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In Quest Of El Dorado

Stephen Graham

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IN QUEST OF EL DORADO

IN QUEST OF EL DORADO

IN QUEST OF EL DORADO BY STEPHEN GRAHAM AUTHOR OF "EUROPE—WHITHER BOUND?" "TRAMPING WITH A PORT IN THE ROCKIES," ETC. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK :: :: MCMXXIII COPYRIGHT. 1923. BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To The literary memory of my friend Wilfrid Ewart Accidentally shot at Mexico City Old Year's Night, 1922...

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PREFACE

PREFACE

Having voyaged twice to America from British ports and once from Copenhagen, I determined on my fourth visit to approach America from Spain and try to follow Columbus's keel over the waters. This study of the quest of El Dorado is mostly on the trail of the Spaniards. The motive of the first explorers and pioneers was generally the quest of gold. And even to-day most people who seek America do so to make money, many to make a fortune. There is, therefore, a continuity through the centuries of th

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I carried on my shoulder through the streets of Madrid Maria del Carmen de Silva y Azlor de Aragon. She was too proud to admit that she was tired, but was ready to accept the unexampled adventure of being carried in that way. Beside us prattled her brother, Xavier de Silva y Azlor de Aragon, called Chippy for short. They are beautiful, evanescent-looking children, fairies rather than boy and girl, and nothing like the swarthy barefooted urchins who beg of you, who want to clean your boots, who w

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You enter Spain through glass doors and see written up "Silence." You open your guidebook and find you are looking at Exhibit A. I have been told that Spain is like Russia, but there is this difference. Belief in Russia will survive the decease of Russia by at least five hundred years. Something is coming out of Russia : yes, but out of Spain—? No one goes to Spain to see the future. Many go there to see the past, sticking out as it were through the present. And so with me—to make a sentimental

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Spain's positive contribution to civilization is a sense of human dignity. This is shown in private life by elaborate manners and the instinctive respect of man for man. Other nations used to have it; it is a marked characteristic of Shakespearian drama, but revolutions have removed it. In Spain there is a delicacy of approach to strangers and even to friends which is unknown in the rest of the world. The bows, the marked attentions, the gravity and stately style of the Spaniard contrast remarka

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With all that, however, let a caveat be entered. The Spanish hold something which is increasingly valuable in our modern human society because it is all the while getting rarer—the gold of good manners. That is true, and must remain after all adverse criticism of the race. But the Spanish have a negative characteristic which through the centuries has outraged the fellow-feelings of the rest of humanity, and that is cruelty, a lust for torture. The Auto de Fe, the ordeals of the Inquisition dunge

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On the Texan Border where under United States law bullfighting is forbidden, the Spanish population still have mock bullfights at religious festivals. In these you may see Sancho Panza mounted on a turbulent ass as picador, and a lot of very broad farce. But there is often a religious element; the matador coming forth as Christ, and the bull, all in red, as Satan. A remarkable reversal of Christian symbolism this—He who returned to Malchus the ear which Peter had struck off will destroy evil wit

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CHAPTER II EN ROUTE FOR CADIZ

CHAPTER II EN ROUTE FOR CADIZ

Travelling by way of Rouen and Chartres to Burgos and Toledo, and by way of Bordeaux to Cordoba and Cadiz prompts certain comparisons—Spain is grander than France; France has more life. The note of the Gothic is aspiration out of stone, but that of the Moorish is barbaric splendor within stone. The asceticism of stone reigns at Durham, at Rouen, and is somehow transfigured into the loveliness of doves' plumage at Chartres, but in the Spanish cathedrals speaks chiefly gold. It is the same at Burg

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We left the beautiful harbor of Cadiz, with its white houses and palm trees and its daintily silhouetted towers and turrets, and the shores unclasped the blue bay and we rode upon the billows of the ocean. The ship was a Spaniard and all the people on it were Spanish or West Indian, and the voyage we were making was the one Columbus made, seeking a new way to India and coming upon the Indies. And the first evening and every evening we pushed "our prows into the setting sun," not seeking, of cour

