COCOYOTLA. CACAHUAMILPÁN. CHALMA. OCULAN. TENANCINGO. TOLUCA.
[Illustration: IXTCALCO CHURCH.]
A little before dark we came to the hacienda of Santa Rosita de
Cocoyotla, another sugar-plantation which was to be our head-quarters
for some days to come. We presented our letter of introduction from the
owner of the estate, and the two administradors received us with open
arms. We were conducted into the strangers’ sleeping-room, a long
barrack-like apartment with stone walls and a stone floor that seemed
refreshingly dark and cool; we could look out through its barred
windows into the garden, where a rapid little stream of water running
along the channel just outside made a pleasant gurgling sound.
Appearances were delusive, however, and it was only the change from the
outside that made us feel the inside cool and pleasant. For days our
clothes clung to us as if we had been drowned, and the
pocket-handkerchiefs with which we mopped our faces had to be hung on
chair-backs to dry. Except in the early morning, there was no coolness
in that sweltering place.
In one corner of our room I discerned a brown toad of monstrous size
squatting in great comfort on the damp flags. He was as big as a
trussed chicken, and looked something like one in the twilight. We
pointed him out to the administrador, who brought in two fierce
watchdogs, but the toad set up his back and spirted his acrid liquor,
and the dogs could not be got to go near him. We stirred him up with a
bamboo and drove him into the garden, but he left his portrait painted
in slime upon our floor.
The Indian choir chanted the Oración as we had heard it the night
before at Temisco, and then came the calling over of the raya. After
that we walked about the place, and sat talking in the open corridor.
Owners of estates, and indeed all white folks living in this part of
the country were beginning to feel very anxious about their position,
and not without reason. Ordinary political events excite but little
interest in these Indian districts, and so trifling a matter as a
revolution and a change of people in power does not affect them
perceptibly. The Indians are absolutely free, and have their votes and
their civil privileges like any other citizens. All that the owners of
the plantations ask of them is to work for high wages, and hitherto
they have done this, but for years it has been becoming more and more
difficult to get them to work. All they do with the money when they get
it, is to spend it in drinking and gambling, if they are of an
extravagant turn of mind; or to bury it in some out-of-the-way place,
if they are given to saving. If they were whites or half-caste Mexicans
they would spend their money upon fine clothes and horses, but the
Indian keeps to the white cotton dress of his fathers, and is never
seen on horseback. Now this being the case, it does not seem
unreasonable that they should not much care about working hard for
money that is of so little use to them when they have got it, and that
they should prefer living in their little huts walled with canes and
thatched with palm-leaves, and cultivating the little patch of
garden-ground that lies round it—which will produce enough fruit and
vegetables for their own subsistence, and more besides, which they can
sell for clothes and tobacco. A day or two of this pleasant easy work
at their own ground will provide this, and they do not see why they
should labour as hired servants to get more. This is bad enough, think
the hacendados, but there is worse behind. The Indians have been of
late years becoming gradually aware that the government of the country
is quite rotten and powerless, and that in their own districts at
least, the power is very much in their own hands, for the few scattered
whites could offer but slight resistance. The doctrine of “America for
the Americans” is rapidly spreading among them, and active emissaries
are going about reminding them that the Spaniards only got their lands
by the right of the strongest, and that now is the time for them to
reassert their rights.
The name of Alvarez is circulated among them, as the man who is to lead
them in the coming struggle—Alvarez the mulatto general, whose hideous
portrait is in every print-shop in Mexico. He was President before
Comonfort, and is now established with his Indian regiments in the hot
pestilential regions of the Pacific coast.
The undisguised contempt with which the Indians have been treated for
ages by the whites and the mestizos has not been without its effect.
The revolution, and the abolition of all legal distinctions of caste
still left the Indians mere senseless unreasoning creatures in the eyes
of the whiter races; and, if the original race once get the upper hand,
it will go hard with the whites and their estates in these parts. Only
a day or two before we came down from Mexico, the government had
endeavoured to quarter some troops in one of the little Indian towns
which we passed through on our way from Temisco. But the inhabitants
saluted them with volleys of stones from the church-steeple and the
house-tops, and they had to retreat most ignominiously into their old
quarters among “reasonable people.”
