Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/79

Rh, to the south, is on the same rich belt, and was the chosen seat of Cortez. We are yet four thousand feet from the top level of the land, though the crawl of an hour or two up the face of this dam has lessened that altitude.

Our mules have rested while this lesson on topography was being given, but they must now hurry forward, for night and danger are on us. Give your last glance into that deep south valley, that mountain-lined passway, that last of the villages of the Hot Lands.

A group of horsemen passed us when we were half-way up, red-jacketed, broad-and-slouched-hatted, well armed, dark, and dangerous looking. Were they spying out the contents of the coach? We easily change them into robbers; not so easily, however, as they may change themselves into that shape. Night comes swiftly down. One realizes the rapidity of the flight of Apollo in Homer—he came like night—in these tropical countries. Our three Mexicans are left at Orizaba, and their places are taken by a revolutionist general, with his carbine, and a Frenchwoman who had been hostess at a hotel most frequented by robbers on the pass from Puebla to Mexico, between Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl—not very encouraging comrades for weak nerves. Our first station is a great robber haunt. The Red Bridge it is called—whether from paint or blood, who knows? Fear says blood; fact, probably, paint.

The lady offers me a cigarette, which is graciously declined. She is offered in return a rich Cordova orange, hanging on its stem and among its green leaves. This is even more graciously accepted. But extremes meet. The next morning the orange was found knocking about the coach. So both the cigarette and Cordova failed of reaching the lips to which they were proffered. She lighted, and smoked, and expectorated as perfectly as the rebel general before her, and showed she was all ready to lead a revolution or vote for Lerdo, as circumstances and pesos might offer. The latter is the stronger circumstance here, as everywhere. Dollars outweigh scruples, whether of conscience or of the apothecary.