# Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive/On the Southern Slope

CHAPTER V
ON THE SOUTHERN SLOPE
Passing away from the city on the way to Toluca, a landscape of enchanting loveliness, with some new features both in vegetation and architecture, unfolds itself. The mesquite takes the shape of our apple-trees, only with a more delicious green; the vegetable gardens are as delicate and fresh as flower patches; the houses look like Swiss chalets, or the huts built along the Norwegian Alps, with broad overhanging roofs held down by great stones. The hills become remarkably steep; and the sudden down-dropped valleys stretch their cultivated fields to the very summits. The poorest house has its plat of flowers, and cage or two of mocking-birds at the door. Most exquisite views open at each new curve of the climbing road; grand as those of Colorado, but with a picturesque entourage that gives a subtle foreign aroma which that wild ​beauty lacks. Hills, mountain-sides, deep cup-like valleys, all are glowing with verdure; and the loving touch of humanity softens the rugged grandeur of Nature. The odd, pretty, miserable houses, with walls of adobe, and roof of thatch or fluted scales of red tiles; the lofty, deep-domed sky, clear and dazzling; the clouds resting ever on far-off mountain-tops; the marshy meadows, with innumerable herds of cattle and swarthy shepherds standing knee-deep in the water, are another and a newer page of fascination. Wild, rocky gorges open sometimes suddenly at the road-side; abrupt canons drop between the hills; deep chasms and sheer precipices leap to unknown depths; but always beyond, the peaceful valleys smile, and the blue mountains keep guard against sense of strife or danger. Wretchedly poor as its inhabitants seem to be, there are compensations. Ignorant of care, untroubled by longing, untortured by ambition, their lot may have more of blessing than we imagine.
On the crest of one hill we looked down a deep ravine to the City of Mexico, thirty-two hundred feet below, and forty miles away. An ocean of overlapping mountains, tossed together like wind​swept billows, surrounded a nest of small valleys, that dimpled in a thousand forms of picturesque beauty as far as the eye could reach. Divided only by brilliant green hedges of the maguey, the climbing fields of rich brown soil, fresh ploughed for tillage, crept to the topmost point of the nearer heights; a rapid mountain stream, fringed with drooping willows, crossed here and there by rude bridges, ran through the centre, and fell like an arrow of light into the depths below. A steep mountain-path, up which a train of burros were painfully climbing, passed over the crest of the nearest hill to some farther valley beyond. The pink towers of an old church, half hidden in trees, rose in bold relief on the summit of one hill; on the slope of another, a ranche of adobe, with dull red roof, made a glorious bit of color; and over the most distant peak of all, the dense shadow of a departing thunder-cloud was smitten by one strong beam of brilliant sunshine, which broke, like Ithuriel's spear, into a thousand spark- ling points below.
Now and again a whirling sandspout rose in an airy column, far off on some gray desert-like plain, as we passed. A motionless fisher with his net, ​standing in a shallow pool, rested like a fine statue-like figure against the sky; the drooping scarlet flowers of a wilderness of pepper-trees stretched away on either side; and far on the hill-side, a silent village, its pale clay walls shining behind adobe hedges, lifted its ruined church-tower amid a sombre grove of cypress. Enormous heaps of corn-stalks for fodder, and grain gathered into piles as large as a New-England barn, showed how the resources of the country are being husbanded to prevent a repetition of the famine which devasted its homes a few years ago. Still farther on begins the winding, limpid river, which runs between its high clay banks, down the different terraces of table-lands in this lovely region, and makes the valley of Toluca, with its two or three crops a year, one of the most fertile and valuable in all Mexico.
At Flor de Maria, on the shady side of the station platform, we found the most primitive form of industry we had yet encountered. Indian women were spinning yarn from the wool of the black sheep of that region, by means of a short wooden rod like a thick knitting-needle, with a little button slipped above the tip to keep the thread ​from sliding off. One pointed tip rested in a small gourd placed upon the ground, and the stick was made to revolve upon this by a swift whirling motion of the fingers. The left hand, meantime, drew the long soft strips of carded wool with a slow movement, into a sufficient tenuity to allow of its being twisted in a strong but rough yarn, around the twirling impromptu spinning-wheel. The rapidity with which the thread gathered upon the reel seemed little short of miraculous, in view of the very original method used in producing it. We bought one of the primitive implements for twenty-five cents. But when we desired to add a yard of narrow cloth woven from the same thread upon a hand loom, the weaver demanded the goodly sum of eight dollars; which shows, if it shows any thing, that even the untutored child of the Mexican plains, as well as the pampered product of nineteenth-century civilization, knows the difference between the manufactured article and the raw material.
