Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/572

564 walk, I guess, to Puebla. If you’re in a hurry to git to your Legation, you must jest ride. No two words about it.”

“Ride!” said I, “with all my heart, but how am I to get a horse? There is no post in Mexico, at least not on the footing established in Europe, and I very much doubt my being able to procure a mount.”

“In Xalapa town you may, and arter that you’ll easy git another, only they’ll fleece you about hire,” answered Mr. Brandreth, knocking away the charred tip of his cigar; “money’ll do most everything in Mexico. But hadn’t you better think twice about it, sir?—there’s ugly customers to be met with long before you see the Prado, and mighty little lead will stop a chap’s galloping.”

But after a little more talk the goodnatured American came round to my way of thinking, saying that, after all, there was nearly as much peril to be incurred in the regular way of voyaging, as in that which I proposed, and that had he been ten years younger he would have gone with me. He further advised me to find out where the relays for the diligence were kept, and to make the best bargain I could for a horse, and a mounted guide. He gave me some valuable hints as to the most dangerous parts of the road, and recommended me to press on as rapidly as possible, but “always to keep a bit of speed in my nag, in case of a scurry.”

His last words were shrewd enough, and have often since then appeared to me to be almost prophetically true.

“Look’ee, Captain M, I’ve been nine years in this country, and if I can’t chatter Spanish, I know a thing or two about the Dons. Don’t you trust ’em. They ain’t half so dangerous, in a fight, as when they make believe butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. Don’t trust ’em, or, if you do, you’ll have your eyeteeth stole, as sure as my name’s Nat Brandreth.”

So we shook hands and parted. I had a walk of five miles before me, but this, in the temperate region of Mexico, was no great hardship. And I had enlisted the services of an Indian peon to carry the bags and my own luggage, which was light and compact. The ground to be traversed was a sort of elevated terrace or high mountain plateau, reasonably fertile, though only cultivated in part. Still, great fields of barley and maize alternated with the dense woods of pine and live oak, the air was cool and agreeable, and I saw more wild flowers, and more pretty glimpses of scenery, than I had ever before encountered in so short a space. Far, far away, through the wondrously clear blue atmosphere, lay the hot country about the coast, a sort of white mist, thin as gossamer, hanging over its dangerous beauty, and the silvery sea glittering beyond. Nearer, were naked rocks of porphyry, quartz, sandstone, and serpentine, jumbled up as by volcanic agency, and mixed with huge trees, from whose boughs the fantastic grey moss hung like so much tapestry. To the west, the sun was going down, fiery red, and I saw the scarlet lustre through the deep green shadows of the woodland to my left. All these things, Tom, I saw and admired, that is, I took mental notes of them, and admired them afterwards; but just then my thoughts were busy with other matters. You know by personal experience, I dare say, that whatever highflown descriptions a traveller may pen in his diary, at the actual time he is apt to be more anxious about his breakfast, or his tight shoes and blistered feet, or some rascally imposition on the part of guide or landlord, than really studious of rosetints on the mountains and pearl-greys on the lake. And I was very hungry, and very unromantically eager for something to eat. Indeed, I am not absolutely sure that even my zeal for the speedy delivery of the Foreign Office despatches would have made me quit the caravan as I did, had not that zeal been supplemented by the hopes of supper. Well, my peon proved very bad company. He trudged along in the dust under his load, silent and patient as a camel, and was about as easily drawn into conversation. He understood Spanish, indeed, but his stock of words and of ideas was painfully limited, and I could draw no information from him as to the political feeling of the country. He seemed, indeed, to regard the Church Party and the Liberals with a kind of dull and timorous dislike, as pestilent folk who stole his fowls, impressed his cart and oxen to carry stores, and trampled over his maize-plot. But he was quite innocent of any notion respecting the cause of conflict, the future of Mexico, or the best theory of government, and I gathered that if he had a feeble preference for the clerical faction, it was because he owed the Cura nine piastres for masses, and had had some faint hopes that his debt might be commuted for partisanship.

But the poor fellow was very well disposed and industrious, as those of his colour are apt to be, and after a long interval of silence he looked up and showed his teeth in a pleasant smile as he said, “Behold, Señor, there lies Xalapa.”

There, sure enough, lay the town, its flat roofs, terraces, and church towers, mixed with trees and gardens fenced by gigantic hedges of the impenetrable thorny shrubs, reddening in the last flush of western light. I asked José—for so the Indian, like nearly half of his patient race, had been christened—if he knew where the diligence changed horses.

“No sabè!” replied the man, quite as a matter of course.

“The best inn, then?”

“No sabè!”

“Confound your ignorance,” said I, rather unjustly out of humour, “what do you know?” But it appeared poor José, though born and bred within an easy distance of Xalapa, knew little about it. He knew the market, whither he sometimes carried vanilla and other vegetable products, medicinal or perfume yielding, gleaned in the forests, and whither his wife more regularly went to sell eggs and fruit. He knew the café where the peasants of Indian race drank and smoked in company, and the café where the white rancheros met to drink, and game, and gash one another with knives. He also knew the garden where the tertulias were held, and twice in his life had entered the church of St. James, the “grandest church in the world,” and that was all. José could give me no further information.