VIII From Pullman Car to Mule-back
Michoacan, Mexico,
November 25th.
After the bullfight we had difficulty in finding a cocha to take us to the railway station. In fact, we could not get one. We were compelled to depend upon cargadores, who carried our trunks and bags upon their backs, while we jostled along the crowded sidewalks. And here, I might remark, that there is no such thing as a right-of-way for the footfarer on either street or sidewalk. You turn to the right or left, just as it may be most convenient and so does your neighbor. You cross a street at your peril, and you pray vigorously to the saints when you are run down.
We left Mexico City about five o’clock in the evening, taking the narrow gauge National Railway to Acambaro and Patzcuaro, where horses and a guide were to be awaiting us, and whence we would cross the highlands of the Tierra Fria and finally plunge into the remote depths of the Tierra Caliente, along the lower course of the Rio de las Balsas, where it forms the boundary line between the states of Michoacan and Guererro, on its way to the Pacific.
As we departed from the city, we passed through extensive fields of maguey, and began climbing the heavy grade which would lift us up some four thousand feet ere we should descend into the valley of Toluca, more lofty, but no less fertile than the basin of Anahuac. Before we crept up the mountain very far, darkness descended precipitately upon us, for there is no twilight in these southern latitudes.
We were at Acambaro for breakfast, and all the morning traversed a rolling, cultivated, timbered country much like the blue grass counties of Greenbrier and Monroe in West Virginia. Here we travelled through some of the loveliest landscapes in all Mexico. This is a region of temperate highlands amidst the tropics, so high in altitude lies the land,—seven to eight thousand feet above the sea. There was much grass land and there were wheat and corn fields many miles in area. Here and there crops were being gathered, and yokes of oxen were dragging wooden plows, the oxen pulling by the forehead as in France. Several successive crops a year are raised upon these lands. No other fertilization is there than the smile of God, and these crops have here been raised for a thousand years—irrigation being generally used to help out the uncertain rains. We passed vineyards, and apple and peach and apricot orchards, forests of oak and pine, several lakes, Cuitzeo and Patzcuaro, being the largest of them—lakes, twenty and thirty miles long and ten to twenty wide. Never yet has other craft than an Indian canoe traversed their light green, brackish waters.
These high upland lakes of Mexico are the resting-places of millions of ducks and other waterfowl, which come down from the far north here to spend the winter time. It is their holiday season. They do not nest or breed in Mexico. They are here as migratory winter visitors. Mexico is the picnic ground of all duckdom. On Lakes Tezcoco, Xochimilco and Chalco, near to Mexico City, the destruction of the wearied ducks is an occupation for hundreds of Indians, the birds being so tired after their long flight from sub-Arctic breeding grounds, that it is often many days before they are able to rise from the water, when once they have settled upon it. The Indians paddle among them with torches or in the moonlight, and club them to death, or gather them in with nets or even by hand, so easy a prey do they fall.
For many miles our train skirted these lovely sheets of water, and so tame were the waders and swimmers along the shores that they rarely took to flight, but swam and dove and flapped their wings and played among the sedges as though no railroad train were roaring by. Among them I looked for the splendid scarlet flamingo and roseate spoonbill, but happened to see none, although they are said often to frequent these shallow waters, but pelicans, herons and egrets I saw in thousands.
The first town of importance we reached, after leaving Acambaro, was Morelia, a city exceeding thirty thousand inhabitants, and the capital of the important state of Michoacan. The people gathered at the incoming of the train were rather darker in color than those in Mexico City, which seemed to indicate a greater infusion of Indian blood. Here we first beheld a number of priests garbed in cassock and shovel hat, a costume now forbidden by the laws.
At this station, too, we came upon a curious tuber which seemed to be cousin to the yam and the Irish potato. The Indians bake it and hand it to you bursting with mealy whiteness of a most palatable taste. The Mexican eats as opportunity occurs, and as opportunity is incessantly offered, he is always eating. At least, so it is with the Indian. Cooked food and fruits are sold at all times along the streets and highways everywhere. The hot tamale, and a dozen kindred peppered and scorching foods, are always to be had. Oranges and lemons, limes and pomegranates, figs and bananas, cocoanuts and sugar cane are sold at a price so low that the poorest can buy. Candied fruits are abundantly eaten, and delicious guava paste is handed up to the car windows on little trays.