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Each still night we seem to pass through something, as it were through mists and veils which are hiding something new. Each morning we rush on to the decks whilst they are still wet and the Castilian sailors are swabbing them. We peer with glasses over the virginal, fresh, foaming blue. The sailors go. The sun dries the timbers. We partake of coffee and smoke a sweet-scented Habana cigarette. The sailors return and pull up white canvas awnings at the cracks and at the sides of which glimmers blu

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We enter the harbor of San Juan de Porto Rico and leisurely pass the old stone castle on the rock and the Spanish fortifications. They look to be several centuries older than they are and are not unlike the weather-beaten ruins at the entrance to old ports on the east of Scotland. They mounted Spanish guns but were without power to repel the North American invader of 1898. The island was then wrested from Spain and added territorially to the United States. Natives of Porto Rico are now ipso fact

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CHAPTER IV PORTO RICO

CHAPTER IV PORTO RICO

Porto Rico was discovered by Columbus in 1493, and he entered the port of San Juan, naming it San Juan de Porto Rico—St. John of the Fine Harbor—hence the name of the island itself—Porto Rico. The Indians there were in a low state of civilization and showed little sign of wealth. The island seems at first to have presented less interest than its neighbors: Santo Domingo became the beloved of Columbus, Cuba became the chief Spanish base for exploration and conquest. Porto Rico enjoyed therefore c

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Over the sea in a tiny boat to the island of Haiti, and to the eastern half of it which is called Santo Domingo. The voyage is still westward and along the eighteenth parallel and not for long out of sight of land, be it the northern shore of Porto Rico or the southern shore of Santo Domingo. The sea reeks with warm exhalations, and in the turgid water lurk sharks. Don't fall off the ship as she lurches and rolls and you hold to the ropes—you may not be saved if you do. Twenty-four hours brings

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Though at first sight the population of the capital of the Dominican Republic may strike the traveler as being wholly black, there are nevertheless a number of persons of fairer complexion—the people of the first families, the aristokratia . One or two of these are German. These keep within their houses more than do the Negroes who trade and traffic and gossip in market place and main street. The island has a bad history. Columbus loved it as the first large materialization of his dream of a bey

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I have heard it said in London that those who live in half-houses are the aristocrats of the slums. The quaint expression may also be applied to the colored folk who live in cabins. They are the black aristocracy of the islands. It was in vain that I pitied the plight of the dwellers in the marine- and saffron-colored dolls' houses of Porto Rico. The real underdog of these parts does not pretend to any little wooden hut. He lives gregariously in the bush like the larvae of the Lackey Moth. He sq

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I was not fortunate enough to be present at a fête on the French part of the island—the Republic of Haiti—but I obtained the impression that the Haitians are much wilder than the Dominicans. The Negroes do not readily identify their needs, they are more ebullient, more pious, and I should say more haunted by a prehistoric past than are the Spaniards. Nothing is more serene, more utterly sweet, than Mass as sung in the great Cathedral at Port au Prince. But the scene outside the Cathedral for a s

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The time came for me to move on from an extremely interesting island. I wished a passage to Vera Cruz or Jamaica or Colon, but the chance of small vessels sailing adventitiously seemed to determine my way. I went to Puerto Plata and thence to Santiago de Cuba, of Cortes' memory, city of which he was Mayor, city which provided much of the capital for his adventure to Mexico. Here is Puerto Plata, on the northern shore of Santo Domingo, the Spanish-speaking part; Puerto Plata, the Plate port, a fi

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There must be twenty thousand mendicant venders of lottery tickets in Cuba, from ragged urchins to reputable graybeards wearing straw hats and carefully creased trousers. These friars of chance know no shame, and are more persistent than bluebottles, coming to you five or six times after having been sent off. They shout the number of their series and whisk the red sheets in your face, knowing that you have no redress against them—for they are in a way Government servants, or at least Government

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Of course it is possible to see Cuba in a more pleasant light. There is much glamour over Cuba if you half close your eyes. It is an ideal place for a wicked elopement. The hero of the Hergesheimer novel thither resorts. It is certainly the place for a good cigar. Cuba has become a sportsman's island, the place par excellence where an American can get a drink. The characteristic sound of the towns is the rattle of ice in the inverted metal tumblers where the cocktail is coming to birth. The cock

