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Story
October 14, 1885
The Hazel Green Herald
Hazel Green, Wolfe County, Kentucky
What is this article about?
Description of bumboat trade in Acapulco, Mexico, focusing on a 400-pound mulatto woman who paddles out to Pacific Mail steamships to sell fruits, eggs, trinkets, parrots, and curiosities, alongside other native vendors using dugout canoes, living simple lives on the beach.
Clipping
OCR Quality
98%
Excellent
Full Text
ACAPULCO,
How the Marketing of Our Mexican Neighbor is Conducted Afloat.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Acapulco is the life of the people who subsist by the small traffic which they carry on with the few steamers that touch there. One mulatto woman there is who weighs at least 400 pounds, and who for twenty years has paddled out or been paddled out to the anchorage ground as often as a vessel is sighted from the promontory adjoining the town. She always meets the Pacific Mail steamships with two bumboats, loaded with her own person, beside some fruits, eggs, trinkets and curiosities. Beautiful parrots of a garrulous turn of mind may be purchased from her for $8 each. Of course she has rivals, but her good natured laughing face and abundant charms, which remind one of the display of dressed meat at a butcher's stall, seem as a rule to carry the day, and she is credited with possessing a very comfortable fortune.
No sooner does the prow of a steamer show itself around the sharp corner which vessels have to turn to enter the harbor than the bumboats may be seen flocking out from the shore, and in an astonishing short space of time they are alongside. The bumboats at all these Mexican ports are the primitive dugout canoe, which, as every one who has seen one will acknowledge, is not ungraceful in appearance, especially when tossing about upon the waves. The natives paddle them now just as their purer-blooded forefathers did 600 years ago, before Cortez set foot in the Aztec empire. The huts of the bumboat people are on the beach, close to the foot of the promontory. Here naked children, hogs, fowls, and dogs live promiscuously together in the sand. Bronze-skinned young women wade out with bare legs and loose gowns displaying their shoulders, arms and bosoms, into the gently lapping tide, secure their canoes, load them, and then, embarking, push off for the anchorage ground. A peep into their huts shows these people to be lazily industrious and invariably cleanly. Their life is just as simple and more peaceful than that of the patriarchs of old.-Cor. San Francisco Chronicle.
How the Marketing of Our Mexican Neighbor is Conducted Afloat.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Acapulco is the life of the people who subsist by the small traffic which they carry on with the few steamers that touch there. One mulatto woman there is who weighs at least 400 pounds, and who for twenty years has paddled out or been paddled out to the anchorage ground as often as a vessel is sighted from the promontory adjoining the town. She always meets the Pacific Mail steamships with two bumboats, loaded with her own person, beside some fruits, eggs, trinkets and curiosities. Beautiful parrots of a garrulous turn of mind may be purchased from her for $8 each. Of course she has rivals, but her good natured laughing face and abundant charms, which remind one of the display of dressed meat at a butcher's stall, seem as a rule to carry the day, and she is credited with possessing a very comfortable fortune.
No sooner does the prow of a steamer show itself around the sharp corner which vessels have to turn to enter the harbor than the bumboats may be seen flocking out from the shore, and in an astonishing short space of time they are alongside. The bumboats at all these Mexican ports are the primitive dugout canoe, which, as every one who has seen one will acknowledge, is not ungraceful in appearance, especially when tossing about upon the waves. The natives paddle them now just as their purer-blooded forefathers did 600 years ago, before Cortez set foot in the Aztec empire. The huts of the bumboat people are on the beach, close to the foot of the promontory. Here naked children, hogs, fowls, and dogs live promiscuously together in the sand. Bronze-skinned young women wade out with bare legs and loose gowns displaying their shoulders, arms and bosoms, into the gently lapping tide, secure their canoes, load them, and then, embarking, push off for the anchorage ground. A peep into their huts shows these people to be lazily industrious and invariably cleanly. Their life is just as simple and more peaceful than that of the patriarchs of old.-Cor. San Francisco Chronicle.
What sub-type of article is it?
Curiosity
What themes does it cover?
Social Manners
What keywords are associated?
Acapulco
Bumboat Trade
Mulatto Woman
Pacific Mail Steamships
Dugout Canoes
Mexican Ports
Where did it happen?
Acapulco, Mexico
Story Details
Location
Acapulco, Mexico
Story Details
The narrative describes the daily life and trade practices of bumboat vendors in Acapulco, emphasizing a mulatto woman who sells goods to arriving steamers and the simple, peaceful existence of the native people using traditional dugout canoes.