Chapter III: Traveling as the Mexicans Do

There were some fields of corn south of Monterey, but soon dust and thorny bushes covered the landscape again. Mountains rose all about us, as the train climbed higher and higher. The mountains seemed to keep crowding closer, like a circle of bandits. They also seemed to become lower, but that, of course, was because we were going up into them. The train made quite good speed, in spite of the steep grade it had to climb.

Saltillo, where I stopped for a few hours, is almost a mile high. The weather was pleasantly cool for the first time since I had left our Great Lakes. Rain had fallen, and it was almost fun to splash through small puddles in the poorly paved streets. I was very weary of the bone-dry, sun-scorched country in which I had been traveling all the way from San Antonio.

The only train from Saltillo to the next large city ran at night. I should have been more comfortable in the sleeping-car, or even among the few Americans scattered about the first-class day-coach. But what is the use of traveling if you go to bed and sleep through the journey? I decided to sit up with the Mexican passengers in the second-class car, even if the benches were hard.

I counted a hundred grown-up passengers in that car, besides more than a dozen children. There were all kinds of Mexicans, from city people who were as white as I, to men and women of the fields sunburned almost chocolate-brown. Only a few of them wore our style of clothes. Most Mexicans still prefer their native dress, the most important part of which is the _sombrero_, a large hat. Mexican men, like American women, want a hat different from anyone else’s. The hats of the peons, or workingmen, are made of straw; the others are of very thick felt, decorated with colored tape and a kind of embroidery.

Wealthy Mexicans, and even some who are not at all rich, pay a hundred dollars for a hat loaded with silver decorations and weighing several pounds. The crowns of _sombreros_ are so high that they would surely hold two quarts of fruit. Such hats are of almost any color except red.

A Mexican never looks half so impressive or picturesque with his hat off as with it on. The rest of the costume is very much alike for everyone. The coat or jacket reaches only to the waist, and has many more buttons than seem necessary. Shirts are of all the colors you can think of, without collars and neckties. A wide cloth belt of some gay color is wound about the waist. The trousers are so tight as to make one wonder how the owner can get into them. Some have rows of buttons down the sides from waist to ankle.

A few of the men in our car wore shoes, but most of them had on _guaraches_, a mere sole of cowhide tied to the foot with thongs of leather. In place of overcoats men wore or carried _sarapes_, reminding me of the blankets in which the Indians of our Southwest wrap themselves. Some of these were woven with fancy patterns in colors, and had long fringes at the ends; all had a slit in the middle to put the head through.

None of the women wore hats. Instead of the _sombrero_ and _sarape_ they had the _reboso_, a kind of shawl for wrapping around the head as well as the body. Their skirts were very long. Some of them wore leather sandals and some were barefoot. The children dressed just like their fathers and mothers, the little boys in huge hats, gay _sarapes_, and skin-tight trousers, the girls wrapped, head and all, in shawls.

A Mexican boy of the highlands wearing a thin cotton suit and a straw
hat. The _sarape_ or _poncho_, a strip of cloth with a hole in it,
helps him to keep warm.
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A Cold Night Ride

It was easy to see that the passengers claimed more Indians than white men as their ancestors. Yet they were very polite, both to me and to one another. I could not help watching one family near me. The father seemed hardly twenty years old, and the mother was even younger. He was a very sturdy, muscular, sun-browned fellow, as if he had worked hard outdoors all his life and never weakened himself with the luxuries of a soft bed and a heated house. They had a child about two years old, his black eyes even brighter, if possible, than those of the father and mother. When we were all struggling for seats at the beginning of the trip, the father picked the child up by one hand and swung him clear across the car to the mother, but the youngster never stopped smiling.

I am sure none of us could have done more to make a lady comfortable on a hard journey than that Indian peon, who had probably never been inside a school in his life, did for his young wife. And though the Mexicans of the peon class seldom laugh, I am certain no American crowd would have been so good-natured as these passengers were, huddled together on hard benches all night long. Not once did I hear any of the children cry, or even whimper, though it was not at all what an American would consider a comfortable ride.

The farther south we went the cooler it grew, for we were still climbing among the mountains. I pulled out my sweater, and finally wrapped myself in all the clothing I had with me, but by midnight I was sorry I had not brought an overcoat. Once or twice I dozed for a few minutes, with my head on my bundle, but there was no room for anyone to lie down.

It seemed strange to be shivering with cold when, at about four in the morning, we crossed the Tropic of Cancer into the Torrid Zone. As daylight began to creep through the windows I stood in the vestibule and watched the bare, brown landscape hurrying by toward the north. I could see no mountains now, because we were on top of them. Scattered mesquite bushes and cactus, some of it ten feet high, were the only growing things. I began to think that Mexico must be a poor land for farming, but before I left the country at its other end I learned that much of it is very fertile. Just as the sun was beginning to cast long slanting rays across the cold earth we arrived at a large city named San Luis Potosí.

