Part 22

The sweet, full letter from Rankweil is received. I long to smell the sunset meadows with you.

_June 23d, evening._

After a day of skimming over the valley with Aunt L., the Seegers, Mr. Butler, and Mr. de Soto.

I had long wanted to go out to Huehuetoca to see the famous _tajo de Nochistongo_, the great cut in the mountains, the most interesting point of the wonderful system of draining the lakes of the Valley of Mexico. It was a problem to Aztec rulers, viceroys, and presidents, finally solved, like a good many other things, in the Diaz epoch--and always bound up with the joys and sorrows of the valley. The Lake of Texcoco, the largest of the six lakes, hospitably receives the waters of the other lakes to such an extent that once it was considered to have a "leaky bottom," draining down to the Gulf of Mexico.

There were immense floodings of the city in old days, and in 1607 one so great that for several years the streets were traversed in canoes, and the saintly Archbishop of Mexico used to be poled and rowed about, distributing food to the starving.

The Huehuetoca road runs out through Azcapotzalco, once a teeming Toltec and Aztec center, now only the haunt of Indians and an infrequent archæologist. Any and every turn of the soil there reveals traces of lost races. At the next town, Tlalnepantla, though we were all feeling more in the mood for general effects than detailed inspections, we did our duty and went into the interesting old church, finding it full not only of sacred relics, but of profane, in the shape of carved Indian stones and various sorts of monoliths. In the cold, ancient baptistry is a strange prehistoric cylindrical vase.

There are still traces of the earthquake of several years ago, whose rendings revealed a wealth of buried objects. Several Indians, gathered about the motor as we came out, furtively drew from their knotted shirts some objects which properly belonged to the government--obsidian knives and a few masks, like those in the museum at San Juan Teotihuacan. We bought them out, and proceeded to Cuautitlan, the old posting-town I have written you about.

Mr. de Soto says that tradition has it that here was born Juan Diego, the Indian to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared. You see how interesting it is along these roads. Each step is always historic or legendary, as well as beautiful. The next village is Teoloyucan, where one branches off to go to Tepozotlan.

Since leaving the posting-town we could see the belfry of the church looking pink and lovely against especially blue and lovely hills. The foreground was of maguey and maize fields stretching away to the mountains. Hedges of nopal, graceful willows and pepper-trees, and Indian life, mysterious, yet simple, living itself out on road and field. We were held up for quite a while by a dozen burros laden with fresh, shining skins bulging with pulque. A great deal of unnecessary prodding of the unfortunate animals went on, the usual audience appearing from the hedges at the noise.

The hacienda of the former governor of the Federal District, Landa y Escandon, now in Europe, is out here. It contains most beautiful works of art, Spanish and viceregal, and many priceless Chinese and French porcelains, these last presentations when various ancestors were at various French courts.[53]

We thought for a moment of asking the administrator to show us over it, but succumbed instead to the invading magic of the road and the pleasant inertia of the automobile. As you will see, it wasn't a day to improve one's mind, but rather to bathe one's soul. As we got into the mountains near the famous "cut of Nochistongo," we spoke the name of the grand old Indian now a-wandering in exile, and talked of the solemn dedication ceremonies when the engineering marvel was completed in 1900 under his auspices.

In connection with the making of the "cut" and the canals winding through and between the lakes are ancient, sad tales of forced Indian labor, drivings, exposures, and deaths; a sort of _mita_ where each had to lend not only a hand, but often give a life. In the old days the viceroys made annual visits to Huehuetoca, lasting several days, conducted with regal splendor.

Nature seemed inconceivably gentle and beautiful there, with its vistas of translucent hills, all gradations of green and gray and blue softly rolling, meeting the eye and falling away. The volcanoes were of clearest white in the pure air, and the shining valley was a gem set within it all. We stopped by a delightful old bridge with its battered viceregal coat of arms, a relic of the ancient post-road to Zacatecas, over which a silver stream flowed into the Casa de Moneda (Mint) in Mexico City, to flow again in shining piastres across the ocean to Spain.

