Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-06-01
TOPICS FROM THE TROPICS.
Among People and Scenes of Four Thou
sand Years Ago.
GUANAJUATO. Nav %.

Toltecs, AZtecs. the MonteZumas, OF
Cortez or any subsequent history, L shall
make no reference. but confine myself.
if indeed l should write any more, to
such minor incidents and novelties as
happen to interest ME as an individual.
A sun dance, on Sunday evening, in a
Pueblo village was the last that we saw
of the United States. I crossing the Rio
Grande from Ell Paso, U. S. A.. to Paso
del Norte, Mexico, one travelsm distance
half round the globe and goes back from
one to three thousand years in the his
tory of the human race,-from the mod
ern to the very ancient,-from Wichita
to Nubia, and to the half naked people OF
the upper Nile.
This afternoon we are in central MeXi-
co, two thousand miles from home.
among people where babies are both
fashionable and numerous, and where
there is nothing but what is primitive,
in a town down among the deep gorges
of mountain OF whose
very existence. we were unaware,
even yesterday, but a place of eighty
thousand people, of dozen churches
and cathedrals; of markets and paved
streets, and Of Notifications; a town
where the sound of a wagon wheel Is
never heard, but of magnificent acque-
ducts, viaducts and architecture, whose
forty thousand men are attired in white
cotton shirts and breaches and sombre-
ros, and the costume of whose women
consists of shirt skirt and robosa, but
a town with silver mine whose under
ground workings are one hundred and
thirty-two miles in extent, twenty seven
hundred feet under ground, whose
twenty thousand men dig and delve. In
her narrow, crooked streets, which
swarm with humanity, but where no
single object can be seen which would
even suggest anything later in history
than the CrusaGes. Even the days and
scenes of Abraham are here, the Re-
beccas with their water pots az the
fountains, the shepherd and his f1ocks,
the oxen and the crooked stick for
pillow, and all that is old and queer and
strange.
Here in Guanaiuato are public works
and buildings that were old when
Columbus discovered America, and the
people i'll all these centuries have
changed in character no more than their
mountains and focks, but they have in
their generations, as shown by their
records. taken out Of their mines nine
hundred millions of dollars. But what's
the use? [ could no more con-
vey to my readers a realistic
picture of this people and their city, nor
of dozen other cities we have visited in
the great central plains and mountains
of Mexico, in the space of brief letter
than | could fly. Here have been revo-
lutions and battles, and here are the
ruins and Notifications of ages, sticking
out of the walls Of some of the latter of
which are the hooks and pixies upon
which were hung the heads of the un-
lucky devils who played the part of
Moses to this simple people, VINO use
mahogany for railroad ties and cactus
for telegraph poles.
Except brief stops of three and four
hours. we have travelled day and night
since we left Wichita, as fast as revolv-
ing wheels could carry us, now for six
days and nights. The locomotive engi-
neer of this country simply pulls the
throttle valve wide open and lets her
scoot, as they hang hstlessly out of their
cab windows. AS there are but few
trains, and as we have orders for right
of way as against all trains, we make
while going from forty to tifty-five miles
an hour And, oh, such riding. For
two days and two nights through north
ern Mexico, or through the states of
Chihuahua and Durango, we whrled
over succession Of circumscribed
deserts, hedged about by barren. lonely
mountains. As we got farther south
the thermometer went up, up, and
the dust and sand went upper,
the cacti and yucca plant of the north
ern flower garden reached the bulk of
great trees and we were in the land of
perpetual summer. Yesterday all day
we travelled through great fields and
irrigated plats upon some OF which
thousand dusky paeans with bare legs in
white shirts and white sombreros har-
vested with sickles, followed by women
cleaners, narrowed and plowed with
oxen and loaded their herds of asses
with the products of the fields. Like
great fiocks of sheep these people cover
the landscape; like locks of sheep they
are born and die: like focks of sheep
only counted while living.
Last evening, just as the sun was set
ting, under which at noon a telegraph
pole only east shadow about two inches
long, we pulled into Zacatecas, a city of
sixty or seventy thousand people. We
went down into their town, followed by
four o. five hundred men. women, chill
dren and babies, and spent three hours
wandering about the streets which
swarmed with humanity in such num-
bers as l cannot tell. Men and women
We're everywhere and babies by the thou
sand. \ governmental brass band of
forty pieces was playing upon
the plaza, which was surrounded
by columns or posts, each one surmount-
ed by human figure in fine bronze. a
bright moon cast sharp shadows, under
whose soft rays the domes and steeples
of many columed and pilastered cathed-
raj stood out in reality but with the i'm
press and beauty of a dream. To the
governors palace and to one cathedral
we were admitted. Both were the results
of vast expenditures of money, beauti-
ful-gorgeous.