CHAPTER XI

MEXICO AS I SAW IT

One day in July, 1900, I was explaining to my small boys that I was going off through Canada and America to Mexico to write a new book, to make some more money for bread and butter and school bills.

One of them appeared distressed at the idea. At last, after a pause, he said:

“Why don’t you go and sit in that shop in Regent Street with your hair hanging down, like those three girls do?”

I looked surprised.

“It would not be so tiring as travelling all that long way and writing another big book,” he explained, “and you would make just as much money, I am sure.”

Lovely idea!

But I dared not accept his suggestion, kindly meant though it was.

A letter I wrote to a woman friend in 1900 has just come into my hands. It says:

“Your congratulations on my ‘success,’ as you are pleased to call it, are very sweet. Public success seems to me to mean so little. After a good dinner the playgoeer enjoys any foolery—and much the same with books. A good temper makes a satisfied reader, and an easy chair and shady lamp do the rest. I am not satisfied. Far from it. Sheaves of reviews—and all good ones, strange to relate—lie before me; but they mean nothing. I know inside my little _me_ that I ought to have done better.

“Perhaps I should have been wise never to have commenced the struggle. To have retired from London to a suburb or a cottage and lived quietly on my small income. You will say I have a fit of the blues—and doubtless I have—or liver, or something equally stupid; but I’ve been pretty hard at it for four years now—three books have been conceived and born and a fourth nearly done, and I am still alive; but I’m tired. Shall I go to Mexico and write another while I am young enough to rough it and stand the racket, or shall I throw down the pen and cry vanquished? Work is a tough job to a woman never brought up to the idea of working, and perhaps I’m trying to carry more on my silly shoulders than those silly sloping shoulders can bear. The table is covered with orders of all sorts and kinds—work lies before me if only I had the pluck to do it. The more ’success’ I gather, as you call it, the more incapable I feel.

“Two strings are tugging at me, one says _go on_, the other says _stop_. The first may end in failure. The second begins in failure. Mexico—and quite alone—mind you, is a long way, and a big job. To-night I seem to funk it; but, then, to-night I seem to funk everything, and even your letter of love and sympathy, dear friend, has not quite dragged me back to my senses. I’m very lonely at times, and that’s the truth. After that remark you will think I’m going to marry again; but there you are wrong. You lost your hundred pounds bet that I would re-marry in a year—so don’t be foolish and risk any more on this silly, wayward, lonely, spoilt pen-woman.

“Yours, etc.”

N.B.—I went to Mexico shortly after—alone, quite alone, on a twenty-five-thousand-mile journey.

Why did I choose Mexico to visit and write about? Because with all the world before me that land seemed to offer a more historic past than almost any other country on God’s earth; and was there not a spice of danger and romance lurking amongst its hills and valleys?

I left London in July, and, after halting in Canada and the United States, landed in Mexico on November 1st, 1900, and returned to England in April, 1901. Between those dates I had travelled some twenty-five thousand miles, had spent thirty-nine nights in moving trains, and many more in private Pullman-cars in railway sidings. I had lived a life of luxury and ease and had roughed it to nigh unendurable straits. Besides which I was constantly sending home articles to the English Press.

It was a several months’ journey from Liverpool to Quebec, through Canada to Niagara, then to New York, Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia; and onward, onward to Mexico. Before leaving America, however, I turned aside when I found myself only fifty miles from Galveston, which, about ten weeks previously, had been visited by its historic and terrible storm. Heart-rending were the sights that met my eyes and the tales that were poured into my ears. Eight thousand people had perished in that terrible hurricane, their bodies were even then being cremated on the shore. Rows of small houses literally stood on their heads, while on the beach pianos, tramcars, saucepans, sewing-machines, baths, and perambulators lay in wild confusion.

Resuming my journey I soon passed the Mexican frontier, and there had my first experience in ranch life; there, too, a “norther,” or dust-storm, made me long for the comparative comfort of a London fog. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, were all choked with hard, sharp, cutting sandy dust. My raven locks were grey and no longer suitable for exhibition in the shop in Regent Street. Next came another long railway journey to Mexico City, with the President of the line in his private train, with various entertainments on the way, including a bull-fight and a cock-fight, and much interested amusement at the customs of the people. Mexico City was reached just in time for me to see the celebrations of the Feast Day of the Lady of Guadaloupe, the patron saint of Mexico. It was a wonderful sight, and the story reminded me of Lourdes, though it is of much earlier origin and the pilgrimage of far greater magnitude.

