Gilbert Haven

“ The whipped-up mules fly over its boulders, and we jump up and down like a small boy on a high-trotting horse. The street is long—very long it seems to us—the houses of one story, and of no especial beauty that we could see in our unseemly dancing.
At last, "after much turmoil," we fly ferociously up to a long high wall, pierced with long high windows, well protected with long high bars, a single story, and striped prettily in fancy colors. At the big portal we stop, with a jounce worse than all that preceded, and beggars of every degree welcome us to the Hotel Diligencias of Orizaba. ”

“ The dry brook, with its superabounding rocks, is our highway for over a mile. A huge rock rising from its brink, is the last resting-place for horse and rider. It is of clay or soil of the country, and has embedded several strata of loose stones, as if formed by the deposits of freshets, and then left for the sun to bake into a solid pudding. The epizootic shows its green presence around the nostrils of the mozo's horse—a going and not a coming presence—which has notwithstanding walked and paced its nigh to fifty miles, patiently and pleasantly, and will rewalk it homeward on the morrow. ”

“ The stage-road twenty miles from Orizaba is the grandest I have ever traveled. It is smooth and pleasant of itself. The crazy Mexican ponies that it took so long to start are off, at last, with a leap and a whirl, and the one-storied, if not one-horse, town is left behind. The way is nearly straight, very level, and lined on each side, at the distance of a mile or two, with a succession of cliffs. They stand out of the valley as sharp as if lifted up in frame-work by human hands. ”

“ It is a nopal, or cactus, orchard, and no white cottage glimmers among its leather lapstone-shaped leaves, but only the same adobe hut, the same half-naked women, three-fourths naked men, seven-eighths naked youths, and entirely naked children, all sitting on the bare ground in poverty and degradation extreme, yet as courteous and kindly as the princeliest soul in the princeliest palace.
We pass through this nopal-orchard, with its many-tinted blossoms and small egg-like fruit, and emerge on a wide plain. Our steps have turned a little too far to the south. ”

“ A rag on two high bushes marks a house for an Indian family, and relieves the monotony of desolation. The sun has risen with a burning heat. Yesterday we shivered in a shawl till near noon; to-day we swelter in the shade, and solicit and enjoy the breeze that blows through the coach, albeit much dust gets mixed up with it.
The vast prairies are thinly covered with shrubs of mesquite, and even the Spanish bayonet gives out, and dwindles to meagre proportions. A red-headed cactus, big-headed too, glows by the roadside, sharp, but not unlovely. ”

“ They are basaltic almost in their castellated forms, and look rather like a column of giant "graybacks" opening their serried ranks to let this column of green, and perhaps this coach and company also, march through.
Our change of mules is made in the heart of this forest. The turtle-dove (palumbra triste, they call it here) fills the air with his melancholy wail, a single note of the whip-poor-will's strain. Women are frying and men eating tortillas under a cactus by the way-side; the vista opens deep into the green forest, and every thing is quiet, soft, salubrious. ”

“ A glimpse of it, and the diligence plunges down a very rough and noisy hill, leaps past open houses, whose brown occupants hasten to the doors to see the infrequent and much-welcomed coach, and with whirl and dash and snap of whip flings itself around corners, through courts, and comes up, with its crunch, at the hotel door.
The town is enjoying its siesta; our noise awakens it. It drowsily peeps from veranda and hut upon our disturbing mules and coach, and then folds its hands to sleep. It is the hottest hour of the day, three in the afternoon. ”

“ Three leagues more over hill and dale, amidst an opening and entrancing landscape, now by barren water-courses, now along high uplands, over which canter our horses. I am on the back again, and likely to be on my back with this fierce and unused riding. So we go gayly on to Regla.
The hills are well stripped by the charcoal vender and the steam-engine devourer, and look like some of the brown, barren, rocky sides of New Hampshire in July. The sun pours a midday torrid heat upon us, and makes us like that too-willing lass of whom it is said that, when her lover said '"Wilt thou?' she wilted. ”

“ They are good for grazing, and their hollows ample for grain. There is no need of poverty and degradation so unspeakable. The hills, black, blue, and purple, and, when the sun lights them, golden-brown, as everywhere in Mexico, "brown in the shadow, golden in the sun," like Willis's beloved's tresses, form a grand background, the rising sun being in this case a grander background to the hills.
Our mules fly as fast as the fearful road and a partial epizootic will let them, to the stone-house village of Napola. Before we reach it, we note the superb roll of the land. ”

“ A ride of an hour and a half brings us to the mud-brick huts that begin the once magnificent city of Cholula. I fear the huts were about the same sort when the city was at the height of its magnificence. The pepper, or Peru, tree grows thickly and uselessly, except to the eye and the birds—the redness of its berry pleasing our vision, and its bitter pungency their taste. The maguey grows yet finer to the eye and yet worse to the taste. ”

“ How exceedingly fortunate is Mexico in the location of her cities! If great rivers elsewhere flow by great towns, as Nature is said to condescend to man, here, for lack of great rivers, she surrounds the chief towns with superb circles of field, lake, wood, and hills—always the last, and one or more of the other three. Mexico has lakes for her chief circlet, a necklace of pearls: Puebla and Queretaro and Leon, fields of greenest green and brownest brown; Guanajuato is bound about with mountains only and closely; and San Luis Potosi with forests, a necklace of emeralds. ”

“ Shall our German infidelity and mis-education make our land like Mexico? Or shall a holy faith and a holy life make this land like the New England of our fathers? As Mr. Lincoln said, "Our nation must be all slave or all free;" and as One infinitely greater said, "A house divided against itself can not stand;" so America, North and South, the United States and Mexico, must be all Christian in its Sabbath sanctity, or all diabolic.
I walked out in the afternoon to the cemetery, feeling that the best church and congregation were to be found there. ”

“ It looks large and majestic from this hill-top. It is perfectly in the grasp of the eye. A farther descent brings the aqueduct to view, the stateliest Roman that is extant in America, and there is no grander in Italy, nor one so grand. It strides across the hollow, forty feet high, with massive pillars and broad arches. We rush beneath it, fly round and round dirty, mud-faced streets, into the thick of the town, and halt suddenly at the Hotel of the Diligence. The day's ride of over one hundred miles is done, and gladly the couch is sought and found. ”

“ It separates the sheep and the goats. Natures human so near are often as far apart in real condition: all for the want, or the possession, of grace. Not Athabesca's divide alone sends its streamlets to opposite seas and eternities; this dusty roadway is a like division between life and death. Every path of life reveals the same profound, perpetual departure, each from each, forever and forever.
The mules change their slow pull into a gallop, and go, lashed and leaping, through the streets to the plaza of the city. ”

“ The high-road is soon struck, and the Valley of La Camada lies before us, like every valley of Mexico, a thing of beauty rare. The brown earth, soft and sown, awaits the coming rain that shall fill it with life. ”

“ Not another sign of life, save in bush and tree, and not much in them, till the twelfth league is reached. Some horses grazing in the bushes look wistfully at us, envying, doubtless, their brothers in the coach, as boys, with all their liberty, envy the burdened man, harnessed and dragging his weary load up hill and down hill till he drops it, or drops under it, dead. ”

“ It is as stony in its faith as in the hewn and polished walls that engirt each tiny lot. It has marble dogs, and granite sphinxes, and bass-relief expressmen, wreathed pillars, and statues of men of renown, but rare is a monument or a line of faith. It will strike others thus. Edwards, and Fisk, and Wayland ought to stand in marble among its statues, and Christianity speak from its faithless, glittering graves. Let those whose believing dead are buried there make them preach their faith from their sepulchres. ”