I suppose I will be sorry I didn't examine the "cut" a little more carefully, but the day was such a flood of soft light that details were quite swept away, so _tant pis_ for Huehuetoca. As it was, we didn't get back to town till nearly three o'clock, when we repaired to the Automobile Club where "Martinis," sandwiches and fruits, partaken of on the veranda, restored us, and we started out again to San Angel.

A perfect afternoon, no sign of rain, and anything as opaque as a house seemed unspeakably repugnant to our souls. At San Angel we wandered about in a deserted garden-like orchard. Roses, heliotrope, and lilies mingled with fig, quince, apricot, peach, apple, and pear trees, and soft crumbling pink walls inclosed them all. Beyond were more beautiful blue hills linked to those of the morning, and now swimming in the afternoon haze the volcanoes towering above in a splendor of mother-of-pearl.

These old Mexican gardens are beautiful beyond words, but I think one must feel the magic of them in the flesh--not out of it--to know the full enchantment. Later we went into the inn, once a great monastery, now transformed into a "hotel with all modern conveniences," as the prospectus says, and where, for a moment, I thought of going when we first arrived.

Some of its ancient beauty is left; old chests and ecclesiastical chairs, and long, carved refectory tables fill the corridors, and pictures of saints and priors hang on the thick walls. There is a charming _patio_ surrounded by cloisters, where monks once walked, saying their breviaries and their beads, and where now tables are placed from which tourists renew and strengthen the flesh.

Above is a terrace bounded by a lacy, intertwining design of grayish-pink balcony. In the center of the court is an oval double-basined fountain, with a little palm planted in the middle of the top one, and water-lilies in the lower one. Masses of crimson rambler were in their last luxuriance, and shining lemon and orange trees, with fruit thick upon them, grew in the little flower-beds. There is a large, new, glass-inclosed room where the proprietor, quite a character, likes to have his patrons go. A corner of the old refectory was sacrificed to do this modernizing, but we had the tea served at a table in the _patio_, and watched the patch of blue sky get pink and the colors of the flowers darken. When we finally turned homeward in an indigo-colored world it was to find the volcanoes like two great flaming torches, casting strange lights upon the dark-blue earth over which we sped. Nothing but night could have induced us to leave the beauty of it all for brick-and-plaster man-made dwellings.

_June 27th._

Professor Mark Baldwin and Mr. Butler came for lunch--and very pleasant. The application of the American mentality to the elusive Mexican equation is always a more or less stimulating process, and one generally feels comfortably, somewhat smugly, superior in spite of the fact that one never gets beyond the X. Professor Baldwin sent me his book, _The Individual and Society_, made up of lectures given at the university here, and dedicated to Ezechiel Chavez, Sub-Secretary of Public Instruction. It is most interesting and I am posting it with this.

_June 29th._

Peter and Paul's Day. After which our beloved friend used to leave Rome.

A sweet letter from Aunt Louise inclosing one of dear Mr. Stedman's poems, "The Undiscovered Country." I have tucked it into my mirror, where I can look at it while having my hair done. It begins:

Could we but know The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, Where lie those happier hills and meadows low-- Ah, if beyond the spirit's inmost cavil, Aught of that country could we surely know, Who would not go?

Aunt Louise was just back from church, and the text made a sacrilegious smile overspread my face, "Look to the hills whence thy help cometh."

_Trouble_ is what comes from the hills here. However, I will blight no illusions when I answer. She had picked a single, beautiful Carl Bruschi rose in its perfection from her rose-corner, to put upon the Sunday dinner-table, with a bit of feathery green. I can see her doing it and "rescuing seedlings from the clutch of weeds," and dusting the peach-tree, and straightening the hollyhocks, and "feeding much upon her thoughts."

With her letter came a long letter from Senator Smith, and his _Titanic_ speech in full.

