Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/416

Jalapa, Peroté and Puebla, was gradually extended northwards from the capital through the principal mining and commercial cities of the north, and thus the means of swift and comfortable travel was at length, though only recently, supplied to a small part of Mexico. The danger of robbers, the wretchedness of the roads, the discomfort of inns and the old fashioned Mexican habit of staying at home, have, therefore, hitherto prevented the masses of the people from going abroad. A journey of two or three hundred miles, for any purpose but business or emigration, is still regarded as an important undertaking. When families depart on such an expedition the preparations embrace almost every comfort and luxury required at home, except a cow and a piano. Until very lately nothing but shelter or the commonest food was to be had at the miserable mesones or taverns along the roads. In most of the less frequented regions this is still the case. It was necessary therefore that travellers should be accompanied by a full complement of servants, that they should carry with them an ample supply of bedding and table furniture, that their long and numerous train should be fully armed and equipped to fight its way if necessary, and that they should be content to halt frequently, journey slowly, and linger on the road. Inconveniences like these necessarily localized and confined all classes of Mexicans except the very rich or those whose business imperatively required them to encounter a life of expensive adventure. Nor was Mexico a country of watering places and sea-side fashion, in which it was customary, at certain seasons, for all whose means permitted, to fly from the city to the fields or the shore for recreation and health. Invalids, occasionally, under the stringent orders of physicians, crawled to the warm baths or mineral waters which are abundant in a volcanic country, but they were not followed by the idle crowds who frequent similar places in Europe and the United States. Tens of thousands are now living in the city of Mexico who have not even crossed the lake to Tezcoco; while the fashionable or the wealthy are perfectly satisfied if they make an annual peregrination in the month of May of twelve miles to San Agustin de las Cuevas, where they spend three days of frivolity, gambling, cockfighting, and dancing. The journeys of the rest of the year are confined, as they are elsewhere in the Republic, to an evening drive or ride on the Passeos and Alameda, or a more extended excursion of a few miles to Tacubaya or San Angel. It was not the usage, in the early days of Mexico or during the viceroyal government, to travel for pleasure in a country conquered from the Indians, and still ravaged by them or made insecure. The custom of the Span-