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

employment. The ride to it, 8200 feet above the sea, up along and out of the gully in which Guanajuato is built, and by steep rocky trails som

mountain. Brilliant yet not hot sunshine illuminated even the far horizon, and little cloud-shadows crawled here and there across the landscape. The rainy season had left on the plain below many shallow lakes that reflected the sun like immense mirrors. From the veranda it seemed quite flat, though in reality by no means so, and one could all but count the windows of Silao, Irapuato, and other towns; the second, though more than twenty miles away, still in the back foreground

marched past the timekeeper, turning over their blankets at a check counter, and with their lunches, of the size of the round tortilla at the bottom and four to six inches high, in their handkerchiefs, climbed into the six-foot, iron ore-bucket until it was completely roofed with their immense straw hats. Near by those of the second night-shift, homeward bound, halted, to stand one by one on a wooden block with outstretched arms to be carefully searched for stolen ore by a tried and trusted fellow-peon. A pocketful of "high-grad

an. Twelve hundred feet down we stepped out into a winding, rock gallery nearly six feet wide and high, where fourteen natives were loading rock and mud into iron dump-cars and pushing them to a near-by chute. Even at this depth flies were thick. A facetious boss asserted they hatche

irt" two peons were grubbing down out of a lower veta, a long narrow alleyway of soft earth and small stones that stretched away into the interior of the mountain b

ere small, and in the concentrated patch of light the play of their muscles through the light-brown skins was fascinating. Working thus naked seemed so much more dangerous; the human form appeared so much more feeble and soft, delving unclothed in the fathomless,

d lost his entire left arm in a recent explosion, yet he handled the dangerous stuff as carelessly as ever. Several others were mutilated in lesser degrees. They depend on charms and prayers to their favorite saint rather than on their own precautions. Every few minutes the day through came the cry: "'Stá pegado!" that sent us skurrying a few feet away until a dull, deafening explosion brought down a new section of the vein. Not long before, there

first hour below, a muddy rock fell down the front of a laborer, scraping the skin off his nose, deeply scratching his chest and thighs, and causing his toes to bleed, but he merely swore a few round oaths and continued his work. The hospital doctors asserted that th

, and even entered into discussion of the alleged characteristics of their superiors in their very presence without being understood by the uninitiated. Frequently, too, amid the rumble of the "veta madre" pouring down her treasures, some former Broadway favorite that had found its way gradually to the theate

heir self-chosen leader. A peon with a bit more standing in the community than his fellows, wearing something or other to suggest his authority and higher place in the world-such perhaps as the pink shirt the haughty "jefecito" beside me sported-appeared with twelve or more men ready for work and was given a section and paid enough to give his men from fifty to eighty cents a day each and have something over a dollar left for himself. Miners' wages vary much throughout Mexico, from twelve dollars a month to two a day in places no insuperable distances apart. Conditions also differ greatly, according to my experienced compatriots. The striking and booting of the workmen, common in some mines,

Caste lines were not lacking even among the Americans in the "camp," as these call Guanajuato and its mining environs. More than one complained that those who married Mexican girls of unsullied character and even education were rated "squaw-men" and more or less ostracized by their fellow countrymen, and especially country-women, while the man who "picked up an old rounder from the States" was looked upon as an equal. The speech of all Mexico is slovenly from the Castilian point of view. Still more so was that of both the peon and the Americans, who copied the untutored tongue of the former, often ignorant of its faults, and generally not in the least anxious to improve, nor indeed to get any other advantage from the country except the gold and silver they could dig out of it. Laborers and bosses commonly used "pierra" for piedra; "sa' pa' fuera" for

ast a half-dozen peo

r on some equally important errand; the workman would run all the way up hill and down again in the rarified air, removing

scended into or mounted from the mine, had concocted and p

Visitors

he platform. It is too lar

e floor. We like to

while he is running. There i

not know his business, please

questions as you like.

the bright work. We have

on the ceiling. We h

look angry don't pay any atte

cigarettes take his. T

ng, report him to the superintend

of the first. It was a long gallery winding away through the mountain, and connecting a mile beyond wi

as furnace hot. From them the day-gang took out 115 car-loads, though the chute was blocked now and then by huge rocks that must be "

ck, which they did not remove even when working naked, and all crossed themselves each time they entered the mine. Not a few chanted prayers while the cage was descending. As often as they passed the gallery-shrine, they left off for an instant the vilest oaths, in which several boys from twelve to fourteen excelled, to snatch off their hats

provocation whatever would the peons fight underground, but lay for their enemies only outside. A shift-boss in a neighboring mine remained seven weeks below, having his food sent down to him, and continued to work daily with miners who had sworn to kill him once they caught him on earth. One of our engineers had long been accustomed at another mine to hand his revolver to the searcher when the shift appeared and to arm hims

igned. In that same mine it was customary to lock in each shift until the relieving one arrived, and many worked four or five shifts, thirty-two to forty hours without a moment of rest, swallowing a bit of food now and then with a sledge in one hand. "High-graders," as ore-thieves are called, were numerous. The near-by "Sirena" mine was reputed to have in its personnel more men who lived by stealing ore than hon

hijo de--, si

ack of "high-grade," and was warned to take his leave on the double-quick

and tortillas with them and making a business of stealing ore. Not even the most experienced minin

ist comes the Spaniard, who is reputed a heartless usurer who long enjoyed protection under Diaz. Third, perhaps, come the priests, though these are endured as a necessary evil, as we endure a bad government. The padre of Calderón drifted up to

