Mexico, the wonderland of the South (1909) (14758705306)

Identifier: mexicowonderland1909cars (find matches)

Title: Mexico, the wonderland of the South

Year: 1909 (1900s)

Authors: Carson, William English, 1870-

Subjects: Mexico -- Description and travel

Publisher: New York, The Macmillan company

Contributing Library: Brown University Library

Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

Text Appearing Before Image:

ood. There is a fairly large foreignelement in the city, consisting mainly of business men,American, English, German, Spanish and French. In thesurrounding country there are a good many foreign planterscultivating sugar-cane, coffee, bananas, etc. In VeraCruz, as in all parts of Mexico, Spanish is the only Europeanlanguage known to the mass of the people, although owingto the increasing number of Americans in the country aknowledge of English is gradually becoming more generalamong Mexican business men. Vera Cruz with the ^^norther blowing was a place tohurry away from, so in the afternoon I took the ^train toOrizaba. This mountain town, situated 4026 feet abovesea-level, arnidst beautiful scenery, is a favorite healthresort for the Mexicans. The gradient is so steep for thegreater part of the way that the train takes about fivehours to cover the eighty miles from Vera Cruz. On Mexican railways the trains are arranged in the usualAmerican style, and American rolling stock is generally

Text Appearing After Image:

Pi O CO g THE TROPICS IN A NORTHER 13 used. The Mexican Railway, however — the Hne betweenVera Cruz, Orizaba and Mexico City — uses some bigFairhe engines made in Glasgow. The trains are invariablydivided into first, second, and third-class cars, the first-class car corresponding to what is usually called in thiscountry sl day coach. Only the night trains have Pull-man cars attached to them. Compared with an American train, the Mexican Rail-ways day train seemed rather shabby; the first-class carwas old and worn, and furnished with black leather seats.^It was, however, no worse than the ordinary first-classcars in which I afterwards travelled on other Mexicanrailways. The companies, I was told, could not affordto run Pullman cars on their day trains at present, asthere are not enough foreign passengers to make it pay,and Mexican travellers are usually too parsimonious topay any additional fare for the sake of more comfort. About twenty passengers from the steamer had takentickets

mexico the wonderland of the south 1909 book illustrations description and travel brown university mexico mexico city high resolution images from internet archive

1909

Brown University Library

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public domain