Acapulco.--The Advantages of a Western Voyage to India.--The great
annual Fair of Acapulco.--The Village and Harbor of Acapulco.--The
War of Santa Anna and Alvarez.--The Retreat.--Traveling alone and
unarmed.--The Peregrino Pass.--Quiricua and Cretinism.--Chilpanzingo.--An
ill-clad Judge.--Iguala.--Alpayaca.--Cuarnavaca.
Let us now make a journey in another direction--from Acapulco northward
to the city of Mexico--the route that the East India trade used to
follow. But, first of all, let us discourse a little time about this
port of Acapulco, once so famous upon the South Seas. It was not
discovered when Cortez built, in Colima, the vessels that went to
search for a northwest passage; but when they had returned from their
fruitless search, they anchored in the mountain-girt harbor of
Acapulco. The discoveries of the celebrated navigator, Magellan, fixed
the commercial character and importance of this sea-port. He had sailed
through the straits that bear his name, and coasted northwardly as far
as the trades. From this port he bore away to the Spice Islands,
discovering on the voyage the Philippine Islands, where the city of
Manilla was founded. By this voyage he demonstrated that the advantages
of a route across the Pacific were so superior to a voyage around Cape
Horn, as to justify the expense of a land transit from Acapulco to Vera
Cruz, and reshipment to Spain. Now that the Panama Railroad is made,
this demonstration may prove advantageous to other nations.
ACAPULCO.
The practical advantage of this discovery was the establishment of the
annual Manilla galleon, in which was sent out 1,000,000 silver dollars
to purchase Oriental products for the consumption of Spain and all her
American colonies. In this galleon sailed the friars that went forth to
the spiritual conquest of India. In it sailed Spanish soldiers, who
followed hard after the priests, to add the temporal to the spiritual
subjugation of Oriental empires. To this harbor the galleon returned,
freighted with the rich merchandise of China, Japan, and the Spice
Islands. When the arrival of the galleon was announced, traders
hastened from every quarter of New Spain to attend the annual fair.
Little vessels from down the coast came to get their share of the
mammoth cargo. The king's officers came to look after the royal
revenue; and caravans of mules were summoned to transport the Spanish
portion of the freight to Vera Cruz. Thus, for a short time, the
population of this village was swollen, from 4000 to 9000, which fell
off again when the galleon took her departure.
[Illustration: ACAPULCO.]
Such was the commercial condition of the town of Acapulco down to the
time of the independence. From this time it was lost to commerce, until
it was made a half-way house on the voyage to California. The town lies
upon the narrow intervale between the hills and the harbor. It is built
of the frailest material, and is destroyed about once in ten years by
an earthquake.
The castle of San Diego stands upon the high bank, and, though
commanding the entrance to the harbor, is itself commanded by the
surrounding high lands, and has so often been taken by assault during
the last thirty years as to be considered untenable. The harbor appears
like a nest scooped out of the mountains, into and out of which the
tide ebbs and flows through a double channel riven by an earthquake in
the solid rock. Tradition says it once had another entrance, but that
an earthquake closed it up and opened the present channel. There is
still another opening in the sharp mountain ridge that incloses it from
the sea, but this opening, dug by the labor of man, at a point opposite
the entrance of the harbor, was to let the cool sea-breeze in upon one
of the hottest and most unhealthy places upon the continent. Such, in
substance, is and was the little city of Acapulco, the seat and focus
of the Oriental commerce of New Spain and of all the Spanish empire.
WAR OF SANTA ANNA AND ALVAREZ.
Santa Anna and Alvarez are the only remaining insurrectionary chiefs in
Mexico. When I was last in the capital, Santa Anna was reigning supreme
in the vice-royal palace, and Alvarez was supreme at Iztla, the capital
of the Department of Guerrero, of which Acapulco is the sea-port town.
