# Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans/Chapter 29

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XXIX.
CHIHUAHUA, THE GREAT FRONTIER STATE.
AT the time of the revolt of the Indians of New Mexico, in 1680, the Spanish colonists, driven out of Santa Fé, retreated southward along the Rio Grande to Paso del Norte,—the North Pass,—where they intrenched themselves, and remained until reinforcements reached them from Mexico.
The most fertile valleys in the Rio Grande region lie to the northward of El Paso, and were occupied, even long before the arrival of the Spaniards, by Indians, who dwelt in settled communities, and were partially civilized. These Pueblo Indians had not penetrated into the territory now pertaining to Old Mexico, unless the ruins of the Casas Grandes—to which I shall allude further on—belong to them, and are found mainly in New Mexico and Arizona. Coming down from the north, pursuing the course followed by the little army of Spanish fugitives of two hundred years ago, a great railroad line—a system, rather, with its giant trunk and numerous feeders—bisects New Mexico, the territory of the Pueblos, and crosses the Rio Grande at El Paso. At Paso del Norte it enters Old Mexico as the "Mexican Central," though still under the guidance of the same wise and sagacious capitalists who projected the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé system westward from the Missouri River, and southward to the Mexican frontier.
In the fine station at El Paso your baggage is checked for Mexico, and at the still finer station of the "Central," in Paso del Norte, across the river, it goes through the farce of an examination by the customs officials, and is re-checked to Chihuahua City, or farther on. But you yourself are not disturbed by even a change of cars, and may retain your seat without molestation. ​and glide so gently over the Border as to be wholly unaware that you have changed your domicil from the United States to Mexico. It was thus that I found myself for a third time entering Mexican territory, within three weeks of my departure from St. Louis, and after having put behind me a total distance (including side trips) of over four thousand miles, over roads that would put to shame many of our Eastern tracks, both for smoothness and for solidity of construction.
​the mesquit (from the Aztec word mezquitl), the tornilla, the fouquiera, the agaves and yuccas, all armed with spikes. But these thorny and angular forms are not confined to animal and vegetable life; they seem to be extended to nature, even in the grandest aspects in which she here appears, as the mountain ridges present the most singular summits, terminating in pyramidal points, or resembling towers and minarets. Thus is everything in these desert regions peculiar." While the parched and desert plains are nearly destitute of birds and quadrupeds, they abound, says a very observant writer, in the greatest variety of reptiles and insects, such as lizards, "horned frogs," tarantulas, alacranes (or scorpions), and rattlesnakes. There are also moles, rats, mice, rabbits, and prairie-dogs, while the most conspicuous birds are the paysano, or chaparral cock,—which not only attacks the rattlesnake, but eats it voraciously,—and the omnipresent crow.
The distance from El Paso to Chihuahua, the capital of the State, is 225 miles, mainly through such arid plains as have just been described. The worst portion of the desert appears first, in the sand-hills, or medanos, which extend in a line some twenty miles in length, and through which the railroad ploughs its way directly southward. The sand is very light and fine, and is constantly shifting about, like ocean billows, exposing here and there the whitened bones of mules or cattle, which fell and perished here in the terrible caravan journeys of former years.
Through the sand-hills the old wagon trail formerly led, and many a train has been ambushed and many a driver murdered by the dreaded Apaches, who infested them until the advent of the railroad. Through the dreariest of desert regions our train steamed steadily southward, with no notable object in view until we reached San Jose, where, as we were sighing for the flesh-pots of El Paso, a stop was made, at an old car turned out on a sidetrack, and dinner was announced. It was an admirable meal, abundant in meats and vegetables, excellently cooked and well served, and with a good half-hour to enjoy it in. It was pervaded by the genius of the great caterer of the Atchison Road, Fred Harvey, whose eating-houses are the best on any line west ​of the Mississippi, and whose cattle are pastured on the green Kansas prairies, so that a toothsome steak is offered the traveller, whose portion elsewhere would be greasy frijoles or the tough integument of a Mexican bull.