The welcome tendered to me in the capital was delightful.

The Christmas customs were, of course, of great interest; Madame Diaz, the wife of that great President, invited me to her _posada_. A most enjoyable and novel evening. One of my most valued treasures is the little bonbonnière she gave me on that occasion.

Many varied experiences followed; rides lasting two or three weeks through that marvellous country to see old Aztec ruins; life at tobacco, sugar, tea, or coffee _haciendas_; to say nothing of the national customs, traditions, and superstitions on every side. The President gave me a guard of forty _rurales_ (soldiers), and, as the opportunity of penetrating remote parts was great, twenty-two gentlemen of all nationalities, from Cabinet Ministers to clerks, joined us. We were sixty-three all told, and, though I rode astride like a man, I was the only woman.

Perhaps the most thrilling and exciting moment on my various travels was that spent on a trolley-car in Southern Mexico. Along those distant tracks barely two or three trains pass in a day, and hundreds, aye, thousands, of miles of railway have to be kept in repair. It is usual for the engineers to run along the line in a little open wagon, known as a trolley-car, which is worked by hand by four or six men, and covers the ground at a good pace. It can stop at any moment, and be lifted bodily off the line should a train require to pass.

Naturally, one sees the scenery magnificently from a car of this kind, for there is nothing before one. I was sitting in front with an engineer on each side of me. We had just come through one of the most magnificent passes in the world of engineering, and had, indeed, at that moment crossed a bridge, a slender, fragile thing. Some two or three hundred feet below it the water gurgled in a rushing stream. Parrots shrieked overhead, terrapins floated on the water, and monkeys swung from tree to tree. There was a precipice on one side, a high, rocky hill on the other, and just room for this mountainous line to crawl round the rocks.

We were all telling stories and chatting cheerfully: the next thing I knew was that the man on my right seized me by the neck, as if he suddenly wished to strangle me, and somehow he and I fell together a tangled mass down the side of the precipice.

When I looked up—luckily caught in the shrubs—an enormous engine was towering over my head, the grid-like rails of the cow-catcher looking ominous and weird above me. The splintered platform of the trolley-car was rushing down the mountain-side, and our iron wheels were running off in different directions. It was a marvel we were not all killed.

It had happened in this wise.

As we turned a sharp corner an engine suddenly bore down on us—one of those great black, high American locomotives, neither varnished nor painted. The engineers, accustomed to the ominous sound, luckily heard it before it was quite upon us. Hence, I was violently dragged from what, in another second, would have been instantaneous death. The natives all jumped off in some wonderful manner, also being accustomed to the sound; but our trolley-car was smashed to smithereens.

It was a ghastly experience. By the time I regained my equilibrium, and saw the horrible accident to our frail little carriage and learnt the awful danger we had just come through, I realised that I had just experienced one of the most perilous moments of my life.

I should have sat there oblivious and literally courted death. We never know life’s real dangers till they are past, hence the courage of the battlefield or shipwreck. We only worry over what we but partially understand, hence the anxiety so often experienced before sitting in the dentist’s chair. Anticipation is so much sharper than realisation.

This was not my only narrow escape, for I was blessed with the proverbial three.

While visiting at the _hacienda_ of the Governor of one of the Southern States we, one day after lunch, amused ourselves by shooting at bottles with the rifles of the _rurales_. After a time my hostess and I had wandered away for a stroll, and, as we returned, a ricochet bullet slid off a bottle and buried itself in my womanly “Adam’s apple.” A red streak ran down my collar, I opened my mouth and literally gasped, choking; everybody thought I was dead. But it proved nothing, and in a few minutes I could breathe and speak again and was washed clean.

My third escape was a terrible illness, contracted when riding in the tropics, and caused either by venomous bites or poisonous ivy. Never shall I forget the awful loneliness of those days and nights fighting with death in a Mexican hotel.

