thanks to the proximity of Irapuato, of "stlaybelly pie." Though the
American force numbered several of those fruitless individuals that
drift in and out of all mining communities, it was on the whole of
rather high caliber. Besides "Sully the Pug," a mere human animal, hairy
and muscular as a bear, and two "Texicans," as those born in the States
of some Mexican blood and generally a touch of foreign accent are
called, there were two engineers who lived with their "chinitas," or
illiterate _mestizo_ Mexican wives and broods of peon children down
in the valley below the dump-heap. Caste lines were not lacking even
among the Americans in the "camp," as these call Guanajuato and its
mining environs. More than one complained that those who married Mexican
girls of unsullied character and even education were rated "squaw-men"
and more or less ostracized by their fellow countrymen, and especially
country-women, while the man who "picked up an old rounder from the
States" was looked upon as an equal. The speech of all Mexico is
slovenly from the Castilian point of view. Still more so was that of
both the peon and the Americans, who copied the untutored tongue of the
former, often ignorant of its faults, and generally not in the least
anxious to improve, nor indeed to get any other advantage from the
country except the gold and silver they could dig out of it. Laborers
and bosses commonly used "pierra" for piedra; "sa' pa' fuera" for to
leave the mine, "croquesi" for I believe so, commonly ignorant even of
the fact that this is not a single word. In the mess-hall were heard
strange mixtures of the two languages, as when a man rising to answer
some call shouted over his shoulder: "Juan, deja mi pie alone!" Thanks
to much peon intercourse, almost all the Americans had an unconsciously
patronizing air even to their fellows, as many a pedagogue comes to
address all the world in the tone of the schoolroom. The Mexican, like
the Spaniard, never laughs at the most atrocious attempts at his tongue
by foreigners, and even the peons were often extremely quick-witted in