I have put down our notions on the “Indian Question,” just as they
presented themselves to us at the time. The dismal forebodings of the
planters seem to have been fulfilled to some extent at least, for we
heard, not long after our return to Europe, that the Indians had
plundered and set fire to numbers of the haciendas of the south
country, and that our friends the administradors of Cocoyotla had
escaped with their lives. The hacienda itself, if our information is
correct, which I can hardly doubt, is now a blackened deserted ruin.
At supper appeared two more guests besides ourselves, apparently
traders carrying goods to sell at the villages and haciendas on the
road. In such places the hacienda offers its hospitality to all
travellers, and there was room in our caravanserai for yet more
visitors if they had come. Our beds were like those in general use in
the tropics, where mattresses would be unendurable, and even the
pillows become a nuisance. The frame of the bed has a piece of coarse
cloth stretched tightly over it; a sheet is laid upon this, and another
sheet covers the sleeper. This compromise between a bed and a hammock
answers the purpose better than anything else, and admits of some
circulation of air, especially when you have kicked off the sheet and
lie fully exposed to the air and the mosquitos.
I cannot say that it is pleasant to wake an hour or two after going to
bed, with your exact profile depicted in a wet patch on the pillow; nor
is it agreeable to become conscious at the same time of an intolerable
itching, and to find, on lighting a candle, that an army of small ants
are walking over you, and biting furiously. These were my experiences
during my first night at Cocoyotla; and I finished the night, lying
half-dressed on my bed, with the ends of my trousers-legs tied close
with handkerchiefs to keep the creatures out. But when we got into our
saddles in the early morning, we forgot all these little miseries, and
started merrily on our expedition to the great stalactitic cave of
Cacahuamilpán.
Our day’s journey had two objects; one was to see the cave, and the
other to visit the village close by,—one of the genuine unmixed Indian
communities, where even the Alcalde and the Cura, the temporal and
spiritual heads of the society, are both of pure Indian blood, and
white influence has never been much felt.
[Illustration: INDIANS MAKING & BAKING TORTILLAS. (After Models
made by a Native Artist.)]
A ride of two or three hours from the hacienda brought us into a
mountainous district, and there we found the village of Cacahuamilpán
on the slope of a hill. In the midst of neat trim gardens stood the
little white church, and the ranches of the inhabitants, cottages of
one room, with walls of canes which one can see through in all
directions, and roofs of thatch, with the ground smoothed and trodden
hard for a floor. Everything seemed clean and prosperous, and there was
a bright sunny look about the whole place; but to Englishmen,
accustomed to the innumerable appliances of civilized life, it seems
surprising how very few and simple are the wants of these people. The
inventory of their whole possessions will only occupy a few lines. The
_metate_ for grinding or rubbing down the maize to be patted out into
tortillas, a few calabashes for bottles, and pieces of calabashes for
bowls and cups, prettily ornamented and painted, and hanging on pegs
round the walls. A few palm-leaf mats (petates) to sleep upon, some
pots of thin unglazed earthenware for the cooking, which is done over a
wood-fire in the middle of the floor. A chimney is not necessary in
houses which are like the Irishman’s coat, consisting principally of
holes. A wooden box, somewhere, contains such of the clothes of the
family as are not in wear. There is really hardly anything I can think
of to add to this catalogue, except the agricultural implements, which
consist of a wooden spade, a hoe, some sharp stakes to make the drills
with, and the machete—which is an iron bill-hook, and serves for
pruning, woodcutting, and now and then for less peaceful purposes.
Sometimes one sees women weaving cotton-cloth, or _manta_, as it is
called, in a loom of the simplest possible construction; or sitting at
their doors in groups, spinning cotton-thread with the _malacates_, and
apparently finding as much material for gossip here as elsewhere.
