Old Mexico and her lost provinces

"Old Mexico and her lost provinces" by William Henry Bishop is a travel narrative written in the late 19th century. It traces an American observer’s journey through Mexico—approached via Cuba—and onward to the former Mexican territories in the American Southwest, blending firsthand reportage with history, politics, and local color. The work dwells on railways, commerce, cities, landscapes, and daily life in a nation rapidly modernizing under new economic schemes and foreign capital. The opening of Old Mexico and her lost provinces follows Bishop’s departure from New York by steamer to Havana, where he samples tropical life, visits Matanzas and a sugar plantation, notes corruption scandals and the lottery, and records talk of the long Cuban insurgency. He transfers to a French packet for Vera Cruz, arrives after a “norther,” and sketches the perilous roadstead, somber San Juan de Ulúa, and a city of tiled domes, zopilotes, and bullfight bills, along with a consul’s argument that yellow fever is epidemic but not contagious and the labyrinth of Mexican tariffs. Boarding the English-built railway at night, he ascends from the Tierra Caliente with a vivid cast—a flamboyantly dressed hacendado and a French bridal pair—through the Metlac gorge, past Orizaba at sunrise, Holy Saturday Judas effigies, pulque country at Apam, and the pyramids of Teotihuacan, before reaching the high basin of Mexico City and its alkali-ringed lakes. He then maps the capital’s core: the Zócalo and cathedral on the Aztec war-god’s former site, arcaded streets, serapes and rebozos, Indian vendors, and the persistent drainage problem of Lake Texcoco.

Old Mexico and her lost provinces, by William Henry Bishop. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77881.