A fantastic mountain had long been in sight, called Montezuma's Chair, and 113 miles from El Paso we reached a station named in memory of the Aztec monarch, where a beautiful house was being erected. The scenery did not materially change for the better, but wore the same terrible aspect of sterility, until the station of Gallego was sighted, 139 miles from Paso. Here is an adobe hacienda, a few miles away under the hills, from a spring near which the great water-tank at the track is supplied. It is surrounded by trees, and the pasturage seems good, but the very hills above have long been the lurking-place of the Apaches. A boy at the station told me that they had raided the hacienda but three days before, killed two men, and carried away seven women,—some of whom were rescued by General Crook,—and that one man had escaped to the station with two bullet holes through his arm.
At San José we had seen a company of Mexican soldiers on their way to Casas Grandes, which lies on the border of the Apache stronghold, and is shown in the map given in the succeeding chapter. Leaving our line of travel southward for a moment, let us glance at these Casas Grandes, or Great Houses, buried in the solitary sierras of Northwestern Chihuahua. A river of this name takes its rise about a hundred miles northwest of the city of Chihuahua, and flows north toward the frontier, discharging into Lake Guzman. The valley of Casas Grandes is extremely fertile, about two miles wide, and occupied by a small village of Mexicans. It is a strategic point in the Apache campaign, and the last remnant of these barbarous Indians may be eventually captured at this place.
The "Great Houses," from which town, river, and valley take their name, are the ruins of structures of adobe that were erected here hundreds of years before the country was settled by the Spaniards. They face the cardinal points, and some of the walls still standing are thirty feet in height and five feet thick, ​made of great blocks of adobe, and were undoubtedly built with successive terraces, like the Pueblo villages of New Mexico. The largest building must have been quite 800 feet in length by 250 in breadth. The group is CASAS GRANDES. the northernmost in Mexico, and is radically different from any other in the republic, though similar ruins are found in the present territory of Arizona, on the River Gila, and elsewhere. It may have been here in these very Casas Grandes that the Aztecs received their first impulse towards a migration southward, when a little bird whispered to their chief to go on; and their halting-places may perhaps be traced in the structures of stone and adobe, that extend in a long and zigzag line from one end of Mexico to the other.
It has been proposed by engineers, to conduct the mountain streams into the desert plains, and fertilize them by a system of irrigation, by canals, or else by water obtained by the sinking of artesian wells. In this basin bisected by the railroad, there is thought to be a great depth of soil, the wash from the mountain slopes through ages of erosion, which would, if irrigated, produce two crops a year. The pasturage improves as the road runs south, and at Laguna it is fair, while at Encinillas, 180 miles from El Paso, it looks very inviting. We pass within sight of the Laguna of Encinillas, or Evergreen Oaks, which is about fifteen miles long by three wide (according to the season), and has pleasant grassy shores, about which great herds of large and long-horned cattle are feeding. Jack rabbits in great number, antelopes, and coyotes skip over the plain, while birds in abundance float upon and fly over the lake. A sand storm, forcible and penetrating, burst upon us as the train entered this plain. ​hiding everything from sight, even the bases of the jasper hills which lie beyond the lake, among the trees on the border of which nestles a fortified hacienda with whitened walls. It belongs, with all the land lying along the track for nearly eighty miles, to Don Enrique Müller, an enterprising German resident of Chihuahua, and Don Luis Terrasus, the Governor of the State. It may be a profitable property, with its 70,000 head of cattle, when the Apaches are exterminated; but it has been repeatedly raided, and so late as September of 1883 a large number of valuable horses and cattle were driven off to the hills. Their shepherds and rancheros have been killed almost as fast as their places could be supplied; yet the proprietors bear their losses philosophically, as the supply of laborers is practically inexhaustible. A dozen miles from Encinillas is the adobe hamlet of Sauz, or Willow Dale, the only village on the road, where there are about a hundred willows, or cottonwoods, and springs, and streams.