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Cuba is the largest and the richest of the West India islands, and has attracted more colonists, more financial capital, and more attention than the rest. It must be thought, however, that the Spaniards from the first were ill-fitted to possess it. For from the time of the crafty and mean Velasquez, who wrought for the ruin of Cortes, until the Spanish-American war it is a pitiful history. Since that war the history of Cuba has had a problematical aspect. In 1898 the United States made war on Sp

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CHAPTER VII AT SANTA FE

CHAPTER VII AT SANTA FE

Judging the tropics in midsummer to be too tiring, I decided to postpone our journey to Panama and Mexico until autumn and winter. Balboa climbed that peak in Darien in September. That should be my month for going there. So we went, for the rest of the summer, to La Ciudad Real de Santa Fe , away in the Southern Rockies upon the borderland of Mexico. That was no small journey from Habana—two days in a fruit boat to New Orleans, then in a Gulf train to Houston and San Antonio, half across the Tex

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CHAPTER VIII COWBOYS

CHAPTER VIII COWBOYS

When Thorp took horses up to pasture we sometimes went also. That meant a ten-mile ride up into the greener heights of the mountains, the leaving of the horses in a roughly wired inclosure, a picnic lunch, and then a ten-mile ride back in the evening. On these occasions Jack would be in old weather-beaten chaparreras (leg aprons of leather) and there would be a ready coil of rope on the horn of his saddle. Five or six loose horses would be driven ahead of us, and as like as not a mare and foal.

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CHAPTER IX INDIANS

CHAPTER IX INDIANS

The story of the Indians in America is the story of the weak in the presence of the strong. Despite the ideals which reign in capitals and cultural centers it is always the same with the main body of the human race—the strong may pity the weak but they will not forbear to use the advantage of their strength. There is little to choose between Spaniards and English. There is little to choose between any of the races; Belgians in the Congo, Portuguese in Brazil, Russians in Turkestan; they have dis

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CHAPTER X MEXICANS OF NEW MEXICO

CHAPTER X MEXICANS OF NEW MEXICO

New Mexico is the only Catholic State in the Union. Maryland has the tradition of Catholicism, but New Mexico has the verisimilitude of a Latin country in Europe. When, in 1848, it was annexed to the United States, or, let us say, in 1850, when it was organized as a territorial possession, or, in 1863, when it was reshaped,—it has had many birthdays—it was entirely Spanish-speaking and Catholic. The population now is five times as great as it was then. The Mexicans have prospered and multiplied;

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CHAPTER XI FROM NEW MEXICO TO THE ISTHMUS

CHAPTER XI FROM NEW MEXICO TO THE ISTHMUS

From the dry, bracing, upper air of Santa Fe, where you may ride for long without raising a moist particle on your brow, down to hot and humid New Orleans, where, without stirring a muscle, you perspire at all pores and your body flows away from you to the wide Mississippi; it is a striking climatic transit—the latitude is much the same, a difference of five degrees north, but there are seven thousand feet and the desert behind you; water's-edge, the Mississippi Delta, and the Gulf in front. Fro

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Columbus sought first a new way to India and glory for Spain, and then his followers sought gold and gems. Spain made a rapid transit in Time. For, as a young man has visions and the mature seek fame, so the old and disillusioned turn cynically to gold as the only substance which in the end will not disappoint its possessor. Spain became old suddenly. Was it rapacity bred decay, or decay rapacity? Even the Indians, who admired all else, laughed at the Spanish lust for gold. It was given to "the

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San Salvador is a long strip of low-lying shore, a platform above the sea, and at night a lighthouse beaming over the dark ocean. It is a shore and it is a light. That is what it was then, "the other side," and the light of Salvation. The story of the first islands, those bits of Paradise vouchsafed to lost mariners, is pitiful and tragic; the story of the mainland, the Spanish Main, is violent and sinful. Adam voluntarily banished himself from Eden a second time. With the banners of the Church

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Neighbor to Nombre de Dios upon the Spanish Main is Puerto Bello, which afterward became the anchorage of the Treasure Fleet. But Puerto Bello also was destroyed and also by one of Albion's hateful isle, though he was by no means a true hero of romance—Henry Morgan the pirate. He blew it up; he marched with his crew, cutlass in hand, across the Isthmus, and fired Panama too, or caused the Spaniards in defense to fire it, thus wrecking the fairest city of its time in America, a city of seven thou

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It was in the Forbidden Country that William Paterson landed in 1698 with twelve hundred men, gentlemen of Scotland, clansmen, old soldiers, traders, and uncovered on Darien's shore the banner of St. Andrew blessed at Leith at parting. And they mounted fifty guns and called the fort New St. Andrew, and proceeded to organize a trade road through the jungle, a mere fifty miles to the other side, convinced that thereby the trade of the world would begin to pass through their hands. The expedition f

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Religious geography is part of the art of living. To come to each new place on the chart called Earth, not in a spirit of mere jollity but with some reverence, gives a richness to life. Whilst some seek gold, others seek spiritual gold, the soul's possession, which is neither sentimental nor unreal but is indeed the one substance out of which in the beginning all things were made. The apology of a world traveler that he did not see the Pacific before, from the heights of Tehuantepec, from the Go

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Balboa, it is said, knelt on the mountain alone, and then his comrades came and planted a cross. And the pious chronicler avers that Te Deum Laudamus and Te Dominum Confitemur were sung. The dog Leoncico barked for joy. Balboa in a loud voice claimed all that was visible for the King of Spain, and the lawyer whom they had brought along drew up a deed which was signed by sixty-seven Spaniards—all that was left of the original hundred and ninety. Balboa then marched to the sea. Pizarro, one of his

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From the Jungle to the Canal is almost as great a leap as to New York itself—out of barbarism to the most advanced post of civilization, the place where in all the world the Stars and Stripes wave most proudly. President Roosevelt obtained almost as great prestige by the Canal of Panama as Disraeli did by that of Suez. In England he would have had more, but America ten years ago was not as sensible of the value of an ocean key as she is now. Disraeli never needed to make speeches on how he acqui

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Though I did not visit Nicaragua in these journeyings I think some notes on its position necessary to this study. It is the State next but one north of Panama, and is separated by the small State of Costa Rica. Though Nicaragua is broader than Panama from ocean to ocean, it has always been considered as possessing an alternative territory for a canal. This is owing to its large lake and existing waterways. British capitalists have in time past considered the feasibility of financing the construc

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CHAPTER XIV THE CANAL

CHAPTER XIV THE CANAL

They tease the American children born in the Canal Zone and call them "speakity babies," but the same children, when they grow up a little, are proud of their birthplace and say— "I'm a Calzone boy!" "I'm a Calzone girl!" And there's a crowd of them, a real new generation of imperial Americans rising in health and pride from what was once jungle and pestilence—the "white man's grave." The Spanish Negro natives, now generally called "Spigs," are slow to learn English, and to what they learn they

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CHAPTER XV PANAMA TO NEW YORK

CHAPTER XV PANAMA TO NEW YORK

I sailed to New York from Colon on one of those transports designed for the use of Canal employees. When the berths are not all taken by officials and their wives the remainder are sold to the general traveling public. The distance of the voyage in nautical miles is 1974, in dollars it is a hundred, and in time it is six days. The accommodation is one class only, with no steerage passengers. It meant six more lazy days similar to those spent sailing from New Orleans. The passengers seemed merrie

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"We don't know where we are going, but we're on the way," runs a light-hearted, popular saying. "Heaven or Hell—which?" the evangelists ask in one breath. No national answer will be given to the query, but if some one replies "Hell," no one will be greatly shocked, whereas, if some one replies "Heaven," his neighbor will turn upon him with a smile and a rude handshake and a "I'm with you, so glad that you're on our side." If you say, "Roses spring up in the footsteps of America," Americans will

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In England and Scotland the working-class population far exceeds in number the middle and upper classes. Enfranchised as it is, men and women both, it has the political power to seize the reins of government and take control into its hands. In America the situation is considerably different. Numerous as is the working class in America, it is outnumbered by the middle class. And the middle class is more comfortable, more self-assured, than that class in England. In England many middle-class peopl