​Down and down we drop to the valley level, and the awful beauty of the descent is marked like a cobweb thread across the mountain-sides. Fields of pale yellow sugar-cane, bound for the harvest, like sheaves of golden spears, occasional clumps of banana-trees, and the deep green of tobacco- leaves begin to alternate with the usual crops. At the pretty station, a crowd of shy women hold up odd woven baskets of straw, filled with oranges, limes, lemons, baked meats, fresh eggs, cakes, dulces, any thing to find a customer. We pass the "Little Hell," a black chasm in which a mad river foams and frets through riven walls, and stop beyond in a paradise of flowers; for this luxurious mode of travelling allows us to stop where we will, for flowers, or sights, or dinner, or hot boxes. By the side of the little stream which runs through the valley, we find maiden-hair ferns, and a wall of small Scotch roses growing like wreaths on tendrils ten feet long; we find gigantic hibiscus like masses of flame and fire, and waxen Yucca lilies, and pale purple bells with the smell of wild violets, and wood-anemones, frail but exquisite. The cars grow drowsy with bloom and fragrance, and we throw the beautiful evanescent things ​away a few miles beyond, for the pleasure of picking more. It is a feast of flowers. We go on through a series of enchanting valleys, where small cottages, with enormous sloping cone-shaped roofs of thatch, nestle in the midst of lavish beauty, and fields where every product of the temperate zone alternates with every product of the tropics. We pass fields of yellow squash blossoms and tomato plants, of pease, beans, corn, lettuce, and radishes, side by side with mamae and pawpaw, limes and pomegranates. The mountains change from bare summits, stained with rare mineral dyes, to masses of luxuriant green from base to crown; a wealth of rich color and fragrance spreads over field and height; a luscious, rank magnificence of growth, which bewilders while it charms. And before noontime of that same frosty morning you will probably be walking about a coffee plantation; the beautiful plants or trees, from ten to fifteen feet in height, covered with small, shiny leaves, dark and burnished like holly, with bright red fruit similar to our cranberry both in color and size. All around the garden the long, banner-like leaf of the banana is waving above great clusters of fruit. The air is heavy with odors of orange​blossoms, shining like waxen stars through glossy green leaves, by the side of glowing golden fruit. Immense pineapples are ripening within whorls of spear-like foliage, with a rich musky fragrance. The peasant huts, with conical thatched roofs reaching nearly to the ground, are half hidden in luxurious masses of unknown but beautiful bushes; and the large sculptured leaves of the palmetto emphasize the strangeness that surrounds you. If you are fortunate as we, you will find an olive- skinned group under the overhanging veranda of the overseer's house; the children swinging in palm-leaf hammocks; the withered grandmother crooning to a baby, on the corner of the wide wooden bench; and the graceful matron ready to draw a gourd full of fresh water for you from the scriptural-looking well under the tamarind-tree. In her long white robe, loosely gathered about the waist by a sash, great rings in her small ears, and a triple necklace falling down on the dusky bosom, she was not unlike Rebecca. The whole atmosphere was redolent of a world new, strange, and untried; and the Mexico we had learned to know looked strangely familiar compared with this one. The heat was something terrific, as if it ​smouldered in silent intensity; the castor-plants, grown to large trees, with long spikes of blossoms and pendant sheaths of berries, looked as if they needed no further refinement of furnace to reduce them to oil; yet the laborers worked on, in sun or shade, as the case might be, as if a temperature of a hundred and twenty-five degrees was a normal condition.
​It is paradise for the body, but it is too much for the soul. Spiritual strength weakens before this luxurious mass of material force. I cannot conceive of great work being done in this seductive world. Beautiful as Circe, it is the mortal, and not the immortal, to whom its fascinations appeal.