The two chiefs had been long hostile to each other, but a gold mine,
discovered upon the bank of the River Mescala, was "the straw that
broke the camel's back." Alvarez had not been consulted in the
disposition made of it. Santa Anna felt himself powerful in his
newly-equipped army of 23,000 men, the finest army that had ever been
seen in Mexico--an army which he was maintaining at a daily cost of
$23,000. Alvarez was equally strong in his mountain fastnesses, in the
affections of the _Pintos_, or "Spotted People," and, above all,
in the poverty of his country. Santa Anna took the initiative by
sending 2000 men to garrison Acapulco, and Alvarez committed the first
open hostility, by closing the passes against them. Then the campaign
began. Santa Anna traveled at the head of his grand army. During his
unobstructed march to Acapulco there occurred a great many victories,
for victories are indigenous products of Mexico. The siege of the
castle of San Diego de Acapulco was the first of the long list of
unsuccessful sieges that distinguished the year 1854. The besiegers
dared not risk an assault, and they had not sufficient material for
conducting a regular siege. For some weeks the opposing forces remained
looking at each other, while almost the only blood spilled was by the
clouds of musquitoes that hovered over the camp of the grand army, and
by the swarms of fleas that infested the castle. It might well be
called a bloody war, for few escaped without bearing the scars of
wounds and bloodletting.
While the besieging army was itself thus almost devoured, and had
devoured all the eatables of the Pintos, symptoms of rebellion showed
themselves at Mexico, to suppress which required the presence of Santa
Anna. The generals of his army thought that they also might render more
important services to the country in the streets of Mexico than in this
inglorious war with bloody insects! A retreat was therefore sounded,
and the country of the Pintos was evacuated. Thereupon rushed forth the
little garrison from the clutches of the devouring insects, and issued
a heroic proclamation, which was enough to frighten a whole army.
It is time to commence my itinerary across the mountains northward to
the city of Mexico. My journey was by the same mule-path that Oriental
merchants have climbed for centuries, as is shown by the vestiges of
that strange race of which Humboldt speaks--an inter-mixture of
Manillamen and Chinamen with the native race.
My traveling companion, who had a pistol, left me and went back at the
first _venta_, or station-house, four leagues from Acapulco. At
Lemones, the second station-house, four leagues farther, I passed the
night sleeping upon a table on the veranda. This is the common
lodging-place for solitary travelers in Mexico. Here I formed my first
acquaintance with the _venta_ pig, who considers himself the peculiar
friend of the traveling public. All the advances made by my new
acquaintance at this first interview were occasional tugs at the
blanket during the night, and divers unsuccessful attempts to turn the
table over. At Alta, two stages farther on, the pig ensconced himself
on a mat with the children, while he gave me no farther annoyance than
an occasional visit, and thrusting of his nose into the hammock where I
slept.
It was still dark when I left Alta in order to clear the Peregrino Pass
and reach Tierra Colorado that day. In a few hours I gained the top of
the pass, and sat down to take a survey of the zigzag way up which my
old horse had climbed, and of the extensive region of hill and mountain
country before me. It is difficult to believe that over this slight
mule-path all the Spanish commerce of India has passed, and cargoes of
silver dollars, amounting to hundreds of millions, during a period of
three hundred years. Over this pass armies have continued to advance
and to retreat with one uniform result: if the army is a large one, it
is starved out of the country; if it is a small one, it is destroyed.
Hunger devours the large armies; the Pintos devour the little ones. All
around was now as quiet and solitary as the grave. There were no signs
to indicate that this spot had been the scene of so much life and
contention. The prospect was a delightful one, and I could have enjoyed
it much longer had I not been assailed by that common enemy, that has
assailed every general and colonel that has crossed this pass--an empty
stomach; so that I and my old horse did our very best to reach the ford
of the Papagalla, where there was a presumptive possibility that
eatables might be found. I found entertainment for beast at the ford,
but no food for his rider until we reached Tierra Colorado.
Here prevails not only that harmless cutaneous affection, the _Quiricua_,
which causes people to appear spotted or painted (_Pintos_), but also
_Cretinism_, the much more formidable disease so prevalent among the
mountains of Switzerland.
This town is also remembered as the scene of a bloody battle. General
Garay, who had lost his way the day before, had here come up, and we
jogged along together; but as a Mexican general and escort are a
doubtful protection to an unarmed man, if there is any real danger on
the road, a prudent traveler will shake them off and travel on alone.
