Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Harry Alverson Franck
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Toward evening things grew somewhat greener. A tree six to twelve feet high, without branches, or sometimes with several trunk-like ones, growing larger from bottom to top and ending in a bristling bunch of leaves, became common. The mountains on both sides showed fantastic peaks and ridges, changing often in aspect; some, thousands of feet high with flat tableland tops, others in strange forms the imagination could animate into all manner of creatures.
A goatherd, wild, tawny, bearded, dressed in sun-faded sheepskin, was seen now and then tending his flock of little white goats in the sand and cactus. This was said to be the rainy season in northern Mexico. What must it be in the dry?
Toward five the sun set long before sunset, so high was the mountain wall on our right. The sand-storm had died down, and the sand gave way to rocks. The 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 distance, as if retiring for the night. Flat, mud-colored, Palestinian adobe huts stood here and there in the moonlight among patches of a sort of palm bush.
Monterey proved quite a city. Yet how the ways of the Spaniard appeared even here! Close as it is to the United States, with many American residents and much "americanizado," according to the Mexican, the city is in architecture, arrangement, customs, just what it would be a hundred miles from Madrid; almost every little detail of life is that of Spain, with scarcely enough difference to suggest another 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, if at all, with the rubbing of shoulders. Outwardly the long vista of bare house fronts that toe them on either side are dreary and poor, every window barred as those of a prison. Yet in them sat well-dressed señoritas waiting for the lovers who "play the bear" to late hours of the night, and over their shoulders the passerby caught many a glimpse of richly furnished rooms and flowery patios beyond.
The river Catalina was drier than even the Manzanares, its rocky bed, wide enough to hold the upper Connecticut, entirely taken up by mule and donkey paths and set with the cloth booths of fruit sellers. As one moves south it grows cooler, and Monterey, fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, was not so weighty in its 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 smallest fleck of white cloud gave great and instant relief. From ten to four, more or less, the city was strangely quiet, as if more than half asleep, or away on a vacation, and over it hung that indefinable scent peculiar to Arab and Spanish countries. Compared with Spain, however, its night life and movement was slight.
Convicts in perpendicularly striped blue and white pajamas worked in the streets. That is, they moved once every twenty minutes or so, usually to roll a cigarette. They were without shackles, but several guards 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 laughed and chatted like men perfectly contented with their lot, and moved about with great freedom. One came a block to ask me the time, and loafed there some fifteen minutes before returning to his "labor."
Mexico is strikingly faithful to its native dress. Barely across the Rio Grande the traveler sees at once hundreds of costumes which in any American city would draw on all the boy population as surely as the Piper of Hamelin. First and 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 is of straw; he too wears the skintight trousers, and goes barefoot but for a flat leather sandal held by a thong between the big toe and the rest. In details and color every dress was as varied and individual as the shades of complexion.
My hotel room had a fine outlook to summer-blue mountains, but was blessed with neither mirror, towel, nor water. I descended to the alleyway between "dining-room" and barnyard, where I had seen the general washbasin, but found the landlady seated on the kitchen floor shelling into it peas for our almuerzo. 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 and total absence of taste. Next followed a plate of rice with peppers, a plate of tripe less tough than it should have been, and a plate of brown beans which was known by the name of chile con carne, but in which I never succeeded in finding anything carnal. Every meal ended with a cup of the blackest coffee.
Out at the end of calle B a well-worn rocky path leads up to a ruined chapel on the summit of a hill, the famous Obispado from which the city was shelled and taken by the Americans in 1847. Below, Monterey lies flat, with many low trees peering above the whitish houses, all set in a perfectly level plain giving a great sense of roominess, as if it could easily hold ten such cities. At the foot of the hill, some three hundred feet high, is an unoccupied 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 or saw-like range resembling that behind Leceo in Italy. Only a young beggar and his female mate occupied the ruined chapel, built, like the town, of whitish stone that is soft when dug but hardens upon exposure to the air. They cooked on the littered floor of one of the dozen rooms, and all the walls of the chamber under the great dome were set with pegs for birds, absent now, but which had carpeted the floor with proof of their frequent presence.
At five the sun set over the city, so high is the Dientes range, but for some time still threw a soft light on the farther plain and hills. Compared with our own land there is something profoundly peaceful in this climate and surroundings. Now the sunshine slipped up off the farther ranges, showing only on the light band of clouds high above the farther horizon, and a pale-faced moon began to brighten, heralding a brilliant evening.
Fertile plains of corn stretched south of the city, but already dry, and soon giving way to mesquite and dust again. Mountains never ceased, and lay fantastically heaped up on every side. We rose ever higher, though the train kept a moderate speed. At one station the bleating of a great truckload of kids, their legs tied, heaped one above the other, was startlingly like the crying of babies. We steamed upward through a narrow pass, the mountains crowding closer on either hand and seeming to grow lower as we rose higher 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 colors without any color scheme whatever. Here I saw the first pulquerías, much like cheap saloons in appearance, with swinging doors, sometimes a pool table, and a bartender of the customary I-tell-yer-I'm-tough physiognomy. Huge earthen jars of the fermented cactus juice stood behind the bar, much like milk in appearance, and was served in glazed pots, size to order. In Mexico pulquería stands for saloon and peluquería for barber-shop, resulting now and then in sad mistakes by wandering Yankees innocent of Spanish.
There were a hundred adult passengers by actual count, to say nothing of babies and unassorted bundles, in the second-class car that carried me on south into the night. Every type of Mexican was represented, from white, soft, city-bred specimens to sturdy countrymen so brown as to be almost black. A few men were in "European" garb. Most of them were dressed á la peón, very tight trousers fitting like long leggings, collarless shirts of all