Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras — Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond by Harry Alverson Franck
page 10 of 220 (04%)

INTO THE COOLER SOUTH

You are really in Mexico before you get there. Laredo is a
purely--though not pure--Mexican town with a slight American
tinge. Scores of dull-skinned men wander listlessly about trying to sell
sticks of candy and the like from boards carried on their heads. There
are not a dozen shops where the clerks speak even good pidgin English,
most signs are in Spanish, the lists of voters on the walls are chiefly
of Iberian origin, the very county officers from sheriff down--or
up--are names the average American could not pronounce, and the
saunterer in the streets may pass hours without hearing a word of
English. Even the post-office employees speak Spanish by preference and
I could not do the simplest business without resorting to that tongue.
I am fond of Spanish, but I do not relish being forced to use it in my
own country.

On Laredo's rare breeze rides enough dust to build a new world. Every
street is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds of
the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat--"Cincinnati Slim" put
it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where the
freight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets full
this'll do fine for an annex."

Luckily my window in the ruin that masqueraded as a hotel faced such
wind as existed. The only person I saw in that institution during
twenty-four hours there was a little Mexican boy with a hand-broom,
which he evidently carried as an ornament or a sign of office. It seemed
a pity not to let Mexico have the dust-laden, sweltering place if they
want it so badly.
DigitalOcean Referral Badge