Eves of an Unknown Eden.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 23, 6 December 1911, Page 34

Eves of an Unknown Eden.

Bi)

E. ALEXANDER POWELL, F.R.G.S.

IT all began with a cafe table discussion in Astrakhan. ‘'Which way are wu headed, friend?” inquired my vis-a-vis, a world wanderer of engaging manners ami strange turns of speech, who, in a half hour's acquaintance, had shown an amazingly intimate knowledge of every thing from the Tenets of the Free Kirk to the tactics of the Foreign Legion. “To Circassia — to see the pretty women,” said I. ou're headed wrong.” said he. “The only women pretty enough to be worth the seeing are in Tehuantepec.” “It sounds like the name of a patent medicine or a Pullman car.” said 1. “It's neither,” said he. “It's a district in the Mexican hot lands. Boat from New Orleans to Coatzacoalcos, rail from

there to Tehuantepec, and you're among the \ eniises and Dianas and Aphrodites of the world. I ought to know,” he added, “for I’ve seen ’em all.” That is why a twelvemonth later found me in that strange corner of Middle America where the oceans try to meet and are foiled by scarce a hundred miles of Mexican jungle.

It is a far cry from New York or Chicago to the Tehuantepec of deadly fevers and lovely women, but the restless spirit of the wanderer stirred within me, and it needed no urging to set my feet on the long trail which leads due south from steam heat to hammock-land. The tierra caliente, or “hot country.” is another and distinct Mexico —in climate, people, manners, and speech as different from those portions of ‘the republic familiar to the tourist as Equatoria is

from Egypt. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is, with the exception of Panama, the narrowest neck of la ml lietween the two great oceans, and across this neck a British contractor, with the vision of a prophet, has built a railway which is destined to threaten seriously the financial success of the much heralded canal. The Tehuantepec route between New York and San Franciso, remember is nearly thirteen hundred miles shorter than that by way of Panama, and to cover this additional distance the average freight steamer will require from four to live days. Now the Tehuantepec National Railway not only will, but does, unload a cargo, carry it across the Isthmus, and reload it in forty-eight hours. As it will probably require a day for a steamer to pass through the canal,

this means a net saving of from three to four days by the Tehuantepec route. Vessels now come alongside the wharf at Coatzacoalcos—or Puerto Mexico, to give it its new official name—electric cranes dip down and lift the merchandise out of their holds and transfer it to waiting cars through hatches in their roofs, and before the ships are loaded again their discharged cargoes are being lowered into the holds of other ships at Salina Cruz, 125 miles away, for their journey across the Pacific. This ten-hour trip from ocean to ocean has not its like in all the world. From Coatzacoalcos. an unkempt. feverstricken hamlet, huddled on the sandy shores of a horsehoe bay. we slide past gray-green fields of pineapples, and then, without warning, plunge straight into the twilight of the jungle, where for mile after mile, hour after hour, the trees are smothered in ferns and orchids, where monkeys chatter at us from the branches, and where inconceivably gorgeous blooms of red and orange and yellow light up the home of panthers, pythons, and parrots. So rapid is the growth of vegetation in this torrid region that the passage of the trains is made possible only by the constant use of chemicals to repel the alarming encroachments of the creepers on the rail. The chemical compound, in the form of a scalding liquid, is sprayed from a heated tank-car by means of a steam-heated atomizer. the application killing all plant life;

but so quickly does another erop ark that the iqieration of drenching there,7 of way must be almost continuous t o 'i effective. Our train chugs on. The sand sift in and fills our eyes and ears and hair the mosquitoes get in their work on neckami wrist and ankle : the heat is s 0 sv i tering that we feel like melting tallow candles rather than human beings. f|„ jungle plants tlap wet feelers against the cars, which move forward through a verf table tunnel of dank, rank foliage. o n the black, oily surface of the ireosotJ ties are small pools of dew, and tinv rills of moisture trickle down the u ' right steel rails employed in li eu wooden telegraph poles, which, ii planted here, would either rot or sprout.

