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

lat, ragged, country roads, bringing to mind that it was long since I had walked on level and unobstructed ground. The crowding of the second-class car

she drew it out, and regained her spirits only momentarily during the smoking of each of several cigarettes. Finally she took to saying her beads in a sepulchral, moaning voice, her eyes closed, and wagging her head from side to side in the rhythm of her professional calling, until we pulled

ss of nature, not the prodigality of the tropics to make man indolent, but just sufficient to give full reward for reasonable exertion. The rich, black, fenceless plains were burnished here and there with little shallow lakes of the rainy season, and musical with wild birds of many species. Primitive well-sweeps punctuated the landscape, and now and then the church towers of some adobe village peered through the mesquite trees. In the afternoon grazing grew more frequent and herds of cattle and flocks of goats populated all the scene. Within the car and without, the hats of the peons, with all their sameness, were never exactly alike. Each bore some individuality, be it in shape, shade, material, or manner of wear

ere as the band plays amid the orange trees heavy with ripening fruit, the more haughty of the population promenade the inner square, outside which stroll the peons and "lower classes"; though only custom seems responsible for the division. One misses in Mexico the genuine democracy of Spain. The idea of a conquered race still holds, and whoever has a strain of white in his veins-or even in the hue of his collar-considers it fitting to treat the Indian mass with a cold, indifferent tone of superiority. Yet in the outer circle the unprejudiced observer found more pleasing than within. One was reminded of Mark Tw

as at one of the seven wonders of the universe. Beggars are few and there is none of the oppressive poverty of other Mexican cities. This, it is agreed, is due not merely to the extreme fertility of Jalisco, but to the kindness of nature in refusing to produce the maguey in the vicinity, so that drunkenness is at its lowest Mexican ebb and the sour stink of pulque

nutes from one to another back and forth through every street, as if mutually to keep up their courage. Scores of the gilded youth on the way home from "playing the bear" before their favorite rejas join together in bands to howl into the small hours their glee at the kindness of life, the entire stock of street-cars seems to be sent out nightly on some extended excursion with orders never to let their gongs fall silent, and long before dawn even the few who have succeeded in falling into a doze are snatched awake by an atrocious din of church-bells sufficient in number to sup

carpet, leaning on his musket at the entrance, made no move to halt me, and I stepped forth on a patio forested with orange trees, to find that most of the public had preceded me, including some hundred fruit, tortilla, cigarette, and candy vendors. Here was no s

'stá d

is eyes and preparing to light the first after-siesta cigarette. When my impressiveness had penetrated his reawakening intellect, he prepar

ile in length; for with Latin love of the theatrical the farther ends had been painted to resemble an endless array of cells, even the numbers being continued above the false doors to minute infinity. Besides these imaginary ones there were some forty real places of confinement on each side of each corridor, three-cornered, stone rooms with a comfortable cot and noticeable cleanliness. The hundred or more convicts, wandering about or sitting

kshops, also long and vaulted and well-lighted by

ch all work was done by hand, the absence of machinery suggesting to the trusty in charge that Mexico is "muy pobre" as compared with other lands. Convicts were obliged to work seven hours a day. Scattered through the building were several small patios with patches of

table known in the region. The institution indeed was fully self-supporting. The kitchen was lined with huge vats into which bushels of beans, corn, and the like were shoveled, and like the prison tailor, shoe, and barber shops, was kept in excellent order. Several short-time prisoners, among them many boys, volunteered to stand in appropriate attitudes before the heavy wall at the end of a three-cornered court where condemned men are shot at three paces in the dawn of many an early summer day. In one corridor the prison band, entirely made up of prisoners, was practising, and when I had been seated in state on a wooden bench they struck up several American favorites, ending with our national hymn, all played with the musical skill common to the Mexican Indian, even among those unable to read

n only because among those laughing at their antics was a peon who had been gashed across the hand, half-severing his wrist, yet who sat on the back platform without even a rag around the wound, though with a rope

rolling land was very fertile, with much corn, great droves of cattle, and many shallow lakes, its climate a pleasant cross between la

e. This primitive bone-shaker, dark-red in color, the body sitting on huge leather springs, was drawn by four teams of mules in tandem, and before revolution spread ov

e. He lacked entirely that incommunicative manner and half-resentful air I had so often encountered in the Mexican, and his country dialect whiled away the time as we followed the unfenced "road" around and slowly upward into hills less rugged than those about Guanajuato and thinly covered with coarse grass and small brush. Twenty-one years ago he had worked here as mozo for "gringoes," my compatriots. They had offered him a whole peso a day if he would not get married. But "he and she

at home, which is larger, only twenty-two pesos, and for the one they stole from him, fifteen pesos and a bag of corn. And once they stole all three of the burritos and he ran half way to Colima and had them arrested and got the animalitos back. So that

d been twice to Guadalajara and only too glad to get away again-and wasn't I tired enough to try the burrito a while, I should find her pace smooth as sitting on the ground. No? Well, at least if I got tired I could come and spend the night in hi

to far-off Guadalajara, and ahead, also still far away, Lake Chapala shimmering in the early sunset. Between lay broad, rolling land, rich with flowers and shrubbery, and with much cultivation also, one vast field of ripening Indian corn surely four miles long and half as wide stretching like a sea to its surroundin

ittle patch of corn which-yes, surely, I could see a corner of it from here, and from it, if only I would come, I should see the broad blue view of Chapala lake, and-My road descended and went down into the night, plentifully scattered with loose stones. Before it had grown really dark I found myself casting a shadow ahead, and turned to find an en

