Chapter VII

In Desolate Places.--Beauty Everywhere.--Railway Engineering.--Analogy in the Conduct of Life.--El Paso.--The Sand Storm.--Human Grasshoppers. --The Placid Night.--Rev. Dr. Higgins.--Juarez.--Rev. M. Cabell Martin. --Strangeness of our Mexican Glimpse.--The Post-Office.--The Old Church. --The Padre's Perquisites.--The Prison.--El Paso Again.--Cavalry Going East for the War.

After leaving San Antonio, the night soon shut out the landscape from our view, and the next morning revealed to us a rather forlorn region. This is how it impressed Mrs. Morgan. I quote from her diary: "We awoke to find ourselves in a desolate portion of country, bare prairie, stretching away towards craggy hills whose irregular outline is very picturesque, and the soft blue and purple shadowing on them is beautiful. Droves of cattle wandered about, feeding on the sparse dried grass, which is the only forage the poor beasts seem to have."

Even the most unpromising places have some compensation in them, for the beauty of the distant mountains was worth seeing, and the natural cured grass of the prairies has wonderful sustaining power. In fact, it is a hay crop wisely scattered everywhere, needing neither storehouse nor barn, always on hand--or at mouth, one might say--for the strolling droves. We passed during our morning's run some splendid pieces of railroad engineering. We were constantly rising above the sea level, every mile bringing us up to the mountain heights. This rapid ascent was managed by a most circuitous route among the foothills, winding in and out, and doubling again and again upon our track. A railway map gives one an idea of almost straight lines from place to place. How different is the reality! It seemed to me a symbol of theory and practice in real life. A proposition in business or in morals seems as simple and inevitable as that two and two make four; but many are the twists and turns that must be taken in all departments of life before the end in view can be attained.

By these necessary zigzags and retracing curves we made our advance, higher and higher. The sparse vegetation revealed our increasing altitude, the trees became few and stunted, and the wild plants more limited in variety. We descend again as we pass on, until toward evening we reached El Paso. Here we landed in the midst of a fearful sand storm. We were met by a dear old friend of former days, the Rev. Dr. Higgins, whose first impulse was to tell us that it was not always thus in El Paso. We should hope not; for it was fearful. The wind blew at a dreadful rate, sweeping along with it dense clouds of sharp sand which gave one a sense of being lashed with whipcords. In the midst of this blinding dust and sand, obscuring the light, people moved about like huge grasshoppers. A contrivance of transparent celluloid, fitted like glasses to the eyes, extending from above the eyebrows, down well on the cheeks, gave people this absurd insect-like appearance. It was gruesome and comical at once. Several of our party invested immediately in these most necessary appliances, in order to get round a little in what looked like a forlorn town; but ere an hour or so had passed we found the storm gone, and all in placid peace, while the stars shone down through the clear night with true southern brilliancy.

The next morning Dr. Higgins was once more with us, and was delighted to act as guide to our younger contingent, who did El Paso thoroughly, and went also across the river, the Rio Grande del Norte, into the Mexican town of Juarez. Some of the party met with a sad experience on their return, when they had to pay so much a pound tax, and _ad valorem_ besides, on a Mexican blanket whose gay stripes had taken their fancy in a shop at Juarez.

My cicerone was the Rev. M. Cabell Martin, Rector of St. Clement's, El Paso, who drove me in his buggy over the frontier to Juarez and showed me all that was to be seen. It is astonishing what a change one sees in little more than a few yards of distance. Once across the bridge from El Paso, and you are in a new atmosphere. El Paso is like a New England town, after all; a little rough here and there, a little strange it may be, like the strangeness of the city pets, the alligators, who sleep in luxurious laziness in the public square; but yet it all was in our ways, and we were at home. But in Juarez all is different. As we drive along, two men by the roadside making adobe looked as if they might have been with the Israelites in Egypt at the same business. With their naked legs they were kneading up the black muck, which, when of the proper consistency, they deftly moulded into form for the great master workman, the sun, to dry at his leisure and pleasure. The streets of the town seemed bare. The shops were in most cases without windows or exterior openings, save the entrance door. The booths and stalls in the streets for cheap eatables, vegetables, pottery, and odds and ends had a wild, gypsy grace about them, all water-colors, ready to be painted, just as they were.

We saw the post-office where Juarez kept up the government and existence of the Republic of Mexico during the whole of the Maximilian invasion. It was a close point to the United States for escape and liberty if he was molested. When Maximilian received his death-shot, Juarez went on with his presidency, taking no notice whatever of the usurpation as if it never had place. This man, of pure Indian blood, was certainly of heroic mould, and a stanch lover of light and liberty.

We looked into the church, a most interesting old adobe building, with walls of immense thickness. The interior was a well-proportioned parallelogram of good height, with a grand wooden roof of carved beams of a dark hue, possibly black with age. We were told that the work had been all done by native workmen in ages past. Part of the doors in the same style, like Aztec work, had been ripped away and thrown outside to make way for a jimcrack gallery for singers. We longed to bring those old doorposts with us, and looked up with gratification at the roof as yet safe in its distance and old magnificence. The church walls had been all done up in whitewash, and the altar was adorned with saints and a Madonna decked out in real laces, satins, velvets, and jewelry, possibly real also. The effect of it all was bizarre and a trifle depressing.

We saw the arena for the Sunday and _fete_-day bull fights, and also the square behind the church where the Mexican padre indulges in his form of church sociables and grab-bag business. He does it by letting out the spaces of the square to all sorts of three-card-monte men, and other catchpennies of that ilk, from December 8th, through the Christmas Holidays, until the following _fete_ of the Epiphany. It is said that the padre gets his percentage on the profits also. Poor man, he must have some compensation, for his lot is such that, under the laws of Mexico, he, or any other padre, cannot walk the streets in clerical garb, but must disguise their calling in the ordinary dress of a civilian. The padre in question, I was told, usually appeared in the dress of an ordinary peon.

We took a peep into the prison, and were instantly assailed by the prisoners behind the bars and in the open court within the gates, offering us for sale trinkets they had made. The Mexican prison rules do not oblige the jailers to provide food for their prisoners, so they must in some way hustle for themselves, buy from their jailers, or depend upon the charity of others. An officer in full uniform lounged on a chair near by the outer door, and soldiers in canvas uniforms were on guard with military rigidity, with arms in their hands. It was like a bit out of the Middle Ages, or a scene from the opera, where brigands and regulars have varying fortunes of conquering and being conquered.

It was nice to drive back over the Rio Grande del Norte again into the home land; to have a chat with the United States Custom House officer; to show him our purchases worth about fifty cents American money, for which we had got eight or ten pieces of pottery from a street vender, and then after our chat to be told "it was all right."

When we got into El Paso we saw the first touch of real war in the shape of a regiment of cavalry bound for New Orleans and Cuba. There were shouts and hurrahs as they moved off in their train, but not the noisy enthusiasm which one might expect. Our American people are not shouters, they are too serious. There is a silence about their most excited conditions which a stranger can hardly understand.