a fearful scream, and caught her
mother round the neck as if she thought somebody was
going to murder her. The mother looked up, and what do
you think ? The doctor keeps a large tame eagle in the
garden, and the girl had seen the critter sitting on the fence.
She wasn't of that scary sort otherwise, so they think the
eagle must have reminded her of something she had seen
before, and they all believe now that those devils on the
rock carried the boy off, with nobody but his sister by."

THE SIERRA MADRE. 177
" Do you see that round hill over there ?" said Jose when
we emerged from the canon a little after noon. " Well,
right behind there is the Franciscan convent, and that hill,

CONVENT OF SAN RAFAEL.

as it looks, is a grove of mango-trees in the convent- garden.
We will get there in time for some meal or other : they're
eating all day long."
"What are they doing besides eating, amigo?"
Jose stole a look at my face before I could suppress an
involuntary smile: "Drinking? That's what you want
me to say, isn't it? But no," with a sigh : " I wish my
chance of going to heaven was as good as theirs. They are
praying three or four times a day, and one of them stuffs
his mattress with corncobs, they say— povredto ! And they
don't charge anything for burying and baptizing; only,
marriage is two dollars and a half."
" Are they attending the sick or doing anything for the
poor people?"
" Yes, they do : they keep a place for poor travellers who
cannot pay, and even for poor men's horses. And one of

178 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
them is a physician, — the smartest man you ever saw : he
has a large room full of stuffed butterflies and poisonous
animals, birds, vermin, and all. You mustn't forget to see
that : it's right inside of the church ; they made a special
partition for it."
At about four o'clock we reached the convent premises,
a large garden not wholly devoted to kitchen vegetables,
since the centre was occupied by a grove of shady mango-
trees, and the hedge was reinforced with a row of jessa
mine and other flowering shrubs, swarming with butterflies
that would have thrown a North-British collector into
ecstasies. The convent itself, flanked by a church and
sundry agricultural outhouses, had the substantial look of
a Dutch country castle, a spacious portico and an extin
guisher-roofed balcony, and a little glass-covered turret, —
perhaps the observatory of the doctor-priest.
" They haven't seen us yet," whispered Jose when we
approached the door : " the prelado" (abbot) " is taking
long naps after dinner. Let's ring the bell."
A barefoot boy opened the door, left it half ajar and
ran into an adjoining room.
"All right," said a voice from within: "tell them to
come in. But hold on ! Ask them if they can chop us a
little wood."
Jos6 burst out laughing. " That's Father Matias," said
he, and, entering the door without ceremony, grabbed the
boy by the neck before he could deliver his message. "Go
back and call the father, you little monkey. Esta un
caballero, sino es d caballo" (" This is a cavalier, though
he hasn't brought his caballo along"). " He is going to
pay." " Mil pardones /" said Father Matias, popping out of
his office and opening the door as wide as he could : " excuse

THE SIERRA MADRE. 179
the boy's stupidity. Step into this room, please : Father
Hilario" (the prior) " will be down directly."
I took a seat in a cool, airy reception-hall, not over-
furnished, like our Northern drawing-rooms, but provided
with all the essentials of a guest-chamber, six or seven
chairs, a lounge, and, near the window, a table with a
couple of books, — De Vega's dramatical works and an
illustrated Natural History.
After a few minutes the door opened, and Father Hilario
made his appearance, — a short, fat man with a coquettish
mantilla over the coarse habit of his order, — who made me
a polite bow and inquired after the state of my health,
rubbing his hands d, la mattre d'hdtel :
" Please make yourself at home, sir, while they are get
ting your room ready. Would an early supper be con
venient, or would you prefer something warm in the mean
time?" " No such thing, padre mio," I protested. " Don't
mistake me for a fine gentleman. I came to the sierra for
the special purpose of getting away from hotels and fashion
able suppers, and you mustn't let me interfere with the
more important occupations of the worthy fathers. Your
customary supper will do for me, and at any time that
may suit you best."
"You are over-kind, sir: sit down, please." Then, in
a more jovial tone, "Viene usted d una casa pobre" ("You
are coming to a poor house"), " sir ; but I don't doubt that
you will make allowances, since your servant tells me that
you camped in the sierra last night. Mi vida! what
delight your countrymen take in those horrid mountains of
ours ! I wish we could export them in exchange for your
beautiful farming-country in the North. You are an
American, sir ?"

180 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" At present, my father, and I am proud of the name,
since I have seen such a glorious part of America as this
mountain-land of yours."
"Yes, yes," laughed the padre, "you are right: we
should treat each other as brethren, — Americanos fibres, all
of us, whether north or south. You are on your way to
Jalapa, I understand?"
" Yes, sir," getting ready for cross-examination. " I
must see Fort Perote and the Rio Frio Valley while I am
in the State, and Jalapa is a good central point for a foot-
traveller, and the town itself is the prettiest on the eastern
slope." " That's true," switching off into the geographical topic.
" They say, with the exception of Oaxaca, there is no town
in Mexic6 with a more beautiful neighborhood. Well, I
am glad you are so favored by the weather-saints. Wasn't
it splendid the last three weeks ?"
End of cross-examination. Want of inquisitiveness is
perhaps the best side of the Spanish character from a social
standpoint, as it is certainly the worst in regard to scientific
affairs. " Do you smoke, sir ?" asked the padre, straddling the
corner of the table and taking a package of cigarettes from
his bosom.
" Mil gracias ! I don't, for a wonder. My countrymen
are great smokers now, and the habit is still gaining ground.
It would become epidemical if they had your good tobacco."
"You flatter us, or rather our habit, sefior. No, no!
you are right, and we are wrong : it's an abominable vice.
But what shall a man do ? Rather learn to relish it than
have others smoke all around you and make you sick. I
have forty calvitos" (" baldies," shaven polls) " under my
charge— all ages, from fifteen to seventy-five — and they

THE SIERRA MADRE. 181
all smoke, pecadores, every one of us. The saints didn't
smoke, that's one sure thing."
" I don't think that St. Francis did."
" Gran Dios, no !" laughed the padre. " He would
take the hide clean off our backs if he caught us at it. He
used to mix all his victuals with gall, they say, wore woollen
shirts in summer and a linen jacket in winter, and slept on
a plank with a cross for his pillow. Well, you must make
yourself comfortable till supper. You don't know farmer
Pacheco — the one who has the contract for hauling wood
for the Perote garrison — do you? Well, his wife died
yesterday, — that is, his third wife. They say he is going
to get another one before the end of the summer."
Fearing that the prelado was preparing for local gossip
for my benefit, I was glad to remember the museum and
the scientific convent-doctor. " You have a physician of
your own here?" I remarked, apropos of Mr. Pacheco's
wife. " Oh, yes — Padre Ramon : he takes care of the whole
comarca" (county). " We could not wish to have a better
doctor." " He is a natural philosopher too, I understand ?"
" So you have heard about him ? Yes, sir, he is quite
a scholar : he has made a collection of natural curiosities
that's really worth seeing."
" Is the doctor at home ?"
" No : I am sorry to say he went out fishing this after
noon, but he will be back before supper, and we can take
a look at his collection in the meanwhile."

12

CHAPTER VI.
LA TIERRA FRIA.
Up in the highlands, in the home of health. — Prior.
Dogs and horses whose caudal appendages have been
clipped for different generations are at last born with bob
tails, and the pathology of the human mind presents some
very analogous phenomena. The spiritual tyranny of the
Middle Ages, for instance, has certainly left its mark on
the Latin races, for nature accommodates herself to ab
normal circumstances, and when she found that the posses
sion of an inquisitive mind subjected her children to the
knife of the hierarchical vivisector, she saved them and
their trainer a trouble by making an incurious disposition
hereditary. The posterity of the orthodox Spaniards have,
in consequence, become contentedly, and almost compla
cently, ignorant, and the difference between the science of
the Anglo-Americans and that of their Spanish- American
neighbors is one of kind as well as of degree. In Yankee-
dom knowledge is a hobby, a passion, a recreation : in
Mexico it is a trade. The convent brethren of the Padre
Ramon tolerated his scientific pursuits as a harmless mono
mania, but I do not think that more than three or four of
the forty-two frailes were able to understand how a sane
man could busy himself with stuffing birds and collecting
minerals unless he was engaged by a museum or the assayer
of a mining company.
182

LA TIERRA FRIA. 183
"Venga," said the abbot, "vamos a ver las singulari-
dades" — Let's take a look at the oddities, the extravaganzas,
of the honest doctor, — a chance to utilize the fool by show
ing him off to strangers and fellow-lunatics.
Padre Ramon was certainly a versatile scientist. His
museum (in a partition of the church that I should have
mistaken for the cage of a staircase) comprised natural
and antiquarian curiosities, relics, mechanical contrivances,
busts, and several dozen oil pictures, mostly of his own paint
ing. His collection of beetles and butterflies was really
splendid : he had sixty or seventy varieties of swallow-tailed
papilionides, horned scarabwi of wonderful metallic lustre,
and one specimen of the colossal atlas moth (Sphinx gigas),
measuring eleven inches with outspread wings, — the first
I had ever seen on this side of the Isthmus. A gorgeous
display of fossils and minerals on a varnished oak table
evinced more taste than erudition : the polychromatic
crystals were arranged with a view to effective color con
trasts, but a piece of coralline rock was labelled " Panal
petrificado," petrified honeycomb, and the skull-bone of an
Aztec warrior and the canine teeth of a cave-bear were
grouped together as homogeneous fragments, and described
respectively as " Skull of Fossil Man" and " Horns of the
Same." The pictures were of the modern idyllic type,
Paul and Virginia promenading on verdigris-colored lawns,
and landscapes that bore a strange resemblance to the fifty-
cent chromos in our metropolitan variety stores.
" It can't be denied that he is a superior artist," observed
the prior: "come and let me show you two pictures he
painted for our church."
The one was a Mater Ecstatica with uplifted hands and
large expressive eyes : the other was a Temptation of Christ,
the tempted a meek saint, but a trifle too sleek after his

184 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
forty days' fast, — the tempter luridly grotesque, with red
proboscis and carnivorous teeth. The abbot and his friar
met here on common ground. Besides the doctor's con
tributions, the main church contained a collection of pic
torial miscellanea whose presence in a sanctuary seemed
hardly justified by their artistic merit. Sundry uniformed
generals and grandees from an illustrated history of Spain
glittered among the beatific visions of a Mexican Tinto
retto, and the department of simple woodcuts comprised a
" Street-scene in Melbourne" from some illustrated English
monthly, and a view of the " Riverside Military Academy"
at Peekskill, New York.
Toward evening, when I was picking a few berries
from the currant-hedge on the south side of the convent-
garden, Padre Ramon entered the gate with his angle and
a string of black pickerel, but made straight for the re
fectory. After supper he joined me in the garden, — a
fat, vulgar-featured little monk, but with a singularly
pleasant voice arid an infectious laugh. His joviality was
not the sly self-persiflage of certain French abbes in the
presence of suspected sceptics, but the unaffected frankness
of a man who felt his practical independence of his present
situation. " You can boast of a very indulgent prior," I remarked
when he mentioned a recent visit to the lake region of
Michoacan in company of the padre cocinero, the convent
kitchen-master. The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Our gates are
open," said he, " and inside parties nowadays need algu-
nas alicientes — some inducements — to stay," alluding to
President Juarez's abrogation of the law that made mo
nastic vows legally binding.
" Are these concessions sanctioned in Italy ?"

LA TIERRA FRIA.

185

" In Puebla at least : our vicar-general leaves it optional
with each abbot."
The prior of San Rafael seemed to have made the freest
use of that privilege. There was no regular night-chapel,
and, with the exception of a few detailed functionaries, the
friars were at leisure after sundown, pleasing themselves as
to the employment of the next twelve hours, provided they
restricted their choice to indoor pastimes. Those who dis-

' DOLCE FAR NIENTE

regarded this provision had to take their chance of finding
the gates closed at their return, but the readmission of a
penitent seemed to depend on the degree of his prospective
usefulness rather than of his previous guilt, and in the case
of valuable artisans the prior had a trick of "conniving
with both eyes."
"You may have noticed that big fellow in the tree there,"
said the doctor, pointing to a sycamore near the gate, where
a burly friar had swung his hammock : " that's the chief
carpenter, one of our monks, but just as independent as you
or the French consul if it should please you to pass a few
weeks on our premises. He left us twice, and the last time
built himself a shanty for his children and their mother in

186 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
the Villa Amorosa, as they call that settlement in the bottom
there, inhabited mostly by females. When his woman
left him the prior offered to take him back, promising
comprehensive indulgences for past and future offences, but
he stipulated for a triple ration and six yards of black
cloth per month, since we cannot pay him in cash ; and
finally we had to take him on his own terms."
"You are not permitted to employ outsiders, I sup
pose?" " Yes, we are, but we cannot afford to pay them : the
convent is too much in debt, and the receipts of our farms
are nearly swallowed by the mudanzas, — the commutation-
money." "What's that?"
" The constitutional amendment of '59 suppressed all
convents, you know, excepting those connected with a char
itable institution; and, since we have no hospital of our
own, we pay ' commutation-money,' — nominally in support
of the Puebla State hospital, but in reality into the pockets
of the official blackmailers, who would have us by the
throat in a minute if we didn't plaster their palms. That
law defeats its ostensible purpose," he added, "for it has
reduced us to passive charities and raised the price of our
hospitality considerably."
The padre's last remark made me thoughtful, and seeing
Jose at the gate half an hour after, I took him aside and
asked him to ascertain the terms of our present boarding-
house as discreetly as possible. He knocked stealthily at
the door and slipped into my bedroom a minute after the
prior had recommended me to his patron saint.
" I'm glad you thought of that in time," he whispered.
"I told them we preferred to settle our bill every morning,
and the padre cocinero says that their regular terms are five

LA TIERRA FRIA. 187
dollars a day, and two for each servant, but that the prior
will probably deduct a couple of reals because you have no
horse. Santissima, que dnverguenzas ! Let's get out of
this ; that beats the hotel prices in Aguas Calientes."
We needed no better pretext than the glorious weather
of the next morning, and continued our road in the direc
tion of Perote and the " Coffer Peak," the highest summit
of the eastern coast-range. When we left the convent-gate,
and again an hour before sunset of the same day, I noticed
an interminable swarm of blackbirds flying in a southwest
erly direction, probably northern emigrants on the way to
their winter quarters in Honduras or Yucatan. Their flight
was as silent and steady as that of migratory pigeons, as if
fatigue or the wonders of the strange country had hushed
their accustomed chatter.
On our first halt, at the edge of a precipitous cliff, we
were overtaken by a troop of noisy gamins, the youngsters
of the Villa Amorosa, to judge by their pure Spanish and
convent-cloth jackets. One of them clambered up to our
cliff, and, seeing me drink from a dripping rock -spring,
asked me for the loan of my gutta-percha cup. — "Just
come up here, boys, where this gentleman can see the fun,"
he called down to his comrades.
"What are you going to do, nino?" I asked.
" Oh, they are coming, sir : you'll see the whole lark.
Padre Tito's Pablo caught a big black squirrel last Friday,
and yesterday morning the creature got away and up a big
pine-tree behind our house. There were eight of us after
him, and when we cornered hini near the top he jumped
down on our roof, sixty feet straight, and never hurt him
self a bit. We caught him on the chimney, but Pablo's
godmother wouldn't let him keep the thing : he's bewitched,
she says. But if we can't keep him we are going to have

]88 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
some fun out of him, anyhow ; so we agreed to take him
out here and throw him down one of these high cliffs."
" What good would that do you ?"
" Why, to see the fun and to find out if he is bewitched or
not. If there is any bruxeria" (enchantment) " about him,
a thousand feet more or less won't make much difference."
The outer crags of the declivity overhung the valley of
the Rio Blanco, more than six hundred feet below, and the
foot of the precipice was bristling with cliffs and bowlders.
The question whether squirrels can be killed by a fall could
hardly be put to a severer test : the problem had a scientific
interest, and a stout squirrel might survive the salto mortale;
so, calming my conscience with these considerations and the
blessed absence of Mr. Bergh, I decided to tolerate the
experiment. They had him in a pillow-slip, a full-grown Sdurus niger,
as bulky and heavy as a moderate tom-cat, and quite as wary
in his movements. He crouched for a spring when I peeped
into the bag, and lowered his head, measuring the opening
with glittering eyes.
" Let him look down, and let's see if he will risk the
jump on his own account," said I, when his proprietor
approached the brink.
The boys got around him and turned the flaps of the slip
back, till the captive sat exposed at the bottom of the bag.
He looked down and then back and sideways, as if com
paring the chances of escape in the different directions, and
finally clambered to the edge and turned half around, so as
to face an open space between the spectators and the brink
of the precipice. But just when we widened our circle to
intercept a flank movement he took a flying leap into space,
and fluttered rather than fell into the abyss below. His
legs began to work like those of a swimming poodle-dog,

LA TIERRA FRIA.

189

MOUNT PEROTE.

but quicker and quicker, while his tail, slightly elevated,
spread out like a feather-fan. A rabbit of the same weight
would have made the trip in about twelve seconds : the

190 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
squirrel protracted it for more than half a minute. With
utter disregard of the conventional laws of gravity the ratio
of its descent decreased, till it appeared to hover in empty
space, and alighted as easy as a skylark on ite return from
an aerial flight. The four-footed bird landed on a ledge
of limestone, where we could see it plainly squat on its
hind legs and smooth ite ruffled plumage, after which it
made for the creek with a flourish of ite tail, took a good
drink, and scampered away into the willow-thicket.
In leaping from a roof or tree a cat has to rely on the
elasticity of ite legs, which will not save it if the height
exceeds a certain modicum, unless the ground below is soft
or sloping; but a squirrel breaks the force of its fall in
mid-air, using its tail and flat body as a parachute, for the
common varieties, as well as the flying-squirrel proper,
have an expansive skin joining the upper half of each leg
to the body.
The children of the amorous village seemed rather dis
appointed at the result of their experiment, but it settled
two points to my satisfaction : that squirrels cannot be killed
by a fall, and that they must act some important part or
other in the household of Nature, since their survival has
been secured by such ample precautions. With the excep
tion of the diving sea-gull, which can fly, swim, run, and
stay under water for minutes together, hardly any other
animal is so well protected against the contingencies of its
trade as the fan-tailed rodent, that unites the agility of a
monkey with the immunities of a bird, and supplements
the winter-store-gathering providence of man by a faculty
of intermittent hibernation.
Leaving the camino real to the right, we kept along the
precipitous banks of the Rio Blanco, crossed it about ten
miles above the convent, and again struck into the piilal,

LA TIERRA FRIA.

191

the coniferous region
of the Tierra Fria,
whose lower bound
ary rises in the coast-
range to nine thou
sand feet, while the
warm Gulf winds ele
vate the snow-line to
thirteen or fourteen
thousand, or about
eight hundred feet
above that of the
central sierras. On
northwestern slopes I
noticed a slight frost
on the grass, but the
vegetation was less
uniform than in lati
tudes of the same
average temperature :
mulberries, copper-
beeches, chestnut-
trees, and even mag
nolias, still mingled
with the furs and
hemlock pines, for the
persistent invasion of
semi-tropical germs
from the neighboring
Tierra Templada has
here adapted some
plants to the climate
of Scotland which

PRECIPICE OF THE RIO BLANCO.

192 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
human art could hardly propagate in France or North
Carolina. I have often thought that our attempts to ac
climatize Southern trees and flowers would be more suc
cessful if we could procure our seeds from the forests of an
equatorial mountain-region rather than from the border
lands of the temperate zone.
We passed a venta, a little wayside tavern, in the open
forest where our trail crossed the Orizaba stage-road, but
the ventero had nothing but pulque and bacon on hand, so
we took dinner a few miles farther up, at the turpentine-
distillery of Don Luiz Tacoma, where the shopkeeper of
the casa sold us a bunch of plantains and a pailful of fresh
milk, and where we witnessed another experiment with
flying mammals. One of the overseers, who was taking
his siesta on the porch of the shop, informed us that the
proprietor had shipped six hundred barrels of turpentine
to Matamoras this year, and could undersell the Yankees
after realizing a handsome profit. He paid his laborers
from two to three reals (twenty-five to thirty-seven cents) a
day. " I am sorry that the superintendent isn't at home,"
said he ; " he could show you a specimen of a curious sort
of cannel coal which our workmen have found at different
places in this neighborhood. It's jet black, and burns in
chips, like sulphur ; you can light it without any wood at all."
"You don't store your turpentine in a combustible
building like that?" said I, pointing to a long wooden
shed above the factory.
" No ; that's the workmen's barracks : we have first-rate
storage in a natural cave back there. All we had to do
was to level the floor and fix a gate to the entrance. I
haven't got the key, or I would show it to you."
" Ask that gentleman if he has ever seen a pitched bat
fly," said the storekeeper.

LA TIERRA FRIA. 193
" You are right. Look here, sir : have you ever tried to
blind a bat and let him fly in daytime ?"
" No : how do you do it ?"
" I'll show you. Oh, Lorenzo !" he hailed one of his
workmen : " tell that boy Lucas to get a couple of bate if
he can climb the gate. Tell him to get two big ones, and
bring the pitch-bucket here. That cave is just lined with
them," he explained. " In winter-time you could gather
them like grapes in a vineyard. In midsummer they are
pretty scarce."
"" Now, look here," said he when the boy returned with
a piteh-keg and some things in his hat that looked like two
pieces of flabby leather: "just notice the size of their eyes,
— little black specks, that's all. What do you say now ?"
after anointing one of the victims with a spoonful of
pitch-grease : " is there any earthly possibility now of this
creature's seeing with his eyes? No more than if you'd
chopped his head off. But now I'll show that he can see,
after all."
We entered the shop, closed doors and windows, and
flung the bat more than once against the ceiling. The
third time he took wing, and began to navigate the air
as steadily and knowingly as any bat or moth in the twi
light of a summer day. He avoided the rafters, dodged
the hams and fox-skins at the ceiling, and turned just
before his wings touched the walls at either end of the
building. "That will do," said I. "I have heard something of
the sort before, but I believe it now. They can see in a
pitch-dark night as well as in daytime."
" Yes, but how ?" said the overseer: "they don't do it
with their eyes, that's one sure thing : it must be  "
" Witchcraft ?" I suggested.

194 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" No, but — what d'ye call it ? — instinto" (instinct), said
the overseer. " Yes, that's it : it must be instinto."
Indefinable words are useful in such cases, but I don't
know if the " sixth sense" which Schwammerdam ascribes
to birds of passage and carrier-pigeons is a much better
explanation. I incline to the theory that the hidden sense
or clairvoyance of bate is nothing but a very acute sense of
feeling, that intimates the neighborhood of a solid obstacle
before they come in actual contact with it. Sensitive per
sons walking in a dark corridor may notice that a sort of
physical presentiment gives them timely warning if they
are going to bump their head against a wall or pillar.
On the ridge of the San Rafael range we got a glimpse
of the Val de Perote, with its yellow cornfields and sombre
mango-forests. The famous fort was not in sight, but on
two opposite hills, on either side of the camino real, the
old commercial highway between Vera Cruz and the cities
of the table-land, I distinguished the ruins of two ancient
castles, La Fortaleza and Torres Negras, that bore a striking
resemblance to the dismantled chateaux of Switzerland and
Southern France. Among the adventurers that followed
in the track of Cortes and Ojeda there were some enter
prising hidalgos who hastened to fortify themselves on the
hills of the New World, in the hope of reviving the age of
feudal independence and romantic forays, and in the latter
part of the sixteenth century New Spain could boast of
some regular robber-knights — sans peur et sans approche —
defying gods and men behind their inaccessible battlements.
But they soon found that the alcaldes and friars sheared
their flocks too close to leave much wool for extra-official
clippers. The last ten hours of our march had led us skyward at
the rate of at least five hundred feet per mile, and an occa-

LA TIERRA FRIA. 195
sional chill, with a growing acceleration of the breathing
process, reminded me that we had reached the region of
high barometers and low thermometers, that tests the lungs
of man and discovers the defects of his habiliments. Our
Tuxpan converted his armhole serape into a Scotch plaid,
and I found that the upper buttons of my coat were not
wholly expletive. To judge by the scale of arboreal vege
tation, we were about eleven thousand feet above the level
of the Gulf. The air of such altitudes is not difficult to
breathe : on the contrary, it relieves asthma and pleuritic
strictures. The trouble is, that it is not filling enough to
supply the organic laboratory at the ordinary rate of res
piration : it is air diluted with ether, and a lungful of it
contains so little oxygen and hydrogen that the intervals
of respiration have to be shortened. Hence the distress of
diseased lungs, whose functions are already abnormally
quickened, and cannot be further accelerated without over
straining their mechanism. The climate of the Tierra Fria,
therefore, will counteract dyspepsia and all complaints that
could be relieved by vigorous physical exercise, and it will
almost certainly cure incipient pulmonary disorders, but it
will prove quickly fatal to patients in an advanced stage of
consumption. " This neighborhood used to have a bad name," observed
Jos6 when we crossed a broad ravine which in the rainy
season forms a tributary of the Rio Blanco. " The Orizaba
stage-coach was robbed here a few years ago, and during
the French occupation a troop of guerrillas, as they called
themselves, had their headquarters in the outskirts of the
pifial. — Que novedades hay" (what news ?) : " is the coast
clear?" he hailed an old man who had hitched his mule at
the roadside and seemed to be taking a rest at the foot of a
gnarled mulberry-tree.

196 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" No hay nada" (nothing stirring), replied the stranger.
" Which way are you  Halloo !" he interrupted him
self, " where did you leave the rest of the boys, old chum?"
The guide stopped and stared. " Santa Virgen !" he
burst out, "if that ain't my tocayo (namesake), my old
tocayo, Don Jose Macan ! Did you ever digest that dish
of armadillo, Don Jose? Are we going to have another
eating-match to-night ?"
"You'll find out if you stop at my shanty to-night,"
laughed the old fellow. " I'll beat you at a squirrel -stew,
with or without pepper, and give you odds besides. I take
that gentleman for an umpire, and I hope he'll shoot you
if you try to bribe him."
" Why — mi santissima ! — you do not mean to say that
you are still living in that same old trap, Don Jos6 ?"
" Of course I do. Don't stand gaping there now, but
anda — go ahead — or it will be another drawn game. Anda,
te digo — just make that lazy Greaser move ahead, sir. I'll
overtake you before you reach my place : it's more than
four miles yet. You'll excuse me : I'm just mending my
buckskin breeches."
" All right !" I laughed.
" Hurry up," the guide called back, " or we'll decide that
match without you."
" Who is that ?" I inquired, when the mulberry-tree was
out of sight.
" A trapper, an Irish heretic from Poland or England,"
said the guide, whose notions about the subdivisions of
Anglo-Saxony were somewhat misty. " He used to belong
to the harbor-police in Vera Cruz six years ago, but one
night he disappeared, and has lived in the sierra ever since.
They say que se enca.ro al reves — that he came across the
wrong man, a detective, perhaps ; but quien sabe ? It's no

LA TIERRA FRIA. 197
concernment of ours. He is a tigrero now — a panther- and
bear-hunter — and the best hand we ever had in these parts

"11

EL TIGRERO.

for catching such creatures alive : I know that the ring
master of the Potosi arena paid him two hundred dollars
in a single year. Vermin are getting rather scarce in this
neighborhood, but he still lives on the old place, it seems,
alone with his dogs and pigs in the same shanty where I
saw him three years ago. La Trampa — the cage — they call
it, because it was first built for a bear-trap. We could
have camped more comfortably in a ravine near here, but
his trap is only two miles farther, and I guess he can sell
us provisions enough to take us through to Perote."
The hunter failed to overtake us, and we stopped re
peatedly, doubtful if we might venture to enter the trampa
in the absence of the manager ; but on turning the flank
of a hill whose primitive vegetation was interspersed with
a few straggling apple-trees, we saw a thick black smoke
rise from a coppice at our feet. 18

198 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
"Let's hurry up," said Jos6: "there is somebody at
home, or the trampa must be on fire."
"Why, I declare! it's the old man himself!" he whis
pered when we reached a little clearing in front of the
shanty. The mule, only half unsaddled, was hitched to a
post, and his owner was sitting on his porch grinding corn
or coffee in a little hand-mill.
" How on earth, or under the earth, did you get ahead
of us ?" laughed the guide, starting back as if he had seen
a ghost. The trapper put his mill down and leaned forward to
shake my hand. " You came by way of the old limekiln,
didn't you?" he inquired, without answering his tocayo's
question. " Yes, certainly : isn't that the right way ?" said the guide.
" I thought so : just like a mule, following the trail he
is used to, no matter if it's six miles out of the way. Didn't
you see that the Perote arrieros had laid out a new road
over the hill ? You might have saved at least half a
league. Well, make yourself comfortable," said he, " and
excuse me a minute : I believe I hear my cow down in that
bottom." We slung our baggage to different harness-hooks on the
porch, and put our terrier under a hen-coop, to propitiate
a pack of obstreperous hounds at the rear of the shanty.
" He says we missed the right road : did we, Jose ?"
"Nonsense !" growled the guide. "The truth is that he
himself has taken a roundabout way and galloped ahead
of us."
"Why?"
" I don't know, but I believe that the old chap is a little
sensitive about strangers coming here unawares, before he
has fixed things up a bit. He seems to have had a pretty

LA TIERRA FRIA.

199

good education in some respects, but if his folks ever taught
him to handle a scrubbing-brush and a piece of soap he
must have forgotten all about it."
" Has he ever been married ?"
" No : that's just what's the matter with him, for what
can you expect of an old bachelor keeping house with a
litter of pigs? The miners in San Carlos used to tell some
tough stories about his place: they said that one of his dogs
died of a broken heart from having to live in such a pigsty.
He's a smart carpenter, though : he has enlarged his trap
considerably : this porch is new, and he has a good roof
now, I see."

LA TRAMPA.

The trampa was a rude log cabin,' built around and into a
huge limestone bowlder, a vertical cleft in the rock having
been fashioned into a chimney, while a sort of rock-cellar

200 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
with a lattice door at the other end of the bowlder served
the purpose of an outhouse.
" That's his larder," said Jos6, " and he keeps it full.
He's living pretty high for a hermit."
" What ' eating-match' was that you were quizzing him
about?" " Oh, he was beaten that time, but not fairly: they pitted
him against a fellow who had an unnatural appetite, a regu
lar hunger disease, that obliged him to stuff like a hog-
tapir. My tocayo here had made a standing bet of fifty
dollars that he could out-drink and out-eat any native
Mexican at any kind of tipple or meat they might fetch
along ; and three years ago the miners heard about a strange
Indian in the Pintado settlements who had been driven away
from his native village on account of his appalling appetite.
He could digest anything from a bushel of wild chestnuts
to a roasted alligator ; and when they found out that he
could even go a broiled armadillo, it struck them that they
might risk fifty dollars on such a champion, for if a man is
in his natural condition an armadillo-steak works him like a
dose of aroxano (nux vomica), you know. So they procured
half a bushel of horse-chestnuts and three fat armadillos, and
asked your landsman if he would undertake to roast them as
a supper for two, and stake his chamjiionship on the result.
" He said that he had never tried armadillo before, but
that he was sure he could stand it if any native Mexican
could. Well, sir, that night there were about sixty Indians
around this shanty, and some twenty Blancos, the engineer
of our blast-furnace acting as umpire and I as one of the
seconds. The meat and things were weighed and portioned
out on different dishes ; and at first I thought the Indian
was losing ground, but when my tocayo commenced on his
second platter of steaks he turned about sixteen different

LA TIERRA FRIA. 201
colors and asked me to go down to the spring for a pitcher
of cold water.
" I do not know what happened next, for just when I
reached the spring I heard a fearful hurrah, and two min
utes after the old man came tearing down the road like a
cavalry horse, and the crowd was cheering and laughing
like lunatics. The confusion was too great to get a sensible
account of the last round : all I know is that they had got
the fifty dollars. The next morning I came by here and
found the door locked, but the old man was in bed, for I
heard him grunt like a four-footer."
When the trapper returned with a pailful of milk we
took supper on the porch, but after sundown the wind
seemed to set from the direction of the Orizaba ice-fields,
and drove us one by one into the interior of the trampa.
The narrow chimney had the advantage of dividing the
atmosphere of the shanty into a torrid and a temperate
zone, so that the natives of different latitudes could select
their favorite climate.
Don Jos6 M'Cann, the "vermin" exterminator of the
Rio Blanco, was a countryman of the snake-destroying
saint, but he had been more than sixteen years in the
Western hemisphere, during which time he had passed over
nearly every republic of North and Central America, and
lost all traces of his Milesian descent, being in manners and
appearance a perfect Mexican, and had almost forgotten his
native language. He had been in California, Arkansas,
and Texas, and preferred Western Arkansas to any other
part of the United States, but not to the South Mexican
highlands. " A man who can rely on himself can be more inde
pendent here than anywhere else in the world," he said ;
" and if he's a hunter or a farmer he wouldn't be ruined by

202 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
competition. You could not find a better climate, either, —
too far south for a cold winter, and too high up for a warm
summer." "Wouldn't you like the foot-hills better yet?" I in
quired ; " with less snow and ice and more wild fruit?"
" I don't know, sir. The nights are rather chilly up
here, but the day-weather suits me exactly; and there's
one great advantage : you can digest meat, and the low-
landers can't, unless they content themselves with sparrow-
hawk rations. I could eat a roast boar every Friday, and
have as good an appetite as ever before the end of the week.
They call me a glutton and a drunkard, but since I have
lived up here I have never been sick longer than ten or
twelve hours. A man who had a mind to diet for his
health could outlive Old Nick in this sierra. A fellow
doesn't know what the next day may bring, but if I should
get seriously sick I would just lock my door and open the
windows, and rely on the mountain-air to do the rest, with
out any priest or doctor nosing round me."
" You are self-reliant in everything, it seems, but don't
you find it rather dull work, — in the long winter nights,
for instance ?"
The hermit picked a coal from the embers and lighted
his pipe. " No, sir," said he. " You wouldn't think so
if you had ever tried it for a winter or two. But an old
Mexican hunter asked me the other day if I wasn't afraid
to live alone ; and that's nearer the point, though it seems
a foolish question to ask a man with two rifles and four
dogs, and no money hardly about him. Trusting yourself
with your own thoughts is just like going to an Indian
ball : a fellow may see more than he has bargained for.
There are things that never show themselves till you are
alone, but if you once make up your mind that there is

LA TIERRA FRIA. 203
no harm in them, you find out that they are pretty good
company." " Well, I suppose a man may get used to lonesomeness
as to anything else."
" Yes, but that's not what I mean, sir. He may get so
' used' to it that he will be sorry he didn't begin sooner.
Have you ever been in the army, sir?"
"Why?"" Because an old soldier would know from experience
that I am right. If a man has to go on post it may rile
him to be waked in his best sleep, but if he has been out
for an hour or two, especially on picket-guard or in a dark,
calm night, where he can dream with his eyes open, it's ten
to one that he will be sorry to hear the relief come round :
it's like being interrupted in a pleasant conversation. It
makes time pass you don't know Jiow, and much faster
than before sunset, because in daytime a man can never be
entirely alone."
"According to that, it would not interfere with your
comfort if they should lock you up and keep you in solitary
confinement ?"
" Yes, it would : I like fried trout and open-air exercise.
And, to say the truth, there is something else : a man wants
to have a pet. It would make people happier if they all
knew that, especially if they knew that it needn't be a
human being. I'm better off with my dogs."
" At least if you count upon gratitude."
"Yes; and they ain't bad company, either. You have
no idea how they get used to you if you are alone with them
for weeks together : the worst of it is that it comes so awful
hard on a fellow to lose a creature of that kind. I bought
a fine Scotch deerhound in Baltimore in '66 : I had him
nearly eight years, and I tell you, sir, I felt like shooting

204 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
myself when I lost him. The Greasers poisoned him, be
cause he wouldn't let them come near my smoke-house at
night. No square, straightforward poison either, for it took
him a whole week to die: it just went through me like a
knife to hear him whine, and perhaps I ought to have put
him out of his misery, but I was thinking of all the scrapes
we had helped each other out of, — we had frozen and starved
together all over Texas and Arkansas, — and I couldn't kill
him while there was a ghost of a chance of his pulling
through." The voice of the old rough became inarticulate at the
recollection. He had spread the dog's couch at the side of
his own bed, and patted his shaggy coat till he lay silent
and motionless. But late in the evening, when the logs in
the fireplace had almost flickered their last, the hound raised
his head and placed it upon his master's arm, looked into
his eyes and sank back dead, — like the last pressure of a
human hand, " a ' farewell' mutely spoken, but not easy to
forget." My companions had ensconced themselves in a recess of
the chimney-corner, and snored a quartet with two asthmatic
pigs under the board floor of the shanty, and for a while I
hesitated between the popular night-air superstition and a
private antipathy or prejudice against heated dormitories ;
but after a look at the crowded floor I unbuckled my
blanket-roll and spread my couch on the moonlit porch.
The intermittent breath of the night- wind swelled or muf
fled the voice of a waterfall, and at larger intervals the
silence of the upper pifial was broken by a sudden scream :
it was the hour when the panther-cat descends from the
crest of the hemlock-fir where she lurks during the day,
and the pine-marteu leaves its hidden nest to steal along the
branches and surprise the slumbering birds. Our dogs

LA TIERRA FRIA. 205
ignored such noises, but attested their watchfulness by a
sotto-voce growl when the lower valleys echoed the gallop
of a nocturnal rider, — perhaps a belated gambler or a miner
returning from the rancho of his dusky amante.
The next morning the mountains were shrouded with a
persistent fog, and our host accompanied us across the pla
teau to the brink of a declivity, where, in accordance with
his prediction, we emerged from the clouds into the sunshine
of the eastern slope.
" Well, companeros, now you can't miss your road," said
he : " if you follow this creek you'll strike the camino at
the river. From there you can take the Perote trail across
the San Inez range ; but if this fog should overtake you,
you had better follow the camino and stop at Mr. Urban 's
place for supper. By the by, sir : there you can see the
benefit of mountain-air : he's a pretty old buck, but his
father is living in the same house, and if you go out in the
yard you can see his grandfather chopping cord- wood. He
does that every evening, and won't let anybody else come
near the wood-pile. His son is eighty-two, and he must
be at least twenty years older, but he still earns his rations
and shows them that he knows it if there are garbanzas for
dinner. And that's just the way I am going to live a cen
tury or two," he added. " In my younger days I had a
different plan, but this is the best: a man has to try a good
many dishes before he knows what really agrees with him."
" You wouldn't try any more armadillo-steaks, then ?"
suggested his tocayo.
" Hush up, you sanducho, you skinny swamp-ape setting
up for a guide ! I could just demoralize you with a single
kick. Good-by, sir," said he, " and don't forget that there
is freedom in the Tierra Fria if the crusaders down in
Potosi make things too hot for you."