Our sleeper went only as far as Morelia. After that we traveled in the day coach. Our traveling companions had been three or four Mexican gentlemen, who kept closely together, incessantly smoking cigarettes. In the day coach we were now traveling with people of the countryside. A tall, white-haired priest, in cassock and shovel hat, with bare feet thrust into black, leathern sandals, sat just in front of me. A large, brass crucifix, six or eight inches long, hanging about his neck, suspended by a heavy brass chain, was his only ornament. He was much interested in my kodak and watched me taking snap shots at the flying panorama. He indicated that he would like to have his own picture taken, arranging himself gravely for the ordeal. No sooner had I snapped the padre than several of his parishioners moved up and intimated that they also would be pleased to have me take their portraits. The film on which these pictures were taken was afterwards lost, or I should be able to present these friends to you.
As we drew near Patzcuaro, the car filled up, and among the incomers were a number of pretty señoritas of high-class Spanish type. Their skins were fair, their facial outlines were softly moulded and their large dark eyes were lustrous beneath their raven hair. Most of the ladies smoked cigarettes, for every car is a smoking car in this Spanish-Indian land. Very few Indians rode upon the train. The railway is too expensive a mode of traveling for them.
It was past the midday hour when we came to Patzcuaro, a city of perhaps ten thousand souls. For many miles we had followed the shores of the lake of that name. Far across the light green waters I noted many islands. Upon one of these stands the Mission Church, where is preserved the famous altar painting supposed to be by Titian—a picture so sacred that it has rarely been looked upon by white men, much less by a heretic gringo. I had hoped to be able to voyage across the lake and see the precious painting, despite the jealous care with which the Indians are said to guard it, but the hurry of travel has made this impossible.
A crowd of almost pure Indians was gathered to meet the train. They watched us closely, while we bargained for our trunks and bags to be carried upon the backs of eager cargadores two miles up the long hill to the town. We passengers entered an antique tram car, drawn by six mules. It was packed to suffocation, most of the occupants being ladies of the city, who had ridden down to see the train arrive and were now riding back again. Among them sat one whose cracking face, I was told, disclosed leprosy, a disease here not uncommon. Not many gringos visit Patzcuaro, and our strange foreign clothing and unknown speech were matters of curious comment. Our mules clambered up the hill at a gallop, urged by a merciless rawhide. We halted finally before a quaint and ancient inn, La Colonia. Through a big open doorway, into which a coach might drive, penetrating a high, white wall, we passed to an ill-paved interior courtyard, where our host, the landlord, greeted us with formal ceremony. He then led us up a flight of stone steps to a wide, stone-flagged piazza running round the interior of the court. We were there given rooms opening off this open corridor, each door being ponderously locked with a big iron key. I had scarcely reached my quarters before the cargadore brought in my trunk. He had carried it two miles upon his back in almost as quick time as we had traveled in the six-mule car. I paid him twenty-five cents (Mexican) for this service (ten cents in United States money). He bowed with gratitude at my liberal fee.
The inn faces upon a wide plaza around which are many ancient stone and adoby buildings, for Patzcuaro is an old city and was the chief Tarascon town before Cortez and his conquestedores made it the capital of a Spanish province. On one side of the plaza is a large and towered church, while beside it stand the extensive, crumbling walls of a dismantled convent. Upon the opposite side are many little shops, and upon the other two are inns of the city with their rambling courtyards, within which gather and disperse constantly moving streams of horsemen, mule drivers and pack beasts. Patzcuaro is the gateway through which a large commerce is borne by thousands of pack animals and Indian carriers to all the country in the southwest, even to La Union upon the Pacific, a hundred miles away. Until recently, through here also passed a large portion of the traffic which crossed the Rio de las Balsas and the Cordilleras to Acapulco.
My companions for the journey are three. There is “Tio,” as we have familiarly named him, who is leader of our company. He is a giant-framed mountaineer of the middle west, who has spent a life-time in prospecting the Rocky Mountains and the Cordilleras from Canada to Central America. Like all those of that fast disappearing race, the lone prospector, he is visionary and sanguine of temperament, and a delightful companion for a plunge among the wild and lonely regions of the Cordilleras. His imagination is eternally fired by the ignes-fatui of mineral wealth, and he has discovered, exploited and lost a hundred fortunes with no lessening of the gold-silver-copper hunger which incessantly gnaws his vitals. His muscles are of iron, his voice is deep and resonant. Kindly by nature, his solitary life has made him reticent and self-contained. Only incidentally do I learn of his past. A slight scar upon the back of his right hand is all that witnesses the smashing of a mescal-infuriated Indian who once went up against him with murderous two-bladed cuchillo; a bullet graze upon his brow is his only reference to a duel-to-the-death, where, it is whispered, the black eyes of a señorita were once involved. Grim and rugged and silent he declares himself to be a man of peace, and none there are who care to disturb this tranquility. But despite his austerity, Tio has a weakness. He is not a little vain of his mastery of the idiomatic intricacies of the Iberian tongue. Nothing delights him more than to dismay a humble peon by the sonorous bellowing of a salutation put in vernacular Spanish or Tarascon. He rides beside me and acquaints me with the history, geography and probable mineral riches of the land we traverse.
