Old Mexico and her lost provinces : $b A journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona by way of Cuba
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2026-02-07 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77881 |
Description
"Old Mexico and her lost provinces" by William Henry Bishop is a travel narrative written in the late 19th century. The work follows an American traveler through Cuba, Mexico, and the formerly Mexican regions of Southern California and Arizona, mixing firsthand observation with history, politics, commerce, and culture, and paying special attention to the new railways reshaping the country. The opening of the narrative traces a sea route from New York to Havana, where the traveler sketches the harbor, the lottery-obsessed street life, talk of war profiteering during Cuba’s insurrection, and a hot, dusty side trip to Matanzas, sugar estates, and coastal forts. He then sails the Spanish Main to Vera Cruz, arriving in a “norther,” and offers practical counsel about the lone nightly train to the capital, while noting the city’s austere beauty, vigilant buzzards, and the American consul’s views on yellow fever and the burdensome customs regime. Boarding the English-built railway, he spends a moonlit night with a richly dressed hacendado, then ascends dramatic gorges past coffee lands, the Metlac barranca, and sunrise on Orizaba, amid Holy Saturday revelry, roadside pulque, and glimpses of Teotihuacan’s pyramids. Reaching Mexico City, he describes customs dues, the Iturbide Hotel, the grave calm of the streets, the Zócalo and cathedral on the Aztec temple site, the flower markets, serapes and rebozos, and the city’s chronic drainage and lake problems. He peeks into tiled courtyards and family chapels, then turns to the hotel courtyard’s bustle of “projectors”: engineers, financiers, and General Grant among them, chasing railways, banks, and factories. Finally, on the Paseo de la Reforma and at Chapultepec, he reflects on the capital’s likely expansion, listens to a colonel’s measured view of Americans, and recalls the contested memories of the U.S. invasion that once ran along these same causeways. (This is an automatically generated summary.)