206 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
The immunity of mountaineers from physical and polit
ical diseases may be referred to the same cause, — the rug-
gedness of their territory, which keeps invaders out and
health in. On level ground pedestrianism has to be pur
sued to a considerable length before it can rank with the
health-giving exercises; but if it includes uphill work, it
becomes a substitute for the most elaborate course of hy
gienic gymnastics, and the only reliable charm for exorcising
the demon of dyspepsia.
Eastern Mexico, like the Atlantic slope of our own re
public, is favored by a humid climate, which manifests
itself in the variety and exuberance of the arboreal vege
tation. Near the junction of the Inez range with the
Sierra de Perote our trail skirted the great Pifial de Loreto,
a coniferous jungle of sixty or seventy leagues, whose
thickete gave me an idea how many trees to the acre even
a rocky soil can produce where the aggregated growth of
centuries has never been touched by the earth-desolating
axe. There were no creepers, no brambles, and but little
underbrush, but the pines stood so close together, and
crowded their neighbors with such a maze of lower branches,
that their visible interspaces extended rarely beyond a four
fold row of trees. A flock of turkeys that crossed our road
only twenty yards ahead of us vanished instantly, like rab
bits in a quickset hedge, and, viewed from a ridge of higher
ground at a horizontal distance of about half a mile, the
single tree-tops could no longer be distinguished.
The neighboring Val de Loreto was the home of the
Amozocs, a race of warlike Indians who committed in
human cruelties among the settlers of the Tierra Templada,
and after having been expelled from the lower valley took
refuge in the thickete of the pifial, from which they made
frequent raids into the next haciendas, and once even sacked

LA TIERRA FRIA. 207
the town of San Augustin, near Puebla. In 1812 the gov
ernor of Vera Cruz ordered a general razzia against these
marauders, but it is said that a remnant of their tribe still
lurks in the inaccessible mountain-jungles of the Rio Me-
sillo, and that hunters and miners have occasionally seen
the smoke of their wigwams from the heights of the Sierra
Madre. No government surveyor has ever carried his
quadrant into this wilderness : like the swamps of Eastern
Yucatan, the pifial is pays deninguno, — nobody's land, — ex
empt from taxation, not included within the comarca limits
of any State map, and never visited by custom-house spies
and begging friars, — the abode of the puma, the pine-grouse,
the bush-panther, and who knows of what other guests?
When we came unawares upon the cliffs of the eastern
slope a black eagle shot out of the rocks at our feet, uttering
a curious whoop, not unlike the coughing boom of the bull-
bat, as they call a certain species of nighthawk in Northern
Georgia. Though it seemed most unlikely to find unfledged
eaglets at this time of the year, we clambered all over the
cliff in the hope of discovering the nest, misled by repeated
shrill squeaks and twitters, till we found that these sounds
emanated from a heap of bowlders farther down, where a
colony of marmottos, or mountain-weasels, had their bur
rows. These little mountaineers build themselves commo
dious nests, and fill them with nuts and grass-seeds at the
approach of winter, but their domestic peace seems to be
disturbed by chronic family feuds, perhaps in consequence
of their polygamous habits, for the champion marmotto of
each community keeps house with a whole harem of young
females, after driving his rivals into remote bachelor holes.
I noticed that in descending the eastern slope the conif
erous region is succeeded by a belt of nut-bearing trees,
especially of the genus Juglans, — walnuts, pecans, and hick-

208 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
ories, — while in the West the corresponding altitudes
produce chiefly thorn-trees, — mesquites, hackberries, and
acacias,— besides different thorny shrubs. In regions of our
earth whose climate has been deteriorated by the outrages of
man upon the vegetable kingdom it seems that by a curious
by-law of Nature all larger plants become spinescent,
as if to protect them from the hand of their ruthless de
stroyer. From the dwarf cactus to the gigantic bombax-
tree, the plants of the arid West are bristling with spikes
and thorns like vegetable hedgehogs, and the polo verde, a
shrub of the North Mexican desert, shows no leaves at all,
the green bark answering their purpose, but is covered from
the root up to the extremity of the smallest twig with an
armor of thick-set, formidable spines.
The sun had disappeared behind a cloud-bank in the
southwest when we reached the camino real on the eastern
flank of the mountains that overhang the Val de Perote.
The ramparts of the Sierra Madre rise abruptly on either
side with a majestic sweep, barely allowing room for the
clambering pine-forests that fringe the crags at their feet,
and, viewed from a ravine of the opposite mountains, could
hardly be suspected of enclosing a more fertile valley than
the cloud-capped hills around the Andalusian Vega. But
from the brow of a hill about a league west of the castillo
a wide and magnificent view opens over the northern dis
tricts of the State of Vera Cruz and the beautiful valley of
Perote, with its lakes and shady haciendas. The horizon
is bounded by the Sierra de Loreto, once the stronghold of
the long-invincible Amozocs, and the Peak of Perote, one
of the highest in Eastern Mexico, rises immediately on the
right. The town resembles a long straggling village, and
contains few buildings of more than one story, but the
fortress-hill that towers above the terraces of ite southern

LA TIERRA FRIA. 209
suburb like a huge Acropolis gives it an antique and, I
might say, Oriental appearance.
The fortress of Perote used to be called the New Spanish
Gibraltar, a comparison which only the isolation of the

VAL DE PEROTE AND THE OLD FORT.
mountain could justify, but the rock is certainly steeper
and much higher than the soi-disant inexpugnable fortress
of Ehrenbreitstein near Coblentz, and the southern declivity,
from which a bridle-path closely resembling a staircase winds
down to the valley below, could easily be made as inacces
sible as the sheer precipices on all other sides. But the

210 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
construction of a new highway around the northern base of
the sierra made the fortin a cornejal, — a rook-tower, a fort
in the wilderness, — and in 1835 the arsenal, together with
a large part of the garrison (and even the name of El Cas
tillo, — The Castle, par excellence), was transferred to the
Presidio de San Carlos, half a league northeast of Perote,
a clumsy quadrangle, whose proximity to the junction of
two principal highways should not have overruled the
strategic objections to ite position in an open plain.
At present the old fortin is only used as a prison for
political culprits and soldiers of the regular army on trial
for capital offences. It is the head-quarters of the preboste
capitan, the chief executioner of the Mexican army, and
from the activity of this official the Indians of the neigh
boring villages call the fort " La Matagente," the man
slaughter-house. On the ridge of the hill some merchants of Perote and
Vera Cruz have their summer residences, and their pleas
ure-gardens soften the aspect of the stern battlements with
a background of evergreen foliage. The fort itself I recog
nized by the tricolor of the Mexican republic, though on a
meadow at the foot of the mountain we saw a similar and
larger flag, and behind it a Body of men, which I took for
a brigade of soldiers drawn up in close marching-order.
But on crossing a viaduct over the ravine of a mountain-
creek I noticed that the uniforms of the supposed brigade
were largely mixed with serapes, and even with the white
rebosos, or head-shawls, of the Mexican matrons of the
upper classes.
" What is it ?" I asked when we met a trooper who had
watered a couple of horses at the creek — " que hay ? an
other execution ?"
" No," said he ; " only a foot-race. Cardena's circus is

LA TIERRA FRIA. 211
in town, and one of our muchachos has challenged their
champion runner and wrestler. The desafio is for ten onzas
(about one hundred and sixty dollars) a side, and they are
just mowing a meadow for a race-course."
Enthusiasm is contagious. I had intended to dismiss
my guide on the same evening, and take the stage-coach to
Jalapa and Potosi, but we all stayed till the following
morning to witness the result of the desafio.
The presence of a crack regiment of cavalry at Perote
and their weekly prize-drills had fostered a spirit of gym
nastic emulation, and the citizens had organized different
rifle, race, and bull-ring "teams," which frequently tried
conclusions with the matadores of the garrison. Two
brothers of the neighboring village of Tresmontes, Luiz
and Juan Vegos, had scored so many victories in these
local contests that, like the Maccabees, they had come to
think themselves invincible, and Avhen the circus gymnasts
tried to astonish the natives one of the brothers had the
boldness to challenge the wrestler, Gil Rivas, an athlete of
national reputation.
The desafio was threefold, — wrestling, running, and spear-
throwing, a favorite game of the mounted lancers, — the
victor in more than one match to claim the stakes ; and by
making interest with the umpire the Peroters had carried
the shrewd proviso that the contest should begin with the
foot-race. The next morning was cloudy and disagreeably close, but
the population of the cOmarca turned out en masse to see
their champion put his head in the lion's mouth. The
competitors seemed not fairly matched. Gil Rivas was a
broad-shouldered, fine-looking gymnast, a native of the
warlike border State of Nueva Leon : his rival was a mere
mozo, a clean-built but slender lad of eighteen or twenty ;

212 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
but the Peroters had conferred with a council of veteran
strategists, and were resolved that the big frontiersman
should not have it all his own way.
The benches of the circus, supplemented by barrels and
planks, formed the stage, and after pacing the race-course

THE FOOT-RACE.

and choosing their sides the champions deposited their slip
pers at the umpire's stand and dashed off with a fair start,
the mozo barefoot, the circus-man in his stocking feet. At
the half-mile post the latter led by at least six yards, but
after that the mozo redoubled his speed, and when they

LA TIERRA FRIA. 213
passed the stake Don Rivas seemed to be a trifle behind.
But that might be on account of his fluttering scarf. The
goal-keeper pronounced it a concurso — a dead heat. The
same on the second trial : the mozo hung back for the first
four or five hundred yards, and then overtook his rival
without any visible effort. The third time he took the
lead, but relaxed on the home-stretch till his competitor all
but overtook him. Concurso again. Mr. Gil's comrades
looked glum : they began to suspect the mozo's stratagem ;
but the fair Perotenas, who were not in the secret, and the
garish belles of the circus, rose in groups, waved their
manias, and cheered their respective favorites at the fourth
start. "Anda, Don Gil! Viva! viva!" " Anda, Juanito, por
mi amor, muchacho !" they screamed, in intense excite
ment. But Don Gil needed no such stimulus to do his utmost,
and Juanito could not afford to gratify his fair friends just
yet. His confidants chuckled behind their serapes. Three
more heats resulted in concursos, till the athlete's white
jaqueta became gray with dust and perspiration, while his
rival's shirt and skull-cap looked as dry as his demure
countenance. The circus-men put their heads together, and,
seeing the umpire getting uneasy, the mozo's friends whis
pered a word in his ear when he returned to the stand the
next time.
At the seventh heat Juanito let the gymnast forge ahead
till the contest seemed decided, when he suddenly flung his
cap down, went away like the wind, and won the race by
four or five yards, though Don Gil, seeing him come, had
finished with a magnificent spurt in the hope of saving his
lead. Shouts and vivas rent the air, for all Perote now
saw what the sachems had known long ago, — that their
14

214 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
champion was dallying with his antagonist in order to ex
haust his strength before the second match.
But the athlete had his revenge. After a rest of ten
minutes and a glass or two of pulque helado, the men stood
up to each other in front of the stage, and with a sudden
dodge Don Gil caught the youngster round the waist, and
was about to force him on his knees when the Peroters set
up a general shout of foul play, — " No espero el serial /"
The circus-man had not waited for the proper signal, but
grabbed his man unawares. The athlete grinned, and per
mitted his rival to regain his equilibrium, and then stood
still, waiting for the seiial. But Juanito was on his guard
this time, evaded the waist-grip and disengaged his neck
by screwing his head through, using his chin as a lever and
his nape and occiput as a sliding fulcrum. After trying in
vain to get a body-hold from below, Don Rivas changed
his tactics and complicated his evolutions by feints and an
aggressive use of his knees; but Master Juan could not
be tripped, and repaid his adversary's thrusts by butting
his stomach. During the first six rounds Rivas had no
fair chance to bring his superior strength into play : the
mozo's head proved untenable, and he obviated all attempts
at his waist by a movement which French wrestlers call
garde d coude, — elbow-parrying. His chin-and-nape trick
seemed to answer a variety of emergencies, and he might
have succeeded in protracting the match beyond the regula
tion time of forty minutes if his long impunity had not
betrayed him into occasional offensive manoeuvres. Stim
ulated by the applause of his countrymen, and perhaps by
an injudicious suggestion of his second, he changed his
position before the seventh round, and at the word " Va !"
had his man round the leg, and attempted to trip him by
jerking his foot up and throwing himself back with his full

LA TIERRA FRIA. 215
weight. Catch as catch can, strike where you please, but
don't kick, is the rule of the Mexican wrestling-ring.
Don Gil seemed to yield, but in stumbling forward bore
down upon his aggressor in a way that obliged him to
clutch his arm in order to save himself from an underfall.
In the next moment he had him round the waist, and, dis
engaging his right arm with a sudden wrench, he bent the
mozo backward till his knee-joints gave way, and in spite
of his desperate writhing and plunging the youngster was
prostrated on his native soil in front of his black-eyed
inamoratas. That made them even, and the possession of the ten onzas
now depended on the result of the third match — echar lan-
zas, javelin-throwing — an exercise which the six lancer regi
ments of the regular army and the use of the hunting-spear
among the half-savage Indians have made very popular in
Mexico. The target was the skull of a goat stuck on a
short pole — distance, sixty yards. By agreement of the
seconds the athlete used a short heavy spear of polished
boxwood, while the mozo preferred the government regu
lation lance, which had won him weekly victories on the
parade-ground of the castillo. Their proficiency in the use
of these archaic implements would have won the applause
of a Turkestan robber-knight and thrown Maurice Thomp
son into ecstasies.
The mozo's friends were confident of victory, and even
his former rivals, the soldiers of the garrison, cheered up
roariously when he knocked the target down at the first
throw. But the frontiersman showed that he had not lived
among the Comanches in vain, for at the end of the first
two rounds each lanzero had scored one square hit and one
" graze," and when the attendant chulos returned them their
missiles the spectators leaped from their seats and crowded

216 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
to the front with utter disregard of civil rights and female
privileges. The ring-master vociferated, girls clambered
on the shoulders of their gallants, and even the priests and
foreign residents were in a state of fierce excitement. Jua
nito declined the first throw, so did his rival ; but before
the seconds had found their dice-box Don Gil had changed
his mind and stepped to the front, spear in hand, with the
sangfroid of an old stager.
His javelin touched but failed to stir the target, and the
silence became breathless when the mozo squared himself
for the decisive throw. He paused on hearing his name
called : his second had seen his arm tremble, made his way
through the crowd with a bottle of aguardiente, and offered
him a glass por darlefirmeza — to steady himself if his nerves
should be in need of it. But Juanito, smarting under the
sting of his late defeat, declined the offer with an impatient
gesture, and again poised his lance. His hand trembled
visibly, and once more his second challenged him, but before
any one could interfere he leaned back and let drive.
The lance darted through the air with an audible whizz,
a little too high, as it seemed, but coming down in a flat
curve it struck the jawbone of the strange target fair and
square. The skull spun round like a top, and when it fell
the men of Perote rushed upon their champion like a crew
of Sumatra pirates, snatched him up and dragged him away :
regardless of his modest protests, of the shower of bouquets
and the pouting of disappointed lips, they rushed him off to
the rear of the circus-tent, where the manager had left a
splendid roan stallion as security for the payment of the ten
onzas, and amidst shouts that were echoed by the cliffs of
the Sierra Madre they lifted him up and upon the horse,
which, though wild with terror, could not stir a leg in the
crowd that pressed around it in a compact mass. " Did he

LA TIERRA FRIA. 217
like the horse? Would he prefer it to the cash?" The
owner valued it at twenty-five onzas, but the collection was
taken up in a minute, and the multitude surged back, drag
ging horse and rider along till they stopped in front of the
stage, where they surrendered their victim to the mad mu-
chachas. The population of Perote and Tresmontes was crowded
together within a space of forty yards around the stage —
merchants, muleteers, priests and soldiers — in a confused
mass, all shrieking and gesticulating like Donnybrookers,
laughing, bragging, and cheering, and shaking hands with
all the friends and relatives of the victor.
A troop of ragged Indians that had come from the moun
tains at the northern border of the comarca were standing
together in the rear rank, and the enthusiasm of the poor
devils gave me an idea what the rapture of gymnastic com
petition must have been in a country where every male adult
was an athlete at a time when men did not think it neces
sary to despise earthly things for the love of heaven.
The sages of that time inclined to the view that this world
has been created for ite own sake — nay, that it might just
be possible to enjoy paradise on this side of the grave — and
our system of ethics takes alarm at the mere mention of such
heresies; but we have begun to rediscover a truth which
was familiar enough to those Nature-taught heathens —
namely, that the highest moral and physical well-being
cannot be attained separately, but must go hand in hand,
like thought and action, or will and force ; and I hope that
the time will come when every school-house shall have its
gymnasium and every village its arena, for only then can we
celebrate our recovery from the Semitic pest, which has
turned our proudest forests into deserts and our noblest men
into monks. The ancient Greeks reckoned their dates from

218 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
the institution of the Olympic festivals, and their re-estab
lishment would indeed mark a new era in the history of a
world which had so long forgotten that God is the Creator
of our bodies as well as of our souls.
What nation will inaugurate that revival ?

CHAPTER VII.
THE VALLEY OF OAXACA.
Mariners who reach this strand
Will renounce their native land.
Tasso: L'Orto d'Armida.
The most enviable homesteads on earth are generally
supposed to be the suburban villas of some Eastern capitals,
whose environs have been reclaimed by Nature, and thus
combine the peace and the verdure of a rustic solitude with
the opportunities of a great commercial metropolis, as the
gardens of Castellamare near Naples, or the Val d'Arno,
which Chateaubriand calls an " Arcadian faubourg, and for
the abode of an independent human being the most desira
ble site." But that claim might be disputed by some of
the mountain-regions of our continent, which enjoy the
abundance of the tropics together with the immunities of a
higher latitude, and compensate their inhabitants for the
absence of a few artificial luxuries by a lavish and gratui
tous supply of their daily natural wants.
The happiest situation of this kind is perhaps that of the
terrace-land which the agents of Maximilian selected for
the reservation of a Swiss colony on the heights of a plateau
that overlooks the incomparable Valley of Oaxaca. The
Rio Verde, which drains this valley, empties into the Pacific
near the upper isthmus of our continent. Eight hundred
miles northwest of torrid Panama the American mainland
contracts to one-fiftieth of ite breadth between Baltimore
and San Francisco, and the traveller who disembarks at
219

220

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

Alvarado, on the Gulf
of Mexico, can reach
the Pacific coast after
a leisurely ride of two
or three days. The
climate, therefore, is
insular, the sun of
South Mexico tem
pered by the breezes
of two oceans, while
the excessive moisture
is moderated by the elevation of the central plateau. West
and southwest of the isthmus and along the spurs of the
Sierra Madre the lowlands of Tehuantepec spread their
swamps around, and the lower forty miles of the Rio Verde
lead through the depths of a forest-region whose annual

FALLS OF THE RIO VERDE.

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 221
rainfall exceeds seventy inches, and whose exuberance of
animal and vegetable life would make it a Garden of Ava-
lon if mosquitoes and perennial thunderstorms were com
patible with an abode of the blest ; but within easy reach
of this wonderland of tropical marvels and treasures the
Llanos Ventosos, or "Wind Plains," of the Sierra de San
Miguel rival the summer climate of the Maritime Alps,
and derive their moisture-supply less from the clouds than
from the dew of the cool, clear nights and the unfailing
springs of the Central Sierra.
I crossed this region in the summer of 1876, in the midst
of the rainy season, and was astonished at the contrast of the
cloudless heights with the reeking atmosphere of the Tierra
Caliente, whose mists and showers were even then confined
to the lower two thousand feet, the undulating plains and
the slopes of the foot-hills, while all above was serene and
dry as an October day in the southern Apennines. From
the cliffs of the Llanos Ventosos the wanderer looks down
upon an ocean of clouds and driving fog, which boils up
from a thousand valleys and far-stretching coast-forests, and
often submerges the island-like summits of the foot-hills;
but if the spray of the misty sea should sprinkle the rocks
at his feet, he may ascend to higher and drier ground, as
the rambler on a rocky beach retreats from the rising tide.
Hazy white cloudlets drift over the surging fog, gloomy
vapors bulge up from the jungles and stand like looming
hills on the horizon, and in August and September this
cloud-panorama seems often as immeasurable as the azure
vault above, but its upper limits are always clearly defined,
and while the sun remains above the horizon the peaks of
the Sierra de San Miguel are rarely dimmed by a shadow.
Our steamer left Acapulco in a thick squall, and all along
the coast from Cape Lopez to Tehuantepec the land was

222 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
veiled by a shroud of rain-clouds till toward sunset, when
the horizon partly cleared, and between the gray-green
coast-hills the vapor could be seen rising from the valleys
as the white steam from our boiler-valves ; but far beyond
the coast, beyond the cloud-bank and beyond the horizon
itself, the blue heights of the Sierra Madre stood revealed
like the aerial forms of another world. When the setting
sun gilded their crests the effect was strange indeed — a
long-stretched, sombre fog-bank crowned with gleaming
pinnacles, mountain-capt clouds instead of cloud-capt moun
tains. We reached the offing of Tehuantepec at ten o'clock on
the following morning, and, as the mail-skiff of our steamer
looked rather overloaded, I stayed behind and asked them
to engage a shore-yawl. The weather was oppressively
sultry, and when our engines ceased to puff we heard the
growl of an approaching thunderstorm. Before the boats
returned the coast wind spattered the deck with big drops
of rain, but my baggage was handed down as soon as the
yawl came alongside, and I had to follow. Two minutes
after, the squall broke upon us with a torrent of rain and
spray that drenched me to the skin in less than ten seconds.
Our outrigger was torn into shreds, the boatmen crouched
under the thwarts, denouncing the shortcomings of their
patron saint in the most unequivocal terms, and for more
than twenty minutes we were unable to face the storm. At
length, taking advantage of the varying wind, we readjusted
the remnants of our jib-sheet, and managed to reach the pier,
as wet as if we had come up from the bottom of the Pacific.
I went to the agency of the Tabasco mail-coach, and,
finding doors and shutters closed, inquired for the alcalderia,
the city mayor's office. My business being semi-official,
the deputy alcalde put his "house and services at my dis-

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 223
position," but warned me that I should have to prepare for
some delay, as no conveyance of any kind had crossed the
flooded Tierra Caliente for the last ten days, and there was
no saying if the diligencia would resume its regular trips
before the end of the month. But further inquiry elicited
the fact that the Trans- Continental Stage Company still
despatched a weekly coach from San Miguel in the Sierra
Madre, which might possibly be reached by taking a coast-
boat to Guatalco, from where the trails through the Tierra
Caliente were less subaqueous than in the immediate neigh
borhood of Tehuantepec. I could not learn the precise
day on which the stage would leave ite present western
terminus, but I preferred to wait in the Sierra Madre, where
a delay of a few days would give me a long-desired oppor
tunity of visiting the Swiss settlement near San Miguel.
Guatalco is nothing but a wharf with a few abandoned
harbor-sheds, so I was advised to engage a guide and carrier
at Tehuantepec. The latter was soon found, but the few
professional caminadors ("way-makers") of the little town
confessed their ignorance of the Guatalco trail, and disin
terested parties, as well as my landlord, assured me that I
had better rent a week-room and wait for the next diligencia
or mule-caravan than tempt the dangers of an unknown
road in the worst week of the rainy season.
I was on the point of adopting their plan when I learned
that a Swiss colonist, who had been involved in a suit before
the probate court, was still boarding at one of the down
town posadas. He proved to be familiar with a quite
practicable trail, and very anxious to return if he could
come to terms with the authorities. It appeared that the
son of a Swiss ranchero at San Miguel had been apprenticed
to a Tehuantepec harness-saddler, and when, after the death
of his father, his mother sent one of her neighbors to bring

224 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
her son home, the saddler stuck to the terms of the inden
ture and refused to let him go. After a private interview
with the artificer in leather and iron, I went to the mayor's
office, and the old Switzer nearly dislocated my wrist when
I informed him that the alcalde had compounded the
difficulty. It had rained day and night for the last forty-eight hours,
but we hired a boat on the same forenoon, and before dark
reached Guatalco, where we encamped in one of the open
sheds and dried our clothes before a roaring fire of shingles
and pitch-buckets. After dark ite glare was reflected from
the dense drizzling fog as from a screen, but my Mexican
carrier assured us that such weather could not last much
longer, even in the wettest season. Three days of uninter
rupted rain was about the maximum, he said, and this night
would wind it up. Yet the next morning dawned late and
chilly, and the monotonous patter on the shingle roof of
our shed still continued. Hadn't we better stay and build
another fire?
No, said the Switzer : if the rain would not leave us, we
could leave the rain : a four hours' march inland and up
ward would bring us to a different climate. Vorwarte !
My carrier had been right, though. We had a glimpse
of the sun before we finished our short breakfast, and when
we plunged into the maze of the forest the occasional vistas
through the leafy vault revealed larger and larger patches
of bright blue sky. Our so-called road, however, was
worse than anything I had ever seen or heard of Flemish
or South Louisiana synonymes of that word — miry lagoons
and spongy mud as black and as sticky as pitch. I followed
at the heels of my carrier, who preferred the lagoons and
seemed to find the shallow places by a sort of instinct, and
the Switzer managed to propel his heavy boots through the

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 225
toughest quagmire ; but his boy, after losing his shoes five
or six times, slung them across his shoulder and splashed
on barefoot. We kept through a comparatively open forest
of cottonwood- and tulip-trees, with a dense jungle on our
right-hand side, while on our left the land" sloped toward
the bottom of the Rio Verde, which is here about five
hundred paces wide, and during the rainy season fills ite
muddy banks to the brink.
These lower coast-forests abound in gigantic trees, whose
fruits are only accessible to the winged and four-handed
denizens of the forest, but farther up the river-shores are
lined for miles with a dense growth of wild-growing plan
tains, of which the natives distinguish four varieties under
as many different names. The fruit of the largest, the
cuernavacas (" cow-horns"), attains a weight of seven pounds,
and resembles in shape the crooked pod of the tamarind
rather than the cucumber-shaped little bananas which
reach our Northern markets. They ripen very slowly, and
often rot on the tree before they become eatable, but the
Mexicans cure them over a slow fire of embers and green
brushwood, after which their taste can hardly be distin
guished from that of the finest yellow bananas. Palm-
trees mingle here with the massive stems of the cottonwoods,
talipot palms and the palma prieta, whose nut might become
a profitable article of export, having a close resemblance to
a filbert. The plum-clusters of the mango can only be
reached by a bold climber, as the trunk rises like a mast,
often perfectly free from branches for eighty or ninety feet,
and the chief beneficiaries of this region are still the macaws
and squirrel-monkeys; but farther up Pomona becomes
more condescending, and the ancient Gymnosophists, whose
religion restricted true believers to a diet of wild-growing
tree-fruits, would have found their fittest home in the

226 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
terrace-land between the lower twenty miles of the Rio
Verde and the foot-hills of the Sierra de San Miguel.
Plum-bearing bushes abound from June to September with
red, yellow, and wax-colored fruit; the mora, or wild mul
berry-tree, literally covers the ground with ite dark, honey-
sweet berries ; the crown of the pifio palm is loaded with
grape-like clusters, which, struck by a cudgel, discharge a
shower of rich acorn-shaped nuts; guavas, alligator-pears,
mamayos, chirimoyas, and wild oranges display flowers and
fruit at the same time, and under the alternate influence of
heat and moisture produce their perennial crops with un
failing regularity ; the algarobe (Mimosa dliqua), a species
of mezquite not larger than an apple-tree, yields half a ton
of the edible pods known as carob-beans or St. John's
bread; the figs of the gigantic banyan-tree furnish an
aromatic syrup; the trunks of the Robinia viridis exude an
edible gum ; and from the vine-tangle forming the vault
of the forest hang the bunches and clusters of forty or fifty
varieties of wild grapes, many of them superior to our
scuppernongs and catawbas, while the amber-colored uva
real rivals the flavor of the finest Damascene raisin-grapes.
A forced march of ten hours through fens and silent
virgin woods brought us at last to the hummock region :
the plain swelled into mounds and the currents of the slug
gish bayous became more perceptible. The higher levels
showed vestiges of cultivation : we crossed dikes and ditches,
a neglected fence here and there ; and where the larger trees
had been felled grapes and liana figs covered even the
-bushes and hedges in incredible profusion. A troop of
capuchin-monkeys leaped from a low mango-tree, and two
stumbling youngsters who brought up the rear in the scram
ble for the high timber would have tempted us to a chase
if we had not been anxious to reach less malarious quarters

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 227
before night. The neighborhood of the great swamps still
betrayed itself by that peculiar miasmatic odor which ema
nates from stagnant pools and decaying vegetable matter,
and in the recesses of the forest fluttered the slate-colored
swamp-moth, the ominous harbinger of the mosquito. The
tipulary pests were getting ready for action : their skir
mishers, the sancudos and moscas negras, had already opened
the campaign, and became sensible as well as audible in
spite of the rapidity of our march. One of the twilight
species, the mosca delgada, a straw-colored little midge,
bites like a fire-ant, — a mischievous, and, it seems, unprac
tical, freak of Nature, since the superfluous virulence of its
sting must certainly interfere with the business facilities of
a suctorial insect.
" Halloo ! here is the corduroy road : we are near the
Casa Blanca now," cried the boy, who trotted ahead of us
wherever the thickets were not too cruelly matted.
" A hacienda, I suppose ? Couldn't we get there before
night?" " Yes, a fine country-seat — Mr. Lacerda's place," said
the senior Switzer : " there is land belonging to it all the
way up to San Miguel. Still, I would advise you to give
the casa a wide berth. The owner is on his last legs, drop
sical and decrepit, and the place is now bossed by a set of
scandalous shrews. Miss Nancy Lacerda and her mother
were up in our village last year, and my uncle Fritz lodged
them in his parlor and treated them to the best his place
affords, — anyhow, never charged them a cent, I am sure, —
and how do you think they paid us ? By ridiculing" his
poor old Swiss jacket and slandering our girls for not wear
ing rebosds" (a veil-like head-dress). " Confound their
tongues ! No, no : I would rather sit in the stocks all night
than trust myself in that den of venomous vixens."

228 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Seeing I looked disappointed, " Never mind," said he,
" I'll get you to a fine trapiche — a cotton-gin — before night :
none of your tumbledown remolinas, but a mill with a
strong roof and planed floors, all in good order except the
machinery. It was built by a man from Texas, who bought
land in this bottom twelve years ago, but was gone before
we came here. ' The rancho of the crazy American,' they
used to call the place. He couldn't agree with his neigh
bors, they say, and hedged his place in, threatening to shoot
any one at sight who should dare to cross his fence. No
doubt we should hear a different tale if we could see the
man himself."
" No mosquitoes there, I hope ?"
" No, not in the loft. That's the best of it ; they never
bother you in a high, open building, unless there are higher
trees close by — maybe on account of the draught, for a good
breeze blows them away like smoke, you know. The Greas
ers say they never go higher than twenty feet above the
level ground, because the upper air belongs to St. Hubert,
who does not tolerate witches and gnats in his depart
ment." The evening mist rose from the saturated ground and the
woods began to darken. " Dios mio I" grunted the car
rier, slapping his neck left and right : " ya vienen — we are
in for it: here they come."
Yes, they were upon us : the nocturnal host of the Fly-
god was in the field, and a humming cloud of invisible pur
suers tracked our march like the ghost of a bloodhound.
We kept on through bushes and brambles, across anthills
and fallen trees, till the boy was getting blown and foot
sore, but when we tried to rest, sitting or standing, the
whining falsetto of the little vampires increased rapidly to
a fierce buzz that soon made us take to our heels again.

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 229
Our guide, who had pressed forward in silent haste, began
to peer around in a way that made me a little uneasy till a
full hour after sunset, when we stumbled upon a bramble-
covered clearing, and a regular Appenzell view-halloo
whoop reassured my mind : " Z'Gott, Herr Landsman, we
found him ! Now for the trapiche !"
The cotton-gin loomed at the farther end of the field,
and was taken by storm over piles of muck and scattered
fence-rails. Seeing no ladder, we clambered through the
pivot-hole in the ceiling of a musty-smelling machine-shed,
but in the open loft above we found a delicious breeze, and
— St. Hubert be praised ! — not a single mosquito.
The carrier threw himself upon his pack with a sigh of
relief, and we squatted around the hatch to cool off before
we opened our mess-bag.
From the hills on our right came the perfume of bloom
ing tamarisks, and from the jungle below a cool lake air,
and at times strange voices of the wilderness — the hoarse
bark of a cayman, answered by the shriek of swamp-geese
in the canebrakes of the Rio Verde, and in the distance
now and then a queer rustling sound, like the shaking of a
tree butted by some heavy animal. Bats were circling
above our heads in the moonlight, and our advent seemed
to have excited the curiosity of a troop of flying squirrels,
who uttered their chirping squeak now on the roof, now in
the branches of a neighboring live-oak tree. After re
moving a layer of seed cotton that might harbor scorpions
or centipedes, I spread my blanket near the hatch and made
myself comfortable for the night. My feet still smarted,
though I had pulled off my stockings as well as my boots ;
yet I could not regret the hardships of a march which had
brought us to such an encampment. The portador was
taking his ease in the centre of the floor, where the night
15

230 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
wind played with his long hair, while the Swiss boy had
fallen asleep on the mantle of his countryman, who was
sitting in the open louvre, smoking his pipe in measureless
content. The air up here was delightfully cool, and with
the buzz of the legions of Beelzebub still ringing in our
ears the sense of security itself was more than a negative
comfort. Baron Savarin, who wrote a treatise on the art of enjoy
ing life, should have added a chapter on the happiness 6f
contrast. A snug cottage in a stormy November night, a
shade-tree on the Llano Estacado, the silence of the upper
Alleghanies after a " revival-meeting" in the valleys, a bath
in the dog-days, would rank above all the luxuries of Paris
and Stamboul if unbought enjoyments could ever become
fashionable. The moon set soon after midnight, but we managed to
readjust our luggage by the light of greased paper-spills,
and entered the gates of the foot-hills before the watch -call
of the nighthawk had been silenced by the reveille of the
iris-crows. A keen land-breeze, tumbling the mists through
the fens of the Tierra Caliente, gave promise of a bright
day. What wonderful perfumes the morning wind brews
from the atmosphere of a moist tropical forest-land! —
scents that haunt the memory more persistently than the
echo of a weird song. No latter-day nose could analyze
these odors and trace them to their several sources ; but,
with or without an attempt at further classification, they
might be primarily divided into sweet, and pungent aro
matic smells, the latter prevailing in the coast-jungles, the
former in the mountain-forests. A few of the first named,
the spicy scents, are so peculiar that, once identified, they
can be easily recognized : here, for instance, the effluvium
of the musk lianas, whose flowers diffuse a sort of odorous

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 231
diapason, which predominates even through the bouquet-
medley of the South Mexican flora.
As the white streaks in the east assumed a yellowish
tint, the paroquets in the creste of the pifio palms saluted
the morning with sudden screams; the multitudinous
voices of a crow-swarm approached from the coast-forests ;
two and two, and in a series of pairs, the macaws came
flying across the sky ; and in our near neighborhood the
startling cry of the chachalaca, or jungle-pheasant, went
up from an hibiscus-thicket. Softly first, then louder and
louder, the calanda, the mocking-bird of the tropics, in
tonated ite morning hymn, and the fluting curlew rose from
the grass like a skylark ; but a sweeter sound to our ears
was the murmuring of a little brook at the roadside : we
had reached the region of rocks and swift-flowing waters.
Of reptiles, as of Red Republicans, it may be said that
they are least dreaded in the countries where they most
abound. While a New England boarding-school virgin
goes into epileptic spasms at the aspect of a blindworm, the
young Mexicanas surround themselves with a variety of
ophidian pets, and view a freckled tree-snake and a gay
butterfly with equal pleasure or equal unconcern. A little
barefoot girl that met us on her way to the spring, put her
toes caressingly on the smooth hide of a green-and-white
speckled vivora mansa that wriggled across the road ; and
our barelegged portador kicked dozens of good-sized bush-
snakes out of our path after noticing that they frightened
our young travelling companion. More than ninety per
cent, of all South American snakes are as harmless as
lizards, and the four or five venomous varieties are well
known and easily avoided.
I will here add a word on the dreaded venomous insects
of the tropics. The ant and mosquito plagues of the coast-

232

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

:wm.

JUNGLES OF THE RIO VERDE.

jungles can hardly be overestimated, but the virulence of
their larger congeners is frequently and grossly exaggerated.
The chief insect-ogres of sensation romancers and fireside
travellers are three : the scorpion, the tarantula, and the
centipede, either of whom can rival the homicidal prestige
of Victor Hugo's octopus. But I may confidently appeal
to the verdict of any personal observer who has passed a
few years in the African or American tropics when I assert
that these supposed express-messengers of Death are not
more venomous, and are far less aggressive, than our com
mon North American hornet. I doubt if the sting of

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 233
twenty tarantulas could cause the death of a healthy
child, and I am quite sure that a poison-ivy blister and
the bite of a fire-ant are more painful than the sting of a
centipede. An hysterical lady may succumb to the bite of
a common gadfly, but I hold that only co-operative insects
— termites, wasps, humblebees, etc. — could ever make away
with a normally-constituted human being.
A swarm of vociferous iris-crows appeared in the sky
overhead, and before they had passed the woods were wide
awake all around. The humming-birds were on the wing,
the wood-pigeons repeated their murmuring call in the
taxus-groves, and from the lower depths of the forest came
the chattering scream of a squirrel-monkey. The rising
sun was hidden by the tree-tops of the eastern valleys when
we halted on the summit of a rocky bluff, but the mountain-
mists had disappeared, and the vistas on our left afforded a
dazzling view of the sun-lit foot-hills and the valley of the
Rio Verde. The river is here crossed by a rope-ferry a
little above its junction with a tributary that drains the
glorious valley of Morillo and an Alpine group whose
wooded heights stand in my memory like a vision of Gana-
desha, the mountain-park of Indra's Paradise.
The air of these woodlands is the antithesis of our
Northern workshop atmosphere. There is a feeling of de
light — our lost sixth sense, I am tempted to call it — which
gratifies the lungs rather than the olfactory organ if you
inhale the morning breezes, oxidated, and perhaps ozonized,
by the first influence of sunlight on the aromatic vegetation
of these hills — a delight which, like the charm of harmo
nious sounds, reacts on the soul, and awakens emotions
which have lain dormant in the human breast since we
exchanged the air of our Summer land home for the dust
of our hyperborean tenement-prisons.

234 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
The hum of insects soon mingled with the bird-voices of
our forest. To and fro, in fitful flight, flashed the UbeUas,
the glitter-winged dragon-flies, and a few large papilios
flopped lazily through the dew-drenched foliage. No gnats
up here, but thousands of tiny, honey-seeking wasps and
midges, and bright-winged grasshoppers that rose with a
fluttering spring when the first sunbeams reached the damp
underbrush. Ants hurried about their daily toil, and when
we ascended the next ridge we saw various kinds of lizards
flitting across the road or basking on the wayside rocks,
one of them a sort of dwarf iguana, of a moss-green tint,
on which protective color it seemed to rely for its safety, as
ite movements were as sluggish as those of a toad.
As we kept steadily uphill, the sun seemed to mount
very rapidly, and, peak after peak, the summits of the
upper sierra rose into view. Zempantepec, La Sirena, and
the Nevado de Colcoyan towered above the rest, the latter
at least four thousand feet above the snow-line. Few pros
pects on earth could efface the impression of that panorama.
In the Sierra de San Miguel our continent reproduces the
Syrian Lebanon on a grander scale. Septimus Severus,
who vacillated between his throne and the Elysian valleys
of Daphne, would have renounced the empire of the world
for the mountain-gardens of the Val de Morillo, and the
giants of the cypress forests on the southeastern slope of
the sierra dwarf all the cedars of Bashan and Hebron.
The largest, though not the tallest, of these trees, the cy
press of Maria del Tule (twelve miles south of San Miguel),
which Humboldt calls the " oldest vegetable monument of
our globe," has a diameter of forty-two feet,* a circum-
* The celebrated "cypress of Montezuma," near the Mexican
capital, measures only thirty-eight feet in circumference. — Vide
Humboldt's "Views of Nature," p. 289, n. 12.

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA.

235

ference of one hundred and thirty-six feet near the ground
and of one hundred and four six feet higher up, and

CYPRESS OF MARIA DEL TULE.

measures two hundred and eighty-two feet between the ex
tremities of two opposite branches. Yet this tree has many
rivals in the Val de Morillo and near the sources of the
Rio Verde, where groups of grayish-green mountain-firs
rise like hillocks above the surrounding vegetation.
On our right extended the orange-gardens of Casa
Blanca for two miles along the base of the hill to a deep
ravine, reappearing on the other side, where their white-
blooming tree-tops mingled with the copses of a banana-
plantation. Farther up, euphorbias and hibiscus prevailed,
and the upper limit of the foot-hills is marked by the paler
green of the cork-oak forests that cover the slopes of the
sierra proper. In the northeast this sierra becomes linked
with the ramifications of the central Cordilleras, and con
nected with our ridge by one of the densely-wooded spurs
that flank the plateau of the Llanos Ventosos. The rocks

236 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
at our feet belonged therefore to a mountain-chain that
might be called a lineal continuation of the Gila range in
Arizona and Nueva Leon. But what a difference in the
climate and scenery ! There, arid rocks and thorny ravines;
here, dense mountain-forests, deep rivers, a saturated atmos
phere, and springs on almost every acre of ground. The
very brambles in the rock-clefts were fresh with dew, and
the sprouts of the broomfurze looked like wildering aspar
agus. The ravines flamed with flowers of every size and
every hue. An agent of a London or Hamburg curiosity-
dealer might make his living here with a common butterfly-
net. On any sunny forenoon an active boy could gather a
stock of Lepidoptera that would create a bonanza sensation
among the collectors of a North European capital: the
rhododendron thickets of the upper Rio Verde are fre
quented by gigantic varieties of Nymphalis, Vanessa, and
Parnasdus which would retail in Brussels at from two to
ten dollars apiece.
The sun rose higher, but not the thermometer, and when
we clambered up through an orchard of scattered cherry-
trees I am sure that the maximum temperature in the shade
did not exceed sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. We had
reached the Llanos Ventosos, the air-plains of San Miguel,
the playground of the four winds of heaven, where sun
strokes are unknown, though the mists of the rainy season
never cloud their deep-blue sky. Down in the coast-jungles
the Rain-fiend was at it again : dark-gray showers swept
visibly along the shore, while the foot-hills simmered under
the rays of a vertical sun. But up here the air was dry as
well as cool : the edge of the plateau is at least six thousand
feet above the level of the Pacific, which is in plain view
from Punta Piedra to the downs of Tehuantepec.
We entered the village about two p.m., and my compan-

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 237
ions conducted me to a little frame house, where I was
hospitably received by the Indian gardener and the daugh
ters of Pastor Wenck, the minister of the Protestant part
of the community, whose brother in Tehuantepec had en
trusted me with different letters, with a note of introduction.
The pastor had harnessed his mule an hour ago to get a
load of Spanish moss from the foot-hills; so I left my
carrier in charge of the Indian gardener and sauntered out
into the village.
Neubern (New Bern) de San Miguel — or Villa Cresciente,
as it was originally called from its situation on a crescent-
shaped bluff — was founded in 1865 under the happiest
auspices, the charter of the colony including such induce
ments as exemption from taxes for the first five years, free
roads and schools, gratuitous seed-corn, farming implements,
etc., to indigent immigrants, and attracted a considerable
number of the very best agriculturists from Tyrol and
Southern Switzerland. But after the collapse of the impe
rial government a waning moon would have been the fitter
emblem of the Crescent Village : its privileges were abro
gated, and many of the disappointed Bauern returned to
their native countries. Still, the appointment of a few
half-Indian officials is the only positive grievance of the
colonists, and the advantages of their climate and situation
might well reconcile them to greater inconveniences.
At a distance of only sixteen degrees from the equator,
the average temperature of the coldest and warmest months
differs less than spring and summer in the United States, so
that the September weather of Geneva or Innspruck is here
as perennial as a sea-fog in Newfoundland. During a res
idence of seven years Pastor Wenck has chronicled four
thunderstorms, twenty-two common storms, two hoar-frosts
(both in November), one sultry day, and two hundred and

238 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
eight short showers, leaving a balance of two thousand two
hundred and ninety-two days of himmelswetter — heaven-
weather — as he called it, alternating with cool nighte whose
dew indemnifies the fields for the scantiness of the annual
rainfall. Yet the denizens of this Himmel-land come in
for a first-hand share of all the luxuries which a compen
sating Nature has lavished on the inhabitants of the swel
tering Tierra Caliente.
Forty or fifty varieties of tropical fruits come to their
tables in a freshness and sun-ripened sweetness quite un
known to our Northern markets ; their builders may select
their material from groves of mahogany, iron-wood, Amer
ican ebony, greenheart, euphorbia, and other timber trees
of the coast-swamps; cacao, vanilla, gums, and frankincense
can be bought at half trade-prices, and an excursion of ten
miles will take them to a region where the pot-hunter can
fill his bag day after day without fear of ever exhausting
the meat-supply, where the adventurous sportsman may
try his luck and the mettle of his dogs, and where the
naturalist can revel in all the wonders of a tropical terra
incognita. At six p.m. Pastor Wenck returned with a cargo of
Spanish moss for mattresses and other domestic purposes, a
bundle of broom-brush, and the following little extras: a
rabbit, a six-pound cluster of yellow grapes, a handkerchief
full of rare orchids, a rhinoceros-beetle, a lot of wild yams,
and two swamp-turtles. He could have shot a hatch of
nest-pheasants, he said, if he had not been short of ammu
nition, for down in the foot-hills his dogs treed a young
puma, and he exhausted his shot-pouch in a vain attempt
to dislodge the little dodger. Venison was a drug in this
market, he told me : his Indian neighbors frequently offered
a fat cimaron (bighorn sheep), an agouti-antelope, or a brace

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA.