and a chicken centuries old served by waiters in evening dress and trained-monkey manners. The free and easy old casa de asistencia of Guadalajara was far more to my liking. B

rmy as Lake Erie. Waves were dashing high at the foot of the town in the morning. Its fishermen are ever fearful of its fury and go to pray for a safe return from every trip before the

nge vendors of Atequisa gathered around me at the station, marveling at the strength of my legs. In the train I shared a bench with a dignified old Mexican of the country regions, who at length lost his reserve sufficiently to tell me of the "muy amigo gringo" whose picture he still

y miles across the Mexican Titicaca, with all vacation sports, a perennial summer without undue heat, and such sunsets as none can describe. The hacienda San Andrés, also American owned, embraced thousands of acres of rich bottom land on which already many varieties of fruit were producing marvelously, as well as several mountain peaks

le thatched roofs. For several miles more the rich bottom lands continued. Then we began to ascend through bushy foothills, and cultivation dropped behind us, as did the massive head overseer, whose weight threatened to break his horse's back. Well up we came upon the "chaparral," the hacienda herdsman, tawny with sunburn even to his leather garments. He knew by name every animal under his charge, though the owners did not even know the number they possessed. A still steeper climb, during the last of which even

andmark on the slopes of which to seek that night's lodging. The treeless land of rich black loam was flat as a table, yet the trail took many a turn, now to avoid the dyke of a former governor and Porfirio Diaz, who planned to pump dry th

w trail struck off across the fields almost at right angles to the one that had brought me. I was already on the hacienda Guaracha, largest of the State of Michoacán, including within its holdings a dozen such villages as this, but the owner to whom I bore a letter lived sti

lls roamed here and there, bellowing moodily, cattle and horses by hundreds waded and grazed in the shallow swamps across which the dyked path led. All the

d lazily about, seeking the scent of carrion. Long-legged, snow-white herons stood in the marshes. Great flocks of small black birds that could not possibly have numbered less than a hundred thousand each rose and fell and undulated in waves and curtains against the background of mountains beyond, screening it as by some great black veil. There were blood-red birds, birds

ading directly to an immense cluster of buildings among trees. The sun was firing the western horizon. From every direction groups of white-garbed peons were drawing like homing pigeons toward this center of the visible landscape. I reached it with them and, passing through se

et, close-fitting trousers, and an immense revolver attached to the left side of his broad and heavily weighted cartridge-belt. I presented my letter of introduction from an American friend of the owner and was soon entangled in the coils of Mexican pseudo-politeness. Don Carlos tore himself away from his priceless labors

lodging, and to be gotten rid of as soon as possible, compatible with the sacred Arabian rules of hospitality. I had not yet learned that a letter of introduction in Latin America, given on the slightest provocation, is of just the grade

in at one or the other of the corner doors. Adjoining the building and half surrounding it was an entire village, with a flowery plaza and promenades for its inhabitants. The owners of the estate were less churlishly selfish

l threshold. He wore an innumerable series of long black robes, which still did not conceal the fact that the curve from chest to waist was the opposite of that common to sculptured figures, and his hand-shake was partic

s and a salt cellar. A peon waiter brought an ample, though by no means epicurean, supper, through all which Don Carlos sat smoking over his empty plate opposite me, alleging that he never ate after noonday for dread of taking on still greater weight, and striving to keep a well-bred false p

n the mule-corral what might by a considerable stretch of the word be called a horse. The mozo was well mounted, however, and the family chauffeur, carrying in one hand a basket of eggs he had been sent to fetch the estate owner in Guadalajara, rode a magnificent white animal. Without even the formal leave-taking cup of coffee, we set off on the road to the eastward. For road in Mexico always read-at best a winding stretch of dried mud with narrow paths meandering through the

only weapon at hand, or be left behind entirely. As the stars dimmed and the horizon ahead took on a thin gray streak, peons wrapped in their sarapes passed now and then noiselessly in their soft leather huarachas close beside me. In huts along the way frowsy, unwashed women might be heard already crushing in their stone mortars, under

It was a populous, flat-roofed, ill-smelling, typical Mexican city of checkerboard pattern, on the plaza of which faced the "Hotel Morelos," formerly the "Porfirio Diaz," but with

eets in robes and vestments, form processions, and display publicly the "host" and other paraphernalia of their faith; all of which is forbidden by the laws of Mexico. When I emerged from the hotel, every person in sight, from newsboys to lawyers in frock coats, was kneeling wherever he happened to be, on his veranda

ate. The church refuses to educate them, and sternly forbids any one else to do so. An American Catholic long resident reported even the priests ignorant beyond belief, and asserted that usury and immorality was almost universal among the churchmen of all grades. The peasants are forced to give a tenth of all they produce, be it only a patch of corn, to the church, which holds its stores until prices are high, while the poverty-stricken peon must sell for what he can get. Those married by the church are forbidden to cont

ze. The night before my arrival bandits had raided the establishment and one of them had been killed. The president of Zamora had profusely thanked the "gring

rough their dead bodies. Woodpeckers eat away the wooden cross-pieces on the iron towers with disheartening rapidity. The company is philanthropically inclined toward its employees. Even the peons are given two weeks' vacation on full pay, during which many rent a patch of land on the mountainside to plant with corn. A savings bank system is maintained, strict sanitation is insisted upon in the houses furnished by the company, and the methods of the haciendas of the region, of paying the peon the lowest possible wage