[51] Peña Pobre has been occupied and evacuated countless times by Zapatistas, and is now completely laid waste--the great paper-mills, the gardens, the hacienda buildings. Since writing these words a vast and blood-stained scroll has been unfolded, and I think many a one has modified his political creed.--E. O'S., 1917.

[52] Of the Casasus house nothing but the walls remain. Everything has been pillaged and scattered. People have happened on an occasional old volume of the great library, and an occasional piece of the gilt-and-brocade furniture has been seen in the second-hand shops. ---- told me that a matter of importance took him to the house when used as a barracks by Carrancistas. In the great _patio_ were only a filthy cot and an old _brasero_ near which a poor _soldadera_ was sitting. The fountain was dry and full of refuse, and some soldiers were standing about waiting for their officer, who came in violently disputing with a woman of the town. From under the cot, after a few moments, the woman drew out a small, beautiful old chest clamped with silver and inset with coral, with which she departed, "the living symbol of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses," as one of his followers calls Don Venustiano.--E. O'S., 1917.

[53] These treasures were scattered and destroyed during the first Carrancista occupation.

XXV

Orozco and his troops flee toward the American border--A typical conversation with President Madero--Huerta's brilliant campaign in the north--The French fêtes--San Joaquin

_July 4th, 4 p.m._

Home from a motor trip and luncheon with Aunt L. at the Country Club, and now getting ready for a rather inexplicable reception at Chapultepec. In the evening there is to be a big theatrical representation to celebrate the glorious Fourth.

_July 5th._

Orozco[54] and his troops are fleeing to the north toward the American border. When we got up to Chapultepec yesterday we found out that the fact that it was our "Fourth" had been overlooked in the governmental rejoicings. Finally, however, the situation cleared, and there were congratulations all around, everybody free and equal, we congratulating them because of the defeat of Orozco, they congratulating us on general and special principles. Bulletins had been coming in all day about Orozco's flight from the battle-field of Bachimba, with General Huerta in full pursuit. Madero appears still untroubled, but he has grown visibly older. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," even if it is in the clouds.

Refreshments were served at small tables on the great terrace, but the strangest wind came up, and everything was blown about, table-cloths flapping, vases overturned, and an uncanny, transient darkness falling. The immensely tall man, Adolfo Basso, _Intendente del Palacio_--"_beber Toluca ó no beber_" we call him, looms high at every reception.

I was glad to see Madame de Palomo there. She is of the "other set," which appears sometimes for charity, but not for Maderista social happenings. She is the head of the Mexican Red Cross, and I have seen her in that way. She has an old house in the Colonia de San Rafael, Calle Icazbalceta, once fashionable, and some interesting old furniture and bric-à-brac. One very elaborate and beautifully carved confessional, in her family for generations, illustrates the history of St. John Nepomuk. In an artistic flight of fancy on the part of him who designed it, the head of the king is represented peeping in through a convenient aperture at the back, trying to hear what the queen confides while at confession. It's not very theological, but it's human and, from the point of view of the collector, quite unique.

Mrs. Wilson and I had rather a typical Mexican conversation with the President. It was _à propos_ of Cuernavaca, which the Zapatista scares have always prevented me from visiting. To-day, as we stood talking with Mr. Madero, he said, "Order is now complete," and added that the Zapatistas were well in hand. We then said we were immensely relieved, as we wanted very much to motor to Cuernavaca. He assured us it was perfectly safe and wished us a pleasant journey.

I had barely got home when Carmona came over from the Foreign Office to say that the President begged the ladies of the American Embassy to postpone their trip, as it would be better not to run the risks of travel on unfrequented roads just now.[55]

To-day the soft-voiced Zambo that brings me _objetos antiguos_ appeared with several handsome old coins, and an embroidered shawl, a _manta_, white on pale saffron. This last is now hanging out on the little oleander terrace to be sunned and aired, and the three coins have been scrubbed. One was of him of the "Iron Horse," _Carolus IV 1792 Dei gratia Hispan et Ind., Rex_, showing his receding forehead, aquiline nose, and pleased, voluptuous Bourbon mouth; his ear is deeply stamped with a counter-mark.