In this zone the white man lights the good fight with rum and nature—and loses. For. though he labours hard, he drinks harder. “A man must drink more in this climate,” he meditates. "It is well to keep one’s liver afloat.” Scorpions and pinolias assail him ; number less gnats, countless flies, unspeakable bugs, persistent fleas make life a petty hell. The heat thins him. the fevers rack him, the ceaseless rain depresses him, but still he labours doggedly, stringing his telegraph wires or dri ing his gang of Indian plate-layers or pruning his wretched plantation of sick I v rubbei trees. Presently’ he takes to I insell native* woman who provides Irin with meals and many’ yellow child) u. 1 ,,1T eventually she gives place in s affections to a black bottle and a ack greasy cards, and after that ,( ‘s tropical paresis. Slowly’ and surel; the insatiate jungle closes in about him. claiming its own. After a 'time tlier- will h another painted headstone in th*' linl' cemetery at Rincon Antonio. Tl' 1* I' 1 ' scs one more pioneer. Presently the jungle through which we are steaming dwindles into s< ib.; the scrub into barren, wind-sw t lull'* dotted, like lonely sentinels, wi i sple’ l did organ cacti. We have to] ‘‘d tm Cordillera, the backbone of the c^ntm'* 111 The descent becomes abrupt, wa a cession of loop-the-loop-like curves am roller-coaster inclines. Strong gusts sea air sweep up from the canons—sign that the Pacific is near ai han**"

and soon, with hiss of steam and grind■n,, of brakes, we draw up before the lamgalow station of Tehuantepec*. Tehuantepec is one of those names which, lik,- Timbuctoo and Heligoland and Zanzibar and Mandalay by their combination ot romance and rhythm stick long in one's memory. It means, so the jefe politico of the district told me. “the hill of the jaguar”; not that there is any overplus of the spotted beasts here, but because in the irregular patches of white quartz which scar the face of a near-by porphyritic hill the Indian fancy discerns the outline of the native tiger.

I* disappoints at first. All such places

do. Fez, Bokhara, and Samarkand were, at first glance, the most disappointing places 1 ever saw. But the town grows on acquaintance. It is built along both banks of a broad and lazy river, on the

edge of immense cocoanut groves in an arid and dusty region which might, to all appearances, Im* northern Africa. Seen from within, the straggling town looks like a place which has been bombarded and deserted, due. no doubt, to the violent and oft-repeated earthquakes which every now and then do their best to demolish it. As a result of these frequent shocks, almost all of the low, one-story houses are scarred with earthquake cracks and many of them are in ruins ; but. instead of clearing these away, the natives build new houses elsewhere. Situated in the very heart of the area of seismic disturbances. Tehuantepec is a city of impending dread. No matter how many years one has lived in an earthquake zone ; no matter how many temblores one has experienced it is a sensation to which one never becomes innured. When the earth heaves, and the houses rock like ships in a storm, and the long, straight street writhes like a dying snake, and the squares are filled with kneeling, praying thousands, it takes a stout-hearted man to shrug his shoulders indifferently and smile.

And so* we find ourselves in Tehuantepec. the home of lovely women the Utopia of the suffragette. The women, you will understand, form tne bulk of the population in a proportion of five to every man. The majority of the males are immigrants from adjoining states; they are more or less degenerate andi utterly insignificant, and in every respect are infinitely inferior to the women. The Tehuana men were practically wiped out of existence as the result of the abortive uprising of Juchitan which followed the establishment of the republic. President Diaz’s brother Felix, locally known as “El C’hato — the Pug Nose—was at that time commander of the military district of Tehuantepec, and he was as a result of the harsh, repressive measures which he had inaugurated, most heartily detested by the native population. So it is scarcely to be wondered at that when the next Indian uprising took place lie was the first victim. The.Tehuanas took him prisoner,

and— so the local story goes—thinking to even up their score in a measure, after clubbing him nearly to death, they boiled him alive in oil. The news came, in due

time, to brother Porfiro, at his palace in the capital, and when the rurales, whom he sent posthaste to the Isthmus, finished their work, there was scarcely a male

Tehuana, boy or man, to be found between the oceans. But the woman—the Tehuana woman —in the wonder of the land. From Kangoou right around to Tillis I have never seen her like. The Circassian women have more lustrous eyes, it is true, and the Cingalese are a whit more willowy of figure; but Miss Tehuana of Tehuantepec, take her by and large, combines more physical attractions than any other woman that I know. When 1 have said that these Tehuana women combine the figure of an Annette Kellerman with the face and features of a Huth St. Denis and the dignity and carriage of a Mary Garden, I have need to say but little further in their praise. Mesdames Garden, Kellerman, and St. Denis are, in fact, the ones who may feel complimented by the comparison. They are olive-skinned, are these Tehuana women, with a soft rose showing through; their eyes are big and dark ami sparkling— just such eyes as the Dolores should have who swings in a hammock under the palms; their features an* perfect, and so are their teeth, which are kept as clean and white as though they were intended for a toothpowder advertisement. Of statuesque build, but of little more than medium stature, with great masses of blue-black hair, exquisite limbs, and smallest feet, they seem made for artists' models. If these women were to mate with Cretan man. we should have a race of demigods again. And this is saying nint h for Mexico, a country where one becomes discouraged and no longer looks at tin* women, so few art* the pretty ones ami far between. In the market place arc many pretty girls, ami so Oriental is the colour you