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American commerce, therefore, enjoys a remarkable sense of security. No draught blows from Russia or elsewhere into the comfortable interior where the game is being played. Production on an ever grander scale is achieved; the wealth of the nation is enhanced, the buying power of every individual is increased, the triumphs of salesmanship are eclipsed, the glory of the great firms is brighter and fuller, their advertisements more extensive. The enormous production is a fact, and not to be gainsai

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Meanwhile American prosperity increases on a grand scale, and the chief sign of it is increased leisure. The leisure class grows. It far outnumbers the leisure class of England or of any other nation. There are more Americans than English at Monte Carlo, more Americans in Switzerland, in Egypt, on the Norwegian fjords, in Athens, in Rome, in Northern Africa. There are many thousands of leisure Americans in London and at the shrines of England and ensconced in English country houses or enjoying t

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But of course it is not the four hundred of New York who are New York, but, as O. Henry briefly and brilliantly suggested in his book of stories, it is the four million—and no upper four thousand or upper forty thousand can be America. Indeed, in many vital matters, the forty thousand have been thwarted by the hundred million. The forty thousand did not want Prohibition and they were not eager for the enfranchisement of women. The forty thousand at least professed themselves in favor of the Vers

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One thing the hundred million will not tolerate in their midst and that is, a foreign point of view in morals. The "dago" will do things no "white man" will stand. So also will the Hun and the "Hunky," the Slav, the "Greaser," the "nigger." An associating of foreigners with unnatural vice is all too common. The fairskinned Anglo-Saxon, despite all admixtures, remains the dominant type. He rejects the melting pot. He alone is the hundred-per-cent American and will not be adulterated. He is oppose

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Provincialism is widely spread. People are not only ill-informed regarding foreign countries, but credulous, and the press reflects their state of mind. A country like Russia might almost be in the moon, to judge by current opinions concerning her. Doubtless it would be absurd to go to America to obtain information about Europe. On the other hand, education goes further in America than in any other country. You often hear exaggerated statements of what the Russian Bolsheviks are doing for the ed

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Where is it all going? Is it drifting southward as I am, to Mexico, to Empire? Will it stay where it is and wax more illustrious? "Tell me where you have come from and I will tell you where you are going," saith the Cynic. "An evil crow, an evil egg." America as a nation was born in the throes of the War of North and South. Or it rose out of Washingtonian independence and Jeffersonian idealism. Or it arose from the Puritanism of the Pilgrim Fathers, or from the adventure spirit of the gentlemen

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CHAPTER XVII ACROSS AMERICA NORTH TO SOUTH

CHAPTER XVII ACROSS AMERICA NORTH TO SOUTH

Ewart was much surprised by the politeness of Chicago. If he made a mistake in New York, such as to bring his lighted cigarette into a car of the overhead railway, he met with such rebukes as Put that cigarette out! Put-it-OUT! But as the porter put our bags into the cab at Chicago he cried out to us: "Good luck, boys!" and gave us a cheery salute. Perhaps we overtipped him. And when we got to Santa Fe a salesman in a shop selling Ewart a shirt called him "brother"—"This pattern, brother, is wha

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One of the poets at Santa Fe had decided to return East and finish a University course which he had broken by a year of freedom and poetry in New Mexico. So Wilfrid Ewart bought his horse, an Indian pony, white, small-footed, and wiry, and named as it were facetiously, "George." He proved too short for a man of six feet two, but except at starting, when he sometimes refused to budge for five minutes, he went as well as the other two horses, Billy and Buck. He proved to be branded with the mark o

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The Jemez Dance used to be one of the finest and most elaborate of the Indian dances, and the tribe, living more remotely, had kept itself more fresh and vivid and unspoiled than for instance the Tesuque Indians, the pets of the artists, who dance on the same day. But the growth of the great city of Albuquerque and the development of the high road to Jemez Springs have attracted the gaze of the white man in all its vulgar curiosity and ignorance. I do not speak of artists and poets, who are as r

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The night after the dance there was a fight between the Navajos and the Apaches, two or three score of the latter having ridden in and begun strutting through the pueblo with their orange-colored scarves and big feathers in their dark sombreros. They and the Navajos were the fiercest of the Indians and used to ravage the whole country even down as far as Chihuahua in Old Mexico. And they are still warlike people, ready to start strife on a slight pretext. The Navajos are especially untamable. Th