239

of turkeys for the privilege of using his carpenter tools or
hand-mill for a few minutes. Irish potatoes need a good
deal of hoeing and artificial irrigation, and fetch four reals
(forty-eight cents) per bushel, but most other vegetables are
as cheap as whortleberries in a Georgia swamp. As all
foreign residents agreed that pulmonary complaints are not
only rare, but quite unknown, on the Llanos Ventosos, the
following price-list may interest Northern invalids who
would like to try the Sierra de San Miguel for a winter or
two :

Rent, per month, of an unfurnished cottage

at Neubern

10 reals =-. 51.20

Indian boy of all work, per

day

3 medios = 18 cents

Saddle-horse,

"

2 reals = 24 L

Guide,
"
4 " =48 '
Milk, per quart .
1 medio = 6 '
Eggs, per score
1 real = 12 '
Pigeon-eggs, per score
1 medio = 6 '
Butter, per pound
3 medios = 18 '
Flour (wheat), per bushel
4 reals = 48 '
Flour (maize)
1 real = 12 '
Olive oil, per quart
3 medios = 18 '
Calmet-seed oil, per quart
1 medio = 6 '
Mutton, per pound
1 « = 6 '
Rabbits, per half score
4 reals = 48 '
Pigeons, " "
3 " =36 '
Turkeys, apiece
3 medios — 18 '
Pheasants, "
1 real = 12 '
Brown beans, per bushel
3 medios -=18 '
Lentils, "
5 reals = 60 '
Sweet potatoes, "
3 medios = 18 '
Brown sugar, per pound
1 medio = 6 '
Mangos (large plums), per
bushel
5 medios = 30 '
Grapes, best quality, '
'
5 " = 30 '
Oranges, '
i
3 reals = 36 '
Bananas, best,
'
3 medios = 18 '
Honey, per pound
1 medio = 6 '
240 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
The Valley of Oaxaca abounds in game; red deer, elk,
otters, turkeys, and pheasants can always be met in their
favorite haunts ; panthers, pumas, and three varieties of
bears frequent the jungles; and perfectly wild black cattle,
shyer than deer, are occasionally seen in the forests of the
foot-hills. Still-hunting and emboscados — lying in ambush
near the springs and salt-licks — are the favorite methods;
the great difficulty with hounds, besides the thickness of
the jungles, being the abundance of vermin, as an Arkansas
hunter would say — of small quadrupeds whose scent con
fuses all but the veteran finders. Mr. Wenck had a couple
of acclimatized deerhounds that would track a panther even
through the thickete of the Tierra Caliente and follow a
deer for days ; but the scent of a capuchin-monkey never
fails to throw them out : the peculiar rank odor of a goto
pardo, or palm-cat, seems also to have an irresistible attrac
tion for canine nostrils.
A species of stout chickenhawk is trained by the Oaxaca
Indians as falcons, and the hamlet of Villarica, near Ama-
tlan, is famous for ite bird-fanciers, among whom the
"gentil craft of gerfalconry" has been handed down, with
all its mysteries and by-laws, perhaps from the retainers of
one of the Spanish robber-knights who infested these
mountains in the sixteenth century. They train them to
catch pheasants and woodcocks, and even gazapos, or mule-
ear rabbits, on the upper table- lands ; and Mr. Wenck told
me about a half-breed falconer of the neighboring village
of Las Tunas who, with the aid of two co-operating hawks,
once filled an order for a dozen parrots in a single forenoon.
His birds captured nine macaws and twenty-two paroquets,
nineteen of them " rough-caught" — i.e. torn into pieces —
but of the rest seven were apparently uninjured, and five
at least in a salable condition.

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 241

INDIAN FALCONER.

I was obliged to decline the invitation of an American
speculator who had purchased a promising silver-mine in
the upper sierra, and wanted to show me his new hydraulic
rock-blaster ; but Mr. Wenck insisted that I must stay till
the next evening and see the festival of Santa Lucia at the
neighboring Dominican convent of Las Tunas.
The following morning my Swiss travelling-companion
from Tehuantepec lent me his saddle-horse, and the pastor
managed to pack his family of six children, together with
sundry baskets and boxes, into a two-wheeled cart padded
and cushioned with hay ; and, leaving the house in charge
of the Indian gardener, we proceeded in a northeasterly
direction on a tolerably good country road. After the vil
lage there was a long, gradual ascent of about a league,
with the deep valley of the Rio Verde constantly in view
on our left, while the rising hills on our right were covered
with woods and orchards. Wherever we passed a clearing
we got a glimpse of the snow-capped sierras in the north
east, and now and then of a glittering double peak a little
farther south, somewhere in the central sierras of Guate-

242 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
mala. After an hour or two of slow riding and lively
talk, Mr. Wenck drew up on a level plateau where the
road turned sharply to the left and downhill.
" If my eldest son shows any turn for business," said he,
" I shall buy him this land and a silk-culture outfit.
There are whole forests of wild-growing mulberry-trees in
the valleys all around, and with the summer climate of
Southern France it would be strange if we could not raise
all the silkworms we want. Labor 'is cheaper here than
in Languedoc, where food and winter-houses are a heavy
additional expense. In New Orleans raw silk brings five
dollars a pound : here I do not think that the producer's
expenses, including transportation to Vera Cruz, would
amount to fifty cents. I have a mind to try it myself if I
should ever resign my charge."
"So you have not lost faith in the prospects of the
colony ?" I asked.
" No, but I should stay for better or worse," said he.
" My relations in Lucerne want me to come home, but I
know that even in the valley of the Engadine I should be
haunted by a homesickness after this Switzerland of the
tropics." We stopped for dinner at Las Cascadas, the country-seat
of Captain Remely, a Tehuantepec merchant of German
descent. The house, built in 1810 by the Spanish governor
of Oaxaca, is charmingly situated near the lower falls of
the Rio Verde, and the present proprietor has turned a
portion of the old orchard into a botanical garden, with a
little Zoo, whose inhabitants, with few exceptions, run at
large like domesticated animals.
The irregular groups of tropical trees and flower-bushes
gave the garden a park-like appearance. There were huge
old taxus-trees, whose hollow branches were garrisoned by

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 243
swarms of paroquets : orange-groves, where sloths and
squirrel-monkeys could get free luncheon at all hours of
the day ; and a great variety of palms, many of which my
Swiss cicerone could only distinguish under their Spanish
names. The trunks of different tall cocoanut-trees were
almost overloaded with a tangle of luxuriant grapevines,
that hung like a mantle from a height of sixty feet to the
ground; and it struck me that viticulture would be as
profitable as the silk business in this valley.
"It has never been tried," said Mr. Wenck. "The
natives get all the fresh grapes they want out in the woods,
and only few of them are enterprising enough to sell them
in the form of raisins. They do not care much for grapes,
anyhow." "Don't they drink any wine?"
" Not often : they have other tipples. There is a dis
gusting kind of poison-herb growing in the swamps, —
dcuta they call it, a sort of water-hemlock, — and a simple
decoction of a handful of the fresh leaves is enough to in
toxicate the toughest toper. If you try it for the first time,
a spoonful is enough to make you seasick, and a glassful
might kill you ; but they, somehow, get used to it, and
prefer it to rum and pulque. I have often thought that
any poison may become a ' second nature' and a ' tonic ;'
and if a man must needs stimulate himself, he might as
well get his tipple in the next poison-swamp, instead of
buying it across the counter."
At least an inexpensive way of going to pot ; but, like
opium, cicuta seems to have the further advantage of in
ducing a peaceful kind of delirium, while hashish and
alcohol affect the temper as well as the senses.
The zoological department of the park comprised nearly
all the felines and quadrumana of Southern Mexico, be-

244 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
sides birds and a variety of reptiles and curious rodents.
If Mr. Remely's captives objected to their treatment, they
showed a strange want of enterprise, for the ring-fence that
enclosed the park was low and full of loopholes ; but I sus
pect that a congenial climate and a liberal food-supply
would reconcile most wild animals to a smaller and less
agreeable prison than a forty-acre lot of woods and orchards.

DON CARL'S PETS.

They seemed, indeed, to have made themselves at home,
agile squirrels, as well as sluggish water-hogs and defence
less monkeys, not less than the larger carnivora. A coyote
bitch suckled her litter of black-muzzled puppies under a
bush close to the main gravel-path, and the capuchin-
monkeys had multiplied till many of the young ones had
to be drowned like supernumerary kittens. Mr. Remely's
eldest son, a poor cripple of nineteen or twenty years, was

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 245
at present the only Caucasian inhabitant of the casa, and
could not enter the park in daylight without becoming the
centre of an excited group of four-handers and reptiles.
They wound around his crutch, clung to his legs, and
often impeded his progress so effectually that he had to
surrender at discretion, and wait on the next garden-bench
till the monos chicos had filched the last nut from his
pockets and the bear had satisfied himself that there would
be no meat for supper this evening. A young boa wound
around his waist when he showed me the she-bear's den,
and seemed to enjoy the warmth of his under-garments
like a nest-squirrel. But an old armadillo on a bundle of
reeds in the corner rolled himself up at our approach, and
contracted his body with the tenacity of a hedgehog.
" We have had this chap more than four years," said
Don Carl, " but I do not know if you will believe me if I
tell you that nobody ever saw him eat yet. The carrots
we leave near his couch disappear and his excrements ac
cumulate periodically, so we know that he does eat ; but,
like a grand Brahman, he conceals the act from all mortal
eyes. I believe he would starve to death if you would sit
up with a lantern and watch him."
Besides the capuchin- and squirrel-monkeys and a few
good-sized sapajous (Ateles paniscus), they had a large
coaita, or spider-monkey, from Guatemala, who seemed to
prefer the society of man to that of his hairier Darwinian
brethren. He approached us like a mendicant with out
stretched paw : the gardener, Don Carl told me, had taught
him to shake hands, and his notions of the efficacy of that
function were somewhat transcendental. Being a native of
the lower tropics, he was rather sensitive to cold, and on
rainy winter mornings used to crouch under the gateway
and shake hands with all visitors, as if to solicit their in-
16

246 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
terference in the obnoxious meteorological proceedings.
On the roof of a tool-shed we found a good-natured little
sloth, who permitted me to tickle his neck and turned over
on his back like a playful puppy, parrying my fingers with
his long claws. A sloth is indeed rather awkward than
sluggish : the peculiar formation of his limbs makes him
almost helpless on level ground, but on his native trees he
is active enough for all practical purposes, and an old cin
namon bear is a much fitter emblem of laziness. The one
in Mr. Remely's park used to squat at the foot of a shady
copper beech, embrace the trunk with his fore paws, and,
pressing his forehead against a projecting root, remain im
movable for hours together, brooding over dreamy me
mentos of the Tierra Fria, whose temperature enabled him
to prolong such blissful torpors for weeks and months.
Don Carl's gardener introduced me to an interesting little
pet, a gray lynx, with restless yellow eyes and an evident
penchant for practical jokes. They kept him in the open
tool-shed, and as we entered he turned his head with a
sudden interest in the construction of a patent lawn-mower
behind his couch. But as I approached, his right paw
stole out from under the hay, he humped his back and with
an abrupt spring alighted on my breast and had his paws
around my neck in a minute. The guffaw of the old Prus
sian guaranteed the peaceful intentions of my interviewer,
who cocked his head, and, with his left ear touching my
chin, eyed me in a serio-comical way that almost upset me
with laughing before I could get rid of him.
" I wonder how you can keep this little bouncer away
from your chickens and things," said I when I recovered
my breath, " if you leave his door open ?"
" God have mercy upon any of them if they touch my
chickens!" said the Prussian. "No, sir: I'm pretty safe

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 247
as far as that's concerned : they know I would skin them
alive. We had a young pointer pup that got into the
garden once in a while, and used to worry the pheasants,
but I cured him in just twenty-four hours."
" What did you do to him ?"
" Well, sir, I caught him on top of a lame old cock-
pheasant that I meant to kill anyhow ; so, instead of whip
ping the dog, I opened his jaws and crammed the cock in
as far as I could, and then tied a twelve-yard wash-line
around his muzzle, bird and all. With the rope I had
left I tied his four legs into a bunch and threw him out in
the hot sun. Chawing the bird only made matters worse
for him, for he bit through into its bowels, and with that
mess in his mouth he had to lie in the broiling sun for full
eight hours, all night and four hours the next morning, till
I released him a little before noon. I do not think he will
forget the day of the month. The mere sight of a pheasant
sets him galloping as if the devil were at his heels. I once
caught old Mr. Cinnamon nosing around a pen where we
kept a litter of young water-hogs, but I cured him by
sticking a pitchfork into his ribs whenever he came within
ten yards of that pen."
" No wonder you can ' cure' them, if you have a list of
such remedies."
" Yes, sir, you can break the most obstinate brutes of
almost anything if you just show them that you are in
downright earnest. I wasn't here two weeks before they
found out who was ringmaster of this circus. I can break
them of all their bad habits — -with one single exception, so
far as I know : no human power or ingenuity can cure
a capuchin-monkey of squealing if you take hold of him.
I tried it, and gave it up after killing about fifteen of
them."

248 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
"You did? They had reasons for squealing, then, I
should say."
" Yes, but I tried them with fair means too — coaxed
them, fondled them, let them starve and came up with my
hands full of tidbits, — all no use : they licked their chops,
but the moment I touched their starved carcasses the
squealing began. I grabbed some of them and choked
them till their eyes and tongues started out of their heads,
but the minute they got wind enough they used it for
squealing instead of breathing. There was no doubt of it
that they did know what I choked them for, but they would
rather die than live and not squeal."
" Don't you think an animal's bite is dangerous if you
torment it that way ?"
" Not a monkey's, sir ; but carnivorous brutes can give
you a dose of gangrene with a mere scratch. I think it's
the putrid flesh and stuff sticking to their claws and poi
soning your blood if they just rip your skin. But mon
keys are subject to hydrophobia, it seems. We had a case
of that kind a year ago with the mate of our big spider-
monkey. She was the best-natured creature in the lot, but
one morning she went tearing around the park like a wild
cat. It was some kind of a fit, we thought, but when we
were at dinner in the casa she rushed into the room and
upon my little poodle-dog, and bit him to death in less
than a minute. It struck us then that she must be mad ;
and I can tell you, sir, I wished that there had been more
than one door to that room or no wire-screen at the win
dows. She was crouching in the open door, ready to
spring, and we had no gun handy, and hardly knew what
to do. Don Carl turned as white as chalk, but didn't say
a word, and I was satisfied as long as he would not ask me
to put that monkey out. We saw then that Greasers are

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA

249

not all cowards. Our old mestizo woodchopper went around
the table and got a cider-jug in the opposite corner, swung
it up and walked towards the door with his teeth set. The
monkey did not seem to like his looks, and drew back a
little, maybe to brace herself for a spring ; but in the next
second the jug came down like an axe, and we had to own
our mistake if we had thought that hydrophobia was in
curable. Don Carl was puzzled for a new set of skull-
bones when he tried to stuff that monkey."

LIMESTONE CAVES OF THE
SIERRA HONDA.

There were four half-
grown panthers and five
very young pumas, who had all been captured in the rocks
of the Sierra Honda, whose limestone caves seem, indeed,
to be used as a lying-in establishment by all the female
carnivora of the isthmus mountains. The cavernous lime
stone crops out in a massive stratum at the head-waters of
the Tehuantepec River, and follows the ridge of the sierra
for more than twenty leagues to ite junction with the east-

250 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
ern Cordilleras. The whole intermediate mountain-range
abounds with unexplored caves, and must be actually honey
combed, if we are to believe the Indian tradition of a hid
den passage from Amatlan to Villalta, on the eastern slope,
by a continuous rock-tunnel, in whose lateral ramifications
the satraps of Montezuma concealed their treasures when
the Spaniards overran the province of Tehuantepec.
About four p.m. we remounted, and reached the convent
of Las Tunas an hour before sunset. At least two hundred
horses were haltered outside in a row, and, seeing nothing
but strange faces, Mr. Wenck drove through the lodge-gate
in the hope of meeting one of his village Indians or find
ing a place for his mule in the convent stables. The gate
posts, the veranda, and many trees were decorated with flags
and huge bouquets in honor of Santa Lucia, the convent's
patron saint and a far-famed adjutor of orthodox invalids.
The funcion was an annual festival, and it was hoped that
the liberality of the visitors would this time meet the ex
penses of a new corona and chaplet, of which, as a placard
near the contribution-box informed us, the saint was in
pressing need. A continual low tolling of the bells seemed
to ring out a standing invitation to the faithful, who, in
deed, had answered the summons in numbers which must
have been swelled by quotas from different adjoining
counties. The convent park was crowded with devotees and sight
seers ; the squaws of the Indian villages had mustered for
dress-parade; and noisy swarms of children on the grass
and in the trees gave the funcion somewhat of the mirth of
a Sunday-school picnic. My padre Abad had squeezed his
ample proportions into a garden-chair under a magnolia-
tree that rose from the centre of a round table as from a
flower-pot, and the shade of the lawn, with its hillocks of

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA. 251
fresh-mown hay and sprawling friars, seemed here so in
viting to our mule that she came to a full stop. Before
we could set her agoing the hospitable Dominicans had re
moved the tail-board of our cart, deposited our baskets and
buckets on the table and our youngsters on the garden-
bench. When I rejoined them after a stroll through the
park one of the padres had buttonholed Mr. Wenck about
the loan of an Appenzell rooster which he wished to enter
at the next Mitla cocking-main, while the abbot helped the
children of the heretical parson to open their lunch-basket
and trotted one of the flaxen-haired girls on his knee. He
complimented the pastor on the purity of his Spanish pro
nunciation, — muy singular por un estranjero, quite unique
in a foreigner, — urged him to address the assembly, pre
tending to scout his objections, and between his arguments
flirted with the young lady on his knee till she boxed his
ears. But when her little brother provoked a jeremiad
from paterfamilias by dropping the semi-fluid contents of
the butter-bowl on his coat, the old celibatist grinned, and
a sly twinkle of his roguish eyes made me fear that he
meditated a mischievous sally. The physiognomy of his
nose betrayed a penchant for sarcasm, and the opportunity
to indulge it might seem tempting, if not even recommended
by a sense of duty. But presently the grin gave way to
a good-natured smile : he had concluded to forbear — no
sufficient inducements to spoil an evening like this.
They expected a popular preacher from Mitla this even
ing, but in the mean while the assembly was indulged in a
soiree dansante and musical exercises, in which even the
choir-boys were permitted to join on condition that the
dances must be confined to rondos— strictly decorous roun
delays. Near the chapel, now ablaze with flowers and
flounces, the father kitchen-master had a little pavilion,

252 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
where he dispensed iced orangeade and dulces at a penny a
plate, and retailed a lot of splendid grapes for a mere song
— often in the literal sense, for the choir-boys repeatedly
filled their hate without asking his permission.
Some of the mozos outside fired off their musquetoons,
and when the moonlight broke through the tree-tops a troop
of Indians from Amatlan mounted the veranda and formed
a semicircle to make room for a gitana, a female vocalist,
who stepped to the front and sang "La Virgen del Pilar"
in a ringing contralto and with such electrifying pathos
that almost at the first notes the chatter was hushed all
around and the monks rose and stared at her in amazement
and admiration. An officious usher slipped around to ob
viate noisy demonstrations, but the applause could not be
wholly suppressed, and if she had repeated the song the
canonized queen of the festival might have found a dan
gerous rival.
A simple hacha azul — a blue torchlight fed with alum
and odorous gum — sufficed, however, to attract a large part
of the crowd to the opposite end of the park, and near the
lodge-gate the young bucks thronged around a " wigwam
swing," a stout rope terminating about eight feet from the
ground in a bunch of rings which could only be reached by
a lucky jump ; but after four or five athletes had got a good
hand-hold the light-weight champions clung to their legs,
and the bundle of yelling aeronauts was set agog by means
of a drag-rope. He who let go first had either to pay a
fine of a penny or assist in swinging the next batch. When
one of the bundles had dropped from simultaneous exhaus
tion, a young Catalan Hercules, the shepherd of the convent
farm, caught the two bottom rings at the first jump, and
offered a bet that he would hold as many men as could
hang on to his legs and arms directly or by proxy, with the

THE VALLEY OF OAXACA.

253

THE WIGWAM SWING.

sole proviso that the padre Vicario, a monastic Falstaff,
should be made to keep his hands off.
The convent church stands at the very edge of the
plateau, and from the lodge of the gatekeeper we could see
the lights of the city of Oaxaca, and farther back the long-
stretched cloud-belt of the Tierra Caliente, illuminated now
and then by a flash of sheet-lightning. But the peaks of
Colula on our left were glittering cold and clear in the pale
moonlight, and the zenith of our own table-land was as
cloudless as ever. In the intervals of the coast-lightnings
only the faint forest-perfume of the night wind suggested
the neighborhood of an ocean of tropical vegetation.
Torches and Chinese lanterns were now lighted in the
park and around the terrace of the main building, where
the choraliste had assembled after surrendering their pavilion

254 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
to the lady visitors. The presence of a number of well-
dressed mozos from Chimaltepec proved that the popularity
of the patron saint was not confined by the comarca limits ;
and, to judge by their frequent visits to the contribution-
box, Santa Lucia's chances for a new head-dress began to
brighten. But when the choir was reinforced by a guitar-
player from Amatlan, the enthusiasm of her devotees became
a trifle secular, and if the expected preacher had called the
meeting to order just then the vanity of all earthly things
would have been a rather unpopular text. Nobody inter
fered : the abbot himself clicked his plate like a Castanet,
and averted his attention with the utmost bonhomie if an
unmindful dancer happened to pass the boundary between
ronda and fandango by a step or two.
The true Semitic askesis can flourish only in a desert
country, where the idea of a better world to come is within
reach of our imagination, and where it is less difficult to
renounce an earth which, after all, might be — our only
chance. But here the very monks declined the risk of the
experiment. The " vale-of-tears" theory is untenable in
the Valley of Oaxaca.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DELTA OF THE SUMASINTA EIVER.
Here they are free: here they find shelter-places,
Beyond the reach of their remorseless foe.
Ruckkrt: The Children of Xntiire.
On the eastern slope of Mount Atlas there is a valley
which for many centuries has been the freehold of the Beni
Hammadin, a tribe of independent Arabs who boast that
Allah has built up their mountain-ramparts for the special
purpose of protecting their liberty against the ambition of
the padishah. Perhaps they are right, for it really seems
as if Providence had taken precautionary measures against
all plans of universal empire, since even the power of man
over the brute creation has been restricted within liberal
but probably unalterable boundaries. Earth will never be
all enslaved. No diver has yet invaded the algse-pastures
of the northernmost ocean, and no hunters will ever follow
the white bear to the Ultima Thule of his arctic domain
nor molest his black brother in the depth of the tropical
coast-jungles. In the swamps of Maine and Oregon, "whose lagoons are
alternately bridged by frost and evaporated by midsummer
droughts, snakes and bears might be permanently extermi
nated ; but in Florida an enterprise of that kind would re
quire a Chinaman's patience, combined with super- Yankee
ingenuity ; and in Southern Mexico even Orion and St.
255

256 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Patrick would prefer day-wages to a job contract. Trav
ellers, for instance, who have visited the State of Tabasco,
southeast of Vera Cruz, will admit that the difficulty of
detecting the proverbial needle in a haystack would be mere
child's play compared with the problem of discovering a
fugitive wild animal in the fens that skirt the Rio Zelades
or the Great Sumasinta, whose delta can only be crossed by
water-ways, the shore-thickets being absolutely impervious
to man and all his locomotive contrivances.
The Sumasinta, or Usamasinta — the shoreless river, as it
may be called in the lower sixty miles of its course through
the Tierra Caliente — was formerly the great highway be
tween the southwestern Gulf coast and the Pacific slope of
South Mexico and Guatemala, but the weekly steamers
from Panama to Vera Cruz have made that circuitous route
the quicker as well as the cheaper one, and the traffic of
Northern Yucatan has found new harbors in Sisal and
Campeche. For travellers from Palenque or San Carlos
to Southern Yucatan, however, the old Sumasinta mail-
barge is still Hobson's choice, and from Guatemala to San
Carlos nearly so, the alternative being a canoe-trip with
Indian oarsmen and night-camps in the mosquito-jungle.
In the summer of 1875 the exigencies of the government
troops in Southern Yucatan had pressed all the Sumasinta
mail-boats into the transport service on the lower river, and,
having reached the Guatemala frontier a day after the de
parture of a merchant's conducta which had engaged the
available canoes, we were obliged to make our way through
the shore-forests as far as Lagunas, twenty miles farther
down, where the influence of my clerical fellow-traveller
procured us a passage on board of a raft-faluca, a flat-boat
with provisions for a logwood-camp not far from the junc
tion of the Sumasinta with the Chiatlan, the latter river,

THE DELTA OZ THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 257

THE SWAMPS OF THE SUMASINTA.
according to reliable report, being still navigated by the
government mail-barges. The faluca was rather over-

258

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

loaded, though skiffs and side-rafts added to her breadth
of beam, but with our bramble-torn shins and gnat-bitten

WSHk

THE RAFT FALUCA.

faces a seat on a coffee-bag pile in the shade of the mat sail
seemed comfort itself; and our content was enhanced by
the discovery that we had reached her just in time, for seven
leagues farther down the banks began to disappear : the
stream had turned into an island-studded lake. A map
showing the terra-firma boundaries of the river would rep
resent the Sumasinta as a monster stream, measuring from
fifteen to twenty miles from shore to shore ; but, more prop
erly speaking, it might be described as a river meandering
through a swamp-archipelago, or rather through woods that
have adapted themselves to a permanent state of inundation.
Here flourishes the mangrove : bogs and good-sized islands
are entirely covered with its sap-green copses, hung around
and, as it seems, supported by offshoots that send sprouts to
the ground like the aerial roots of the banian-tree ; palms

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 259
rise from the thickets wherever the alluvium has accumu
lated above high-water mark ; and here and there a majes
tic copal-tree guarantees the stability of one of the wooded
islets whose jungle vegetation would not secure it against
being torn from its moorings and swept away like drift
wood by the next freshet. The river itself — i.e. the cur
rent — often loses itself in the mazes of the archipelago,
divided perhaps, and as it were absorbed, by an open cy
press forest, and reappearing farther below at the end of a
large lake or sweeping like a mill-race through a strait be
tween two large islands. The river-pilot knows and avoids
these rapids on account of the snags that often clog the
channel in unforeseen places, and keeps through the open
lagoons, steering his way between wooded headlands and
pond-weed shallows, and reefing his sail where the ripple
of the current or a projecting branch suggests subaqueous
obstructions. " Fi de mi santo /" our shipmaster would exclaim when
ever we approached a driftwood pile, " otro mal punto"
(another dangerous point). " May the saints overlook our
sins ! Cuidad !" with an uneasy glance at his rough-and-
ready negro pilot. " Take care, man : don't spit in the
water. It's unlucky, I tell you."
" Hang those fools ! Starboard, I say ! Bear on that
rudder ! Tenga ! easy now : confound you for a set of  "
" Don't swear, man, till we get out of this trap — don't !
That tongue of yours will be the ruin of us. Cuidad !"
and so on till the mal punto was passed and saints and
sinners resumed their cigarros.
" D'ye see that log sticking out of the mud across there ?"
said the pilot, when we passed through a sedgy lake near
the mouth of a sluggish tributary. " Well, boss, two years
ago there was an island there as large as Morgan's Bar near

260 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Galveston harbor, and last October the river swept it clean
away, trees, jungle, and all, — fifteen acres of it I should
say, — though it hadn't been rainier than usual, either. I
have known this river to rise seven feet in forty minutes
without any warning : if a fellow was going to settle on one
of those islands, he might get a free passage to Campeche
some fine night."
Among the various theories by which the natives account
for these sudden freshets, the most plausible ascribes them
to the bursting of some large upland lake. Between Eli-
sario and the Guatemala frontier the Sumasinta is flanked
by large lagoons, some of which, in the dry season at least,
are true lakes, — i.e., inland waters with smaller or larger
affluents, but without any permanent outlet. In the rainy
season, however, the tributary creeks become torrents, and,
after swelling their lake till its banks give way, discharge
their accumulated waters into the next river valley like the
deluge of a cloud-burst. Whole forests of trees and brush
wood are thus swept away and scattered over the delta-
islands, where they either take root in the new alluvium or
blockade the skirts of the forests with mountainous heaps
of driftwood. Indirectly, too, these floods help to make
the jungles of the lower Sumasinta the most impregnable
thickete on earth by stimulating the vegetation of the under
brush into a rankness which can hardly have been exceeded
by the fern-forests of the Triassic period. Wherever the
jungles are periodically submerged the fertilizing sediments
favor the growth of the hiedraselvas, or swamp-liana, a
thorny creeper that spreads along the ground from bush
to bush, and knits even a strip of willows or canebrake
into a formidable hedge.
Though abounding with game, the Sumasinta jungles
are therefore no hunter's paradise, and the feroz ' naturce

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 261
have no safer asylum on the western hemisphere. Hunting,
in the literal sense of the word, is out of the question. A
rifle-artist may kill a jaguar at his drinking-place or bag a
peccari or two while the herd crosses the river, but neither
a Texas trapper nor the hardiest wild Indian could here
follow his game to its cover : there is no chance of pursuit,
and but rarely time for a second shot. The scattered set
tlers keep watch-dogs, and, at the most, permit them to
tree a raccoon or a wild-cat near the clearings, for out in
the swamp they are useless. In the water they would fall
an easy prey to the alligators that infest even the smallest
lagoons, and in the bush a dog might keep a wounded deer
at bay for days together before his master could reach him.
A pot-hunter has to content himself with waterfowl, and
the pleasure of exploring the thickets for the mere sake of
adventure would be more than outweighed by the grievous
mosquito-plague. We made our first landing at one of the larger islands,
and, finding the poop-cabin insufferably close, followed the
crew ashore, — to camp, but not to sleep like those case-
hardened natives. The negro pilot sat nodding over his
camp-fire, extracting solace from a pipeful of N. C. "Rebel
Comfort," and my companion, the padre Cristoval, tossed
and grumbled till midnight before he at length fell a-snoring
under his woollen blanket, though he had preached two
years at the hammer-works of the San Carlos copper-mines,
where he could certainly have studied the art of sleeping
under difficulties. I had bandaged a torn Mexican hat
with the shreds of a silk handkerchief and drawn it over
my face like a hood, but after a long and vain attempt to
breathe through the interspaces my patience and the strings
of my head-dress gave way together, and I concluded to
sit at bay for the rest of the night, renouncing Nature's
17

262 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
sweet restorer for the sweets of revenge upon my winged
tormentors. How I envied the snoring Franciscan at my
feet! The current in the canebrake murmured strange
lullabies, and the soughing of the night wind in the tree-
tops sounded drowsy and sleep-inviting; but it wouldn't
do : the blanket threatened me with suffocation, and with
my head unprotected I would not trust myself to nap for
fear of awakening exsanguis. The morning chill hardly
abated the fierce buzz around me, but to my delight our
craft got under way with the first twilight, and the clouds
overhead seemed to veil a vertical sun, when a shower at
length awakened me from a trance-like slumber in some
crevice of the luggage-pile.
I have often wondered if the human hide can become
mosquito-proof, and I believe that our tropical red-skins
become hardened against at least the after-effects of a gnat-
sting, — against the venom that distinguishes the bite of most
winged insects from that of a flea. By a many thousand
fold repetition of the doses their epidermis becomes, as it
were, inoculated with the poison and ceases to be affected
by ite virulent stimulus. They feel a mosquito-bite only
as we should feel the puncture of the smallest needle-point,
and old swamp-rangers may at last get callous to even this
mechanical irritation, as blacksmiths get indurated to flying
sparks and Bedouins to a sand-storm. This ancesthesis and
the fur, feather, and scale armor of wild beasts are Nature's
preventives, and probably superior to the best artificial
remedies. A sweltering night makes it doubtful if a mos
quito-bar is the lesser evil, and the peace obtained by fetid
ointments is certainly too dear bought. Experimental phi
losophy, however, has devised a more comfortable, though
not quite infallible, expedient. Mosquitoes, like mildew
and miasma, hug the ground, the bogs and the rank under-

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 263
growth of the tropical forests, and rarely rise more than
thirty feet above the next water-level. Acting upon this
discovery, the ranchero of the Tierra Caliente builds him
self a platform on trestlework or swings his hammock in
the top of a tough-wooded tree, and sleeps in peace high
above the vexations of the lower world — provided that the
night wind does not disappoint him altogether. In abso
lutely calm nights the gnats somehow get on the track of
their victim, and may treat him to a surprise-party even in
the top of the highest tree.
They avoid the open water, at least in daytime, and gave
us a chance to study the varying scenery of the river-shores.
Secas, or dry-land isles, alternate with aquatic forests, the
latter predominating: on our left, for many leagues, the
woods were inundated, if they had ever been out of water
at all. Below Lagunas the average water-mark does not
vary much in the different seasons, the pilot told me, though
freshets which subside as quickly as they come are most
frequent between June and December. The submergence
of their lower trunks rather agrees with the majority of
tropical trees, and seems to be no serious inconvenience to
their wild inhabitants. Squirrels and palm-cats disported
themselves in the upper branches, and when our faluca
skirted a mulberry-grove a monkey of the genus Mycetes
descended to the water's edge, paddled the scum out of the
way, took a good drink, and clambered leisurely back into
the screening foliage.
Wherever the current was opposed by the broadside of
an island the wash had accumulated hillocks of driftwood,
and on one of these piles — a good-sized island itself — we
saw an animal which I at first mistook for a beaver, but
which proved to be a large swamp-otter (Lutra palustris),
light brown with a snow-white belly, and a whisker-like

264 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
fringe of bristles around its mouth. At the approach of
our raft it rose on its hind legs, eyed us keenly, and slipped
into the penetralia of ite fort, where it probably reared its
young, more secure than a fox in his subterranean burrow.
No human force, no axe, could have forced a passage through
sixteen acres of tangled logs and brushwood intertwisted
with the coils of creepers that had sprouted in the bottom
of the rubbish-heap and overspread the pile with a mantle
of bright-green leaves. We passed numerous floating logs,
some of them bestridden by sea-turtles on their return-trip
from an expedition to the sand-banks of the upper river,
where they deposit their eggs before the end of the rainy
season, and, trusting their incubation to the sun and good
luck, commit themselves to the current, which sooner or
later will carry them back to their haunts in the Bay of
Campeche. The rivers of this swamp-region abound with skate-shaped
flying-fish, whose aeronautical propensities seemed to be
excited by the splash of our oars or perhaps by the gam
bols of two fresh-water dolphins that had accompanied
the faluca from our last landing, but gave our angles a
wide berth. Our shipmaster regarded their escort as an
omen of a lucky trip — "Si no saltan el timon" — unless they
should jump across the rudder, which would presage a dire
catastrophe; and it seemed really as if they had brought
us good weather, for the threatening clouds had so far let
us off with a single brief shower. A continual cackle of
gannets mingled with the chatter of our mestizo crew, and
now and then a pelican swept by with its grunting squawk.
More than once in turning some bushy headland we came
suddenly upon a conventicle of waterfowl that took wing
with a simultaneous rush, and once a splendid black heron
rose from the skirts of a canebrake almost under our thwarts

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 265
and flopped away over our heads with a noise that sounded
like a clapping of hands in the air.
Toward evening the sun came out for a moment and
glistened upon a large expanse of pond-weeds on our left.
It looked like a meadow in the middle of the lake, a level
and dense tangle of green tendrils with yellow flowers, fre
quented by a swarm of small yellow butterflies. But at
the edge of this lacustrine lawn we found four fathoms of
water, and the flowers, a sort of water-pimpernel (Nymphaza
capilaris), must have had their roots at the end of an equally
long stem. The strange flower-patch measured about half
a mile in circumference, and in the centre, in a small pond
of open water, we saw a crested moor-hen with her chickens
diving around and exploring the vegetable borders of their
little reservation. They too were safe : only a winged pur
suer could have followed them to their aquatic asylum :
wading was out of the question, and the tangled weeds
would have impeded the progress of a boat as well as of
the best swimmer.
After twelve leagues of alternate rowing and sailing we
reached, two hours before sunset, the landing-place, the
wigwam of Corrientes, at the mouth of the Rio Negro,
where we had to wait till the faluca returned from the log
wood-camp, about fourteen miles up-stream on the banks
of the muddy tributary. Corrientes had been one of the
regular landings of the government mail-barges, which now
were temporarily withdrawn from this part of the river,
and we were now only twenty miles from the mission of
San Gabriel, whence the Chiatlan boats would carry us to
our destination. A government courier who had joined us
at Lagunas grumbled considerably at the delay, but the
luggage of the padre Cristoval included a mule and a large
wooden box, and I would rather not have trusted my own

266 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
trunk to a dug-out canoe; so there seemed nothing for it
but to await the return of the faluca.
The station depdt was a wretched shanty, but farther up
we found a weatherproof log cabin and a little Indian wig
wam, where we bought grapes and fresh turkey-eggs. Our
purveyor also kept hogs, and informed us that he had to
feed them on cayman flesh, since the last freshet had played
the deuce with this year's nut- and acorn-mast, except on
the opposite shore, where some of the islands were above
high-water mark.
" My starved hogs would swim the river unless I pen
them up," he said ; " so I have to choose between letting
the alligators have my pork and feeding my porkers on
alligator meat."
" Do you shoot them ?" we inquired.
" Can't afford it, caballeros : times are hard, and powder
and shot are very high hereabouts. I spear them."
" We should like to see it, but it must be a rather ticklish
job in that little dug-out of yours ?"
"No, no: I spear them ashore," he said. " There is not
much risk about it, except of losing my harpoon. It's only
half a mile up the river, and we can be back in time por
otra cena — for a second supper."
" No horse-thieves around here ?" asked the cautious
Franciscan. "No hay ctuidado: your worship's mule will be perfectly
safe here," laughed the old Indian. "My daughter and
her cousins wouldn't steal him, and there is nobody else on
the island just now : our bucks have gone up the Rio Negro
turtle-hunting." Said bucks and our cayman-hunter belonged to the tribe
of the Pintos, a horde of independent fishers and hunters
who formerly ranged the hill-country between Yucatan and

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 267
Guatemala, but have now retreated to the coast-forests of
Eastern Tabasco, where they defy all attempts at conversion
and civilization. Their neighbors, of the race called the
white by prescriptive right, accuse them of anthropophagous
habits, a charge too uniformly preferred against all pagan
Indians to have any practical significance. I believe that
they are quite as moral as, and a great deal more intelligent
than, the Christian plantain-eaters of the northern Tierra
Caliente. Half an hour before sunset we followed our guide to the
landing, where he took a harpoon and a stout club from the
shed of the station depot, and led us to a narrow jungle-
path that kept along shore and across different log-bridged
bayous. In a baglike piece of matting he carried a coil of
tarred lariats and a little sucking pig, whose grunts of dis
content rose to a shriek whenever the bag-carrier accelerated
his pace. A sort of swamp-fog had settled over the woods
when we halted behind a coppice of taxus-trees near the
shore at a point where a projecting sand-bank formed a little
river-bay. The Pinto cast a searching look across the
water, and, motioning us to stand back, deposited his cargo
in a bush and proceeded to business. Selecting an over
hanging bough about six yards from the water's edge, he
stripped it of its leaves, girdled the squealer with a double
hitch of his lariat and suspended him in the fork of the
bough at a height of about four feet from the ground. He
then uncoiled a longer and stouter lariat, and fastened one
end to a tough but elastic sapling and the other to the han
dle of his harpoon. An indescribably offensive smell de
terred us from examining a little box which he had left on
his poncho behind the taxus-hedge. He opened it, took a
twisted string of bombax wool from his girdle and greased
it with the contents of the box, a yellowish viscid substance

268 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
whose composition he seemed unwilling to disclose. " It
belongs to the station-master," he said : " I don't know
where he gets it." Its effluvium seemed a mixture of musk,
putrid meat, and something resembling the pungent odor
of sal-ammoniac. He tied one end to the next bush, and
weighting the other with a piece of wood threw it into the
river. " What's that for?" we inquired,—" a bait?"
" Yes, a nose-bait," said he : " the pig is for the eyes and
ears, and now comes the grub-bait," taking one more bun
dle from the matting, a rag containing three chunks of half-
roasted meat. " That will make him mount the barrera,"
he chuckled. The barrera (barricade) between the taxus-
thicket and the water's edge was a long sand-dam, capped
with a row of gnarled logs. Toward the water the dam
sloped very gradually, while its landward front was abrupt
enough to check the speed of a retreating reptile.
After depositing the tidbits at equal intervals between
the beach and the ridge of the barrera, the hunter stimu
lated his pig with a kick that ensured ite vocal co-operation
for the next ten minutes, and joined us in our ambush, spear
in hand. The sun had set some time ago, but the air was
still oppressively sultry — not a ripple on the bay, save
where little fishes played duck-and-drake upon the surface
or a louder splash suggested the advent of the much-baited
saurian. " It's getting dark," said one of my Mexican companions
at last, breaking a long silence : " this seems a poor place
for cayman-hunting."
The Pinto raised his hand, but made no reply, looking
immovably in the same direction.
" Do you see one," asked the padre.
" There are four or five of them heading this way," whis-

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 269
pered the hunter : " one was close by here a minute ago,
when that other gentleman began to talk. Speak low,
please." " Where, in the name of  "
" Hush ! here he comes."
At the lower end of the dam a dark object rose slowly
from the water till ite upward and shoreward motion re
vealed the lower outline of the shapeless protuberance.
The Pinto was right: that was the head of an old cayman,
or coast-alligator, distinguished from the northern variety
by a flatter tail and receding lower jaw. He mounted the
beach opposite the lower extremity of the barrera and wad
dled around the dam, raising his head every now and then
to reconnoitre the bushes on his left. He either had not
yet seen the pig or meant to approach it from the land side.
" Mala suerte !" muttered the Pinto — " confound the
luck ! He is bound to spy us if he gets through that
bush. If he keeps on I'll have to try him at long range."
The cayman hobbled across a fallen tree and the harpoon
rose : another step forward would bring him in sight of
our ambush. But no : he stopped and listened, and as if
his guardian spirit had whispered a word in his ear he sud
denly turned, dashed through the bush, and waddled back
into his native element.
" A lost game," said the courier : " he has seen us."
"Keep quiet," whispered the hunter. "No, no, he's all
right : he has seen the pig ; only that tree bothered him.
He's going to try from the other side, just where I want
him." But minute after minute passed without a sound or sign
of our departed visitor. While we listened we heard a
loud triple splash on our left, a quarter of a mile up-stream.
"Did ye hear that?" whispered the Pinto. "There are

270 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
three or four of them in that little bayou up there. Pura
terquedad — sheer contrariness of the miserable thick-skulls ;
but never mind, I shall get even with some of them."
" We had better go there now," I suggested : " it will be
dark in ten minutes."
The Pinto hugged the ground and raised a warning
hand : "Keep quiet ! here he comes again. I thought so,"
he chuckled : " he's smacking his chops. The old pork-
thief believes he has found a free sausage-shop this time.
I wonder what he will think of himself in five minutes
from now?"
The cayman had emerged directly in front of us, and
could be seen through the lower branches of our coppice
with his belly squat on the ground and his upturned jaws
at work upon the first chunk of roast bait,
" I believe I have seen that chap before," whispered the
Pinto in my ear. " Yes, it's the same one-eyed old sinner.
He owes me two pigs, but he's going to pay his debts. I'll
whack it out of his brain-box before that river has run
another furlong. But let us keep very still now : not a
word, gentlemen. We'll get him sure this time."
The pig had suddenly stopped squealing, and the general
silence was only broken by the doleful squawk of a tree-
frog over our heads.
The cayman had gobbled the second chunk and advanced
upon the dam, but stopped short at sight of the third and
largest morsel. He cocked his head, and his solitary eye
assumed a puzzled expression. Who was the unknown
benefactor ? No answer to the mute enigma, — nothing but
the monotonous call of the tree-toad. Never mind : No. 3
followed its predecessors. On top of the dam he stopped
once more, and glared at the pig in surprise and apparent .
mistrust of his own senses. It might seem incredible, but

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 271
there it was, an actual living pig within easy reach, obvious
even to a one-eyed cayman. Should it be a trap? He
looked sideways and turned his head. Nothing stirring :
the very air seemed to stagnate — Nature's voice reduced
to the monotone of the tree-toad. The coast was clear.
Still  He seemed on the point of sliding back, but
suddenly, as if ashamed of his own misgivings, he jerked
his tail up, leaned forward, and plumped into the sandy
hollow behind the barricade.
The Pinto sprang up, and the cayman turned like a shot
and headed for the dam, and up it with super-reptilian en
ergy ; but the gnarled logs delayed him for a moment, and
in that moment the iron went crashing through his scaly
hide, and the pent-up emotions of the Pinto found vent in
an exultant yell. The spear stuck. " Mil caraxos ! I
got you this time ! — Look out ! here he comes !"
Jerked back by the tension of the lariat, the captive came
floundering through the bush, making the leaves fly around
his switching tail, and several times plunged forward with
an impetus that would have snapped the rope like a trout-
line if the elasticity of the sapling had not broken the force
of his spring. The Pinto had seized his club, a stout
cudgel of hackberry wood, and jumped around his reckless
prisoner with anathemas that would have appalled any
other heart; but the intrepid saurian only redoubled his
efforts till the rope caught in the root of a bush, compli
cating the difficulties of his situation to a hopeless degree.
He was at the end of his tether, and, seeing his opportu
nity, the Pinto dealt him a whack across the head that laid
him sprawling on his back. The second blow made him
rear, with his jaws full of broken teeth, and the third and
fourth squirted a mixture of blood and brains from his
nostrils. The cayman had paid his debt.

