in the streets. Mexican law forbids them to wear a distinctive costume,
hence they dressed in black derbies, Episcopal neckbands, and black
capes to the ankles. Not distinctive indeed! No one could have guessed
what they were! One might have fancied them prize-fighters on the way
from training quarters to bathroom.

There is comparative splendor also in San Luis, as one may see by peeps
into the lighted houses at night, but it is shut in tight as if fearful
of the poor breaking in. As in so many Spanish countries, wealth shrinks
out of sight and misery openly parades itself.

Out across the railroad, where hundreds of ragged boys were riding
freight cars back and forth in front of the station, the land lay flat
as a table, some cactus here and there, but apparently fertile, with
neither sod to break nor clearing necessary. Yet nowhere, even on the
edge of the starving city, was there a sign of cultivation. We of the
North were perhaps more kind to the Indian in killing him off.



CHAPTER II

TRAMPING THE BYWAYS

Heavy weather still hung over the land to the southward. Indian corn,
dry and shriveled, was sometimes shocked as in the States. The first
field of maguey appeared, planted in long rows, barely a foot high, but
due in a year or two to produce pulque, the Mexican scourge, because of
its cheapness, stupefying the poorer classes. When fresh, it is said to
be beneficial in kidney troubles and other ailments, but soon becomes