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CHAPTER XIX THE DANCE OF THE ZUNYI INDIANS

CHAPTER XIX THE DANCE OF THE ZUNYI INDIANS

At the end of November I went to Cibola, which had been the goal, four hundred years ago, of Coronado and his companions. I had hoped to ride over the ground of Cortes' conquest of Mexico first and then follow the adventures of Coronado and his companions who followed the golden vision of Cibola northward. Thus I should have kept to the historical sequence—Columbus and the Indies, 1492, Balboa and the Pacific, 1513, Cortes and Montezuma, 1521, Coronado, 1541. But life and death break up elaborat

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Its discovery was part of the fruitless quest of El Dorado by Coronado—the greatest hole in the world and nothing in it. He had hoped to find another Mexico in the North and despoil it of its jewels. Like the Vandal he was, he plunged into the American Sahara to loot another Rome. Cibola and Quivira were his glittering dreams. He rode in all two thousand miles, cactus and alkali-whitened plains all the way. He fought not men but deserts; instead of storied Cibola he found the mud huts of the Zun

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CHAPTER XXI GOOD-BY TO THE HORSES

CHAPTER XXI GOOD-BY TO THE HORSES

Returning from Grand Cañon we discussed plans for the coming year. Ewart had his Scots Guards history, which he ought to finish by the summer, and then he was going North to the Canadian Line, and proposed to make a study of the relationship of the two peoples, Canadian and American, for a book to be called "The Unguarded Line." I had in mind to go to Mexico, continuing this study of the quest of El Dorado along the traces of Cortes' conquest. The severity of the Santa Fe winter decided Ewart ag

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CHAPTER XXII THE GOLD

CHAPTER XXII THE GOLD

Mexico is a country marked for conquest. It is no doubt the most romantic country of the New World but its history has been the most sordid. It is gilded with tales of fortune and wonder. Even its sunsets must seem of a more marvelous coloring than those of other shores. It has been, and is, a land of riches. And it has for that reason attracted the violence of mankind. Even before the Spaniards came Mexico lived in a state of war. Empire had succeeded Empire. The crushing of the Aztecs by Corte

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CHAPTER XXIII APPROACHING MEXICO FROM THE NORTH

CHAPTER XXIII APPROACHING MEXICO FROM THE NORTH

It came as a pleasant surprise, upon entering Mexican territory, to receive gold coins in exchange for paper money. Mexico since 1920 has had a gold and silver currency and no bank notes. All the depreciated paper has been withdrawn from circulation, and there is that much wealth in the Estados Unidos Mexicanos which obtains in no European country to-day, a stability of the value of money. One certainly feels as if one had in one's possession something real—with a pocketful of handsome gold piec

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CHAPTER XXIV AT MONTEZUMA'S CAPITAL

CHAPTER XXIV AT MONTEZUMA'S CAPITAL

Here the event happened which saddened the year: my friend was killed. Wilfrid Ewart, to whose genius and person I was devoted, and who in turn was very fond of us, was shot on Old Year's Night, a lamentable taking off over which one can never cease to grieve. Arrived at Mexico City my wife and I sped along the Avenue Juarez to the Hotel Cosmos where we spent a night. Next day we repaired to the quieter and more comfortable Iturbide, a fine old structure built around stone courts and a garden of

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1. Cortes

1. Cortes

Yucatan, the site of the ruins of the Maya civilization, was the first part of Mexico to be discovered, for it was the point of the mainland nearest to the Indies. De Cordova visited it in 1516-1517; Juan de Grijalva called there in 1518 and going further, searched the coast of the Gulf for islets. He was recalled and dishonored, though it is recorded that he was a most honorable man. Honor among pirates is no saving virtue. Cortes followed him, and he had the craft and style to play hero or vil