Fine them of

, "you know that by the laws of Mexico and the

w countrymen were much given to mixing with the most courteous Spanish forms of speech asides in English which it was well the pompous native officials did n

six bones and let him be on his way-Oh, sí, se?or. Cómo no? Con muchísimo gusto-and there goes six of our good bucks and

ern hills in a narrow, pinkish-red streak; to-morrow the play of colors on mountains and clouds, shot blood-red, fading to saffron yellow, growing an ever-thicker gray down to the horizon, with the unrivaled blue of the sky overhead, all shifting and changing with every moment, would be hopelessly beyond the power of words. Often rain w

r, galloped sure-footed up and down steep faces of rock. Cargadores bent half double, with a rope across their brows, came straining upward to the mine. Bands of peons released from their underground labors paused here and there on the way home to wager cigarettes on which could toss a stone nearest the next mud puddle. Flocks of goats wandered in the growing dusk about swift stony mountain flanks. Farther away was a rocky ridge beaten with narrow, bare, crisscross trails, and beyond, the old Valenciana mine on the flanks of the jagged range shutting off Dolores Hidalgo, appearing so near in this clear air of the heights that it seemed a man could throw a stone there; yet down in the valley between lay all Guan

g to the then "liberal" President of the republic, and accident pay would have caused these insensible fellows to drop rocks on themselves to enjoy its benefits. For several mornings threatening political posters had appeared on the walls of the company buildings. But this time word came that "liberal" posters had been stuck up in the galleries of the mine itself. The boss sprang to his feet, and without even sending for his revolver went down into the earth. An hour or more later he reappeared with the remnants of the poster

ksmith-shop continued unbroken, cars of rock were dumped every few minutes under the swarming stars, the mine pulse beat uncha

e sky. Valenciana, where so many Spaniards, long since gone to whatever reward awaited them, waxed rich and built a church now golden brown with age, sat on its slope across the valley, down in which no one would have guessed huddled a city of some 60,000 inhabitants. Much nearer and a bit below drowsed the old town of Calderón, home of many of our peons, a bright red blanket hung over a stone wall giving a splash of brilliancy to the vast stretch of grayish, dull-brown, and thirsty green. The road wound slowly down and ever down, until the gullies grew warmer as the rising mountains cut off the breeze and left the sun in undisputed command. Along the way were flowers uncountable,

o which no doubt Guanajuato held the baseball championship of Mexico. Like the English officials of India, the Americans in high places here were noticeable for their youth, and, at least here on the ball-ground, for their democracy, known to all by their boyhoo

m not a politician bu

eral" candidate. He tore them up and sent his own men to watch the election, with the result that there was a strong majority in that precinct in favor of the candidate more pleasing to the mine owners. The pulquerias and saloons of the peons had been closed, but not the clubs and resorts of the white men. In one of these I sat with the boss, watching him play a game of stud poker. A dissipated young American, who smoked a cigar and a cigarette at the same time, was most in evidence, a half Comanche Indian of an utterly impassive countenance did the dealing, and fortunes

ayed earlier was now completely deserted. The road was nearly five miles long; the trail, sheer up the wild tumble of mount

tion in the strong wind. I had soon to cast this away, as it not only threatened to burn my hand but left the eyes unable to pierce the surrounding wall of darkness. In the silence of the night there came to mind the assertion of by no means our most timorous engineer, that he never passed over this trail after dark without carrying his revolver cocked in his hand. My fellow countrymen of the region all wore huge "six-shooters" with a large belt of cartridges always in sight, less for use than the salutary effect of having them visible, in itself a real protection. Conditions in Mexico had led me to

des and ahead and behind me, while the whistling language shrilled from every gully and hillside. Evidently drunken peons were harmlessly celebrating their Sunday holiday, but the shots sounded none the less weirdly out of the black night as I stumbled on over the rocky, tumbled country, for the only smooth way thereabouts was the Milky Way faintly seen overhead. Gradually the shooting and shouting drifted behind me and died out as I surmounted the last k

st and descended some two hundred feet more, then wound off again through the mountain by more labyrinthian burrowings in the rock, winding, undulating passages, often so low we must crawl on hands and knees, with no other light than the flickering candles half-showing shadowy forms of naked, copper-colored beings; the shadows giving them often fiendish faces and movements, until we could easily imagine ourselves in the realms of Dante's imagination. In time we came to a ladder leading upward into a narrow dark hole, and when the ladder ended we climbed on our bellies some forty feet h

brown bodies as under a shower-bath. In five minutes I had sweated completely through my garments, in ten I could wring water out of my jacket; drops fell regularly at about half-second intervals from the end of my nose and chin. The