The Mexicans spun and wove their cotton-cloth just in this way before
the Conquest, and malacates of baked clay are found in great numbers in
the neighbourhood of the old Mexican cities. They are simple, like very
large button-moulds, and a thin wooden skewer stuck in the hole in the
middle makes them ready for use. Such spindles were used by the
lake-men of Switzerland, but the earthen heads were not quite the same
in shape, being like balls pierced with a hole, as are those at present
used in Mexico.
The Indians here had not the dull sullen look we saw among those who
inhabit the colder regions; and, though belonging to the same race,
they were better formed and had a much freer bearing than their less
fortunate countrymen of the colder districts.
Our business in the village was to get guides for the cavern. While
some men were gone to look for the Alcalde, we walked about the
village, and finally encamped under a tree. One of our men had got us a
bag full of fruit,—limes, zapotes, and nisperos, which last are a large
kind of medlar, besides a number of other kinds of fruit, which we ate
without knowing what they were. Though rather insipid, the limes are
deliciously refreshing in this thirsty country; and they do no harm,
however enormously one may indulge in them. The whole neighbourhood
abounds in fruit, and its name _Cacahuamilpán_ means “the plantation of
_cacahuate_ nuts.”
It soon became evident that the Alcalde was keeping us waiting as a
matter of dignity, and to show that, though the white men might be held
in great estimation elsewhere, they did not think so much of them in
this free and independent village. At last a man came to summon us to a
solemn audience. In a hut of canes, the Alcalde, a little lame Indian,
was sitting on a mat spread on the ground in the middle, with his
escribano or secretary at his left hand. Other Indians were standing
outside at the door. The little man scarcely condescended to take any
notice of us when we saluted him, but sat bolt upright, positively
bursting with suppressed dignity, and the escribano inquired in a loud
voice what our business was. We told him we wanted guides to the cave,
which he knew as well as we did; but instead of answering, he began to
talk to the Alcalde. We quite appreciated the pleasure it must have
been to the two functionaries to show off before us and their assembled
countrymen, who were looking on at the proceedings with great respect;
and we had not minded affording them this cheap satisfaction; but at
last the joke seemed to be getting stale, so we proceeded some to sit
and some to lie down at full length, and to go on eating limes in the
presence of the August company. Thereupon they informed us what would
be the cost of guides and candles, and we eventually made a bargain
with them and started on foot.
On looking at the map of the State of Mexico, there is to be seen a
river which stops suddenly on reaching the mountains of Cacahuamilpán,
and begins again on the other side, having found a passage for itself
through caves in the mountain for six or seven miles. Not far from the
place where this river flows out of the side of the hill, is a path
which leads to the entrance of the cave. A long downward slope brought
us into the first great vaulted chamber, perhaps a quarter of a mile
long and eighty feet high; then a long scramble through a narrow
passage, and another hall still grander than the first. At the end of
this hall is another passage leading on into another chamber. Beyond
this we did not go. As it was, we must have walked between one and two
miles into the cavern, but people have explored it to twice this
distance, always finding a repetition of the same arrangement, great
vaulted chambers alternating with long passages almost choked by fallen
rocks. In one of the passages, I think the last we came to, the roaring
of the river in its subterranean bed was distinctly audible below us.
Excepting the great cave of Kentucky, I believe there is no stalactitic
cavern known so vast and beautiful as this. The appearance of the
largest hall was wonderful when some twenty of our Indian guides
stationed themselves on pinnacles of stalagmite, each one holding up a
blazing torch, while two more climbed upon a great mass at one end
called the altar, and burnt Bengal lights there; the rest stood at the
other extremity of the cave sending up rockets in rapid succession into
the vaulted roof, and making the millions of grotesque incrustations
glitter as if they had been masses of diamonds: All the quaint shapes
that are found in such caverns were to be seen here on the grandest
scale, columns, arched roof, organ-pipes, trees, altars, and squatting
monsters ranged in long lines like idols in a temple. There may very
well be some truth in the notion that the origin of Gothic architecture
was in stalactites of a limestone cavern, so numerous and perfect are
the long slender columns crowned with pointed Gothic arches.
