Northern Mexico

“ The greatest part of this territory has never been occupied or even explored by the Mexicans, and the thin population in the settled parts of it proves that they never had put great value upon it. The greater inducements which the South of Mexico offered on account of mines, climate, commerce, etc., have concentrated there the seven or eight millions of inhabitants that compose the Mexican nation, allowing but a small portion of them for the northern provinces. One half of this northern territory may in fact be a desert, and entirely worthless for agriculture ”

“ Americans in Northern Mexico, especially in Chihuahua, have been charged with a want of due respect for the local authorities. They have invested largely in mines and ranches, and are unwilling to be controlled by the laws of the country. On August 1, 1883, a dispatch from Paso del Norte to a New York journal disclosed a new scheme for the acquisition of a part of Mexico by the United States. ”

“ Those are the settlements of Nuevo Mexico, an oasis irrigated by the Rio del Norte. The scene of our story lies not there.
Face once more to the eastward, and you have it before you. The mountain upon which we stand has its base upon a level plain that expands far to the east. There are no foot-hills. The plain and the mountain touch, and at a single step you pass from the naked turf of the one to the rocky and pine-clad declivities of the other.
The aspect of the plain is varied. In some places it is green, where the gramma-grass has formed a sward ”

“ Of the southern part of Mexico we possess already excellent profiles of the country, made by Alexander Von Humboldt, Burkhardt, and other scientific travellers; but of northern Mexico scarcely anything is known in that respect, and the series of elevations above the sea from Independence (Missouri) to Santa Fe, Chihuahua, Monterey, and the seashore, as represented in this profile, is the first one published, and will prove, as I am inclined to believe, highly interesting to every person that wishes to form for himself an opinion of the character of that country. ”

“ A still more important question is disposed of by the facts stated in this chapter, viz., that there is no possibility of the present inhabitants of Mexico ever successfully driving back the Apaches and reconquering the northern provinces. Her title to the wild regions of the north, which rests on discovery and colonization, is lost by her utter inability to subdue the Indians and to colonize, after a probation of three hundred years. At this day the whole of the northern provinces lie, like waifs, open to any civilized people to take possession who require an additional territory. ”

“ The settlements of New Mexico covered at one time a much wider extent of country than they do now. The Indians have been constantly narrowing the boundaries for the last fifty years. At present these settlements are almost wholly restricted to the banks of the Del Norte and a few tributary streams. ”

“ As to the peculiar phase of Mexican art, and whatever other evidence of progress Mexico supplies, they appear to me no more than natural products of the first successful intrusion of the barbarians of the northern continent on the seats of tropical civilisation. Certain it seems, at least, that if an earlier civilisation had ever existed in the north, or if the representatives of any Old World type were present there in numbers for any length of time, some traces of their lost arts must long since have come to light. ”

“ As to the present Natives, most of ’em are subject to the Spaniards; but in some of the Mountains and Northern Parts they are not reduc’d; so that they frequently attack the Spaniards, when they meet with a favourable Opportunity.
Mexico Described.
In that call’d New Mexico some of the Natives are very barbarous, and much given to Arms, the Men wear nothing but Skins, and the Women scarce any other Covering than their Hair; they live for the most part on raw Flesh, and go together in Troops, changing their Habitation as the Season requires, or for the Conveniency of Pasturage. ”

“ The whole province of Mexico is crossed by a vast plain at the height of from 2000 to 2700 yards above the level of the sea; here the inhabitants enjoy a perpetual spring; and, although they live under the Torrid Zone, they occasionally feel a considerable degree of cold in the northern districts. The climate in the interior is so delightful [35] that the natives sleep, with little covering, under the canopy of heaven. ”

“ The geographical position of Mexico, when considered in connexion with its agricultural riches and metallic wealth, is perhaps the most remarkable in the world. A comparatively narrow strip of land, possessing all the climates of the world, is placed midway between the two great bodies of the northern and southern continents of America, and midway, also, between the continents of Europe and Asia. ”

