down the cumbres.—a monster locomotive.—maltrata.—el barranca del infernillo.—in the tierra templada.—peak of orizaba; how it was ascended.—an old and quaint town.—excursions in the environs of orizaba.—falls of the rincon grande.—manufacturing industries.—cerro del borrego.—the mexican army routed.—cordoba.—how to run a coffee plantation.—barranca of metlac.—paso del macho.—tierra caliente.—dry lands near the sea-coast.—vera cruz.—zopilotes and their uses.—yellow fever; its seasons and peculiarities.—northers and their benefits.
the "portales," or covered walks.
the plateau terminates suddenly at boca del monte, and here begins the descent of the cumbres. at esperanza the train exchanged the ordinary locomotive for a monster one of great power; it looked like two locomotives placed end to end with a tender between them, and was specially built to take the trains over the extraordinary grades on this part of the road. high speed was out of the question, or at all events dangerous, and in descending the slope the train moved not faster than fifteen miles an hour. the schedule time of the ascent is twelve miles an hour, and the brobdingnagian locomotive is taxed to the utmost of its ability.
map of railway between city of mexico and vera cruz.
frank learned from one of the officials of the road that there are no fewer than 148 bridges between vera cruz and mexico, and on the branch to puebla. these bridges are of various lengths, the longest being the puente de soledad, which measures 742 feet. the longest of the tunnels is 350 feet, and there are fifteen tunnels in all.
"nowhere else in the world," wrote frank, "have we seen finer engineering work than on this railway. it reminded us of the railway from
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bombay to poonah in india, the line from colombo to kandy in ceylon, and the saint gothard and semmering railways in the alps. we looked down from dizzy heights where the train would have been ground to atoms had it rolled from the track into the abysses below; we crept along the edges of precipices, or in niches cut in perpendicular walls of rock; we crossed deep chasms upon slender bridges; we darted into tunnels in rapid succession, and swept around curves so sharp that it seemed as though the brakeman on the rear of the train might have shaken hands with the engine-driver. we looked into the beautiful valley of maltrata, which lay spread far below us, a gem of floral and arboreal beauty among the rugged hills; and we wound and turned among the sinuosities of the track so that our locomotive faced to all points of the compass a dozen times over in a single hour. in a direct distance of two and a half miles, as the bird flies, the railway goes
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twenty miles; looking down, we saw the track far beneath our level, and looking up we could trace its zigzags along the slopes and precipices. it was the railway passage of the alps, the caucasus, the sierra nevadas, the indian ghauts, and the blue mountains of australia all in one.
double-ender locomotive on mexican railway.
"we stopped a few minutes at the station of maltrata, which is on an artificial platform that was built up from the slope; it was originally intended as a passing-point for the up and down trains, and for several years after the completion of the line the daily trains each way met at maltrata. from this point onward the descent was as rapid as before; the locomotive held the train back instead of pulling it, and the brakes kept up a continual grinding against the wheels. we shuddered to think what would have been the result if the brakes had given way and the locomotive failed to restrain us. but in such an event our agony would have been brief, as the whole business would have been ended in a few minutes. they told us that once when a freight train was climbing the mountain two of the rear wagons became detached and started down the slope. fortunately there was no one on these wagons to lose his life; they jumped the track at one of the curves, and were dashed a thousand feet or more down a steep hill-side into a rocky valley.
"a little distance below maltrata we skirted one side of the barranca del infernillo, a great chasm which made our heads swim as we looked into it. twelve miles from maltrata we reached orizaba, where we had arranged to spend a day, and therefore we left the train as it drew up at the station.
"we observed a change in the vegetation as we descended the slope; we had left the tierra fria behind us, and were now in the tierra templada, or temperate region. the maguey and cactus gave way to darker and richer verdure, which was certainly far more pleasing to the eye than the scanty vegetation of the great plateau. orizaba is 4000 feet above sea-level, 181 miles from the capital of the republic, and eighty-two from vera cruz. it has 20,000 inhabitants, and is a favorite resort of the people of vera cruz in the hot and sickly season.
"we expected to have a fine view of the peak of orizaba from the town of the same name; but in this we were disappointed, as there is no part of the great volcano visible from here, except a thin strip of white over the top of a nearer and lower mountain; even this strip cannot be seen from all parts of the town, but only by climbing to the roof of the hotel or the tower of one of the churches.
