Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans/Chapter 27
XXVII.
BY RAIL TO NORTHERN MEXICO.
I AWOKE, one morning, on the banks of the Rio Grande, the great river separating the two republics of the North, with twenty-five hundred miles between me and the city from which I had departed five days before. I had left it in the gloomy twilight of an evening in May, on the first day of that month of disappointments.
O the kaleidoscopic changes of that ride by rail! We left New York with hardly a tree in blossom; in Western Pennsylvania, the cherries, peaches, and pears were bursting into bloom; in Ohio, they had hidden their skeletons of branches in sheets of pink and white; and in Indiana and Illinois, as the great road trended southward, foliage and flower vied in its display of verdure and efflorescence.
Night fell about us in the centre of the famous Horseshoe Curve, partially veiling its glories and its beauties; but before the second day had drawn to a close we had reached the Mississippi, had crossed its miracle of a bridge, and had entered the city which stands at the confluence of our mightiest rivers,—St. Louis. Thirty-six hours and a thousand miles parted us from the great metropolis of the coast; but we did not stop here, for a train was in waiting in the great Union Depot, and it was but a step from Eastern to Western track; another iron steed was harnessed into our carriage, and in another hour we were dividing the mists that lay above the Missouri prairies. At daylight, next morning, we were half-way across the State, at ten o'clock we sliced off a corner of Kansas, and at noon were in the Indian Territory. When I sought my berth that night, the third of the journey, we were still speeding across the boundless Indian prairies; but when I awoke, next morning, the beautiful plains, with vast herds of cattle feeding on them, and covered with flowers of every color, proclaimed our entrance into Texas. Diagonally across this grandest of States we drew a southward-trending line, and the thousand pictures that danced before our eyes—that appeared, vanished, and were replaced by others, which in turn waltzed away into space—were seen through the crystal plate of a hotel-car window. We ate, we played, we slept; we awoke refreshed, to renew the blissful experience of the day that had passed, with an ever-recurring change of scene.
And so, as I said at the beginning, we reached the Rio Grande, where I opened my eyes from my fourth night's restful repose, and left with keen regret the shelter of my temporary house on wheels.
It is at San Antonio, one hundred and fifty miles from the Rio Grande, that one first enters a really Mexican settlement. Beyond San Antonio, running south, the great inclined plane of Texas, which slopes to the Gulf of Mexico, and which is fertile in the northern and central portions of the State, becomes more sterile, and is covered with chaparral, of cactus, yucca, and mesquit,—vegetation anything but attractive, though shading a peculiarly sweet and nutritious grass, which renders this region desirable for the cow-boy and ranger. It is not my purpose to describe other country than that pertaining to Mexico; yet in Texas we find ourselves in a former province of New Spain, and at San Antonio in an ancient Mexican town, set down in the centre of a very pleasant and fruitful region.
The scenery of this section, though of the finest, is less attractive to me than its history; for here were established, as early as 1690, by monks coming up from Queretaro and Zacatecas, those frontier missions of Mexico. The "Mission Period" lasted from 1690 to 1820, or so long as the Spaniards held possession of Mexico; but at the opening of this century, Texas, although a province of New Spain for one hundred and fifty years, was almost unknown to Americans. Austin's bold project of colonization opened it to the North, and in a few short years it became more populous and prosperous than any State of the Mexican confederation. Then came the inevitable trouble between the hardy and independent citizens of this remote province and the military rulers sent to govern them from Mexico. After the massacre of the Alamo, in 1836, the Mexicans lost men, and courage, and territory, until the last was finally entirely wrested from them, and the limits of Old Mexico fixed at the Rio Grande, instead of the Rio Sabinas.
But, except to pause a moment to gather up these scattered threads of history that connect San Antonio with the country we are about to visit, we have no cause to linger here; our destination is Mexico. Let us return to the Rio Grande. The Mexican monks pushed their religious conquests into the Indian country, founding fortified posts as far east as San Antonio; but there was no permanent settlement on the Rio Grande until 1737, when the Presidio of Laredo was established. Herds of cattle and horses gradually extended over the intervening country, and to the south and west; but at the breaking up of the colonies, in 1820, these became the prey of the Indians, or ran wild, and gave rise to great droves of mustangs, which were in later years found grazing here in countless numbers.
