On the Mexican Highlands Part 14

After my breakfast, a Spanish hall-boy of the hotel had struggled down the successive stairways with my valise. Ordinarily, we would have taken the new electric elevator, but the American company which recently installed it had recalled their experts, and the Spaniard supposed to run it in their place had promptly put the machine out of order. The cage now hung fast about half-way up the shaft awaiting American skill to set it moving.

One of the many _cochas_ drawn up before the _loggia_ of the hotel was soon carrying me to the Caballerio Pier, there to have my trunks and bags stamped with the certificates of the health officers of the port, and checked through for the journey to Tampa. And then I went up to a little bird shop on Calle Obispo, and took charge of a clever parrot, for which I had arranged the day previous,--a bird brought from the Isle of Pines, with green body, white head, pink throat. She is named Marie, and yesterday she talked to me long and loud in Spanish. Along with her I purchased also a pair of pretty love birds. Perhaps I may tell you that the Marie with which we reached Florida could talk no Spanish, and the pair of pretty parakeets, instead of being loving mates, turned out to be two fighting males. But all of this I only learned when many leagues distant from the soft-eyed _senora_ who sold them to me in the little shop on the Calle Obispo.

Our boat was named the _Mascot_, and well was it so christened, for the fierce billows tried her seaworthiness to the limit. The Norther which broke its fury upon the coasts of Yucatan did not arouse so angry a sea as that which fought the currents of the Florida Strait.

The greater number of our pa.s.sengers were Cubans going across to work in the tobacco factories at Key West. It was apparently their first experience of the sea. They filled the forward decks, and gay and lively was their company as they waved their _adios_ to their shouting friends ash.o.r.e. The tempestuous waters caught us before we even left the bay. We were steaming out dead in the teeth of the gale, and the little boat pitched until she almost stood on end, and rolled as though her gunwales would be every time awash. Our Cubans soon lost their speech and then their breakfasts, and were at last filled with fear alone. They were scarcely recovered when we made fast to the long pier at Key West, and did not regain their cheerfulness until their legs were firmly set upon the land.

Key West boasts a larger Cuban-Latin population than native American, and sonorous Spanish speech falls more frequently upon my ear than th-i-th-ing- s-i-s-sing- English; yet I behold the Stars and Stripes floating above me and know myself at home.

My journey through Mexico and Cuba is at an end, and I am returned to the United States. I now experience again the same shock of transition which so moved me when a few weeks ago I crossed the Rio Grande and entered Mexico. For many days have I beheld and felt the puissant tenacity of a civilization older than my own; a civilization once world-dominant and still haughty and a.s.sertive, which begat arrogant war-lord and subservient slave, which exalted the few and crushed the many, and which to-day while it applauds and a.s.sumes the outward habiliments of democracy, yet underneath retains the flesh and blood of despotic individualism; a civilization, nevertheless, marked by the highest appreciation of all that appeals to the finer senses in splendor of religious ritual, in sensuousness in art, and in the graceful and the ornate in architecture; in music and in belles-lettres.

For the masterful rule of Diaz I had come prepared, but of the numerous well-ordered and well-built Mexican cities I had no thought.

The discovery that here had been successfully applied the principles of munic.i.p.al ownership of public utilities centuries before Chicago, San Francisco, and New York had debated their problems, came to me as a revelation, and when I beheld the n.o.ble cities of Mexico, of Toluca, of Morelia, of San Louis Potosi, of Monterey, and many others, giving for three hundred years free water and free illumination to their people, and throughout these centuries adorned with well-kept parks where flowers bloomed, artistic fountains flowed, and music played, for the free enjoyment of the poorest peon as well as the millionaire grandee, I was fain to bethink me whether the practical, money-getting American might not after all take lessons from his Latin brother of the South.

The romance of Mexico's early history, the travail and triumph of Montezuma and Malinche, of Pagan teocali and Christian cross, stirred my imagination and aroused my interest to highest pitch, while the present progressiveness of Mexico's people, the enlightenment of her leaders, the n.o.ble efforts she has made, and is now making to keep step with the procession of human progress, excited my sympathy.

Nor have I ceased to marvel at the extraordinary geographic and climatic gifts which nature has so lavishly bestowed upon this favored land; a country where every climate from the heats of Yucatan to the cool airs of Quebec are brought together within the compa.s.s of a journey of a single day; where teeming tropics and fertile highlands alike pour out their fruitfulness for the use of man; where alone upon the North American Continent has beneficent nature presented conditions which made it possible for mankind to develop an indigenous civilization of advancing type;--upon these plateaus existed well-built stone-and-mortar cities centuries before Cortez and the Spaniard set foot upon her sh.o.r.es; here successful agriculture has prevailed in uninterrupted continuity for a thousand years; here precious metals have been dug and worked by man for unnumbered centuries; and upon these salubrious highlands more than a mile above the sea, beneath the shadows of her snow-capped Sierras, man has developed, and may yet develop, the highest energy of the temperate zones.

I confess that despite a general knowledge, I yet entered Mexico ignorant, sadly ignorant, of one of the most splendid portions of the earth's domain, and while my glimpses of this great country have necessarily been limited and partial, yet I have seen enough of her mineral and agricultural wealth, the solidity and comfort of her cities, the vigor and intelligence of her people, to a.s.sure me that the Republic of Mexico is destined to be no puny factor in promoting the advancement of the world, as well as the further increase in riches and power of the sister Republic wherein I dwell.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEY WEST LIGHT, THE SOUTHERN EXTREMITY OF THE UNITED STATES]

Nor has my transitory glimpse of Cuba, "Pearl of the Antilles," as she is, caused me the less to marvel at the abounding fertility which const.i.tutes her a veritable garden, and the charm of her climate, free of all frosts, yet temperate enough, amidst the cooling breezes of the all-surrounding seas, to make her the home of white races which hold fast to their primitive energies although within the tropics. While in imagination I behold her, at no distant date, taking her proud place among the galaxy of States of the great Republic of the North and vying with the most splendid of them in opulence and power.