From Jasper Matheny –Frontier Sheriff, Businessman, Mexican Planter, and a Founder of Spokane by Don Rivara, 2004, page 68-70..
Referring to Jasper and Elizabeth (Libby) Matheny’s time in California, Don Rivara states,
“It was probably while living here that Jasper came across a pamphlet that encouraged Americans to buy land in Southern Mexico and become involved in coffee growing. As such literature does, it painted a rosy picture of the ease of such a project and the riches it could earn. Presumably Jasper did some investigating before taking his family there in 1884. Meanwhile, Libby studied Spanish a few months.
…Only fourteen-year-old Guy Matheny was left at home, but Jasper’s daughter Ida and her husband Job Cornwell decided to take part in the venture and accompanied the Mathenys on the voyage.
The family probably traveled to San Francisco to embark on the trip aboard the Pacific mail boat. They would be entering a country under the rule of dictator Porfirio Diaz, against whom the Mexicans would eventually revolt. Libby, writing in 1931 at age seventy-five in Cartagena, Colombia, shortly before her death wrote of her first impressions of Mexico:
I do not know if I can remember or rather describe my first impressions; it is so long ago. The whole world has changed so much. I think I was astounded that the earth looked just like the earth in California… the air of the people was different. There seemed to be no hurry anywhere. People strolled about as though they had nothing to do and all the time to do it in. So many dark-eyed black-haired people delighted me as I have always loved dark, flashing eyes.
Mazatlan, the first town we stopped at, was all an enchantment to me. “Compran naranjas!” [Buy oranges.], a long drawn-out wail. “Chicarones!” [cracklins] “Pan caliente! [warm bread]. I recognized so many words that I knew. There was a great difference in the impression the men made to that the women made. The men looked like bandits muffled up to the chin in their serapes [blankets] with their elegant hats, heavily laced and braided with gold and silver, or gold lace. The hat sometimes cost more than all their other clothes. The women, on the contrary, wore delicate silks with many ribbons and laces, were of delicate figure, and were always attended by a duena or some gentleman of her family. I speak of the higher classes. The servant class were mostly of the Indian or mixed class and are call “mestizos.” I thought everything interesting because it was new, I suppose. Then, as our time on shore was so short, we went away not satisfied at seeing so little. Little I thought how tired I would be of the whole blooming show before I got away which would be nine long years later.
… We had to stay in Acapulco for several days before our ship arrived, but the days were filled with gossip. The landlady had been there many years and could tell us about most of the foreign people who lived in the colony of Americans, where we were going to by land to plant coffee.
… San Benito was their port of entry. It lay in the Mexican state of Chiapas, which abuts the Guatemala border. San Benito has since been renamed Puerto Madero to honor Francisco I. Madero, hero of the Mexican Revolution.
Then the next day the enchantment began, and I feel again the pleasure I felt forty-five years ago on first entering a tropical jungle. The road wound about between bamboo and other trees unknown to me and all interwoven with creepers [vines]. There were great trees covered with bell flowers which grew in great bunches, and with lilac orchids. I do not know the names of orchids, but there were a great many varieties, not on the coast but out in the higher lands. There were butterflies and strange brilliant birds. The coast was sandy and this strip of woods cool and moist, muddy in places so that the ox carts, two-wheeled and cumbersome, would sink half way to the hubs and have to be helped back onto the road.
… The land was up on the slopes of Mount Tamarra beyond the town of Tapachula.
… Tapachula was a great disappointment to us. The land company who sold us our line described a flourishing city ‘built in the Moorish style.’ He must have meant ‘Primitive Moorish’ because it had not one modern comfort. No water system, no electric light, no sewers, with a river flowing out the back door with a big head of water straight from the mountain on whose volcanic slope we made our coffee plantation, Mount Tacarra. “