So complete became the desolation of this southwestern section that, when General Taylor marched with his army from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, in 1846, it is said that not an inhabitant existed there. It was not till 1850 that the repopulating of this portion of Texas commenced, when the mustangs were caught or killed, and the foundations laid for that great enterprise of stock-raising, to which alone this arid region is adapted. Over this apparently worthless territory the stock-raisers of Texas are now quarrelling bitterly, and running fences in every direction, one owner alone having above one hundred miles of barbed wire around his ranch.
Along the entire length of the treacherous Rio Grande, there are few natural passes through the sterile hills that guard its banks. Laredo is situated at one of these, and is the objective point for the great railways, which are shooting their steel shafts across the Border, and which take no heed of men or towns, but seek for passes with natural advantages. It is the largest town in Webb County, which has an area of fifteen hundred square miles, and lies along the river. Its climate is mild, though trying, and cattle are pastured throughout the year, though only about one tenth the county area is fit for cultivation. The population of the county is about eight thousand, which represents a gain of six thousand in ten years; and its taxable property $2,000,000, or a million and a half more than in 1870. Laredo itself contains about six thousand inhabitants, constantly increasing in number, and the American element yearly gaining on the inert and useless Mexican.
Every town on the Rio Grande has its counterpart on the opposite side of the river, and so there is here a new and an old Laredo. One, the American, is busy, prosperous, progressive; the other, the Mexican, is idle, lifeless, and gone to decay. Yet, notwithstanding that the American Laredo has such an undesirable neighbor, it is advancing with mighty strides, dragging after it the moribund carcass of its sister town, which it is all but resuscitating, in its own efforts to enter into a new and quickening life. It is an American town engrafted upon a Mexican stump, but which might have been a yet more vigorous shoot if it had been a seedling in virgin soil, instead of a nursling with decaying roots.
There are few beautiful buildings in Laredo, but these are ambitious ones, such as the court-house and jail, which cost nearly sixty thousand dollars, and those of the several railways. If I were writing of the Laredo of five years hence, I should speak of handsome and substantial structures, for these are destined to be built. The Mexican character of the town is visible in its plaza and church, the former treeless, and the latter more barren of ornament than is usual in the houses of worship in Catholic Mexico.
The town has a bank, several second-rate hotels and first-rate bar-rooms, many large mercantile houses, an "opera-house," a ten-thousand-dollar school fund, telephones, and water-works, and electric lights in prospective for the very near future. Yet, withal, Laredo is set down in the midst of a landscape that is absolutely heart-rending in its dreariness, and rejoices in a 
| Main Plaza. | MONTEREY. | Bishop's Palace. |
climate that, though healthy, is most discouraging and appalling, alike to resident and new arrival. It is hot, but that is nothing; it is windy, but that does not signify; yet when heat and wind combine, and the one scorches the Rio Grande sand until it is fine grit, and the other hurls it into the air in whirlwinds of dust, then the dweller in Laredo muffles his head and curses his unhappy lot, while the temporary sojourner curses likewise, but departs. But for the heat, and the sand, and the fleas, and the Border Mexican, it would be pleasant to live in Laredo, if one were not obliged to gaze continuously upon its joyless scenery. But as Laredo is the "gateway" to the promised land of Mexico, one need not remain here if he choose to go farther, for here two great international lines cross the Border and invade Mexican territory. One hundred and sixty-seven miles west is Corpus Christi, the Gulf terminus of the "Mexican National" railroad, while to the north is San Antonio, connected with Laredo by the "International and Great Northern." Here the "Oriental," the southern courier of the vast "Gould System" of railroads, leaps straight across the river, penetrates the tierra caliente, or hot coast region, and draws a direct line for Mexico City. Thence it will be continued southward by the "Mexican Southern," a concession controlled by General Grant, and eventually may penetrate the confines of Guatemala, and even Central and South America. Who knows? With a management presided over by the greatest general of our armies, and the skilful organizer of our railways, it is possible that within a decade of years one may obtain, over the "Gould System" of roads, a through ticket from New York to Panama, or from St. Louis to Quito. All possibilities seem limitless, after an inspection of the great lines of the Southwest, thrown into Mexico through the force of genius and enterprise.