“ Coming down from the north, pursuing the course followed by the little army of Spanish fugitives of two hundred years ago, a great railroad line—a system, rather, with its giant trunk and numerous feeders—bisects New Mexico, the territory of the Pueblos, and crosses the Rio Grande at El Paso. At Paso del Norte it enters Old Mexico as the "Mexican Central," though still under the guidance of the same wise and sagacious capitalists who projected the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé system westward from the Missouri River, and southward to the Mexican frontier. ”

“ Thus, a large part of the country on the Pacific coast has scarcely been penetrated outside of the roads or "trails" which lead from the seaports to the interior. There are hundreds of square miles in Southern Mexico, especially in the States of Michoacan and Guerrero, and also in Sonora, that have never been explored, and are merely marked on the maps as "terreno desconocido"; and whole tribes of Indians that have never been brought in contact with the white man, and repel all attempts at visitation or government supervision. ”

“ We now ascend the steep upper zone of the Sierra Madre, and cross it, descending thence to the Great Plateau or mesa central, the dominating topographical feature of the country. Here lies the real Mexico of history, and here is the main theatre of the new land of industrial awakening. Within the mountain ranges—that which we have crossed, and those which intersect this vast tableland and bound it on three sides—lies the great wealth of minerals—gold, silver, and others—which have attracted men of all races and all times since Cortes came. ”

“ To the stay-at-home American, Mexico is only a sun-scorched desert. In reality, it is a land of everything—of sandy wastes, of rugged mountains, of rank tropical jungles, of temperate valleys—of lowlands bathed in moist tropic heat, of midlands where strawberries are always ripe, even of highlands swept eternally by chilling winds. Yet always there is some intangible spirit about it that makes it unmistakably Mexico, especially upon the bleak plateau. ”

“ There was no gold there, and, moreover, the inhabitants of its coasts had always given the visiting Spaniards such warm receptions that they were always glad to leave them alone after a single trial of their prowess. Anxious as they were for the bringing of these Indians under the influence of their religion, the acquisition of wealth was a matter of vastly greater concern. So the tide of conquest flowed over all Mexico, and extended even to Guatemala and the Pacific, before it more than lapped the shores of Yucatan. ”

“ It is like climbing the mountain to find the Louisiana lowlands. A chain of yet higher mountains surrounds it, it is true; the snowy summits of Popocatepetl and its mate, the White Woman, always shine upon it from a
distance, but Mexico itself is a basin. ”

“ With sash, long and ample, tied about the loins, collars, bracelets and anklets of gold-embroidered leather richly adorned with precious stones, and gaudy pendants from ears, under-lips, and sometimes the nostrils, we have a picture of the Indian brave of Mexico which would quite rouse the envy of his less-cultivated red brother of our own Western frontier. The chiefs, as we have seen elsewhere, had other finery, belonging to them exclusively. The festival array of an Aztec was sometimes a beast mask or in skins flayed from human victims, in which young men dressed themselves to dance. ”

“ He will wonder, after traversing the border counties at the western edge of the Great Plains, at the infrequency of plowlands, and will promptly conclude that New Mexico is one vast, bare desert—an impression that will be corrected rapidly when he visits the dark National Forests where the slim, crowded spruces and firs tower skyward. ”

“ It extends south about eleven degrees from the eighteenth parallel of north latitude, and is therefore entirely in the tropics. The geographers give it an area of 175,000 square miles, and a population of something less than three millions, the greater portion being native-born Indians. The whites and creoles are nearly all of Spanish descent, as the country was conquered and occupied by the Spaniards soon after the Conquest of Mexico. ”

“ In the land of Anahuac settled a roaming people whose story we can only dimly guess. If they came from the wintry north, this country, which is now called Mexico, must have seemed a paradise on earth. Between two high mountain ranges stretches a lofty plateau, beautiful alike in scenery and climate. Lying a bare twenty degrees north of the equator, it would be hot as the plains of India if it were not for its altitude. ”