Of all the marvellous sights, the magnificent scenery, the many-coloured birds and flowers rivalling each other in gorgeousness, I need not write here. But, far beyond everything, the scene that left the deepest impression on my mind was in Southern Mexico. It was a visit to the Caves of Cacahuimilpa, one of the greatest wonders of the world, and the Governor of the State organised an expedition for me to see them. Numberless Indians from far and wide had joined my party, glad of the opportunity of going inside the wondrous caves which they hold in such superstitious dread. Candles were distributed to the company, which by now must have been swelled to something like a couple of hundred people. All was ready.

The descent was easy, for a roadway had been made; but it was really very impressive to see so many individuals solemnly marching two and two into impenetrable blackness to the strain of martial music. Each person carried a long lighted candle, but before we returned to our starting-point, six and a half hours later, these candles had nearly burnt out.

The caves were originally formed by a river, the waterline of which is distinctly visible, while in places the ground is marked with wave ripples like the sand of a beach. Then, again, many stones are round and polished, the result of constant rolling by water; and, still more wonderful, two rivers flow beneath them, probably through caves just as marvellous, which no man had then dared penetrate.

I believe we went through seven caverns, and our numerous lights barely made a flicker in the intense gloom—they were nothing in that vast space. Rockets were sent up. Rockets which were known to ascend two hundred and fifty feet, but which nowhere reached the roof; the height is probably somewhere between five and six hundred feet. Think of a stone roof at that altitude without any supports.

The size alone appalled, but the stalactites and stalagmites almost petrified one with amazement. Many of them have joined, making rude pillars a couple of hundred feet high and perhaps a hundred feet in diameter at the base. Others have formed grotesque shapes. A seal upon the ground is positively life-like: a couple of monster Indian idols: faces and forms innumerable; here an old woman bent nearly double, there a man with a basket on his head, thrones fit for kings, organs with every pipe visible, which, when tapped, send forth deep tones. It was all so great, so wonderful, so marvellous; I felt all the time as if I were in some strange cathedral, greater, grander, and more impressive than any I had ever entered. Its aspect of power and strength paralysed me, not with fear, but with admiration.

At times it was terribly stiff climbing and several of the party had nasty falls in the uncertain light; at others it was a case of sitting down and sliding, in order to get from one boulder to another; but it was worth it all to see such a sight, to realise the Power that made those caves, to bow before the Almighty Hand which had accomplished such work, even in millions of years. There hung those great stone roofs without support of any kind—what architect could have performed such a miracle? There stood those majestic pillars embedded in rocks above and below; there hung yards and yards of stalactites weighing tons, and yet no stay or girder kept them in place. It was a lesson, a chapter in religion, something solemn and soul-stirring, something never to be forgotten; one of the Creator’s great mysteries, where every few yards presented some fresh revelation.

My knees were trembling, every rag of clothing I wore was as wet as when first taken from the washerwoman’s tub, yet I struggled on, fascinated, bewildered, awed, by the sights which met me at every step. Think of it. Stumbling along for four and a half hours, even then not reaching the end, and, though we returned by the easiest and quickest way, it was two hours more before we found the exit.

In one of the caves the Governor proposed my health, and the party gave three cheers, which resounded again and again in that wonderful subterranean chamber, deep down in the bowels of the earth, with a mountain above and a couple of rivers below. The military band of Cacahuimilpa accompanied us, and the effect produced by their music was stupendous. No words can give any idea of the volume of sound, because the largest band in the world could not succeed in producing the same effect of resonance in the open air which ten performers caused in those vast silent chambers.

It is impossible to describe the immense grandeur of Cacahuimilpa.

Man is speechless in such majestic surroundings; but in this all-pervading silence surely the voice of God speaks.

Hot, tired, and overpowered we were plodding homewards, when a letter was handed to a member of the party by a mounted soldier, who, seeing our lights approaching the entrance, had dared to venture into the grottos to deliver his missive. We were all surprised at the man’s arrival, and more surprised to find he carried an envelope. It turned out to be a telegram which had followed our party from a village forty miles distant, and had been sent on by special horseman with instructions to overtake us at all speed. Was ever telegram delivered amid stranger surroundings, to a more cosmopolitan collection of humanity assembled in the bowels of the earth, far, far away from civilisation?

What news that telegram contained! It had travelled seven thousand miles across land and sea; it had arrived at a moment when we were all overawed by stupendous grandeur and thoroughly worn out with fatigue. At the first glance it seemed impossible to read. Men, accustomed to the vagaries of foreign telegraph clerks when dealing with the English language, found, however, no difficulty in deciphering its meaning.