The muddy Rio Grande was bridged by the railways but little over a year ago, until which time it had always been crossed by ferries. It was in the dry season; at that time it was but a gentle stream, meandering sluggishly between its sandy banks, and which a man could almost wade across. It endured the ignominy of being spanned, without remonstrance; but as the melting snows fed its mountain sources, far away in Colorado and New Mexico, and its multitudinous branches swelled its current to a torrent, it then, in the expressive language of the West, "just humped itself," and bore those bridges triumphantly away to the Gulf on its turbid bosom. But it is not always that man proposes and river disposes, for the structures of iron and stone now built will be able to defy old Rio Grande in his wildest mood.
The bridge we crossed, belonging to the "National," was built, it was said, in eight days. The distance from Laredo to Monterey, our destination, is one hundred and seventy miles, for the road does not directly approach it, as land is worthless here, and a road must zigzag over the country, and cover a good deal of it, in order to get some return for its outlay. It would seem that Nature intended the broad and arid Rio Grande valley to be forever a dividing line between the two republics; though steam and electricity were things not taken into account in the original plan of the continent, so that excellent roads now span otherwise impassable areas, and conduct to fertile fields beyond.
The frontier is crossed at about seven in the morning by the daily train which reaches Monterey at six in the evening. On the Mexican side of the frontier the luggage is examined by gentlemanly customs officials, and later on the road a polite young man makes pretence of peeping into your valise; but further than this there is no inconvenience, and you would not know that the smoothly-running train was not in the United States. The "National" is a narrow-gauge (three feet), but the cars are wide and comfortable, and those of the first class contain reclining chairs. For three hours the passage is through a desolate and forbidding country; then the mountains, offshoots of the Eastern Cordillera, show their crests, always fantastic in shape, and toned by distance into amethyst and purple. They present every variety of outline: conical, jagged, and even rectangular, the most conspicuous example of this last, the mesa, or table-topped hill, being opposite the town of Lampazos, about seventy-five miles from Laredo. This mesa has perpendicular walls, a thousand feet high, it is said, and a surface of nearly a thousand acres. To the top the only access is by a narrow, zigzag path, which only a man, or a donkey, can ascend. And if a man is very much of a donkey, he cannot get up at all. Here, strange to say, is a community of poor people, with a church and a school, and the soil is fertile, and produces great crops of corn for its owner, Señor Milmo, the rich banker of Monterey. Señor Milmo, by the way, is a living witness to the fact that fortunes have been made by foreigners in Mexico; for he, though Irish by birth, married the daughter of a rich hacendado, and so acquired his money and his mesa. Richly has he been repaid for whatever sacrifice he may have made in leaving the stately halls of the Emerald Isle,—with such others of his countrymen as occasionally condescend to honor America with their presence,—as not only has he gained to himself rich store of gold and pesos, lands and cattle, but even his name has undergone a transformation. For whereas in his native land he was known only as plain Pat Mullins, he now rolls under his tongue as a sweet morsel the sonorous sobriquet of Señor Don Patricio Milmo!
Now, why does not Mexico entice thither more of the sons of Erin? What have we of the United States to offer in lieu of such distinction as this? Nothing, alas! We can, indeed, bestow upon them the paltry honors and emoluments of office; but what avails this to the Celt, whose noble nature spurns all lucre as dross? Let our rulers look to this. Let them at once enact that every immigrant be addressed as a "Don"; else New York may lose many influential citizens, and Castle Garden become a howling wilderness!
At the station of Palo Blanco we are in the midst of a region of upland, and many small towns are passed on the mesquite-covered plains, the principal of which are Salado, Lampazos, and Villaldama; but they are not on the railroad, but nestle far away at the foot of a hill, or in a plain where a darker green indicates cultivation and gardens. Mines reputed wealthy in galena and silver—or in traditions of them—give a certain importance to some towns, and Bustamente, sixty miles from Monterey, is celebrated for the products of its looms. There is here a colony of Indians, descended from the Tlascalans who fought by the side of Cortés, and whose ancestors were sent here to form a nucleus of civilization in the centre of the barbarous tribes who then overran the "Kingdom of Nuevo Leon."
At seven o'clock, and sunset, we entered a gap in the mountain wall which separates the valley of Monterey from the wretched country below, and were in an entirely different region. Hacks were in waiting to convey us to the city, which is a mile distant from the station, and to which also a fine tramway leads.
