Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/186

178 zopilotes, from the Aztec word zopilotl, and belong to the genus Cathartes,—two species, aura, or the turkey buzzard, and atratus, the black vulture.

The Plaza is the only attractive point in the city; and though it is small, it has marble walks and some wind-blown trees. The architecture is the same as that of all these cities of New Spain transplanted from the mother country,—a combination of Spanish and Moorish that redeems the city from sameness and makes it interesting to a stranger. That the hotels are clean and fairly served, that there is a tramway with a single track traversing the city, that you run the risk of catching the vomito, or yellow fever, if you pass a night on shore,—all these items of information are given in the guide-books, and have become familiar to every traveller.

There need be no exaggeration regarding the vomito, for there is scarcely room for any, in a city which has for many years been known as la ciudad de los muertos,—the city of the dead. The Vera-Cruzians claim that the death-rates are overestimated, yet people enough succumb to "Yellow Jack," for all that, to make a stranger cautious how he exposes himself. Periodical visits from this dread visitor are as sure as taxes and death in its ordinary shape. In June, 1881, for instance, people were dying at the rate of one hundred a week.

A clipping from a Mexican newspaper, of the date of my residence in the city of Mexico, will illustrate the extent to which this evil had spread, and was raging at that time:—

"Pandora's box was not a circumstance to the evils which Vera Cruz contains. Advices from there state that the yellow fever prevails to an extent unknown in other years.

"Old residents are dead and dying, and medical aid is pronounced of no avail. Whole families are leaving for Jalapa and Orizaba. In addition, the city has the typhoid and bilious fevers, small-pox, and several other pleasant adjuncts to agreeable living. The panic is very great."

From my note-book of that date I extract the following:—

"Forty deaths a day are reported from yellow fever and small-pox in Vera Cruz. It would seem as though no one would be left to carry on