Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1907-04-17
A TRIP TO OLD MEXICO
While Recuperatine From Typhoid Fever Mr. A. c. Baker
Writes Interesting Description Of His Recent Trip to
the City Of Mexico for Public Opinion Readers. 4

While / have been writing we have
reached our dinner station, by name
Moctezuma (named / am told for the
father of MonteZuma. We lCok into
the dining-hall; it is operated by
Cinnamon the table looks very good,
but Mrs. B. advises that we have our
lunch served on the train from a small
dining apartment in one of the cars.
We walk up the track, they are coal.
ing. A large number of boxes holding
about five bushels of coal each and
hung in handle bars are piled one
above another. The natives one al
each end of box carry them up a
plank incline, empty into the tender
and return by another plank We
are soon moving again; we run per.
haps thirty miles by shallow lake
full of waterfowls, a sportman
paradise.
Chihuahua is reached at 8 o'clock.
The last two hundred miles we have
been travelling over one mans land
he is now governor of this state.
Chihauhau. He brands 10000 head
of cattle year and lives in palace
five miles north of the city, and his
order seems to be the law in this
state.
Eat chihuahua Mr.. Lock and Max
Matteson leave us; they are going
into the mines 300 miles west. Lock
to ship to the smelter car of oar
and Max to gain fortune in the
mines. My wish is that his hopes
may be more than realized.
/ am out early the next morning
we are now in an irrigated country,
the bitches finely kept up, at each
intersection cement gates as perma-
nent as rock are built Let me say
here everything in Mexico is built of
cement or cement lime except the
homes of the very poor; bridges,
seats in parks, houses, all alike and
not a crack in them, though some of
them are known to have stood for
four hundred years.
AS we travel ON we see strings of
we'll sweeps; men are pulling them
down raising water and filling the
bitches. Again we see lone OK
travelling in a circle and raising water
with an endless chain of buckets.
The soil looks rich; OK teams are
everywhere plowing with the same
old crooked stick of bible times.
though they have a steel point ON
them. One handle is all they use
l saw few American plows but they
had sawed off one handle, the other
hand had to swing the whip so the
handle is of no use. did not see a
wagon in Mexico outside of the cities.
The poor little burrow and mule are
the beasts of burden. You see droves
of them, loaded so they stagger under
the burden, being hurried along by
drivers on foot.
Later in the day we are in an alkali
desert. The dust finds its way into
our car and we gasp for breath. No
living thing is seen but the giant
cactus which are seen in punches
sometimes as tall as twenty feet. We
pass number of important towns
during the day and at night seek our
dusty berth, expecting to find our car
on the switch at Zacateca in the
morning Morning comes, and look
out squads of beggars are about our
car. Large churches are seen in the
distance. L crowd by blind harpist
who is at our door what a sight of
misery meets me. Mexico is a land OF
cripples and beggars; you are con-
fronted with them at every turn.
Here before me is more misery than
can be found in all Iowa This de-
generate race seems to be almost ready
to die out from lack of vitality.
But our train is all there and the sign
on the depot says Cartenas. l see an
Irish face and ask him what it means.
He explains an engine has blown NJ
down the track but that our engine
will soon return from the wreck, as
the track is nearly repaired. We run
down to the wreck, the boiler has
been blown from the trucks over three
hundred feet into "A corn field, and
five are killed. My curiosity gets the
better of me. | raise the sheet cover
ing the remains. The largest piece,
the trunk below the neck, was not
over foot long, the rest of the five
were only fragments. The engineer
was an American, the rest natives.
They are put in our train and we
move ON to Zacatecas, thirty miles
ahead.
We pile into one of the little street
ears at Zacatocas aud are moved by
three.mule power The driver misses,
whistles, cracks hisywhip, blows his
horn. We are whirling through mar.
row alleys at an electric speed