On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

The ancient inn, the Hotel Morelos, where we put up, was built by the Spaniards more than two centuries ago. When we arrived we rode all our six mules and horses right through the big doorway into the interior paved court. Here we turned to the left and stopped at a flight of stone stairs, which went up to the second floor. All our baggage was carried up. A large square room was assigned to us. The walls and floor were of stone. Three narrow iron bedsteads were brought in, each having good woven wire springs, a thin mattress, a sheet, a blanket and a small pillow. Our baggage which the two pack mules had carried was piled in a corner. A table and three commodes, one next each bed, a basin and pitcher of enameled iron, and four chairs completed the furniture, all brought in after our arrival. Big double doors opened on the inner, tile-floored piazza, overlooking the patio, and casemented windows opened on the little balcony overlooking the street. On our left was another similar chamber, then round the corner, a dining room, then the kitchen, then another large room, the water-closet, with a dozen seats all in a row, used freely by both sexes and no lock to the door! A whole company might use it simultaneously. These places, in Mexico, are always close to the kitchen. I then understood the reason for constant yellow fever in less lofty altitudes.

In the town is a very old and large church with two towers and a great clock. Many women were kneeling along the dusty floor, saying their vespers, when we entered.

An artistic fountain (whose waters are said to be “Holy”) carved with lions’ heads, plays in the center of the plaza. From the plaza one can look over the lower town and far to the southwest, over and into La Tierra Caliente (the hot country) in which we now are. But Ario was cool, and at night I slept in flannel pajamas under two blankets.

We were early astir! and enjoyed an excellent breakfast of coffee, eggs, chicken, rice, tortillas– in fact, I may remark that all meals I have thus far eaten off the beaten track of travel in Mexico, are quite as good as any I would get in the mountains of West Virginia. We had the two pack animals loaded, paid our bill, about forty cents each, (one dollar Mexican), mounted into our saddles and filed out of the patio into the street by seven-twenty o’clock. There we found El Jefe Politico superbly mounted, astride an elegant saddle with red trappings and tassels. He was accompanied by six cavalrymen on handsome black chargers, in white and blue uniforms, and a company of foot soldiers in white uniforms. With them was the prisoner, a tall dark man, his left hand in a sling and his right hand tied behind to the small of his back. All were lined up awaiting us, to be our escort till late in the day. So we left Ario with dignity and pomp. Whether the prisoner would reach the day’s end was an open question.

XI

Inguran Mines – Five Thousand Six Hundred Feet Below Ario

Inguran Mines,November 29th.

From Santa Clara to Ario we had descended one thousand two hundred feet in thirty miles. Now we were again going down. Each mile the country grew more tropical. A fine, rich, rolling land it was, a soil black and fertile; guavas, bananas, coffee, and other like trees began to be common along the road; long lines of monstrous century-plants (maguey), supplying an unfailing source of pulque, bordered the roadway on either hand, serving as impenetrable hedges. The camino (road) showed signs of having once been graded and on the slopes it had been paved from curb to curb. Now, as yesterday, all the road is gone, or nearly so. Chasm-like ruts, vast holes, diverse and many paths, give the traveler a varied choice.

Again we met hundreds of loaded horses, mules and burros and scores of men also, bearing crates and heavy burdens upon their backs. They were transporting cocoanuts, and sugar, and brown ocean salt, and palm leaves, and tropical products even from the distant Pacific shores, seven or eight days’ journey across the gigantic summits of the Cordilleras far to the southwest. Also, we met trains of pack mules loaded with bags of concentrated copper ore from the mines of this great mineral belt, wherein now I am.

I took many kodaks of these travelers as well as of passing incidents. The Jefe Politico stopped his whole “army,” or would have done so, if I had not waved him to come on, for the picture had been taken while he gave his order, “Instantemente,” greatly to his surprise.

