Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 May 1887 — An Old Mexican Tragedy. [ARTICLE]

An Old Mexican Tragedy.

High up in a desolate canon, about forty miles from Monterey, the traveler on the ferro carril (as the steam cars are called) sees the ruins of an ancient casa whose crumbling walls are usually mistaken for one of the many fortifications left in the wake of our General Taylor. But this ghostly place has a sadder history. It was the scene of a midnight tragedy the actors in which, if stories be true, still prowl about the premises, though their bodies have been dust more than half a century. The history in brief is this: Some sixty years ago a proud-spirited Spaniard lived there who had inherited all the jealousy, suspicion, and bad blood of Ilia race. His beautiful wife had refused an earlier suitor—a Mexican—in order to marry the Spaniard, whom she devotedly loved, and the rejected lover determined on revenge. He acted the part of lago, and caused the Spanish Othello’s ear to be filled with cunning tales of his own invention concerning the wife’s unfaithfulness. Jealousy, once thoroughly roused in Southern blood, knows no bounds but death." The infuriated husband carefully devised liis diabolical plans, and when all was ready feigned business in Monterey, but caused fleet horses to be stationed every five miles along the route. During the silent watches of the night he returned to the casa, murdered his gentle wife in her bed, and accomplished the entire eighty miles before daylight. Being found in Monterey next morning, nobody suspected him of the crime, but the fiendish lago could not disguise liis exultation, and lit the gushing confidence of too much mesial disclosed the whole plot. When convinced at last beyond doubt of his dead Desdemona’s innocence, crazed with remorse, Othello plunged his dagger into lago’s heart, and then into his own. The orphaned children were taken to Monterey and cared for by tbe church, and to-day their descendants represent some of the most prominent families in the State of Coahuila. Correspondence San Francisco Examiner.