Old Mexico and her lost provinces : A journey in Mexico, southern California,…
"Old Mexico and Her Lost Provinces" by William Henry Bishop is a travelogue written in the late 19th century. It chronicles a long journey from the United States to Mexico (by way of Cuba) and then through the former Mexican territories of the American West, blending on-the-ground observation with history, economics, and culture. The focus is on a country in rapid transition—railways pushing inland, trade opening, and old Spanish and Aztec legacies
meeting modern enterprise. The opening of the work follows the narrator from a New York departure to Havana, where he sketches island life—lotteries, corruption scandals, yellow-fever debates, and excursions to Matanzas, plantations, and seaside forts—before boarding a French packet for Vera Cruz. He reaches Mexico’s coast amid “northers,” wrecks, vigilant buzzards, crowded churches, and a confusing customs regime, then details consular views on quarantine and a byzantine tariff. Taking the English-built railway overnight to the capital, he describes tropical lowlands giving way to steep gorges and engineering feats at Metlac, moonlit stations, the dawn blaze of Orizaba, Holy Saturday revelry with exploding Judas effigies, pulque country at Apam, and a first glimpse of the pyramids at Teotihuacan. Arriving on the high plateau, he finds Mexico City flat and lake-ringed, its grand Zocalo crowned by a vast rococo cathedral atop the Aztec war-god’s former temple; he lingers over serapes and rebozos, flower markets, pulquerías, funerals on tramcars, and handsome but timeworn palaces and convents. He explains the valley’s drainage dilemma and then moves to Chapultepec and the Paseo de la Reforma, invoking Maximilian’s urban vision. In his hotel courtyard he meets a cadre of foreign “projectors”—railway men, miners, manufacturers, bankers (with General Grant among them)—and weighs whether the capital will become the nation’s true metropolis as rails knit the republic together, closing with a sober nod to Mexican memories of the U.S. invasion. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Bishop, William Henry, 1847-1928 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 02023140 |
| Title | Old Mexico and her lost provinces : A journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona by way of Cuba |
| Original Publication | New York: Harper & brothers, 1883. |
| Credits | Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | F1201: North America local history: Mexico |
| Subject | California -- Description and travel |
| Subject | Arizona -- Description and travel |
| Subject | Mexico -- Description and travel |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77881 |
| Release Date | Feb 7, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 1268 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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