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Updated: June 18, 2025
There were in all twelve of us traders, and a number of hunters, who had agreed to accompany us across the plains. There was a miner, too, who belonged to a copper mine near El Paso. There were also four Mexicans the "arrieros" who had charge of our little train of pack-mules. Of coarse, we were all well armed, and mounted upon the best horses we could procure for money.
Hardly a Mexican mule in the old days of the trade could be found which did not bear the scar of this rude supplement to the immense saddle. The load, which is termed a carga, was generally three hundred pounds. Two arrieros, or packers, place the goods on the mule's back, one, the cargador, standing on the near side, his assistant on the other.
This opened on a high vaulted corridor, six feet wide and thirty long. Along this, behind glass doors, stood some hundred more or less complete bodies shrouded in sheets. They retained, or had been arranged, in the same form they had presented in life peon carriers bent as if still under a heavy burden, old market women in the act of haggling, arrieros plodding behind their imaginary burros.
This method of transportation was so cheap, because of the low rate of wages, that wagon-freighting, even in the most level region, could not compete with it. Five dollars a month was the amount paid to the muleteers, but it was oftener five with rations, costing almost nothing, of corn and beans. Meat, if used at all, was found by the arrieros themselves.
Well, then; I used to have my own lovers plenty of them handsome young arrieros and rancheros: there was Tadeo, a valento of the first class: and Buffa and well, I will sleep; they do not remember me, I dare say; and I have forgotten their names." In the mean time the sisters sat down beneath a great fig-tree. No sunshine, no shower, could penetrate its thick foliage.
There we were, with all our baggage and instruments, but without carriers, deserted by our arrieros, and with no opportunity in Tumbala to secure new animals or helpers; it was like the voice of a friend, to receive this English letter from El Triunfo, and we felt that, if worst came to worst, Don Enrique might help us out. The room in which we slept was filled with stored stuff and two tables.
The woman who kept the shanty fonda down the street boasted of having lived nineteen months in California in her halcyon days, but was obliged to borrow enough of me in advance to buy the ingredients of the scanty supper she finally prepared. By eight the corral was snoring with arrieros and I ascended to my substantial couch.
And Tzapotecans and women, arrieros and servants, ran about in the utmost terror and confusion, with cries of "Vamos, paso redoblado! Off with us, or we are all lost, man and beast," and saddling, packing, and scrambling on their mules. And before Rowley and I knew where we were, they tore us away from our iguana and coffee, and hoisted and pushed us into our saddles.
The courtyard was full of arrieros and carriers, brawling loudly; the master of the house was fighting with two of his customers, and universal confusion reigned around. As I dismounted I received the contents of a wineglass in my face, of which greeting, as it was probably intended for another, I took no notice.
Thus far I had seen barely a human being all the day, but as the shades of evening grew I passed several groups of arrieros who blasted my hopes of reaching Gracias that night, but who informed me that just beyond the "rio grande" was a casita where I might spend the night.
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