It appears these coins are still to be found throughout the Orient; each banker through whose hands they passed would stamp his own little mark on it. The other was more ancient and bore the date 1741 with the device "_Utraque Unum_," showing the pillars of Hercules surmounted each by a crown, and two hemispheres in between, joined by another crown. This was Philip V.'s modest device. There was also a little medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe, so defaced (I suppose it had been worn around generations of necks) that I could scarcely see the date, which appeared to be 1710.

All this seems very simple, but any foreigner living in Mexico would know that I had had a "good" morning. How the objects came into the possession of the _comerciante en objetos antiguos_ would be quite another story.

Mexican numismatic history is as romantic as its mining history, and bound up with it. Effigies of various rulers of the nation appear and disappear with a dramatic but disconcerting rapidity. The Iturbide coins are extremely rare, but I saw one the other day, and it is on them that the eagle and the cactus first appear. On the other side, around Iturbide's bold profile with projecting jaw, is graven _Augustinus I Dei Providencia, 1822_. Now we have simply the eagle and the cactus, and the redoubtable word "_Libertad_" stamped in the Phrygian bonnet.

_July 7th._

To-day we picnicked at the Casa Blanca, out beyond San Angel. It belongs to an Englishman, Mr. Morkill, now engaged in business in South America. When we got there, in spite of explicit telephonings, there was no key to be had. One person went to fetch the caretaker, who lived _quién sabe_ where, and some one went to fetch _him_ and so on, an endless chain. We must have been outside for nearly an hour, looking up at the loveliest and pinkest of walls, above which showed tops of palm- and fruit-trees and delicious known and unknown vines.

Finally, a very old woman and a very young boy appeared with the key to the door of that especial paradise, and we went in, with a loud sound of locking after us, and a "_Pués quién sabe?_" in a belated, breathless masculine voice. The garden, as all unfrequented gardens in Mexico are, was a riot of loveliness. We spent an hour wandering about its enchantment, and some one quoted that lovely poem--

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern'd grot-- The veriest school of peace--

interrupted at this line by appropriate and all too ready jibes about peace in Mexico.

Within the larger garden was a sort of inner tabernacle, a sun-bathed, inclosed fruit-garden--peach and quince growing with orange and lemon and fig, and the little pathway was fringed with lilies. The house showed the unmistakable quick results of inoccupancy here; the doors sagged, the windows stuck, and it was dismantled of most of its furniture.

We got out some tables and spread our luncheon in a little _mosquete_ and jasmine-blossoming porch, even with the ground, opening from one of the salons. Continual whiffs of perfume came from the garden, and the air was now damp with threatening rain or indescribably brilliant as the clouds passed. Mrs. Wilson brought some especially good things in the way of jellied chicken and one of the large cocoanut cakes for which the Embassy is famed. Mr. Potter's motor we called "the cantina," for obvious and refreshing reasons.

Afterward, while we waited for the rain to pass, we went to the _mirador_, built in a corner of the high wall of the bigger garden, overlooking the maguey-fields, which stretched away to the lovely hills, on which great, black shadows were lying between sunlit spaces. When we came down we picked armfuls of flowers, and there were some particularly beautiful trailing blackberry sprays with which we innocently decorated ourselves, but which I have discovered left indelible marks on our raiment. As we filled the motors with wet, sweet, shiny flowers and leaves, we sighed that the owners of anything so lovely should be so distant.

_July 15th._

The Schuylers have gone--a week ago--and N. is at the Embassy bright and early these mornings. The ambassador is more and more pessimistic, and there is a huge amount of work to be turned over every day.

The situation is heavy with responsibility for him, and the road thorny and full of the unexpected. Am now waiting for Madame Lefaivre, to go to the Red Cross.

