Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras | Page 6

sat a family of
three. The father, perhaps twenty, was strikingly handsome in his
burnished copper skin, his heavy black hair, four or five inches long,
hanging down in "bangs" below his hat. The mother was even younger,
yet the child was already some two years old, the chubbiest,
brightest-eyed bundle of humanity imaginable. In their fight for a seat
the man shouted to the wife to hand him the child. He caught it by one
hand and swung it high over two seats and across the car, yet it never
ceased smiling. The care this untutored fellow took to give wife and
child as much comfort as possible was superior to that many a
"civilized" man would have shown all night under the same
circumstances. Splendid teeth were universal among the peons. There
was no chewing of tobacco, but much spitting by both sexes. A delicate,
child-like young woman drew out a bottle and swallowed whole
glassfuls of what I took to be milk, until the scent of pulque, the native
beverage, suddenly reached my nostrils.
The fat brown auditor addressed señora, the peon's wife, with the
highest respect, even if he insisted on doing his duty to the extent of
pushing aside the skirts of the women to peer under the long wooden
bench for passengers. A dispute soon arose. Fare was demanded of a
ragged peon for the child of three under his arm. The peon shook his
head, smiling. The auditor's voice grew louder. Still the father smiled
silently. The ticket collector stepped back into the first-class car and
returned with the train guard, a boyish-looking fellow in peon garb

from hat to legging trousers, with a brilliant red tie, two belts of
enormous cartridges about his waist, in his hand a short ugly rifle, and
a harmless smile on his face. There was something fascinating about
the stocky little fellow with his half-embarrassed grin. One felt that of
himself he would do no man hurt, yet that a curt order would cause him
to send one of those long steel-jacketed bullets through a man and into
the mountain side beyond. Luckily he got no such orders. The auditor
pointed out the malefactor, who lost no time in paying the child's
half-fare.
This all-night trip must be done sooner or later by all who enter Mexico
by way of Laredo, for the St. Louis-Mexico City Limited with its
sleeping-car behind and a few scattered Americans in first-class is the
only one that covers this section. Residents of Vanegas, for example,
who wish to travel south must be at the station at three in the morning.
Most of the night the train toiled painfully upward. As a man scorns to
set out after a hearty meal with a lunch under his arm, so in the swelter
of Texas I had felt it foolish to be lugging a bundle of heavy clothing.
By midnight I began to credit myself with foresight. The windows were
closed, yet the land of yesterday seemed far behind indeed. I wrapped
my heavy coat about me. Toward four we crossed the Tropic of Cancer
into the Torrid Zone, without a jolt, and I dug out my gray sweater and
regretted I had abandoned the old blue one in an empty box-car. Twice
I think I drowsed four minutes with head and elbow on my bundle, but
except for two or three women who jack-knifed on the long bench no
one found room to lie down during the long night.
From daylight on I stood in the vestibule and watched the drab
landscape hurry steadily past. No mountains were in sight now because
we were on top of them. Yet no one would have suspected from the
appearance of the country that we were considerably more than a mile
above sea-level. The flat land looked not greatly different from that of
the day before. The cactus was higher; some of the "organ" variety,
many of the "Spanish bayonet" species, lance-like stalks eight to ten
feet high. The rest was bare ground with scattered mesquite bushes.
Had I not known the altitude I might have attributed the slight

light-headedness to a sleepless night.
Certainly a hundred ragged cargadores, hotel runners, and boys eager
to carry my bundle attacked me during my escape from the station of
San Luis Potosi at seven, and there were easily that many carriages
waiting, without a dozen to take them. The writer of Mexico's Baedeker
speaks of the city as well-to-do. Either it has vastly changed in a few
years or he wrote it up by absent treatment. Hardly a town of India
exceeds it in picturesque poverty. Such a surging of pauperous
humanity, dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in
the Western Hemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is