Then there is “El Padre” as we call him, who joins our party as our guest and for the pleasure and profit of seeing the wilder, remoter sections of the great state of Michoacan. He is virtually the Presiding Bishop of the Baptist Missionaries of Mexico, for as General Secretary he visits their different stations, handles the funds sent down by the General Board from Richmond, Virginia, and does invaluable work in organizing and directing the common propaganda. He is a native of Tennessee, a graduate of the University of that state, a cultivated, scholarly man who speaks classic Spanish and is master of local dialects as well. I find him greatly respected by the leading Mexicans whom we meet, and withal a most delightful and intelligent comrade. He is an adept at adjusting all those little comforts of the camp which only the practiced traveler can know, and by his bonhommie and courtesy wins the good will of señor and peon alike, while even the Roman padres we fall in with return his salutations with friendly greeting.
Izus Hernandes, our mozo, completes the party. He lives in Patzcuaro, where Señora Hernandes brings up his numerous brood, for he is father of eleven living children. He is short and slender, with dark black beard covering his face. His color is pale brown, and like most of the population hereabouts, he has in his veins much Tarascon blood. His manners are gentle and courteous, even suave to Tio and El Padre and myself, but his orders are sharp and peremptory to the horseboys and stablemen of the ranchos and fondas where we stop. He has spent his lifetime traversing these trails between Patzcuaro and La Union and Acapulco, driving bands of pack animals and acting as escort for parties of Dons and Doñas when trusty guards have been in demand. He supplies his own pack animals, is past master in cinching on a load, and makes all bargains and pays all bills in our behalf. He is our courier and valet of the camp combined. And he proves himself worthy of his hire—two silver pesos (80 cents United States) per day—for he never fails us throughout the trip.
Our horses have been picked with care and newly shod. Tio bestrides a mettlesome white mare, while El Padre rides a chestnut sorrel, lean and toughened to the trail and gaited with giant stride, a famous horse for fatiguing days of mountain travel. For myself has been reserved the choicest of the mount, an iron-limbed black mule—the mule is the royal and honored saddle-beast in all Spanish lands—a beast well evidencing Isus’ discerning choice.
Our coming being expected, arrangements had been made for our further journey to the South. Our mozo was awaiting us in the courtyard of the Fonda Diligencia with the four saddle-beasts and two pack animals, a black bronco and a stout white pack mule. We carried snug folding cots, which rolled up into compact bundles, and extra food against short rations, when we should reach the borders of Guerrero. We are provided with immense Mexican sombreros, of light woven straw, which cost us fifteen centavos apiece, the high, peaked crown and wide-reaching brim protecting head and neck completely from the sun.
We have with us heavy clothing and flannels for our journey along the highlands of the Tierra Fria and also the thinnest of linen and wool garments to save us from the scorching sun, when we descend into the hot levels of the Tierra Caliente. I have purchased a pair of immense Mexican spurs and my mule’s mouth is choked with a mass of wicked iron, calculated to break the jaw with little effort, should I pull hard enough on my rawhide bridle rein. A rawhide goad hangs upon one side of my saddle-pommel and my long barreled Colt’s revolver, loaded and ready for instant use, hangs on the other. We are all armed and our mozo has a formidable and ancient sword strapped along the left saddle-side beneath his leg.
We dined in the low-ceilinged eating hall of the Colonia, upon a well-served dinner of boiled rice, boiled chicken, yams and peppers, and cups of strong black coffee, drunk with sugar, but no milk. Our city clothes are left behind in a room, the rent of which we have paid a fortnight in advance, and the large iron key of which we take along.
Our foreign looks and ways attracted much attention in the town. A crowd gathered in the courtyard of the fonda to see us off. Our coming and our going were events. Nor was it altogether a simple matter to pack our equipment safely and balance it properly upon the beasts. But Izus was an expert, and with many yards of palmetto rope finally cinched fast the loads. At a word from him the pack animals trotted forth from the fonda’s court, he following behind, while we brought up the rear. “Adios, adios, señores,” shouted the crowd. “Adios, adios,” we replied.
Our animals knew the road perfectly. They had traveled it many a time before. We wound and twisted through narrow streets, we passed several wide plazas, and then turning up a street wider than the rest, began the ascent toward the hills which lie back of the city.