—————__ Ee 
between a white man’s civilization 
and 12 or 15,000,000 of black faces 
who today live in the far past, back 
in dim centuries of ruins and des- 
potism, back in the days of wayside 
shrines, back in the age of peonage 
and squalid huts, back to the time 
of Egypt. 
But I am not writing history. I 
am not going te-tell you a lot about 
when this country was inhabited by 
a people who built great pyramids 
and greater cities and then dropped 
off the map. You don’t care for 
columns of dry talk about the Tol- 
tics, the Vikins, Cortez, the Aztecs 
(1196), ete. I am going to tell you 
a little about Las Vacas, San Carlos 
and the places where the tourist 
does not go. 
Las Vaeas, one straight street of 
business places, perhaps 600 popula- 
tion and not one soul who can speak 
the English language. Doesn’t a 
man think he must be dreaming? 
I tried it alone, without an inter- 
preter—started at one end of the 
street and went down the line, ta- 
king in everything from stores, bar- 
ber shops, saloons, hotels, ete. 
I wanted some Mexican money, 
so I went into a saloon (which is 
also. a. general store and a meat 
market) and bought drinks for four 
sons of Diaz, who weren’t working. 
I laid down an American silver dol- 
lar and got in change one dollar 
and eighty cents. They got mes- 
eal, beer, wines and some other of 
those concoctions, one of which, 
meseal, (made from the century 
plant) Texans say will make a rab- 
bit spit in a bull dog’s face and 
dare him to fight, and if a man 
takes on a few drinks he will fight 
himself if there is no Mexican handy 
to kill. 
I went to the garrison where the 
soldiers were. Not one of them 
could speak a word of English, but 
when I said New York,, they fell 
over themselves to try to entertain 
me. One of them broke off a foot 
or two of some kind of sugar cane 
and asked me to chew it. Some of 
them wore sandals—the old time 
sandals of Jerusalem—and how pit- 
iful it did seem to see these soldiers 
of a great(?) republic marching out 
to target practice barefooted. 
Did it make me think of West 
Point? ; 
Recently this little town was the 
lively spot in the insurrection. The 
insurgents came down the one lit- 
tle street and turned loose on the 
soldiers. There are a heap of bul- 
let holes in the ’dobies. Fifteen 
soldiers were killed before Diaz 
down the pike. They tell the story in 
could get re-enforcements up from 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
23 
nn nnn nn EEE UII 
Del Rio (Tex.) that American cap- 
ital fostered this outbreak. But I 
am not supposed to give away state 
secrets. (Ask Knox). 
Not one single board in these 
Mexican provincial towns. Just a 
few mosquito poles to hold the roof 
up and the rest is mud. “Dobies, 
mud houses builded us they did a 
dozen centuries ago—one room, the 
size of a box ear, where these Mex- 
icans, Indians, Aztecs, Toltecs, or 
any old race you care to style them 
—live like animals. 
And yet. You will see a little 
girl coming from school with a 
wooden frame of drawn work. She 
will stop on some corner and pull 
threads. Watch her and she will 
quit. Ask her how much for the 
frame and she will say, ‘‘no savy 
Merieano.’’ Later her Indian moth- 
er will hunt you out and see what 
you will stand for. If you can talk 
Spanish you can get the rare work 
for a few cents (Mexican) but if you 
‘‘no savy’™ they won’t do a thing to 
you. 
If you can talk the mungeral you 
are dead safe in this country; if you 
can’t they have no time for you, and 
they are guessing under which arm 
you carry the pocketbook, how much 
there is in it (American gold) and 
how much trouble your corpse would 
be. 
These Mexicans hate an American 
(the white-faced American, who has 
snow in his blood). Half of them 
can’t remember -who their grand- 
parents were, yet with a pride half 
regal, they have an American in the 
aeroplane business when it comes 
to courtesy. If their dobe has two 
skins you get one of them for a bed, 
and if they have one biscuit and a 
shot of chili, you get the biggest 
half of the bread and all hot stuff 
dressing your throat will stand. 
Baek in 1497, when Columbus was 
trying to make the pudden heads of 
Spain believe the world was round, 
and when some old queen was taking 
her jewelry around the corner to see 
how much she could realize on it, 
the Aztecs were living down here 
across the Rio Grande, as they live 
today—1910. If they have pro- 
gressed any we haven’t noticed it. 
Out here under the Aztee sun they 
still live—doing business at the same 
old stand, and they don’t care for 
any other stand. 
They weave in the same old way, 
if they want that kind of weaving, 
or they will take your order—for 
they are getting wise. 
You ean get shoulder blankets 
here (sarapes) from $5 to $100, de- 
pending on whether they saw you 
first, or whether you caught them 
out of frijole and beans. The age 
of the weave should regulate the 
price, but it depends a whole lot on 
whether Joe Cannon or Aldrich. is 
steering the schedule. There are 
some superb old designs going out of 
existence as fast as they can, that 
mark the passing of another lost art. 
They tell the tale up in New York 
that a man can come down here over 
the line, pay 80 cents per acre for 
range pasture, hold it for ten years 
and it will make him rich. I pre- 
sume this is all to the good if Diaz 
holds out that long— and hundreds 
are taking this chance. 
Mexicans won’t work. They give 
no thought for the morrow. No am- 
bition, no desire beyond the today. 
Just content to exist. Their needs 
are few—a bowl of beans twice a 
day, a blanket and a skin to sleep 
on. I never saw one who chewed 
tobacco or smoked a pipe, or one 
who didn’t smoke cigarettes. In the 
winter they will go up in the Santa 
Rosa mountains and kill bear, find 
them in a comatose state in the caves 
where they are easily dispatched. 
There isn’t one in a hundred Mex- 
icans who ean or will speak English. 
Texans tell me that it is because 
of hatred of the language—that 
many of them can talk and under- 
stand English, but simply will not. 
But an American, who is foreman 
of a big hycindia, told me they simp- 
ly cannot learn it—that is the native 
born Mexicans. 
Many of the women are handsome, 
after the Indian style. The black- 
est of hair and eyes, and they are 
ever ready with the cherry ‘‘ Buenas 
noches’’ to a stranger. The lan- 
guage is soft and pleasing to the 
ear, and the same word may have a 
half-dozen meanings, depending on 
the accent. 
And while you are trying to weave 
a little romance around her you 
will see her enter a little 10x12 mud 
hut, a squalid, filthy abode, which 
has one room, where the whole fam- 
ily eats, lives and sleeps. She will 
go over in a corner where a kettle 
smoulders over a few embers, dip in 
an earthen cup and fish up a few 
beans and more water, sit down and 
blow and sip it. She may have a 
ehunk of tortillas (corn cakes) on 
the side. No seasoning but pepper. 
If she had a piece of bacon as big 
as a dollar I suppose she would 
think herself an aristocrat. 
And I wonder if her last bath and 
change of clothes goes back to the 
time of Aztlan. She looks it, and | 
can’t summon up any more romance 
around her than I could around a 
fat Seneca squaw on the Salamanca 
reservation. 
