18 The War-God’s Country

toMMY tiNker was eating a slice of bread and butter. He was biting it very carefully round the edges and between bites he looked at it thoughtfully.

“What in the world are you doing!” asked his father.

“I’m biting a map of North America,” replied Tommy.He placed it carefully on the tablecloth. “There’s Alaska on this corner, Labrador on this corner, Florida on this corner,and Yucatan opposite it.” Then he rolled out a little tail of bread and placed it on the other corner. “And there’s Lower California.”

Did your teacher

“I ought to send you from the table for playing with your food,” said his father; “but I won’t if you can tell me where the Gulf of California is.”

“It’s not in California,” said Tommy. “You didn’t catch me that time. It’s in Mexico and so is Lower California too—both are in Mexico.”

“Right,” said his father. “When I was a boy my teacher asked me where the Gulf of California and Lower California were and, though I hadn’t studied my lesson, I answered‘California,’ for I felt sure that must be right.”

“Did your teacher ever show you this one?” asked Tommy.He curved the finger and thumb of his left hand to form the letter “G.” “G is for Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “My finger is Florida, my thumb is Yucatan and here is Mexico. Do you see it?”

“They didn’t teach me geography that way when I went to school,” said his father.

“They don’t now,” said Tommy. “I made that up myself.”

Perhaps you have heard people speak of some place as“God’s Country.” Well, the country just south of the United States is named “God’s Country,” but it is the War God’s Country. It is called Mexico after the Indians’ God of War,Mexitli.

When you cross the line from the United States to Canada you hardly know you are in another country—the people are the same, they talk the same language. But when you cross the line from the United States to Mexico you do know you are in another country—the people are different and they talk a different language. Mexico used to belong to Spain across the Atlantic; it now belongs to itself.

I told you there was a Peace Stone on the Canada line and that Canada and the United States agreed long ago never to fight each other. There is no peace stone on the Mexican border line and there have been many fights between the United States and Mexico. Our States of Texas, New Mexico,and Arizona once belonged to Mexico. Between Texas and Mexico is a river called the Rio Grande, which means River Grand or Grand River. The Rio Grande runs through such a dry country, however, that part of the time there is no river,only a dry place where the river did run, so that people can walk right across from the United States to Mexico in certain places, or at certain times of the year.

When the white people came to America there were Indians living all over our country. The white people pushed the Indians farther and farther off to the corners and outof-the-way places until now there are so few Indians in the United States that many boys and girls have never seen an Indian except in the circus or on the 5-cent piece. When the white people came to Mexico there were Indians living all over that country too, but in Mexico there still are more Indians now living than there are white people. Many of the white Spanish people have married Indians, so some Mexicans are Spanish, more are Indian, and still more are mixed Spanish and Indian.

The people in the United States speak English and do many things as the people in England do. The people who came to Mexico were white people from Spain. So they speak Spanish and do many things as the people in Spain do.

When the Spanish first came to Mexico they found the Indians there wearing silver necklaces and silver bracelets and silver ornaments, so they knew there must be silver in Mexico. The Spaniards were really looking for gold, but silver was next best, so they set to work to dig for silver and they are still doing so, and even now, more than 400 years after white people came to Mexico more silver is mined there than anywhere else i. t. w. W. except the United States. Silver mines are in the mountains, the same chain of mountains as the Rocky Mountains in the United States, only in Mexico they are called Sierra Madre.

Up in the Sierra Madre Mountains, in a bowl-shaped valley, is the capital of Mexico. It is called Mexico City, so you don’t have to learn a new name. The farther north you go the colder it gets, but not always. The farther south you go the warmer it gets, but not always. But the higher up you go in the mountains the colder it gets—always. Mexico City is so far south you would think it would be very hot, but it is not, because it is so high up in the mountains. They have mild weather in Mexico City all the year round.

Near Mexico City is an old volcano with the peculiar name:Po-poca-tepetl. It sounds something like Po-poca-teakettle.Why didn’t they give it an easy name, you may wonder.They did, for in the language of the Indians who named it,Popocatepetl means “smoking mountain.” Popocatepetl is so far south we should expect it to be warm, but it is so high that its top is cold and is covered with snow all the year round.Popocatepetl is no longer firing up, but clouds of sulphur smoke pour out of it all the time and sulphur collects in its mouth. Indian workmen climb up the sides of Popocatepetl and climb down inside to get the sulphur, which is used in making matches and medicine and other things.

On the Gulf side of Mexico, along the shore, it is very warm indeed, very damp and unhealthful, so no one would live there if he didn’t have to; but great lakes of oil were found down under the ground, along the shore near a city called Tampico, and men have dug wells through the ground to get the oil. It is so close to the sea that tank ships can fill up with the oil and carry it to the United States and other places in the World. It is much cheaper to send oil by ship than by train, for one tank ship will carry as much as a thousand tank cars.

The thumb-like piece of Mexico is called Yucatan. In Yucatan grows a plant with tall swords-haped leaves. From these leaves a fiber that looks like long gray hair, called sisal,is obtained. It is used to make rope and twine. From the juice of another plant that grows in Yucatan, chewing-gum is made.