The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1884-08-16
WITHOUT RIVERS OR ROADS
Mexico During the Rainy Season..
The Fantastic Burr0.
Letter in New York World


Letter in New York World
Not only is Mexico without rivers,
but it is without roads. Cortez made
q good artificial road from Vera Cruz
up to Mexico $50 years ago, and this is
still in use for the occasional wagon.
But the employment of wagons for
transporting either freight or passen-
gers is scarcely known in Mexico. The
reason for this doubtless is that in the
rainy season-June to September, in
clusive-the roads are well nigh i'm
passable.
Mules have been known to be
drowned in the very streets of this city
stuck in the mud at first, and as they
struggled to get free at last swallowed
up out of sight. You see that place
in the street yonder. where it is i'm
proved 2" asked an acquaintance me
the other day, indicating spot on the
next block.
said yes.
"That's bad place in the rainy sea-
son" he continued. II once saw a
team of forty mules stalled there while
trying to draw an empty wagon
AS result of this tenacious quality
of the soil in heavy rains, in country
where it rains every day for four
months, the most of the transportation
in Mexico has always been done by
huacaleros and donkeys. The huacal-
eros still do the most of it. These are
porters, native Mexicans, with hun
dred to hundred and fifty pounds of
some staple or merchandise strapped
upon each of their backs. These
make very long journeys, sometimes
alone and sometimes in large
parties, and they carry every imaginable
thing that is grown or used in the coun-
try. Some of these are women and
some children. Whoever rides out of
this city early any morning ON the road
by which Cortez fought his way in shall
see hundreds of these copper-colored
poems with strings of live ch ckens,
geese and turkeys around their necks
and hanging head downward. They
have brought this live freight ten,
twenty, thirty, fifty mile, and still they
go much of the time upon short-step-
ping trot that must carry them five or
six miles every hour. l would like to
back healthy huacalero to go as-you-
plea against Powell.
Some of these porters are laden with
green gra for the city horses (these
women and gir's, mostly, some with
charcoal, the only fuel of the country !;
some with wheat or bags of corn, some
with cocoanuts. A strong man here
and there will cary great load of
earthen pots and round jugs-half a
cart-load tied on in some mysterious
manner by a string that goes around
each of the out jugs and | have seen
this porter sit by the wayside to rest,
leaning back against his thirty cubic
feet OF croc'lery cargo that lowered far
above his head, and sticking his legs
straight out before him-th only way
to dispose of them. have wished that
could see him get up, but l never
happened to be present when that con-
vulsion took place.
The donkey, or burro, trains form an
auxiliary to the landscape that is quite
as pictorial and more fantastic. They
carry everything that the huacaleros
don't. This little burro, with his aver
age load, looks very much like cat
tied between two bundles of wheat.
A-OOn Ouu WIG N1uUoN AL Gtl0
early and you shall see half dozen
burros up and down the street halting
before the doors and delivering milk
the 6 eat milk cans, two or three of
them, strapped to each of his sides.
Considering that Mexico is as densely
populated as the United States, it be-
comes obvious that this transportation
by tot ng must be quite in efficient. The
result has always been paucity of the ex-
change of different products that leaves
Mexico, in regard to luxury, merely
half-civilized The Pacific slope OF
the Sierras grows fruits which the peo-
pie of the City of Mexico never taste,
and the manufactures of one state are
| often quite unknown to those of an
| other.
In trip last week over the divide,
250 miles towards the Pacific, on the
Mexican National, the train took on al
one OF the stations ton or so of hand.
some copper kettles, pans. ETC., evi
IDENTIFY beaten out by hand. I asked
some questions and Vice President
Purdy said: I'VE carry those. up te
Mexico to market. They are so heavy
that poems could not carry them al
this distance at a price that would al
low the market profit. The railroad
solves the problem and gives the cool
OF the capital cop er saucepans wher
he has always hitherto used earthen.
Railroads will make the various part
of this republic acquainted with eacl
other for the first time.
| San EraneisaA'a