Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
into it, which was held up on a float of wire and cork. When it was alight he placed the glass
on a box in front of a little image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, leaving the light to burn all
night.
Duringtheconversation,thatchangedfromonesubjecttoanother,somediscussedtheVir-
gin of Guadalupe and the Virgin Mary. One man said the Virgin of Guadalupe, being
prieta
(dark), was 100 per cent Mexican, and that the Virgin Mary was white, and belonged to the
gringos. This subject was soon dismissed with shouts of '
Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe; abajo
la Virgen Maria!
' (Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe; down with the Virgin Mary!)
The language of this region is Zapoteco, which is of old Indian origin. Most natives, when
talking among themselves, prefer to speak in this language, although all of them master Span-
ish.
Next day we continued our march towards the isthmus. The first half of the journey was
bad and we had to swim one or two nasty places. Mancha was by far the best horse in the wa-
terand,unliketheotheranimals,hewouldnevergetboggedinsoftplaces,seemingtopossess
a wonderful instinct for avoiding them. He always swam across first to explore the way for
the others. Towards midday we came to pretty open and hilly country. Every now and again
a hare would jump up and run through the grass that grew in abundance everywhere. I had
never seen such hares before, for all had white hindquarters, though the front half of the body
was of the same colouring as the European hares'. I shot one to examine it, and found it to be
identical with the hares I had hitherto known, excepting for the strange colouring.
Our guide suddenly pointed ahead, where I could see a man on horseback in the distance.
He said that this must be a bandit, for no one else would venture to ride here alone now. No
sooner was the man aware of our presence than he started off at a gallop, and immediately
severalofoursoldiersbegantochaseafterhim,butbeforetheycouldreachhimhehadcircled
around towards the swamps and forest-land. After about an hour the soldiers returned with a
pony tied to a rope. They said that the fugitive had managed to reach a wide stream where he
had had time to unsaddle and to swim across and escape into the brush where pursuit would
havebeennexttoimpossible.Theguiderecognisedtheponyasonethathadbeenstolensome
time before.
One evening we halted in a miserable village where we had to sleep on the floor without a
bite to eat. During the night dogs were continuously barking, a sign that always made me feel
uneasy. I had put Mancha in a small corral not thirty yards from where I lay, and had care-
fully tied and padlocked the gate so as to make it difficult for any person to open it. Padlocks
are necessities if one travels in some Latin American countries, for, beside chaining the corral
gate, one can secure one's doors which rarely have locks but merely two rings.
The soldiers had tied their horses to a row of stakes, giving Mancha the preference of the
corral, where he might be alone and roll if he wished. The escort's animals knew each other,
but as Mancha was a stranger they always fought with him. I got up several times to look at
my horse, and always found him munching away happily, and finally I fell soundly asleep.