Perhaps that enterprising American who built the tramway from the railroad station to and through the city, whose expenses are about a hundred dollars a day, and who is constantly experiencing annoyances from the civil authorities,—being obliged, among other things, to carry a policeman on every car, who promptly returns every man ejected for nonpayment of fare,—rejoices exceedingly that his lines have been cast in such a pleasant place. It is presumed that he expects to recover a fair interest on his investment; and perhaps he will, if the powers that be cannot find a pretext for confiscating the line, and turning it over to some deserving native,—it being well known to the Mexican that the American has great constructive skill, but no executive ability. Everybody rode at first, from the novelty of the thing, but everybody did not pay; and doubtless the proprietor of the line realized the difference between his position and that of the owners of Northern street railways, whose patrons pay a six-cent fare for a five-cent ride. But the Mexicans are older, as a people, than the dwellers of the North, and perhaps more competent than they to deal with grasping monopolies.
Monterey lies on a fertile plateau enclosed by spurs from the Sierra Madre Mountains, at an altitude above the sea of sixteen hundred feet, and at a distance, in a direct line, from Mexico City of about four hundred and fifty miles. The scenery about Monterey is attractive, especially noteworthy objects being the mountain peaks. One of these, to the east, is known as La Silla, or Saddle Mountain, from a hollow in its ridge giving it the appearance of a Mexican saddle, and the other as La Mitra, to the west, which reminds one of a bishop's mitre.
To one to whom the Hispano-Mexican architecture is a novelty, the city must seem quite attractive, with its enclosed courts blossoming with flowers; but types of its buildings may be found in several of the earlier chapters of this volume.
The city was founded in 1590, although upon the site of a settlement
previously made, and is the oldest and most important of Northern Mexico. The climate is equable and salubrious, and in the gardens and orchards are found fruits of the South, as well as of the North. Like Chihuahua, it carries on its commerce chiefly with the United States, and since the completion of the railroad this has grown rapidly; the population has nearly doubled in the past decade, and now numbers forty two thousand. The buildings of note are the hospital, college, convent, city hall, and bishop's palace. This last-named building, on a hill to the west of the city, is a prominent landmark, not only in the suburban scenery, but in the history of modern Mexico. In September, 1846, the American army of the North had advanced as far into Mexico as Monterey, the capital of New Leon, and the key to all the northern provinces. In the city was the Mexican general, Ampudia, with 10,000 men, and this force the Americans, under Taylor, though only 6,500 strong, assaulted in their stronghold. They commenced the attack on the 21st of September, and after fighting desperately from street to street, assailed from house-tops and terraces by the populace, as well as by the regular soldiery, they penetrated to the central plaza. The next day, the strong position of the bishop's palace was carried by storm, and the entire force of Ampudia captured.
El Monte Rey, the King's Mountain, was for many years, in early times, merely a frontier post of the advancing Spanish civilization. Its location, in a fertile valley supplied with large springs, which pour forth a great volume of water, was most advantageous for trade with the Indians. The streams from these springs flow through half the town, and about their banks are clustered the mud and cane houses of the lower classes. In a stroll, one morning, I encountered a full company of soldiers industriously washing their clothing, and the while it was drying bathing their persons in the swift waters. A thing that will strike a stranger as anomalous in Mexico is, that though every shop in every city keeps and sells vast quantities of soap, and though everybody in the neighborhood of a stream is constantly washing, both himself and his garments, yet every person of the lower order is as dirty as though just dipped in a city sewer. As this fact has come under my observation through thousands of miles of travel, I have at last come to the conclusion that personal ablution in Mexico is done by proxy; that is, that certain ones are hired to exhibit at the lavatories, and thus save the credit of the more respectable of the community.
A great effort has been made, of late, to bring Monterey forward as a health resort, and pamphlets by the thousand, the work of some interested, though injudicious author, have been circulated, praising the city to the skies. There is certainly much here to recommend the place to the tourist. Its buildings are old and quaint, its central plaza delightful, its altitude above the sea sufficient to insure a pure and healthful climate, and it has, a few miles away, some very remarkable mineral springs. But to call Monterey an "Invalid's Paradise" is going a little too far. Because there are no American hotels of note, the food is vilely cooked, and the streets, over which said invalid must be jolted, and the walks, are broken and full of holes. There are no attractions in the suburbs to which an invalid would take pleasure in walking, for the city is completely begirdled by the huts of the lower classes, whose squalor and misery are not exceeded in any other city of Mexico.