272

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

We slept in peace that night, as the tight walls and nar
row windows of our cabin favored a successful application

SETTLING OLD SCORES.

of the smoke-pot process, which consists in evicting the
winged tenants of an apartment with a potful of smoulder-

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 273
ing leaves, and preventing their return by screening the
apertures with a double sheet of gauze. Common leaves
or dry moss answer the purpose very well, but the Creoles
of the lowland tobacco-plantations use by preference the
sobras or sweepings of the curing-houses, and breathe the
densest nicotine fumes with all the gusto of an old toper
sniffing the alcohol effluvium of a wine-cellar.
I believe that the gift of sleeping is a distinct faculty
which can be cultivated without the aid of such palliatives
of insomnia as gluttony and alcoholic debauches. Our fa
luca was not expected before noon, and, finding the morning
air agreeably cool, I returned to the cabin after breakfast
to invite the Franciscan to a stroll through the woods, but
found him snoring in a corner where he had fallen asleep
among the remnants of his frugal repast. Sauntering
along the beach, I met the Pinto with a big shoulder-bag
containing a section of the captured alligator, whom he had
chopped up in dtu like a log ; and on my return to the
station depdt I found our courier hobnobbing with the
wigwam belles, who had brought in a jugful of pineapple
cider from an outlying cottage. There were three of them,
— a stout wench of eighteen or twenty, with a red-lined
reboso or head-shawl and a sort of dalmatica, sack-like, but
more sensible than the strait- jackets of the North Mexican
country-girls ; and the twin daughters of the station-mas
ter, a little taller than their stout cousin, as they called her,
but perhaps younger in years, and evidently so in social ex
perience. One of them, who shook my hand with the zeal
of an old acquaintance, was " barefoot up to the neck," as
good Bishop Heber described the toilette of the Bombay
nautch-girls, but wore a sailcloth imitation of her cousin's
reboso trimmed with copper tacks and capped by way of
climax with the rowel of a Mexican spur. Her somewhat

274 • SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
smaller sister preserved her sangfroid in the costume of
the Nereids. They acquainted us with the current gossip
of the wigwam. Pepita, she of the spur-bonnet, informed
me that her aunt Inez contemplated the purchase of a milch
goat, and that her brother Pancho would probably win a
prize in the next sculling-match ; and they were just de
scribing the visit of two American logwood-choppers during
the late freshet when the approach of Father Cristoval set
them agog with curiosity and surprise. What ! a padre, a
monk, without a cross and without an acolyte ! Was he
going to preach like the missionary from Campeche ? Would
there be a gift-distribution of rosaries and pictures?
" Ye fell barbarians, what are you doing ?" laughed the
padre. " Coquetando con las pelladas canibales — flirting
with the sansculotte cannibals? — And you, nina, don't you
know it's wicked to wear a head-dress like that ? How is
a poor stranger going to resist a red-lined reboso with forty
spangles ?"
Pepita giggled.
" You are right," said the stout wench : " she ought to
know better than to put on airs about that bonnet, — a person
in her circumstances, not having a shirt or shift to her
name !"
Pepita grinned.
" Y mira," continued the wench — " look here ! She
stuffs her braids with sow-bristles to make them look
fuller." " That will do now," said the courier : " you are only
envious." " Envious about what ? That bonnet of hers ? There
is nothing enviable about it. She got those tacks out of an
old mule-saddle, and the red lining is all a sham. Mira!
she fringed it with a bit of red yarn to make it look lined

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 275
like. Humbug ! Look here ! nothing inside but greasy
canvas !"
Pepita snatched her bonnet away, and — paradox of the
female mind ! — the same maiden whose equanimity could
resist the most glaring defects of apparel had blushed
crimson through her dusky skin at a discovered deficit in
fripperies. "Ay, que seas maldita, cabrona — shame on you for a
malicious vixen !" she hissed, and whisked away, with her
still nuder sister at her heels.
The padre shook his head : " What a state of affairs for
a Christian country ! The governor of Tabasco ought to
be tarred and feathered, together with all his breechless
backwood apes. Heaven defend me from the African sav
ages if they are any worse than our Pintos !"
" Why doesn't your holy order reclaim them ?"
" We tried to," said the Franciscan, " but they are the
most inconvertible of bipeds. It's impossible for a white
man to follow them in all their wild wanderings, and the
casual proselytes relapse into barbarism as soon as they are
out of sight. They are called Pintos because they used to
paint their bodies like barber-poles, you know ; and one of
our missionaries converted a whole village of them up on
the Chiatlan, and thought he had cured them of that paint
ing mania, but when he revisited their place after a year or
two he caught one of his vicars dancing in a coat of yellow
ochre and copal varnish."
When I repacked my trunk the courier came in and
asked me for the loan of my pocket-knife to cut a piece of
scarlet cloth out of the lining of his poncho. While cross
ing a brier-patch behind the wigwam, he said, he had found
the twins rolling on the ground, drenching the grass with
tears, which the duty of a cavalier required him to dry.

276 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Just before the faluca reached her landing the sisters slipped
into our shanty, all smiles and thanks, to inquire if we
could spare them a needle and a little black thread. They
had resolved, en petite comiti, to elaborate a bonnet that
should burst the midriff of their envious cousin.
Below Corrientes the Sumasinta becomes broader and
deeper, often expanding into a placid lake whose waters
reflect the varying hues of the firmament and the different
tints and shades of the shore-vegetation. The shell-banks
at the mouth of the Rio Gordo glittered like snow, and
seemed to stretch inland and northward for a considerable
distance. The birth-land of this tributary abounds with
lakes, some of them flanked with dangerous quicksands,
and one of its upper affluents, the Rio Pinto, drains an
almost unapproachable wilderness. Turtle-hunters who
have ascended the Rio Gordo in their small sailing boats
report that even in the dry season ite banks consist of a
black vegetable mud more yielding and treacherous than
quicksand, while the thickete are infested with panthers and
jaguars, who here have become almost wholly arboreal in
their habits and prey upon monkeys and various kinds of
gallinaceous tree-birds. Our shipmaster, who had visited
this region, assured me that where sloths and monkeys are
scarce the jaguar will attack the camps of the roving In
dians with reckless ferocity, and can often be captured by
baiting a trap with a human corpse. A half-breed hunter,
he said, who had thus avenged the death of his brother,
was himself poisoned by a scratch of the captured man-
eater, and would have died if his comrades had not ampu
tated his arm at the shoulder.
The weather of the past twenty-four hours had been too
fine to last, and twelve miles below our last landing we
were caught in a thunderstorm that drove us shivering and

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 277
chattering into the hindmost corner of the poop-cabin,
while our naked oarsmen continued their work with aggra
vating complacency. The padre, as usual, took refuge in
Dreamland, and the courier in a tobacco-cloud. " Never
mind," said he : " we are only six miles from San Gabriel
now: the major will comfort our souls with butter-pan
cakes and hot coffee."
" The major? Commander of a military station, I sup
pose?" " No : he is a man of peace and somewhat hunchbacked,
but commander-in-chief of the port, for all that. He has
kept a ship-store at the mission for the last seven years, be-

MISSION OF SAN GABRIEL.

sides a tavern and the station depot. His family are the
only white people in the settlement, and of course the red
skins have to keep in the rear rank."
" Was it ever a regular mission ?"
" Oh, yes : the priests had a school and a chapel there,
but during the Indian rebellion of 1858 and '59 their con-
18

278 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
verts gave them the slip, and monks know better than to
work for their own living. They went back to Campeche,
where their order has a large convent. Their chapel is
used for a storehouse now. The whole place is a curious
old wigwam, growing out of the water like the swamp-
oaks around it. It will be pitch-dark before we get there,
but if we leave to-night you must take a look at it while
they light their pitch-pan."
Like many of his countrymen, Major Casales rejoiced in
the advent of a stranger as an Oregon backwoodsman hails
the arrival of the Eastern mail with the accumulated news
of the last three or four weeks. His emotion on ascertain
ing that two of us came directly from the headquarter
States left us no doubt that we were really welcome. He
oversweetened our coffee and double-buttered our pancakes
in his eagerness to learn the result of the Diaz manifesto
and the presidential counter-proclamation. Was Diaz pop
ular with the army ? Would the United States support
Tejada? He bustled in and out with empty pots, wrong
dishes and half-cooked dishes, inviting us to help ourselves
and obliging us to make the freest use of that permission.
Our store of current news having been drained to the
last drop, we learned that the courier's impatience had been
superfluous, and that we should have to wait here for a full
day, as the barge was not expected before the next follow
ing night. The Yucatan insurrection was spreading, the
major informed us, and the government officials hereabouts
had a lively time of it, but his private business was dull :
the upper-river traffic had come to a full stop, and even the
turtle-hunters had made themselves scarce for fear of being
pressed into the " volunteer service," as the State governors
were pleased to call their forced levies. The agricultural
prospects, too, were rather dreary : the banana crop was

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 279
rotting on the stem, and the continual rains would prob
ably result in another freshet and ruin his oak-mast.
But Don Casales had evidently laid something by for a
rainy day. His private table was sumptuous, and the fur
niture curiosities of his parlor, if not in the very best taste,
demonstrated certainly the ability to indulge it. After pan
cakes and politics we strolled out on the veranda to see the
bright sheet-lightning that illuminated the sky from end to
end every other second, and the major's conversation proved
that the light of knowledge can enter by the ear-door as
well as by the eye-window. He had to sign his name by
proxy, but expressed himself with clearness and fluency,
and seemed well informed on most points of contemporary
interest. " Where I was brought up," he said, " books
were only known from hearsay, and I confess that there
was a time when I thought I could afford to despise them,
but I gradually discovered that without a school education
even the smartest man runs a handicapped race. I use
every chance to impress that fact on my boys," he sighed,
" but, as usual, they follow my example rather than my
advice. They don't seem to know what paper is good for,
except to make into shot-gun wadding : fishing and boat-
adventuring are all they care for."
The environs of San Gabriel seemed indeed to favor the
ascendency of these foibles. The vicinity of the coast was
felt in the heavy throb of the Gulf-tide beating against the
foundation-piles of the building, and in the open water
farther up the splash of leaping fish was loud and incessant.
The open bay in front of us seemed to extend for several
miles southwest, but in the east the electric flashes re
vealed a long row of wooded islands, — sombre hillocks with
rounded outlines that suggested the prevalence of palm-for
ests. As often as occasional brighter flashes were followed

280 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
by a roll of thunder the echo was answered by the distant
voices of a flamingo-swarm in some reed-meadow of a mist-
shrouded lagoon in the north, — el Lago de Patos, at the
outskirts of the great Rio Gordo swamp. This swamp,.
Mr. Casales told us, was supposed to be the retreat of a
gang of pirates who infested the coast between Sisal and
the Bay of Carmen, and who reached the sea by some
northeastern channel of the Rio Gordo. Logwood -cutters
who visited the lower affluents of that river had often seen
the smoke of their camp-fires rising from the heart of the
jungle-wilderness in the north, or heard the report of dis
tant rifle-shots in the stillness of the winter nighte. The
Lago de Patos communicates in the east with a large sedgy
forest-lake whose islands would furnish an almost inex
haustible supply of valuable timber if the dangerous shoals
that obstruct the channel could be dredged or avoided by a
canal from the Rio Gordo to the south corner of the timber-
lake. The breeze from the direction of this archipelago, though
moist and not quite free from a certain swamp-odor, was
agreeably cool and promised a refreshing night. A little
flower-garden on our left sweetened the air with the odor
of gillyflowers and blooming oranges, which seemed to
have attracted a swarm of nocturnal honey-hunters : moths
of all sizes and forms buzzed around our ears or blundered
with a dull thud against the panes of the corner window.
Down in the canebrake a water-fox whimpered like a
whining child, and where the garden adjoined the rank
shore-forest two wills-o'-the-wisp danced around a rotten
tree with that peculiar cold-white flicker that differs from
fire as moonlight, does from sunshine. Here they were
the only lights of the night, — no beacon-fires, no flaming
factory-chimneys or harbor-signals, near and far. The

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 281
horizon was dark all around, but there was a charm in that
very solitude, and I could conceive that a native of this
island-world would be loath to exchange ite wild freedom
for the comforts of a more populous country.
Senor Casales had lived here for the last eleven years.
He was an observer, in his own way, of Nature's physical
and moral phenomena, and though he had managed to live
in peace with his neighbors, and had rarely ventured beyond
the premises of the mission farm, his memoirs of the last
decade would have furnished the material of a curious chron
icle of the wilderness. One night about the end of the rainy
season he was awakened by the furious barking of a little
terrier, and, descending into the yard with a lantern, found
that a big black wolf had swam the river and was culti
vating the acquaintance of his mastiff bitch. He went
softly up-stairs, got a gun, and shot the shaggy Leander
before he discovered his danger. The major had seen bear-
tracks on the sandy neck between his peninsula and the
mainland, and used to keep a heavy trap chained to a mul
berry-tree in a thicket behind the mission farm. A few
months ago it was dragged away by some unknown animal,
the chain being broken close to the root of the tree, while
the surrounding bushes were trampled down and the tree
itself stripped of ite tough bark in different places. All
the hunters who frequented his store assured him that no
bear could have torn that chain. What could it have been ?
Some equally mysterious two-legged guests had visited
the mission, — hirsute desperadoes who answered no ques
tions and asked none, except about the price of tobacco and
flannel shirts, and were permitted to depart in peace after
settling their bill, or fugitive Indians who sought and ob
tained aid in the name of the common father of all nations.
One morning, while the rain was coming down like a

282 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
waterfall, a canoeful of armed men sought shelter in his
boat-house. The strangers mounted the platform of his
warehouse, but declined his invitation to enter the store.
They bought a bag of navy biscuit and some dried meat,
paying in advance, and asked the lady of the house to get
them some dinner while they waited under the wharf-shed.
A mess of mutton and sweet potatoes was boiling and al
most done, when the men suddenly hurried to their boat
and pushed off, after throwing a handful of copper coins
through the window. They were out of sight when the
major stepped out on the wharf, but he saw the government
mail-barge approach the landing from the opposite direction.
The swamp-pirates, whose vicinity was a source of con
stant uneasiness to the delta settlers, had never damaged
him in his property, perhaps for the same reasons that in
duce a fox to spare the hen-houses in the near neighbor
hood of his burrow ; and only once he had cause to believe
that some unknown party or parties had visited his place
with burglarious intent, and would have robbed him if
they had not been baffled in an unexpected way. On a
high shelf behind his counter he keeps a cage containing a
more or less happy family of squirrels and opossums and
two monkeys, a capuchin and a young ceboo (Ateles panis-
cus) ; and one night, between two and three A.M., he heard
the latter animal screeching with all its might, and soon
after hurried footsteps on the veranda in front of his store.
His Indian-of-all-work rushed in from an adjoining room,
and all the male members of the household rallied en masse
with guns and lanterns ; but the nocturnal visitor had van
ished. The store-door, however, stood wide open, and the
major was positive that the lock must have been picked, as
he kept the key in his bedroom. The would-be marauder
had left a track of dirty boots between the wharf and the

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 283
store, but as there were no marks on the counter, he could
not have hurt the monkeys or even touched their cage, and
the alarm-cry of the little ceboo is therefore a curious in
stance of the manifestation in a quadrumanous animal of
an instinct which in general may be said to be confined to
one species of mammals and a single genus of birds, — the
canines and the goose. All other domestic animals witness
the plunder of their master's property with perfect uncon-

A PINTO PATRIARCH.

cern, and even the sagacious horse may be abducted by mid
night thieves without betraying its fears by the slightest
sound. We took a bath next morning in a tolerably limpid bayou
between two flood-gates warranted alligator-proof. The
water I found by actual measurement fifteen degrees cooler
than the air in the shade of an adjoining caucho-grove.
There was a grayish-white mist on the river, and the morn-

284 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
ing wind was saturated with that peculiar swamp-odor
which on the lower Mississippi is thought to be sympto
matic of the deadliest malaria. The delta of the Sumasinta,
however, is almost free from climatic diseases. The major
took us to the cabin of a reputed centenarian, a Pinto pa
triarch, who remembered the great Indian rebellion of 1798,
and whose father had cultivated maniocs on the upper Su
masinta before any white man had penetrated to the high
lands of western Tabasco. He was mending the trimmings
of a rawhide saddle apparently coeval with himself, and
behind the cottage a young Indian was engaged in skinning
a boa which his grandfather had killed with a common
cudgel. The old man answered our greeting with a cheery
" Buena suerte d mis caballeros," but bewailed the shame
less rapacity of a swarm of palm-squirrels who still entered
his larder by an undiscovered hole. He had caught one of
them a few nights before, he said, anointed him with tur
pentine-grease and set him on fire — por ensenarles crianza
— to teach them manners ; but they were carrying on as
bad as ever.
His countrymen have practically relapsed into paganism,
having in some cases exhausted the patience of their would-
be converters by sheer passive resistance, disregard of holy
days and church ordinances, and persistent neglect of their
cornfields. The " mission Indians" were in the habit of
smuggling their boys away as soon as they could run, per
mitting the padres to support the young squaws during the
age of uselessness, — i.e. from infancy to the middle of their
teens, — after which they managed to follow their brothers.
When the monks abandoned the mission many of the fugi
tives returned and emphasized their satisfaction by a three
days' bonfire that lighted the midnight skies for many miles
around.

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 285
The Franciscan missionaries have virtually abandoned
them to their fate. In their wigwam meetings the sachems
studiously discard the Spanish language, and some of the

SKINNING A BOA.

old squaws set a bad example by substituting the ancestral
paint-pot for imported calicoes. They burlesque the Sab
bath by mock masses with war-dance entr'actes, and the

286 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
trees behind the mission are covered with hieroglyphic in
scriptions which can hardly have been dictated by a spirit
of Christian reverence, the emblem of the cross being fre
quently combined with a more ancient symbol which the
sculptors of classic Italy also used rather too freely in their
graphic extravaganzas. A stone image of San Gabriel
which had disappeared from the mission chapel was at last
discovered in the cabin of an Indian hunter, looking very
much as if it had been doing duty as a whetstone.
But the Pintos have hardly consulted their material inter
ests in neglecting the agricultural lessons of the good padres :
the cornfields are covered with weeds and the irrigation-
ditches clogged with mud and driftwood. The hammock
wigwams cultivate maniocs and perhaps a few plantain-
trees, but the Pintos of the delta are mostly carnivorous.
We met two young bucks with a boa which they had shot
in the taxus-swamp — "por guiso de Domingo, senores" —
for a bit of a Sunday-stew. Boa flesh is oily, semi-trans
parent in thin slices, and has a musky flavor, but is perhaps
not more indigestible than our eel pies and pork fritters.
In point of diet, indeed, a practical philosopher cannot be
blamed for suspecting that nature and habit are interchange
able terms. Liebig demonstrates with the most plausible
logic that Hindoos must be vegetarians, — that they have to
abstain from meat on pain of disease and physical degen
eration; but in still more torrid climates the Ethiopians
and South American swamp-Indians devour all the meat
they can get, and seem, physically at least, not much the
worse for it. Nobody, however, can doubt that the lethal
effects of alcoholic intemperance are swifter and more in
curable in a tropical country. Neither inherited vigor of
constitution nor open-air exercise can save the native of an
equatorial region from the consequences of habitual intoxi-

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 287
cation, and bibulous immigrants from the land of snow
soon find that their sweet poisons cease to be sweet in any
sense of the word. With the rarest exception, the Ameri
can Spaniards use their ardent liquors neither as intoxicants
nor for " medical purposes," but rather as fluid spices, —
peptic stimulants, which, like pepper and ginger, facilitate
the digestion of fat in a tropical climate.
Our boatmen returned in the course of the afternoon,
and at sunset we continued our trip on board of the Rio
Gordo government mail-barge of eighty tons to Carmen
harbor. Below San Gabriel the Sumasinta expands into
a bay known as the Lago de Terminos, — " the terminating
lake," the end of the sweet-water lagoons, — a brackish
estuary whose islands are twice a day submerged by the
surging tide of the Caribbean Sea. The shores here recede
to a hazy distance, and the tangled thickets that cover the
littoral swamps are almost, or wholly, uninhabited, a para
dise of bears and water-snakes. Hunting ceases to be
profitable: even bear-trapping would not repay the danger
of tempting such jungles.
After midnight the clouds in the east parted, and a
waning moon blinked down upon a dismal expanse of water
and gray sand-banks. Low-sailing clouds drifted seaward,
and flights of waterfowl passed us with rushing wings, but
voiceless, as if awed into silence by the vast dreariness of
the scenery. Only the night-heron croaked in the distant
swamp, and from near and far, from the seaweed shallows
on our lee and the mist-shrouded fens of the Gulf-islands,
came the hoarse bark of the coast-alligators. In the night
time especially their deep-mouthed groans sound in your
ears with a direful significance, and I believe that even the
stolid sailors shared our feeling of relief when the signal-
lights of Carmen harbor gleamed through the morning mist

288 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
and the shrill crowing of a cock announced the vicinity of
human habitations. An uninhabited wilderness may be
sublime and even attractive : an uninhabitable one is always
dismal. Carmen harbor, at the mouth >of the Sumasinta, is a veri
table city of the sea, rising from a substructure of trestle-

CARMEN HARBOR.

platforms, pontoon-bridges, and anchored hulls, and the
sluggish canal which forms the principal street reminded
me of Tasso's description of the Porto di Brondolo and ite
sombre river :Corre la Brenta al mar, tacita e bruna,
a town of swaying wharves and bilge-water odors. There
is a navy-yard here, and the harbor is the halfway station of
the Vera Cruz and Sisal packets. Our captain hinted that
the tide would probably delay us for a couple of hours, but a
private interview with his clerk seemed to have oiled the
angry billows, for we contrived to reach our pier half an
hour before the arrival of the east-bound steamer.
In spite of mosquitoes and mud-banks, long delays and
laconic dinners, I think that a trip from San Carlos to

THE DELTA OF THE SVMASINTA RIVER. 289
Carmen will reward the enterprise of travellers who do not
judge the byways of our continent by Mr. Baedeker's stand
ards. The littoral forests of the upper river are not
essentially different from those of the northern Gulf-coast,
but at the lower landing the explorer may study Nature in
her strangest forms, and the inaccessible thickets beyond can
at least teach him one oft-forgotten truth, — namely, that the
earth was not made exclusively for the sake of man.

CHAPTER IX.
YUCATAN.
Why left they this eternal home of Summer,
To seek a land whose flowers must yearly die? — Silvio Pellico.
Fifty leagues east of Vera Cruz the passengers of a
homebound French steamer sight land again : first, the
square-cut ridge of a coast-range that rises like a wall
above the edge of the northern sky, and soon after the
jagged peaks of an inland sierra far behind the southern
horizon of a blue-green archipelago of coast islands.
Viewed from a sufficient elevation, the eastern gates of the
Gulf of Mexico would resemble the projecting piers of a
double breakwater at the entrance of a fortified harbor, and
the inland scenery north and south would make it difficult
to distinguish the highlands of Cuba from those of Central
Yucatan. Their confronting shores, however, would present
the striking contrast of a rock-bound coast with the jungles
of a broad and swampy estuary ; and this contrast has
probably decided the different destinies of the two countries.
The island with its inviting harbors has attracted a contin
ual swarm of Spanish conquerors and colonists, while the
swamp-protected peninsula enjoyed the same immunity
from town-and-tree-destroying invaders which has preserved
the forests and ancient cities of Siam.
Even the fanatical iconoclasts who transformed the rest
290

YVCATAN. 291
of New Spain after the image of the mother-country have
spared the monuments of Chichen and Uxmal, and the
western pueblos of the Mayos belong to the few tribes of
the aboriginal population whose rights have to some degree
been respected by their Gaucasian conquerors. Since the
expulsion of the Spaniards in 1821 these pueblos have
thrice seceded from the Mexican confederation, and the last
time (1846-52) maintained their independence for nearly
seven years, and only rejoined the union on terms which the
Mexican dictators have rarely ventured to violate. The
presence of a French armada in the Bay of Sisal overawed
them for a few years, but after the restoration the authority
of the governor was openly defied, and in 1874 I was sent
to Campeche as a member of President Lerdo's mision de
reforma, a commission of inquiry which was to confer with
the delegates of the different pueblos with a view of ascer
taining the cause of their chronic discontent.
At the suggestion of the new governor the commission
was divided, and as the race-prejudices of my medical col
league made him thoroughly indifferent to the result of the
expedition, I was offered the choice between the eastern
mountain-districts and the southwestern lowlands between
Campeche and the Sierra de Belize. I decided for the
western or lowland region, partly for the sake of the famous
ruins, which might be reached by a short detour from our
prescribed route, but chiefly in the hope of collecting data
for the solution of a mystery which gives a special interest
to the ethnological problems of our southern continent, —
viz., the enigma of the almost universal degeneration of
our race in the tropical latitudes.
Is there any objective necessity for it? Are snowstorms
and long winter nights really essential conditions of our
well-being? In spite of a staggering array of ex post facto

292 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
arguments, our instinct revolts at the idea that perennial
fruits and flowers should be incompatible with human hap
piness. The analogy of the oldest and youngest, highest
and lowest, forms of animated Nature proclaims the fact
that light and warmth are the chief sources of all organic
prosperity. In the tropics the cereals of the North reappear
as palms, ferns as fern-trees, woodbines as giant creepers ;
the type of the wild-cat develops a tiger, of the adder a
boa, of the lizard a crocodile, of the sand-spider a tarantula :
the size, the strength, the beauty and longevity of plants
and animals are found to increase as we approach the equa
tor, and none of them seem the better for having to wring
subsistence from a frozen soil. Does man alone make an
exception ? Or are we rather justified in suspecting the
agency of abnormal circumstances, — of baneful habits whose
effects require the influence of cold air as an antidote? The
question, methinks, deserves a share of the attention which
is still wasted on archaeological squabbles, for its solution
would elucidate the oldest and darkest of all biological
problems. At present we must admit that the ruling races
of the earth have lost — or rather voluntarily abandoned —
their Southern garden-home, though its climate was not
always unfavorable to the growth of the manly and indus
trial virtues.
Uxmal is the American Nineveh, and in Yucatan at least
the decay of an ancient civilization cannot be explained by
the exhaustion of the soil. The vegetation of the riparial
forests is rankly, unmanageably exuberant, the ruins of the
hill-country are covered with tanglewood as the monuments
of Syria with sand, and the fruit-crop of a large variety
of indigenous trees is absolutely perennial.
On our return from Merida we stopped at the Bafios de
San Joaquin, and the proprietor of the mineral springs

YVCATAN. 293
treated us to a lunch of apricots and datiles frescos — new
dates — whose flavor might have satisfied an emir of Bele-
duljerid. The hedges were still full of wild oranges, and
the storekeeper of the hacienda had bananas, sweet oranges,
and fresh figs for sale at a season of the year when our stores
of domestic fruits have mostly dwindled to frozen crab-
apples. Yucatan is famous for its semi-annual banana-
crops, and the second or winter harvest is often more
abundant than the first if the rainy season ends before
the beginning of November.
Seven miles south of San Joaquin the road and our tropa
divided : Lieutenant Perez and an American teamster, the
outrider of our cavalcade, agreed to accompany me to
Uxmal, while the rest continued their way to Campeche,
where the Christmas and New Year's festivities promised
abundant pastime till after the return of our colleagues
from the eastern circuit. Lieutenant Perez, the adjutant
of the military commissioner, was a Cuban refugee, who
seemed to have forgiven and forgotten the wrongs of the
isla heroica, though a Spanish sabre had left an indelible
memento on his face ; while Nick Fisher, our guide, who
had lost a team of mules and a " valuable buck nigger" at
Murfreesboro', was still very severe on the Abolitionists.
He had followed Kirby Smith to Matamoras, where he had
found employment in an American restaurant, and, after try
ing his luck in various Mexican seaports, had finally strayed
to Sisal and exchanged the spit for a muleteer's goad, — vulg.,
" caracho-pole," — having found that the close resemblance
of the climate to that of an unmentionable region would be
completed by a kitchen-fire. In less than five years he had
become personally acquainted with every teamster and
tavern-keeper in Western Yucatan, and had visited Uxmal
thrice and Chichen sixteen times, mostly as guide to Euro-
19

294 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
pean or Yankee excursion-parties. El Pecador — the Sinner
— his comrades called him, a nickname which had originated
in his own unlucky attempt at translating his patronymic,
but which in the eyes of the natives might derive addi
tional point from his persistent and undisguised heresy.
Southeast of San Joaquin extends a chain of sand-hills
which Ave hoped to cross during the cool of the forenoon,
but at a ford of the Rio Becal, hardly three miles from the
cross-roads, we were detained for nearly two hours by the
senseless obstinacy of my companion's mule, which waded
the deepest part of the river with unflinching steadiness,
and then refused to proceed through the shallow water near
the opposite bank. We had to return to the western shore
and distribute the lieutenant and his baggage among the
sensible quadrupeds ; but the stubborn brute, though now
unloaded and unsaddled, declined to make any concessions
in return, till the Pecador, losing his patience, tied her legs
crossways, and, after felling her to the ground, hitched the
entire mulada to their fallen sister and dragged her across
like a carcass of beef. Priessnitz, the founder of hydro
pathy, holds that a bath, in order to be a perfect tonic,
ought to be followed by a haut-reiz, a skin-stimulus ; and
the correctness of his view was triumphantly illustrated by
the application of a double-twisted cowhide after we got
our patient to terra firma. The bland alacrity of that mule
during the remainder of the trip was something unprece
dented in the experience of her owner.
We had to face the arenal in midafternoon now, but the
" sand-region" proved better than ite name : the plateaus
were tufted with mimosas and tamarisks, and in the ravines
feather-willows and bulrushes indicated the presence of
moisture. A descent of three hours brought us back to
the rolling woodland of the vega, where furlongs and miles

YVCATAN. 295
of our road were shaded by dark-green euphorbias, sloth-
trees, and open groves of algodoneras (Hibiscus odoratus),
whose cotton-like blossoms still covered the lower branches,
while the tree-tops near and far were festooned with the
flaming flowers of a variety of epiphytes, yellow bromelias,
and pale-red Amphilidse or fire-orchids. In Cuba and the
littoral forests of Northern Mexico the new year's vege- '
tation is characterized by a more vivid green and the ab
sence of fruits and full-blown flowers, which have been
stripped by the storms of the rainy season, but in Yucatan
even the October showers alternate with weeks of cloudless
and intensely warm weather, and the cool season — Novem
ber to February — deserves that name only comparatively,
the noon temperature during the Christmas week rising
frequently to 105° Fahrenheit in the shade. As the cli
mate of the Central American highlands resembles an ever
lasting spring, that of Yucatan may be called a perpetual
midsummer, — sunny, agreeable mornings, and sultry, or
else dry, clear, and superheated afternoons. If the foreign
residents of the coast-towns bewail the perennial excess of
caloric, the flora and fauna of the wild interior are certainly
not the worse for it. The first Spanish settlers cleared large
tracts of ground for the cultivation of henequen, or Sisal
hemp, and after exhausting the soil by a succession of uni
form crops abandoned their plantations as barren sand-
fields, — arenals as they are here called, — and on these bar
rens, dusty limestone plateaus some of them, the noontide
heat is often almost suffocating ; but the river-bottoms and
the virgin woods of the southwestern lowlands flourish
in an evergreen luxuriance which refutes the widespread
opinion that heat per se is a characteristic concomitant or
a cause of aridity. The highlands of Northern Tartary
rival those of Dakota in barrenness as well as in the severity

296 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
of their winter climate, while the equator in its range
through two continents and three large islands does not
touch a single desert nor any country that ever suffered
from a scarcity of water. Nor can sand-wastes be said to
impair the fertility of adjacent woodlands : on the contrary,
the forest encroaches upon the desert ; and it is my delib
erate opinion that if Asia and Africa could be delivered
from the tree-destroying animal miscalled Homo sapiens,
and left in the healing hands of Nature for half a millen
nium, the spread of arboreal vegetation would restore the
lost Eastern Paradise to ite pristine glory. In torrid Yu
catan hundreds of square miles have thus reclaimed them
selves, and the arenals of Belonchen and Macoba, having
been left to their fate three or four generations ago, are now
covered with a tall second growth of timber trees.
With the exception of the nomadic Tabascanos, the in
habitants of Yucatan are chiefly agricultural, and their non-
carnivorous habits manifest themselves in the remarkable
tameness of birds and smaller quadrupeds. Bushcocks and
quails were dodging around in the weeds almost under the
hoofs of our mules, and only the larger abutardas, a species
of bustard ( Otis tarda), deigned to take wing for a moment
when we approached their favorite haunts in the tall grass
of the hibiscus-groves. A graceful bird of the heron kind
was cleaning his pearl-gray plumage in our next neighbor
hood when we halted at a little creek for the benefit of our
mulada, and two black squirrels kept chasing each other
round and round a hollow fig-tree whose gigantic branches
overshadowed the dell of the streamlet from bank to bank.
High overhead a pair of parrots were fluttering about the
tree-top with frightened screams, but not on our account : a
tree-snake had made its way to a branch immediately above
their hollow nest, and they foresaw the moment when the

YUCATAN.

297

safety of their young would depend on the strength of
their untried wings.

SAUVE QUI PEUT.'

" Look here !" said the lieutenant : " what do you call
that, close to the triple fork up there? It's too large for a
squirrel : it must be some kind of black tree-bird. Do
you see it moving ?"
Stepping back, I distinguished a round protuberance that
might be an excrescence of the tree or the rump of a half-
hidden animal. With the exception of the wedge-tailed
woodpecker, birds do not cling to the main stem of a tree.
It must be a raccoon or a cluster of bats, I thought.
" I see it plainly now," said the guide : " it's a hormi-
guero" (tamandua, or little ant-bear). " He's picking ante
out of that hollow branch."

298 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" No, no," insisted the lieutenant : " it must be a bird.
A hormiguero is larger, and would show his long tail."
" He'll show it mighty quick if you will lend me that
rifle for a moment. Thank you. — Queda, Paquita !"
The mule stood stock-still, but somehow the shot went
a trifle too high, tearing the bark about an inch above the
nose of the doubtful entity.
" Yes, you are right : I see his long snout now," said
Don Perez. " Yoii scared him, anyhow."
The report and the bark-explosion under his nose had
caused the ant-bear to clasp the tree with a convulsive grip,
but in a shock of surprise rather than of fear. Unconscious
of any offence against mankind in general and the specimens
present in particular, he failed to realize the fell significance
of the phenomenon, and, after sniffing and squinting around
the bullet-hole, turned his head and eyed us in a way that
seemed to solicit a clearer statement of our intentions. Was
it a practical joke, or had we tried to furnish him a busi
ness-opening to the ant-colonies of the interior tree? The
next second might have solved his doubts, but better coun
sels prevailed, and we left him hugging the tree and his
charitable illusion.
Riding slowly along the brink of a deep gully in the
hope of finding a suitable camping-place, we saw a thick
yellow smoke rising from a clump of taxus-trees about a
mile farther down, and I thought I heard the peculiar howl
ing bark of an Indian dog.
" There are no ranchos hereabouts," said the guide : "it
must be a gypsy-camp, wandering Indians, — Tabascanos,
as they call them. I'll bet my mule that we shall find
a spring or something in that hollow: those chaps have a
good nose for drinking-water."
After inspecting the ravine near the camp and finding

YVCATAN. 299
our hopes of water abundantly realized, we decided to
" ranch" a little farther down in a grove of wild fig-trees
(Adansonia), whose leafy roof in case of rain would pro
tect us against all but the heaviest showers, and certainly
intercept every drop of dew. Like the elm in the North,
the Adansonia is here the shade-tree by excellence, and can
dispute the prize of beauty and usefulness with any palm.
The figs of the wild tree are insipid, being leathery, dry,
and somewhat deficient in saccharine elements, but they
make excellent mast, and a single full-grown higuera sheds
yearly from eight hundred to twelve hundred bushels of
ite small grayish-green fruit, besides the large quantities
eaten by tree-rate, monkeys, and birds.
We had blankets enough to dispense with a fire, and
could enjoy the full luxury of the gradual decrease of
caloric as the night wind swelled from an intermittent
afflatus to a steady breeze. Bats, night-cicadas, and moths
fluttered around our heads, but no mosquitoes : the high
lands of Central Yucatan offer no congenial habitat to the
miasma-loving pests. Heat alone cannot breed gnats, any
more than it can raise clouds from an arid soil. The mos
quito is not a native of any special latitude : his home is
wherever the sun shines on a mixture of stagnant water and
decaying vegetable matter. Like watering-place doctors,
the gnats of the northern swamps have to suspend business
during the frost season, but they make up for lost time :
the summer-garden of Beelzebub, the great mass-meeting
ground of all his fly-fiends, is not in the jungles of the
Punjaub nor in the fens of the lower Senegal, but on the
beaver-meadows of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where
hunters and woodchoppers have to wear gauze veils in
July, though the winter temperature sinks fortv degrees
below zero.

300 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" Hadn't we better sleep by reliefs ?" I heard the lieu
tenant say when my eyes had already closed business for
that day. " This camp needs a sentry : those red devils are
prowling around our mules, if I am not much mistaken.
Yes, there are two or three of them sneaking around the
trees back there," said he after a while. "Listen ! you can
hear them talking. I saw one quite plainly a while ago
with something like a stick or a bow in his hand."
" I'm going to find out what they want," said the guide,
rising from his couch ; " but our mules are all right, you
may depend on that. The Tabascanos have no use for
them : they are tramp-Indians — not a cavalryman in the
tribe." The recon noissance was brief and satisfactory. " I thought
so," said he : " the poor devils are hunting cachiporras"
(frugivorous bate) : "they swarm around fig-trees after dark.
One of those chaps has got four of them already, and would
have his bag full, he says, if he hadn't been afraid to dis
turb the caballeros. They will soon have enough, anyhow :
that's what they built that fire for."
" Por Dios ! to eat them ?"
" Of course they will : the Tabascanos will eat grubs and
caterpillars, and prefer them to the best fruit in America.
They have a nickname for the Yucatan Indians that means
monomozos" (monkey-boys), " because our red-skins live on
monkey-food, — bananas and pineapples, and such-like."
Before we broke camp the next morning the Tabascanos
passed us in single file, carrying bundles of dried meat and
household stuff, on their way to the hunting-grounds of
the Rio Belize. Males as well as females wore a full head
of hair, divided in three or four tails that hung down to
their girdles or fluttered in the breeze like the standard of
a capitan pasha. Prejudice aside, it does not look bad if

YUCATAN.

301

the hair is kept well back, and is perhaps the best head
gear in a tropical climate, since it keeps the scalp cool by
evaporating the perspiration, which is condensed or checked
under an air-tight hat.

TABASCANO INDIANS.