smeared all over with the drippings of candle-grease, worked steadily for all the heat and stuffiness. Indeed, one could not but wonder at the amount of energy they sold for a day's wages; though of course their industry was partly due to my "gringo" presence. We addressed them as inferiors, in the "tu" form and with the generic title "hombre," or, more exactly, in the case of most of the American bosses, "húm-bray." The white man who said "please" to them, or even showed thanks in any way, such as giving them a cigarette, lost caste in their eyes as surely as with a butler one might attempt to treat as a man. I tried it on Bruno, and he almost instantly c

by the stunning, ear-splitting dynamite blast, screams of "No vás echar!" as some one passed beneath an opening above, of "Ahora sí!" when he was out of danger; the shrill warning whistling of the peons echoing back and forth through the galleries and labyrinthian side tunnels, as the crunch of shoes along the track announced the approach of

few overlooked. In the bodega, or underground office, I changed my dripping garments for dry ones, but waited long for the broken-down motor to lift me again finally to pure air. In the days that followed I was advanced to the rank of car-boss in this same level, and found enough to do and more in keeping

the worthless rock thrown out on the "dump," a great artificial hill overhanging the valley below and threatening to bury the little native houses huddled down in it. A toy Baldwin locomotive dragged the ore trains around the hill to the noisy stamp-mill spreading through another valley, with a vi

but they were sharp-eyed and very few worthless bits got by the three of them. A story below, the picked material went under deafening stamps weighing tons and striking several blows a second, while water was turned in to soften the material. This finally ran down another story in liquid form into huge cylinders where it was rolled and rolled again and at last flowed on, smelling like mortar or wet lime, onto platforms of zinc constantly shaking as with the ague and with water steadily flowin

ray-black blocks of the size and form of a paving-brick, 85 per cent. pure, about as heavy as the average lady would care to lift, and worth something like $1250 each. Two or four of these were tied on the back of a donkey and a train of them driven under guard to the town office, whence they were shipped to Mexico City, and finally made into those elusive things

he did not complain at this half-day excursion under some twenty pounds. Being drawn out, he grew quite cheery on this new fashion of carrying-"when the load is not much." In the cool morning air, with a wind full of ozone sweeping across the high country, the trail lay across tumbled stretches of rocky ground, range behin

c stone idol, under a veritable haystack of hat, who ostensibly at least was a sworn friend of the mining company. With him we returned to the deafening stamp-mill and brought up in the "zinc room," where the metal is cast into bricks. Here the stealing of ore by workmen is particularly prevalent, and even the sear

h, the three of us being admitted, the door was locked. The jefe político, as the government authority of the region, set about searching them, and as his position depended on the good-will of the powerful mining company, it was no perfunctory "frisking." The ragged fellow

a piece of ore as large as a silver dollar, wrapped in paper, which the fellow had surreptitiously tossed away among a bunch of mats against the wall. The jefe cuffed him soundly and ordered him to take off his shoes-he was the only one of the five sporting that luxury-and discovered in the toe of one of them a still larger booty. The last of the group was a cheery little fellow barely four feet high, likable in spite of his ingrained lifetime lack of soap. He showed no funk, and when ordered to undress turned to the "gringo" manager with:

that for?" as

sneered the jefe, wadding it

nd guilty and the third suspected, who stood silent and motionless against the wall. Three policemen in shoddy uniforms, armed with clubs and enormous revolvers sticking out through their short coat-tails, at length appeared, of the same class and

are you wa

robability they lay several months before their case was even called up; while the manager and I ascended to his veranda and flower-grown resid

em whenever they left that they should not keep even a little bit of it for themselves. Now they had made their own people shut them up because they had picked up a few dollars' worth of scraps left over from the great burro-loads of which, to their notion, the hated "gringoes" were robbing them. Like the workingm

rest sidewall; the rest was a dank, noiseless, blank space, seeming square miles in extent. For three hours we wandered up and down and in and out of huge unseen caves, now and then crawling up or down three or four hundred foot "stopes" on hands and knees, by ladders, stone steps, or toe-holes in the rock. Through it all it was raining much of the time in torrents-in the mine, that is, for outside the sun was shining brightly-with mud underfoot and streams of water running along much of the way; and, unlike the sweltering interior of "Pingüico," there was a dank dungeon chill that reached the marrow of the bones. Even in the shafts which we desc

d up and down. To it a trot was evidently an endeavor to see how many times and how high it could jump into the air from the same spot. The ancient Aztecs, seeing us advancing upon them, would never have made the mistake of fancying man and horse parts of

which they do not to a man afoot; a solemn stillness of rough-and-tumble mountains and valleys, with deep-shadowed little gorges scolloped out of the otherwise sun-flooded landscape, br

s give a joyful touch, and patches of green and the climate help to make the place reminiscent of the more thickly settled portions of Palestine. From the town we could see plainly the city of Leon, fourth in Mexico, and a view of the plain, less striking than that from "Pingüico," because of the ra

cessantly, like some distant water-fall; for with modern methods it pays to crush rock with even a few dollars a ton value in it, and the Americans of to-day mine much that the Spaniards with their crude methods cast aside or did not attempt to work. At a mine in the vicinity the ancient stone mansion serving as residence of the superintende