Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras | Page 4

nothing of another hemisphere. England brings to her
colonies some of her home customs, but not an iota of what Spain does
to the lands she has conquered. The hiding of wealth behind a
miserable facade is almost as universal in Mexico of the twentieth
century as in Morocco of the fourth. The narrow streets of Monterey
have totally inadequate sidewalks on which two pedestrians pass, if at
all, with the rubbing of shoulders. Outwardly the long vista of bare
house fronts that toe them on either side are dreary and poor, every
window barred as those of a prison. Yet in them sat well-dressed
señoritas waiting for the lovers who "play the bear" to late hours of the
night, and over their shoulders the passerby caught many a glimpse of
richly furnished rooms and flowery patios beyond.
The river Catalina was drier than even the Manzanares, its rocky bed,
wide enough to hold the upper Connecticut, entirely taken up by mule
and donkey paths and set with the cloth booths of fruit sellers. As one
moves south it grows cooler, and Monterey, fifteen hundred feet above
sea-level, was not so weighty in its heat as Laredo and southern Texas.
But, on the other hand, being surrounded on most sides by mountains,
it had less breeze, and the coatless freedom of Texas was here looked
down upon. During the hours about noonday the sun seemed to strike

physically on the head and back whoever stepped out into it, and the
smallest fleck of white cloud gave great and instant relief. From ten to
four, more or less, the city was strangely quiet, as if more than half
asleep, or away on a vacation, and over it hung that indefinable scent
peculiar to Arab and Spanish countries. Compared with Spain, however,
its night life and movement was slight.
Convicts in perpendicularly striped blue and white pajamas worked in
the streets. That is, they moved once every twenty minutes or so,
usually to roll a cigarette. They were without shackles, but several
guards in brown uniforms and broad felt hats, armed with thick-set
muskets, their chests criss-crossed with belts of long rifle cartridges,
lolled in the shade of every near-by street corner. The prisoners laughed
and chatted like men perfectly contented with their lot, and moved
about with great freedom. One came a block to ask me the time, and
loafed there some fifteen minutes before returning to his "labor."
Mexico is strikingly faithful to its native dress. Barely across the Rio
Grande the traveler sees at once hundreds of costumes which in any
American city would draw on all the boy population as surely as the
Piper of Hamelin. First and foremost comes always the enormous hat,
commonly of thick felt with decorative tape, the crown at least a foot
high, the brim surely three feet in diameter even when turned up
sufficient to hold a half gallon of water. That of the peon is of straw; he
too wears the skintight trousers, and goes barefoot but for a flat leather
sandal held by a thong between the big toe and the rest. In details and
color every dress was as varied and individual as the shades of
complexion.
My hotel room had a fine outlook to summer-blue mountains, but was
blessed with neither mirror, towel, nor water. I descended to the
alleyway between "dining-room" and barnyard, where I had seen the
general washbasin, but found the landlady seated on the kitchen floor
shelling into it peas for our almuerzo. This and the evening comida
were always identically the same. A cheerful but slatternly Indian
woman set before me a thin soup containing a piece of squash and a
square of boiled beef, and eight hot corn tortillas of the size and shape

of our pancakes, or gkebis, the Arab bread, which it outdid in toughness
and total absence of taste. Next followed a plate of rice with peppers, a
plate of tripe less tough than it should have been, and a plate of brown
beans which was known by the name of chile con carne, but in which I
never succeeded in finding anything carnal. Every meal ended with a
cup of the blackest coffee.
Out at the end of calle B a well-worn rocky path leads up to a ruined
chapel on the summit of a hill, the famous Obispado from which the
city was shelled and taken by the Americans in 1847. Below, Monterey
lies flat, with many low trees peering above the whitish houses, all set
in a perfectly level plain giving a great sense of roominess, as if it
could easily hold ten such cities. At the foot of the hill, some three
hundred feet high, is an unoccupied space. Then the city begins,
leisurely at first, with