After breasting a steep bluff we kept along the ridge of
the Cerro de Macoba, the backbone of Central Yucatan, a
hill-chain of calcareous spar with deep woodlands on either
side. The limestone-mounds before us enclosed broad
arenals entirely devoid of vegetation, and long before noon
the air became hazy and tremulous with heat, the outline
of the eastern horizon grew indistinct, and the large barrens

302 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
ahead glittered now and then with the wavy water-hues of
a transient mirage.
El Pecador had led the way in silence for a couple of
miles, when he drew rein in the chequered shade of a mi
mosa-tree and came to a full right about. " Just turn your
head this way, doctor," said he, — " eastward, or east by
northeast, I should say. Don't you smell something ?"
" What do you mean ?"
" Something like plum-pudding, I mean. Do you know
what day this is ?"
"What day of the month? Last Monday was the
twenty-first — Why, you are right: this is the twenty-
fourth of December, Christmas Eve and Plum-pudding
Night ! What shall we do about it ?"
"I'll tell you what we can do. There is a string of
ranchos on the Rio de Belonchen, about six leagues ahead,
where we can buy ail the material for a stunning Christmas
stew, — beans, bacon, potatoes, eggs and all. Now, I know
a fine spring in the river-bottom, with plenty of shade,
where we could make a night of it if the gentlemen will
agree to let their dinner go. We can reach the river at
four o'clock if we keep on at a decent trot."
The motion was carried by acclamation, and our mules
went ahead as if they sniffed the river from afar, while Si-
moncito, our groom, wore a six-inch grin reflecting visions
of garbanzas con jamon y chili Colorado. Our programme
de cuisine was settled in all its details when we dismounted
in a shady dell in the Belonchen Valley : Don Perez was
to accompany me on a fuel-forage in the lower river-bottom,
the Pecador to canvass the ranchos with a pocketful of cop
pers and a couple of bags, and the mozo undertook to effect
the loan of a large olla, or earthen pot, which he remem
bered to have seen at the rancho of an acquaintance.

YVCATAN. 303
The Pecador returned last, but his efforts had been ex
ceedingly productive, — too much so, in fact, for the capacity
of the olla, which was medium-sized and rather too flat for
a blazing fire. Still, a two-gallon dosis of brown beans
and yams, with eggs, lard, and onions, would meet all im
mediate wants, and the bliss of anticipation had reconciled
us to the imperfection of earthly things in general when
we lifted the earthen pot from the ashes. While the mess
cooled off we decided to collect a dessert of yellow grapes
from the vine-mantled trees in the river-bottom, and all
hands were set to forage, the mozo being left to guard the
palladium and get the dishes ready. I had nearly filled
my hat with the contributions of a single sycamore-tree
when I heard a loud scream from the direction of the
spring, and my blood ran cold with a horrible misgiving
even before I had understood the meaning of the shrieks
which were soon echoed from the lower end of the dell :
" El cochino ! the hog ! the hog ! Santissima ! she's upset
the pot ! Transd la olla ! there goes our supper !"
" Sic transit gloria !" Overpoweringly tragic, but true.
A big sow, attracted by the savory steam, had strolled up
from the canebrake, and while the mozo was filling a tin pail
at the spring she had made a rush for the main stake, upset
the olla, and spilt its contents on the ash-strewn ground.
We stood around in that deepest sorrow which despairs
to find relief in words, when the lieutenant arrived from
the farther end of the grove, his eyes dilated with terror,
but not realizing at first sight the full extent of our bereave
ment. " Oh, the brute ! What !" seeing the empty pot,
" nothing rescued, nothing at all ? upset the kettle altogether ?
Ouarenta mil caraxos del vivo — " I must elide the climax
of the anathema.
" There now !" laughed the Pecador : " isn't it clear that

304 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
a man cannot get along in this country without the lengua
Castellana ? I should like to know what other language
could have clone justice to an occasion like this?"
" Por amor de los santos, lend me your shot-gun, Don
Felix!" whimpered the mozo: "we have to get even with
that brute. Thank you. I'll run her down, if it takes me
all night. Here — "
But in the next moment the Pecador had him by the
shoulder : " Hold on there ! Put that gun down, young
man. I hope that none of us will ever see another Christ
mas Day if that sow is going to get off with a spoonful of
small shot. I'll make her pay the full value of that
supper." "What are you going to do ? Roast her alive ?"
" Never you mind. I'll make it hotter for her than any
fire this side of Halifax. Hand me that cowhide."
He crushed his hat down, bridled his beast with a hitch
of the halter, and galloped away in pursuit of the fugitive
sow, whose career had subsided into a lazy trot as she neared
the river-bank. She allowed him to approach within a
hundred yards before she looked round, but, finding he was
on her traces, she gathered herself up and dashed away at
full speed along the shore of the stream. He overtook her
at the mouth of a little influent, and if grief interferes with
eupepsia I do not think that hog ever digested its best
supper. Our loss, after all, was chiefly one of time : beans, lard,
and eggs enough were left to fill the olla once more, and
the success of our giape-forage could assuage our chagrin
at the absence of yams. Soon after sunset the vibratory
boom of a kettledrum sounded across the valley: the In
dians of the river-ranchos were going to celebrate the Holy
Night with a gran funcion of bonfires, music, and chants, —

YVCATAN.

305

perhaps an echo
of the old Mexi
can Sun-festivals,
which ushered in
the winter solstice
for centuries be
fore the golden
astrum of the
teocallis was su
perseded by the
wooden cross. But
the original signifi
cance of these beal-
fires has long been
forgotten : what
the troopers of Gri-
jalvaand Montejo
attempted in vain
the legionaries of
St. Francis have
thorough ly accom
plished. From Si
sal to Cape Vigia
the agricultural
Yucatecos have
accepted the yoke
of the cross, and
their intolerant
treatment of the
pagan Ustecs and
Tabascanos has
frequently been lynching a lunch-fiend.
the cause of inter-Indian wars which enabled the Caucasians

306 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
to hold the balance of power in spite of their numerical
insignificance. At present the resistance of the Gentiles has
almost entirely ceased, and local insurrections are promptly
suppressed by the orthodox natives without the assistance
of the general government. In the district of Izamal and
Valladolid there are Indian euros and Indian inquisitors
who enforce the statutes of the Church with the proverbial
zeal of new converts, and have aided the Franciscan mission
aries by translating portions of the Bible into the vernacu
lar of their respective tribes, though the ostensible purpose
of the gospel has hardly been furthered by the barbarous
methods of their propaganda. In many of the larger pueblos
the assessment of tithes and school-taxes is farmed out to
Indian colectores, who do not hesitate to sequester the house
hold valuables of defaulting sceptics, and secure the con
nivance of the ecclesiastical authorities by reclaiming apos
tates and deserters without extra charge. On the upper
Belize the Ustec rancheros used to evade the wrath of their
spiritual guardians by taking en masse to the woods and
rocks, but after the introduction of West Indian bloodhounds
by their fermeir-gindral the danger of unbelief has ceased to
be a controverted dogma. The Voz de Mexico mentions a
"collector" of El Cayo so famous for his skill in reclaiming
dissenters that in the winter of 1873 he was sent to the Rio
Zelades, in the eastern part of the State, where the infidels
were openly defying their pastor, and declined to marry or
be given in marriage after the rite of an infallibly expensive
Church. The collector went down with two assistants and
a picked pack of his four-legged propagandists, and was
soon able to report a rousing revival.
Passing through the rancheria the next morning, we saw
a characteristic specimen of the " colored curate" (cura
prieto), as the Yucatecos call their indigenous clerics, — a

YVCATAN.

307

RECLAIMING AN APOSTATE.
fat, powerful mestizo, who
strutted at the head of the
procession under the canopy
of a long-handled cotton umbrella upheld by his acolyte.
He carried a Bible and a little bunch of bulrushes, prob
ably a sort of aspersory. Our mozo knew him personally,
and described him as a severe disciplinarian who had been
known to exact a fee of "cien fanegas" (about sixty bushels)
of maize for baptizing an illegitimate papoose. On taking

308

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

holy orders he had also assumed the patronymic of his
defunct Caucasian predecessor, Pedro Santerra, whom he

DON PEDRO SANTO.

imitated in his habit of spicing his sermons with Spanish
sesquipedalities. "Don Pedro Santo" his un regenerate
neighbors used to call him.
Half a league southeast of the rancheria we reached the
camino real from Campeche to Uxmal, and by an easy
ascent of seven miles the ridge of the Cerro de Macoba,
here the watershed between the Gulf and the Caribbean
Sea. In the far southeast we had a glimpse of the Belize

YVCATAN. 309
coast-jungles now and then, a light-blue expanse spangled
with water-bright streaks and dots ; nearer by, the valley
of the Rio Bacala, winding between densely-wooded hills ;
and on our left, the Cerro de Izamal, whose plateau abounds
with ruins that antedate the oldest aboriginal traditions.
The table-lands of our higher ridge, too, somehow suggested
the idea of former cultivation : curious long-drawn furrows,
though full of brambles and stones, bore a decided resem
blance to boundary-ditches, with the earth heaped up at
either side ; a pile of rocks at the brink of a deep ravine
reminded us, not without reason, perhaps, of a buttressed
tete de pont ; and the gradual descent of the winding slopes
seemed too regular to be quite accidental. With woodlands
on either side, our ridge was very sparsely timbered : the
plateau seemed naturally arid, and the Spanish muleteers
had aggravated the evil by their condemnable habit of using
the wayside shade-trees for firewood : the most frequented
highways of New Spain are lined with tree-stumps and the
charred vestiges of innumerable camp-fires. In certain re
spects the Latin races are our superiors in hygienic insight,
but their conformity to the health laws of Nature is sub
jective rather than objective. Cleanly in his personal habits,
the Spanish Creole tolerates all kinds of nuisances in and
about his rancho : he permits his land to become a desert
or a seed-plot of malaria, but counteracts the consequences
by dietetic precautions.
Frugal, in the original sense of the word, meant literally
to live on fruits in distinction to carnivorous habits, which
the ancient Italians discountenanced as a dietetic aberration ;
and this literal kind of frugality is no bad plan in the trop
ics. We halted for refreshments at a wayside venta, and
heard to our dismay that the ventero had only tortillas and
oranges for sale ; but we found no reason to repent our
20

310 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
lenten fare. The sun seemed to have lost his power for
mischief this morning; the roasting of our skin did not
affect the department of the interior ; our orange breakfast
had made us caloric-proof. Besides being the most digest
ible articles of food, fruits seem to have the property of
lowering the temperature of the system, as it is increased
by meat and all kinds of fat; and I have often found a
fresh-plucked pineapple or orange from twenty to thirty-
five degrees cooler than the surrounding air under the
shadiest trees. Plants seem to possess a power for producing
cold analogous to that exhibited by animals of producing
heat, and even in the midst of a large desert the cool ex
halations of an isolated forest will draw rain from passing
clouds which withhold that blessing from the thirsty sand-
fields around. Insects, too, seem somehow able to main
tain a comfortable temperature under a blazing sun : at ten
o'clock the flint buttresses on our ridge felt as hot as oven-
plates, and the lizards in the shade of the cliffs lay gasping
with open mouth, but the insect world seemed to celebrate
a holiday, the manna-mesquites swarmed with wasps and
beetles, and the flower-tufts of the dusty-green cassias
sparkled with hovering butterflies.
A winding ravine brought us to the valley of the Rio
Macoba before noon, and, after stopping at different unpro
ductive ranchos, we found the right one and replenished our
mess-bag with a store of cakes and bananas. There was no
lack of drinking-water in the creeks, but we had set our
heart on reaching a little eminence with a magnificent clump
of trees that had been a conspicuous landmark for the last
four hours. Our perseverance met its reward : no draught
of spring-water could be more refreshing than the air that
received us on entering the tree-shade : the sudden change
equalled the thermal contrast at the mouth of a deep cave.

YVCATAN.

311

CHRISTMAS IN YUCATAN.

The family of a poor ranchero were eating their Christmas
dinner at the foot of a giant fig, and rose with exclamations
of welcome : " Buenos dias de Dios, caballeros ! — a happy

312 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Christmas to you ! What fine weather you have brought
us ! Dismount, amigos : hay campo por dos pueblos — there
is room here for a cityful."
We needed not much urging, and in a few minutes the
good ranchero had revived the embers of her camp-fire, and
proceeded to warm our tortillas with a sauce of onions and
clarified butter. They declined our invitation to share our
repast, but showed their good-will by joining us at the sec
ond course, and our combined efforts soon produced an im
posing pile of banana-peels. While we enjoyed our Christ
mas siesta the ranchero's muchachos combined pleasure with
business by chasing the big yellow butterflies that visited
the honeysuckle festoons of our shade-trees, the tally being
kept by their little sister, who announced each capture with
screams of delight and derision of the unsuccessful com
petitor. Their father's farm was crossed by the camino real
to Uxmal, and visitors from the strange country called In-
glaterra had often paid as much as twenty cents for a single
butterfly, — the day's wages of a stout peon for a flimsy and
almost imponderable insect ! But fun, to be unmixed, must
be unprofitable, and the young entomologists soon devised
a change of programme. On the opposite bank of a deep
ravine grazed a troop of young mules, led — or rather mis
led — by a wary old donkey who had retired from business
to enjoy the evening of his life on the sunny slopes of the
cerro. In a bush near their pasture, but overhanging the
ravine, a colony of black hornets had built a conspicuous
nest, a grayish-white spheroid at least sixteen inches long
by a foot in diameter. A common stone would hardly carry
across, but, after a number of fruitless attempts, one of the
boys hit the nest with a flat piece of slate, and two seconds
later the mules joined in a series of antics that would have
made the fortune of any circus-proprietor. The old ran-

YVCATAN. 313
chero laughed till he screeched, and we had just secured our
animals, who were watching the evolutions with growing
interest, when the performance closed with a thundering
hurdle-race through the underbrush of the chaparral.
When the boys returned their progenitor broached a pack
age of cigaritos, and the whole family then indulged in a
sociable Christmas smoke. They were peones de rotura, —
board-laborers working for their rent and a few shillings
a month, — too poor to indulge in pulque or garbanzas on
week-days, but evidently with no reason to envy the noon
ing of a Northern factory-laborer with his ten dollars a
week and ten daily working-hours. He who thinks other
wise has never seen a Pittsburg iron-worker on a midwinter
day bolting his dinner in a corner of the rolling-mill, where
flying cinders and sooty drops mix with his pea-soup, and
the draught of three open doors with the breath of the
furnace, while his son or the boarding-house boy stands
shivering by, waiting for the dishes and his share of the
leathery pie-crust. 0 Dios del Sur!
Excess of caloric might cause as much discomfort as
excessive cold if it could not be so much more easily
counteracted. Even the after-dinner hour — generally the
warmest from within and without — may be passed right
pleasantly at such trifling expense as may be involved by
a trip to the next shade-trees. After a frugal dinner, rest
ing on a shady eminence, without insane scruples against the
removal of superfluous garments, you may defy the dog-star
to do ite worst. Such a siesta-camp found, what can exceed
the luxury of its dreamy repose? — though in the tropics
you have to dream with your eyes open : it is not easy to
slumber during the busiest working-hour of the organic
powers. Earth seems surcharged with vitality as the sky
with sunlight. You feel the pulsations of Nature's heart,

314 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
the breath of the Dea Genetrix : the essence of life quick
ens the soil, moves over and in the waters, and peoples the
air with a thousand forms : the spirit ot Vishnu is almost
visibly present ; the day-fairies may bring you visions, but
they are visions that banish sleep.
After an hour or so we remounted, though the weather
was still ovjpressively warm. Dark-gray clouds had risen
from the east, but failed to overtake the sun, and we envied
the parrots that returned in swarms from the fields to their
homes in the depths of the virgin woods. A flight of ma
caws in a wooded valley on our left were called together
by their leader and started off in double file, or rather by
sets of twos, for high overhead the column divided pair-
wise, and the separate couples took a bee-line to their re
spective nests. It was a pretty sight, and their harsh
screams sounded clear and melodious from the distance, —
from an astonishing distance indeed, for the voice of the
larger parrots is not less remarkable for its power than for
its versatility : the crested macaws can summon their mates
from across the broadest rivers of the American tropics.
"It reminds me of home," said the Cuban. "In the
province of Bayamo they are our weather-prophets, and if
they hurry home before sunset the farmers follow, because
it is a sure sign of rain."
"I do not know about rain, but I reckon we'll have a
storm before night," said the guide. " They have dry
gales in this country that are worse than any thunder
storm : the wind doesn't seem to have set much force if
there iswater in the air."
"Did you see that lightning?"
" Yes : that decides it," said he : " we are in for a rain
storm now. Close up, gentlemen : I'm trying to get you
to Charley Cortina's tower-house if I can : he has better

YVCATAN. 315
accommodation than any ventero we could possibly reach
to-night." If animals cannot be credited with reason proper, it must
be a sort of acquired instinct which enables them to ap
preciate their own share of interest in the rate of progress.
Our mules went ahead at a spanking trot, and continued to
improve their gait without other prompting than that of
the muttering thunder and a chill gust of wind which sud
denly cooled the air by twenty or thirty degrees. Splashing
through a creek, we started a drove of mayarros, or dwarf
peccaris, which had huddled together in the canebrake
under the shelter of a fallen tree, and I noticed that one of
the young pigs had its legs so entangled with pond-weeds
and mud that it might have been easily captured. But
there was no time for zoological adventures ! a whirlwind
of dust and leaves swept across the creek and over our
heads when we reached the top of the opposite bank.
" Single file !" yelled the Pecador. " Keep up, caballeros,
unless you're waterproof: not a minute to lose."
We galloped through a rocky defile and away over the
chaparral in the direction of a banana-plantation at the foot
of a wooded ridge.
" Is that Cortina's place?"
" No: the next below it, — the house at the farther end of
the ridge."
" Too late !" cried the Cuban. " Look back there : it's
coming like a flying deluge."
" We have to. keep ahead of it. Wake 'em up, gents !
Alza ! Devil take the hindmost !"
"He won't take me, then," shouted the Cuban. "Let's
see what they call riding in your country, Mr. Guide.
Here goes ! Santos de Cuba !"
He had the advantage of us, being slight-built and long-

316 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
spurred, and the hydrophobic mule forged ahead at a rate
which completely redeemed her character. There was no
need of looking back : the oncoming storm roared in our
rear like a waterfall, and a dust-cloud whirling leaves and
twigs over our heads made us clutch our sombreros. The
rancho was almost reached, — they had seen us, for we heard
their cheers and the creak of the swinging gate, — but in the
moment when we galloped through the corral the flying sea
overtook us, and no wetter guests ever crossed the threshold
of Carlos Cortina.
The " tower-house" had originally been built for a con
vent, and the walls were of enormous thickness, the material
having been brought in the form of ready-hewn limestone
blocks from the ruins of a neighboring teocalli; but I could
not get rid of the impression that I felt as well as heard the
storm-blasts which seemed to strike the house from all sides
at once. After removing our wet mantles the family of
the landlord pressed around us in silent awe, till we had to
laugh in our own despite at the manoeuvres of a little sapa-
jou monkey who was trying to hide behind a hand-loom in
the corner, and squealed and chattered in his attempts
to squeeze his shoulders through. Daylight was almost
eclipsed, but the air was fairly deluged with electric fire,
and the voice of Jupiter Tonans rose to a continuous roar.
There were eleven persons in the room, including two
women and several children, but I do not think that any
of them were afraid : the feeling of fear in such moments
is kept in abeyance by a stronger emotion, an excitement
which neither experience nor lightning-rods will help us to
outgrow. It may take the form of devotional exaltation
or of boisterous mirth, but only the opium-torpor of a Turk
would be proof against crashes that shake the air behind a
wall of bombproof masonry and flashes that can penetrate

YVCATAN. 317
the veil of a cloudburst. Moreover, I suspect that the
sensations of a deaf and blind person during a tropical
thunderstorm would furnish some curious arguments in
favor of Von Haller's conjecture that the organism of the
human soul is an electro-magnetic apparatus.
"That will cool the weather for the next two weeks,
anyhow," said the landlord, when the worst was over; "but
it comes a little too soon to suit me : my corn isn't quite
ripe, and I am afraid there is not much left standing."
"That will disappoint your long-tailed neighbors, the
apes," laughed the guide. " Better get your corn in as it
is, or they will take it for a New Year's present, as they did
last year."
" Oh, they are welcome," said the farmer. " I made
them pay for all they got : I caught fourteen last summer
and sold them all but three."
" Do you catch any in winter-time ?"
" There will be a chance to-morrow if it clears up before
morning, but the best time is the rainy season" (June to
November). " If the woods are thoroughly soaked, they
can't stand it any longer, and come out into the open fields
with the first sunshine."
" You ship them to Campeche, I suppose ?"
" A few, senor, but my foreign visitors pay me more than
the regular traders. This is only eight miles from Uxmal,
you know, and strangers pass almost every week. One of
my neighbors has a regular curiosity -shop of birds and pets."
"What is the average price of your monkeys?"
" All the way from four reals to four dollars, sir : one
American lady paid me four dollars for an old mono vasteco"
(sapajou), " the wickedest brute I ever caught. Strangers
somehow seem to prefer the full-grown ones, — maybe on
account of their glossy fur, — but if they asked my advice I

318 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
should tell them honestly that they throw their money away
if they pay as much as four copper cents for the finest old
monkey in Yucatan, unless they want to eat him or stuff
him. If they hope to get any fun out of the brute, they
are cheated : a badger or a boar peccari isn't half as con
trary as an old monkey. As a rule, the funniness of a
monkey ends with his second year."
The rain ceased toward morning, but the air was still
humid and sultry, and our guide advised us to wait for a
safer guarantee of fair weather, a change of wind or of tem
perature. While the farmer inspected his corn-fields we
ascended a little mound behind the house to take a look at
the ruins of a teocalli, or ancient altar-pyramid, which from
the valley looked almost like a strongly-entrenched rock-
fortress. I could not ascertain the former height of the
pyramid, nor how often its ruins had been pillaged by mod
ern builders, but, to judge by the dimensions of the present
ruins, I believe that the original structure must have been
the work of different generations, unless the mandate of a
despot had assembled an army of architects. The mission
of Sacrificios, or the " tower-house" (casa torrada), as the
neighbors call it, was built in 1812 with the contributions
collected by the Franciscan monks in the district of Valla-
dolid ; but the site chosen by its first projectors was sixteen
English miles farther up the river, near the junction of the
Rio Macoba with a perennial affluent. It seems that the
workmen and their purveyors were in the habit of fetching
their forage from the woodlands of the lower river-valley,
and that on one of these expeditions a Mexican woodcutter
discovered the teocalli of Sacrificios, a huge rubbish-mound
entirely covered with a shroud of creepers and tanglewood.
Finding the stones superior in size and finish to those his
countrymen were chiselling with so much labor, he reported

YVCATAN.

319

his find to the contractor, who at once came down, and, after
a careful examination of the ruins, offered to execute his
contract at one-third of the stipulated price if his employ
ers would agree to change the site to the neighborhood of

THE RUINS OF SACRIFICIOS.

the teocalli. The Franciscans, seeing their way out of a
financial embarrassment, consulted their superior, who,
whispering he would ne'er consent, not only consented, but
also recognized the miraculous character of the discovery,
which is now claimed to have been the result of a vision re
vealing the locality of the strange quarry when the builders
were straitened for the means of pursuing their pious work.

320 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
The teocalli itself is certainly a marvel of enterprise.
The foundation-walls, consisting of a triple stratum of Cy
clopean blocks, cover an area of nearly half an acre, and
would alone furnish the material for half a dozen churches,
while the upper seven tiers of the superstructure are cov
ered with ornaments which must have cost infinite labor if
it is true that their sculptors were unacquainted with the
use of iron implemente. Between here and Uxmal the
ground is almost covered with debris, and the "sacrificial
mound" of the Rio Macoba may have been a suburban
palace or fortified acropolis of the great city.
" Caught a monkey ?" inquired our guide, when we met
the farmer's family at breakfast.
" No, but we lost one," whimpered the little girl.
" Halloo, what's the matter ? Did one of your pets get
away ?"
" Look here !" said the farmer, showing us the dead body
of a little tamarin (Midas rosalia) : " all the wild monkeys
in Yucatan and all my dogs would I have given for this
little fellow, and one of our pet squirrels bit him to death
last night. Parece que tuvo alma — I'm sure he had a soul,"
said he : " my children never had a prettier playmate."
" Your squirrel did it, you say ?"
" Yes, he burned his tail a couple of weeks ago, and last
night the squirrel found that sore place and gnawed his tail
clear up to the backbone, — bled him to death, I suppose.
When my children found him this morning he was as limp
as a rag, and died before I came back. It isn't my fault :
I shouldn't have sold him for ten dollars. But just do look
at those children : they wouldn't cry half as much if the
curate of our parish had died."
" Never mind, Anita," said her mother : " your papa will
catch you another one just like this."

YUCATAN. 321
" No, he never will," wailed Anita. " 0, mi querido, mi
pobre chi 'querido ! — my sweetheart, my poor little sweet
heart !"
" Padrecito," said the boy, who had clutched his father's
arm till he secured his attention, — " padrecito, mother says
that you are going to skin that squirrel alive : when will
you do it ?"
" Yes, my boy, — as soon as we have buried poor Chico."
"Father," continued the boy, "will you let me rub him
with pepper-sauce after you've skinned him?"
" He's right," laughed the Pecador : " you ought to get
ten dollars' worth of satisfaction out of the brute that did
it: are you going to kill him?"
" Que drve ?" (" cui bono ?"), said he : " it's their nature,
I suppose : squirrels are nothing but overgrown rats, any
how." Our kind host accompanied us to the upper end of his
farm, from where we could reach our destination by a trail
across the hill-pastures, the road through the river-bottom
being somewhat miry after the heavy rain. The wind had
veered to the northwest, and between the slowly-shifting
clouds on the eastern horizon the sun glittered on a light-
green plain intersected by still brighter, almost canary-yel
low, stripes and lines, radiating up the river toward the
dark-green hill-country at our feet. The bright lines marked
the extent of the riparial palmetto-swamps, the home of
countless varieties of water-birds and the favorite haunt of
the roving Tabascanos, while the agricultural Maceguals
stick to the upland valleys, where their crops are eked out
by an unfailing harvest of spontaneous fruits. The banks
of the Macoba are overhung with fig-trees and cabbage-
palms, festooned with the coils of the uva real, whose small
but sweet and very prolific yellow grapes alone would se-

322 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
cure a homeless wanderer against starvation: farther up,
butternut-palms, carob-trees, mangoes, and wild mulberries
form evergreen and ever-teeming orchards, and the under
brush abounds with nute, berries, and different wild-growing
Leguminosse, whose beans are often mixed with those of
the cultivated varieties.
Of all non-indigenous fruit-trees, the biennial banana
alone requires tillage and artificial propagation, but rewards
its cultivator so abundantly that a populous village might
here be supported with the same amount of labor and on
the same acreage which in the North would hardly main
tain a small family. A dinner of brown beans, maize
cakes, milk, and bananas requires but few entremets, — grapes
perhaps, a little honey or butter now and then, or an oc
casional bit of bacon ; but of the four first-named staples
the Yucatan farmer can secure a redundant supply by one
hour of daily work, without using any of the labor-saving
contrivances which have converted our large Eastern farms
into so many steam-factories.
At the outskirts of a coppice of taxus-trees we came
across a singular obstacle. A long wall of verdure it
seemed, a perfectly straight hedge of brier and bush-ropes,
but a closer inspection revealed a substratum of masonry,
heavy and rough-hewn but well-cemented limestone blocks.
A dome-like mass of foliage on a hill on our right was
probably supported by a similar nucleus, and every now
and then our animals stumbled over rubbish-heaps and
scattered blocks covered with grass or a network of cordero-
brambles. A good deal of building material seemed to
have been quarried in the next neighborhood, for the rock-
walls of a narrow valley a little farther down were hewn into
terraces and polygons for a stretch of nearly half a mile.
As we pursued our trail along the shady banks of a little

YVCATAN. 323
creek our guide suddenly halted at the foot of a massive
bridge-head, and we dismounted to lead our mules over a
barricade of heaped-up debris : we had entered the suburbs
of Uxmal. The forest seemed literally to rise from a buried
city. Almost everywhere the ground was paved or strewn
with square-hewn limestone blocks ; leafy arbors and copses,
standing about in detached groups, turned out to be rub
bish-heaps with a film of vegetation ; and when we haltered
our mules under the canopy of a flowering tamarind we
found that its roots had wrenched a sculptured corner-stone
from the base of a buried terrace.
What might a dwelling-place of the living be where a
city of the dead could robe itself in such a garb of joy ?
The platform of the crumbling terrace was covered with a
flower-carpet of wildering geraniums, lianas and evergreen
vines twined their garlands from wall to wall, and pendent
tresses of tillandsia moss fluttered like banners from the
lintel of a broken gateway. As the sun rose higher the
noon-blooming heliconias shook the rain from their locks
and opened the light-blue eyes of their feather-flowers, and
when the north wind dissipated the clouds the sun himself
blinked through the swaying screen of the liana tangle
and coquetted with the dancing rivulet at our feet. Not a
nook, not a recess, was tenantless : lizards peeped from the
narrow loopholes, butterflies and humming-birds carried
their morning salute to their favorite flowers or visited the
shady arcades where a pair of squirrel-monkeys chattered
roguishly in their hiding-place, and the leafy vault overhead
resounded with the jubilee of the weaver-thrush.
How cheap is happiness in the tropics ! and how expen
sive in the latitudes where light and warmth cease to be
the free gifts of Nature! Our tongues have been attuned
to hymns of thanksgiving and resignation, but how many

324 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
thousand hearts in Europe and North America may repeat
the lament of Lenau's exiled Circassian and his prayer to
the sun, — Take me from this icy desert,
Up to thee, eternal One !
We may point to our superior civilization, our steam-
ploughs and sewing-machines, our petroleum stoves, gas-lit
cities, benevolent societies and feather beds, but all that
proves only that life has become more complex on the in
door plan, and that the absence of natural comforts has
promoted the elaboration of some highly ingenious substi
tutes. Reduced to its essentials, however, the problem is
just this : Has our net surplus of happiness been increased?
Can we discount the gratuitous blessings of the South after
subtracting the manufacturing expenses of our boasted
succedanea? Or has our burden of woe been lightened
enough to incline the balance in our favor ? Are cold and
hunger a less fruitful source of misery than indolence?
Where is the reward of incessant toil if its produce is swal
lowed by those ever-clamorous creditors ? Our system of
ethics, a mixture of puritan and mercantile principles,
makes us liable to forget that labor is a blessing only as a
means to something better, not as the end of existence, and
that the temptations of leisure may survive ite golden op
portunities. Ten hours of factory-work, often followed by
a heavy share of domestic drudgery, leave not much chance
for the gratification of an ugly habit, but certainly even
less for the cultivation of a fine talent, for weeds may still
thrive where nobler plants must hopelessly starve.
It cannot be denied that the higher latitudes have be
come the home of the superior races, but the theory which
ascribes the shortcomings of our neighbors to unavoidable
climatic influences cannot be reconciled with the stature and

YVCATAN. 325
strength of the ancient Greeks and modern Abyssinians,
nor with the relics of a thousand cities whose builders
proved that enterprise and genius may flourish in a winter-
less clime.
The present degeneracy of the noblest Southern nation
is rather a consequence of the baleful physical vices which
have fastened upon mankind like a canker, whose ravages
can only be counteracted by a powerful prophylactic. This
antidote has been found in a cold climate. Cold air is a
tonic and antiseptic : like quinine and belladonna, a heavy
frost acts as a febrifuge ; it preserves animal tissues from
decay, and enables us to indulge with comparative impunity
in a variety of anti-natural habits for which our Southern
neighbors have paid with their prestige and their pristine
vigor. The bitterness of the cure may be the condition of
its efficacy. But is the evil itself a necessary one? Our
scientific journals lately adverted to the discovery of a
California opium-eater who could " sober up" at ten min
utes' notice by swallowing an heroic dose of arsenic ; and
more than three centuries ago Paracelsus found that the
progress of a virulent, and till then incurable, disease could
be arrested by the internal use of mercury. These remedies,
too, may be infallible, and, on the whole, the lesser evil, but
all that would hardly justify the assertion that sobriety and
purity can only thrive on a basis of arsenic and quicksilver;
and yet it is in a precisely analogous way that a cold climate
counteracts a tendency to sloth and ignorance and mitigates
the consequences of dietetic abuses.
To Nature-abiding nations and individuals the upland
regions of the tropics would offer chances of a happiness
superior to that of the frost-plagued latitudes, by just as
much as sunlight is superior to coal-gas, and the botanic
garden of Lima to the finest Northern conservatory.
21

CHAPTER X.
THE AMERICAN POMPEII.
Sleeping in a leafy vault,
In a winding-sheet of ivy. — Shenstone.
" Every tomb is a cradle," says Jean Paul ; and his apo
thegm holds good wherever the organism of Nature exerts
its functions in undisturbed harmony. Life is the heir of
Death : every mouldering plant fertilizes an aftergrowth
of ite kind, and if the races of mankind succeeded each
other as the trees of the forest, a superior spirit might view
the decay of an oak and of a nation with equal unconcern.
But while the fading flowers of the old year may console
us with the hope of a coming spring, our lament over the
withered empires of the Old World has a deeper significance ;
the dying nations of the East have involved their fields
and forests in an equal fate : the lands that know them no
more have themselves withered, and no spring can restore
the prime of an exhausted soil. From Eastern Persia to
Western Morocco, Earth has thus perished together with
her inhabitants : Vishnu has resigned his power to Shiva,
and the Buddhistic Nirvan, the final departure of the
Genius of Life, has already begun for some of the fairest
countries ever brightened by the sun of the Juventus
Mundi. The western shores of the Atlantic, too, have seen the
rise and decline of mighty empires : the ruins of Uxmal
equal those of Nineveh in grandeur as well as in the hope-
326

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 327
lessness of their decay, but the soil of Yucatan has sur
vived ite tyrants. In the struggle between Chaos and
Cosmos the organic powers have here prevailed, and the
sylvan deities have resumed their ancient sway.
There is a well-defined ridge of Tertiary limestone for
mation which divides the table-lands of the eastern penin
sula from the wooded lowlands of the west, and the ruins
of Uxmal, Chichen, Izamal, and Macoba have all been
discovered in the western timber-lands, but have nowhere
betrayed their existence by the diminished exuberance of
the vegetation. Their walls are hedged, interlocked, and
covered with trees, and while the Oriental archseologist
has to grope in the sand-drifts of burning deserts, his Trans
atlantic colleague can thus pursue his studies in the shade
of a forest-region whose living wonders may well divide
his attention with the marvels of the past. Eighty years
ago the district of Macoba and Belonchen was an unex
plored wilderness. The Jesuit missionaries of Valladolid
had recorded an Indian tradition about the vestiges of a
giant city in the neighborhood of Merida, but their vague
descriptions were supposed to refer to the large teocalli
near the convent of Sacrificios, and the rediscovery of the
Casas Grandes seems to have been as complete a surprise
to the citizens of Merida as the exhumation of Pompeii to
the burghers of Nola and Castellamare.
The great treasure-trove of 1829 has often been ascribed
to the Baron Frederic de Waldeck, though since the publi
cation of his memoirs in 1837 his countrymen have never
claimed that honor. His subsequent explorations made
Uxmal the Mecca of American antiquarians, but the amus
ing account of the original discovery, as given in the Voyage
Pittoresque, proves that in archseology, not less than in other
sciences, the better part of our knowledge is what Lessing

328 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
called a "museum of collected curiosities, discovered by
accident and independently of each other." On the even
ing of the 1st of November, 1828, Don Pancho Yegros, a
Yucatan planter, and his guest, Dr. Lewis Mitchel, a Scotch
surgeon of Sisal harbor, returned from a hunting-expedition
in the Sierra Marina, and, seeking shelter from the threaten
ing weather, happened to come across an Indian wood-
chopper, who guided them to a sacristia, an old Indian
temple in the depths of the forest. They lighted a fire,
and, having noticed some curious sculptures in a sort of
peristyle, the Scotchman proceeded to inspect the interior
of the building. The masonry was covered with dust and
spider-webs, but the application of wet rags discovered a
triple row of bas-relief decorations running along the walls
horizontally and at equal intervals, and between the roof
and the upper lintel of the door the limestone slabs were
covered with small figures which seemed too irregular for
simple ornaments, and might be hieroglyphic symbols.
After daybreak the Scotchman rummaged a pile of debris
behind the temple, and unearthed the torso of a little image,
which he pocketed with an enthusiasm that puzzled the
Spanish planter as much as his Indian serf. The natives
were unable to give any satisfactory account of the building,
and, taking his leave, the doctor requested his host to inter
view the old Indian residents of the neighborhood in regard
to the problematic temple, and rode away with the promise
to renew his visit in the course of the year.
" Isn't it strange," said Don Yegros when he was alone
with his peon, " that we have lived here for a lifetime with
out suspecting that there was such a curiosity in our neigh
borhood? Why, that caballero tells me that some of his
countrymen would buy those pictured stones for their weight
in silver !"

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 329
"He gave me half a dollar, anyhow," chuckled the
Indian. " He ought to take those countrymen of his to
the north end of the sierra : in the chaparral of the Rio
Macoba there is a square league of ground just covered with
such empty old buildings."
The hacendado turned on his heel : " Are you deranged ?
A square league of such ruins ! You do not mean build
ings like that we slept in last night ?"
" No, senor ; very different buildings, — houses as high as
yours, and forty times as long. One of them has more
rooms in it than there are tiles on your roof, and long
galleries with sculptured heads and figures."
Don Yegros stood speechless for a moment. " Mil de-
monios!" he burst out when the stolid countenance of his
serf told him that the fellow was in sober earnest. " Why,
in the name of your five senses, could you not tell us that
a minute sooner? Did you not see how delighted the
caballero was to find that one old broken statue ?"
" He liked it, did he? Well, I didn't know that, senor.
I found a much prettier one in that same place a few years
ago, and took it to our village priest, but came very near
getting a good hiding for it. He smashed it, and cursed it
for an idolatrous monster and me for a monstrous idiot."
" Well, so you are. Get on that horse now, and I give
you just twenty minutes to overtake the caballero and bring
him back here. Why, man, you came very near missing
the only opportunity you ever had of being of any use in
the world."
The caballero and the opportunity were retrieved, and on
the next day the peon led an exploring-party to the jungles
of the Rio Macoba, where they had to make their way
through all the obstacles of a pathless wilderness, but on
the third day found themselves in the midst of a liana-

330 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
shrouded Pompeii, and entered different edifices whose di
mensions so far exceeded the expectations of their archaeo
logical companion that he decided to return at once and
carry the news to the foreign residents of Sisal. They had
discovered the ruins of Uxmal, which rival those of Thebes
and Persepolis in beauty and grandeur as well as in extent,
and stand unequalled and unapproached among the archi
tectural relics of our own continent. While volumes had
been written about the clumsy burrows of the Mound-
builders and the naked brick walls on the Rio Gila, this
city of palaces had slumbered in ite forest shroud, unex
plored by any visitor save the prying catamount and the
silent tribe of the tropical bats, and, but for the accident of
the rainstorm on that November night of 1828, might thus
have slumbered for ever, like the lost Atlantis in her ocean
grave. Soon after his return to Sisal, Dr. Mitchel was inter
viewed by a French traveller, the Baron Jean Frederic de
Waldeck, who had visited the West Indies, Panama, and
Guatemala, and had been attracted to Yucatan by the rumor
of the marvellous discovery. They started for the back
woods as soon as the doctor could disengage himself from
his professional duties, Waldeck intimating his intention to
weed and clear the ruins at his own expense. But a cursory
inspection of the main casas, their great extent, their dis
tance from each other and from the next inhabited town,
and the intricacy and rankness of the all-covering and all-
pervading jungle, convinced the French traveller that the
work of restoration would overtask his private resources.
He therefore contented himself with making a careful
draught of the accessible buildings, and prepared a memo
rial to the Mexican government, which the doctor under
took to translate and forward with the recommendations of

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 331
all the provincial magnates and officials whose interest could
be enlisted by his personal influence. A number of foreign
merchants and landed proprietors of Yucatan signed this
petition, and entrusted it to Don Cesar Pedraza (a relation
of the general and presidential candidate of the same name),
who was about to visit the Mexican capital. But the Yu
catecos had been unfortunate in the choice of their delegate :
General Pedraza was defeated, and Don Cesar, by his zeal
ous support of his kinsman, incurred the ill-will of the
omnipotent Santa Anna, during whose long military dic
tatorship and subsequent presidency Mexico was to all pur
poses an absolute monarchy. Santa Anna retained his power
by proving himself a patriot in some international transac
tions, but reserved to himself the privilege of deciding all
domestic matters by favoritism. He deposed the governor
of Yucatan, and in his place appointed a man whose parti
san policy and unscrupulous interference with the municipal
affairs of the peninsula produced a ferment of factions that
kept all non-political questions in the background. The
explorations of Stephens and Catherwood at last revived
the sensation, and in the summer of 1845, Senor Lizadas,
the mayor of Merida, was induced to send a civil engineer
and some of his peons to Uxmal with a view of improving
the wretched roads ; but soon after the mayor was worsted
in a political trial of strength with the new state autocrat,
and had to take refuge in New Orleans, while his real es
tate was confiscated by the governor. The death of the
latter functionary in 1849 enabled Lizadas to return and
recover his property, but in the mean while the archaeolog
ical excitement had subsided, and the mouldering ruins were
left to their fate.
A year after the election of Benito Juarez the president's
accomplished secretary, Lerdo de Tejada, visited Yucatan,

332 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
and commissioned an American engineer to survey a good
carriage-road from Merida to Uxmal and send him an esti
mate of the probable cost. But the next year brought a
European armada and a French surprise-party with torpe
does, siege-guns, and other machinery that threatened to
multiply the existing ruins of Mexico, and once more the
buried city was abandoned to the beasts of the forest. Then
came the farce of the Empire, followed by the tragedy of
Queretaro and the carnival of chaos in 1867. When Jua
rez undertook the work of reconstruction the poor Indian
found himself beset with problems of ways and means
which he was glad to escape by making his way to the
happy hunting-grounds ; but his successor, Lerdo, weath
ered the crisis, and after a year of hard work treated him
self to a recreation-trip through the southern provinces. At
Merida he had a long interview with the son of Don Pancho
Yegros, the surviving member of Dr. Mitchel's party, and
on his return to the capital the president recommended an
appropriation of fifty thousand pesos (about fifty-five thou
sand dollars), one-half of the sum for the construction of
a road to Merida and the thorough removal of rubbish and
vegetable encumbrances from the ruins, the interest of the
remaining half to be set aside for repairs, repetitions of
the weeding process, etc., and the salary of a mayoral, or
government superintendent.
In the winter of 1872 this appropriation was granted,
and the long-delayed work was then commenced in earnest.
The dimensions of the ancient city were found to exceed
even the conjectures of Baron Waldeck. The muralla or
rampart-wall was traced southward to a quarter of a mile
beyond the Rio Macabo and east to the foot-hills of the
Sierra de Belonchen, and must have enclosed an area of at
least twelve English square miles. To clear such a space

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 333
of its jungle-maze and the organic deposits of centuries
would have exhausted the scanty appropriation, and the
trustees of the fund had to content themselves with clear
ing the main buildings and connecting them by avenues with
each other and with the carriage-road that is now finished
to San Lorenzo, where it connecte with the old military
highway to Merida. Even thus the undertaking could only
be completed by employing peons or Indian serfs, whom
the neighboring planters volunteered to furnish gratis, the
trustees only providing their food and the necessary tools.
For the same work of destruction and obstruction which
the fire-deluge of Mount Vesuvius accomplished in a single
night has here been effected by the silent progress of arbo
real vegetation and decay in a manner which illustrates the
scientific axiom that in dynamics force and time are convert
ible factors. The mixture of ashes and porous lava which
covers the City of Pompey is far easier to remove than the
tegumen of mould, gnarled roots, and tanglewood that has
spread itself over the ruins of Uxmal. Like the coils of
a boa-constrictor, the flexible arms of the lianas and the
cordero-vines have wound themselves around the columns
and projecting rocks ; nay, forced their sprouts through the
crevices of the thickest walls, sending out lateral shoots
along the inner surface, so that often their grip can only be
broken at the risk of breaking the building at the same
time. Trees were found which had incorporated themselves
with a detached pillar or window-sill after wrenching it
from its place, or by growing completely around it if it
proved immovable ; and it has been supposed that the re
markable absence of smaller buildings is owing to this
cause. They were disintegrated by trees and vines that had
fastened themselves upon them and in the course of their
growth dislodged them from their foundations. Only the

334 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
enormous weight of the larger edifices could preserve them
from the same fate. If much longer, would have been a
different question, but the buildings which have so far stood
their ground are now probably safe.
A year after the commencement of the work the carriage-
road to San Lorenzo was completed, and the ruins can now
be reached by private conveyance from Sisal in twenty-four
hours, or by the semi-weekly stage vid Merida in two days,
the distance from the coast being about eighty-five miles.
About twelve miles southwest of Charley Cortina's
" tower-house" we crossed a tributary of the Rio Macoba,
and came in sight of a broad terrace that overlooks the
river and the undulating woodlands beyond. Here Colonel
Rochez, the mayoral, or government agent en chef, has col
lected all the detached statues, ornamented stones, and
sculptured curiosities which his workmen unearthed in the
course of their labors. They are grouped in pyramids and
monumental piles of various shapes, rather with a view to
picturesque effect, as it seems, than for the accommodation of
antiquarian students, most of the hieroglyphic tablets being
stacked up like slabs in a slate-quarry, with their inscrip
tions partly or entirely covered.
The road then enters the forest once more, and the rank
intricacy of the cordero-thickets gave me an idea of the
appearance of this region in Baron Waldeck's time, and
the difficulty of uprooting square miles of such jungles.
" Is Captain Luiz at home ?" inquired the Pecador, when
we met a loafing peon at the lower end of the terrace.
" I don't know, but I can tell you where you may find
the mayoral himself. He's hunting quails in a ravine be
hind the Nunnery. I'll show you the way, if you like."
" Never mind, I know the place. That fellow means
the superintendent," exclaimed the Pecador, — " old Colonel

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 335
Rochez, who has been in charge of this place since they
built the new road. But the real mayoral is his son, Captain
Luiz: I believe he knows more about these buildings than
any twenty men in Yucatan. Charley Cortina told me
that he saw him the day before yesterday, so we shall find
him at home, I guess."
" Captain Luiz Rochez? Wasn't he down in Campeche
a few months ago ?" inquired the lieutenant.
" Yes, he went down last May, trying to get a few more
quarrymen, but the government would not foot the bill.
The old colonel should have gone himself."
"They helped themselves to military titles all round, it
seems ?"
" No, they earned them honestly," said the lieutenant.
" The old gent was in charge of Fort Miguel near Acapulco
till they had to retire him on account of his deafness, and
his son used to belong to the Second Artillery, and had the
name of being the best engineer in the regiment. Up in
Matamoras he got mixed up in the Escobedo rebellion, and
they made him resign, I believe, — probably because he
wouldn't bribe the court-martial. He was too much of a
gentleman for the frontier service, anyhow. He would be
in his right element here if the pay wasn't so confounded
small." " He has to share it with his father, I presume?"
" No, the government doesn't recognize him at all : they
merely tolerate him because the old man needs an assistant.
He generally shows the visitors around, and is the most
obliging and -modest fellow you ever saw, though his cir
cumstances do not always permit him to decline a compen
sation." " Just wait here," said the Pecador, when we reached one
of the larger casas : " I'm going to the lodge to see what

336 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
provisions they have on board. We can take our dinner
here, and camp in the upper story : it's a great deal more
comfortable than their narrow guest-rooms. The captain
will soon be here," said he, when he returned with a basket
ful of yams and corn cakes : " he is cleaning a ditch down
in the bottom, and they promised to send him up as soon
as he comes home."
The ground-floor of our casa was a large hall, divided
by a bar of debris from a sort of antechamber with a nar
row window in the farther corner, where we lighted our
fire on a platform of rubbish and broad flags. We had
just toasted our maize cakes when a merry "Halloo !" in
the front hall announced the arrival of the captain. " Don't
let me disturb you, gentlemen," said he, when he clambered
into our refectory : " you are disturbed enough by the
smoke, I see. Halloo, Don Nicolas," recognizing the
guide. " Now, you have been travelling all over Yucatan,
have you ever seen a trace of a chimney or fireplace about
any of the old casas ? I never did : they must have swal
lowed their meat raw in those times."
"Maybe they roasted their beef in the sun," said the
Pecador. " Why, in the name of reason, don't you keep
some ice on hand, Don Luiz ? There would be some in
ducement to patronize your hotel."
"I'm sorry you didn't say so before," laughed the captain.
" Our visitors are mostly Yankees, you see, and after all
you told us about their smartness we never doubted that
they were clever enough to make their own ice. Well, this
afternoon you can't complain about the weather," said he,
when we had finished our dessert : " so, if the gentlemen
are ready, we can begin with the principal casas, and leave
the suburbs until to-morrow : the bush is a little wet yet
after last night's rain."