"doctor bronson asked if we wished to ascend the peak of orizaba; we gave a prompt negative to his question, partly for the reason that his
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plans would not permit us to stay here long enough, and partly because the sensation was pretty well exhausted at popocatepetl. the ascent is quite as difficult as that of old popo; orizaba is a beautiful peak, shaped like a sugar-loaf, and wearing constantly a mantle of purest snow upon its regular and beautiful cone. according to humboldt, it is 17,378 feet high; a party of american officers ascended it in 1848; three years later a frenchman named doignon followed their example, and found the flagstaff they left there, with the torn fragments of the american flag which marked their visit.
"there was a town here at the time of the conquest, and cortez left a small garrison to hold it when he pushed on to mexico. it has an agreeable climate, the frequent rains and the mists from the gulf keeping it well moistened, so that the trees, plants, and green things generally are in a high state of luxuriance. coffee and tobacco are grown here in large quantities. the town has quite a manufacturing industry, and contains the repair and construction shops of the railway company. we greatly enjoyed a stroll through the streets, which seemed rather dull and sleepy
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after those of the capital. most of the houses are covered with red tiles, which give the city a very picturesque appearance when it is looked upon from the heights surrounding it. like all old towns of mexico, it has an abundant supply of churches, and the inhabitants are mostly of the catholic faith. not many years ago it was unsafe for a protestant woman to appear on the streets wearing a hat or bonnet of foreign make; she was liable to be pelted with mud and stones, and her life was by no means out of danger. a milder feeling prevails at present, and the old bigotry is steadily passing away.
view of orizaba.
"we made a pleasant excursion in the environs of the city, which are very attractive, owing to the luxuriance of the vegetation. fields of coffee, tobacco, sugar-cane, oranges, and bananas alternate with each other and show the mildness of the climate of orizaba; some of the plantations are of great extent, and we received many invitations to make a leisurely visit and spend whatever time we liked in their examination.
"one of the sights of the place which we were told not to omit were the falls of the rincon grande, about three miles from the city. we did
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not omit the falls, and will always hold them in pleasant recollection. the rio de agua blanco, which supplied the water for the falls, is a deep and swift stream coming from the mountains to the eastward of orizaba. much of its course is through a deep cañon; but where the falls begin, a part of the river flows along the surface of the mesa which forms one side of the ravine, and breaks over the side to join the main stream below.
"the fall is perhaps fifty feet from top to bottom, and a cloud of mist rises like that from niagara or montmorency. both sides of the fall are bordered with a luxuriance of tropical verdure, rendered especially luxuriant by the moisture from the plunging waters. the trees are covered with bunches of spanish moss, some of them several feet in length,
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and by numerous parasitical plants, nearly all gaudy with flowers. some of the trees are so completely in the grasp of the parasites that hardly anything of the original trunk or limbs can be seen. they showed us one tree that had been killed by the parasites; the wood had decayed and crumbled, and the vines were so thick where it had stood that they remained erect as though unaware that their former support had passed away.
"we saw the falls from above and also from below; and while both views were interesting, each had an especial beauty of its own. the shrubbery was so dense that we could walk only in the paths that had been cut for the purpose; and the growth of vegetation is so rapid that these paths require to be trimmed out several times a year. there is no possibility of straying from the path, for the simple reason that it is impossible to proceed in the dense undergrowth except by the aid of a machete. though at an elevation of 4000 feet above the sea, orizaba has a tropical climate; its location places it in the tierra templada, but its temperature and characteristics would seem to include it in the tierra caliente. and not only its temperature but its mosquitoes give it a tropical character, as they are of the kind with which the traveller in equatorial regions has a disagreeable familiarity.
the river at orizaba.
"there's a pretty river flowing through orizaba, and it is useful to the inhabitants in many ways. when we saw it there was not much water in its bed, but they tell us that at some periods it is a rushing torrent of great force and volume. it turns several mills, and is the resort of the women whose duty it is to cleanse the soiled linen of the rest of the inhabitants. laundry-work here is about as it is in the rest of mexico, and the rough handling of shirts and other garments by the lavanderas converts them into rags in a very short time. this is good for the cotton-factories of orizaba, which turn out a fair quality of goods, but are said to be unprofitable for their owners. we have better reports of the flouring-mills here, and also of a paper-mill which was established by an american several years ago. as the mexicans become better educated the demand for paper is likely to increase; at present it does not take a large number of mills to supply their wants in this respect.
hill of el borrego.
