Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/591

Rh his wagons or their contents, in fording streams and otherwise, he may consider himself fortunate."

This was written in 1852; thirty years later, the railroad brought with it a change, and American goods now flood the market of Chihuahua at a slight advance over prices prevailing in the North.

Relics of that age of wooden wheels, when carts without a particle of iron in their composition were solely used by the native Mexicans, yet survive. All along the Border, as well as in the interior of Mexico, we meet with these carretas, with wheels hewn from a single block of wood, and yoked to the patient bulls or oxen by a rigid cross-bar lashed to their horns.

My companions in the box-car were about equally natives of Texas and Mexico, whose conversation was chiefly of bullfights and cock-pits. Piedras Negras, they declared, was full of thieves and murderers,—all Mexicans according to the Texans, but all Texans according to the Mexicans.

From the foreman of the gang I obtained some valuable information regarding the difficulties attending railway construction on the Border, and the jealousy with which the Mexican defends his prerogative. It was only the week before, he said, that his hand-car ran down a "Greaser" on horseback, by which half his men were seriously injured, and the horse killed. Unfortunately, he said, the Greaser was uninjured, and lay in wait for an opportunity for revenge, and shot at him as he was wiring a telegraph pole. A man up a telegraph pole would offer, presumably, a fair mark; yet the Mexican missed him, and the railroad man, descending hurriedly, brought him to terms, after a short, though exciting chase.

During one of our frequent breakings-up a jug of molasses was smashed, which proved a double disappointment, as the men thereby lost their sweetening, and we lost our seats on the floor. At about four o'clock in the afternoon we reached the end of track, having passed two towns of considerable size, though built of adobe and of the meanest sort, and through fifty miles of a country already attracting the attention of Texan rancheros. We met one of these worthies, a stalwart young