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 337
We left our baggage in the antechamber, and tethered
our mules on the north side of the building in a sort of
moat with plenty of grass and weeds. Seen from the dis
tance, our casa resembled a Spanish inn with a Moorish
courtyard below and a row of small bedrooms above, but
in its original dimensions it seemed to have extended along
the entire length of the moat, which is flanked with the
vestiges of a foundation-wall for a distance of more than
sixty yards beyond the present east end of the building.
The woods behind the moat are intersected by a similar
wall, which at different places rises to a height of twenty
feet. " El Quartel — -the Barracks — we call this building,"
said the captain : " the large hall below is supposed to be
the drill-shed."
No other ruins were in sight, but on the summit of a
rock-strewn acclivity the woods opened and revealed a gray
ish stone pile rising like a mountain rather than like a
building from a wilderness of weeds and debris, but assum
ing more symmetrical outlines as the road approaches. A
quadrangular esplanade, with a range of stone steps, leads
up to a narrow terrace that forms the foundation of a
mound of cyclopean blocks, house-shaped, but craggy and
cliff-like from the massiveness of the pillars and walls.
The entire structure rising to a height of eighty-four feet,
with a facade of three hundred and twenty and a circum
ference of eight hundred feet, it stands there with ite open
and desolate doors like an antediluvian skeleton — "La
Casa del Gobernador, the most massive, though not the
highest, of the main buildings," says our guide.
At Uxmal the Spaniards have illustrated that talent for
nomenclature which has made them such useful pioneers in
the river- and mountain-labyrinths of the New World. All
the houses, temples, and caves, and even the more conspic-

338 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
uous statues, have their names, most of them singularly
appropriate as well as pretty. If Yucatan was a province
of prehistoric Mexico, and Uxmal the state capital, the
house on the double terrace must have been the residence
of the governor. These high portals with their carved col
umns, and these sculptured walls, were not built for a
granary or a fort, and the character of the bas-reliefs, as
well as the absence of altars and idols, makes it unlikely
that the edifice was a temple.
From the upper terrace to the third story the walls are
entirely covered with ornaments that might be described as
sculptured mosaic, each figure being formed by a combi
nation of carved stones. These sculptures represent human
heads, colossal figures, fantastic birds and quadrupeds, and
every variety of arabesques, which, viewed at a certain
angle, give the walls the appearance of those rough-hewn
granite blocks our architects love to display over the en
trance of a tunnel or massive gateway. The lower halls
are partly obstructed by a pile of debris, for the range of
stairs leading to the second floor has fallen down, and has
been replaced by a wooden ladder. The most interesting
rooms are on the second and third floors, which also connect
with outer galleries bordered by long balustrades of graceful
fretwork. According to the measurements of Sefior De-
vegas, the walls of these two stories contain thirty-four
hundred yards — or nearly two English miles — of bas-relief,
most of them at a height of about four feet from the floor,
and running along the wall in an unbroken row, the lower
border being on a line with the lintels of the windows and
doors. These decorations are often coarse in execution and
defective in the details of design, but the total impression
is nevertheless strangely pleasing. There are long proces
sions of men-at-arms, groups of animals and stars, — the

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 339
latter perhaps astrological symbols, — and countless faces
(portraits, our guide called them) in profile, some of them
distinguished by a turban-like head-dress. One of the
more elaborate groups represents a warrior promenading
on a row of prostrate bodies, probably a symbol of royal
power if not a memorial of a martial triumph. Another
shows a procession of mutilated men, one-legged, armless, or
entirely dismembered, which our cicerone supposed to be a
regiment of veterans returning from war, but which may
possibly have had an allegorical significance. In one of
the third-story rooms a portion of the floor is paved with
a coarse mosaic representing a battle between light-armed
and nakedgiants and warriors of smaller stature, but well
equipped with a panoply of heavy arms. The faces and
attitudes of the antagonists are well distinguished, and the
whole conveys the impression of having been suggested by
an actual occurrence, perhaps an encounter between the
citizen-soldiers of the ancient empire and some savage tribe
of the northern forests. It has been observed that the
black marble which is used in the composition of these and
other mosaics is not found anywhere in Yucatan, and must
have been brought from Central Mexico, if not from Cuba.
Before the arrival of the present superintendent this
building was infested with every possible variety of creep
ers and air-plants : in the basement their growth was some
what checked by lack of sunshine, but in the upper
stories they formed a continuous tapestry along the walls of
every apartment, and vestiges of these expletive decorations
still defy the pruning-hook of the mayoral. The arm of
an idol here and there or the head of a long-snouted animal
is wreathed Avith leaves like a thyrsus-staff, and many of
the coarse arabesques around the larger retratos are mingled
with the delicate folioles of a twining grenadilla. With a

340 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
sort of vegetable instinct, most of these intruders have
pierced the walls at places where the convolution of their
tendrils is favored by a pilaster or the protuberances of a
bas-relief. The next turn of the road leads to the plaza, or market-
square, a partly-cleared field of about sixty acres, offering a
view of the three largest and mo3t interesting buildings in
Uxmal, — the Casa de las Monjas, the Palomal, and the Casa
del Enano. The largest of these — and, indeed, the largest
architectural relic of our continent — is the Casa de las
Monjas, the " House of the Nuns," so called from the vast
number of little cell-like apartments. There are eighty-
seven larger and half a hundred smaller rooms, besides
extensive corridors and several halls, distributed over a
three-story building of four wings, which enclose what may
have been a spacious courtyard, but now resembles a neg
lected garden.
Entering from the north, you pass through a gateway
supported by pillars of enormous thickness, and an inner
vestibule that communicates with a broad gallery or interior
veranda, stone-paved and inviting by the grotto-like cool
ness of its shady recesses. The builders of this city were
not acquainted with the keystone arch, but formed their
vaults by overlapping stones, held in place by the weight
of the superstructure and covered Avith a large slab or with
lintels of wood, the latter being found over every door and
window Avhose horizontal diameter exceeds two feet. The
wood used for these lintels is of iron toughness and texture,
and has been identified with a species of lignum-A'itse that
is found in the mountains of Guatemala, but noAvhere in
Yucatan or Eastern Mexico. From the middle of the first
flight of steps upAvard the walls are decorated AA'ith glaring
pictures, checkered and polychromatic like a collection of

THE AMERICAN POMPEII.

341

SOUTH WALL OF CASA DE LAS MONJAS.

butterflies, though a pale carmine and a brilliant golden
yellow predominate. Frescoes the mayoral calls them, but
the process of their production seems to have involved a
preliminary plastering of the walls with a grayish-brown
22

342 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
substance that makes an effective foil for the brighter tints,
and the employment of a very durable varnish that would
explain the freshness and the metallic lustre of some of the
colors. On the second floor the cells begin, and monopolize
the two larger wings of that story. Few of them are pro
vided with more than one aperture, either a door communi
cating with the corridor or a window opening upon the outer
gallery, their average size being five yards square by four
high. Many cells in the second story are paved with pol
ished and variegated marble slabs, while the walls opposite
the entrance are covered with pictures ; and if the dwelling
was a nunnery the convent rules cannot have been very as
cetic, the character of these retratos being decidedly secular,
— so much so, indeed, that some of the artists must have
belonged to AArhat poor Southey called the " Satanic School."
The windoAvs are festooned Avith rock-ivy and grenadilla-
vines with small red pipe-flowers, and in one of the lower
rooms an abeto-bush, a species of juniper, has forced ite way
through the masonry of the floor and of a sort of stone bench
near the window, rising from the flags like a Christmas-tree
from a table.
All the cornices and Avindow-sills of these countless
chambers, all the balustrades of the long galleries and the
balconies overhanging the court, are ornamented Avith bas-
relief figures, colored stuccoes, and sculptured mosaic, carved
Avith an unri\Talled richness and variety of detail ; and if it
is true that a portion of the material was brought from a
great distance, the treasures of a Avealthy empire must have
been lavished on the Casa de las Monjas. Sefior Escalante,
an intelligent Mexican architect, estimates that even with
all the raw material on hand the present cost of such a
building would exceed four million piastres, and thinks
that the carvings of some of the larger pillars would em-

THE AMERICAN POMPEII.

343

ploy a hardworking statuary for six months. Bats are uoav
the only tenante of this sculptured Coliseum, since a colony of
monos chicos, or Mexican raccoons, that had established them
selves in the basement, were ejected by order of the mayoral.

r.fAUsr se
THE PALOMAL.

In a grove of mango-trees that were
'. spared on account of their edible fruit,
and hardly fifty yards from the Nunnery, stands the Palo-
mal, or " Dove-cote," a large but plain and artless edifice
that received its name from the number of little niches in the
masonry of the inner walls Avhich the ready imagination of

344 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
the natives compared to pigeon-holes. Baron Waldeck
believed that the Palomal was a prison, but ite proximity to
a royal palace makes it more likely that it was a guard-house
and the cellular apartments the soldiers' dormitories.
Near the front gate of the Palomal stands — or rather
leans — an obelisk, a large sculptured pillar which the wood
cutters discovered in the midst of a thicket of rhexia thorns.
South and southwest of the Pigeon-house the plain is cov
ered with continuous Avoods, clumps of wax-palms waving
over dense thickete of figs and euphorbias that obliterate
the undulations of the soil and almost overarch the valley
of the Rio Macoba. To a native of the Old World the
luxuriance of this vegetation in the neighborhood of such
ruins appears strangely anomalous, like tufts of flowers
rising from a snoAvbank or a fountain from the desert sand.
Moreover, the forests of Uxmal do not exhibit the charac
teristics of a spontaneous second growth — dwarfed trees
and sun-scorched weeds : many of the tree-clumps are as
gigantic and their arcades as leafy as if shade-loving birds
had been their only inhabitants since the birth of the
Western continent.
As Ave passed through the mango-coppice an obstreperous
bird of the shrike species, that had followed us from the
Nunnery, perched on a bough in front of us, as if resolved
to attract our attention, and chattered away with a voice
that expressed indignation as plainly as the barking of an
enraged cur.
" There he is again !" said the Pecador. " I threAv a
stone at this same chap Avhen I was here last March, and I
do believe he has been screaming ever since."
" He seems to have his nest in that thicket."
" No, he does not Avant strangers to come near these build
ings at all," said the captain : " he will follow you from bush

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 345
to bush if you don't drivehimaway. El Pregonero (the town-
crier) our Indians call him."
Proceeding southward
and upward, Ave reach ;
the platform of a little
hill, and are brought fs
face to face with a dome- -
like pile of colossal di- r.
mensions, the Casa del
Enano, or " House of the
Dwarf," so called from
the narrowness of the THE TOWn-crier.
sally-port, Avhich is, in
fact, a mere loophole in what originally may have been the
second story, the basement having been buried by aA^al-
anches of debris that have tumbled from the decaying
walls. A tower encircled by galleries that contract toward
the top is the nucleus of this pile, and leads to a circular
platform of about forty yards in circumference. The
strength of this central tower has supported the building,
but the galleries with their substructures have collapsed all
around, and give to the Avhole the appearance of a conical
mound covered Avith a wilderness of broken fragments and
AAreeds. Goats, and even coavs, frequent the slopes of this
artificial hill, and make their way to the A'ery top, where
mountain-breezes and patches of rank wall-grass reward
them for the somewhat arduous ascent.
The interior of the edifice forms a striking contrast to
this rustic outside. After passing (on all-fours) through
the loophole above mentioned the visitor finds himself in
the vestibule of the tower-hall, which he enters through a
portal of pillar-like buttresses. This hall seems formerly
to have been lighted from above, but the wall on the south

346 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
side is now full of cracks and holes, which serve as so many
windoAvs, but have admitted rain as well as sunshine, as at
tested by a considerable pool at the lower end of the sloping
floor. The Avail on the west side rises like a terrace or a
range of colossal stairs, tier above tier, receding a yard and
a half after every three yards of elevation. The upper
tier is a shapeless mass of ruins, connected with the ceiling
and the opposite Avails by a network of liana-coils, some of
Avhich have become detached withxthe crumbling stones and
hang across the hall like tight-ropes in a circus-tent. But
farther down the vertical surfaces of the terrace are covered
Avith hieroglyphics, Avhile the intermediate levels afford seats
for a large assembly of " idols," as the Spaniards call them
indiscriminately, though the plurality of these shapes seems
to have been suggested by the exigencies of symmetry, since
they reappear at equal intervals from a common centre, and
may have been nothing but architectural extravaganzas, like
the caryatides and griffins of our Gothic chapels. The hu
man — or rather anthropoid — shapes ivere idols, to judge by
their central positions and heroic proportions, and some of
them are as composite, though not quite as monstrous, as
the divinities of a Hindoo pagoda.
On a special pedestal about four feet above the floor sits
a four-armed giant with a disproportionately large but not
altogether repulsive face, and with a corselet that resembles
the scaly hide of a crocodile. Two of his arms are akimbo :
the other pair are extended, Avith the palms of the hands
down, as if in the act of delivering a benediction. Just
above him, on the third terrace, stands the semi-torso of a
youth with a coronet of spikes or rays upon his head and a
sort of rosary Avound about his Avaist. Both his arms are
broken off at the elboAv, but seem to have been lifted above
his head or to have supported a shield, like a similar but

THE AMERICAN POMPEII.

347

7 v "^Sp-N'rT."^ - -

THE HOUSE OF THE DWARF.

smaller statue farther up. The figure is supposed to be a
symbol of the Chasca, or evening star, whose statues in the
old Peruvian temples were distinguished by a halo of ver
tical rays. In the menagerie of animals and animal frag
ments there are six elephants' heads, distributed in the cor
ners of three successive tiers. Whatever they are intended

348 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
to represent, the curled and tapering trunks and pendent
ears are decidedly elephantine, and even the small piggish
eyes are characteristic of pachyderms, though it ought to
be mentioned that the tusks are uniformly omitted. These
heads have caused a good deal of curious speculation, since
even the illiterate Yucatecos knoAv that only imported ele
phants have ever displayed their trunks on this side of the
Atlantic. Did the fauna of prehistoric Mexico include
elephants, or had the builders of this city preserved tradi
tions of a Transatlantic fatherland, — India, Siam, or South
ern Africa ? Or may it be possible that ante-Columbian
visitors from the East had carried elephants, or the pictures
or descriptions of such animals, to the Western World ?
Quien sabe ? But it would certainly be curious if unas
sisted fancy had produced such congruous combinations.
The hieroglyphics that alternate with the sculptured
roAvs are subdivided by vertical mouldings at irregular
intervals, forming longer or shorter quadrangles that seem
to enclose separate inscriptions. Many of these mouldings
are ornamented with a sort of arabesque, Avhile the elaborate
characters are strongly suggestive of an important meaning.
Different recent visitors have copied such inscriptions in ex-
tenso, but it is to be feared that their labors have been in vain :
the key to that picturesque alphabet has been lost forever.
The ghost-ridden natives give the casas a Avide berth, but
the House of the DAvarf is an object of their especial dread.
Mezequenho, the Good Spirit, was never properly Avor-
shipped by the citizens of Uxmal, they say; and Avhen the
boundary between his patience and his wrath was passed he
turned the entire population into stone and confined them
in this building. But after sunset the petrified assembly
revives, and woe to the Avight that passes the Casa del Enano
in a moonless night ! The north side of the building looks,

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 349
indeed, as fantastic as any castle in Fairydom : a lofty dome,
croAvned with a tuft of vegetation not unlike a colossal cac
tus or a gigantic skull Avith a wisp of hair standing on end
and bristling in the breeze, while the shroud of creepers
forms a compact mass of foliage from the middle terrace —
i.e., from a height of sixty-five feet — to the ground, recall
ing the legend of Dornroschen's Burg circumvallated Avith
a rampart of wildering roses.
SoutliAvest of the Casa del Enano there are different
smaller buildings, too rude and artless or too far adA7anced
in decay to merit a separate description, though I might
mention the Casa de la Vieja, the " House of the Old
Woman," an ivy-mantled, snug little cottage with a balcony
and a single alcove; and the Casa Cerrada, or "Closed
House," a cubic mass of masonry Avithout any opening
Avhatever, — a watch-toAver, perhaps, or a mausoleum.
Besides these buildings the excavations have brought to
light a considerable number of detached statues, terraces,
paved courtyards, etc., and some miscellaneous objects Avhose
significance is as problematic as that of the hieroglyphics.
There are an amphitheatre and an artificial lake, both ex
cavated from the solid rock ; a " tennis-court" or gymna
sium, paved and encircled by a Ioav Avail ; and a nameless
rotunda with fragments of carA'ed columns. On an artifi
cial mound northeast of the Casa Cerrada stands a double-
headed sphinx, twelve feet long and five feet high, and a
little farther back a six-sided nondescript cut from a single
block and with a polished surface about eight feet square.
Some American merchants from Sisal had the bad taste to
christen it the "Altar of Abraham," and the mayoral, in
commemoration of their visit, now calls it the "Altar of
Abraham Lincoln," which is certainly Avorse ; but Lincoln
is popular in Mexico.

350 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
I have already referred to the open-air museum on the
river-terrace, where the superintendent has amassed a ship
load of idols and sculptured tablets. He boasts that he
has hieroglyphic slabs enough now to roof the largest
building in Yucatan, and the excavations which are still
progressing will probably increase his collection.
Neither the descent of man nor the purpose of the Pyra
mids is shrouded in deeper mystery than the origin of these
ruins. All we know Avith certainty is this : that they an
tedate the advent of Columbus by a period which reaches
far beyond the oldest records and traditions of the American
aborigines, for that Uxmal was not built by the Aztecs is
positively demonstrated by architectural and archseological
evidence, and indirectly by the entire absence of local
tradition. Senor Simon Escalante, of Puebla, who has devoted a
lifetime to the study of Mexican antiquities, adduces a long
list of technical arguments against the alleged identity of
the structure, sculpture, and system of hieroglyphics of these
buildings Avith those of the Peruvians and North Mexican
temples, of which I can quote only a few, and perhaps not
the most conclusive ones. The Casa del Gobernador, the
Nunnery, and the Dome (House of the Dwarf) contain
columns, entablatures, and stuccoes which are found nowhere
else in America Relicta ; and a careful comparison of the
hieroglyphic systems of Uxmal and Central Mexico has
established the fact that they bear no more resemblance to
each other than either bears to those of Luxor and Nineveh.
Besides, all the Indian temples and palaces from Peru to
the Rio Gila are dwarfed in comparison with the gigantic
piles of the Yucatan city. The Nunnery alone would
furnish cut stones enough to reconstruct all the castles of
the old Mexican capital and all her temples, which rarely

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 351
exceeded forty yards in length, and never contained more
than two stories, if we except the teocallis or sacrificial
mounds, which were simply terraced mud-piles with a super
structure of stone slabs or bricks.
It seems also certain that the founders of Uxmal Avere
familiar with the manufacture and use of metal implements,
for their stonework does not present the chopped appearance
of the Mexican masonry, cut with chisels of flint and ob
sidian ; and to produce the elaborate cornices and mosaics
in the Governor's House with such brittle tools would, as
the Puebla antiquarian expresses it, " snap the sinews of
human patience."
Some of the foundation-Avails and terraces in West Uxmal
were covered with a stratum of vegetable mould which
could hardly have been formed in less than a millennium,
even if we allow for the rapidity of organic development
and decay in a tropical coast-region, while trees with the
self-registered record of their age in their texture have
grown from rubbish-mounds where they must have taken
root before the Spaniards had gained a foothold in America
or the Visigoths in Spain.
The argument derived from the absence of historical
records has been met with the remark that the Old World
too has ruins the record of whose origin has been lost, not
in the cloudland of the Dark Ages, but in the confusion of
wars and conquests of comparatively recent date. But it
must not be forgotten that all such ruins are the primitive
relics of a primitive race, like Stonehenge, the Hunengrdber
of Westphalia, or the cairns of Ireland and Western Nor
mandy, Avhile the monuments of more civilized nations
have transmitted, eA'en by oral traditions, a record of their
construction and destruction which can only be obliterated
by a succession of ages. The traditions of Mexico date

352

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

back to remote centuries of the Christian era, but about a
\rast and wealthy city in Western Yucatan they are as silent
as the annals of the Conquistadores. The ruins themselves
have never betrayed their secret.
Before the sun went down Ave mounted the Casa del
Enano and rummaged the pile of broken statues on the
upper terrace till the chill of the evening air admonished
us to return to the Barracks.
" No wonder your Indians believe in ghosts," said the
lieutenant, when we passed a little mound in the open woods.
" Look up there ! — a
spectre stalking around
in broad daylight."
On the mound grazed
a horse, — the remains
of a horse, I should say,
the component parts of
the animal's body being
reduced to a framework
of bones and a very
thin tegumen of hide
and hair, — an equine
skeleton endowed with
the faculty of locomo
tion. "Yes, that's one of
our antiquarian curios
ities," said the captain.
" Nobody knows where
he comes from, but Ave suspect him of being the identical
steed that ran aAvay from Balboa in the battle of Chiapas,
though my father holds that he must be one of the Mo
hammedan horses that Avere rewarded Avith immortality for

'J^t:

THE OLDEST INHABITANT.

\

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 353
having carried the Prophet. We call him ' the oldest in
habitant,' and he was certainly grazing in Uxmal before any
white man cooked his dinner in the casas. There he goes.
Precisely at the same time every night he Avalks to his
stable in the Palomal, and stays there till sunrise, leaning
against the wall with his eyes half shut. He sleeps in the
daytime too : I have found him leaning against a tree and
pricking up his ears in his dreams. I Avonder Avhat he
hears? He might tell us something about Uxmal if he
could talk."
" Do you ever feed him ?"
" Oh, he finds all the feed he wants, — he generally stays
around the Avestern casas, — but it puzzles us all to explain
where he gets his water from. We never saw him at the
creek : he must know the Avhereabouts of a spring which
nobody else has discovered yet."
Returning to the Quartel, Ave found a good supply of
fireAvood in one of the upper rooms, where a broken alcove
had been fashioned into a sort of chimney, and the captain
promised to get us a few extra blankets, as the cool night
wind threatened to degenerate into a regular borasso, or
"norther," Avhich here often follows upon a heavy rain.
It has been said that the strain of a harp ranks first among
the acoustic aids to inspiration, but it is more certain that,
to a Northlander's ear at least, no other sound in the infinite
scale of Nature and aft is more promotive of domestic com
fort than the music of a good crackling wood-fire. As soon
as the recess of our alcove resounded with that hyperborean
anthem Ave felt at home, and soon all earthly cares Avere
merged in the pleasant occupation of reneAving the supply
of fuel from time to time.
The mayoral sent us a basketful of cakes and plantains,
excusing himself Avith the state of the weather and of his

354 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
rheumatic knee, but Captain Luiz returned in person, and,
having met our mozo in the basement, complimented us on
our success in overcoming the national prejudice of that
youth. " As a rule, their superstition is incurable," said he.
" When we went to work on the western casas our laborers
would rather forego their dinner and their siesta than enter
the buildings after dark. Their ghost-horror overcomes
every other kind of fear : they would sooner make a circuit
through a panther-jungle than take a short cut through
the haunted ruins."
" That seems to account for their reticence. Don't you
think they have known something about this place before
its so-called discovery by the whites ?"
" I am quite sure of it. They have known it all along,
and would haA^e kept the secret for another century or two.
And even without any superstitious motive."
" Why, what other reason could they have to conceal it?"
" I don't know ; but the matter is this : you and I would
certainly see twenty reasons for not concealing it, but if an
Indian could see any of them is a different question. You
know, perhaps, Avhat Avord our old official records used in
referring to the Indians : gente sin razon, — creatures devoid
of reason. Their character may have changed since the
Conquest, but so much is certain : some human attributes
seems to have become extinct in their natures : desire of
knowledge, for instance, and sympathy with the intellectual
pursuits of others. If a Yucatan Indian should discover
Paradise or the Fountain of Eternal Youth, or if a confiding
spirit had betrayed the secret of futurity, he would neither
say a word about it nor take any personal interest in the
matter. The wants of these people are purely animal, —
food and drink and a liberal share of rest. If they have
any ideas above that, they certainly do not express them in

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 355
words. You may have noticed that yourself: could you
ever interest them in your botanical collections ?"
" Only in the digestible varieties : they do not care much
for scientific curiosities."
" Not one straw. I had a curious illustration of that a
year ago, when I Avas out badger-hunting Avith one of our
peons one evening. Two miles southwest of the Nunnery
there is an artificial lake about a furlong across and some
forty feet deep, and just Avhen we passed it Ave heard a loud
splash in the pond right behind us, as if somebody had
struck the water with the broadside of a heavy oar. Alli
gators are unknoAvn in this part of the State, and no large
fish were ever seen in that pond ; and to this clay I have
not the least idea what it was or possibly could have been ;
but my astonishment was still greater when I looked at my
Indian : the brute had not even turned his head, but trudged
on with the unconcern of the most stupid quadruped, for a
dog Avould at least have stopped and pricked his ears."
" It's a Avonder how the ancestors of such animals could
build a city like this."
" It puzzled me confoundedly," said the captain, " but I
have now reasons to suspect that they Avere no relations of
theirs at all. They belonged to a different race."
" Toltecs ? or what is your private theory ?"
"I am no scholar, sefior: I can only tell you how the
Indians themselves have led me to my conclusion. There
are no large ruins in the western suburbs of the ' town,' as
our peons call it, — nothing but low Avails and d6br is of rough-
hewn stones, — and we ascertained that among the old In
dians of the neighboring settlements this part of Uxmal
goes by the name of the At'acegual, the ' Indian Toavii,'
but the eastern portion they call the 'Main City' — El
Huasacmal, — and that's whence the word Uxmal is derived.

356 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Who inhabited that ' main city' is more than I can tell, for
it seems that the ancestors of our Indios had to live in a
pariah suburb. M'acegual is the native word for a Mayo
Indian. Up in the Sierra de Macoba, where white men
have hardly ever been seen, there is a plateau they call the
Campo de Rota, the 'Field of Defeat;' and in districts
where our priests do not Avatch them they celebrate a festi
val about the end of September under the name of the
' Week of Deliverance.' So far as I know, they cannot
pretend to have been delivered from us or the Spaniards in
that Aveek. And as you came up the river from Don Cor-
tina's place you may have noticed the large quarry on the
right-hand side of the cafion. That quarry goes by a name
which our peons tell us means la Matanza, the ' man-killery,'
as if they had been Avorked near to death there, cutting
stone, — probably for the same foreign gentlemen Avho in
habited the ' main city.' "
" Don't you think your excavations Avill bring something
to light that may solve the puzzle ?"
" I hardly think so. The holes and cellars have been
rummaged pretty thoroughly. We found a large skeleton
two years ago, and some English gentlemen told us it might
help to settle the race-question ; but it has been in Sisal
these last ten months, and it does not appear that they can
make anything of it, except that the bones seem larger than
those of any living Yucateco. There has been a good deal
of private digging going on here, our neighbors tell me, but
most of the explorers were treasure-hunters, and that busi
ness has declined for want of encouragement. One poor
devil thought his fortune was made Avhen he found a big
earthenAvare box in the cellar of the Palomal, but when he
got it open it proved to be full of skulls and knuckle-bones,
mixed Avith sand and a sort of yellow brickdust. Our

THE AMERICAN POMPEII.

357

Indians speak of a time Avhen their forefathers used to dig
up iron swords and spear-heads from the debris, and have a
dim tradition that once — long before the Spaniards came

A DISAPPOINTED TREASURE-HUNTER.

— a body of armed men landed at Cape Penasco, twenty
miles south of Campeche, marched to Uxmal by following
the ridge of the mountains, and removed a great mass of
23

358 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
plunder from one of the buildings where it had lain con
cealed under the stone slabs of the floor."
" If you understand their language or have a Spanish-
speaking peon, you ought to collect such traditions."
" I do, but few of them are worth repeating. There is
no lack of legends, of course: for instance, the tradition
of the Indian hunter Avho crossed the Rio Macoba before
sunrise one morning, and heard a sound of merry music
when he approached the Casa de las Monjas, and, crouching
behind a tree, saw a number of young men step from the
ruins before long and pass within a few yards of his tree
with garlands on their necks and guitar-like instruments in
their hands, as if they were returning from a nocturnal
fandango ; but the starlight was too dim to see Avhere they
went to. Indian ghosts are more sensitive than ours : they
cannot stand moonlight any more than sunshine. Have
you ever heard of the rebosada ?"
" Some female spook, I suppose ?"
" Yes, it means the veiled Avoman, the lady with the hood,
— a sort of female Bluebeard who entices unwary young
men to out-of-the-Avay places and massacres them after a
very short flirtation. In the Cerro de Sacrificios, twelve
miles east from here, the Indians say that one of her in
tended victims was saved by the timely rising of the moon.
He recognized her by her gleaming teeth; but instead of
betraying any fear he flattered her in the most amiable way,
and told her so many diverting stories that she missed her
chronological calculations. They were walking up hill arm
in arm, due west by good fortune, he stealing an occa
sional look at the sky, Avhile he managed to keep her from
turning her head till they reached the summit, when
he suddenly stopped and pointed to the east. ' Look,
mi amante,' said he, 'who comes there Avith a white cap!'

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 359
She turned, saAv the rising moon, and vanished with a
horrible shriek."
The captain rose and walked toward the window. " That
reminds me I ought to vanish myself," said he : " the moon
is up, and I guess I can find my way home Avithout a lan
tern. The sky is quite clear : it's going to be cold to
night." " Yes," said the mozo, " we had better keep our fire
going. Wait: I'm going to fetch that big log Ave left in
the basement where we cooked our dinner."
" It's your OAvn fault, captain," laughed the Pecador :
" that ghost-story of yours Avill cost you a pretty lot of
firewood, don't you see? Our poor Indian wants an ex
cuse for keeping up a light all night, so your spooks can't
get the better of him."
We were not the first travellers who had camped in this
palace of unknoAvn kings, or whose witch-expelling smoke
had ascended through the chimney : in the alcove of an
adjoining room we found a large heap of Avood-ashes and
broken bottles the next morning, and between the hiero
glyphic inscriptions the stone tablets on the south wall of
the Quartel bore the less interesting but more legible signa
tures of the Messrs. Smith, Brown, and Schultze. Around
some of the tablets the cement seemed to have been chopped
off with a hatchet, but if some inquisitive barbarian had
tried to remove them his attempt had been foiled by their
thickness and the resistance of the surrounding masonry.
On the east side the third story of the building has been
made accessible by means of iron spikes driven into the
wall at handy intervals, and in a corner of the basement
we found the remains of a rude scaffold Avhich a visitor
from Sisal had constructed for the purpose of photographing
the inscription over the front portal. Some English offi-

360

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

cers who had rusticated here for a couple of weeks went to
the trouble of copying the entire facade of the Casa de las
Monjas, a sculptured chronicle of many chapters; but I
contented myself with making a drawing of the best pre
served side of the above-men
tioned limestone obelisk, which
is almost covered with emblems
and monographs.
The Indians stick to the
belief that the inscriptions will
ultimately be deciphered and
reveal the hiding-place of the
tesoro del regote — the treasure
of the Great King — that lies
buried somewhere in a stone
chest, and may perhaps be res
urrected by a learned Indian,
a mail-carrier, or a parish clerk,
though they have a sore mis
giving that the erudite for
eigners will be beforehand with
them. But it is extremely prob
able that neither red-skin nor
pale-face will ever disturb the
royal treasury, for the ablest
American archseologists and
philologists have resigned
themselves to the conviction
that the hieroglyphics of Uxmal will remain what they are
now, — a book with seven seals. Even if another Champol-
lion should discover a key to the alphabet, lie Avould be con
fronted by a further and more insuperable difficulty, for, like

OBELISK OF UXMAL.

THE AMERICAN POMPEII. 361
the parrot of the Orinoco mentioned in Humboldt's travels,
these inscriptions speak the language of an extinct tribe, —
a language that has outlived its interpreters. The buildings
themselves, indeed, are symbols of a more manifest signifi
cance, and proclaim in a language which cannot be misunder
stood that Eastern Mexico was not always a land of wild
woods and thatched wigwams ; but of the builders not even
the nominis umbra is left. Like the rock-skeletons of an
earlier world, the Avails of their houses have remained, but
all that is perishable about the works and the memory of a
nation — their name, their fame, their language and every
trace of their influence — has been obliterated forever. The
havoc of war and the blight which the decay of a
large city entails on the surrounding country have left no
vestige in the neighborhood of their ruins ; a forest-vegeta
tion which seems to date its origin from the dawn of creation
covers their battle-grounds, their highways, and their for
saken fields: the malady of civilization has been thoroughly
cured. The ghosts, too, have been laid, the a\Tenging spirits
that haunt the burial-places of murdered Eastern nations :
there are no robbers in Yucatan ; the harmless natives seem
to belong to one of those elder races which, like the au
tochthones of Egypt and India, have bent before successive
storms of conquest and survived them all. Their assailants
have fulfilled their doom in mutual destruction, and the
abandoned ruins have been reconciled with Nature, in
whose hands a tomb becomes a temple of peace.

CHAPTER XL
THE BACKWOODS OF GUATEMALA.
Days that passed by like hours, but whose remembrance
AVill pall our city joys for many years.
Clemens Bhentano: Alpen-Reise.
L'art de chasse-ennui, — the "art of pastime," — I take
it, has been more liberally patronized, and consequently
more assiduously cultivated, than any other, but the costly
amusements of our gayest cities can never emulate the gra
tuitous diversions which Nature provides for her favored
guests. " I was brought up in the fashionable quarters of
a large capital," says Victor Jacquemont, " but from early
boyhood I could not get rid of the impression that the life
men were intended for must have been different from ours,
— less dull especially. Before I left Europe I could not
account for this idea, but among the tropical wonders of
the Nerbudda I felt that I had been right."
I became conscious of a similar feeling on the hunting-
grounds of the lower Rio Grande, and again, seven years
later, when I crossed the primeval forests of Eastern Gua
temala in midAvinter, which here corresponds to the spring
time of our Northern woodlands. Eastern Guatemala is
the American Siam, a zoological park, the botanic garden-
spot of our tropics, — a land whose marine climate and rich
black soil can vie with the happiest regions of the Sunda
Archipelago. Especially the alturas or mountain-forests
362

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 3(53
of the department of Vera Paz, between Yucatan and the
main chain of the Sierra Negra, cannot have been more
luxuriant when Avila and Pedrarias landed in the Bay of
Belize. Southern Mexico may rival this region in the
marvels of its primeval vegetation, but no land on earth
in the number and variety of its birds and flying insects.
The hill-country of Vera Paz is Nature's museum of living
birds and butterflies, as the upper valley of the Zambesi is
the great preserve of the four-footed fierce natures.
In the last year of my sojourn in Spanish America I
visited the alturas as the commissioner of certain Belgian
colonists who intended the settlement of a public domain
in the Sierra Negra de Vera Paz. At the urgent recom
mendation of the French consul in Guatemala I had in
duced them to engage the services of a veteran frontiersman,
the ex- may oral or mining-superintendent, Don Nicolas
Ruan, who had been obliged to resign in expiation of his
inpatriotismo (" unpatriotism"), like many others, Avho,
with or without an active interest in politics, had been guilty
of the indiscretion of holding office under Maximilian. A
likewise rather unnational foible for scientific experiments
and books had prevented him from hoarding the Avages of
his sin, and for the last eight years he had eked out a frugal
living on a little^ banana-farm in the frontier State of Chia
pas, Avhence he had frequently visited the mining-districts
of Northern Guatemala on the chance of earning a few
dollars as a surveyor or mineralogist. His topographical
memory might have saved me the expense of an Indian
guide, and, in spite of his advanced years, he proved a stout
pedestrian and most entertaining travelling-companion. In
the village of San Remo, where the Chiapas camino real
terminates at a rope-ferry, Don Nicolas met me with a large
boar-hound and a mestizo peon Avho had shared his fortune

364 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
in all its vicissitudes, and on the folloAving morning we
crossed the frontier near the cascades of the Rio Dolores
and entered the virgin Avoods of Vera Paz. Guatemala
has no tierra caliente proper, no loAvland jungles, for on
both shores the cliffs of the plateau reach to the very edge
of the sea, and the airy hill-forests contrast agreeably
with the stagnating SAvamps of Eastern Yucatan ; still, the
exuberance of the vegetation is fairly astounding : the
varieties of palm-trees alone are considerably more nu
merous than all the arboreal species of the NeAv England
woods taken together. It often made me laugh to imagine
the bewilderment of an omniscient Northern botanist in
these tangle-woods ; and, begging Professor Linne's pardon,
I hold that the still prevailing system of botanic classifica
tion by staminal distinctions would be admirably calculated
to increase this confusion. The plan of classing quadrupeds
after the shape of their tails, though it Avould group coavs
with lions and horses with ant-bears, could hardly lead to
more perplexing results. A member of the just-mentioned
great family of palms, for instance, can always be identified
by unmistakable outward characteristics, but the division
by stamens and peculiarities of inflorescence would dis
member and scatter the same family among the grasses,
brassicas, coniferse, and sixteen or twenty other species that
differ as widely as a pine-tree does from a cabbage.
Our trail followed the windings of the Rio Corso, a small
affluent of the Dolores, and as long as Ave kept the creek
in sight the canopy of leaves overhead was almost unbroken,
— a continuous screen of tangled lianas, through which the
sunlight came melloAved as through a roof of opaque green
glass. But after two hours of climbing up and down over
fallen trees and through rocky ravines and fern-thickets,
the valley contracted into a glen, and we had to breast a

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 365
hillside Avhose slippery slate-cliffs would have tripped even
the goat-footed Sierra Madre mules. Seeing that the woods
opened as we ascended, we made our way to the very top
of the ridge, and obtained a fair view of the surrounding
country on three sides, the lookout in the Avest being barred
by the Avooded knolls of the ridge, a spur of the slate-
mountains that flank the upper valley of the Rio Dolores.
The ravines at our feet were hidden by the foliage of
their giant trees, and from our height we beheld the obverse'
of the screen,, the upper and sunny side of the leafy vault
that overshadows the valleys of Vera Paz far and near.
It Avas in midwinter, the flower-time of the lower tropics,
three months after the end of the rainy season, and in the
sun-gilt foliage the various tints of green were mingled
with an equal number of different flower-hues, white and
light blue predominating, Avith other colors scattered here
and there like butterflies on a meadow of snowdrops and
violets. In the southwest the ocean of golden green Avas
bounded by the heights of the Sierra de San Luiz, — a blue
range with that hazy outline peculiar to wood-covered
mountains, — while the hill-country in the east sloped toward
the Val de Madera (the " timber-valley"), a deep Avoody
glen expanding in the northeast, where the Lake of Peten
glittered between the tree-tops of its forty islands.* A
greater elevation would have revealed a glimpse of the Bay
of Honduras between the headlands of the eastern coast-
range, but we saw only an unbroken contour of Avooded
hills. The department of Vera Paz is the backwoods
State of Guatemala, neglected, or rather spared, by the

* Lake Peten [el lago de quarenta islas) is about sixty miles in cir
cumference. On the largest of its islands stands the old convent-town
of Flores, now abandoned to the Mission Indians.

