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After returning to Silao, we resume our journey southward on the main line of the Mexican Central Railroad, crossing the State of Guanajuato through a fertile and well-cultivated region, in strong contrast to much of the country left behind.
The church of Santiago has a tall, graceful, and slender spire, sure to attract an observant eye, recalling the pinnacle of St. Peter and St. Paul in the capital of Russia. We have said Silao is of little commercial importance, but there are six or eight flour-mills, which seem to be the nucleus about which the principal business interests centre.
The branch line down to Silao was soon among broad plains of corn, without rocks even along the flat, ragged, country roads, bringing to mind that it was long since I had walked on level and unobstructed ground. The crowding of the second-class car forced me to share a bench with a chorus girl of the company that had been castilianizing venerable Broadway favorites in Guanajuato's chief theater.
From the veranda it seemed quite flat, though in reality by no means so, and one could all but count the windows of Silao, Irapuato, and other towns; the second, though more than twenty miles away, still in the back foreground of the picture.
Silao is of little commercial importance, but it has the over-abundance of churches always to be found in Spanish towns of its size, none of which, in this instance, are any way remarkable. But the place is picturesque and interesting; one would not like to have missed it.
The immense plain and farther mountains remained almost visible in the starlight, in the middle distance the lamps of Silao, and near the center of the half-seen picture those of Irapuato, while far away a faint glow in the sky marked the location of the city of Leon. Excitement burst upon the mess-table one night.
The quaint old city of Guanajuato, capital of the state bearing the same name, pronounced Wan-a-wato, is situated nearly a thousand feet higher than Silao, two hundred and fifty miles north of the city of Mexico, and fifteen miles from the main trunk of the Mexican Central Railroad, with which it is connected by a branch road.
After passing through miles of dreary territory which produced little save an abnormal growth of cacti of several species, exhibiting great variety in shape and the color of its blossoms, which were sometimes white, but oftener red or yellow, twenty miles southeast of Leon and two hundred and thirty-eight north of the national capital, we reach the small city of Silao, in the State of Guanajuato, which has a population of about fifteen thousand.
We entered one of the boxes on wheels which were on the rank in front of the railway station. Under promise of a good "silao," that is to say, something to drink, the yemtchik or coachman undertook to give wings to his two doves, otherwise his two little horses, and we went off at a good pace.
Some of the men wearing Texan hats laugh at the plump arms and pendulous breasts of the woman who fainted. "Gentlemen, a well-dressed man stole my suitcase at the station in Silao! All my life's savings ... I haven't got enough to feed my little boy now! ..." The old woman speaks rapidly, parrotlike, sighing and sobbing. Her sharp eyes peer about on all sides.
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