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However, as we had no special authority from our own commanding general, and as we knew nothing about the terms of the truce, we were permitted to occupy a vacant house outside the guard for the night, with the promise of a guide to put us on the road to Cuernavaca the next morning. Cuernavaca is a town west of Guantla.
We felt the heat becoming more and more intense as we descended, and when we reached Cuernavaca we lay down in the beautiful garden of the inn, among orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, listening to the pleasant cool sound of running water, and looking down into the great barranca with its perpendicular walls of rock, and the luxuriant vegetation of the tierra caliente covering the banks of the stream that flowed far below us.
The peaks of Orizaba and Perote were conspicuous to the east; to the north lay the silver-mountains of Pachuca; and to the south-west a darker shade of green indicated the forests and plantations of the tierra caliente, below Cuernavaca.
There was no hope of catching the afternoon train from Cuernavaca, and we laid plans to tramp on across the valley floor to Tizapan. But Mexican procrastination sometimes has its virtues, and we were delighted to find the station crowded with those waiting for the delayed convoy that ten minutes later was bearing us cityward through the cool highland night.
Much more interesting than the city of Mexico she found the quaint and ancient town of Cuernavaca, where Maximilian was wont to come with his Empress to enjoy the delights of the famous Borda Gardens. These gardens, though fallen from their first high estate, were still very beautiful at the time of Mrs. Stevenson's visit.
Zapata hung about Cuernavaca and marauders frequently approached the very outskirts of the capital. Under our knapsacks we struck upward through the stony village where the train had set us down, and along a narrow road that soon buried itself in pine forests. A bright clear stream came tumbling sharply down, and along this we climbed.
Colonel Clarke, of the Sixth Infantry, had been ordered into the Cuernavaca Valley, forty-three miles south, with a force amply sufficient to enforce a thorough collection.
Of these pleasant days in Cuernavaca she writes in a letter to her daughter: "I have a little plant from the garden where Carlota lived, which I think is a climbing syringa.
She told him that her title was to be Santa Maria de Tequatlanopeuh, "Saint Mary of the rocky hill," of which hard word the Spaniards made "Guadalupe," just as they had turned Quauhnahuac into Cuernavaca, and Quauhaxallan into Guadalajara, substituting the nearest word of Spanish form for the unpronounceable Mexican names.
Before this campaign I was in Cuernavaca, in the State of Morelos, during the time when General Huerta had his headquarters there in his campaign against Zapata's bandit hordes in that State after the fall of General Diaz's government.
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