Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/588

580 where I left the Sunset Route and took its Mexican spur, the "International," for Eagle Pass and Mexico. The train I left sped westward, after exchanging news with the "California Express" going eastward. How strange it seemed, this meeting in the night, in the centre of an arid plain, of messengers respectively from the Mississippi and the Pacific! The place of meeting, named after the attorney of the road, R. S. Spofford, Esq., consisted, at the time of my arrival, of a few tents and shanties, while the land about, seen by moonlight, seemed sterile. For all that, it is destined to be an important station, when direct connections are made with the North.

In the gray dawn of a cool morning I walked through the straggling suburbs of Eagle Pass and sought a hotel. No one was stirring, but the hotel door was wide open, so I marched into the first vacant room, lay down on the bed, and pieced out my broken night's rest with a nap. After a breakfast of good quality, I strolled about the town, and then, taking my "gripsack" and revolver, went over the Rio Grande into Mexico. Eagle Pass possesses, in respect to local attractions, few advantages over Laredo, its rival down the river. Although the natural outlet of Mexican trade, lying at the entrance into the most fertile region of the Mexican Border, it will not progress with the rapidity of the southern town, but ten years hence will probably be a more prosperous city. My reasons for predicting this will appear, as we go over the length of railroad already built into Mexico.

In the language of the local paper, "The Maverick," which was started only the week before my arrival, Eagle Pass has had no "great big boom"; but since the advent of the railroad within her precincts, there has been a steady, substantial improvement and growth. The latest and surest indications of an advanced state of civilization, ice factories and telephones, may be found here, and at least one enterprising merchant has run one of the latter across the Border, as witness the following from the paper previously mentioned: "Jim Riddle has placed his Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras stores in connection by a telephone. We have heard of men who were 'penny-wise and