Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Harry Alverson Franck
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automatic. The roadways of Mexico offered unknown possibilities. A six-foot street-car drawn—when at all—by mules, stood at the station, but I struck off across the rolling country by a footpath that probably led to the invisible town. A half-mile lay behind me before I met the first man. He was riding an ass, but when I gave him "Buenos días," he replied with a whining: "Una limosnita! A little alms, for the love of God." He wore a rosary about his neck and a huge cross on his chest. When I ignored his plea he rode on mumbling. The savage bellow of a bull not far off suggested a new possible danger on the road in this unfenced and almost treeless country. More men passed on asses, mules, and horses, but none afoot. Finally over the brown rise appeared Dolores Hidalgo; two enormous churches and an otherwise small town in a tree-touched valley. The central plaza, with many trees and hedges trimmed in the form of animals, had in its center the statue of the priest Hidalgo y Costilla, the "father of Mexican independence." A block away, packed with pictures and wreathes and with much of the old furniture as he left it, was the house in which he had lived before he started the activities that ended in the loss of his head.
Well fortified at the excellent hotel, I struck out past the patriot priest's house over an arched bridge into the open country. As in any unknown land, the beginning of tramping was not without a certain mild misgiving. The "road" was only a trail and soon lost itself. A boy speaking good Spanish walked a long mile to set me right, and valued his services at a centavo. A half-cent seemed to be the fixed fee for anything among these country people. A peon carrying a load of deep-green alfalfa demanded as much for the privilege of photographing him when he was "not dressed up." He showed no sign whatever of gratitude when I doubled it and added a cigarette.
The bright sun had now turned the day to early June. The so-called road was a well-trodden sandy path between high cactus hedges over rolling country. An hour out, the last look back on Dolores Hidalgo showed also mile upon mile of rolling plain to far, far blue sierras, all in all perhaps a hundred square miles visible. There were many travelers, chiefly on foot and carrying bundles on their heads. The greeting of these was "Adiós," while the better-to-do class on horse or mule back used the customary "Buenas tardes!" Thirst grew, but though the country was broken, with many wash-outs cutting deep across the trail, the streams were all muddy. Now and then a tuna on the cactus hedges was red ripe enough to be worth picking and, though full of seeds, was at least wet. It was harder to handle than a porcupine, and commonly left the fingers full of spines. Two men passed, offering dulces, a species of native candy, for sale. I declined. "Muy bien, give us a cigarette." I declined again, being low in stock. "Very well, adiós, señor," they replied in the apathetic way of their race, as if it were quite as satisfactory to them to get nothing as what they asked.
The Rancho del Capulin, where night overtook me, was a hamlet of eight or ten houses, some mere stacks of thatch, out of the smoky doorway of which, three feet high, peered the half-naked inmates; others of adobe, large bricks of mud and chopped straw, which could be picked to pieces with the fingers.
From one of the kennels a woman called out to know if I would eat. I asked if she could give lodging also and she referred me to her husband inside. I stopped to peer in through the doorway and he answered there was not room enough as it was, which was evident to the slowest-witted, for the family of six or eight of all ages, more or less dressed, lying and squatted about the earth floor dipping their fingers into bowls of steaming food, left not a square foot unoccupied. He advised me to go "beg license" of the "señora" of the house farther on, a low adobe building with wooden doors.
"There is nothing but the place opposite," she answered.
This was a sort of mud cave, man-made and door-less, the uneven earth floor covered with excrement, human and otherwise. I returned to peer into the mat-roofed yard with piles of corn-stalks and un-threshed beans, and met the man of the house just arriving with his labor-worn burros. He was a sinewy peasant of about fifty, dressed like all country peons in shirt and tight trousers of thinnest white cotton, showing his brown skin here and there. As he hesitated to give me answer, the wife made frantic signs to him from behind the door, of which the cracks were inches wide. He caught the hint and replied to my request for lodging:
"Only if you pay me three centavos."