By 11:00 A. M., we reached the Rancho Nuevo, and entered through the big white wall into an extensive courtyard. Here, were already several pack trains, some from the mines, one going on beyond the Balsas River into Guerrero. The journey is from dawn to midday. Then a halt is made, the packs are taken off, the animals cooled, – led slowly about by boys, – then later, the saddles and aparejos (Mexican substitute for pack-saddle) are taken off and, finally they are watered, and given “roughness” (the stripped dried leaves of maize) to munch, but are not fed with grain till night.

Nothing differentiates the Spanish-Indian civilization of the Mexican – mediæval and Roman as it is – from the twentieth century civilization of our own modern life, more than the attitude of the two peoples in regard to the suffering of dumb creatures. This I see everywhere and at all times. For example: The Spanish-Mexican knows no other bit to put upon his horse than a cruel combination of rough steel bars and pinching rings sufficient to break the jaw. No horse nor mule, nor burro, wearing this cruel device, will pretend to drink a drop of water, nor can he, until it is removed. When you would water your beast, you must dismount, take off the bridle and remove the harsh mass of iron from his mouth.

Pack-animals are rarely shod and are often driven until their hoofs are worn to the quick and their backs are raw and the flesh is chafed away even to the bone. When they can travel no further they are turned out to die or to get well as best they may, no one caring what may be their fate. Horsemen ride the ponderous leathern saddles of the country in the fierce heat of the Tierra Caliente as well as upon the highlands of the Tierra Fria. And no one would think, for a moment, of pausing in his journey for the mere reason that his horse’s back had become galled and sore, however grievous the wounds might be. The gigantic spurs with their big blunt points are perpetually rolled with pitiless insistence and an incessant jabbing heel motion along the animal’s bloody sides.

The same cruelty which we saw practiced in the bullring, where horses were ripped open, sewed up twice and thrice and ridden back into the arena to be ripped open just once more, amidst the plaudits of vociferating thousands, is equally apparent along this traveled highway where we constantly meet animals overloaded to their death, animals turned out to die, animals fallen beneath their loads and unable to rise.

At the Rancho Nuevo, the Spanish-Indian ladies of the kitchen promised us boiled chicken with our rice for the midday meal. One of the ladies, a stocky, swarthy Indian, with her agile son, started in hot chase after a long-legged active hen. The bird seemed to know its fate. Several short-haired dogs joining in the pursuit, the hen was captured. The mother brought it to me holding it up showing it to be fat and well-fed, and then, as she stood beside me, watching a caravan of pack animals on the moment just entering the courtyard, she calmly broke the thigh bone of each leg and the chief bone of each wing, so that escape became impossible, and proceeded right then and there to pick the chicken alive. She was evidently unconscious of any thought of cruelty. The legs and wings were broken in order that the bird might not run or fly away. It was picked alive as a matter of course. The sentiment of pity and tenderness for dumb things had never yet dawned upon her mind. The fowl destined for the pot, was as little considered as the wounded prisoner with his wrists tied tight to the neck and back, whom Don Louis’ soldiers that day were “transferring” to another jail.

Our Jefe Politico had been joined by two Spanish (Mexican) gentlemen, managers (superintendentes) of haciendas and we all dined together. We had the hen cooked with rice and then frijoles, and I gave them of my precious old Bourbon, which – “La agua de los Estados Unidos” – they pronounced “mas excellentemente” than their own mescal.

Here we rested until about 3:00 P. M., when we got away for the final descent into La Tierra Caliente. We came down very gradually for about an hour and then found ourselves at Agua Sarpo, a collection of a few huts on the brink of the plateau, whence we looked out over an aggregation of mountain peaks and ridges, valleys and deep plains, much as though you stood at the “Hawk’s Nest” in West Virgina, and looked out for a hundred miles over a country five thousand feet below, all that distant region bathed in lurid heat, verdant and luxuriant with tropical vegetation.

The summits below me were volcanic and the flat cone of Mexico’s last created volcano, Jorullo, thrown up to a height of nearly two thousand feet in a single night, September 29, 1759, and so graphically described by Humboldt, stood at our very feet – the extraordinarily clear atmosphere making the volcano and neighboring peaks and ranges look as though crowded hard against each other, although they were many of them miles apart.