Sacramento, where Colonel Doniphan, on his celebrated march in the early stage of the Mexican war, fought a decisive battle, lies eighteen miles beyond Sauz. The victory gained by the brave Doniphan opened to the United States troops the capital city of Chihuahua, less than twenty miles farther on, and which may be seen at a distance of nearly ten miles, as it stands upon an elevated plain without any intervening vegetation, and is thrown into strong relief against a barrier of mountains. The train rolls over its solid road-bed at a steady jog of twenty miles an hour, down over the dry and treeless plain; and just where the hills come together from either side and seem to forbid farther progress, there lies Chihuahua, its great church towers rising above its stone and adobe houses, with its chapel of Guadalupe at one end and the convent of San Francisco at the other. For a few miles before we reach the city, a band of green borders the eastern hills,—a tree-fringed river, which divides and runs around it, and then disappears amongst the hills.
The city of Chihuahua is built upon a bleak and barren plain, surrounded by bare and rocky mountains, at a height above the sea, 4,600 feet, that gives it a climate far famed for its salubrity. ​There is probably no town in the United States, of the same number of inhabitants, that possesses so many fine buildings, or is built upon a plan of such lavish magnificence, as this; for it owes its origin to the discovery of rich mines, and its noble edifices to the constant stream of silver that flowed from them during a very long period. Founded near the close of the seventeenth century, it rapidly assumed the proportions of a city, and at one time had more inhabitants than at the present day; but when the mines became exhausted, its population dwindled to less than 10,000, though now numbering 18,000. When the Spaniards were expelled, in 1821, the mines were entirely abandoned, and the ranches and haciendas likewise fell into decay. Indications of those times when the mines were in their greatest splendor remain in the vast heaps of silver scoriae, of which many walls are built, and even houses, and "in which, according to trustworthy analysis, enough silver remains to make fresh smelting, under better and more economical management, a profitable undertaking." Looking to this end, a company has been formed, in Philadelphia, which has purchased all this wastage, and from which it hopes to realize a bonanza.
The train from El Paso arrives within sight of the city at dusk, passing through a colony pertaining to the railroad, where great machine-shops cover the ground, and where a round-house, with its stalls full of iron horses, is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of railway material, and where the evidences are strong that an American town will soon develop that shall rival the capital city itself. It crosses a fine bridge, and comes to a halt at the station. True to Mexican tradition, the authorities would not allow the railroad to approach the city within the distance of a mile. Nor would they allow of the purchase of land by the company for building sites, lest an American town should be formed that could exist independently of their own. So a tramway now connects with the city, over the intervening mile of space, the most notable objects on the way being the heaps of silver slag, and the river that flows around and drains the town.
The city was well and regularly built, mainly of adobe, with ​some stone buildings, with broad streets which were once well paved. It has the usual plaza, or central square, with its customary fountain and bit of greenery, so marked a feature in every Mexican town, and so attractive to visitors from the North. About this square are the usual public buildings, as the governor's palace and the great church, this latter said to be second only in size to the cathedral of Mexico City, and the noblest edifice in all Northern Mexico. It is a beautiful and imposing structure of light-colored stone, with a central dome, and two high towers. Its façade reminded me of that of the cathedral of Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico, (though itself a grander building,) as it is embellished with life-size statues of our Saviour and the twelve Apostles. Its picture is here; and in accordance with my plan, to waste no time on text when the graver can be employed to better advantage, I resign the pen in favor of the latter.
I would advise the visitor to follow my example, at least in one particular, and climb to the towers, where there are many bells,—one in particular which was shattered by a cannon-ball from the invading army of Maximilian, in 1866,—and take a survey over the attractive valley from that elevated point. Its numerous bells are mellow-toned, and its quaint old clock is illuminated at night, so that the many loungers in the Plaza, who idle away the hours of evening to the strains of Mexican music and the tinkling waters of the fountain, retire promptly and quietly as the hour often is struck.