​We stopped at length on the brink of a precipice on the summit of the hills, in a white radiance of moonlight that made the world almost unearthly. The snow-covered dome of the mountain looked as if bathed in molten silver faint home-lights glanced here and there, like fire-flies, from the obscure depths of the valley, three thousand feet below; a long, wavering line of forest fires ran like a glowing red snake up the opposite hillside. On the back platform of the rear car, the dark-eyed Spanish conductor sang Castilian love-songs and Italian airs to the accompaniment of his guitar; and, as the full, liquid tones rolled out upon the night, the doors of wayside cabins opened softly, and groups of silent, dark-eyed Indians gathered near to listen. The people seem to love music as they love flowers and birds, intuitively; and we were not surprised to learn that a conservatory for the education of promising voices was established in Mexico. The perfect simplicity and kindness with which this handsome young fellow entertained us through the long midsummer evening could only be possible in a country like this; and it was as charming as it was new in conductors.
On the journey toward Vera Cruz, the traveler, ​entering from the north, is brought for the first time into close contact with those immense plantations of the maguey, which form one of the largest industries of the country at present. Here for hundreds of miles the plains and hillsides are covered with long, close lines of agave in every stage, from the strong, large, generous beauty of the full-grown plant, to the small, tender green of the newly transplanted shoots. If one can conceive the symmetry of these regular forms, with the spiked, fleshy leaves, eight or ten feet long, falling in a whorl around the central blossom-stalk with the regularity of sculpture, and conceive also the effect of seeing them spread over such vast tracts of country, he will have before him one of the most novel pictures in this land of novelty. The plant is to the native what the cocoa-palm is to the South-Sea Islander; it combines within itself a dozen different materials for comfort and use. Growing on an absolutely dry soil, with no help from irrigation, it has a property of condensing moisture and coolness about its roots, which makes it yield at full growth an incredible amount of liquid. The difficulty of finding certain information regarding any thing here, where the usual ​answer to inquiry is a shrug and a "Quien sabe?" has kept us from finding definitely the facts regarding pulque-making up to the present time. The plant, after from six to eight years' growth, develops in the centre a large circular cone, which, if allowed to increase, would become a thick stalk, bearing the blossom atop. The cone being removed at this early stage, leaves a deep, bowl-like hollow, into which the juice pours at the rate of four to six quarts daily for two or three months. The slightly acrid fluid is drawn off by means of rude siphons, and left from ten to fourteen days in enormous vats, covered inside with hides, the hairy side out, for some chemical reason. A slight froth rises during the process of fermentation, which is skimmed off; and the pulque is drawn into casks or pig-skins ready for transportation. What attraction to taste, sight, or smell this thin, sticky, sour, pale beverage can have, is one of the mysteries a stranger can never hope to elucidate. Still, as nearly every luxury in every land is an acquired taste, from the decayed fish and birdsnest of the Chinese, to the Roquefort cheese and olive of Western civilization, we ought not to quarrel with this ​manifestation. Throughout the length and breadth of this country, the slimy, yeasty, sorrowful stuff has an enthusiastic success.
​On the same southern route is Puebla, the second largest city oi the republic, — beautiful, with airy, wholesome streets, and clean, fine houses; with a wilderness of old churches, rich in bronzes, tapestries, and valuable pictures; with fine façades glittering in blue and yellow tiles, and a forest of spires and towers in every soft tint under the sun, purple, pink, amber, and azure. We found new products in the market-places; queer mats of pineapple and maguey fibre, pottery decorated in bold relief, brooms and sombreros, and onyx worked into a thousand ornamental shapes. And presiding over a tawny heap of oranges and a fragrant mass of pineapples, we found the Queen of Sheba, her great eyes shining under a broad straw hat, her plump, dusky shoulders rising from the richly embroidered recesses of her white camisa, her bare, small feet and ankles showing under the short scarlet skirt with its barbaric trimming, and a soft, floating sash of vivid colors loosely knotted about her supple waist. She was walking, with a superb step, through the shadows of the arched portales as I first saw her, and her gait revealed the goddess. I am sorry to say she was walking ​toward a pulque counter, and that she tossed off a pint tumbler full with as much sang-froid as you would show in taking a glass of ice-water. But she did it with so airy a grace, and with an abandon so different from the usual timid aspect of her sex, that it was irresistible.