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2. Vera Cruz

2. Vera Cruz

Mexico City had become haunted for us since Wilfrid Ewart's death, and we were glad when occasion offered to go down to the lower country, to Vera Cruz and the historical country between that city and the capital. Up and down these heights soldiers have constantly streamed in battle. It is Mexico's fighting ground, scene of her victories and of her defeats. Of the port of Vera Cruz, the old Villa Rica, I will say little except that it has become a place of great commercial and military importanc

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3. The City of Jalap

3. The City of Jalap

Cortes marched up to it from the sea. Montezuma's messengers met him with golden ducks, discs of the sun in gold, large stones of jade, gifts of plumed armor and golden arrows, and they prayed him to go away. Jalapa was the chief city of the Totonac Indians—it was a city of flowers; there were silver houses there. There were blood altars. Cortes said "No," he would not go away till he had delivered in person a message which he bore from the King of Spain. That message he invented—but he had a me

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4. At Tlaxcala

4. At Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala surely is the most romantic place in Mexico, the little mountain city whence Cortes gleaned his greatest allies, an Indian Sparta. The Tlascaltecs displayed a devotion to the Spaniards which in its unthinking generosity was very characteristic of the Indians. At a word from Malinche, as they affectionately called him, they even changed their religion and consented to be baptized. They never foresaw how the Spaniards in victory would prove ungrateful. They reinforced Cortes in thousands

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5. The Pyramid of Cholula

5. The Pyramid of Cholula

Since the discovery of the tomb of King Tut-ankh-a-men there has been in Mexico an amusing feeling of jealousy of Egypt. The era of the mythical Atlantis has been pitted against the era of the biblical Pharaohs. Archeologists in Yucatan are reputed to be digging feverishly for some remains of the Maya civilization which will divert the interest of the world from Luxor. I have, however, stood in the Kings Chamber in the center of Cheops Pyramid and now I have stood on the apex of the great pyrami

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6. Tenochtitlan

6. Tenochtitlan

Puebla, the third largest city in modern Mexico, has grown up near Cholula—one of the few cities that has no Indian history behind it. Puebla was built by the Spaniards and exclusively populated by Spaniards. There at least the Indian woman was not a bride. Something purely Spanish was bred there—as a racial bulwark against possible foes. It remains to-day the most Spanish of all the cities of Mexico and therefore the most conservative and the most unalterably Catholic. Puebla is a beautiful and

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7. In the Marquisate of Oaxaca

7. In the Marquisate of Oaxaca

Cortes was recognized and rewarded and he made a happy end of life. He overcame all the intrigues. His success, like a rising sun, triumphed over all mists and clouds and at its zenith shone over half the world. His Emperor honored him and granted to him and his heirs in perpetuity the lands of the Valley of Oaxaca with all the wealth therein contained, both potential and actual. On the strength of it the Cortes of to-day ought to be Morgans or Rothschilds. Oaxaca is one of the most golden valle

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8. Under the Great Tree of Tule

8. Under the Great Tree of Tule

The greatest tree in the Americas, though not the highest, is in the far south of Mexico at Tule, some ten miles from Oaxaca; the highest and perhaps the oldest is to be found among the Californian sequoias. But in girth and grandeur the cypress of our Lady of Tule has no rival. The Aztecs called it the Ahuehuetl, but it was a fine old tree at the dawn of their history. It must have been a great tree in the time of the Toltecs and was before them too. Perhaps some Emperor planted it two thousand

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9. From the Ruins of Mitla

9. From the Ruins of Mitla

Mitla is the American Luxor, and in the quieter days of Diaz' rule in Mexico many were the travelers who went there, to gaze and wonder. The ruins are those of some great city of a bygone civilization but what civilization, whose civilization, none can tell. History does not work for them as for the ruins of ancient Athens or Thebes—for they are entirely without record and their story, whatever it may be, interweaves in no way with the story of mankind as we know it. How rash the Outline of Hist

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10. Ad Astra

10. Ad Astra

The story of gold commences in Genesis when of a certain country we are told "The gold of that land is good." It does not say for what or for whom it was good. It was just good. Gold is good: that was in the beginning. Primitive man held gold in his hand as children do bright pebbles and he was pleased with it, as God the Creator Himself was reputed to be pleased with the world when He had made it. Man in the earliest days kept the gold which he picked up, made a possession of it, fought to keep

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