Vera Cruz

a seaport of Mexico. It is situated at the head of a bay of the Gulf of Mexico. The name is Spanish, meaning true cross. Vera Cruz is one of three Mexican ports open to the commerce of foreign countries. Seven railways center here, including lines communicating with the City of Mexico and with Salina Cruz on the Pacific coast. A cable reaches Galveston. In addition to coastwise trade, steamers call from Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States. The total value of exports and imports handled yearly is estimated at $100,000,000; the important exports are gold, silver, copper, coffee, sisal, cotton, fruits, vanilla, cacao (chocolate), and hides. There are foundries, cotton mills, paper mills, and sawmills, as well as manufactures of chocolate and wax candles. Vera Cruz has an interesting old harbor, early one of the busiest places in North America. Cortez and his band of marauders landed here in 1529. General Scott set out with his army for the conquest of the capital city in 1847. The following graphic lines from Charles F. Lummis' Pioneer Transportation in America give an idea of the early importance of Vera Cruz:

The first great commercial highway in America, and for more than three centuries incomparably the most important, was that romantic calzada or "shod" mule-path from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico. The Vera Cruz road (first laid out by Cortez in 1522, and improved in later days to the tune of $3,000,000) was a more or less stone-paved highway nearly 100 leagues long, from the seaboard to the capital, which, for three and a half centuries, was the largest city in all the western hemisphere; and over its rough meanderings, for that long span of time, pottered up and down a commerce so vast in value as to seem incredible to any "American" generation except this present one. Down its declivity from the Tierra Fria of the great plateau to the pestilential Tierra Caliente toiled the enormous revenues of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and other great silver mines. In the twelve years ending with 1791 there were shipped from Vera Cruz $224,052,025 in coined silver dollars. There were besides the vast riches of indigo, sugar, cochineal, sarsaparilla, and jalap from Mexico, the cacao of Peru and Ecuador, the copper of Coquimbo, and the silks and spices of China and the Philippines (from the "Acapulco ship"). There are reasonably well-known railroads in the United States which, today, do not haul half as much value in freight in a year as yearly shuffled down the Vera Cruz calzada 300 years ago; and, so late as 1824, Bullock notes seeing a thousand pack-mules in a single train loaded with silver--each mule carrying $2,000. Until the railroad from Mexico to Vera Cruz was finished in 1873, the traffic was conducted almost entirely by pack-trains. In its palmy days the trails used 70,000 mules a year. Rates for freighting ranged from twenty-six cents to $1.25 per ton per mile--or for the journey, $25 per mule--just a slight advantage over the figures which ruled in the "packing" days of our West! At the height of its activity the Vera Cruz Trail enjoyed a commerce of more than 50,000 tons a year--or 350,000 mule-loads. Wheeled vehicles were but little used, and only for passengers, the fare being on an average about $50. The wheeled conveyance most in use was the carroza, a ponderous coach drawn by eight or nine mules, with two postilions. A more common conveyance, for those so worthless as to be unable to ride horseback, was the litera--a litter on shafts swung to the saddle of a mule in front and one behind. This litter was wide enough for two persons, and long enough to lie down in. There were four chief stage routes in early Mexico: That from Vera Cruz, via Puebla to the capital, required eight days.

With so enormous a freight traffic as never trampled any other American highway (a century ago, the commerce of the Acapulco and Vera Cruz trails was $64,000,000 a year) it is easy to comprehend--even without the particular statistics--something of the innumerable host of mules and the army of arrieros, or drivers, that made that stony pathway vociferous in the days of its glory.