Category: Travel Writing
One wintry night I bade my few journalistic friends adieu, and, accompanied by my mother, started on my way to Mexico. Only a few months previous I had become a newspaper woman. I was too impatient to work along at the usual duties assigned women on newspapers, so I conceived...
One wintry night I bade my few journalistic friends adieu, and, accompanied by my mother, started on my way to Mexico. Only a few months previous I had become a newspaper woman....
2. CHAPTER II."This hour," she replied, smiling at me; "you slept so well, I did not want to rouse you, but the morning is perfect and I want you to share its beauties with me."
3. CHAPTER III."Thirty minutes to dress for breakfast," was our good-morning in Mexico. We had fallen asleep the night previous as easily as a babe in its crib, with an eager anticipation of t...
4. CHAPTER IV."The City of Mexico," they had called. We got off, but we saw no city. We soon learned that the train did not go further, and that we would have to take a carriage to convey us...
5. CHAPTER V.In Mexico, as in all other countries, the average tourist rushes to the cathedrals and places of historic note, wholly unmindful of the most intensely interesting feature the co...
6. CHAPTER VI.Every day is Sunday, yet no day is Sunday, and Sunday is less Sunday than any other day in the week. Still, the Mexican way of spending Sunday is of interest to people of other...
7. CHAPTER VII.A Sunday in Mexico is one long feast of champagne, without a headache the next day. When the first streaks of dawn appear in the east people bob out from this street and that, h...
8. CHAPTER VIII.Mexicans are always mauana until it comes to bull-fights and love affairs. To know a Mexican in daily life is to witness his courtesy, his politeness, gentleness; and then see h...
9. CHAPTER IX.The first place tourists go on reaching Mexico is to the post-office. All one has to do when desiring to know what the latest incoming party looks like, is to take a position ne...
10. CHAPTER X.How much I would like to paint the beauties of Mexico in colors so faithful that the people in the States could see what they are losing by not coming here. How I would like to...
11. CHAPTER XI.Love! That wonderful something--the source of bliss, the cause of maddened anguish! Love and marriage form the basis of every plot, play, comedy, tragedy, story, and, let it be...
12. CHAPTER XII.Dear old Mexico shows her slippered foot, for summer is here. The fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses in bloom, the birds are plenty and everybody is wearing the widest sombre...
13. CHAPTER XIII.Mexico does not know how a nation mourned for one Virginius like McCullough; has never witnessed Barrett's Cassius and David Garrick, or been thrilled with O'Neill's Monte Crist...
14. CHAPTER XIV.Of course, everybody has heard of the famous floating gardens of Mexico, and naturally when one reaches this lovely clime their first desire is to go up to La Viga. I wanted to...
15. CHAPTER XV.When Maximilian first established his royal presence in Mexico he began to do what he could toward beautifying this picturesque valley. The city had been rebuilt on the old Azte...
16. CHAPTER XVI.The Mexicans, as a people, have an inordinate passion for gambling. They gamble on everything. Poor peons have been known, when their money was gone, to take the rags off their...
17. CHAPTER XVII.If they had put both in a kettle and, after constant stirring, poured the contents out, there would not have been more of a mixture of religion and amusement than there was duri...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.We went up to the Zocalo to take a car for Guadalupe. All the street cars start from this center, and on some lines trains of three to ten in number are made up, so that they ma...
19. CHAPTER XIX.After being annoyed by the porter for two hours, who feared we would miss the train, our party of two at four o'clock in the morning started for Jalapa. Even at this unholy hour...
20. CHAPTER XX.On opening my door one morning to leave for the railway station a man, who had evidently been waiting by the side of the entrance, sprung forward and seized my baggage. My first...
21. CHAPTER XXI."If you come over here you will get a better view," spoke a gentleman as he came from the back end of the car hauling us from Cordoba to this place. We were nearly breaking our...
22. CHAPTER XXII.If the innocent-looking tourists believed all that is told them here they would conclude that every spot and town of interest had been built by the Virgin and the angels. One ni...
23. CHAPTER XXIII.The pyramid of Cholula is very disappointing to any one who has seen illustrations of it in histories of Mexico; there it is represented as a mass of steps, growing narrower as...
24. CHAPTER XXIV.Very few people outside of the Republic of Mexico have the least conception of how government affairs are run there. The inhabitants of Mexico--at least it is so estimated--numb...
25. CHAPTER XXV.El Mexicano thinks it would be one of the pleasantest, as well as one of the easiest, things in the world to whip the "Gringoes," while the latter, with their heads a little swe...
26. CHAPTER XXVI.The press of Mexico is like any of the other subjects of that monarchy, yet it is a growing surprise to the American used to free movement, speech and print who visits Mexico wi...
27. CHAPTER XXVII.When able to translate Spanish, there is nothing that will amuse a tourist more in the City of Mexico than reading the street and store signs and names of the different squares....
28. CHAPTER XXVIII.Most readers will probably be interested to know how custom rules that a parlor shall be furnished "in Spanish" as we quaintly say in Mexico. For the knowledge that all are of a...
29. CHAPTER XXIX."Why the world are all thinking about it, And as for myself I can swear, If I fancied that Heaven were without it, I'd scarce feel a wish to be there." _Moore._
30. CHAPTER XXX.The City of Mexico makes many bright promises for the future. As a winter resort, as a summer resort, a city for men to accumulate fortunes, a paradise for students, for artists...
31. CHAPTER XXXI.The maguey plant is put to as many uses by the Mexicans as the cocoa palm is by the South Sea Islanders. All around Mexico, even on the barren plains where nothing else can exis...
32. CHAPTER XXXII.Among the most interesting things in Mexico are the customs followed by the people, which are quaint, and, in many cases, pretty and pleasing. Mexican politeness, while not alwa...
33. CHAPTER XXXIII.I presume everybody who knows anything about history remembers reading how Cortez, when he thought he was going to lose the fight for Mexico, on July 10th, 1520, retired under a...
34. CHAPTER XXXIV.Superstition is the ruin of Mexico. While we were there some children found a shell containing an image of the Virgin. The matter was deemed miraculous, and they directly decide...
35. CHAPTER XXXV.Probably some one would like to make a few of the dishes most common to the Mexican table. Of course you will think them horrible at first, but once you acquire the taste, Ameri...
36. CHAPTER XXXVI.There is hardly a spot in Mexico that has not some romantic history connected with it; and the tales are always so beautiful and full of thrilling romance. I would like to live...
37. CHAPTER XXXVII.I cannot close this little book without speaking of one of the most remarkable and brilliant women in Mexico, the only daughter of the emperor. After the execution of the empero...