Letter to children

Scope and content:

Written from Veracruz, Mexico. Letter regards travel across Mexico, ongoing colonization, and the political situation in Virginia.

Language:

English .

Other descriptive data:

mail to Will or Corbin
Havana Arrived 9

Veracruz, Mexico
1 March 1866

My dear Children
The English steamer in which I have paid my passage £49.10 is now over-due two days, and her day of sailing again is day after to-morrow.

I left Mexico Saturday the 24th at 2 A.M. arrived at [Puebla] at 7 p.m. when I "pernocted" in a room with diverse others for $2. Was called at 1 A.M. and off again at 2, over a very rough road -a very fatiguing journey. Passed between long ridges of my lordly maquay shooting up it magnificent flower stalks, as large and as high and as straight as a common telegraph pole. Indeed unless you were near enough to see the wires I found it often difficult to tell one from the other. This `first of Flora" with its enormous height and proportions is pushed up in the course of 6 or 7 days. To compare great things with small, imagine an immense asparagus stalk say one day old and before its head has swollen out sufficiently to begin to burst and shoot out branches, well imagine it to 18 or 20 inches in circumference, 30 or 40 feet high and you have it as I generally saw them, rising out its magnificent tuft of foliage 30 feet around and 12 feet high. Occasionally the more forward ones had commenced to shoot out, from the top and horizontally their splendid flower brackets and to assume the appearance of splendid and gigantic candelabras from which the genie of the hoary hooded orizaba which with his night cap of snow was looking down upon us, intended to light up the plains through which the coach was teetering its toilsome way. Ascending the Western slopes of the [`Cumibres'], the highest range between Mexico and the Gulf, we left its `boast of Bacchus" and entered the cloud region. It was blowing a furious gale, the wind was howling amongst the rocks and cliffs, and driving a cold and penetrating mist through a white darkness so thick that you could see nothing beyond the distance of a few feet. It was piercing cold: I had on 3 flannel shirts, but as we began to climb, I began to draw around and button tight and finally found myself wrapped in cloak and blanket and uncomfortably cool. Presently we dropped down through this thick cloud stratum into bright sun shine and the coolest air that is was possible for heart of men to conceive. This was the lovely little valley of [Acu ] at our feet, and spreading out miles away into the plains of Orizaba which are 4000 feet above the sea. The valley was quilted over by swirling crops in all the stages of growth form the sprouting corn to the ripe grain. The reapers were in golden fields of the yellowest and the brightest barley I ever saw, the wheat was just coming up; and immense herds of cattle as they fed on the rich pasturage lent a charm to the landscape that made it altogether lovely. Passing a cascade of milk white foam as it leaped from the mountains.

We entered the valley and felt what old Job had said about the scent of water - we were in the midst of fruits and flowers. Orange trees loaded with ripe fruit. And the peach tree is all the glory of blossom. Hedges and copens of roses, fuschias, arborvitaes, rhododendrons. Oh a wilderness of the loveliest flowers and the gayest colors, and such only as I used to think in Tennessee had never grown anywhere except in the garden of "Beauty and the Beast" - and it too has its beast, for two months ago it had been then in the shape of an earth-quake and shaken down the adobe huts of the village, which owners were reconstructing of some rustic materials, such as bamboo, reeds - palm [fronds] straw and hides. After passing through these beauties for 12 or 15 miles, and at 6½ p.m. drove into Orizaba in the midst of a rain storm - Coffee, tobacco, the cereals, and the banana with other fruits seemed to be the principle article of cultivation. Here I pernocted again in another [ ] whereas before there was little chance for sleep. Was called at 5, off at 6, and at 10 breakfasted at Cordoba, and I arrived at Pas del Macho where I pernocted again as unsatisfactorily as before. And so the next day at 6 started in the cars for this place. Total expenses $45.50 the $0.50 being spent for extra's such as a cup of chocolate or so between the early hours of starting and the late one of breakfasting. There were fresh arrivals of immigrants, all the hands were taken up. Cordoba looked lively & everybody in high spirits. Two ship loads had just arrived. Sheridan had refused to let them embark at New Orleans as he was determined to break up that Maury nest of Confederates which was agitating the public mind of the South & preventing the people there from quietly submitting to subjugation. I thank him for the encouragement. The Mexican plan is spreading over the South. We are going to have happy homes, a fine country, & a bright future here. Let those who lack gall or who having it, have steeped it in honey, stay. I seek to plant my posterity here.

Dick has got land in my Carlota colony, 640 acres. He has sent to China for labourers- 12 or 15 to work it, and to Virginia for young Crutchfield to take charge of it. I have such good irons in such good fires, that some of them will surely be got to welding heat. If so, I hope to find comfortable homes, and a bright future here for you all at last. Corbin and Nannie will come in the steamer that is to leave New York Oct 8. They will without stopping here a night, take the cars to Paso del Macho- 50 miles-they are then by stage 5 hours from Cordoba, where they will arrive say 21st or 22nd and wait a week for us. We will be due here say on the 27th. Corbin can spend this week profitably & both of them pleasantly in visiting the Colony, examining the coffee plantations & c. [Then] will take a [whole] stage for Puebla, by which time the railway thru to Mexico will be completed- so will teeter over the cumbres and among the maguey in a stage coach.

My letter to "the people at home" has never been published. It should be. So should the anachronistic one to Dr. Dabney. Let my brave backers- Nannie & Corbin- do the thing that is right and send copies of them to Jno Tyler of the Whig or someone else who has a bone in his back to publish. Among the misfortunes that have befallen our people, I regard as not the least, the advice that has been given by the best men among them, viz.- to stay at home & help the enemy to establish his power & complete our degradation. The Yankees have conquered Virginia, it's theirs, we are subjugated, & have no rights except such as the victors in mercy may vouchsafe to give. If the whole South is not a conquered territory then I have never read in history of one that was conquered, and Dabney & them who like him consider it to be their duty & their interest to help build up that Yankee despotism called the Union, owe it to the grace and mercy of their conquerors, that their conquerors do not cross from the map the very name of Virginia, blot out all former state lines, make new provinces and call a part of what was Virginia the state of Winnepisscogee, South Carolina Peasquod, & such like Yankee innovations & that nothing should remain to remind the vanquished of the ancient renown.

Subjects:

Mexico—History
Correspondence

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