At the close of the last century a massive aqueduct was built, about three miles and a half in length, running a long distance on arches of masonry. It terminates near the alameda, a great grove of Cottonwood trees, which shelter grand promenades and drives, though given over to pigs, goats, and burros, and to certain classes of Mexicans. The chapel of Guadalupe, at the head of the alameda, where may be seen a statue of the great Jesuit, Loyola, is fresh and attractive; beyond which a road runs into the suburbs, to a quarter of stately houses and gardens. In the upper part of the city is another alameda, or public walk, which is more of a resort, where a triple row of trees shades numerous benches of stone and masonry. ​Here, at a point mainly above the roofs of the city, is a vacant lot, the only eligible site for an American hotel, and which, I was told, the owner offered to give outright to any one who would erect there a structure costing not less than $60,000. There is certainly a need for a good public house in Chihuahua, as those at present existing are not altogether satisfactory. The obstacles in the way, however, are both numerous and serious; the principal being the lack of fuel and produce, and the great cost of everything necessary to the running of a successful public house. Of restaurants and second rate hotels Chihuahua now has a sufficient number; and whether the increasing travel will warrant the erection of a costly house, which must depend almost entirely upon the "States" for its provisions, and entirely upon them for patronage, would seem at present problematical. All the requisites for success as a winter resort—bright sun, pure and bracing air, picturesque (though circumscribed) surroundings, and a region new to the average tourist—are here. The prices of necessary staples are about as follows: flour, $8 per hundred pounds; wood, $26 per cord; coal, $25 per ton; chickens, forty cents each; eggs, fifty cents per dozen; American cheese, fifty cents per pound; lard, forty cents; butter, sixty cents: sugar (American), thirty-seven cents; ham (American), fifty cents; fresh beef, six to twelve cents; mutton, eight to fifteen cents; native vegetables at low prices. Building material is excessively dear, and labor, skilled and common, very low. I might add, that Chihuahua possesses one monopoly,—a diminutive dog, so small that it leaves nothing to be desired, and so intelligent that it never barks and rarely bites. Its origin is enveloped in mystery, but its fate, so far as Mexico is concerned, is likely to be extermination, as all the specimens procurable are bought at fabulous prices and sent North. Attempts to propagate the species, outside of Chihuahua, have failed in producing pups that did not outstrip their progenitors in size, and thus become worthless.
An immense trade was carried on here with the United States, as the distance is so great, to the Mexican producing and manufacturing centres that nearly all supplies are obtained from the ​North. The great trade, which was formerly conducted by means of caravans, with Santa Fé, Kansas City, and St. Louis, now, of course, reverts to the railroad. No longer isolated, but with direct and rapid communication with the outside world. Chihuahua does not now demand its goods in great bulk; its wants are supplied, and of the great number of traders and speculators who flocked there at the opening of the railroad, the majority have been badly bitten and bitterly disappointed. The Mexican can only move at a certain pace; in an age of steam he lives with all the simplicity of his ancestors, when the patriarchal system was in vogue. You cannot hurry him, except you charge upon him with an engine, and then he retorts by putting conductor and engineer in jail and confiscating your property. He does not take kindly to innovations; he prefers bare floors and unadorned walls to English carpets and American furniture. In truth, he prefers to be let alone; he will not allow his household gods to be ruthlessly torn down by these iconoclastic "Gringos"; and if the American flood increase to a deluge, and even completely surround him and his family, he will continue to live as his fathers did, calm and unmoved amid the seething waters of change.
​"Throughout America," says a traveller, Froebel, "the term 'American' is almost exclusively applied to the people of the United States;—a practice by which the 'manifest destiny' of that compound of the most active elements of the present generation of mankind is thoughtlessly recognized, even by those who are most immediately threatened by it; for in all Spanish countries los Americanos means the people of the great Northern republic." Let this definition, by a foreign writer, satisfactorily explain the use of the word, and its origin, and let it not be charged upon us that we have arrogated to ourselves this distinctive term of superiority. Much to our discredit, it is indiscriminately applied to all individuals from over the Border, whether the land of their nativity be the New or the Old World. At least nine out of ten of these murders—let it be distinctly understood—are by foreign-born citizens of the United States, coming mainly from that country notorious for its turbulent population. While I was in Chihuahua, I remember, two murders occurred of a particularly brutal character, and all the native citizens of respectability held up their hands in horror at the barbarous deeds of los Americanos. Yet they proceeded from the usual source. "They were 'Americans,'" said one of my countrymen indignantly, commenting on the affair; "every foreigner is an American here; but one was born in England, and the other came straight over from Ireland!"
