ALONG OUR SIDE OF THE MEXICAN BORDER 



67 



Photograph from Frank H. Probert 



AN ORNATE WROUGHT-IRON GATEWAY TO ONE OE MEXICO'S CITIES OE THE DEAD 



Many of the cemeteries of the southern republic suggest the catacombs of Rome and the 

 Campo Santo of Genoa. Tombs are rented by the month or year, and when the relatives of 

 the departed fail to pay the fee required, the sheeted dead are unceremoniously dispossessed, 

 their bones being thrown upon a pile where hundreds of others have suffered a like fate. 



to mail bullfight or ballerina picture pos- 

 tals to the home folks to show that the 

 writer has been "gay, blithe, and devilish 

 in foreign parts." 



It is a typical Mexican frontier town 

 of squat, one-story adobe houses (plas- 

 tered and painted light blue or pink), of 

 ticndas, plazas, casinos, bull rings, Chi- 

 nese restaurants, curio stores, and often 

 a few lurking American derelicts waiting 

 here till the sheriffs in their home towns 

 are dead. 



Like the natives of Nogales, Agua 

 Prieta, and Xaco, most of the peons of 

 Juarez make a living by working in the 

 adjacent American border town — swarm- 

 ing to the American side, carrying babies 

 and bundles, when the rebel alarm is 

 raised. From Juarez, Mexican railways 



lead off south, connecting with most im- 

 portant interior cities. 



ONLY EIGHT INCHES OE RAINFALL ALONG 

 THE LINE 



From the point at Monument Xo. I 

 where the boundary line crawls out of 

 the Rio Grande (at the southeast corner 

 of New Mexico"), it strikes west into a 

 wilderness of singularly dry and empty 

 aspect. For 40 miles along this march 

 the traveler must carry his own water. 



Near Columbus a few small trees ap- 

 pear, and here, too, a wagon trail from 

 Deming down to the American Mormon 

 colonies in Chihuahua crosses the border. 



To the west lie the rough, hostile foot- 

 hills of the Dog Mountains ; near here, 

 in the San Luis 'Range, the line reaches 



