This morning there is still a great rattling of the windows and the doors, but not a sign of gnat or mosquito. I must arise and further investigate isthmian life. The _huacamaia_ in the fig-tree has been making himself heard since dawn. I knew that if I did not tell you of Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz now, you would never hear, and I think what those names have meant to you during the years. It's all a memory of drifting sands, women as straight as their own palm-trees, slim, naked boys, fierce wind, and, in the harbor, the great port works, built by foreign energy and capital. _January 14th._ Going up, up, with a ringing in my ears out of the "blazing tropics" into the Tierra Templada. I am traveling with a parrot in a cage, and a nondescript little animal called, I think, a _tajon_, in a box with slats! After a very cursory survey last night, it seemed to belong to the 'coon family. I (who wish all animals well, but not too near) dimly apprehend the Mérida family on the "Ward Line" traveling with their parrot, when I consider that I was put onto the Pullman last night in a thick, inky, tropical darkness, with a parrot in a cage, and a _tajon_ in a box with slats. The amiable colored porter is looking after them in the baggage-car, and the back veranda with the oleanders, beyond the dining-room, is their ultimate destination. I say nothing of the parting; Aunt L. has promised to come soon. The glorious Pico de Orizaba has just shown its lovely white head between two dissolving blue ridges. Last night I reread _Le Journal d'Amiel_, which, with _Monsieur Le Coq_, I picked up as I was leaving the house. As up-to-date in the jungle as anything would be. [29] Fifty-second viceroy. XVII Gathering clouds--"Tajada" the common disease of republics--Reception at Chapultepec--Madero in optimistic mood--His views of Mexico's liabilities to America _January 17th._ I have not written since my word in the train. Too busy taking up daily threads, and there have been various dinings and lunchings out. On my return I found yours saying that another yellow-stamped instalment of the _Arabian Nights Entertainment_ had come in on your breakfast-tray. Just put Mexicans instead of Persians, or whatever they were, intrigues for power in a Latin-American republic, instead of the intricacies of Haroun-al-Raschid and his _califat_, change your longitude, and you are "Orientée" as exactly as the pyramids! _January 19th._ (My brother's birthday).