Very fortunate it is for Northern speculators and the railway men that the Governor of the State, Don Luis Terrasus, and the Mayor of the city, Don Juan Zubiran, are gentlemen of broad and enlightened views, courteous and refined, who enter heartily into the progressive movement, and strive with all their power to allay, rather than promote, sectional animosities. The two newspapers here printed in the interests of Americans, "The Enterprise" and "The Chihuahua Mail," though a little too sanguine in their predictions of immediate prosperity for the northern investor, are yet excellent pacificators; and as the Mail prints half of its broad columns in Spanish, and does not hesitate to bestow a healthy criticism upon the State and city government now and then, they are very important factors ​in the Americanizing of Northern Mexico. And by the term "Americanizing" I would imply that great civilizing force that is permeating the Southern republic, opening its mines, spanning its deserts with bands of steel and electric wires, thus materially aiding the central government in the restoration and permanent preservation of law and order in its remote and hitherto inaccessible provinces.
"The most hopeful sign of the better fortune dawning for the two republics," says a progressive newspaper, the El Paso Times, "is to be found in the rapid manner in which the old feelings of ill-will, which were wont to prevail between the people of the United States and the people of Mexico, are disappearing. In the near future will doubtless be realized the statesman-like vision of Grant: a free trade for the North American continent, and a moderate tariff for foreign nations."
The railroad brought to Chihuahua many industries to which she was a perfect stranger, one of the first being a great lumber company and factory, the result of the joint efforts of Ex-Governor Anthony of Kansas, a former Superintendent of the Central Railroad, and Mayor Zubiran. A flouring-mill was established by Mr. Marshall of California, and a bullion refinery by a learned German, to utilize the wastage made in silver by the old processes. Three hotels were soon opened by Americans, which were a great improvement over the Mexican meson, with its stables in the courts and total disregard of a traveller's wants. A livery stable and transfer company was the next American enterprise, and the street railroad the crowning one, while rapid communication with the North and the safe forwarding of letters and packages is attended to by the Wells Fargo Express. Real estate agents are here in sufficient number, the "liveliest" of whom publish an excellent journal, the "Enterprise," while bankers of integrity and good standing are already established. A telephone company and an ice factory, and everything that Chihuahua needs, or is supposed to require, have been provided, except a well-appointed drug store and a really magnificent caravansary. News and book companies operate here at great profit, while hand in hand with other American institutions the ​Protestant Mission has secured a foothold here. The pioneer in this work, representing the combined Presbyterian and Congregational Boards, is the Rev. J. D. Eaton, a gentleman who has won the love and regard of the entire community, while engaged in the labor of bringing together such members of it as, deprived of the Christian influences of home, are yet desirous of retaining its memories and religious associations sweet and unimpaired. I think it is his aim—as it certainly should be—rather to supply the spiritual needs of our own people who have wandered beyond the reach of the home circle, than to attempt to proselyte from among the Mexicans.
A building which strangers to the city never fail to visit is the mint, casa de moneda, where not only do they inspect the works and operations of this establishment, but are shown a room in which Hidalgo, the liberator-priest of Mexico, was confined, the night previous to his execution in the adjacent plaza. We need not to be reminded that Chihuahua is a silver-producing State, for it has long borne that reputation. It contains eighteen or twenty well-defined mineral districts, in which are valuable mines in working, with others abandoned through Indian incursions. Twelve, at least, of these districts contain mines that have a marketable value, and are profitable to their owners. The number of large reduction works is twenty, and constantly increasing. The systems employed are the smelting and the patio (see Chapter XXII.), though the greater portion of the metal is extracted by the former, and by an improved process introduced by American capitalists.