“ It was an agricultural race that the Spaniards found in possession of Mexico,—a people that had held and tilled the soil for hundreds of years before the white man heard of the New World,—not a savage horde that subsisted by the chase. As a consequence, we find every portion of this southern republic susceptible to the influences of the hoe and plough carefully and exhaustively cultivated. One may ride through leagues of territory, with an Indian settlement only at long intervals, and wonder at the thriving appearance of the fertile fields, in decided contrast to the parched and barren hills. ”

“ Afterwards I became accustomed to this unusual formation, when I found that mountains always grow that way in the Far West, and particularly farther on in New Mexico and Arizona. All their ranges seemed like elongated "Wrekins" set in a plain of gigantic dimensions.
At Aguilar, half-way on the road to Trinidad, I met the first really Mexican town. It will be remembered that all the south-western States once belonged to Mexico and one by one they have been ceded or bought or otherwise appropriated until Mexico now is only a shadow of its former self. ”

“ When he has climbed to the height of between seven and eight thousand feet, the weary traveller sets his foot on the summit of the Cordillera of the Andes,—the colossal range that, after traversing South America and the Isthmus of Darien, spreads out, as it enters Mexico, into that vast sheet of table-land which maintains an elevation of more than six thousand feet, for the distance of nearly two hundred leagues, until it gradually declines in the higher latitudes of the north. ”

“ Mexico, with regard to her agricultural resources, were they fully developed, would be found to be unsurpassed by any land, possessing, as she does, capabilities for the growth of almost every production of tropical and temperate climes. Her physical conformation bestows upon her three distinct climatic zones, designated as the tierra caliente, the tierra templada, and the tierra fria, meaning, respectively, the hot, temperate, and cold regions. And in them every want and luxury of man can be supplied. ”

“ The castes were most numerous in Guadalajara, Puebla, the north-east provinces, and the mining regions, and the whites mustered in force along the same parallels, where mining and stock-raising presented opportunity for enrichment, and predominated in Nuevo Leon and Sonora. Indeed the sparsely settled north was occupied chiefly by Spaniards and half-breeds, although they assisted to swell the central group of Guanajuato, Puebla, and Mexico, which greatly exceeded the rest in population. ”

“ Two thousand feet below lies a plain of Mexico's great table-land, stretching forty miles or more across to where it is shut off by an endless range of mountains, backed by chain after blue chain, each cutting the sky-line in more jagged, fantastic fashion than the rest, the farther far beyond Guadalajara and surely more than a hundred miles distant, where Mexico falls away into the Pacific. ”

“ Bold explorers, guided by intelligence received from the Indians, had even penetrated the interior of the isthmus, and from the summit of the central mountain barrier had [Pg 19] gazed with delight upon the placid waves of the Pacific. But the vast indentation of the Mexican Gulf, sweeping far away in an apparently interminable circuit to the west, had not yet been penetrated. The field for romantic adventure which these unexplored realms presented could not, however, long escape the eye of that chivalrous age.
Mexico is discovered.
Arts and sciences of the Mexicans. ”

“ We find the population distributed in a somewhat different manner from that of South America and the United States, not along the coasts, which are here low-lying and malarious, but mainly on the interior plateau, where culture and wealth had ever centred, notably along a narrow strip embracing Puebla and Mexico, and two other towns of from 35,000 to 130,000 inhabitants, and only one or two days' journey apart, while elsewhere great stretches of fine country lie almost uninhabited. ”

“ Eagle Pass possesses, in respect to local attractions, few advantages over Laredo, its rival down the river. Although the natural outlet of Mexican trade, lying at the entrance into the most fertile region of the Mexican Border, it will not progress with the rapidity of the southern town, but ten years hence will probably be a more prosperous city. My reasons for predicting this will appear, as we go over the length of railroad already built into Mexico. ”