My first herald of the approaching tropics was a paraquita gorgeous in emerald and scarlet and gold, sitting on a stump watching me intently, and then I noticed a flock of parrots tumbling in the air.

The road, a mere trail, was as steep as some of those which lead down from our Kanawha mines. We let the Jefe and his soldiers follow us, we taking the lead. Down we went and down, and down, hour after hour. We passed palm trees, multitudes of bananas, and coffee trees. There were many Indian huts by the wayside, – for we were on a famous, much traveled thoroughfare, – and at most of them a bottle or gourd of pulque and fruit were set out to tempt the traveler to buy.

When almost down we came to the hacienda Tejemanil, a great sugar estate, with an ancient mill run by water conveyed many miles from the plateau. Here we rested half an hour, the Jefe transacted some business, and we ate delicious oranges, small, in color a light yellow, and bursting with slightly acid juice.

We were now on a level of palm orchards, whence the dried palm leaves are shipped to the highlands in great bales. Then we came to another hacienda, a farm of a hundred thousand acres, La Playa, where the Jefe and his company with their doomed prisoner took the diverging road to La Huacana. Finally, we came to a broad valley, the valley of El Rio de la Playa, black with volcanic sand, called the mal pais (bad land), this being the immediate region once devastated by the terrible eruption of volcano Jorullo. Here were extensive banana groves, strange tropical trees quite new to me, orchids and palms and a stretch of several miles of indigo and watermelon cultivation. We then crossed another divide and came down again just as the big hot sun dove behind the mountains and precipitated the night. It was pitch dark when we entered the hacienda La Cuyaco and dismounted, four thousand eight hundred feet below Ario, six thousand feet below Santa Clara and yet some one thousand two hundred feet above the sea.

This night we slept on rawhide springs, a piece of matting for a mattress. We were in the tropics. I was forbid to touch water, even to wash. Our supper was chocolate, (delicious), tortillas and eggs. Parrots and two large gray doves and a gold finch hung in cages in the patio where we ate. All were new to me. A baby swung in a cradle suspended from the ceiling and the father, Izus, the keeper of the courtyard, held another. He had thirteen children.

We took off our thick clothes – (it had been difficult to endure them all the afternoon) – I put on a gauze underwear and linen, and slept without the burden of a blanket. In the morning we set out early, but the sun was fiercely hot by nine o’clock. For some fifteen miles we now traversed a wide valley. We were away from the neighborhood of Jorullo and its scattered volcanic sands, and had entered the mineral belt. A ledge bearing copper and silver ran through the courtyard of the hacienda. I tripped against it when going to supper.

And thereby hangs a tale: Not long ago, it seems, an itinerant American – one of those casual countrymen of mine who now and then retreat to Mexico, when the law at home gives too hot chase – dropped in at the hacienda toward the close of a hot day and asked for lodging. He was hospitably received, as is the custom, and when the great bell clanged for supper, he left his sleeping room and made his way across the courtyard.

Walking carelessly, he stubbed his toe against the unruly ledge and limping into the dining room, his host apologized for the presence of so ill located a ledge of obtruding rock. The guest declared his hurt a trifling matter, and the incident was forgotten. The next morning, he was seen knocking the ledge with a hammer and he put samples of the rock in his pocket before he went away.

Many months passed by and all memory of the casual American had vanished from men’s minds. Recently, however, an officer connected with the Department de Mineria of the Mexican Government, dined at the hacienda and politely informed the superintendente, that an American had “denounced” (i. e. filed claim to) the ledge of mineral running through the courtyard, and had received title thereto along with the right to occupy as much of the adjacent surface as might be necessary to work the mine.

Thus are the proprietors of the hacienda most uneasy at the approach of any gringo (contemptuous term for American) lest the newcomer turn out to be their casual guest or his representative.

After leaving Cuyaco, we met constant indications of minerals along the road. I also noted flocks of parrots, multitudes of jays, flycatchers, brown and black vultures and many Caracara eagles, all of these birds being new to me; and I saw also several fine butterflies, Papilios and Colias, small white and orange and yellow ones. But nowhere did I see any wild flowers – the season was now too hot for these.