366 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Spanish colonists, who mostly confined their settlements to
the gold-bearing valleys of the western sierras.
Birds of all kinds chased each other through the tree-tops
or darted across the ravines, but in regard to the fauna of a
tropical woodland the ear is a better criterion than the eye.
In the littoral pineries of North Carolina I have often
wondered at the utter stillness of their gloomy depths, which
for half-hours together remained unbroken by any sound
save the rustling of a squirrel or the occasional moan of a
ringdove. In Florida and Southern Texas the pauses of
the diurnal bird-concerts rarely exceed five minutes, in
Eastern Mexico hardly twenty seconds, and south of the
fifteenth parallel their music may vary from a ringing dia
pason to a chirping monotone, but is never entirely inter
rupted while the sun remains above the horizon. On the
Rio Corso the multitudinous twitter of small songsters
formed a sort of accompaniment to the shrill melodies of
the weaver-thrush and the fitful counterbass of a croaking
iguana, while the antiphones of screaming parrots and
shrieking sapajous came at various intervals from different
distances, and often suddenly from trees where not the stir
ring of a leaf had betrayed the presence of any living thing.
Here I heard for the first time the plaintive cry of the
spider-monkeys, a pitiful IioavI with singular flute-like
variations. " I have sometimes heard them in Chiapas" (Southern
Mexico), remarked the mayoral, " but only from a far dis
tance : they are absurdly shy, and fly at the sight of the
smallest Indian boy as if they had seen a panther."
" You may have studied the habits of other monkeys,"
said I : " what Avoods or trees are their favorite haunts ?"
" They prefer the sunny side of the foot-hills," said the
mayoral, " but there is no such thing as counting upon their

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 367
appearance at any certain place or time, as you Avould stalk
deer at a saltlick or hogs in a canebrake. Monkeys build
no nests, and they are migratory : they may suddenly appear
in swarms in districts where they have not been seen for
years, and there is no kind of food that can be relied upon
to attract them to any particular place, with the exception
perhaps of fig-tamarinds and ripe mulberries at a time
when other fruit is scarce. It Avould be easier to say Avith
assurance where you cannot find them : they wander to and
fro between the settled mountain-valleys and the coast-
jungles, trying to give hunters and panthers an equally
Avide berth."
On the western slope of the ridge Ave lost our trail among
the slate-cliffs, but the ground was tolerably free from un
derbrush, and before sundown we reached the shore of the
Rio Moscon, a tributary of the Lago de Peten, and our
valley-road to the plateau of the Sierra Negra. We halted
under a clump of magnolia-trees, for a dancing SAvarm of
twilight gnats admonished us to get our hammocks ready,
as we could not have reached any building before midnight
nor leave the river bottom without going out of our Avay.
A stout canameiio (or travelling hammock) of Sisal hemp
weighs about five pounds, and with an air-pilloAV or folded
shaAvl and a woollen blanket makes a bed that secures you
against the dampness of the ground, and, if you will take
the trouble to hang it high enough, against all the gnats of
the tierras calientes. Magnolia-, mango-, and Avalnut-trees
make the best roosts, being tough and free from thorns ;
and after the traveller has overcome the nervousness which
will probably interrupt his slumbers for the first few nighte,
the only objection to the use of a canameiio is the trouble
of finding trees which are at once high enough and not too
difficult of ascent. An elevation of twenty feet in the

368

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

EXCELSIOR

alturas and of
thirty in the
lowlands is the
minimum, but
1 even in the
reeking swamps of the coast-jungles a roost-height of fifty
feet constitutes an absolute excelsior to all the insect-plagues
of the lower world.
After dividing the blankets between our tAvo aerial cra
dles, the mayoral descended for his gun and travelling-bag.

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 369
" Quiere subir ? Hadn't you better join us up there ?" he
asked my guide, who was but ill provided Avith bedding of
any kind.
The Indio grinned and shook his head. "I'm a bad
hand at climbing," he said, " and would rather trust to my
feet d seria novedad" (if anything should happen).
He had set his heart on reaching an Indian village that
night, and did by no means approve of our camp in the
river-jungle. The night, however, was passed Avithout
novedad, except that I lost a package of topographical
charts from under my pillow in a way Avhich I have never
been able to account for. The mayoral being above suspi
cion, and the Indians below, I had to devote my impreca
tions to a swarm of hypothetical tree-rate, of Avhose squeaking
in the branches my guide had heard or dreamed something
between midnight and morning.
When we resumed our march the ground vras covered
with a " grass-fog" (nube yerbal), as my companion called
it, — a dense Avhite mist that shrouded the undergroAvth up
to a height of two or three feet, while the upper air was
clear enough to reflect the sunbeams from the dew-drenched
foliage overhead. At a distance of ten paces our guide
seemed to wade up to his knees in a lake of milk-white
matter, and a squirrel Avhich leaped to the ground at our
approach disappeared at once, like a frog in a turbid creek.
We stopped for breakfast at the beach of the Rio Moscon,
not far from the mouth of a creek Avhere the ripple of the
current and a bridle-path winding up the steep bank indi
cated a ford.
" That's the San Tomas trail," said the mayoral, " the
interoceanic road from San Tomas to Michatoya on the
Pacific coast. Do you see that gap in the spur of the ridge
over there? If ever Guatemalans become a commercial

370 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
people, this same trail will be the route of a transconti
nental railroad : the saddle of the gap where it crosses the
Sierra Negra is only twelve hundred feet above tide-water,
and almost in a bee-line between the Bay of Honduras and
their best Pacific port."
The gap, in a ridge of faint blue hills in the western
sky, seemed about on a level with the horizon, but toward
the south the mountains rose in all the majesty of the
Sierra Madre, and among the bold summits of the central
chain we recognized the twin-peak of Amilpas, whose west
ern horn is the highest active A'olcano (thirteen thousand
eight hundred feet) between Ecuador and the valley of
Anahuac. In proportion to his strength, a dog is a far more cour
ageous animal than his master, at whose bidding he will
charge a bull or a bear regardless of consequences, yet even
the bravest dog is apt to recognize the resistless superiority
of certain enemies. When we passed a cane-jungle at the
mouth of the creek, Don Ruan's big boar-hound Leoncito
came rushing out of the bushes, ventre a terre, Avith his tail
drawn in, and, after retreating behind his master, looked
back at the jungle with a sort of shudder bristling his
shaggy coat.
"What Avas it? a panther?"
" No, no," laughed the sefior : " you Avouldn't see this
old boy making room for a panther, or a jaguar either, in
that respectful way. He has seen a snake, a vivora parda"
(species of moccasin), " I suppose. You Avould hear him
all over a square league of ground if he had met a panther,
but to a snake he knocks under without any ' back talk,'
as a man would to a ghost or a bombshell."
Beyond the creek our trail improved to a broad beaten
path, and toward noon Ave reached a village of the Casca

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA.

371

Indians on a
high bluff above
the Rio Moscon,
which here en
closed different
islands, on whose
flat shores a num
ber of pits and
little sand- piles
attested the re
cent visit of a
turtle-egg hunter. There Avere about sixteen lodges, but
ten squaws or five stout men could have removed the entire
camp in half an hour. The huts Avere mere tiendas, open
tents of bombax matting, and one framework lodge of
poles, with a roof of concentric wattles partly covered Avith
flat bundles of swamp-grass and bulrushes. There is some
thing in the expression of the lower facial features — the

VILLAGE OF THE CASCA INDIANS.

372 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
mouth, the maxillary bones, and the chin — which at first
sight distinguishes the carnivorous Indio from his vege
tarian cousin ; and the face of a young squaw in the first
tent told me at once that the Casca Indians belong to the
hunting-tribes of Eastern Guatemala, the hunting and
fishing forest-nomads, who may pick a few berries from
the wild-currant bushes or a windfall from under the nut-
bearing trees, but prefer the uncertain prizes of the chase
to the abundant rewards of agriculture, — in the tropics, at
least, a hardly natural bias, and somewhat akin, methinks,
to the moral perversity of gamblers and tramps. They
had not removed the rubbish from behind their tiendas,
and disdained to drain a large puddle in the centre of
what might be called their market-square, though a short
ditch would have discharged the water over the bluff, and
though an old pitfall in rear of the camp proved that they
were not unprovided with ditching implements. From
the ridge-pole of the main lodge depended the remains of
a peccari and a string of Avild pigeons, — shot with bamboo
arrows and bows of bignonia-Avood, the mayoral assured
me ; and the patriarch of the village Avas engaged in the
manufacture of hunting-snares from the fibrous bast of an
unknown plant, the strings being greenish-yellow and ap
parently tough enough to hold a peccari. A live harpy-
eagle in a kind of hen-coop near the tent had one of his
talons quite entangled Avith strings of that sort, which
must have resisted the edge of his powerful beak. I took
up a piece of the green bast and tried to tear it between
my fingers. " No wonder the poor devil could not break
it," said I.
Pointing to the eagle, the old man crooked his five
fingers into the shape of a claAv, and drawing them across
and lengthways over the wrist of his other hand, gave me

THE BACKWOODS OF GUATEMALA.

373

to understand that the king of Central American birds had
not been captured with impunity.
In spite of their prognathous profiles, the Casca Indians
cannot boast of the grim misanthropic visages of our North-

IN THE TOILS.

ern red-skins, and
have the reputation
of treating- their
squaws with a good
deal of indulgence.
Their pappooses too, in their intercourse with their male
seniors, behaved like privileged personages, and took lib
erties which a Sioux warrior would have resented Avith an
impressive kick. One toddling little muchacho followed
24

374 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
me all over the camp, and watched my face with an
expression of mingled curiosity and amusement when
I bent over the cage of the harpy. In a remark about
the difficulty of keeping such pets alive I used the
word alimento (food), and the modulation of the four
syllables so tickled the fancy of my little companion that
he repeated them again and again, accompanying each
successful attempt Avith a burst of merry laughter. But
when we continued our march the same infant clung to
my ghawl with a question which our guide interpreted as
an inquiry after the amount of my loose coppers, — a request
for backsheesh, in fact !
"How old would you take that little monkey to be?"
I asked, after a moderate disbursement — "three or four
years ?"
" Hardly three," said the mayoral : " wonderfully pre
cocious kids, are they not ? They are up to a lot of snuff
before a white man's child can Avalk on ite hind legs. A
couple of years ago I was out hunting a few leagues west
of my place, and came across a stray pappoose, — just four
years old, as I afterward found to a certainty. When she
spied me first she started to run, but stopped when she saw
that I should overtake her anyhow. ' Oh, mi sefior,' she
snivelled, ' do you like fried plantains or yams with bacon
fat and chipped onions ?' ' Don't I, now !' I said, won
dering what she would be at'. ' Pues tendra usted muchos'
(then you will get lots of them), she said, ' if you will
please take me to my mother's place. I got off the right
road : it's all my brother's fault ;' and then went on to ex
plain how she came to lose her way, and that her mother
lived down on the creek near the Elena country-road ; but
all after inquiring after my dietetic predilections. A child
of four years !"

THE BACKWOODS OF GUATEMALA. 375
Imagine a lost babe in the woods prefacing its tearful
appeal with such a question !
" I tell you what it is," continued the mayoral, " I sus
pect that the smartness of very young animals stands in
inverse ratio to their future intelligence. Have you ever
noticed the nimbleness of young pigs and the clumsiness
of puppies ? The same with children : with the sagacity
of the average young Indian any white boy of the same
age would pass for a prodigy ; but the tables get turned
after tweh^e or fourteen years, and in comparison with a
long-headed and long-bearded old Caucasian the wisest
Indian is only a clever boy. The smaller the brain the
quicker ite development. A young hog-tapir of ten months
is out and out as intelligent as the senior sachem of its
tribe." Two miles west of the village we met a squaw with a
large basketful of sweet acorns, the edible fruit of the
Queireus ilex, which flourishes in evergreen groves on both
sides of the river. Either the mast or the IioIIoav trunks
which characterize the old trees of this species had assem
bled a variety of parrots and macaws, whose screams would
have excited the envy of the proudest English rookery-
owner. The great purple macaw, the macayo real of Cen
tral America, is certainly the phoenix, the polychromatic
wonder-bird, of the New World, hardly rivalled by the
humming-birds and the gayest gallinaceous roosters. I
have never seen the star-spangled peacock in his native
jungles, but I saw him on the wing in a Swiss poultry-
park, flaunting his iridescent plumage in a blaze of sun
light : and still I hold that Juno's favorite would have
lost his prestige if the goddess could have seen the royal
macaw SAveeping like a meteor through the dark arcades of
a tropical forest.

376 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
By leaving the river a mile or so to the left we passed
dry-shod through a series of lateral valleys, each with ite
highest slope to the west, for when we halted on an open
plateau we saw the bluff far below, and had now for the first
time a bird's-eye view of the Lago de Peten in ite full ex
tent. We had reached the alturas, or upland woods, in
the very centre of Vera Paz, — thirty miles, by the mayoral's
estimate, from the next largest settlement. As compared
with the lowland vegetation, the varieties of palms had
diminished, but not the number of fruit-bearing trees : the
air Avas saturated with the honey-smell of ripe and rotting
chirimoyas, a species of wild plums, and the carob-beans
(" St. John's food"), tamarinds, and mimosas displayed
bunches of green pods that must have flowered before the
end of the rainy season.
"Wasn't I right?" said the mayoral. "I told you
yesterday that monkeys make their head-quarters on the
sunny side of the foot-hills. They are at their old game
again: those tamarinds are just swarming Avith sapajous :
hear them! — Hallo! "said he, " look there ! Old Lucas"
(the peon) " has hoisted his blue peter. I guess he is after
a wild-cat : he promised his squaw to get her a catskin or
two." The taciturn old peon had hung back since we entered
the high timber, still-hunting, as it seemed ; but, looking
back, we saw him dash through the thicket at a lively rate,
stop short and clap his old trabucco to his cheek, aiming
almost straight overhead. A short snap, but no smoke, —
the crazy flintlock had not even ignited the pan-powder, —
and the Indian grabbed his gun as if he had a good mind
to break it against the next tree.
" What is it ?" the mayoral sang out : " a cat ?"
" No ! — fratres delgados" (" Brothers Long-legs" — i.e.,

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 377
spider-monkeys), shouted the peon — " about seven of them !
El Demonio take this seven-times-accursed old shootina--
iron of mine !"
We started at a double-quick, cocking our guns as Ave
ran, but too late : the long-legged brethren had justified
their nickname and reached the tree-tops on the other side
of a broad ravine, going through the liana-tangle at a rate
of a furlong per minute, hand over hand, with a swing of
five yards at each grab. The English language has no
single word for superlative nimbleness, but the spider-
monkey (Lagothrix paniscus) is nimble to a degree which
makes one smile at the readiness Avith which that word is
applied to such creatures as rats and raccoons. If a spider-
monkey could be trained like an East Indian hunting-pan
ther, I believe that his OAvner could safely back him to
catch twenty squirrels in as many minutes.
" Don't waste your powder," said the mayoral : " better
try the monos" (sapajous) " if you have a long-range barrel.
Unless I am much mistaken, I heard some baby-squealing
over there : it's their breeding season, you know."
The fig-tamarinds formed a continuous arbor along the
crest of the ridge, tree joined to tree by bush-ropes and the
thorny mistletoe ( Viscum rubrum), with the accumulated
brambles of many years' growth. As AA'e approached, the
chattering of the monos receded : they had evidently espied
us, though Ave were yet unable to judge even of their ap
proximate whereabouts, except by the occasional shaking
of a branch or the sudden flight of a nest-bird from the
tree-tops. Still, we could see that the whole troop Avas
moving in the same general direction, and, hoping to profit
by the confusion of a panic, Ave concluded to head them off
and let our Indians disorder their retreat with a shower of
clubs. But the sapajous proved that they could combine

378 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
circumspection with speed, and in spite of an audible rush
through the mistletoe-brambles we did not get sight enough
for a snap shot till the sly scramblers reached an hiatus
in their covered way, a gap in the roof of the long arbor
occasioned by the fall of a dead giant tamarind. All was
quiet for a minute, but the rattle of clubs came nearer and
nearer, and presently a bold blockade-runner cleared the
chasm with a flying leap and disappeared in the network of
the opposite branches. By and by faces and hands peeped
from their leafy hiding-places, and the reviving chatter
showed that the success of their leader had restored the
confidence of the fugitives. A middle-sized mono left his
lurking-place and clambered boldly up a dangling liana
into a higher branch : two veterans followed, and close
on their heels a nursing mona, trying to keep her bantling
out of sight by squeezing herself through on the safe side
of her predecessors. Our guns rose together, and at the
first report the mona doubled herself up like a person
in a fit of cramps, and at the second flung herself back
with a convulsive leap into the lower branches, where a
rustling scramble and the simultaneous shaking of several
vines showed the numerical strength of the remaining
troop. While we strained our eyes to discover the whereabouts
of our victim, I spied another mona, with a much larger
baby, slipping noiselessly behind the next largest branch,
through one of Avhose forks her brown head reappeared a
minute after, looking exactly like a spongy protuberance or
a loose piece of bark. But if I had doubted the first tes
timony of my senses, a slight movement of the apparent
excrescence reassured me ; so, crouching down, I rested my
gun-barrel on the knob of my Avalking-stick and took a
cautious aim at the saddle of the fork. With and like the

THE BACKWOODS OF GUATEMALA.

379

flash the head disappeared, but the commotion in the
branches now sounded like the struggle of a dying animal
beating its body against a twig, till the leafy screen parted

LOVE AFTER DEATH.

and one of our monas came down with a heavy thud ;
Avhich of them I am unable to say, for the baby, which still
clung to her neck and eyed us in a reproachful way, seemed
somehow of a medium size between the first and the second
we had seen with their living dams. I should have liked
to keep it for a pet, and my guide had already made a nest

380 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
for it in his bundle of sundries, when an examination of its
limbs showed a double fracture of its left forearm ; so we
permitted our dog to put it out of its misery. As soon as
we shouldered our guns the rest of the troop broke out en
masse, showering down leaves and excrement in their head
long flight ; but, seeing there Avould be no pursuit, they
stopped in the next high trees to vent their feelings in a
chattering indignation-meeting.
A panther-cat jumps four or five feet farther than any
monkey of the same size, but no other animal rivals the
quadrumana in the ease of, the absence of any visible effort
in, their rapid movements. Still more astonishing is the
quickness of their eye and what I might call the retentive-
ness of their visual memory. At a single glance a flying
monkey seems able to precalculate the direction and the
length of the next dozen jumps to a fraction of an inch,
and then dash ahead through branches and tangled vines
at a height of perhaps eighty feet from the ground, yet
with his head turned back and his eyes fixed on his pur
suer. And this in forests abounding Avith spinescent trees
and creepers which neither man nor monkey could grasp
without lacerating his hands ! To the three things which
are too wonderful, while the fourth is too queer, for human
comprehension (Proverbs xxx. 18) King Solomon should
have added the way of a monkey through a liana-tangle.
We found several pieces of mica on the western declivity
of the ridge, and the mayoral seemed inclined to return and
prospect the upper cliffs, but our guide was getting fidgety.
" Nos vamos a chingar : we are going to catch it before
night," he said. " Look at the sky back there, as murky as
pitch-smoke, and the caprimulgas swarming like SAvallows."
We regained the Aralley by following a rambla, or dry
ravine, and found the Indian's apprehensions confirmed.

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 381
Before we reached the river-shore crescendo thunder-echoes
boomed from the glens of the Dolores range, and the pur
ring night-hawks (CapHmulgas) had turned out in swarms,
as if the day were Availing. An awkAvard place to weather
a tropical rainstorm, — wilderness all around, except on a
range of hills on the other side of the river, where the
upper slopes had been partly cleared. On one of these
clearings I thought I discerned the white walls of a stone-
built rancho or limekiln. The river seemed shallow enough
to be easily forded : could Ave reach that building before
night ?
" The matter is this," said the mayoral, after a topograph
ical council with the two Indians : " your guide wants to
know if you Avould prefer a sure drenching to the possi
bility of getting into a mosquito-trap? As a sleeping-
place the rancho Avould be preferable, but it is fully three
leagues from here, and there is an old logwood-chopper's
camp on this side of the river not more than a mile ahead."
An ominous moaning in the tree-tops biased our consul
tation : the next shelter seemed the best. The shores of the
principal rivers of Guatemala and Southern Mexico are
dotted with the camps of the leiieros or logwood-men, the
most useful pioneers of the backAvoods States, — path-makers
rather than desert-makers, since, unlike our professional
lumberers, they confine their attacks to a single species of
trees — trees which are neither the finest, nor, aside from their
chromatic properties, the most useful, of the abounding ti
erra caliente. Their casuchas, or temporary huts, are of the
rudest description, having neither Avindows nor that sine
qua non of a habitable Northern log-shanty, a fireplace ;
but the woodcraft of the builders is generally attested by
a Aveather-tight roof. In the camp on the upper Moscon
we had the choice between four well-roofed casuchas, addi-

382 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
tionally sheltered by a canopy of mighty cecropia-trees, and
not much the worse for having been abandoned six years
ago, such trifling inconveniences as transparent walls and a
rickety floor being probably original defects.
While we made a bonfire of the dry leaves and chips
which covered the bottom of our chosen casucha we became
aware of the fact that the forest around us had turned dark,
— darker than a London reading-room during a fog, —
though by my watch the next two hours seemed yet to be
entitled to a fair share of daylight ; and when, finally, the
rain came down in sheets and cataracts, a person suddenly
awakened from a long slumber would have been unable to
say if the faint shimmer between the riverward tree-tops
emanated from the sun or from a waning moon.
The fury of the rain abated after a sudden shifting of
the wind, but the untimely twilight continued for half an
hour : our dog barked furiously at the foot of a little gum-
tree not more than forty yards from our hut, but we tried
in vain to distinguish more than the dim outlines of an
animated object in the upper branches of the tree. It
looked too round for an iguana, too small for a bear, and
much too sluggish for a monkey or wild-cat.
" There are tAvo or three of them," said the peon, after
walking close up to the tree through the drizzling rain, —
" raccoons or young bears I should say, and in no hurry to
leave, by the way they are crawling around. They keep
close together : you might bring them down with a single
shot." "Kill them, but not bring them doAvn," said the sefior.
" I would bet my gun that I know what they are, — a brown
tarda" (sloth) " Avith her young ones. The black variety
is not nearly so sluggish, and no raccoon or bear in the
world would stand that amount of noise without getting

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 383
out of the way. If brown sloths find a tree that suits them,
they stick to it, dead or alive ; for if you shoot them the
carcass hangs on by ite hooked claws till the feet rot away."
The wind turned chilly, and just before sunset the Avestern
sky cleared, and brightened the woods with a reddish light.
We made ourselves comfortable for the night, and identified
our silent neighbors. Don Nicolas was right : they were a
family of brown sloths, crawling slowly along the branches,
— slowly and placidly, like insects rather than like arboreal
mammals, which as a rule are the liveliest creatures of
Nature. I believe there is no doubt that wild animals
enjoy rain, a warm rain especially : in a tropical woodland
a good shower after a sultry day awakens the same grunt
ing and screeching acclaims that greet the rising sun or the
discovery of a bonanza of palatable food. To the naked
savage too the glowing sunshine is perhaps a comfortable
warm-air bath, and a cloudburst an agreeable shower-bath.
To the children of Nature, I suspect, naturalia non sunt
sozva any more than turpia.
While we suspended our hammocks under the eaves of
the roof my Indian guide spread his thin blanket between
the threshold and the root of our protecting tree, preferring
the chilly wind to the broken floor. The only piece of
level plank had been occupied by the old peon, Avho was
already snoring, with his poncho on a leather pouch for a
pillow, and no covering at all.
" It is curious what a hardy education will do for a man,"
said Don Nicolas. " That old chap would rather sleep on
a pile of cobblestones or in a hollow tree than go half a
mile out of his way for the finest feather bed in America.
You have seen him walk barefoot through the jungle, and
he used to do the same in Avinter-time up in the Durango
mountains, with four inches of snow on the ground. Your

384 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
priests and city people may affect to pity the ' poor Indians,'
but if the duendes" (the fate-fairies) " offered to grant me
one wish, and only one, I should be much tempted to choose
perfect health in preference to any other kind of perfection."
The night was moist but still, and Ave could plainly hear
the squealing of a troop of peccaris in the neighboring
jungle, — long-drawn squeals, closely resembling the quaver
ing nocturno of a group of recumbent barn-yard hogs.
From a greater distance we heard occasionally the low
wailing cry of a mono espectro, or night-monkey, a small
quadrumanous animal allied to the lemures, and very rarely
seen in daytime.
One great advantage of a woodland over a treeless country
is the purity of its rivers and creeks, an all-present vege
tation acting as a filter and purifying the running water
before it reaches the larger streams. Travellers in the
United States often Avonder at the contrast of the blue
Susquehanna and the clear Ohio to the turbid Avaters of
the West. The Mississippi Valley forms the dividing-
line between the great East American sylvanias and the
treeless Central States, as we should call them, for the true
West, California and Oregon, can vie with West Virginia
in arboreal Avealth and the purity of the streams. The rains
of that winter night would have flooded a Kansas river
Avith a swill-deluge of fluid mud, but the Rio Moscon
looked as limpid and almost as shallow as on the preceding
afternoon : the dense vegetation of the surrounding hills
had absorbed the water like a sponge, to deal it out in
driblets of never-failing springs.
Six miles above our last camping-ground the river forked :
we folloAA'ed the southwestern arm, which issues directly
from the cafions of* the Sierra Negra, while its tributary
curves around the eastern spur of the main range. We

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 385
now had to breast pretty steep up-grades, and before long
the increasing altitude began to tell upon the vegetation :
the palms shrank to palmettos, and the blue-green euphorbia
groves were succeeded by copses of cypress- and juniper-
trees and stately pinabetes, or mountain-larches. Pinoles, or
pineries, the Spaniards call these hill-forests, as Ave would
speak of a " strawberry-patch" in the mountains, Avhere a
few strawberry-plants are scattered among hundreds of other
herbs and grasses. Unmixed pine woods are hardly ever
seen south of the twenty-fifth parallel, for even in the
heights of the tierra fria the stunted fir-bushes are mingled
with rhododendrons and rock-birches.
On the eastern slope of our ridge the acacias and tama
rinds were still in full bloom, and on the opposite bank of
a steep cafion we saAv a veritable arboreal nosegay, a clump
of feather-mimosas, whose sweet-smelling white and lilac
flowers had attracted a cloud of butterflies, which, seen
across the gorge, seemed to swarm like bees around a new
hive. Only a painter could do justice to the brilliant lepi-
dopteral insects which frequent the sunny sides of this ter
race-land : I saw some sphinges and a rare variety of the
genus Colia which sorely tempted me to encamp on the spot
and devote a day to entomology. The Papilio phosbus,
especially, seems to find a congenial home on the flowery
leas of these uplands, as does a milk-Avhite Vanessa with a
border of flame-colored rings and dote ; also a dark-green
humming-bird moth, which here appears long before tAvi-
light, and, darting from bush to bush or hovering with
quickly-vibrating wings, looks exactly like the Trochilus
colubris, or emerald colibri, of Southern Mexico.
Soon after entering the pifial we met a solitary wanderer,
a little Indian fox-hound, whose master was chopping wood
somewhere up in the sierra, leaving his poor cur to take his

386 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
breakfast out of such opossums or nest-birds as he might
fall in with on his lonely rambles. A chip of dried beef
attached the hungry stranger to our company, and, after
conciliating Leoncito by several reverend prostrations, he
followed us at a distance and began to range the thickets
along our line of march. Hunting-dogs stimulate each
other : Leoncito joined in the search. Before long the fox
hound gave tongue, and two minutes later we heard a bay :
they seemed to have treed their game at the first heat or
run upon a peccari sow with a litter of pigs to defend.
The bay seemed stationary ; so, handing our share of the
cargo to the Indians, we cocked our shot-guns and entered
the thicket at a trot. There we had them. What could it
be ? The dogs were standing round a low bush, their game
hidden by the lower branches and a few tufts of bamboo-
grass not more than fourteen inches high. Could they have
raised all this din about an opossum or a coiled-up arma
dillo ? But no : getting sight of us, Leoncito made a rush
forward, but as quickly sprang back. A long claw had
darted out at him like a stiletto : the customer he had to
deal with was evidently averse to familiarities.
" Hallo ! a hormiguero, — an ant-bear !" said Don Nicolas.
" Did you see his fangs ? Take care ! stand over on this
side." It was a curious sight : a young ant-bear (Myrmecophaga
gigas), about the size and weight of a full-grown panther,
lay flat on his back, guarding his body with his poised
claws, each toe armed with a fang as long as a boar's tusk
and as sharp as a penknife, his head slightly raised and his
eye, gleaming like bright steel, restraining its wink for fear
of losing the slightest movement of the adversary. With
the same glittering eye, expressive of the same determina
tion to make the most of his one chance, I have seen a

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA.

387

swordsman with poised sabre watching the advance of a
knife-armed foe : at close quarters the sabre would be use
less, but its first stroke may be fatal, both parties knowing
this, and fully aware that the first mistake will decide the
game. The legs of the ant-bear are too stiff to be turned
inward or upward Avith much effect, but a sidelong stroke
of those awkward paws will rip a dog from throat to tail

AN ANT-BEAR AT BAY.

or gash a man's leg to the bone in spite of gaiters and cow
hide boots.
Don Nicolas at last whistled his dog off, and the ant-bear,
suddenly getting sight of us, regained his feet and started
to run ; but danger now threatened him from too many
sides, and from the first unguarded point the fox-hound
leaped upon him Avith a sudden spring, and had him by

388 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
the neck at the first grip ; and, cheered by his master's hal
loo, Leoncito in the next moment grabbed him from the
other side and pinned his head to the ground. He brought
his hind feet into play and Leoncito came in for a few ugly
scratches, but betAveen them the dogs had him foul : his
desperate efforts to turn on his back were unavailing. The
fox-hound at last got an under grip on his throat, and now
for the first time the hitherto mute hormiguero raised his
voice, — a rasping grunt, rising quickly into ear- and soul-
harrowing shrieks, more piercing than the shrillest screech
of a wet slate scraped Avith a blunt caseknife. I felt sorry
for the poor devil, but there was no help for him : the dogs
Avere covered with blood, and could not be whistled off now
Avithout exposing them to the full vengeance of those long
hooks that claAved the ground with impatient rage.
" Malgasto es pecado" (" All AAraste is sinful"), said the
thrifty Mexican when I raised my gun, " but you are right :
let us be merciful ;" and approaching his victim from behind
with his long hunting-knife, he showed him what hunters
call " mercy" by cutting his throat from ear to ear.
During our absence our Indians had been more usefully
employed in routing out a nest of dAA'arf rattlesnakes Avhich
they had discovered at the wayside. The gusano infernal,
or " hell-worm," is not much longer than some of the
largest tropical caterpillars, — from ten to twelve inches,
about sixteen inches as the maximum, — in color not unlike
the yellow Texas rattlesnake, which it also resembles in its
general appearance, its hannless end being decorated with
two or three horny capsules which produce a faint rattling
sound. But this epitome of the Crotalus horridus rivals ite
big relative in the deadliness of its venom, and ite very puni-
ness makes it the most dreaded reptile of Central America.
In grass or stunted herbs, where the Northern rattlesnake

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 389
would betray itself at a distance of twenty yards, its trop
ical congener finds a safe hiding-place, and its rattle is gen
erally too feeble to be of much use as a warning signal.
The old peon had discovered a large conventicle of the imps
under a ledge of slate-rock, and mashed eight of them Avith
the butt of his blunderbuss, — repulsive little creatures,
writhing in the sand like overgrown leeches.
" By rare good luck they are very sluggish brutes," said
the mayoral : " they will not strike unless you are about to
tread on them ; but if you do — and they will do nothing
to prevent it — off they go like a spring-gun, and a man
may think himself lucky if he gets off with tAventy-four
hours' fever and a week's headache after exhausting all
remedies. Children mostly die, and nothing can save a dog,
so far as I know."
" What remedies do you apply ?"
" Bleeding and heroic doses of persico" (bitter-peach
brandy), "repeated alternately till you swoon. The In
dians use an abominable decoction of a stuff that tastes
like a mixture of tobacco and quinine, and throws you into
a delirium of gastric fever; and an old wretch of a half-
breed medicine-man of my acquaintance used to bleed his
patients by slitting their ears, on the theory that a man Avill
not die as long as you can keep his brain clear."
The nostrum used by the Guatemala natives I afterward
ascertained to be an infusion of Papaver nanum, or bastard
poppy, a plant that frequents the open glades of the western
sierras and is sometimes cultivated for its intoxicating prop
erties. The rationale of all snake-remedies, by the by, seems
to be founded on the circumstance that two diseases cannot
coexist in the human body, and the effects of most poisons
can be prevented by a swifter toxic agent. On the same
principle, a sore eye may be cured by inducing an artificial
25

390 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
inflammation on the upper part of the neck, and the seeds
of consumption, though their fruit is death, will for years
prevent the development of any other disease.
An hour after midday we passed the Portello de Esmar-
cada, a gap in the eastern or lower chain of the Sierra Negra,
and, standing on the brink of the western slope, Ave beheld
our next objective point, the Lago de Tortugas, a triangular
highland tarn which forms the source of the main fork of
the Rio Moscon. The valley between the two main chains
of the sierra, Avith their magnificent terraces, is traversed
by the dividing-line between the departments of Vera Paz
and Chiquimulga, and is dotted with little lakes, and on
the western slope with villages and haciendas, whose clear
ings, viewed from this height, looked like bright-green
lawns in a frame of pine forests. At the head of the Lago
de Tortugas stands the little village of the same name,
whose nucleus is formed by a rendezvous of turtle-egg
hunters, who make this point their head-quarters, Avhence
they visit the rivers and smaller lakes of the valley if the
report of their scouts has announced a bonanza de huevos.
"If your countrymen are good ditchers they can pay
their land-rent in turtle-eggs," observed the sefior : " the
agents of the Guatemalan government Avill take a hundred
fresh eggs, in lieu of a peso fuerte" (one dollar and a quarter),
" in payment of all dues and taxes, or buy them at any
time at three-fourths of that rate. Scientific mining too
would pay almost anywhere in the main range : if I were
not so completely out of cash I would build a quicksilver-
furnace about ten miles northeast of your reservation. The
lead ores of the old Izatlan mines Avould pay sixty dollars
to the ton if they were correctly handled."
Following the windings of the Val de Tortugas in a
southerly direction, the lake daAvns gradually upon your

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 391
view through an opening screen of magnolias and cork-oaks,
but, standing upon the brink of its steep shores, a scene
uniting so much loveliness to such grandeur Avould still be
a surprise even to a senior member of the London Traveller's
Club, — the charms of Pennsylvania and Piedmont combined,
Erie Bay framed with Alps and Apennines, or Lago Ticino
wreathed with the fine forests whose loss the Italian lakes
have mourned for the last eighteen centuries. A deep-blue
lake, about twenty miles in circumference and fed by innu
merable rivulets, which come doAvn on the western or sierra
side in a series of tiny waterfalls, forming as many shady
bays on the south shore, — a lake that will yet be a favorite
resort of pleasure- and health-seekers, but whose clear waters
have never yet been furrowed by the keel of a sailboat or
even by a prosaic ferry : the shiftless natives prefer a circuit
of several miles to the trouble of constructing a transit-boat,
and their wretched dug-outs hug the shore and neA'or leave
their landing in rough weather.
About six miles south of the outlet (the head of the Rio
Moscon) Ave reached the first houses, an Indian farm-hovel
and a little tendajo or cross-road store kept by a mestizo
" merchant," as he styled himself. We halted at the shop,
but found the door locked, and, looking around, discovered
a long Avooden horn dangling from the porch, and above it
a board with the following inscription in rather phonetic
Spanish : " If Sr. Matias the merchant is not at home, apply
to the next neighbor or wind the horn."
" Don Matias is out in the sierra grouse-hunting," ex
plained the next neighbor : " you'll have to givre him a
good blast or two."
For the fun of the thing I tried the primitive telephone,
a tube of taxus-wood six feet long, with a knuckle-bone
for a mouthpiece, but all my efforts resulted in an inglorious

392 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
grunt, a gurgling splutter. I might as well have tried to
get music out of a bean-shooter.
" Never mind," laughed the mayoral : " I only wanted
to buy a few pounds of sugar, but I guess we can get enough
at Don Gascar's pulque-shop, where we are going to stop
to-night." Imagine a storekeeper of a New England valley request
ing his customers to summon him with a cowhorn, perhaps
from the hunting-grounds of the upper White Mountains!
The village, with its miserable shanties embowered in
walnut groves and copses of blooming cecropias, proved
that arboreal vegetation can ennoble almost any archi
tecture, while ite absence will leave an aching A'oid in a
city of palaces. Let traATellers compare our Savannah with
Turkish Damascus : here a garden-city in a wilderness of
swamps, there a wilderness of whitewashed sepulchres in a
garden-land. " Oh, Juan !" the mayoral hailed one of the house-boys
when Ave had deposited our luggage in a back room of the
pulque-shop, " do you think you could find old Martin, —
old Martin Santiago, you know ?"
" I guess I could, sir."
"Well, then, run like a good lad and tell him to come
over here : I Avant to treat him and introduce him to this
gentleman." " Santiago ? Who is he ? a local celebrity ?"
" Not exactly : local marvels are rarely appreciated by the
natives, you know ; but he is a great curiosity, nevertheless.
Have you ever heard of a man cutting a third set of teeth ?"
" I heard of it, but I did not believe it."
" Well, you Avill have to believe it noAv. This old man
was sweeping and scrubbing floors in the San Jose custom
house for more than tAvelve years, and there are hundreds

THE BACKWOODS OF GVATEMALA. 393
of persons who can testify that he hadn't a tooth in his mouth
when he left there; but after roughing it for a couple of
years in his native pueblo, where he had to chew parched
corn bread and acorns, his jaws revived : he cast his old
snags and got a new set, — as pretty as any dentist could
make him, — after being plagued with gum-aches like a
teething child for several months. Three years ago he
went down to San Jose with a load of eggs, and happened
to meet Dr. Ortez, the quarantine physician, who had seen
him nearly every day in his toothless condition, and didn't
know if he could believe his own eyes when he noticed the
anamorphosis. But, being a man of methodical business
habits, he gave the old fellow an appointment, invited tAvo
dozen mutual acquaintances, and made them sign an affi
davit to the above facte."
We were just going to supper when Juancito returned.
" Here he is now," he whispered, drawing me back behind
the door.
Mr. Santiago had entered the adjoining bar-room, — a
brawny old Indio, well built, but with a baboonish cast of
countenance and with an animal fire in his hollow eyes
which, like a ray flashing through vacant night, only served
to make darkness visible.
After a short conversation with the bartender he strolled
into our room and announced himself with a grunt, raising
his hand in an awkward imitation of a military salute.
" How are you, Don Martin ? Sit down. What is your
present occupation, sefior?"
" Occupation ?"
" How are you getting on, I mean ? what are you working
at?" "Curing plantains, sefior. I am boarding Avith Mr.
Herrera, — Juan Herrera's brother, you know."

394 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
" Just think of that !" said Don Nicolas, — " doing farm-
work like a young man ! He is nearly seventy years old
now." " Indeed ! You are looking remarkably hearty for your
age : what is your diet, Don Martin ? What do you gen
erally eat, I mean ?"
" I generally get corn bread and beans, senor, — wheat
bread on Sunday."
The mayoral made me examine his teeth, and I found
his lower jaw and all his incisors perfectly sound, two of
the upper molars being slightly carious. His front teeth
were white and even, like a young girl's, and disproportion
ately small compared with his defective molars.
" Do you eat any meat ?" I asked.
" Yes, senor. But no — " with a sudden gleam of suspi
cion — " not to-day — oh no, not on Friday, sefior." I might
be a masked priest, for all he knew.
" Do you like pulque ?"
" Si, sefior" his countenance brightening : the bishop
himself would not traverse such an impeachment.
" Do you take any — aguardiente ?"
" Yes, sefior. You know" (half-apologetically) " a man
needs zafarse de su memoria — wants to get rid of his mem
ory — once in a while."
Get rid of his memory ! After all, that is the only valid
excuse a man can plead for admitting the " enemy that
steals away his brains ;" but where did a savage learn that
humiliating truth? Could it be that the happiness of
that golden age Avhich mankind may " learn to forego, but
never to forget," was founded upon habits from which the
ignorant children of the wilderness have strayed as far as
the sickly city-dwellers, only in a different direction ?

