Chapter IV: Part 4

Among the nuisances in Mexico the fleas take their place in the first rank. They appear to thrive in every locality and under all conditions. Like vicious bulldogs, they are especially fond of strangers, and never lose an opportunity of showing their domestic hospitality. In connection with the flea family there is a very small black variety, the name of which in Spanish is pronounced nēwaw. They usually attack the feet, especially of the natives--for they wear no shoes--and burrow in under the skin around the toenails or at the bottom of the foot, and remaining there they deposit a great number of eggs which are surrounded by a thin tissue similar to that which covers a ball of spider eggs. The presence of this troublesome insect is not noticeable until the eggs begin to enlarge, when there is an irritating itching sensation followed by pain and swelling. The skin has to be punctured and the sack of eggs removed,--not a pleasant operation, especially when there are forty or fifty at one time. These insects thrive at all seasons, and, next to the omnipresent wood-tick, are one of the worst torments extant. I have frequently seen natives whose feet were so swollen and sore that they could scarcely walk. At recurrent seasons there is a fly that deposits a diminutive egg underneath the skin of human beings by means of a needlelike organ, and the larva of which produces an extremely disagreeable sensation, sometimes followed by fever.

This does not by any means exhaust the list of disagreeable insects and reptiles, but enough are mentioned to give the reader some idea of the bodily torments to which both the inhabitants and the visitor are constantly subjected.

Having obtained a fair idea of the existing conditions we may now return to our friend Mr. B., and then wend our journey homeward. After the visit to the hacienda of the wealthy Spanish gentleman (who, by the way, brought most of his wealth from Spain), he was perhaps the least concerned of any man in Mexico as to whether vanilla, rubber, coffee or anything else could be profitably grown there. Like Dickens with his Dora, he could see nothing but "Carmencita" everywhere, and no matter upon what line or topic the conversation turned it was sure to end in the thought of some new charm in the black-eyed beauty. She was not only a flower, but a whole garden of flowers, too beautiful and too delicate to subsist long in that vulgar soil. She longed for the life, excitement and companionship of the friends of her schooldays in America, compared with which the humdrum monotony of a Mexican hacienda seemed like exile. With ample means and social standing as an armor the conquest was therefore a predestined conclusion. The conquering knight returned home with me, but in less than seven weeks he was back again, though not by the way of the loitering route down the _laguna_. In the following November he returned again to America, bringing with him the coveted treasure whom he installed in a beautiful home in America's greatest metropolis. The union of these two kindred souls was a happy event. Their home has since been blessed with the advent of two lovely girls and one boy. It is therefore no longer true that no American fortune-hunter has ever returned from the rural districts of southeastern Mexico richer than when he went there; for here is an instance where one of the most priceless of all gems was captured and borne triumphantly away from a land which appears to abound in nothing but pestilence and torment.

Verily may it be said that this part of Mexico whose people, possibilities, peculiarities, pestilences and pests I have briefly sketched in the foregoing pages, was made for Mexicans, and so far as I am personally concerned, they are everlastingly welcome to it.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Otherwise, the author's original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact.