clothing. By midnight I began to credit myself with foresight. The
windows were closed, yet the land of yesterday seemed far behind
indeed. I wrapped my heavy coat about me. Toward four we crossed the
Tropic of Cancer into the Torrid Zone, without a jolt, and I dug out my
gray sweater and regretted I had abandoned the old blue one in an empty
box-car. Twice I think I drowsed four minutes with head and elbow on my
bundle, but except for two or three women who jack-knifed on the long
bench no one found room to lie down during the long night.

From daylight on I stood in the vestibule and watched the drab landscape
hurry steadily past. No mountains were in sight now because we were on
top of them. Yet no one would have suspected from the appearance of the
country that we were considerably more than a mile above sea-level. The
flat land looked not greatly different from that of the day before. The
cactus was higher; some of the "organ" variety, many of the "Spanish
bayonet" species, lance-like stalks eight to ten feet high. The rest was
bare ground with scattered mesquite bushes. Had I not known the altitude
I might have attributed the slight light-headedness to a sleepless
night.

Certainly a hundred ragged _cargadores_, hotel runners, and boys
eager to carry my bundle attacked me during my escape from the station
of San Luis Potosi at seven, and there were easily that many carriages
waiting, without a dozen to take them. The writer of Mexico's Baedeker
speaks of the city as well-to-do. Either it has vastly changed in a few
years or he wrote it up by absent treatment. Hardly a town of India
exceeds it in picturesque poverty. Such a surging of pauperous humanity,
dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the Western
Hemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is no cure for man's ills. The
chief center was the swarming market. Picture a dense mob of several