CHAPTER XII.
THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA.
Is this my birthland ? Has this echo wakened
Dim recollections of a former home ? — Lenau.
The English language has no indigenous word for that
curious psychic phenomenon which Jean Paul calls the
"dualistic mystery" (das Geheimniss des Dualismus), and
which he describes as " a revival by an actual event of a
reminiscence of unknown origin." In our pilgrimage
through life most (perhaps all) of us have met with adven
tures which somehow surprised us Avith the consciousness
that the same train of incidents, in the same succession and
under the same circumstances, had someAvhere crossed our
path before ; not in a dream nor in a fit of second sight, —
that would have left a different impression, — but in real life,
as it would seem, only a long time ago, — so long ago, indeed,
that we could hardly bridge the interval without some com
promise with the doctrine of metempsychosis. "'Tis a
transmitted experience," says the German pantheist, — "an
incident in the life of one of our forefathers, the recollection
of which has been awakened by a similar occurrence (like
a sleeper starting at the sound of his own name) after hav
ing lain dormant in our soul together with millions of in
herited ideas, opinions, talents, and inclinations, — all the
result of ancestral experience. Each human brain is stamped
with the records of all preceding generations." 395

396 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
On the same principle we may perhaps explain the
strange suggestiveness of certain landscapes, which remind
us of nothing we can possibly have seen before, except,
maybe, with the eyes of an ancestor, — with eyes which
could still read the language in which Nature writes her
secrete and her promises. A country which would repel
the modern agriculturist by its ruggedness and the city-
dweller by ite solitude might thus prove attractive to those
older instincts by Avhich even a cockney may now and then
recognize the original home of his species, as stall-born
chamois are said to be lured aAvay by the sight of the Alpine
highlands. In the mountains of Central America there
are regions Avhich seem peculiarly adapted to all the re
quirements of a primitive home, having a comfortable cli
mate, natural shelter-places, and an abundant supply of
man- and monkey-food, besides a variety of plants whose
bast and seed-cotton might be used for rude textile fabrics.
The alturas, or wooded uplands, of Eastern Guatemala
abound especially with productions of that kind ; and if
the American Indians are real autochthones the rivers of
the Sierra Negra de Vera Paz may have been the Pisons
and Gihons of the Western Paradise.
The government lands between the Val de Tortugas and
the sources of the Rio Motagua comprised some highland
pastures and an abandoned lead-mine, Avith a few acres of
cleared ground, but the main part of the reservation lay
betAveen the Val de Motagua and the Rio Polochique, in
the very heart of the timber region, where no agricultural
settlements had ever been attempted. Before committing
my countrymen to a definite contract I wanted to verify
the report of the land-office by personal inspection of the
resources and market-facilities of this region, and, if possi
ble, get the government to assist us in the construction of

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 397
a Avagon-road to Macultepec, where the camino real to the
capital crosses the valley of the Rio Moscon.
We left Tortugas an hour before sunrise on the third of
February, — in the midwinter week, here corresponding to
the early spring of Southern Texas or the end of May in
the Northern Alleghanies. Only the moonlight kept watch
in the vineyards of the little village, but the creste of the
sierra were already tinted with a reflection of the morning-
clouds, and a flock of tarn-geese rose screaming from the
mist of the lower lake.
" We are going to have a warm day, caballeros," observed
my carrier. " Look at those red mountains up there :
that's San Florian's weather-signal, — he's heating his dest'-
aguardiente" (fire-water still).
" Never mind," said the mayoral : " we shall be in the
upper sierra before he gets his machinery a-working. Do
you see that Avhite streak, Don Felix, — that long streak of
mist south of the sierra? That's the valley of the Rio
Motagua. If your countrymen could get as far as the Ma
cultepec ferry, they would have a good country-road to
Port Isabel, with twenty markets instead of one : the Hon
duras bergantins call there, and a weekly steamer to Sisal
and New Orleans. Port Isabel is only thirty-five miles
from the ferry."
" Couldn't we go there and be back before the end of
this week?"
" Yes, if they do not delay us in the sierra. We might
try to stop at Gil Mateo's ranch to-night : if you should
find him at home he could give you as much information as
all the natives of the Indian village."
The upper slopes of the Val de Tortugas are very sparsely
settled. Near Plan del Monte we passed a few Indian huts,
with a patch of garden-land and a field whose proprietor

398 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
was pulling out cornstalks by the root. Farther up, the
trail entered a thicket of catalpa and iron-Avood trees, that
seemed to mark the upper boundary of the agricultural
region. The vegetation of these slopes on the whole re
sembled that of the Moscon Valley, but when we began
the ascent of the main chain the dryer air and the dry, aro
matic herbage of the ravines reminded me of the rainless
highlands of Southern California. There was but little
dew on the grass, and the morning air was perfectly free
from any taint of swamp-mist ; the rivulete were as clear as
plate glass, and the leaves rustled under our feet as if they
had been dried in a hop-loft.
It is hard to decide if red-skins and pale-faces had a
separate " centre of creation," but I hold that our original
home or homes were in the Avoodlands of a tropical moun
tain-region. In spite of the infinite diversity of our do
mestic habits, all normally-constituted human beings, I
believe, still prefer a wooded to a treeless country, a dry to
a swampy soil, and a temperature which on the whole main
tains itself above the freezing-point. Conjointly, these
conditions can be fulfilled only by the mountain-forests
of the lower tropics, at the same time the favorite home of
the palms, figs, mangos, and larger Nuciferse, in itself a
significant circumstance, for that sweet tree-fruits were our
original food is one of the few points on which Moses and
Darwin agree. Our Ur-vater, Avhether demi-gorilla or
demi-god, Avas probably a montanus ; ancient and modern
mountain-countries, Syria, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Scot
land, and Circassia (Virginia, her F. F.'s would add), have
always produced a superior breed of men ; and the "garden
planted eastward in Eden," between the head-waters of
four great rivers, can hardly have been a lowland plantation.
For railroads, ship-canals, and machine-farming purposes

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 399
the prairie States offer certainly superior advantages, but if
our manifold sins should result in another deluge, and an
American Noah had to select a homestead for recommencing
business with limited resources, his first choice would prob
ably be the highlands of Vera Paz, his second the palm-
region of Western Tehuantepec or the whortleberry and
chestnut woods of Northern Alabama. In the upper val
leys of the Sierra Negra a man could sleep in the open air
the year round under a common plaid : according to all ac
counts, the variations of the temperature seem almost limited
to the diurnal changes, ite annual range being from a
monthly average of eighty degrees in June to sixty-five in
November. The surface-rock, a trachytic feldspar, is honeycombed
with clefts and caverns Avhere a homeless squatter could
find abundant shelter from October to Christmas, the rainy
season being here confined to those six Aveeks. Near the
pass of Los Cumbres I saw a series of caves that seemed to
have sheltered benighted wanderers, — prospecting miners
perhaps, or a tropa of muleteers,- — as the ground around there
AATas strewn Avith charred sticks and corncobs. I entered
one of them, and found the bottom perfectly dry, with no
trace of moisture on the walls, but a profusion of gray
and reddish lichens. Even near the watercourses we could
take short cute through the woods wherever we pleased :
they Avere as clean and dry as an Austrian mountain-park
artificially drained and weeded. And yet we were treading
on virgin soil, as primitive a Avilderness as any between
Peru and Oregon. From the glens on our left rose the
true primeval forest of Central America, — bulky caucho-
trees with smooth bark and leathery foliage, lignum-vitse
giants, Torreya pines, yellow-wood, tulip-trees Avith large
woolly leaves, — all crowding each other on the sunny sides

400

SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.

a£fSa£ HHfe

UK3*

flHHHMi -i

MHK09

THE HIGHLANDS OF VERA PAZ.
and making room on the northern slopes for the hardier
myrtles and laurel-trees. The Torreya pines swarmed with
a small and short-tailed variety of the genus Parus (tomtits),
and on the same trees I noticed several bird-spider nets,
one of them with a diameter of more than six feet, without
including the long brace-threads that ran out like forestays
to the extremity of the surrounding branches. To judge
from the tenacity of their filaments, I should think that
they Avould make a good substitute for coarse silk. I had
no means of measuring the strength of the single threads,
but I found that the main body of the web stopped a
number of wild lemons (about the size of a pigeon-egg)

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 401
which I flung against the centre with all my might and
from a distance of hardly fifteen yards. The animal iteelf
has a peculiar talent for keeping out of sight : I remember
that I once rummaged for half an hour around a leafless
catalpa-bush before I detected the eight-legged weaver that
had nearly covered the tree Avith his viscid tissues.
The weather-saint verified his augurium, after all. The
morning was rather warm for the midwinter week, and the
mayoral unbuckled a little gourd from his hunting-pouch
and clambered down into a bushy ravine to get a drink of
water. " Stop a moment," he called up from the bottom :
" there must be a wild-turkey nest down here : the dog
flushed a hen from almost under my feet. Do you hear
her? I know what that cackling means."
While we waited my Indian took a seat on a wayside
rock,,but suddenly jumped up and into the middle of the
road, " Mira ! mira ! mi capitan : que animalote ! — Look up
there ! what a monster of a beast !" he cried, pointing to a
big caucho-tree at the brink of the ravine. It was a boa
de polios (" a chicken-boa"), winding her sluggish length
through the upper branches of the tree, and eA'idently ill at
ease at seeing herself discovered. I cocked my gun, and she
reared as if she contemplated an escapade into a neighboring
and somewhat higher tree, but retracted her neck, and,
hugging the main stem of the caucho, managed to conceal
the bulk of her body on the safe side. Her head was still
in view, but oscillating in a way that made me a little mis
trustful of my aim, the height of the tree-top being about
sixty feet, as near as I could judge. Having no ramrod-
screw handy, I put a load of buckshot on top of a bullet-
charge, and, alloAving for the elevation, aimed a little above
her eye, which seemed to Avatch us sideways, still rather
doubtful about our intentions. When the smoke cleared

402 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
away the head of the serpent hung back as if her neck had
been crushed by an axe-stroke, while her coils contracted
slowly and firmly. But in the next moment the convul
sions commenced : independently, as it seemed, of any cere
bral promptings, her tail laid about Avith a vigor that filled
the air with flying twigs and leaves, and, suddenly reversing
its coils, the body slipped off and came plumping to the
ground amidst the uproarious shouts of the two Indians.
" Esta hembra, y llena de huevos (it's a she, and full of
eggs), I bet," cried the peon. " Wait till I get Don Ruan's
hunting-knife. I'll lay a dollar that Ave get a hatful of
eggs out of her."
He was actually going to cut her up, but at my request
the mayoral vetoed the disgusting operation. The boa was
about sixteen feet long, and very prettily speckled with
black and orange-brown spots. Her neck was riddled with
shots that seemed to have broken the vertebra? in several
places, but when we finally marched our Indians off she
was still writhing in the grass, and, as the peon assured me,
would not die before the next ghost-hour (11-12 p.m.),
when El Demonio would call around for her soul.
The true Boa constrictor is found only in the coast-forests :
in the mountains the name is applied to four or five species
of smaller tree-snakes, and even to a python Avhich fre
quents the canebrakes of the upper lakes. Lynxes, panthers,
and cinnamon bears are occasionally seen in the alturas, but
they are getting scarce in the neighborhood of the settle
ments : the enemies and rivals of man cannot maintain
themselves in the comparatively open forests of the upper
sierra. Yet with one exception : the hormigas (ante and
termites) still hold their own, and scorn to recognize the
sovereignty of the self-styled viceregent of the Creator.
The " strength-in-union" principle is indeed strikingly illus-

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 403

BOA-SHOOTING.

trated by the achievements of those leagued Liliputians
who dread no foe in Brobdingnag, and prey upon man as
he preys upon all other creatures. Ants cannot be starved
out, for they can subsist on decaying organic substances of

404 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
any kind, vegetable as well as animal ; you cannot kill them
out, for their name is legion of legions ; you cannot ex
terminate them, like mosquitoes, by draining the lagoons,
for they will thrive on dry ground as well as in the swamps;
and if you cut the trees down they will move into your
house. The ant-bear is their only dangerous foe, but his
activity can only check over-multiplication : the total
number of all species of ante has been estimated as fifty
thousand times larger than that of all vertebrate animals
taken together. They have their colonies on the ground,
underground, and in the rocks; and one variety of termites,
the mat'abejas, or bee-killer ants, build their nests in the
tree-tops, and if they really feed exclusively on honey, bee-
culture must be difficult in Guatemala, for we saw mat'abeja-
neste Avhich I at first mistook for monstrous clusters of
mistletoe, as they covered all the upper branches of good-
sized cauchos and magnolias.
Our path had gradually turned from southwest to south,
and about 2 p.m. we crossed a deep glen, the upper cafion
of the Rio Motagua, opening a vista toward the eastern
valleys through a wild chaos of rocks and pine-forests.
Clambering up the southern slope, we caught a glimpse of
a Avaterfall that seemed to come from the cloudland of the
upper sierra, and, after tumbling in a cascade over the rocks
of the first forty or fifty feet, fell straight into the appar
ently bottomless abyss below. We had a steep ascent of
sixteen or eighteen hundred feet, but when we got up, per
spiring as if just out of a Turkish bath-house, I could not
resist the temptation to follow the brink over boulders and
brambly clefts till I got a front view of the falls. It
was a veritable staub-bach, — a large creek dissolved into a
shower of spray before it arrived at the bottom of the cafion.
The water reached the main stream by a number of rills

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 405
between loose mossy rocks, but the descent of the rain-cat
aract seemed to create a strong current of air, for a moun
tain-ash ten or twelve yards below the junction swayed as
if moved by a fitful gale, though the trees farther down
stood rigidly erect.
About four miles below the falls our trail approached
the cafion once more, and we found that the glen had widened
into a broad valley, with stretches of level ground on both
sides of the river, some of them wide enough for a little
farm, and exposing a thick stratum of black mould where
the river had Avashed the sward from ite banks. All this
valley was included in the reservation : we were still four
or five leagues above the lower boundary. At the next
turn of our trail the forest had been partly cleared : Ave
passed a stack of cordwood, scattered fence-rails, and other
indications of a neighboring settlement. Half an hour
before we had heard a cow-bell, and now heard it again
only a short distance ahead.
" That's Gil Mateo's ranch," said the mayoral. " 1 be
lieve I heard his dogs too, so I hope we shall find him at
home." "Does he know you?"
" Yes : I stopped here several times. He's a trasgresor"
(trespasser, wild squatter), " and a rough sort of a customer,
but I would advise your countrymen to keep on his good
side : he'll not bother them, I guess, and can be right use
ful if he chooses. By birth he is a Catalan, and has been
in California during the gold years, but he's pretty well
acquainted in this neighborhood, — has lived here ten or
twelve years, I believe."
" Listen ! there's somebody coming," said the peon.
Two boys galloped across the road, but drew rein at the
halloo of the mayoral, and eyed us with evident surprise.
26

406 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
They looked like twin-brothers, eleven or twelve years of
age, fair specimens of the muchacho gachupin, — acclimatized
and Indianized young Spaniards. One was mounted on a
stout donkey, the other on an equally thick-headed sierra
pony. " Why, Pablito ! don't you know me ?" the mayoral
called out.
Pablito stared.
" Oh, I know him noAv," cried his brother. " Yes, that's
Don Ruan : I recognized him as soon as I saAv his big
dog." " Glad to meet you, boys," said the mayoral, after a
general handshaking : " is your father at home ?"
" He was home for dinner," said Pablito, " and he isn't
very far off now. He's boiling maple-sugar down the river,
about three miles from our place : you can see the smoke
from our porch. I am sorry Ave didn't know you Avere
coming, but we'll try to get back as quick as possible."
" Where are you going, boys ?"
" Going to Sefior Coban's place to borrow a bear-trap."
" Sefior Coban in Val Secco ? Wouldn't this road be the
shorter way ?"
" Yes, I know," said Pablito, " but the ford is very bad,
my father says ; so we are going to take the old Indian trail
over the Torreya gap, if we can find it. But come on, her-
manito, or we sha'n't get back before midnight."
" Yes, Ave want to be back in time for the dog-fight,"
laughed his brother ; " don't forget what you promised us,
sefior. Adios meanwhile."
They Avheeled round and galloped away with merry cheers
into the thick of the pathless forest.
" Poor devils !" said the mayoral, " they have never had
shoes on their feet since their father made this clearing.

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 407
In your native country they wouldn't take them to be white
men's children, would they, Don Felix ?"
I said nothing. I believe I envied them. They were
both unkempt, barefoot, and almost barelegged, and had
perhaps never seen the inside of a school-house ; but, trans
planted to an Illinois* country town, with substantial farms,
railroad facilities, and Christian colleges, those same boys
would have pined away with homesickness and ennui. Dull
times — in the domestic rather than a financial sense — drive
thousands of our country boys from their homes to the
wilds of the Great West or to the more bewildering wilder-
ness of a great city : they seek circenses more than panes,
fun rather than fortune. Our young metropolitans satisfy
that craving after a fashion of their own, but it is cheaper
and out-and-out safer to let your boys explore the mysteries
of the wildest sierra than the mysteres de Paris.
" We can save ourselves the roundabout way," said Don
Ruan. " I can see the smoke now. I guess I know where
he is : there is a maple-grove close to the cafion, about three
miles from here."
" He is a Spaniard, you say : is he an intelligent fellow?"
" His manners are a little off color, but he can give you
a deal of useful information : he has tried all kinds of gar
dening on a small scale, and is likely to know what crops
pay best. And it's Avorth while knowing how he has man
aged to hold his ground against the Guachinos" (the hostile
Indians of the Honduras border). " If a single family
could do that, a colony of old frontiersmen with rifles and
pistols needn't have any apprehensions on that account."
We left the path, and picked our way through the woods
by guess and instinct till we got back to the bank of the
river-valley. Between the pines and arbor-vitses we saw
a good many maple-trees, with leaves that looked a little

408 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
smaller than those of the genuine " bird's-eye maple," but
resembling the Acer saccharinum in their general appear
ance. Most of the larger trees had been tapped, and the
little log troughs and elderwood siphons at the "sugar-
camp" showed that Don Mateo had learned the business in
the United States. The smoke rose from a crevice in the
solid rock, where a copper kettle had been suspended over
a smouldering wood-fire. Heaps of billets and kindling-
Avood lay around, and near one of the larger piles an axe
and a hat, but Avhere was Don Mateo himself?
" Just look at that Indian casucha he has built !" laughed
the mayoral. " A half-savage, isn't he ? Yes, he is in there,
sure enough, just like a bear in his winter-quarters. Step
OATer here, Avill you?"
At the very brink of the cafion a fallen pine-tree had
formed a natural arbor, and by the simple process of lopping
the lower branches and interlacing them with those on top
the casucha had been made weather-tight, and commodious
enough for half a dozen recumbent lodgers. The floor was
covered Avith a litter of chips and pine-needles, and in this
litter Don Mateo lay on his back, — a half-savage, indeed.
His face, hands, and naked arms were smeared Avith a mix
ture of soot and maple-honey, and the color of his old
leather breeches resembled that of his naked feet. He
was napping, or trying to.
The mayoral handed me his gun, clambered over a
pile of kindling-AVOod, and hailed him : " Buenas tardes,
Don Gil."
The don turned on his elbow, stared at his visitors and
then at each one of us separately, before he spoke a word.
" Halloo ! come in," said he at last.
"Is this your private country-seat?" asked the mayoral.
Another pause. " I do not know if it is my own or not,"

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 409
said the squatter. " I guess those men are the new settlers
you told me about, the colonists who are going to kick me
out ?"

"Who said so?"
replied Don Ruan.
"This gentleman here
is their agent, and he
tells me they Avill
.....„..— thank God for having
one white man for their neighbor.
There are smart carpenters among them, Don Gil, and they
will help you to fix your house up comfortably."
" I'm sure I won't ask them to bother themselves on my

410 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
account," said the squatter : " I can do my own housebuild
ing and housekeeping."
" Yes, it seems so," said I, " and we Avant you to show
us how to do it, Don Mateo. There are eighteen families
of them, and we will make it worth while for you to help
us. We want to put up some temporary shelter-places
before the beginning of the rainy season. You may find
some old chums among them if you have been in Cali
fornia," I added.
He looked up and eyed me in a curious way : " Been in
the Alias ?" (Upper California.) " How are times there
now ?"
"All settled up, amigo, — full of Chinamen and land-
speculators : no chance there now for an independent man.
You picked out a much better country. But let me ask
you one question : How did you contrive to manage the
Indians? That's more than the government troops can
do." "God help your colonists if they are going to rely on
the government troops !" said the Catalan. "Look here,
sir," taking up an old rifle : "that's Avhat I rely upon."
" Halloo ! let me see. Why, that's a genuine American
squirrel-gun : Avhat will you take for it?"
" More than you would like to pay, captain : that gun is
meat and bread to me. Look over there," said he, point
ing to the opposite bank of the valley : " do you see that
ravine across the river ? I killed a buck there yesterday
morning, and right from Avhere I stand noAV. Could you
do thatAvith such shooting-machines as you can buy in this
part of the Avorld ?"
" No : you are right. Is there much game in this neigh
borhood ?"
" Plenty of grouse, and some peccaris farther down. Deer

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 41 1
are getting scarce, but that's just what I was talking about :
if a man can rely on his gun, he needn't make a hog of
himself and shoot a hen-grouse on her nest or a peccari-sow
with pigs, as our Indians do. I caught one of them cutting
spare-ribs out of a peccari with ten unborn pigs last month.
Well, sir, I would have given his own pork a dressing if I
could have run him down. On the marquis of Figuera's
estate in my native country they would have shot such a
fellow like a mad wolf. Just let me know if your colonists
want a gamekeeper: I'm their man. I mean, if they are
going to back me up if I should happen to cripple a pot
hunter or two."
Don Mateo described the climate as very equable : he
had never seen snow in the lower sierra, and the summer
months were rarely disagreeably Avarm. Two crops of corn
and wheat and perennial string-beans could be raised in
the river bottoms, and the sunny sides would make pro
miscuous orchards, to judge from the great number of spon
taneous tree-fruits. Viticulture might be very successful,
he believed, but good wine Avould hardly find a market in
Guatemala ; and he advised me strongly to sur\rey a wagon-
road to the boca (Port Isabel), where several foreign traders
would be glad to take commissions at liberal rates.
We decided to bivouac at the sugar-camp and continue
our journey at daybreak to Macultepec, where the Port
Isabel road could be reached by a rope-ferry over the Rio
Motagua. " We are rather short of provisions," said the Catalan,
" but I will send you all we can spare : you can pay the
boy or settle after you come back. Please don't let the
fire go out. Oh, I nearly forgot," said he : " you will have
some visitors to-night. There is a camp of Indian turtle-
hunters about three miles from here, and they come up

412 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
every night to get the sugar-scrapings : it saves me the
trouble of cleaning the kettle myself."
After supper we crawled into the casucha, and slept peace
fully till about an hour after midnight, when I was awakened
by the low growling of the dog at my neighbor's feet.
" What's up?" said the mayoral. — " Oh, I see," he whis
pered: "Yes, here are the Indians, — licking the treacle out
of Mateo's kettle, I bet. Listen ! What in the name of
reason are they doing? Singing, praying, or what?"
I raised my head, and thought I saAv six or eight of them
squatting in a circle around the sugar-kettle, but the flicker
ing fire gradually resolved all these shapes into piles of
chips and firewood, — all but one : right in front of the kettle
crouched an old hag, a solitary old squaw, warming her
bony hands over the embers and crooning a melody that
had perhaps been composed in a tent-village of the Mon
golian steppes.
I made the mayoral get up and take a look at the appa
rition. " She's the wigwam-cook, I guess, belonging to a
tribe of wandering Guachinos," said he. " I shouldn't
wonder if Don Gil lets them have something besides scrap
ings : they are very apt to blackmail a solitary farmer, like
our Mexican bandits, who go around begging with a cocked
musketoon in their fist."
" The Guachinos have no fire-arms, have they ?"
" No, but they manage to get even with their enemies
somehow or other. In Napaluco they nearly killed the
lieutenant of the Mexican garrison with poisoned tobacco.
They are as vindictive as gypsies, — hold human life very
cheap, and commit murder or suicide on the slightest pro
vocation. Our soldiers rather admire them for it, being
themselves such arrant cowards that they respect courage
in any form."

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 413
" The Guachinos are mostly heathens, I suppose?"
" Yes, but baptism doesn't tame them very much. One
of my neighbors up in Chiapas had a baptized Guachino
boy on his hacienda who threatened to commit homicide or
suicide whenever they put him to any hard work or crossed
him in one of his peculiar whims. They had him about
two years, when he took it into his head to make red-hot
love to the haciendado's daughter, Avho was too good-natured
or too much of a coquette to cut his acquaintance in an off
hand Avay till her father sent for the priest, the only person
Avho had any influence on the young demon. They Avere
going to find him a good place in Soconusco, in order to
get him out of the Avay. The priest told him that they
would have kicked him out of the hacienda without any
ceremony if he hadn't been a convert, and then, appealing
to the fellow's common sense, told him that his suit Avas
perfectly hopeless, and that he would find a good home in
Soconusco, where kind friends and a new occupation would
by and by cure him of his passion. The boy made no
reply, but hung his head. 'Am I not right?' asked the
priest when they parted. 'Yes,' says Master Guachino,
' but me sanare mas pronto — I shall prefer a shorter cure.'
The next morning they found the body of their late con
vert in the woodshed of the sugar-mill."
We decamped in the twilight of a cloudless morning,
went a mile to the right to get clear of the manifold wind
ings of the Motagua, and then steered due east over a de
scending plateau of park-like groves and mountain-mead
ows. The eastern slope of the Sierra Negra being exposed
to the Atlantic trade-Avinds, the vegetation absorbs moisture
enough from the atmosphere to preserve all its freshness
in the rainless season. The grass was mixed with flowering
stone-clover and bindAveed (Convolvulus tamus), and alive

414 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
with chirping grasshoppers, busy bumblebees and still busier
ichneumon-wasps, the murderous enemy of all tropical cat
erpillars. The conifers here alternate with catalpas and
wild china-trees, beeches and Avalnuts, and in the lower
valleys the variety of nut-bearing trees is almost infinite.
The farmers of Vera Paz gather the mast of a small kind
of wild chestnut, grind it and bake it into bread and cakes
of a peculiar pleasing flavor, resembling a certain sort of
almond pastry. The slopes are intersected by numerous
ravines, running mostly parallel with the Motagua Valley,
and occasionally widening into grassy dells where a Swiss
goatherd could forget his Alpenland. Here flourish the
mezquite and the madrona or strawberry-tree of the South
ern Cordilleras, and amidst broom-corn and rosemary the
Avild pineapple ripens its sweet-scented fruit. Combined
with the atmosphere of this axomatic herbage, a high tem
perature can be not only tolerable, but strangely agreeable :
in a flowery glen where we rested for the benefit of our
carriers my pocket-thermometer indicated 92° Fahrenheit,
and the sun stood almost directly overhead, but its glow
felt so pleasant that I began to comprehend how the Roman
epicureans could build special solaria — glass-covered cot
tages — for the purpose of bathing in sunshine.
During the whole forenoon Ave enjoyed the panorama of
the snoAV-capped sierras of Chiapas and Tabasco, standing
like turreted cloud-castles on the northern horizon, till Ave
reached the depths of the Val de Motagua, where the view
and the noonday sun were hidden by the canopy of the an
cient pine-woods which had accompanied the river from its
source in the rocks of the alturas. Under many of the larger
trees the ground was covered with gnawed fir-cones, and
now and then we caught sight of a squirrel-monkey or two
dodging behind the stems after the fashion of the Northern

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 415
fox-squirrel. The American squirrel-monkey (Jacchus
sciureus) forms the connecting link between the rodents and
quadrumana : ite hands terminate in claws instead of blunt-
nailed fingers, and its food consists chiefly of nuts and oily
seeds, but its movements and general appearance suggest a
close relationship with the tamarin and other small Ameri
can monkeys. It generally has two young ones at a time,
— strange, fluffy little kittens, that cling to their mother
without hindering her movements in the least degree, and
during a rapid flight clasp her neck in a way that seems to
incorporate the three bodies into one.
When we came once more in sight of the Rio Motagua
we found that the mountain-torrent had widened into a
respectable river, bordered with ground-palms, fan-shaped
canes, and gigantic mulberry-trees whose lower branches
were festooned with long tresses of maidenhair (Adiantum)
dangling from projecting limbs or trailing in the water like
fish-nets. We reached the rope-ferry at the same time with
a company of pantaneros (literally, " moormen"), gum-
gatherers, and logwood-cutters, who had been at work in
the river-swamps, and were now on their route to Port
Isabel and New Orleans. Since the great dyewood forests
of Campeche have been depleted these men, like our Cal
ifornia gold-hunters after the exhaustion of the placer-
mines, wander about in troops, generally under the auspices
of a patron or speculator, who makes it his business to
ferret out bonanzas of gum- and logwood-trees, and engages
a gang of pantaneros either at fixed wages or with the
promise of a tantieme of the uncertain profits. In dull
seasons the patron boards his men on credit, generally in
Vera Cruz or New Orleans, or some other Gulf-port with
regular steamboat facilities, in order to tackle the next
bonanza without loss of time. As a matter of course, the

416 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
average pantanero is in a chronic state of indebtedness ; but
quien sabe ? A lucky season and a fair dividend may fill
his pockete, and with health, hope, and smoking-tobacco
he is the merriest muchacho in Spanish America. Every
man of this party was a Avalking curiosity-shop, loaded
with Indian trinkets, dried humming-birds, living mon
keys, etc., for the New Orleans market, and besides their
spades and axes most of them carried heavy Mexican mus-
ketoons. Their commissariat was somewhat reduced, but
their leader intended to replenish their provender-bags at
the Zapateria, a wayside tavern about a league ahead, where
he advised us to put up for the night.
The Zapateria, or cobbler-shop — so called from a subsid
iary trade of the first proprietor — proved to be a stage-coach
depdt, at a triple cross-road, and, with its outbuildings and
enclosed corrals, flan ked the first good-looking farm we had
seen since our departure from Chiapas. The river was con
veniently near, and at the time of our arrival the entire
male population of the farm seemed to be engaged in water
ing cattle and horses. Leoncito, our four-legged avant-
courier, entered the open gate Avithout ceremony, but came
flying back, followed by a chorus of dog-voices that would
have done credit to the three-headed gatekeeper of Tartarus.
We clubbed our guns, expecting a disastrous sally, but no
body came : the dogs were chained up in the horse-stable,
— three Aragon Avolf-dogs, the most ferocious brutes that
ever claimed descent from the genus Canis. When we
passed their den they crouched down like jaguars, and then
leaped forward with a fury that made the timbers of the
stable creak, uttering yells that differed from the bark of a
common dog as the belloAving of a sea-lion differs from the
yelp of the seal.
The posadero was in luck that night. The evening stage

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 417
brought two merchants from Guatemala City who were
going to a horse-fair in Macultepec, and before dark the
Port Isabel party was reinforced by a detachment of sol
diers, who had been on special duty on the Indian frontier
and were now returning to their barracks at the head of
the boca. As first-comers, we had our pick among the
various sleeping accommodations, but after an ocular and
olfactory examination of the interior dormitories I preferred
a couch on the open porch, to the glad surprise of the mer
chants, who dreaded the " night-chill" with that meteoro
logical fastidiousness of the New Spaniard which is only
equalled by his entomological indifference.
They alluded in vague terms to the ubiquity of the third
Egyptian plague when I met them at breakfast the next
morning, but seemed to regret their choice chiefly on ac
count of having missed a rare piece of fun.
In that half-hour of cool ethereal twilight which precedes
a tropical sunrise I was awakened by a sound of hurried
footsteps on the paved corral, and, looking up, saw a num
ber of half-dressed men running in the direction of the
stable at the top of their speed. " What's up?" I asked
my neighbor, who seemed to have been awake for some
time, — "a horse stolen?"
" No, no : un tropo de monos vastecos — a troop of cebou-
monkeys — stealing maize," he replied. "One of the sol
diers on his Avay to the spring has spied them in the big
cornfield, and the proprietor is going to unchain his hound."
AVhile he spoke hound, master, and soldiers had passed
us in silent haste, and, snatching up my shot-gun, I left
my baggage in charge of the Indian and ran out in my
stocking-feet. Before we reached the gate the monos had taken the
alarm, and on a level field a cebou-monkey can get over the

418 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
ground at a lively rate : but the distance to the high timber
was nearly a mile, and, once started upon the fresh scent,
the Aragon wehr-wolf gained upon them so rapidly that
even bets were offered upon the chance of any of them es
caping Avith their lives, when one unlucky mona made a
scapegoat of herself by jumping upon a tree-stump hardly
eight feet high and in full sight of the hound. He saw
her, and at once changed his course to the left oblique, un
conscious, as it seemed, of having a larger number quite as
much at his mercy.
When he headed for the stump the consternation of the
mona was both ludicrous and pitiful : she jumped backward
and forward, looked up and down and sideways with in
describable grimaces in her efforts to devise ways and means
of escape, clutched her head as if to stimulate her five
wits into a quicker solution of the problem, and finally
clasped the stump tightly, while the recollection of her sins
seemed to affect her like a sudden cathartic ; but in the next
moment Nemesis overtook her in the form of a flying
hound. Cerberus missed his grip, but, bearing her down
by the impetus of his leap, caught her almost before she
reached the ground, and a stifled screech announced the
consummation of the vicarious atonement.
The distance from the cross-roads to Port Isabel is about
twenty miles. Going east and steadily down-hill, we had
a quick trip, still further shortened by the infectious mer
riment of our travelling-companions. On the railroad
from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico the smoking-car is at
the same time the singing- and whooping-car, for neither
the presence of ladies nor the fear of immediate ejection
will keep the natives quiet while the train is in motion.
They enjoy peregrination as we do our fireside comforts :
only in the Germanic languages "at home" and "at ease"

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 419

"¦ v are synonymous terms.
The Anglo-Saxon, though a
great emigrant, is at heart
domestic, while the Spaniard
is by nature excursive. The Eng
lishman, one might say, emigrates
for the purpose of reaching a new
home, — the Spaniard, in order to
get aAvay from his old one.
The programme of our musical entertainment included
Indian war-songs, sacred and national hymns, mediseval
ballads, and erotic impromptus : an American farmer would
have taken us for a gang of migratory minstrels. The only
quiet man in the party was the second sergeant, a big,
strapping fellow with a deep bass voice, who contented
himself Avith keeping the even tenor of his Avay, while the
gait of the sargento primero was somewhat the Avorse for
his frequent calls at the wayside pulque-shops.
The silent philosopher turned out to be a native of
Temesvar in Southern Hungary, who had come over with

420 SVMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Maximilian and served in the third artillery of the imperial
regulars till his battery Avas captured at Oaxaca, where they
kept him at work in the public streete on two pounds of
corn bread and four ounces of bacon a day. After the res
toration he donned the bottle-green uniform of the repub
lican army, gradually advanced to his present rank, and
was now " as Avell off as any Austrian chaplain," he assured
me, — "four dollars a week, nothing to do and plenty to
eat," — a man who had solved the problem of life to his
satisfaction. " What takes you to Port Isabel ?" I asked ; " going to
wait for a Mexican steamer ?"
" No, we are stationed there," he said : " since the Yuca
tan compromise our government keeps a garrison at the
boca." The northeastern corner of Guatemala is noAV under the
protectorate of the Mexican go\rernrnent, after having for
twenty years been the scene of an Indian and international
rough-and-tumble fight which made it a most unprofitable
possession to the smaller republic. The hostile Indians,
like our Comanches and Apaches, used to escape across the
convenient frontier whenever their depredations had started
the government troops on their trail, and by the treaty of
1862, Port Isabel was to be free to a certain class of Mex
ican vessels, with the proviso that the Mexican government
should furnish auxiliary troops whenever the advance of
the hostiles threatened the safety of the harbor. The result
was a tragedy of errors, a muddle of protests and counter-
protests, marches and countermarches, till 1869, when the
governor of Yucatan offered to garrison and improve Port
Isabel at the expense of his State on condition that the
privileges of the harbor should be extended to Mexican
vessels of all classes. The Guatemalan government was

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 421

FORT ISABEL.

sensible enough to accept the compromise, and has ever
since continued to derive a handsome revenue from a sea
port whose protection and repairs have not cost it a cent
for the last ten years.
Port Isabel (Itzabal or Atzabal the Caribbeans called
the ruins of an ancient city on this coast) will never be of
much importance as a commercial seaport, on account of
the craggy reef that almost closes the harbor at ebb-tide,
but the seaward prospect of its surroundings repeats on the
o-randest scale the peculiar scenic charms of Perth and
Trieste, the town being situated at the head of the Bay of
27

422 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
Honduras, which, seen from afar, resembles a mighty river
with terraced shores and mountainous headlands.
How is it that distances are so deceptive in the atmosphere
of the Spanish Main and the southern Gulf coast ? Stand
ing on the brink of the steep plateau west of Port Isabel,
the buildings of Fort Gonzales, viewed across a valley of
ten miles in diameter, can be distinguished as plainly as the
cottages and garden-walls at your feet : the officers' quarters
with their row of shade-trees, the boat-house, the scarps
and counterscarps of the bastion, are all crowded together
on the tip of a promontory, but as sharply outlined as the
picture in the spectrum of a telescope. The white walls
reflect their light without glittering ; the shades are dark,
but not obscure; the atmosphere iteelf seems to act like a
periscopic lens, unless its absolute freedom from smoke and
dust should account for its wonderful transparency. That
is what our neighbors mean Avhen they speak of " el sol de
Mexico," — the Mexican sun, — whose glories are reserved
for their favored country, which vouchsafes such perennial
summers to no other land, and whose light lingers on their
sierras after it has retreated in disgust from the foggy
swamps of the hyperboreans. Just now it gilded the creste
of the South Mexican Alps, Avhich tower above all the
highlands of Honduras and Vera Paz.
The ruins of Itzabal are about six miles northeast of the
seaport, but the modern village offers few objects of interest,
and, as the moormen were anxious to reach their boat before
sundown, we followed them to the wharf, where we treated
our military escort at an open-air pulqueria, Avhile the pan
taneros reported at the agency of the Mexican steamer.
The soldiers then formed in double file and marched off to
the fort, and, after quartering our Indians at the next posada,
we accompanied the moormen to the landing.

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 423
The steamer was moored about a mile and a half from
the mainland, at the Barra del Padre, the " Parson's Reef,"
an ugly rock, but a golden gate to a swarm of ferrymen,
who convey freight and passengers in boats of every desired
rig and size, steam-tugs being unknown in the Bay of Hon
duras. The thrifty moormen selected a rowboat of a kind
that can be hired at half-price if the passengers agree to
man the oars ; the steamer had already hoisted her partida-
flag, and, as there was a chance of finding an American
newspaper on board, we permitted ourselves to be lugged
along. Seen from a distance, the Barra del Padre looks like
a narrow chain of rocks with intervals that might be im
proved into a roadstead, but its submarine extent is unfor
tunately more considerable : between the mainland and the
reef an archipelago of craggy islets becomes visible at low
water, and every now and then our boat grated audibly
against the serrucho (cross-cut saw) of a subaqueous ledge.
" No hay cuidado — no danger," laughed our pilot : " the
serruchos are all worn out, — the big boats have broken their
teeth." But it struck me that the Bay of Honduras must be
strangely afflicted with what our sailors call iron-bound
coasts if the Mexicans could not find a better harbor of
their own. Their territory borders the bay for more than
a hundred miles, but Port Isabel nearly monopolizes the
trade of Belize and Eastern Yucatan.
The ridge of the Parson's Reef is about four feet above
low-water mark, but storm-floods have frequently submerged
it, and, with the exception of the lighthouse, the buildings
form a floating village, being mere wharfboat sheds that
rise and fall Avith the tide. A Mexican gunboat and an
English clipper were anchored alongside of the steamer,
besides a considerable number of smaller vessels at the

424 SUMMERLAND SKETCHES.
lower quay and in the offing. There were sailors of various
nationalities squatting about the wharf in small knots, eat
ing, angling, and gambling. Tavo minutes after landing
us and securing his boat our pilot was engaged in a game
of sixpenny monte Avith a Spanish sailor and a mestizo
'longshoreman. " You'd better help us to get our traps on board," ob
served the leader of the moormen : " they are ringing their
bell now."
"Campana del burro!" grunted the Spaniard, "don't
bother this man: don't you see he's dealing? You have
got time enough and to spare."
" She leaves at six o'clock, sharp," explained the pilot, —
" at sundown, amigo : you will know it when they fire their
evening gun at the fortin."
The Fortin . de Gonzales stands at the extremity of a
steep promontory, on the site of a larger fortress with an
arsenal and military storehouses which were destroyed by
the last Spanish garrison. The new buildings are only
used as barracks, now garrisoned by Mexican troops, but
on the roof of the guard-house the flags of Mexico and
Guatemala fluttered side by side. Our friends seemed to
have reached their quarters in the mean while, and I
thought I recognized the fat sergeant among a group of
soldiers who waved their bandanas from the parapet of the
battery. At last the boatswain's whistle summoned " All hands
for'ard !" — tropa adelante ! — the honest pantaneros wished
us " long life and a thousand such merry days," and the
ferryman solicited our patronage for the return-trip. The
reader will probably join the home-bound party, but before
the tender casts off her hawser let him take one more look
at the inland hills and the airy summits of the Sierra de

THE VIRGIN WOODS OF THE SIERRA NEGRA. 425
San Tomas, where the sun of Mexico has lighted the watch-
fires that will gleam like gold when the last twilight of the
valleys has faded into night. In what other land on earth
will you see such a sunset, or such lights and shades re
flected from every cleft and every rock of those soaring
heighte athwart a distance of forty English miles, or that
dark-green ridge of the coast range, where the pine-trees
stand so clearly defined against the northern sky that one
might listen for the murmuring of the sea-wind in their
matted branches?
But it is time to part. Yes, there goes the gun at the
battery, and as the steamer swings slowly round the sol
diers on the parapet throw up their caps and send a ringing
shout across the water : " Adios, amigos !" while the moor
men fire off their trabuccos and wave their hats from the
forecastle. Then, gentle reader, let us join in the answering cheer,
" Adios a Mexico !" shake hands with your guide, and take
your farewell of the glorious sun.

THE END.

^Xle university lib

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