The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1883-02-23
The New Mexico.

The Atlantic Monthly publishes an article
from the pen of Mrs Helen Hunt Jackson
1.-The 'sH. H. who has done such valiant
service on behalf of the Indians in news
paper and magazine literature for the last
few years-in which she discourses of the
improved facilities for travel in Mexico. Her
visit seems to have been made in October
last, since which time there have been
changes in that awakening country which
would have seemed swift for a decade in
In the last century; but she saw then, and
tells with delightful coloring of the locali-
ties, the onward progress that was assured
by the presence of railroads and locomo-
tises. Noticing in Ell Paso, on the day of
her departure, pair of Mexican mules
drawing an open platform car back and
forth, she says, half regretfully: "The next
day the cars were to begin their regular
trips. We thought of waiting, for The sake
Of crossing the boundary in them, but we
did not; on reflection, there seemed to be
profounder impression in the sight of the
new car, standing bright, silent, ready, on
the Rio Grande bank, then there could have
&CCu III cCCluS ITO NAOooluS Va tuC XIV
en-"
Ell Paso, a town two years old, is on the
American side of the river, while on the op-
posite shore lies the Mexican town of Paso
del Norte, more than 800 years old, and
with number of inhabitants which nobody
knows but everybody estimates at 10000.
The mud houses stretch In unbroken lines
for miles and miles, with mud-walled vine
yards aud muddy bitches between, but how
many people there are in what is to be the
future great eutIepot of American trade,
what they do and how much they buy and
sell, there is no one living in the town who
knows or cares. Statistics of all kinds are
collected with difficulty in Mexico, and ''H.
H." likens the general Mexican sentiment
regarding such precision of research to the
opinion expressed by the Arab Sheikh I'm
aum Ali Zadi, who wrote the famous
letter in reply TO inquiries as to the
size, population and trade of certain towns !:
The thing you ask of me is both difficult and
impossible. Although have passed all my
days in this place have neither counted the
houses nor have I inquired into the number of
on his mules. or that one slows away in the
bottom OF his ship, that is no business of mine.
We, praise be to God, were born here
and never desire to quit it, Is it possible, then,
that the idea OF general intercourse between
mankind should make any impression on our
minds? Heaven forbid!
But in spite of native apathy, revolution
is taking place almost as great and as rapid
as that wrought by Cortez. A train put upon
the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe road six
months ago, and appropriately named The
Thunderbolt, leaving Colorado Springs at 6
In the evening, reaches La Junta, 100 miles
east of Pueblo, at 1870 p. M, and on the
morning of the second day the traveller
breakfasts in Ell Paso, having passed through
Trinidad, numbers of mud villages, part In
dian, part Mexican and part American, as
the board shanty-fronts testify, and the old
Mexican town of Las Vegas, 6,400 feet
above the sea, now being transformed into
. new railroad city with pert brick blocks
among its fiat rooted houses of adobe and
mud.
In August, 1881, the first spike for the
Mexican Central railway was driven on the
Mexican side of the Rio Grande. 1t Is now
completed a.considerable way beyond the
city of Chihuahua, e25 miles from Ell Paso.
from which less than half century ago the
United States received more silver coin than
from all other sources put together and in
which at the present time the coinage
amounts to more than 100000 year. At
the other end the road is finished for some
distance this Side of Leon, which is 260
miles from the city of Mexico. The gap of
probably less than 700 miles will be com
plete, at the present rate of work, within the
next two years.