Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond By Harry A. Franck Author Of   "A Vagabond Journey Around The World,"   "Zone Policeman 88,"   etc. Illustrated With Photographs By The Author To The Mexican Peon With Sincerest Wishes For His Ultimate Emancipation This simple story of a journey southward grew up of itself. Planning a comprehensive exploration of South America, I concluded to reach that continent by some less monotonous route than the steamship's track; and herewith is presented th

You are really in Mexico before you get there. Laredo is a purely—though not pure—Mexican town with a slight American tinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly about trying to sell sticks of candy and the like from boards carried on their heads. There are not a dozen shops where the clerks speak even good pidgin English, most signs are in Spanish, the lists of voters on the walls are chiefly of Iberian origin, the very county officers from sheriff down—or up—are names the average Ameri

Heavy weather still hung over the land to the southward. Indian corn, dry and shriveled, was sometimes shocked as in the States. The first field of maguey appeared, planted in long rows, barely a foot high, but due in a year or two to produce pulque, the Mexican scourge, because of its cheapness, stupefying the poorer classes. When fresh, it is said to be beneficial in kidney troubles and other ailments, but soon becomes over-fermented in the pulquerías of the cities and more harmful than a stro

A classmate of my boyhood was superintendent of the group of mines round about Guanajuato. From among them we chose "Pingüico" for my temporary employment. The ride to it, 8200 feet above the sea, up along and out of the gully in which Guanajuato is built, and by steep rocky trails sometimes beside sheer mountain walls, opens out many a marvelous vista; but none to compare with that from the office veranda of the mine itself. Two thousand feet below lies a plain of Mexico's great table-land, str

With the coming of November I left Guanajuato behind. The branch line down to Silao was soon among broad plains of corn, without rocks even along the flat, ragged, country roads, bringing to mind that it was long since I had walked on level and unobstructed ground. The crowding of the second-class car forced me to share a bench with a chorus girl of the company that had been castilianizing venerable Broadway favorites in Guanajuato's chief theater. She was about forty, looked it with compound in

My compatriot strongly opposed my plan of walking to Uruapan—at least without an armed guard! The mountains were full of bandits, the Tarascan Indians, living much as they did at the time of the Conquest, did not even speak Spanish, they were unfriendly to whites, and above all dangerously superstitious on the subject of photography. There are persons who would consider it perilous to walk the length of Broadway, and lose sight even of the added attraction of that reputed drawback. I was off at

The El Paso Limited picked me up again twenty-four hours later. Beyond Querétaro's ungainly aqueduct spread fields of tobacco, blooming with a flower not unlike the lily; then vast, almost endless stretches of dead, dry corn up low heights on either hand, and occasional fields of maguey in soldierly files. At San Juan del Rio, famous for its lariats, a dozen men and a woman stood in a row, some forty feet from the train, holding coils of woven-leather ropes of all sizes, but in glum and hopeless

It is merely a long jump with a drop of two thousand feet from Orizaba to Córdoba. But the train takes eighteen miles of winding, squirming, and tunneling to get there. On the way is some of the finest scenery in Mexico. The route circles for miles the yawning edge of a valley dense with vegetation, banana and orange trees without number, with huts of leaves and stalks tucked away among them, myriads of flowers of every shade and color, and here and there coffee bushes festooned with their red b

The three of us were off by the time the day had definitely dawned. Ems carried a heavy suitcase, and Dakin an awkward bundle. My own modest belongings rode more easily in a rucksack. A mile walk along an unused railroad, calf-high in jungle grass, brought us to a wooden bridge across the wide but shallow Suchiate, bounding Mexico on the south. Across its plank floor and beyond ran the rails of the "Pan-American," but the trains halt at Mariscal because Guatemala, or more exactly Estrada Cabrera

The train carried me back up the river to Zacapa, desert dry and stingingly hot with noonday. Report had it that there was a good road to Jocotán by way of Chiquimula, but the difference between a "buen camino" and a mere "road" is so slight in Central America that I concluded to follow the more direct trail. The next essential was to change my wealth into Honduranean silver, chiefly in coins of one real , corresponding in value to an American nickel; for financial transactions were apt to be pe

A monotonous wide path full of loose stones led through dry, breathless jungle across the valley floor to Comayagua. The former capital of the republic had long held a place in my imagination, and the distant view of it the day before from the lofty rim of the valley backed by long blue ranges of mountains had enhanced my desire to visit the place, even though it lay somewhat off the direct route. But romance did not long survive my entrance. For the most part it was merely a larger collection o