Six miles distant from the city, and a mile from a station on the "National" road of the same name, are the hot springs of Topo Chico. There are two of them,—one very hot (208° Fahrenheit), and the other an arsenic spring, just tepid. As I have previously remarked, one needs to forecast events at least five years, in writing of Mexico in 1883; and it may seem uncharitable to mention that the accommodations for the suffering invalid, who has been lured by the seductive pamphlets to these waters of rejuvenescence, gushing out of the "Paradise" aforementioned, are utterly wretched. Yet that is the cold fact; and, until the great hotel goes up, which is promised mañana, and until the present horrible hack, without springs and with the hardest of boards for seats, is replaced by a luxurious carriage, I would advise a seeking of the more accessible thermal waters of the United States. With good hotels, one at the springs and another in the city, Monterey may some time claim as many visitors as its Californian namesake. In advance of the railway, and on its completion, there had been a great influx of Americans into Monterey, and the streets were tolerably full of disappointed fortune-seekers. They came here as to a new country, little realizing, until too late, that this very city was old when our republic was born, and that the Mexican, both Spanish and Creole, possessed an instinct for trade and a love for lucre as keen as the shrewdest Yankee in our country. Beyond establishing a few cheap bar-rooms, they had not accomplished much in the matter of business, and even though these charged a real for a glass of beer or lemonade, they did not seem to be making money.
Race prejudice is stronger here than in the interior, for the Border States have suffered more; and if any one imagines that the Mexican is disposed to allow the American to make a dollar, except by superior skill, he misunderstands the prevalent feeling. He is quite willing el Americano shall spend his own money in the building of railroads, tramways, and hotels, but he will resist strenuously any attempt to capture Mexican trade.
At the time of my residence in Monterey, the papers contained many bitter articles against "the North American invasion,"—el invasion Norte Americano,—some indeed quite able. The Revista, the leading journal, advocated government aid in favor of immigrants of the Latin race, and even of the Mongolian, as opposed to the Saxon, with strong arguments in favor of the first. The great Saxon wave that is now sweeping over Mexico is of course irresistible, and the Mexican's recognition of it, and of his own impotency in arresting it, tends to enrage and exasperate. But though it will be impossible to stay the progress of that southward-sweeping deluge, which threatens to obliterate race distinctions and even the autonomy of Mexico, yet it is most absurd for any American to go there thinking to wrest a living from the soil. In the plateau it is mainly sterile; in the tierra caliente, no unacclimatized immigrant can long survive the fatal climate, and in every portion there are Indians by the thousand ready to labor for less wages per week than would purchase the meals of an American for a day.
During the week of my stay in Monterey, four murders were brought to popular notice, but all committed, so far as we could learn, by aliens from over the Border. One of these was so brutal as to excite comment, even amongst the Mexicans. Two men, named Mudd and Leggett, waylaid and shot a Swedish railway contractor named Hickling, as he was driving through a lonely canon with his buggy laden with silver to pay off his men.
They were captured by Mexican police, who would doubtless have offered no opposition if the threats of lynching, freely made by the employees of the road, had been carried out.
By the Mexican law, no capital punishment could be inflicted; but the alcalde of the village near which the murder was committed thought he could so arrange matters that the chief actors in this bloody drama should be shot, and an accomplice sent to the fortress at Vera Cruz. This, I believe, was done, though it was after I left. They have a way in Mexico of inflicting the extreme penalty, without having the law on the statute-books, which is quite simple and effective. The judge remands a prisoner guilty of murder in the first degree to another court, or orders him transferred from one jail to another. It so falls out that the misguided wretch sees, or is led to believe that he sees, a way to escape, and attempts to run. Now no true Mexican would seek to establish a precedent so contrary to all the traditions of the country as to indulge in rapid locomotion, except in a case of life and death, and where his own was the life at stake. Thus it happens that the soldiers save their dignity, and their prisoner at the same time, by a volley from muskets ready charged in anticipation.
