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Updated: May 8, 2025
The French intervention has come to a close, and is now a thing of the past. . . . The end is known. On February 13 the Emperor, with Generals Marquez and Vidaurri, at the head of a column of some two thousand men, sallied forth from Mexico to establish his base of operations at Queretaro.
In the environs of Queretaro one sees immense plantations devoted to the growth of the maguey plant, from which the national beverage is manufactured. Pulque is to the Mexican what claret is to the Frenchman, or beer to the German, being simply the fermented juice of the aloe.
This industry as now carried on was established by him, and is still conducted by the same manager, Don Cayetano Rubio. The excellent system of the establishment would do credit to a Lowell or Lawrence factory; indeed, almost any similar establishment might take a favorable lesson from this at Queretaro.
Where water power is to be obtained, it is improved to the utmost, as at Queretaro, where a small river is made to turn the largest overshot wheel which has ever been constructed, furnishing power in the famous Hercules Cotton Factory of that city, which gives regular employment to many hundred native men and women.
Moreover, he saw the body of his brother Maximilian brought home from the Mexican plain of Queretaro, where he had been shot down by a file of soldiers as if a vulgar criminal; he stood by the deathbed of a favorite niece, burnt to death before his eyes in the palace of Schoenbrunn, when her dress had caught fire from a lighted cigarette which she was endeavoring to conceal from him and from her father; he followed to the grave another favorite of his, a nephew, accidentally killed while out shooting.
Referring to the fact, he says: "In about forty days I may receive an acknowledgment of this report, and by that time, if the treaty of peace be not accepted, I hope to be sufficiently re-enforced to open the commercial line between Zacatecas and Tampico. The occupation of Queretaro, Guanajuato, and Guadalajara would be the next in importance, and some of the ports of the Pacific third.
The white inhabitants of these states are more cleanly in their habits, and more industrious than the Southern people. The little state of Queretaro has little to boast but its agriculture, but to the north of it is a country of mines and pasturage. There was formerly great rivalry between the states of Guanajuato and Zacatecas on the ground of their mining successes.
They can be purchased at Queretaro at from ten dollars to ten hundred; for the latter price a really splendid gem may be had, emitting a grand display of prismatic tints, and all aglow with fire. The natives, notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them.
Instead of marching on Puebla, Santa Anna turned his forces toward Queretaro, but in a few days countermarched. After two or three maneuvers of this kind, he finally invested Puebla with about fifteen hundred cavalry and four field pieces. He summoned Colonel Childs, who was in command, to surrender on the score of humanity.
I am restored and brought back to health, I am transacting the business for which I came, and feel ready to set out on my journey back to that vineyard of the Lord. "During my sickness in Queretaro, I was nursed with remarkable charity and diligence, by Padre Procurador Fr. Alexandro Llaneras, and soon after I arrived here, in this College of San Fernando, we heard of his death.
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