Among the many forms of cactus in Mexico is the so-called “organ
cactus.” Its great stalks, covered with sharp spines, sometimes grow
twenty feet high.
]

Perhaps you have been wondering whether you could not go down through Mexico in your own automobile. I am afraid not. The highways built there long ago by the Spanish have become miserable trails. Even in Spain roads are not very good, and Mexico is a true daughter of that land. The Indians who ruled in Mexico before the Spaniards conquered them were quite civilized in many ways. But as they had no wheeled vehicles, nor even any domestic animals (everything being carried on men’s backs), their descendants of to-day do not consider roads as important as we do.

The present government of Mexico is building highways, and perhaps some day we can drive all the way to Mexico City in the old “flivver.” But we would not get very far south of the Rio Grande in it now. For one thing, there are many long stretches with no towns, no stores in which to buy food, and no gasoline stations. When we reach the capital we shall find automobiles enough. But away from the big cities and off the railroads we must travel mostly by the old narrow, unpaved trails. Most Mexicans are horsemen, unless they are so poor that they have to walk.

A Real Mexican City

San Luis Potosí is now one of the up-to-date cities of northern Mexico. It lies in a great basin of mountains more than a mile above sea level, so that its climate is always cool, and pleasant except during the rains. Many of its buildings are well made, and it has a fine cathedral. Its business men are so enterprising that some of them have become rich. It is the capital of the state of San Luis Potosí, which was the first state in Mexico to pass laws in favor of the working classes—the “radical land reforms” about which we shall learn more later on.

When I first saw San Luis Potosí it seemed rather poor and miserable. Perhaps that was partly because rain fell nearly all the time I spent there, and because I still had American cities in mind. The dull skies made it seem very dreary, and the only way to keep warm was to walk or to stay in bed. I could not help laughing at the idea most Americans have of the climate of Mexico. It should be as warm as Florida, they think, because it is as far south. They forget that most of it is a table-land high above tropic sea level.

The public market of San Luis Potosí overflows along the cobbled and
often muddy streets. Each family has its few cents’ worth of produce
to sell.
]

There seemed to be at least a hundred ragged men and boys at the station, clamoring for a chance to earn a few cents by carrying someone’s baggage. Hundreds more of them wandered about the town looking for some way to earn their food. Their tight trousers and short jackets and collarless shirts, even their leather sandals, were ragged and torn. Their clothing might be patched with half a dozen different faded colors. Some had only a strip of old carpet as a _sarape_ wrapped around their thin bodies. They wandered dismally about in the cold rain. There seemed to be as many poor women and girls as men and boys. In fact they seemed poorer, for most of them did not even have _guaraches_, but splashed about in bare feet. Nearly all the poor people were trying to sell something or other. There was a covered market, but only a small part of the great throng could find room in it. Every narrow little muddy street all about the market was lined on both sides with sellers squatting over their wares. Most of them had hardly ten cents’ worth of stuff to sell, and the buyers were so poor that many bought only a cent’s worth at a time. There were little piles of six peanuts, sickly little apples, tiny cones of muddy-looking sugar, turnips cut in two because people could not afford to buy whole ones. It would take pages just to mention all the things to eat that were for sale in tiny quantities. Then there were baskets and earthenware jars of every kind and size, scraps of calico, and long strips of leather for making sandals. Now and then a woman dressed better than usual went along making purchases, always followed by a ragged man or woman carrying what she had bought. To any Mexican above the peon class it is a terrible disgrace to carry the smallest package in public.

All the people of San Luis Potosí are not poor, by any means. In the daytime most of the homes looked poor, because one could see only their bare outer walls. But when they were lighted, I got many a peep into richly furnished rooms and flowery _patios_. In the great churches and in the best shops there were men and women, and children, too, fully as well dressed as any I had seen in my own land.

My hotel room had a fine view of the mountains, but I was supplied with no water, no mirror, no towel. When I went downstairs to wash, I found the landlady sitting on the floor shelling peas into the only washbasin!

I am sure you will be interested in what I had to eat. Mexican breakfasts are very light, nothing but a cup of coffee or chocolate, and a roll or a corn cake. For dinner and for supper we always had a very thin soup, squash, boiled beef, and hot corn _tortillas_ that looked much like our pancakes. Then came a plate of rice and peppers, tripe, and a peppery dish of beans (_chile con carne_). Every real Mexican meal includes red or black beans, served just before dessert. Since pies and cakes are not native to Mexico, we usually had as our last course a bit of fruit and the blackest coffee you ever saw.

Of course there are better hotels in Mexico than the one I have described. Even San Luis Potosí has a better one now. But some of the beds I slept in were not much more comfortable than the wooden benches in a second-class Mexican railroad car. Who minds such things, though, if he can travel in strange foreign lands?

Photo by H. L. Summerville, San Antonio

At San Antonio, Texas, one may visit four Franciscan missions built by
the Spanish monks. La Concepción, the first, was erected in 1713.
Then came San José and San Juan, and in 1730 San Francisco (or
Espada) Mission which is shown here.
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