Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/603

Rh An omnibus was in waiting, and into it I climbed, but had hardly seated myself when the vehicle—which had rumbled off with great flourish and bluster—stopped, and the frouzy-headed conductor poked his face in and said, "Fork over!"

"How much?" "Half-dollar." "All right, drive on." "On where?" "Why, to the hotel, of course." "That's just where we be now, stranger."

I was too sleepy to expostulate over the extortion, but descended to the "office," registered, and was assigned a room at the "Central," then the largest hotel in town, and by all odds the dirtiest in the State, though fairly served. El Paso, situated in the extreme western part of Texas, lies 500 miles from Spofford Junction and 633 from San Antonio. In approaching it, I had run along two sides of an obtuse-angled triangle through the great State of Texas, leaving out any trips southward from Eagle Pass and San Antonio, comprising above a thousand miles across its territory alone. The town—whose inhabitants will doubtless be mortally offended because I do not call it a city—is about half a mile across, and situated in the centre of a verdureless, mud-colored plain, with a semicircle of gravelly hills on one side and the Rio Grande on another.

Its buildings are mainly new, as houses of wood and brick are fast replacing the old adobe hovels; there are several hotels, numerous, large, and well-supplied stores, two banks, many good residences going up in the suburbs, and plenty of room for expansion. There are several newspapers here, one of which, "The Times," displays energy, ability, and enterprise.

There are abundant indications that El Paso will grow to the proportions of a great and perhaps attractive city, as it has an advantageous situation, nearly four thousand feet above sea level, and is entered by several great railroads. The "Sunset Route" passes through it from east to west; the Texas Pacific meets it here, affording the shortest route directly across Northern Texas to St. Louis; and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé comes