Not only the mint is a constant witness to the great yield of the mines, but even the cathedral. Its walls, to use a figurative expression, are laid in silver, and from "turret to foundation stone" this vast structure was the product of a single mine. How? Let us see. Numerous writers have adverted to this fact, but I will quote from one the least prejudiced, because disinterested, the German traveller, Froebel: "Twelve or fifteen miles distant from the capital are the mines of Santa Eulalia, from which it derived its ancient wealth and splendor, and all the mountains of which, within a space of six square miles, ​contain silver. Over two hundred mines have been worked here, and more than fifty of these have shafts not less than six hundred Feet in depth. Several of them are so extensive, that it takes a day to pass through a single one. When these mines were at the height of their prosperity, a tax of a real was levied upon each marco—half-pound—of silver produced, for the building of the cathedral of Chihuahua and the church of Santa Eulalia. The first cost $600,000 (one writer says $800,000); the last, $150,000; and a surplus of $150,000 remained to the building fund when both were completed. Between 1703 and 1833 silver was taken from these mines amounting to 43,000,000 marcos, or about $344,000,000." This author then adds: "For these mines and the town of Chihuahua, there is every prospect of a renewed and lasting period of wealth, since, sooner or later, there can be no doubt that capital and enterprise will be found to develop the natural resources of this locality."
This statement, made over thirty years ago, was in a measure prophetic, as a company of Eastern capitalists has commenced work at Santa Eulalia, with all the machinery necessary for pumping out the abandoned mines, and exposing the veins that produced so many successive bonanzas. One of their tunnels alone is seven hundred and fifty feet in length, eight feet high, by seven wide, and is intended to tap several mines.
In the banking-house of McManus & Co. I was shown a mass of silver as large as a coco-nut, containing that peculiar formation called clavos (or nails), like wires or nails of silver melted together. It had just been received from the Batopilas mines, now owned by a company, the "Batopilas Consolidated," represented by Ex-Governor Shepherd. At the same time the conducta came in from Batopilas with $60,000 in pure silver, as the returns for the month's work. In the list of mines of Northern Mexico, the Batopilas occupy the first place, as they have yielded many bonanzas and have produced some of the largest and most beautiful masses of native silver that have ever been exhibited to the world. They lie on the western declivity of the Sierra Madre, southwest of the city of Chihuahua, and distant five days by coach or muleback. The distance from ​Parral is about two hundred miles, nearly due west, and the district is situated in a very deep ravine, where the climate is warm, but healthy.
The metallic lodes, says Mr. Ward, visible by their elevated crests, are almost innumerable. The principal mines, most of which have been in bonanza, are the Carmen, San Antonio, Nevada, Pastrana, Arbitrios, Dolores, Candelaria, and Buen Suceso. The Carmen is the mine that produced the enormous wealth of the Marquis of Bustamente, and from which a mass of solid silver was extracted which weighed 425 pounds. The ores of Pastrana were so rich that the lode was worked by bars, with a point at one end and a chisel at the other, for cutting out the silver. Buen Suceso was discovered by an Indian, who swam across the river after a great flood. On arriving at the other side he found the crest of an immense lode laid bare by the force of the waters. The greater part of this crest was pure and massive silver, and sparkling in the sun. The Indian extracted great wealth from his mine, but on arriving at the depth of three varas, the abundance of water obliged him to abandon it. In the Batopilas district the silver is generally found pure, and unaccompanied by any extraneous substances. The reduction of the ores is consequently easy and simple. When the silver is not found in solid masses which require to be cut with a chisel, it is generally finely sprinkled through the lode, and often seems to nail together the particles of stone through which it is disseminated. The lodes are of considerable width, but the masses of silver are only met with at intervals.
