WALKING/MULES/HORSES

Those travelers who spent a significant amount of time writing about walking or riding animals as their main mode of transportation were the "adventure seekers" and used the most primitive methods of transportation. This includes Gillpatrick who in 1905 spent a significant amount of time in the wilderness travelling the mining region in Mexico. His only options for transportation in these isolated locations were walking or riding a mule. Roosevelt in 1913 hiked and rode a mule into the Amazon to explore an unmapped river, the River of Doubt. In 1916, Franck, who was a "self-proclaimed vagabond" also looked for adventure in Mexico and traveled by foot and horse because he wanted to reach the continent of South America by "some less monotonous route than the steamships track"(foreward).

Guenther and Maybury-Lewis both traveled to Brazil with scientific motives and to conduct research. Both of these travelers found walking a convenient mode of transportation. Guenther, who in the 1920's traveled to Brazil to study the flaura and fauna frequently walked to his subjects to observe and examine them. Maybury- Lewis traveled by foot for a portion of his journey into the Brazilian "interior" in 1955 to conduct anthropological research.

COACH

A coach is a large four wheeled horse drawn carriage that is usually enclosed. These were used for travelling to farther destinations and could not go into the wilderness with its unbeaten paths like a human or horse could. Coaches could operate though on flat or gradually in/declining terrain. Coaches were not always the most reliable form of transportation as Anderson discovered. "Some dozen of us transferred our bodies into an old fashioned New York nine passenger coach and started for Cordova...but we broke down on the bridge, so we sent back to Paso del Macho for another one"(14). Gillpatrick found the experience exilerating and stated "If you have never ridden on a Mexican coach, you still have a new sensation in store. People talk of Mexico as slow, but the word can never be applied either to stage coaches or street cars, when they once get started"(190).

BOAT

This mode of transportation was not popular among the travelers because many of them visited the interior of Mexico or Brazil as opposed to the coast. Guenther was one of the few who utilized a boat in his " voyage from the Pernambuco to the South (which) is magnificent, especially if one travels not by one of the great ocean-liners, but by one of the Brazilian coasting-steamers, the "Costeria," whose name begins with "Ita" (the Indian word for rock)(29). Agassiz also traveled by steamboat for a portion of his trip and he found that "at night it grows deliciously cool, the sunsets are always beautiful and we go to the forward deckand sit there until nine o'clock in the evening"(73).

TRAIN

Railroads were first constructed in Mexico in 1857 and this is the most popular mode of transportation among the travelers. The train is mentioned in almost every account, and for good reason, it was the quickest and most reliable mode of transportation of the time. It was also convenient because it connected to so many destinations. Some, like Franck, traveled in a train for extented periods of time, such as four days. "We rambled across just such a land, endless flat sand scattered with chapparral, mesquite, and cactus; nowhere a sign of life, but for fences of one or two barb-wires on crooked sticks-- not even bird life"(7). Other travelers only used them as more short term transportation to travel from one city to the next.

AUTOMOBILES/ AIRPLANE

Automoblies and airplanes seem the only way to travel today due to their convenience and popularity. But, these are the most modern methods of transportation and are used only by the 20th century travelers. Within cities taxis, trucks, and buses are used by Gillpatrick, Garner, Franck, and Maybury-Lewis. In these accounts modern transportation 'appears' in their writings for the first time. The mention of the automobile in any travel account automatically conveys the time period becasue they were invented so recently. Garner felt that "travelling by bus may be more or less uncomfortable, but it is almost unfailingly interesting. We went from Taxaco to Mexico City on one which was crowded (they nearly always are)"(57). Airplanes are only written about by Maybury-Lewis in 1955 when he did research in Brazil. Interestingly, Maybury-Lewis, after flying to Brazil, flew to the interior with " the Brazilian Air Force (who) always had been and always would be willing to do everything it could to facilitate the work of people who were engaged onserious projects in the interior"(223).

HOTELS

Hotels are the main place of lodging for the majority of the travelers. Some travelers found them to be agreeable and to their likings, while others experienced the opposite reaction. As early as 1865 Anderson writes about "the sleeping apartments which all open up to an inner court or plaza, which is, like in the towns, the main part of the establishment"(55). Seventy years later in 1935 when Bess Garner visited Mexico she pleasantly described her hotel in great detail. "The Hotel Arronte in Puebla was built as a private residence in 1672...The house was 2 stories high and a perfect example of the typical Puebla-type building, faced with red brick and blue and white tile. The first floor was the granary and the storerooms, and the living rooms were all on the second floor. There was a living room over seventy feet long, besides thirty or forty other rooms. The down-spouts or gargoyles were in the form of cannons. They still surround the patio at the second-story height, useless now except to excite the curiosity of the tourist he usually calls them 'machine guns'. Forty years ago a third floor was added and a fifty-room hotel made. Mr Manuel Arronte has owned it since 1915, and it has been as it is now since then...The furniture in the hotel belonged largely to Mr. Arronte's parents, who lived in Atlixco. There is a set of French furniture on the balcony that ought to be in a museum. There are mirrors of unbelievable size, one seventy or eighty, some one hundred and fifty, years old. (79) This hotel seems to be very old, but well decorated with antique furniture.

Unfortunately, Maybury-Lewis did not stay in such an elaborate hotel. "On our first night in the hotel we had been shown into a small, airless room whose soul furniture was a hard-looking double-bed. It was lit by a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling, giving a pale splodge of light which left the walls and corners cobwebby with shadows" (25). Gillpatrick lodged in a number of different hotels during 1905-1906 and he stated "I could tell gruesome tales of nights spent in Mexican hotels, but I won't. Good hotels are a crying want in the republic, and when I encounter one I sing its praises"(188).

It is obvious that the condition of the hotel varies from traveler to traveler, but they all stay in some variation of a hotel. The fact that hotels are built proves the point that even in the mid 1800's the idea of the 'tourist' was being created and evolving. Today many people automatically associate hotels with tourists, and it is odd to think of mid-1900 travelers as tourists. But, the reality is that is was during that time period that the idea of the tourist was created. People traveled for leisure or interest rather than exploration and settlement, and such a trend becomes apparent at the increase in availability of hotels.

The Mayaland Lodge, Mexico 1937

The Hotel Arronte, Puebla, Mexico 1937

SOURCES

Agassiz, Professor and Mrs. A Journey in Brazil.1868. University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co. Cambridge. Boston, 1868.

Anderson, William Marshall. An American in Maximilian's Mexico 1865-1866. Ed. Ramon Eduardo Ruiz. San Marino: The
Huntington Library, 1959.

Franck, Harry A. Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras: Being the Random Notes of an Incurable
Vagabond. New York: The Century, 1916.

Garner, Bess Adams. Mexico: Notes in the Margin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937.

Gillpatrick, Wallace. The Man Who Likes Mexico. New York, NY: The Century Company, 1912.

Kozar, Richard. Theodore Roosevelt and the Exploration of the Amazon Basin. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers,
2001.

Maybury-Lewis, David. The Savage and the Innocent. Boston: Beacon Press, 1956.

IMAGES

http://www.nationalrrmuseum.org

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