Burnside has returned from the north, where he has been with General Huerta's army. He says Huerta conducted a really brilliant campaign against Orozco, in spite of illness among the troops, smallpox, typhus, etc., and the difficulties of communication. The amiable _soldadera_ deputed to look after his morning coffee, with her nursing baby in her arms, asked him, with unmistakable intent, the first day, if he would have it with or without milk. Needless to record, he took it black.

_July 15th._

The French fêtes are beating their full at the Tivoli Eliseo. They seem to celebrate the 14th of July from the 6th to the 20th. The Lefaivres invisible, except to their colony. For the sake of _la nation amie_, I put my head inside yesterday--and was met with a cloud of confetti and swarms of _vendeuses_. Bands were playing, and there was dancing at one end, and everywhere a lively selling of objects for the French _œuvres de bienfaisance_ in Mexico. The celebrated Buen Tono cigarette-manufactory had outdone itself in generosity, its booth being the _clou_.

Last night there was a patriotic performance at the Teatro Colon. Kilometers of tricolor and a very demonstrative colony filled the huge place to overflowing.

We got there just as the Mexican national hymn was sounding, and the President and his wife, with the Vice-President, were being ushered into the great central loge, where Monsieur and Madame Lefaivre were waiting to receive them bowered in red and white and blue flowers and lights, with a great tricolor floating beneath.

After the last singing of the "Marseillaise" we went in to speak to them and found the President saying to the minister: "_C'est Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité que je voudrais voir dirigeant les destinées du Mexique_," while a look as remote as the poles came into his eyes. Monsieur Lefaivre, for the sake of the vast French interests to be safeguarded, has always cultivated the friendliest relations with Madero--hoping against hope that the situation may develop elements of stability. Madero is obsessed by French political maxims, but without any understanding of that very practical genius which enables the _doux pays de France_ to turn ideas into actualities. The Encyclopedists, however, are having quite a revival in "glorious gory Mexico." We came home unconvinced, yet vaguely hopeful, under a blaze of constellations set in wondrous relief against great black spaces.

_July 17th._

I have just closed George Moore's _Ave Atque Vale_. A new book by him continues to be a delicious intellectual repast. I read it in rather a miserly manner, knowing there cannot be many more, not tearing its heart out as I so often do with books. He is nearing the inevitable departure on that last journey--and he will not return to write epigrams about it.

_July 19th._

I am scribbling this in the lovely old _patio_ of San Joaquin, out beyond the hacienda of Morales, sitting on a comfortably slanted grave--slab, on which I can just distinguish a bishop's miter and a faint tracing of the date--17 something and _requiescat in pace_. Delicate mosses, bits of cactus, and a tiny, vine-like, yellow flower make it a thing of beauty.

Madame Lefaivre and Elsie S. are sketching; all is peaceful, sun-flooded, with much singing of birds, and the trees are dropping solid bits of gold through their dark branches. There is a fine old five-belled belfry that pierces the perfect sky; the top bell and one of the next lower pair are missing (in what vagary of Mexican history they disappeared I know not).

This was once a Carmelite monastery, and still has a wonderful garden and a celebrated peach and pear and chabacano orchard. The wall inclosing the orchard is so high that scarcely anything green grows tall enough to show above it, though the mirador has a few vines twisting about it. The wall, however, is beautiful in itself--pink, crumbling, sun-baked, with moss and flowers and bits of cactus clinging to it, and a fruity odor was wafted over to us as we passed on the broken, ditch-like road with the motor at an angle of forty-five degrees.

There is a large space, planted with live-oaks, outside the _patio_ of the church with _its_ lovely, broadly scalloped pink wall. Once through the carved door, one is as if in a bath of sun and beauty. Before another time-worn, carved door leading into the church stand two straight, black, immemorial cypresses. The inside wall of the _patio_ has, here and there, an old carved coat of arms cemented into it, and colored growing things abound. The live-oaks outside bend above the scalloping of the walls, on which are ancient numbers above flat-carved symbols for the "Way of the Cross."