Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras | Page 3

there was a little Mexican boy with a hand-broom,
which he evidently carried as an ornament or a sign of office. It seemed
a pity not to let Mexico have the dust-laden, sweltering place if they
want it so badly.
I had not intended to lug into Mexico such a load as I did. But it was a
Jewish holiday, and the pawnshops were closed. As I passed the lodge
on the north end of the bridge over the languid, brown Rio Grande it
was a genuine American voice that snapped: "Heh! A nickel!"
Just beyond, but thirty-six minutes earlier, the Mexican official stopped
me with far more courtesy, and peered down into the corners of my
battered "telescope" without disturbing the contents.
"Monterey?" he asked.
"Sí, señor."
"No revólver?" he queried suspiciously.
"No, señor," I answered, keeping the coat on my arm unostentatiously
over my hip pocket. It wasn't a revolver; it was an automatic.
The man who baedekerized Mexico says Nuevo Laredo is not the place
to judge that country. I was glad to hear it. Its imitation of a street-car,
eight feet long, was manned by two tawny children without uniforms,
nor any great amount of substitute for them, who smoked cigarettes
incessantly as we crawled dustily through the baked-mud hamlet to the
decrepit shed that announced itself the station of the National Railways
of Mexico. It was closed, of course. I waited an hour or more before
two officials resplendent in uniforms drifted in to take up the waiting

where I had left off. But it was a real train that pulled in toward three,
from far-off St. Louis, even if it had hooked on behind a second-class
car with long wooden benches.
For an hour we rambled across just such land as southern Texas,
endless flat sand scattered with chaparral, mesquite, and cactus;
nowhere a sign of life, but for fences of one or two barb-wires on
crooked sticks--not even bird life. The wind, strong and incessant as at
sea, sounded as mournful through the thorny mesquite bushes as in our
Northern winters, even though here it brought relief rather than
suffering. The sunshine was unbrokenly glorious.
Benches of stained wood in two-inch strips ran the entire length of our
car, made in Indiana. In the center were ten double back-to-back seats
of the same material. The conductor was American, but as in Texas he
seemed to have little to do except to keep the train moving. The auditor,
brakeman, and train-boy were Mexicans, in similar uniforms, but of
thinner physique and more brown of color. The former spoke fluent
English. The engineer was American and the fireman a Negro.
Far ahead, on either side, hazy high mountains appeared, as at sea. By
the time we halted at Lampazos, fine serrated ranges stood not far
distant on either hand. From the east came a never-ceasing wind,
stronger than that of the train, laden with a fine sand that crept in
everywhere. Mexican costumes had appeared at the very edge of the
border; now there were even a few police under enormous hats, with
tight trousers and short jackets showing a huge revolver at the hip.
Toward evening things grew somewhat greener. A tree six to twelve
feet high, without branches, or sometimes with several trunk-like ones,
growing larger from bottom to top and ending in a bristling bunch of
leaves, became common. The mountains on both sides showed fantastic
peaks and ridges, changing often in aspect; some, thousands of feet
high with flat tableland tops, others in strange forms the imagination
could animate into all manner of creatures.
A goatherd, wild, tawny, bearded, dressed in sun-faded sheepskin, was
seen now and then tending his flock of little white goats in the sand and
cactus. This was said to be the rainy season in northern Mexico. What

must it be in the dry?
Toward five the sun set long before sunset, so high was the mountain
wall on our right. The sand-storm had died down, and the sand gave
way to rocks. The moon, almost full, already smiled down upon us over
the wall on the left. We continued along the plain between the ranges,
which later receded into the distance, as if retiring for the night. Flat,
mud-colored, Palestinian adobe huts stood here and there in the
moonlight among patches of a sort of palm bush.
Monterey proved quite a city. Yet how the ways of the Spaniard
appeared even here! Close as it is to the United States, with many
American residents and much "americanizado," according to the
Mexican, the city is in architecture, arrangement, customs, just what it
would be a hundred miles from Madrid; almost every little detail of life
is that of Spain, with scarcely enough difference to suggest another
country, to say