The gambling Festival of San Augustine.--Suppressed by Government.--The
Losses of the Saint by the Suppression of Gambling.--How Travelers live
in the Interior.--A Visit to the Palace.
GAMBLING AT TLALPAN.
I have already said that my first entry into the valley of Mexico was
from the south, through the suburban city of Tlalpan, where in good old
times was held the great gambling festival of San Augustine. The
advancing morality of our day has put an extinguisher on this noted
festival, which was one of the most noted days in the Mexican calendar.
Crowds flocked to it to gamble, to dance, and to adore the most holy
Saint Augustine. To a looker-on it was hard to say whether it was the
devil or the saint whom the people had come to worship. The chief
business of high-born dames seemed to be to make a display of their
taste in dress, and to set off the whole contents of their wardrobe;
for five times in each day was their entire wardrobe changed, and so
often did they appear in a new set of jewels. To this festival came
also noblemen and highway robbers, to gamble and to rob each other, and
to be robbed by the women at the _monte_ table. In honor of the saint,
the city was crowded with monks, and thieves, and Magdalens, and the
dignitaries of the Church and state. The rich and the poor came
together to enjoy the saturnalia in honor of the most blessed Saint
Augustine. Gambling was here duly sanctified by the participation of
the priests, who were here, as they are every where in Mexico, the most
expert gamblers at the tables. While this festival continued, money
changed hands more rapidly than in California in her worst days. Five
dances a day were the pastime; but at the monte table was the solid
sport. This was the great attraction that had called all the crowd
together. It was an exciting scene to see the ounces piled up as men
got excited in the game. What is there left of woman's virtue, when
the highest ladies of the court stake their ounces at a public
gaming-table, and poorer ones eagerly throw down their last piece of
silver? Woman's rights have not yet reached that point with us that she
may gamble and get drunk without losing caste; and God grant they never
may.
It is a consolation to be able to add that the late government of the
State of Mexico had sufficient firmness to suppress this abominable
festival of the Church, much to the pecuniary disadvantage of the saint
and his priesthood. Indeed, there is now no public gambling, not even
in the city of Mexico, except the lottery of the Academy of Fine Arts,
and the lottery which is monthly drawn to promote the adoration of our
Lady of Guadalupe. This last is one of the most corrupting of all
lotteries. Tickets for as small a price as a Spanish shilling are
hawked about the street, and by the exhibition of a splendid scheme the
poor Indians are tempted to venture their last _real_ in the hopes of
winning a rich prize, through the kind interposition of the Virgin, to
whom they are taught to pray for that purpose. It is true that a mass
is performed for the benefit of all losers, but this mass has never had
the power of restoring to the poor Indian his lost shilling.
Let us now go from this place, where gambling used annually to have its
festival, or, rather, harvest of victims, into the cathedral church of
San Augustine, to whom the lucky gamblers were accustomed to dedicate a
part of their winnings, that thus they might sanctify their unrighteous
calling by bringing robbery to the saint for an offering. Poor saint!
how much he and his priests have suffered by this wanton interference
of the civil government in Church affairs--this prohibition of
monte-playing in honor of the festival of San Augustine! There was much
in this church to admire, and much of that gold displayed which
gamblers are accustomed to lavish upon their idols. It seemed like
another worship and another religion from that which I had been
accustomed to witness in the humble chapels of the Pintos, in whose
country I had so long been wandering.
Again I was in the saddle, and soon upon that noted causeway by which
Cortez entered the city of Mexico. It has lost none of its attractions
in the course of centuries, but has been kept in fine repair as a
carriage-road, while the venerable trees that line it on either side
look as old as the time of the Conquistadors. This noble carriage-way,
through the marshy ground of the valley of Mexico, is an enlargement of
the old causeway of the Indians, or, rather, it has been built over and
around it, that having been less than thirty feet in width. I soon
arrived at Churubusco, the scene of one of the bloody battles of the
American campaign in this valley. There was little here to look at, and
I hurried on and entered the south gate of the city, and soon arrived
at the _Hotel de Paris_, to which I had been directed. My poor old
mustang here ended a twelve days' journey, over mountains and plains of
_pedregal_, without a shoe to his hoofs.
A party of Californians, who had been stopping here for some weeks, had
left the day before, and I was ushered into French society, in which to
form my first impressions of Mexico. Still, there was an exquisite
pleasure in once more getting clean, and eating food cooked after a
civilized manner. Not that I had in any wise become tired of drinking
porridge, extracted from corn, called _atola_, or dissatisfied with
eating bits of fowl, which the maid of honor to General Garay so
ingeniously served up with her fingers, after having it well flavored
with Cayenne or Chili pepper! He that does not love Chili must keep out
of Spanish America. And he will prove a poor traveler who can not sit
down with a good appetite to a supper of small black beans (_frijoles_),
and a dozen Indian cakes (_tortillas_), as thin and as tough as a
drum-head, which serve the double purpose of spoon and plate.
ABODE IN MEXICO.
My room was on the roof, and when my inner and outer man was fully in
order, I used to walk till a late hour of the day upon the paved
house-top, now leaning against the parapet and looking up to the
snow-covered mountains, whose shadowy forms could be made out even by
moonlight, and upon the shadowy towers and domes of the city. Thus
pleasant days and weeks flew on. Sometimes I rode about the valley,
carefully searching after the relics of times past, and at other times
surveying the curiosities of the city. Once this order was broken in
upon, in order to accompany that noble-hearted man and excellent
embassador, Governor Letcher, to the palace, where I had an interview
with Arista, then the President of Mexico, who strikingly resembled our
own President of that day, Millard Fillmore.