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And I will arrange that the señor shall live for a time in the mountains it will be a hard life, I fear at Santa María and at San Andrés, in which villages he can gain a mouth-mastery of both Otomí and Tarascan. A little time must be given to all this some months, no doubt. But the señor, who already has studied through ten years, will understand the needfulness of this short discipline.
My compatriot strongly opposed my plan of walking to Uruapan at least without an armed guard! The mountains were full of bandits, the Tarascan Indians, living much as they did at the time of the Conquest, did not even speak Spanish, they were unfriendly to whites, and above all dangerously superstitious on the subject of photography.
The fog hung long with us and made impossible pictures of the procession of Tarascan Indians coming in from Tzintzuntzan with every species of red pottery, from cups to immense water-jars, in great nets on the backs of horses, asses, men, and women.
The form is something like a fat horseshoe; fine hills rise around it on all sides, behind which are mountain heights, with jagged outlines; pretty islands dot its waters, and twenty-two villages or towns of Tarascan indians are situated on its borders. The indians of these villages rarely use the land roads in going from town to town, commonly journeying by canoes, of a somewhat peculiar type.
The houses, bowered in dense groves of green, are of the picturesque Tarascan type. The four-sloped roofs, now covered with long, narrow shingles, now with the dull red tiles, suggest the prettiest pictures in Japanese towns. The streets are clean. Through the centre of the town dashes a mountain stream of clearest water, with the hue of sapphire.
He gave us a letter of introduction to him, and an order upon the authorities. We were at once given possession of the schoolhouse for our work, and I started out to find a subject. Almost the first person encountered was a young man of twenty-three years, who presented the pure Tarascan type.
The old style house is such as is characteristic of many other Tarascan towns, but is here more picturesquely developed than in most places. The low-sloped, heavily-tiled roof projects far over the street and is supported below by projecting timbers, which are trimmed at the end to give a pleasing finish.
Death, especially a bloody one, appeared to awaken a keen enjoyment, to quicken the sluggard pulse of even this rather peaceful Tarascan tribe. One could easily fancy them watching with the same ebullient joy the dying struggles of helpless human beings butchered in the same way.
Not only, however, was every house a store, but on the highway between towns, we passed many places where, beneath brush shelters, women offered fruit, food, or drink for sale. Usually several such shelters would be near together, and the venders had gay times, chatting, laughing and singing. Such houses and roadside-selling are common through the whole Tarascan region.
But the center of the picture, the picture, indeed, for which all the rest served as frame, was Lake Patzcuaro. It is not beautiful, but rather inviting, enticing, mysterious for its many sandy promontories, its tongues of mountains cutting off a farther arm of the lake with the old Tarascan capital, and above all for its islands.
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