Toward ten o’clock, we stopped at an hacienda, that of San Pedro de Castrejon, where the Castrejon brothers live, owners of copper properties near those we go to see. They are the grand señores of the Valley; they also gave us letters of introduction. Black birds, big boat-tailed grakles, grey and white jays, and scores of wild doves were here walking tamely among our horses. Swarms of parrots were clamoring in the trees. For a few centavos, we here bought delicious bananas, small finger size, and others three times as big, and oranges and cocoanuts.

By eleven o’clock we began to see the steam from the power house of the Inguran mines and were soon there. They are ancient copper mines, now being opened by the French Rothschilds, over four million francs having been thus far spent. Extensive copper deposits are here exposed. The managers are all Americans; one is from Virginia, one from California. There is not a Frenchman employed.

We are installed in the private bungalow of the general manager, of Mexico City, from whom we brought a letter of introduction. We are half way up the foothills; we have a superb view, the beds are comfortable and the fare is good.

This morning we have gone through the mines. Fuel and transportation are here the two problems. This whole region of several hundred miles square is rich in copper and silver, is full of ancient mines, once worked by Indian slaves but now abandoned, since Spanish expulsion and the dawn of liberty.

XII

Antique Methods of Mining

Mina la Noria, Michoacan, Mexico,December 4th.

We left the mines of Inguran early Saturday morning. We were up at four-thirty, and by five-thirty had packed and breakfasted, desayuno, and almuerzo combined. The traveling Mexican eats early and, while he may take a midday snack, it rarely rises to the dignity of the comida, and when the day’s journey is over, like the two morning meals, the comida and cena, are united into one. Our breakfast consisted of fried chicken and rice – rice so delicately fried that each grain was encased in a crisp and dainty shell, and each mouthful cracked with relish between your teeth. Eggs are always to be had. In Spain and Cuba an egg is called huevo, in Mexico the refinement of language substitutes the word blanquillo (little whitey). It is a courtesy to ask your hostess for blanquillos. It would be ill-bred to ask her for huevos. It is also a courtesy, to say, when you address her, señorita. If she protests she is a señora, mother of a family and long past the age of a señorita, you exclaim “it is impossible,” for since she looks so young, she must be a señorita. The blunt American manner which calls an egg a huevo, and a dame a señora, is regarded as unpardonably rude.

By 5:45 we were climbing down the three hundred feet of mountain side, through the mining village, over an ancient paved roadway about four feet wide, the paving stones set in so firmly between the curbs that the floods and wear of the centuries and seasons have left it as intact and solid as when first laid. The Spaniards built many such roadways to their mines, when they worked the Indians as slaves, centuries ago. The mining village was picturesque. The miner, when he goes to work, builds his own house and pays no rent. The walls are upright poles and the roof is a palm leaf thatch. When he quits his job he abandons his house, although he sometimes carries away the roof. Near each dwelling is built a sort of Dutch oven of clay, making an oven and stove combined. In it the bread is baked; upon it most of the cooking is carried on. Housekeeping is a simple process in this tropical land.

The mines of Inguran are situated at an altitude of about two thousand feet above the sea, and the dry air, not too light nor too heavy, seems to agree perfectly with the Americans there at work, and restored me to a vigor which the thin air of the highlands had partly relaxed. We were entertained, of an evening, at the delightful bungalow of the superintendent of the inside work, a Mr. O’Mahondra, a member of the distinguished family of that name of Richmond, Virginia. Originally he began the practice of law in Chicago, when, his wife being threatened with consumption, he fled with her to El Paso. There she gained nothing and he carried her further south and, abandoning the law, took this post at Inguran. She was tall, fine looking and the picture of robust health. A clever American woman, she had acquired the art of assaying and, as official assayer of the mines, received a handsome salary. “The only drawback to living in Inguran,” she said, “is that I am so delightfully healthy.”