Not so far to the south is the Cusihuiriachi District, in the centre of which region is a metallic deposit in the general shape of a tree, from the trunk of which radiate many veins in every direction. Upon the hill, which is the highest of this branch of the Sierra Madre, are the mines of silver, lead, and zinc of San Martina, San Antonio, and San Bartolo, which have been recently purchased by an American company, for a large sum, and are full of rich promise for the future.
One evening, as I sat on the balcony of the American House, overlooking the beautiful plaza, a shouting and cracking of whips ​arrested my attention, and there came into view a caravan of mules, which lengthened out until nine fourteen-mule teams had passed down the broad street and disappeared in the dusk. They were the teams used in transporting machinery and mining supplies to those far away camps in the mountains. At another time a great wagon drawn by long yokes of oxen came up from the south, from Mexico City, quite a thousand miles away, with its spare wheel lashed under the wagon body, and its drivers and cattle looking worn and weary. Not many more trips are in store for them, for the railroad covers much of their long, wearisome route, and they will soon be as useless as their fifth wheel, except in cases of emergency, unless they seek new fields in Central America.
These carts were laden principally with the beautiful pottery of Guadalajara, a great State of Central Mexico, famous for these products of the ceramic art and for the vast cathedral of its capital city. To complete the series of pictures of the principal churches and cathedrals of Mexico, I insert an engraving of this great and splendid religious edifice.
​darkness, with its dazzling headlight, we can excuse them from making the sign of the cross, and bending to the ground, while they murmured,—as many did,—'Ave Maria Santissima, estan llegando el diablo; salvarnos!'"
It halted not, this black monster of invasion, but proceeded on its way southward, and when I was there, in June, 1883, was four hundred miles south of the Border. In company with a delightful acquaintance, Mr. Hotter, a well-known lawyer of St. Joseph, Missouri, I left Chihuahua one night, at eleven o'clock, for the end of track. The road had not then been "accepted" beyond the city by the government engineer, but a caboose was attached to every construction train in which passengers who chose to make the venture could stow themselves at their own risk. The opportunity for visiting hitherto inaccessible country and distant relations, without cost, was too tempting for the Mexican to resist, and the caboose was so crowded that a seat on the floor, even, was at a premium. The Mexicans had an abundance of provender, and they ate, and smoked, and spat, until the air was blue, themselves gorged almost to bursting, and the floor itself in the condition of their own dirty hovels. The men were voluble, the women loquacious, and the babies yelled all the night long, so that we were not at all sorry when daylight came.
About two miles from the city are the reduction works of the Santa Eulalia Mining Company, which are connected with their mines by a short narrow-gauge track, and are doing well. Adjoining this property is a vast hacienda, comprising some 62,000 acres, situated in a very fertile valley, and owned by Señor Enrique Müller. I drove over this great property at a later date with Señor Müller, who is a German by birth, and a gentleman of culture, broad views, and great attainments. He was building an adobe residence, with cut stone portals and pillars, 200 feet long by 125 feet wide, surrounding a court, and with graceful towers at every angle. All the work was done by his own laborers, even to the sculptured columns and arched portals. He had raised, in the year past, 70,000 bushels of wheat, and 20,000 of corn, while his herds covered the pastures for miles. The adobe quarters for his laborers were several hundred feet ​in length, each family having two snug little rooms, and constituted one wall of his nursery, in which he had already set out over 3,000 fruit trees. They do things on a vast scale in Mexico, when they can get the land; next below Señor Müller are several haciendas, one of 60,000, and another of 125,000 acres.
With us, on the car, was a part owner of the Santa Eulalia mines, and of the celebrated iron mountain, the Cerro Mercado, of Durango, who was going to visit the latter, and would have to "stage it" four hundred miles beyond the end of track.
