ADVENTURING DOWN THE WEST COAST OF MEXICO 



487 



Trains do not hurry away from the 

 stations in this country. The engineer 

 whistles ; then he whistles again. The 

 sleepers who have been dozing alongside 

 the track, in the shade of the cars, reluc- 

 tantly rise. The roadside saleswomen 

 put away their offerings of tomatoes, 

 onions, coffee, cakes, and bread. 



The sucking of oranges begins again in 

 the cars, along with gossip and cigarettes. 

 Every one is friendly and happy. Some- 

 times the train halts for a group of fren- 

 zied riders to catch it through a mounting 

 cloud of dust. The officers, in puttees 

 and Sam Brown belts and revolvers, buy 

 innumerable bottles of beer at a peso a 

 bottle and gurgle it from the bottle 

 mouth. Dust sweeps in through the open 

 window. 



The man in the seat ahead carried a 

 fish to the drinking - water tank and 

 cleaned it. Then he wrapped it in wet 

 grass and hung it to the coat-rack, so that 

 it dripped upon his shoulder. 



Intimate domesticities are observed 

 here and there. The woman in the seat 

 behind obeyed at last the squalled remon- 

 strances of a very hungry baby. 



From the ancient first-class car, in 

 which one rode upon once-plush seats, I 

 could see through the open doors into the 

 third-class car ahead. The Indians sat 

 on backless benches, worn smooth and 

 beautifully colored by age and friction, 

 and leaned forward, their beady eyes 

 fixed unwinkingly on the gentlefolk in 

 the first-class car. 



A sixteen-year-old girl changed her 

 blouse and did up her hair. No one gave 

 her a second glance or thought. 



At the wayside stations small naked 

 babies pattered about. They were the 

 most delightful little rascals, brown and 

 fat and gay. 



The zopilotes abound. They became 

 an obsession of Adams. He was forever 

 stalking these obscene birds ; so that his 

 collection of buzzard pictures is, perhaps, 

 the finest in Christendom (see page 474). 



Hereabouts the Mayo Indians are the 

 preferred laborers. They may or may 

 not be the remnant of the ancient Maya 

 tribe, which built such superb monuments 

 in Guatemala and Yucatan. 



It seems unlikely. The Maya civiliza- 

 tion was of a rather high order, while 



these squarely-built, strong, five-foot 

 chaps seem stupid. They prefer not to 

 live in houses, and many a time a ranch- 

 man has established a new family in a 

 good hut, to find them next morning 

 crouched under a ragged blanket stretched 

 upon a bush. 



The port of Los Mochis is Topolo- 

 bampo. Once it had hopes. That was 

 when Americans planned to build a rail- 

 road across the mountains from Kansas 

 City. A pier was constructed, the rot- 

 ting remains of which are still used when 

 an occasional boat drifts into the little 

 bay. A stub-end of railroad was built up 

 the Fuerte River. It should have met the 

 line which was being built through the 

 mountains, south from the border, but 

 by and by building stopped in the hills. 



All around Topolobampo is the weird, 

 mysterious bush, through which one- 

 mule-wide trails go winding. One won- 

 ders what is at the other end of the 

 trails — what can be at the other end. 



An occasional cow, bursting with fat- 

 ness, crops her way through the jungle. 

 Deer gaze mildly from the edge of the 

 narrow clearing through which the rail- 

 road runs. We hear of huge snakes — 



We refuse to listen to snake stories. 



SHRIMP SWEPT BY TIDE; INTO MOSQUITO- 

 INFESTED TRAPS 



The Indian meaning of Topolobampo 

 is Tiger Water, so called because the de- 

 clining rays of the sun, falling upon 

 waters that swarm with golden shrimp, 

 give the effect of a tiger's skin mottled in 

 purple and gilt and gray. 



Carloads of shrimp are sent from here 

 during the season to the United States. 

 They are caught in traps by heroic In- 

 dians as the tide sweeps them on. The 

 Indians are heroic, because no one else 

 can resist the masses of mosquitoes that 

 fight their way through the smoke of the 

 smudge that is tied alongside the trap. 

 The Indians work desperately with long 

 poles "to poke the big fish off/' as one 

 shrimper explained. 



Our entrance to Culiacan still pleases 

 me in retrospect; it was so unreal and 

 stagy. We tumbled down an embank- 

 ment that was fitfully lighted by tallow 

 candles, the beams from the headlight, 

 and the lanterns of the trainmen. A 