We passed Buena Vista, the fine sugar estate of M. Comonfort, and
Aquaguisotla, and slept at Mazatlan, and the next day arrived at the
famous city of Chilpanzingo, or City of the Bravos, the centre and
focus of the insurrection in the southern provinces. Here, in the
public square or plaza, in front of a church built by Cortez, there was
a grand bull-fight, or rather ox-fight, in which great efforts were
made to infuse some life into a dozen stupid cattle. These efforts were
attended with very indifferent success. A deep _barranca_ extends
to the Mescala, the largest river in Southern Mexico, across which we
passed on a raft of gourds, propelled by two naked Indians, who swam
across, each holding in his right hand a corner of the raft.
AN ILL-CLAD JUDGE.
The next night, after dark, I arrived at a little village, and turned
into an open caravansary. The old man of the establishment was very
kind, and offered me a mat to lie on, but he had no corn for my horse.
After making some inquiries that were a little unpleasant for a man who
was traveling without a passport to answer, he said he would procure
for me some corn from the alcalde. This village magistrate, who, in the
absence of the "Judge of First Instance," is _ex officio_ a judge,
was an enormous negro, over six feet in height, whose dignity was not
certainly dependent upon his official robes, for a single napkin
constituted his whole apparel. He sat upon an ox-skin, which did duty
for the wool-sack--the very personification of the majesty of the law,
with curled wig, and hide as black as the gown of the Lord Chief
Justice, with the advantage that both were natural. This was the second
negro I had yet seen in the country. The other held a commission as
captain in the army, and was in the escort of General Garay.
I had a hard day's ride to reach the city of Iguala in time to witness
the celebration of the independence, which was proclaimed here in 1821.
The celebration, for the most part, consisted in eating and drinking
from booths placed around the central square of the town. As I had
little time to spare, I hurried on, and soon came to the Puente de
Iztla, the carriage-road, that is finished thus far southward from the
city of Mexico.
I started early next morning upon my journey. During the greater part
of the day the road led through a continuous corn-field, and toward
evening we came to the pretty Indian village of Alpayuca, so neat and
well-ordered that it might have passed for one of the missionary Indian
villages of our northern Indians, were it not for the fine old Catholic
church, which must have cost in its construction, centuries ago, fifty
times the value of the present village, without including the cost of
the bronze railing, brought from China in the prosperous days of the
Manilla Company.
CUARNAVACA.
Not stopping to examine the ruins of great antiquity near this place, I
rode on six leagues farther, when I arrived at the venerable city of
Cuarnavaca, the place selected by Cortez as the finest spot in all New
Spain. This was bestowed upon him, at his own request, by the Emperor
Charles V. as a residence. It merits to this day the distinction that
has been given to it as one of the finest spots on earth. It stands
close under the shadow of the huge mountains that shield it from the
northern blast, and it is at the same time protected from the extreme
heat of the tropics by its elevation of 3000 feet. The immense church
edifices here proclaim the munificence of Cortez, while the garden of
Laborde, open to the world, shows with what elegant taste he squandered
his three several fortunes accumulated in mining. The combination of a
fine day in a voluptuous climate, the beautiful scenery, and the happy
faces of the people celebrating New Year's day in the shade of the
orange-trees, made an impression upon a traveler not easily forgotten.
I was too near the city of Mexico to remain long here, and I rode on,
up the zigzag way that leads over the mountain rim of the Valley of
Mexico. I was not fortunate enough to accomplish the journey from city
to city in a single day, and, from necessity, had to pass the night at
the half-way house, upon the summit of the mountain, 10,000 feet above
the sea. A poor Hungarian, who had been detained here like myself, came
and laid his blankets with mine, and then we lay down, and chattered
and shivered together until the morning. Such a night as this detracts
somewhat from the enjoyments of this otherwise pleasant journey; but
when I got a morning view of the valley and city of Mexico from the
Cross of the "Marquis of the Valley," the sufferings of the chilly
night were soon forgotten.