Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond

ican town with a slight American tinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly

ers from sheriff down-or up-are names the average American could not pronounce, and the saunterer in the streets may pass hours without hearing a word of English. Even the post-office emplo

the minds of the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat-"Cincinnati Slim" put it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from

tution during twenty-four hours there was a little Mexican boy with a hand-broom, which he evidently carried as an orname

nd the pawnshops were closed. As I passed the lodge on the north end of the bridge over th

l stopped me with far more courtesy, and peered down into the co

ey?" he

se?

" he queried

n my arm unostentatiously over my hip pocke

for them, who smoked cigarettes incessantly as we crawled dustily through the baked-mud hamlet to the decrepit shed that announced itself the station of the National Railways of Mexico. It was closed, of course. I waited an hour or more before t

fe, but for fences of one or two barb-wires on crooked sticks-not even bird life. The wind, strong and incessant as at sea, sounded as mournful throug

rial. The conductor was American, but as in Texas he seemed to have little to do except to keep the train moving. The auditor, brakeman, and train-boy were Mex

ared at the very edge of the border; now there were even a few police under enormous hats, with tight trousers and short jackets showing a huge revolver at the hip. Toward evening things grew somewhat greener. A tree six to twelve feet high, without branches, or sometimes with several trunk-like ones, growing

and then tending his flock of little white goats in the sand and cactus. This

moon, almost full, already smiled down upon us over the wall on the left. We continued along the plain between the ranges, which later receded into the di

her country, to say nothing of another hemisphere. England brings to her colonies some of her home customs, but not an iota of what Spain does to the lands she has conquered. The hiding of wealth behind a miserable facade is almost as universal in Mexico of the twentieth century as in Morocco of the fourth. The narrow streets of Monterey have totally inadequate sidewalks on which two pedestrians pass

heat as Laredo and southern Texas. But, on the other hand, being surrounded on most sides by mountains, it had less breeze, and the coatless freedom of Texas was here looked down upon. During the hours about noonday the sun seemed to strike physically on the head and back whoever stepped out into it, and the smalle

ards in brown uniforms and broad felt hats, armed with thick-set muskets, their chests criss-crossed with belts of long rifle cartridges, lolled in the shade of every near-by street corner. The prisoners la

foremost comes always the enormous hat, commonly of thick felt with decorative tape, the crown at least a foot high, the brim surely three feet in diameter even when turned up sufficient to hold a half gallon of water. That of the peon

This and the evening comida were always identically the same. A cheerful but slatternly Indian woman set before me a thin soup containing a piece of squash and a square of boiled beef, and eight hot corn tortillas of the size and shape of our pancakes, or gkebis, the Arab bread, which it outdid in toughness

upied space. Then the city begins, leisurely at first, with few houses and many gardens and trees, thickening farther on. All about are mountains. The Silla (Saddle), a sharp rugged height backing the city on the right, has a notch in it much like the seat of a Texas saddle; to the far left are fantastic sharp peaks, and across the plain a ragged range perhaps fifteen miles distant shuts off the view. Behind the chapel stand Los Dientes, a teeth o

red with our own land there is something profoundly peaceful in this climate and surroundings. Now the sunshine slipped up off the farther ranges

r among them. The landscape became less arid, half green, with little or no cactus, and the breeze cooled steadily. Saltillo at last, five thousand feet up, was above the reach of oppressive summer and for perhaps the first time since leaving Chicago I did not suffer from the heat. It was almost a pleasure to splash through the little puddles in its poorly paved streets. Its plazas were completely roofed with trees, the view down any of its streets was enticing, and the little cubes of houses were painted all possible

collarless shirts of all known colors, a gay faja or cloth belt, sometimes a coat-always stopping at the waist. Then last, but never least, the marvelous hat. Two peons trying to get through the same door at once was a sight not soon to be forgotten. There were felt and straw hats of every possible grade and every shade and color except red, wound with a rich band about the crown and another around the brim. Those o

alleros. Near me sat a family of three. The father, perhaps twenty, was strikingly handsome in his burnished copper skin, his heavy black hair, four or five inches long, hanging down in "bangs" below his hat. The mother was even younger, yet the child was already some two years old, the chubbiest, brightest-eyed bundle of humanity imaginable. In their fight for a seat the man shouted to the wife to hand him the child. He caught it by one hand and swung it high over two seats and across the car, yet it n