Mexican justice was not likely to prove tardy in this case, as the alcalde was even then smarting under an indignity offered to his own town. But a few days previously a telegraph operator had shot a Mexican "accidentally." Being a man of parts, and perhaps having already had a taste of Mexican law, he at once "lit out" in that expeditious manner designated in the Southwest as "between two days." The authorities immediately wired those below in Monterey to stop the culprit as he passed through; but the operator there, being an American, thought best not to deliver the message until his confrère was well over the Border. Then, being a prudent man, he also made hurried preparations to depart from a land where the atmosphere was not favorable to the transmission of electric currents. But the jefe politico, with an alacrity truly wonderful in one of his race, promptly clapped the delinquent into the calaboose,—el calabozo. It being represented to him, however, that the business of the line, as well as that of the municipality, would suffer, unless he were released, he was forthwith muleted to the tune of twenty five dollars and set at liberty; and the first train northward carried him likewise across the Rio Grande.
The third man concerned in the murder of the Swede escaped, and it was rumored, and afterwards confirmed, that he was hiding in the very house in which I was stopping. Our landlady was an exceedingly able woman, who had "roughed it" along the line for a number of years, and she declared that she knew Charley H. as well as she wanted to, and while she had little doubt as to his complicity in the matter, she wasn't "going to see him given up to any —— Greaser; but if a white man
wanted him, that was a different thing." One evening, at dusk, a horseman rode quietly up to our hotel door and inquired for the landlady; but before she had time to appear, one of the loungers about whispered something in his ear that sent him ambling rapidly down the street. It was no other than the mysterious third party, whom the police—a squad at that time being in our very court—were anxiously looking for; but doubtless before another sun had set Texas had claimed another recreant citizen.
Many of the frontier settlements of Mexico are yet in the condition of that Western colony which hung a tinker for an offence of the blacksmith,—because there were two tinkers in town and but one son of Vulcan. Policy plays a most important part in the decisions of justice; and hence it is that the Mexican army is full of red-handed murderers, who have only escaped being shot by shouldering muskets and becoming themselves defenders of the laws.
In an enumeration of the attractions of Monterey I should not forget the Plaza of Zaragoza, with its fountain and flowers, with the municipal palace on one side, and the cathedral on the other. In the palace are still shown three of the muskets with which Maximilian was shot, and other curiosities. The market building, the Parian, towers above just such a mat-covered pavement as is described in my chapter on the markets of Mexico, with filthy women and miserable men crouched beneath frail tula shelters, and guarding contemptible collections of fruit and vegetables. With an escort, ladies might visit the bishop's palace, now gone to decay and used as military quarters, the Campo Santo, or cemetery, and the "house in the tree," where a small structure is perched in the branches of a giant ceiba.
The bull-ring of Monterey is merely an enclosure of poles, so frail that an animal of spirit could demolish it in a single furious charge; not an amphitheatre such as we find in the federal district. Neither are there here any genuine Andalusian bullfighters, imported from Spain, as in the capital, who rarely fail to drive the rapier straight to the spinal marrow; nor was my blood stirred by the rabble in Monterey as it was at the first bull-fight I saw in Mexico, under the shadow of the hill of Chapultepec. As for another Mexican institution, the cock-pit, it is nothing more than a circular shed with thatched and pointed roof.
South from Monterey a diligence formerly ran to the city of Mexico; but the constantly advancing railroad has pushed its 
terminal stations nearer and nearer together, until it now merely covers the distance as yet untraversed by the iron horse. In company with the General Superintendent of the "National," I went over the road to the end of the rails, where horses and an ambulance were in waiting to convey him and his escort south to San Luis Potosi. A son of the lamented General Ord, a dashing young horseman, accompanied him as compañero, whom I had met two years previously with his father in Mexico City.
