Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/64

60 One gentleman says: "I ate armadillo steaks in a cabin on top of that mountain overhanging the Falls of Atoyac but he did not kill the choice lizard, and so I receive his assertion with some incredulity. Every body says monkeys are here, but nobody says he has seen them. They say that they have retreated away from the railroad, a sad reflection on Darwin's theory; for should they not accept the higher life to which their posterity have attained, and begin themselves to build railroads, and cut down timber, and speculate in corner lots, and eat armadillo?

The parrot is here, but does not flash his plumage among the trees. Only on the perch of the ranchos do we see his beauty and hear his ugliness. The cougar is reported present; one gentleman, and he a man of veracity, declares he saw a young tiger, or old cat of this species, as he was resting his stage legs by a tramp up another spur of these mountains. But I think the real sight was when he sat at meat that day, and beheld on the table a roasted creature, with a great gray-yellow eye staring at him, and saying, "Come eat me, if you dare." Asking the waiter what it might be, he was answered, "El gato del monte" (the cat of the mountain). Like they of the Rimini story, who read no more that day, he ate no more that day. That cat was a reality. Whether the cougar was or no, you must judge. Quien sabe? and a shrug is all I say.

A run of a few miles through verdant fields, by coffee-haciendas and banana-groves and orange-orchards and tobacco-fields, and Cordova is reached.

This ancient city of Cortez lies in an open plain, surrounded by mountains. The railroad leaves it a little to the right, and in a deeper vale, so that only its dirty church towers and domes are visible to the eye. It is a decayed town, but under the stimulus of the railroad may revive, especially if pure Christianity can come in here to energize and educate its people. Pure Christianity has come in. The Methodist Episcopal Church has already lay preaching in this city, and a society well gathered. The redemption of this fine old Spanish town is begun. Let it go on to a millennial completeness.