“ The trees stand grand about the smoky hut, and the natives lounge under the grandest one. As a dessert, I get up a broken talk with them, and so overcome the cry of hunger within. The still better cry of "Vaminos" calls me gladly away from the tree and rancho. The road pursues the same path through an open, empty, thorn-covered country, rich for every manner of fruit, when it can have rest and an intelligent population. Night finds us in a town of huts, whose name I have lost. ”

“ The country became more open, and cattle began to becloud the broad prairies. The woods changed from the light, thin-leafed mesquite to the dark, thick, short, John-Bull leaf of the live-oak, an evergreen of beauty in this spring-time; how much more in the yellowness of winter! It stands in groups and bunches on the open sea of grass, at times stepping out by itself to show us how perfectly it can round itself into shape when it takes the notion. ”

“ From Venta Aguilar we have a delightful ride of six leagues, over as fine a prairie as ever gladdened the eyes of an Illinois former, finer, in fact, because encircled with grand hills. It is such a luxury, after our rocky roads and hideous joltings, to get on a plush carpet, and roll like a lad in the first spring grass on southern slopes. The air is warm and breezy. The fields lie twenty miles from hill to hill across our bows, and twelve from stem to stern. They are used for grazing, and were for a long while the favorite place for raising bulls for the bull-fights. ”

“ The country still holds its wildness, whiteness, and greenness. For a dozen miles the road winds in and out among the mesquite-trees, a good pathway and exceedingly romantic. It enters then the pretty town of San Francisco.
No village so ornate in water-color frescoes have I seen in Mexico as this bit of a city. Irapuato is its only rival, and that is not so daintily touched up. The hand of a master is here. Look at that drinking-saloon on the south-west corner of the plaza. Never was an inner fresco of a Parisian parlor more beautiful. ”

“ Looking from a like point out of this car window, the product itself of true Christianity, may we not imitate Cortez, and pledge the city that lieth like the very mount of God, in magnificence unequaled by any capital of earth, and all the surrounding region, not to a persecuting and debilitating Christianity, but to one that comes without a sword, comes with an open Bible, a joyful experience, a holy life, education, comfort, refinement for all, the true Cross and Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, who created this scene and its inhabitants for His own praise and glory? ”

“ The road is hard and smooth. Crosses appear quite frequently, and remind us of that long disease of the land, the violent death of its people, while dead mules and asses alike remind us of the late disease of its horses and their kin.
The mountains gather close to us. The open meadows disappear, and the pass assumes its proper place and shape. Three miles these bases stand apart, perhaps more, perhaps less; for distances are deceptive in this clear air. The walls rise a thousand feet and over, and, being so close to us, they seem five times that height. ”

“ Far away to the north and east, the grand plains above Queretaro roll out, a scroll written over with industry and its rewards. It will be yet better written, when this age shall be a palimpsest for the one, near at hand, of equal rights, higher faith, universal culture, and social reform. How intense the solitude of these mountains; how profound their silence! It is a stillness that can be felt. Not a bird wings its way across the summits, or sends an echo along their sides ”

“ The mule-changing Agua Nueva is as hot a spot as one cares to pause on. Yet some decaying buildings, one of which is especially roomy, give us momentary shelter from the storm of heat, as well as the sight of dirty damsels frying their perpetual tortillas. A bit of a chapel, dirty as any of its worshipers, stood among the huts and the larger semi-ruins of a once valuable hacienda. It was, therefore, especially agreeable to see the mozo harnessing up his eight mules for the pull across a famous field, and to a civilized town. ”

“ The rattling of spurs on its pavement, and clinking of the ornaments of the horsemen and their horses, are familiar sounds. The patio is European and antique; an elegant stairway to the upper story begins opposite the entrance; a balcony runs around that story, well faced with exquisite flowers of every tropical delight, and rooms open from it, spacious and elegant. Everywhere wealth and refinement prevail. The luxurious air of Mexico is about us, and the old times are yet more around us. ”