might imagine yourself east instead of west of Suez. Fur these an* the hot lands, and children of the sun the world over love the splendour of crimson and scarlet and gold : even the birds wear brighter colours. I'he lower part of their daily costume is a nagua, or skirt, of cherry or scarlet cotton, striped with white, black, or yellow as the fancy of the wearer dictates, held close about her by a vivid sash. The upper part of the body is covered with a zouave jacket,

heavily embroidered, low-necked and sleeveless and revealing superb arms of bronze, sometimes of copper, moulded on splendid lines, and at the waist a few inches of brown skin. Lastly there is the juipil, or headdress, a huge affair of lace, stiffly starched and with a wide flounce, a silky material of gamboge or apple-green forming the centre. Juipil is the native for an embroidered chemise, which is worn by most other trilies in the usual way ; but these particular juipiles have undergone a peculiar evolution, having developed into purely ornamental garments, and from continued one-sided use having long since lost their original capacity of being put on over the body. The whole thing is starched, and worn in several ways. For going to mass and for festal occasions the rim of the neck is fastened) round the face ami tied under the chin, so that the starched neck-frill frames the features like an exaggerated Elizabethan ruff, while the waist-frill rests upon and covers the shoulders, bosom, and hare arms down to the elbow. When walking in the street, they wear it with the neck portion resting upon the shoulders, the waist being turned up over the head to form a pretty and effective sunshade. Sometimes, again, it is worn hanging straight down the back, and then it recalls the trailing war-bonnet of a Comanche chief. Perhaps the strangest headdress in the world, it wants only a pretty face to set it off. and) that, as I have remarked, takes little seeking among these tropic queens of Tehuantepec. If the Treasurer of the United States should ever have occasion to call in his gold coins, he would find a most amazing quantity of them bedecking the persons of these Isthmian belles. British sovereigns and French Napoleons are not desired, but a big premium will be paid for the eagles, half-eagles, and double-eagles of Uncle Sam. Every centavo a Tehuana woman can beg, borrow or earn goes into her fund for purchasing gold pieces, the gorgeous necklace with its rows of shining. tinkling coins making a showy and not unattractive ornament. As the financial and social standing of a Syrian is denoted by the amount of cloth in his trousers, so is that of a Tehuana by the number of coins on her necklace. I heard of one Tehuana heiress who has, it is said, a necklace valued at one thousand pounds. Strangely enough, none of these gorgeously dressed women can be persuaded to wear shoes or even sandals. Clad in all her finery—juipil, nagua, necklace, and smile —she will appear barefooted — a strange anomaly. Without shoes she will dance over a stone floor, or even a dirt, gravel-bestrewn surface, with a grace which violates all the rules of the Isadora Duncanian art. There is scarcely beginning or end to one of these fehuana dances. It consists of repetitions of some simple figure, danced to the music of an Indian harp, a guitar, and) a fiddle ; and this accompaniment, as well, is but the ceaseless recurrence of a simple rhythmic phrase. Dance and music are both chiefly interesting because they are among the few survivals of that strange Zapotec race which, with the exception of these few people, has disappeared from the land as mysteriously as it came.Woman dominates the city on the torrid Isthmus. Here her rights are recognised and undisputed. The women run the place and do ninety per cent, of the business. A striking characteristic of

Jlist such eyes as the Dolores should have who swings in a hammock under the palms. these Tehuana beauties is their commercial enterprise. In the market place, where most of the bartering is done, they reign supreme. The wife owns the property, she holds the family purse-strings and she must even vouch for the husband before he can obtain credit. Not only are tin* women the power in the district, but they are fully aware of it ; they delegate all of the menial work, save the cooking. to the men. andi devote their energies to trade., which is so fully in their hands that all commercial transactions in Tehuantepec are done by them or require their sanction. They are Tehuantepec—they in their barbaric colours—treading the earth as if it were theirs, while the little men shamble about with the dogs, the one as degraded as the other. One hears much of the morals of Tehuantepec. The Tehuana woman is reputed a tropical Delilah. The Isthmus, very naturally, is provided with a true Isthmian code of morals, but it is no Haunting abode of sin, as some would have you think. There is no gilded vice

in Tehuantepec—not so much as a glitter Amid the dreariness of mud huts and palm shacks and frontier hotels, how should there be ? The vice of places j s always exaggerated for that matter Tangier, Port Said, Baku—l have known them all in their prime, but they all fell far below their reputations. The conditions which we hold to lie immoral in Tehuantepec could only be called unmoral. In any event, they are