We ran for twenty-seven miles through a single grant, belonging to Señor Horcasitas, and at a curve around the Santa Eulalia mountains entered another hacienda of 45,000 acres, owned by the bankers, McManus & Son, of Chihuahua. At the Rio San Pedro a magnificent bridge of hewn stone, soft in color and easily worked, was being constructed across the broad and exposed river-bed. Over the river we entered another ranch. Las Delicias, of 150,000 acres, with 10,000 under cultivation, and which is said to rent for $15,000 per annum. The moderately fertile lands of the celebrated Conchos River lie beyond, and we rode for twenty-seven miles within sight of the stream, and along an immense irrigating canal, which renders this otherwise waste land productive in wheat, corn, barley, and even in cane, cotton, and tobacco.
At the fork of the Conchos and Rio Florida lies the adobe town of Santa Rosalia, with about 9,000 inhabitants, unattractive save for its plazuela, with its flowers, and rivulets, and singing birds. Above the town are the ruins of an adobe fort, taken by the gallant Doniphan on his march through the country to join General Taylor, at the beginning of the Mexican war. Four miles from the town are the hot springs of Santa Rosalia, famous throughout Northern Mexico for their curative properties; and these we visited, leaving the train with its expectorating passengers and shrieking infants, and taking to a vehicle denominated by courtesy a "hack." The ride, though rough, was delightful, first through the mud-colored hamlet, then down a shady lane, across an acequia. Fording the Rio Conchos, we passed over a mile of fertile farm land, level as a floor, and every ​inch under cultivation. The Indian farmers were peacefully ploughing, with wooden ploughs, driving their teams four abreast, and leaving behind them furrows such as might be made by dragging a sharpened stick of timber over the ground. Yet their acres were broad and free from weeds, and smiling, beneath the glorious sun of Northern Mexico, in cotton, tobacco, corn, and cane, intermixed with desirable fruits, such as apples, quinces, and peaches. They lived, to be sure, in mud hovels, mere boxes of adobe brick, hardly ten feet high by twenty square; but these huts are cool in summer and warm in winter; and what more does man want, in this climate of perpetual sunshine? The springs themselves lie under a cream-colored bluff, about fifty feet in height, from which they come pouring out, to the number of six, some smelling of sulphur, others of sulphuretted hydrogen, and all of them hot. Each one is guided into an adobe pen, or mud hut, about ten Feet square, and in the mud floor of which a hole is sunk about six feet by three. An attendant living in another mud hovel furnishes you with a towel and a sheet, and then you take your choice of an arsenic, a sulphur, an iron, or a magnesia spring, or of another in which all these elements are compounded, with a resultant stench that is completely overpowering, even in this land of evil odors.
A romantic history pertains to these springs; but their future is of more importance than their past, just now, for the railroad company, with that liberal policy and foresight which have characterized the managers of the Atchison system, purposes to make of Santa Eulalia a watering-place second to none south of Las Vegas in New Mexico. There is a good deal in these springs besides water, and there is little doubt that a hotel will take the place of the present ill-conditioned quarters, within the space of a few years.
The valley of the Rio Florida is reputed the richest in Chihuahua, yet there were but three haciendas in sight in a run of forty miles. They, indeed, were almost boundless in extent, as measured by the eye, and their acequia, or irrigating canal, was nearly fifty miles in length; many a league of waste land, covered originally with mesquit, was being reclaimed through ​its influence, and corn and wheat were springing up wherever its trickling rills had penetrated. This section was the crossing place of the Apache trail from the Sierra Madre to the eastern plains, and throughout these fields we saw scattered circular adobe watch-houses, to which the laborers would retreat at the first note of alarm. The Apaches have not been seen here for a number of years, and will never probably come this way again; yet every hacienda has suffered from them, and one field was pointed out to us where twenty laborers had been killed in a single fight. Towards sunset, in the centre of the valley, we passed one hacienda where the Indian peons were all sitting on the flat roofs of their mud dwellings, a picture of which I was reminded later, when visiting the Pueblos of New Mexico. The peon wears only cotton drawers and a hat, perhaps sandals, and at night a shirt and sarape; in fact, the Indian of the Border differs but slightly in dress from his red brother of Yucatan and Southern Mexico.