"the people of this city are less eager to point out the hill of el borrego than are the pueblans to indicate the scene of the battle of cinco de mayo. the latter was a mexican victory, while the battle of borrego was a disastrous defeat. four or five thousand mexicans were surprised and put to flight by a few hundred french troops. the french say there were not over one hundred in the attacking party. it was a
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night surprise, and the french had all the advantages of a nocturnal assault. in justice to the mexicans it should be added that the assailants were old soldiers, while the surprised army was composed of raw recruits, who are proverbially easy to throw into a panic, especially in the darkness. the same troops made a good record for themselves later in the war."
from orizaba our friends continued their railway journey into the tierra caliente, passing fortin and cordoba, the latter the centre of a coffee-growing district of considerable importance. a german gentleman who had a coffee estate near cordoba was in the carriage with doctor bronson and the youths, and gave them some account of the industry;
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fred made notes of his remarks, and afterwards wrote them out in full, with the following result:
"cordoba is less important now than it has been, owing to the decline in the prices of sugar and coffee; it was founded in the early part of the seventeenth century, and for a long time its industries were the growing of sugar-cane and tobacco. coffee is a comparatively recent introduction; we produce annually in the cordoba district about 10,000,000 pounds of coffee, and five times as much tobacco, and our coffee and tobacco have a high reputation in the market. coffee grows in the lower regions of mexico, and up to elevations of four, or even five, thousand feet; the best site for a plantation is about 3000 feet above sea-level; but it must be remembered that the coffee-tree requires a great deal of moisture, and unless a region is warm and wet it will not answer for a successful experiment."
orange grove in cordoba.
frank asked how soon after a plantation was started the trees would begin to bear.
the gentleman replied that he had seen coffee-trees bearing two years after they were planted, and it was very common to gather fair crops from
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trees three years old. but they could not be relied upon for a profitable yield until they were four or five years old, and they continue to bear for twenty years. when a plantation is five years old it does not cost much to keep it up, but before that time it is a heavy outlay, with little or slight return.
coffee-drying.
"you may grow tobacco or bananas between the young coffee-trees when you set them out," he continued, "and the profit from these products will cover a part of your expenses. in fact you should set out enough bananas or plantains to shelter the young plants, which are liable to be injured by the sun and rain and wind in their infancy. the coffee-tree would grow to a height of twenty or twenty-five feet if we permitted it to do so; we cut it off about six feet from the ground, and thus force the
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vigor into the branches; we want it low enough to pick from without too much reaching or climbing, and this would not be the case if we allowed the tree to run up as it would naturally."
then he gave the youths an account of the harvesting of the crop, and its preparation for market, but as this has already been described elsewhere[5] fred did not make a record of it. the culture of coffee is pretty nearly the same all the world over wherever the plant is grown.
the conversation with the coffee-grower had not prevented our friends from observing the scenery which lies between orizaba and cordoba along the line of the railway. they were especially impressed with the engineering which was required for crossing the barranca of metlac; this barranca is about 200 feet deep, by twice that width, and the first thought of the engineers was to throw a bridge directly across it. a bridge of a single span of 400 feet would be very costly, and piers 200 feet in height to support a lighter structure could not be built without great expense. consequently the plan was adopted of descending to where the barranca is less wide and high before attempting to span it.
"the bridge," wrote frank, "is on eight piers of iron, resting on masonry, and it curves in its course from one side of the barranca to the other on a radius of 325 feet. it is 400 feet long and 92 feet high; the railway is cut into the slope of the barranca on each side, and as it nears the bridge it enters a tunnel that curves so as to give the necessary approach. the incline of the railway on each side of the barranca is about three feet in a hundred, and for quite a distance the opposite tracks are almost parallel to each other. the sides of the barranca are covered with a dense growth of tropical trees and underbrush, and the picture it presents is very attractive to the traveller, however disheartening it may have been to the men who planned the railway. many a railway engineer in mexico has regretted that barrancas were ever invented, and, on the other hand, has congratulated himself that their number is no larger than it is."
bridge of attoyac.
from cordoba to paso del macho the fine scenery continued, the train winding among hills and mountains, disappearing into tunnels, crossing deep valleys upon graceful bridges, and steadily unfolding a panorama of great beauty. frank made note of the bridge of attoyac, 330 feet long; the chiquihuite bridge, 220 feet long; and that of san alego, three miles before reaching paso del macho, which is 318 feet long. in twenty miles there was a descent of 1200 feet, and the scenery steadily assumed more and more a tropical aspect.
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but beyond paso del macho the country changed again and grew sterile, as though they were once more in the region of the tierra fria.
"how is this?" queried fred. "here we are coming all the time nearer the sea both in elevation and distance; i thought we should have it a perfect forest of tropical growths all the way to vera cruz."
in tierra caliente.
