V 
TRIP TO MEXICO 
1899 
Good fortune smiled on me again when in the early 
spring of 1899 I was asked to join a party of scientists on 
a trip to Mexico. Mr. George W. Breckinridge of San Antonio 
had asked Major Button, who was then a resident of San Antonio, 
to accompany him on a visit to Mexico and to invite one or more 
scientists to join the party and the invj^tion was extended to 
me, as indicated by appended letters and telegram. I reported 
at San Antonio on April 1, 1899. 
Mr. Breckinridge is a banker and in appearance 
res edibles Secretary Langley. He is an agreeable man who 
enjoys outings of the kind proposed. G. K. Gilbert, the 
geologist, was invited to join the party which travelled by a 
special car by way of Monterey, Tampico, Orizaba, Cordoba, Vera 
Cruz to Mexico City, arriving on April 7. Our itinerary in- 
volved five or six trips with the City of Mexico as a starting 
point, some being for geological and others for archeological 
observations. Mr, W. W. Blake of Mexico City, an old friend 
of mine, joined us in some of our trips. 
The following quotation from a letter addressed to 
Mrs. Holmes from Orizaba on April 7, 1899, will give an in- 
formal touch to the otherwise formal accounts of the trip. It 
seems that my notes have largely disappeared and the only publi 
cation resulting from the trip is a study of the Obsidian mines 
(see paper on same, American Anthropologist , 1900) 
