Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/568

560 snows fed its mountain sources, far away in Colorado and New Mexico, and its multitudinous branches swelled its current to a torrent, it then, in the expressive language of the West, "just humped itself," and bore those bridges triumphantly away to the Gulf on its turbid bosom. But it is not always that man proposes and river disposes, for the structures of iron and stone now built will be able to defy old Rio Grande in his wildest mood.

The bridge we crossed, belonging to the "National," was built, it was said, in eight days. The distance from Laredo to Monterey, our destination, is one hundred and seventy miles, for the road does not directly approach it, as land is worthless here, and a road must zigzag over the country, and cover a good deal of it, in order to get some return for its outlay. It would seem that Nature intended the broad and arid Rio Grande valley to be forever a dividing line between the two republics; though steam and electricity were things not taken into account in the original plan of the continent, so that excellent roads now span otherwise impassable areas, and conduct to fertile fields beyond.

The frontier is crossed at about seven in the morning by the daily train which reaches Monterey at six in the evening. On the Mexican side of the frontier the luggage is examined by gentlemanly customs officials, and later on the road a polite young man makes pretence of peeping into your valise; but further than this there is no inconvenience, and you would not know that the smoothly-running train was not in the United States. The "National" is a narrow-gauge (three feet), but the cars are wide and comfortable, and those of the first class contain reclining chairs. For three hours the passage is through a desolate and forbidding country; then the mountains, offshoots of the Eastern Cordillera, show their crests, always fantastic in shape, and toned by distance into amethyst and purple. They present every variety of outline: conical, jagged, and even rectangular, the most conspicuous example of this last, the mesa, or table-topped hill, being opposite the town of Lampazos, about seventy-five miles from Laredo. This mesa has perpendicular walls, a thousand feet high, it is said, and a surface of nearly a