We reached Laredo, a city of some five thousand inhabitants, about six o’clock, P. M., where I sent the following telegram, “Cane, cotton, cattle, mesquit, sand and cactus, O. K.,” which, though brief, sums up the country I have been traversing for the last two days. Laredo is upon the American side of the Rio Grande, which is crossed by a long bridge to Nuevo Laredo, in the State of Nuevo Leon. Here smartly uniformed Mexican customs officers examined my baggage and passed me through.
_He llegado en esta ciudad, hoy, cerca las ocho de la mañana!_ The moment we crossed the Rio Grande we changed instantly from American twentieth century civilization to mediæval Latin-Indian. The Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo, the buildings, the women, the men, the boys, the donkeys, all were different. I felt as though I had waked up in another world. As we approached the station of the Mexican city, I noticed an old man riding upon his donkey. His saddle was fastened over the hips just above the beast’s tail, his feet trailed upon the ground. He sat there with immense dignity and self-possession, viewing with curiosity the _gringos_, who had come down from the land of the distant North. He silently watched us for some moments and then rode solemnly away, while I wondered by what hand of Providence it was he did not slide off behind.
From Nuevo Laredo to Monterey, which we reached at half past ten P. M., was all one flat mesquit and cactus-covered plain; sand, mesquit and cactus; cactus, sand and mesquit, mile after mile, till darkness fell upon us, when we could see no more. Monterey is the center of Mexico’s steel and iron industries, of large tobacco manufactories, of extensive breweries. It is the chief manufacturing city of modern Mexico. Our stay was brief, and I caught only a glimpse of a cloaked and high-_sombreroed_ crowd, hurrying beneath the glare of electric lamps, and then we passed on toward the great interior plateau of the Mexican Highlands.
During the night it grew cold. I awoke shivering and called for blankets. In San Antonio the morning had been warm and, all day, south to Laredo and on to Monterey, the heat had been oppressive. It was cold when I left Kanawha, but the chilly air had not followed me beyond New Orleans, and I had there packed into my trunk all my warm clothing and checked it through to Mexico. Passing westward through Louisiana and Texas, the mild air was delightful and I was comfortable in my thinnest summer garments. Thus dreaming of orange groves and sunny tropics I fell asleep. Now I was shivering with a deadly chill, and the thin keen air cut like a scimiter. I pulled on my overcoat, which I fortunately still had with me, and slept fitfully till the day.