Such exorbitance! The regulation price was perhaps one. But I yielded, for it was raining, and entered, to sit down on a heap of unthreshed beans. The woman brought me a mat three feet long, evidently destined to be my bed. I was really in the family barnyard, with no end walls, chickens overhead and the burros beyond. The rain took to dripping through the mat roof, and as I turned back toward the first hut for the promised frijoles and tortillas the woman called to me to say she also could furnish me supper.
The main room of the house was about ten by ten, with mud walls five feet high, a pitched roof of some sort of grass with several holes in it. In the center of the room was a fireplace three feet high and four square, with several steaming glazed pots over a fire of encinal fagots. The walls were black with soot of the smoke that partly wandered out of an irregular hole in the farther end of the room. The eight-year-old son of the family was eating corn-stalks with great gusto, tearing off the rind with his teeth and chewing the stalk as others do sugar-cane. I handed him a loaf of potosino bread and he answered a perfunctory "Gracias," but neither he nor any of the family showed any evidence of gratitude as he wolfed it. The man complained that all the corn had dried up for lack of rain. The woman set before me a bowl of "sopita," with tortillas, white cheese, and boiled whole peppers. A penniless peon traveler begged a cigarette and half my morning loaf, and went out into the night and rain to sleep in the "chapel," as the mud cave across the way was called. There several travelers had settled down for the night. A girl of seventeen or so splashed across from it to beg "a jar of water for a poor prostitute," apparently announcing her calling merely as a curious bit of information.
The family took at last to eating and kept it up a full hour, meanwhile discussing me thoroughly. Like most untutored races, they fancied I could not understand their ordinary tones. When they wished to address me they merely spoke louder. It is remarkable how Spain has imposed her language on even these wild, illiterate Indians as England has not even upon her colonies. As the rain continued to pour, I was to sleep in the kitchen. Drunken peons were shouting outside and the family seemed much frightened, keeping absolute silence. The four by two door with its six-inch cracks was blocked with a heavy pole, the family retired to the other room, and I stretched out in the darkness on the unsteady wooden bench, a foot wide, my head on my knapsack. I was soon glad of having a sweater, but that failed to cover my legs, and I slept virtually not at all through a night at least four months long, punctuated by much howling of dogs.
It was still pitch dark when the "senora" entered, to spend a long time getting a fire started with wet fagots. Then she began making atole. Taking shelled corn from an earthen jar, she sprinkled it in the hallow of a stone and crushed it with much labor. This was put into water, strained through a sieve, then thrown into a kettle of boiling water. It was much toil for little food. Already she had labored a full hour. I asked for coffee, and she answered she had none but would buy some when the "store" opened. It grew broad daylight before this happened and I accepted atole. It was hot, but as tasteless as might be the water from boiled corn-stalks. There had been much discussion, supposedly unknown to me, the night before as to how much they dared charge me. The bill was finally set at twelve centavos (six cents), eight for supper, three for lodging, and one for breakfast. It was evidently highly exorbitant, for the family expressed to each other their astonishment that I paid it without protest.
At the very outset there was a knee-deep river to cross, then miles of a "gumbo" mud that stuck like bad habits. My feet at times weighed twenty pounds each. Wild rocky hillsides alternated with breathless climbs. Many cattle were scattered far and wide over the mountains, but there was no cultivation. I passed an occasional rancho, villages of six or seven adobe or thatch huts, with sometimes a ruined brick chapel. Flowers bloomed thickly, morning glories, geraniums, masses of a dark purple blossom. The "road" was either a mud-hole or a sharp path of jagged rolling stones in a barren, rocky, tumbled country. Eleven found me entering another rancho in a wild valley. My attempts to buy food were several times answered with, "Más arribita"—"A little higher up." I came at last to the "restaurant." It was a cobble-stone hut hung on a sharp hillside, with a hole two feet