The gallant old soldier was as well known on the Border as the Mexican General, Treviño, who married his daughter, and whose aspirations for the presidency, as well as his capitulation to his opponent, Diaz, are well known. We had an excellent dinner in a construction car, and then, after gathering the details of the recent murder of his subordinate, the Swedish contractor. Superintendent Gardner gave orders to march, and his little cavalcade tightened their saddle-girths, buckled on rifle and revolver, and were soon hidden from my sight in a cloud of dust. The next place of importance south of Monterey is Saltillo, capital of the State of Coahuila, about sixty-five miles distant, a city of note, containing seventeen thousand inhabitants, with cotton factories and various native industries. The valley in which it is situated is considered fertile. The town lies on the slope of a hill; its streets are well paved; some of its buildings, as the church and bull-ring, are worthy of notice, and its alameda so fine as to attract the attention of every visitor. About seven miles beyond is the hamlet of Buenavista, famous for the battle fought there, on the 23d of February, 1847, between the forces of General Taylor and Santa Anna. The result of that battle was largely due to the almost impregnable position selected by Taylor in the pass of Angostura, where Santa Anna could not use his artillery or cavalry, nor derive much benefit from the great numerical superiority of his infantry. At all events, the five thousand Americans sent ten thousand Mexicans flying southward, so thoroughly whipped that the whole northern province remained in their undisputed possession. Agua Nueva, the village in which the American army was encamped at the approach of Santa Anna, lies at the upper end of a beautiful vale, called La Encantada,—the Enchanted Valley. Not finding this an advantageous position, Taylor fell back to Angostura,—the Narrow Pass,—where the valley, some six miles wide below, narrows to less than two.
The next great city south is San Luis Potosi, at a distance of 385 kilometres, say 275 miles, from Monterey. The intervening country is remarkably dry and sterile, and the plains, as described by a recent traveller, "dusty, monotonous, covered with cacti, aloes, and yucca,—yucca, aloes, and cacti,"—almost exclusively given up to vast haciendas with infrequent towns and ranchos. It is in the main a wretched and thinly populated region, so dry that wells and water-tanks are objects of interest, even of solicitude, and give names to various hamlets, as Agua Nueva and Tanque la Vaca. No more interesting object will be seen than the mountain of Catorce, with its famous mining town, about which are clustered traditions of bonanzas such as few silver regions can lay claim to. San Luis will interest a traveller coming from the North as a thoroughly representative metropolis, in streets and architecture, of Southern Mexico. It contains numerous churches, which possess excellent paintings, a fine cathedral, and an attractive alameda. The famous silver mines of Potosi, now fallen in and neglected, in a cerro within sight of the city, once produced enormously, and from one of them, it is said, was obtained the largest piece of solid gold ever found in America. It was sent to the king of Spain, who in return gave a large clock, which may be seen in the cathedral to-day. The city has a population of forty-five thousand, and is destined to be an important railway centre, as not only does the National, coming down from the north, connect it with Monterey and the United States, and, passing through, extend its trade to Mexico City, but a branch of the Central, leaving the trunk line at Leon, runs through to Tampico, 300 miles distant, on the Gulf of Mexico.
Passing beyond the southern border of the State of San Luis, we enter the great and famous hacienda of Jaral, which was—perhaps is now—the largest in Mexico. Half a century ago, its proprietor, the Marquis of Jaral, was reputed the largest landowner in the world, owning over three hundred thousand head of live stock, and slaughtering annually sixty thousand sheep and goats. His hospitality was unbounded, but his oppression of the peons of his estate bore heavily upon them; he even razed the houses of a village, and scattered the inhabitants, to prevent them from getting a town charter, which would give them control of the land.
Next south is the town of San Felipe, 6,900 feet above the sea, and next Dolores Hidalgo, chiefly remarkable as the parish of the Mexican patriot, Padre Hidalgo, where the first note of liberty was sounded, in September, 1810. Directly south, situated in the midst of a fertile and beautiful champaign, is the flourishing city of Celaya, containing thirty thousand inhabitants. Here the two great railroads meet and cross; the Central coming up from Queretaro and Mexico, and the National from Acambaro and the capital. By the former it is 180 miles to Mexico City, passing through Queretaro, ancient Tula, and the northern entrance into the valley; and by the latter 200 miles, through the large and quaint Indian cities of Acambaro and Maravatio, and the beautiful valley of Toluca.
From Saltillo, on the 24th of every month, a conducta, or silver train, starts south for the mines of Zacatecas, in charge of a noted conductor, who has safely transported millions of silver over this route. He has a band of excellent mules; his men are trusty and armed to the teeth, and his reputation is such that the ladrones, or robbers, always give him a wide berth. Being a most companionable and delightful man, he sometimes allows a traveller to join his caravan, and treats him like a prince. The march is leisurely made, the noonday halt is long, abundant time is allowed for hunting, and the fortunate guest is entertained with song and dancing at every hacienda. Notwithstanding that the completion of the railroad will obviate the necessity for horse or diligence, I think that, if again called upon to make the southward journey into Mexico, I shall seek out this courteous caballero and attach myself to his conducta.