Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1883-03-02
TIE NEW MEXICO.


awakened Interest in Mexico and the opening
of commerce with that country on great
scale, Is an article in the current Atlantic by
Mrs. Helen Hunt jackson t"H. H.D, in
which especial attention is raid to the I'M
proved facilities for travel in Mexico. Her
visit seems to have been made late last Fall,
since which time there have been changes in
that awakening country which would have
seemed swift for a decade in thela century;
but she saw them and tells in highly inter
es,ing way, the onward progress that was as
sured by the presence of railroads and loco
motives. 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 regretfuly: ''The next
day the cars were to begin their regular trips.
We thought of waiting for the sake of cross
ing the boundary in them, but we did not
on reflection there seemed tobc a profounder
impression in the sight of the new car, stand
ing bright, silent. ready on the Rio Grande
bank, than there could have been IN seeing
its first crossing of the river" Ell Paso, a
town two years old, is on the American side
OF the river, while on the opposite shore lies
the Mexican town of Paso Del Norte, more
than three hundred years old, and with a
number of inhabitants which nobody knows
but everybody estimates at ten thousand
The mud houses stretch in uubrokcn lines for
miles, with mud walled vineyards and mud
dy bitches between. but how many people
there are in what is to be the future great
entrepot 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 oil kinds are
collected with difficulty in Mexico, and I'll.
H." likens the general Mexican sentiment
regarding such precision of research to the
opinion expressed by the Arab Sheikh In
aum All Zadi who wrote the famous letter
in reply to inquiries as to the size, popula-
ton and trade of certain towns: The thing
you ask of me is both difficult and impossi-
bic. Although have passed all my days in
this place have neither counted the houses
nor have inquired Into the number Oh in
habitants and as to what this person LOADS
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 1t
possible, then, that the idea of general in
tercourse between mankind should make any
impression on our minds F? Heaven forbid.
But in spite OF native apathy, revolution
is taking place almost as great and as rapid
as that wrought by COrtcz. train put upon
the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe road six
months ago, and appropriately named the
Thunderbot, leaving Colorado Springs ut 9
in the evening, reaches La Junta, 100 miles
east of Pueblo at 1890 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 beard shanty-fronls testify, and the old
Mexican town of Las Vegas, 64OO feet above
the sea, now being transformed into new
railroad city with pert brick blocks among
its fat 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
a considerable way beyond the
city of chihuahua, % miles from Ell Paso,
from which less than half century ago the
United States received more silver coin than
from all ether 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 2G0
miles from the city of Mexico. The gap OF
probably less than 700 miles will be COM
plete, at tue present rate of work, within the
next two years.