Our way lay down and then across the San Pedro valley toward the southwest. The valley is a mile or two wide. The trail we followed ran through dense tropical foliage. The air in the early morning was cool almost to coldness. The birds were everywhere astir and all their notes were new to me. There were many doves, the little brown ground dove that merely stepped out of our way; a bigger dove, slate gray in color, which flew among the higher branches of the thickets. The large gray jay was numerous and there were many magpies and rusty and yellow-headed grakles. Along the watercourses we again came constantly upon bands of the big brown and small black vultures, as well as Caracara eagles which were fishing in the stream. Parakeets, resplendent in green and scarlet and gold, were abundant, and flocks of gray and green parrots tumbled clumsily in the air. I saw also my first big green Military macaws, – birds as large as chickens or small turkeys, the body a brilliant green, the head capped with red and yellow. I have never seen these splendid birds in captivity, nor among those brilliant macaws from the Amazon and from Australia which are so often exhibited in collections. These macaws were very tame, and a flock of them settled upon a mimosa tree under which we drew rein. I might have shot them with my pistol, and should have brought some of them home with me, if I had had any way to preserve the skins. In the thickets I also noticed flycatchers and several sparrows I did not know, but I saw no ravens as I did the other day upon the highlands.

After five or ten miles down the valley, winding through the forest, crossing open clearings, passing here and there a native hut, frequently fording the river, we left the main trail and turned up a shaded ravine, following it to its head, where we passed through a low gap with high mountains on either hand, and then descended toward the river again, thus cutting off a great bend and saving fifteen or twenty miles. As we came down toward the main valley, the timber grew smaller, the persistent mesquit more and more possessed the land, and the sun fell full upon us. The heat was intense. No living thing now seemed anywhere to exist; only the multitudes of little brown lizards, countless thousands of them scurrying on the sand; and iguanas, black as night, sleeping in the crotch of a tree, or on the heated top of a stone near the wayside. Nor did any sound now stir the midday silence except the hum of millions of cicadas, which the fierce sun rays seem only to nurse into active life.

Six hours in the forepart of the day brought us to the Hacienda de Oropeo, on the borders of the Rio de San Pedro. Here we halted for the noontime rest, lying-by beneath an Indian shelter, a wide-thatched roof of palm leaves, under which we could tie our horses, and where we might ourselves repose. Here an old Indian woman cooked for us tortillas and frijoles. We watched her make the tortillas, little cakes of corn meal as thin as sheets of paper. The dry kernels of the corn are first soaked in lime water until the enveloping shell readily comes off. It is then much like samp. The swelled and softened grain is then rubbed to a pulp between two stones, the moistened pulp is patted between the hands to the thinnest sort of a wafer, and these thin wafers are laid upon the top of the clay oven to be slowly dried. The tortilla is said to be the most nutritious of all foods prepared from maize. It is the staff of life of the Mexican peon, and the making of tortillas is the chief vocation in life of his wife and daughters. As soon as the little girls are big enough they begin to pat tortillas, and they continue to pat tortillas throughout their lives. If you travel through an Indian village your ear will be struck by the pat, pat, pat, of hundreds of pairs of hands. The Indian women are patting tortillas. They are always patting tortillas, when not specially occupied in other toils.

Toward 4:00 P. M. Izus, our mozo, repacked the loads, again we mounted, and in an hour were across the river, where we ascended a small creek a couple of miles to these ancient mines. It was while resting at noontime, that we noticed a group of thirty or forty men bearing on their shoulders the palm-thatched roof of a moving mansion. Later, we rode past the new domicile, the roof was already set upon the corner posts, and the family were already moved into their habitation.

We are bivouacked in a building where once lived the lord of the mines, – mines now filled with water and abandoned, although none of the workings go down more than one hundred feet. The building is chiefly constructed, both the floor and walls, of sun-baked clay. High above the walls rests the palm-thatched roof. There are no frames in the window openings, no frames in the doorways. Walls and roof being only a protection from the sun heat, the air may blow through where it listeth. Our cots are taken from the back of “Old Blacky,” unrolled and set in the breezy chamber; upon them we sit and sleep.