grew louder. Still the father smiled silently. The ticket collector stepped back into the first-class car and returned with the train guard, a boyish-looking fellow in peon garb from hat to legging trousers, with a brilliant red tie, two belts of enormous cartridges about his waist, in his hand a short ugly rifle, and a harmless smile on his face. There was something fasci

ity Limited with its sleeping-car behind and a few scattered Americans in first-class is the only one that covers thi

self with foresight. The windows were closed, yet the land of yesterday seemed far behind indeed. I wrapped my heavy coat about me. Toward four we crossed the Tropic of Cancer into the Torrid Zone, without a jolt, and I dug out my gray sweater and reg

country that we were considerably more than a mile above sea-level. The flat land looked not greatly different from that of the day before. The cactus was higher; some of the "organ" variety, many of the "Spanish bay

I had never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is no cure for man's ills. The chief center was the swarming market. Picture a dense mob of several thousand men and boys, gaunt, weather-beaten, their tight trousers collections of rents and patchwork in many colors, sandals of a soft piece of leather showing a foot cracked, blackened, tough as a hoof, as incrusted with filth as a dead foot picked up on a garbage heap, the toes always squirting with mud, the feet not merely never washed

s if the possessor could not wait until they grew up before digging them; cactus leaves, the spines shaved off, cut up into tiny squares to serve as food; bundles of larger cactus spines brought in by hobbling old women or on dismal asses and sold as fuel, aguacates, known to us as "alligator pears" and tasting to the uninitiated like axle-grease; pomegranates, pecans, cheeses flat and white, every species of basket and earthen jar from two-inch size up, turnips, some cut in two for those who could not afford a whole one; onions, flat slabs of brown, muddy-looking soap, rice, every species of frijole, or bean, shelled corn for tortillas, tomatoes-tomate coloradito, though many were tiny and green as if also prematurely gathered-peppers red and green, green-corn with most of the kernels blue, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, melons of every size except large, string-beans, six-inch cones of the muddiest of sugar, the first rough product of the crushers wound in swamp grass and which prospective purchasers handled over and over, testing them now and then by biting off a small corner, though there was no apparent difference; sausages with links of marble size, everything in the way of meat, tossed about in the dirt, swarming with flies, handled, smelled, cut into tiny bits for purchasers; even strips of intestines, the jaw-bone of a sheep with barely the smell of meat on it; all had value

in the attempt? How did they resist eating up their own wares? It seemed strange that these sunken-chested, hobbling, halt, shuffling, shivering, starved creatu

ls the favorite Mexican dishes,-frijoles (a stew of brown beans), chile con carne, rice, stews of stray scraps of meat and the leavings of the butcher-shops. These were dished up in brown glazed jars and eaten with strips of tortilla folded between the fingers, as the Arab eats with gkebis. I

implanted in him by those of ulterior motives. Nor did they once ask alms or attempt to push misery forward. The least charitable would be strongly tempted to succor any one of the throng individually, b

uent spurts of cold rain. Now and then a lowest of the low passed in the cast-off remnants of "European" clothes, which were evidently considered far inferior to peon garb, however bedraggled. Bare or sandaled feet seemed impervious to cold, again like the Arab, as was also this fear of the raw air and half covering of the face that gave a Mohammedan touch, especially to the women. To me the atmosphere wa

nt each. They were political in nature, often in verse, insulting in treatment, and mixed with a crass obscenity at which the dismal multitude laughed bestially. Three musicians, one with a rude harp, a boy striking a triangle s

and then one of these dregs of humanity crept into church for a nap, but the huge edifices showed no other sign of usefulness. On the whole there was little appearance of "religion." A few women were seen in the churches, a book-seller sold no novels and little literature but "mucho de religión," but the great majority gave no outward sign of belonging

d houses at night, but it is shut in tight as if fearful of the poor breaking in. As in

t as a table, some cactus here and there, but apparently fertile, with neither sod to break nor clearing necessary. Yet nowhere, even on