The people were better dressed here, the serapes finer, the sandals more like proper foot-coverings, than in any place we had so far reached. There were fewer of the very poor, fewer cripples and beggars and unemployed, than even in the City of Mexico; consequently the general air of content and happiness was greater. The churches offered an embarrassment of riches, and both public buildings and plazas were exceptionally well kept. Its cleanliness was marked, and a corresponding degree of healthfulness made it doubly attractive. At the Hotel de Diligencias, where we had our second purely Mexican dinner, the tables were laid under the arches of the upper gallery of the inner court, under hanging baskets of flowers, with climbing vines and strange shrubs rising from pots of deep blue pottery placed closely around the light balustrade which separated us from the open air. The deep sky, ​with an occasional fleecy cloud rolling across it, looked down upon us; the deep go,den sunshine broke through the delicate green hedge behind us; strange birds in odd wicker cages answered each other in bursts of melody; it was as lovely a decoration as art could conceive. We had a spicy, hot soup, of flavor unknown to us; omelette, with green herbs; rice, with tomato and red peppers; beef à la mode; oyster patties; curry of chicken; jellies, delicate and deliciously moulded; fruits, coffee, cakes, and tea. From the promenade on the flat roof above, we could look down into the court and the pretty impromptu dining-room, like some strange foreign picture. And we could look at something better still, — at the two mysterious and beautiful creatures rising into the serene sky only twenty miles away. Lightly veiled by a transparent silver cloud, which wound about them in a thousand graceful forms, while exquisite lights and shadows stained their rifted sides with deep amethyst and royal purples worthy the mantle of a king, — Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatapetl, brought startlingly near from our change of position, looked down upon us through all the changing ​hours of one memorable day. Far away on the other side, like a pale shadow, the beautiful peak of Orizaba showed upon the horizon; and fainter yet, the outline of Malinche made itself visible beyond.
It is impossible yet to reconcile the personal dirt of the lower classes, which is indisputable, with the cleanliness of their clothes. Few, even of the poorest, but have a very respectable whiteness in their cotton shirts and drawers; and the towels and napkins, which they use abundantly about their baskets of cakes and dulces, are as snowy as laundry work can make them. They are, besides, beautifully embroidered with the exquisite fine drawn-work for which the women of Mexico are celebrated. It was astonishing to see the beauty and value which had often been added to coarse or common material in this way. The bodices and short-sleeved chemises of the young girls, and even the woollen petticoats of the Indians, were almost invariably ornamented, either in colors or in white. The ease and accuracy with which intricate designs were conceived, or followed from some minute strips of pattern, were astonishing. The recent "crazes" of ​civilization for art needlework have shown nothing more delicate or more refined than the specimens of work to be seen everywhere here from the hands of the common people. The celebrated embroideries of Fayal look coarse and mechanical in comparison; as soon as their worth is understood by strangers, there will certainly be a legitimate and profitable occupation opened to the women of the country. Much of the skill shown is no doubt due to the teaching of the convent schools, which have always been famous for their training in fine needlework. The gentleness and extreme patience of the popular character lend themselves with especial adaptability to the care required in such manipulation; and the renown which has followed the lace-makers of Belgium may be repeated again for the beautiful work of their southern sisters.
We have been more surprised throughout at the neatness in the country than at the filth. It is easy to see where carelessness creeps in, when water can only be dipped by the saucerful from the narrow trough of a fountain in the smaller towns, or at best be carried in jars from the aqueducts. But it is harder to explain the ​clean-swept streets and floors, the clean-washed garments, when one reflects that nine times out of ten the one suit, noonday and night, forms the entire stock of wearing apparel, and that cleaning it means the temporary retirement of the family, either publicly or privately. Judging from the number of primitive bathing and washing establishments we met by country brooks and city ditches, wherein father, mother, children, and clothes were all being cleaned together, I am inclined to think they prefer the public demonstration. And why should they not, if it be simpler and easier? Is it their dovelike innocence that is to be condemned, or our prudish wisdom?