On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

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Edwards William Seymour. On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

I. Flying Impressions Between Charleston-Kanawha and New Orleans

II. The Life and Color of New Orleans

III. Southwestward to the Border

IV. On to Mexico City

V. First Impressions of Mexico City

VI. Vivid Characteristics of Mexican Life

VII. A Mexican Bullfight

VIII. From Pullman Car to Mule-back

IX. A Journey Over Lofty Tablelands

X. A Provincial Despot and His Residence

XI. Inguran Mines – Five Thousand Six Hundred Feet Below Ario

XII. Antique Methods of Mining

XIII. Some Tropical Financial Morality

XIV. Wayside Incidents in the Land of Heat

XV. Morelia – The Capital of the State of Michoacan – Her Streets – Her Parks – Her Churches – Her Music

XVI. Morelia and Toluca – The Markets – The Colleges – The Schools – The Ancient and the Modern Spirit

XVII. Cuernavaca – The County Seat of Montezuma, of Cortez and Spanish Viceroys, of Maximilian – A Pleasant Watering Place of Modern Mexico

XVIII. The Journey by Night from Mexico City – Over the Mountains to the Sea Coast – The Ancient City of Vera Cruz

XIX. Voyaging Across the Gulf of Mexico and Straits of Yucatan from Vera Cruz to Progresso and Havana

XX. The City of “Habana” – Incidents of a Day’s Sojourn in the Cuban Capital

XXI. Cuba – The Fortress of La Cabaña

XXII. Cuba – Her Fertile Sugar Lands – Matanzas by the Sea

XXIII. Cuba – The Tobacco Lands of Guanajay – The Town and Bay of Mariel

XXIV. Steamer Mascot

Отрывок из книги

When the New York and Cincinnati Flyer (the “F. F. V. Limited”) came into Charleston yesterday, it was an hour late and quite a crowd was waiting to get aboard. Going with me as far as Kenova were D, H, and eight or ten of “the boys.” They all carried Winchesters and were bound on a trip to the mountains of Mingo and McDowell, on the Kentucky line, to capture a moonshine still which was reported to be doing a fine business selling to the mines. D wanted me to go along, and offered me a rifle or a shotgun, as I chose. They are big men, all of them, and love a scrap, which means the give and take of death, and have no fear except of ambush. I still carry in my pocket the flat-nosed bullet D took from the rifle of Johnse Hatfield two years ago, when he caught him lying-in-wait behind a rock watching for Doc. Ellis to come forth from his front door. Johnse was afterward hanged in Pikeville for other crimes. Then, a few months later, his brother “Lias,” just to get even, picked off Doc. Ellis as he was getting out of a Pullman car. Now “Lias” is said to be looking for D, also, but D says he’s as handy with his gun as “Lias” is, if only he can get a fair show. D is captain of this raid and promises to bring me tokens of a successful haul, but I am apprehensive that, one of these days, he or some other of “the boys” will not come back to Charleston.

At Ashland my Louisville car was attached to the Lexington train, and we turned to the left up the long grade and soon plunged into the hill country of eastern Kentucky. Here is a rough, harsh land, a poor, yellow soil, underlying miles of forest from which the big timber has long since been felled. Here and there small clearings contain log cabins, shack barns, and soil which must always produce crops as mean as the men who till it. We were traversing the land of the vendettas. At the little stations, long, lank, angular men were gathered, quite frequently with a rifle or a Winchester shotgun in their bony hands. It was only two or three years ago that one of these passenger trains was “held up,” by a rifle-armed gang, who found the man they were looking for crouching in the end of the smoker, and shot him to death right then and there – but not before he had killed two or three of the assassins.

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In the late afternoon we passed through Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, and could see in the distance the rising walls of the new statehouse, to be a white stone building of some pretentions. Here a number of Italians and Jews, well dressed and evidently well-to-do, entered our sleeper en route to New Orleans. The country trade of Mississippi is said to be now almost altogether in the hands of Jews and of Italians. The latter coming up from New Orleans, are acquiring many of the plantations in both Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as, in many cases, pushing out the blacks from the work on the plantations by reason of their superior intelligence, industry and thrift. A lull in Italian immigration followed the New Orleans massacre of the Mafia plotters some years ago, but that tragedy is now quite forgotten, and a steady influx of Italians of a better type has set in.

In the dining car, I sat at midday lunch with a round-faced, pleasant mannered man some forty years of age, with whom I fell into table chat. He was a writer on the staff of a western monthly magazine and was well acquainted with the country we were traversing. He pointed out places of local interest as we hurried southward, while many incidents of history were awakened in my own mind. All of this land of swamp and bayou and cotton field had been marched and fought over by the contending armies during the Civil War. Here Grant skirmished with Johnston and won his first great triumphs of strategy in the capture of Vicksburg. Here the cotton planters in “ye olden time” lived like lords and applauded their senators in Congress for declaring in public speech that “Mississippi and Louisiana wanted no public roads.” Here Spain and France contended for supremacy and finally yielded to the irresistible advance of the English-speaking American pioneer, pressing southwestward from Georgia, Carolina and Tennessee.

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