"those who have studied the subject," answered the doctor, "say that this strip of land along the coast is not touched by the moist vapors which blow inland from the sea. they are attracted by the mountains and highlands, and blow over this region to shed their moisture at a greater elevation."
evidently the youths were disappointed, but they consoled themselves with the reflection that they were not intending to settle in the country, and therefore it didn't matter much to them what it was. paso del macho is about 1500 feet above sea-level, and forty-seven miles from vera cruz. the slope of the land from here onward is regular, and no unusual engineering skill was required for the construction of the railway. fred noted the names of four stations, camaron, soledad, purga, and tejeria, before
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they reached vera cruz; but there was nothing attractive about any of those places to render them worthy of further record. historically, soledad is memorable as the scene of the convention between generals prim
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and doblado in 1862, which led to the occupation of the country by the french troops and the invitation to maximilian to become emperor of mexico. fred asked if there was any monument at soledad to commemorate the event, and was not at all surprised at receiving a negative answer.
vera cruz, looking seaward.
night had fallen when they rolled into the station at vera cruz. fred watched for the fortifications, of which he had read so much, and was disappointed to learn that they had followed the fate of the walls of most european cities and been levelled out of existence. modern artillery has rendered all defences of this kind of no value for military purposes, and it is an act of common-sense to destroy them and make practical use of the ground they occupy.
the air was close and warm and offered no inducements for a stroll. by the time our friends had located themselves at the hotel de diligencias, which was said to be the principal one, and partaken of a not very appetizing supper, they had more thoughts of bed than of anything else.
next morning the youths were out in good season for the local sights. the first objects of interest were the zopilotes, or vultures, that act as a street-cleaning bureau, in taking possession of everything edible (from their point of view) in the refuse of the streets. frank and fred had seen these birds before on many occasions, but never in such numbers; they are analogous to the turkey-buzzards of the southern states of north america, and are said to be scientifically of the genus cathartes. they roosted on the house-tops, and walked through the streets, constantly on the lookout for something in their line. they are protected by law, and are faithful scavengers, working without pay other than board and lodging. they lodge in the open air, and board upon what no other living creature would eat, so that they are inexpensive luxuries. they have never been charged, like street-cleaning bureaus elsewhere, with obtaining money under fraudulent contracts.
"the streets were quiet," wrote fred, "and we were not surprised to learn that the population of vera cruz is under 20,000 and not particularly prosperous, although for a long time nine-tenths of the foreign commerce of the country passed through this port. since the railways from the united states were opened to the capital the trade of the city has greatly declined. most of the business is in the hands of foreigners, so that the chief connection a mexican has with it is to handle the goods as they are transferred from ship to railway or warehouse. the streets are straight and mostly narrow, and the open drains require to be constantly flushed, to keep down the stenches and unhealthy miasmas. in
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the sickly season the drains are nightly supplied with disinfectants to keep off that dreaded scourge the vomito, or yellow-fever.
after the vomito.
"we had heard much of the unhealthiness of vera cruz, and particularly of the vomito, which sometimes carries off hundreds of victims in a single week, and makes the road to the cemetery the best travelled one in the whole city. forty or fifty deaths a day are by no means uncommon; the old inhabitants do not seem to mind it, as they claim that a person who has once had the fever is ever after safe from it. a few years ago dr. trowbridge, the american consul, was removed from the office which he had held for twelve years; his successor arrived during the prevalence of yellow-fever, and died on the thirteenth day of his occupation of his new place. dr. trowbridge and his family had the fever lightly when they first arrived, and never afterwards suffered from it.
"they tell us that yellow-fever is most dangerous in summer months, and least so in the winter. it is not advisable for a stranger to come here in the sickly season, and so well is this recognized that the betting men of vera cruz are said to make wagers as to the probable length of life of a visitor from europe or north america when the vomito is prevalent. a yankee whom we met up-country says that when he came to vera cruz a polite individual called upon him at the hotel and solicited his patronage, 'which he was sure to need.' he did not feel very comfortable on learning that the polite man was an undertaker, and fled from the city by first train. it used to be said that a life insurance policy was vitiated if the holder remained more than twenty-four hours at vera cruz.
"yellow-fever is as dangerous for the mexican from the table-lands as it is to the north american, and some authorities say that the stranger from over the sea is less liable to it than the mexican from the tierra fria. it begins in may, is worst in august and september, and then declines to december, when it practically disappears under the influence of the strong 'northers' that blow during the autumn equinox. were it not for these northers vera cruz would be altogether too unhealthy for human habitation."