Then the Governor spoke a word. Every Indian doffed his hat and bent his eyes, as Colonel Alarcon walked solemnly towards me, and in deep tone, with evident feeling, explained that the President of Mexico had sent on the news to tell the English señora—

“QUEEN VICTORIA IS DEAD.”

A historic telegram, truly, announcing a national calamity, and received amidst the wildest possible surroundings in the strangest possible way.

The Queen was dead. The English-speaking people had lost her who had been their figure-head for sixty-three years. The monarch, to whom the whole world paid homage as a woman and respect as a Queen, had died at Osborne on the previous day, while we, wandering over Aztec ruins at Xochicalco, had not even heard of her illness.

Impressed as we were by the mystic grandeur of the caves, amazed at the wonders of nature, this solemn news seemed to fit the serious thoughts of the day, thoughts which had grown in intensity with each succeeding hour. Cacahuimilpa appeared a fitting spot in which to hear of a great public loss. Time and place for once were in no wise “out of tune.”

It was dark and the way steep as we rode back to the village in silence.

Like the proverbial bad penny, I rolled home again with my pocket full of notes on men, women, and things. I had collected my material, written bits in railway trains, on steamboats, and almost in the saddle, and as soon as I felt well enough, put together _Mexico as I saw It_.

The beginning of the manuscript was sent off to the publishers in the June following, just two months after landing at home, and the remainder was printed, chapter by chapter, as I managed to finish each: a most terrible and anxious manner of proceeding and one certainly not to be recommended. The first proof of _Mexico as I saw It_ was returned on July 10th; the slips, or galleys, finished on August 10th; the whole was paged and passed for press on September 10th. It appeared in October at a guinea net, the illustrations mostly from my own camera. So I was just six months in Mexico, and just six more getting out the book; in my own souvenir copy there is written on the fly-leaf: “It is done, but it has nearly done for me.”

Reviews were more than kind, but then the subject was new, so people found it interesting. As Frederic Harrison wrote in the _Positivist Review_: “The marvellous restoration of Mexico, from being a hot-bed of anarchy and the victim of superstition to its present condition of one of the best governed and most enlightened of modern countries, has often attracted the attention of political observers. In Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s most interesting volume we find suggestive sketches of the institution of the Republic, and a personal character of the President, General Porfirio Diaz, the noble statesman who has achieved such triumphs.” How could one help being gratified that other influential organs of public opinion felt with me the “fascinations of the Southern _haciendas_ and of the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,” and held the information, that had been zealously collected, of practical and informing value?

On the hospitality of the President it is only necessary to say that, looking back to those records of 1900-1, I find this expression—warm from the heart—respecting General and Madame Diaz:

“Their kindness and courtesy, the extraordinary thoughtfulness and consideration with which I was treated, will ever remain in my mind. Without the personal aid of General Diaz I could not have written _Mexico as I saw It_, and perhaps this peep into the life of the people, over whom he rules so powerfully, may help to make that wonderful country a little better understood.”[5]

* * * * *

Five years later I returned to Mexico and wrote the _Life_ of the President.

The first time I left the country I was limping with pain after a serious illness of blood-poisoning—the second time I left almost limping again, but that was from the weight of the precious documents I bore away.

No one knew but the President, his wife, and three of his Ministers, what important material I was taking with me, or that I was going to write the _Life_ of General Diaz from his diaries and notes. It was published in England and America in February, 1906, and reprinted with additions two months later. One kindly critic said: “It is a romance, a history, a biography, one of the most thrilling stories of real life ever written.” Later it was translated into German and Spanish. I was so pressed with work at that time I had one Spanish and two English secretaries constantly employed—I often sat at my desk for nine or ten hours a day, and rarely went to any social entertainment except an occasional public dinner.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] _Mexico as I saw It_ quickly passed into a second edition in spite of its price, and then fell out of print. Nearly ten years later Nelson and Sons decided to add it to their shilling Library of Travel. Strange as it may appear, not a single copy of the old edition was on the market anywhere, and we had to advertise three times before we could get a dirty copy to tear to pieces for correction for the printers. In August, 1911, the cheap edition was selling in thousands on the railway bookstalls of Great Britain.