Our procession through the cave was a picturesque one. We carried long
wax altar-candles and our guides huge torches made of threads of
aloe-fibre soaked in resin and wrapped round with cloth, in appearance
and texture exactly like the legs and arms of mummies. As we went, the
Indians sang Mexican songs to strange, monotonous, plaintive tunes, or
raced about into dark corners shouting with laughter. They talked about
adventures in the cave, to them of course the great phenomenon of the
whole world; but it did not seem, as far as we could hear, that they
associated with it any recollections of the old Aztec divinities and
the mystic rites performed in their honour.
No fossil bones have been found in the cavern, nor human remains except
in one of the passages far within, where a little wooden cross still
marks the spot where the skeleton of an Indian was found. Whether he
went alone for mere curiosity to explore the cave, or, what is more
likely, with an idea of finding treasure, is not known; nothing is
certain but that his candle was burnt out while he was still far from
the entrance, and that he died there. I said no fossil remains had been
found, but the level floors of the great halls are continually being
raised by fresh layers of stalagmite from the water dropping from the
roof, and no one knows what may lie under them. These floors are in
many places covered with little loose concretions like marbles, and
these concretions in the course of time are imbedded in the horizontal
layers of the same material.
As we left the entrance hall and began to ascend the sloping passage
that leads to daylight, we saw an optical appearance which, had we not
seen it with our own eyes, we could never have believed to be a natural
effect of light and shade. To us, still far down in the cave, the
entrance was only illuminated by reflected light; but as the Indians
reached it, the direct rays of sunlight fell upon them, and their white
dresses shone with an intense phosphoric light, as though they had been
self-luminous. It is just such an effect that is wanting in our
pictures of the Transfiguration, but I fear it is as impossible to
paint it upon canvas as to describe it in words.
Next morning our friend Don Guillermo said good-bye to us, and started
to return post-haste to his affairs in the capital. We stayed a few
days longer at Cocoyotla, never tiring of the beautiful garden with its
groves of orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, and the river which, running
through it, joins the stream that we heard rushing along in the cavern,
to flow down into the Pacific.
On Sunday morning the priest arrived on an ambling mule, the favourite
clerical animal. They say it is impossible to ride a mule unless you
are either an arriero or a priest. Not that it is by any means
necessary, however, that he should ride a mule. I shall not soon forget
the jaunty young monk we saw at Tezcuco, just setting out for a country
festival, mounted on a splendid little horse, with his frock tucked up,
and a pair of hairy goat-skin _chaparreros_ underneath, a broad Mexican
hat, a pair of monstrous silver spurs, and a very large cigar in his
mouth. The girls came out of the cottage doors to look at him, as he
made the fiery little beast curvet and prance along the road; and he
was evidently not insensible to the looks of admiration of these young
ladies, as they muffled up their faces in their blue rebozos and looked
at him through the narrow opening.
Nearly two hundred Indians crowded into the church to mass, and went
through the service with evident devotion. There are no more sincere
Catholics in the world than the Indians, though, as I have said, they
are apt to keep up some of their old rites in holes and corners. The
administradors did not trouble themselves to attend mass, but went on
posting up their books just outside the church-door; in this, as in a
great many other little matters, showing their contempt for the brown
men, and adding something every day to the feeling of dislike they are
regarded with.
We speak of the Indians still keeping up their ancient superstitious
rites in secret, as we often heard it said so in Mexico, though we
ourselves never saw anything of it. The Abbé Clavigero, who wrote in
the last century, declares the charge to be untrue, except perhaps in a
few isolated cases. “The few examples of idolatry,” he says, “which can
be produced are partly excusable; since it is not to be wondered at
that rude uncultured men should not be able to distinguish the
idolatrous worship of a rough figure of wood or stone from that which
is rightly paid to the holy images.” (There are people who would quite
agree with the good Abbé that the distinction is rather a difficult one
to make.) “But how often has prejudice against them declared things to
be idols which were really images of the saints, though shapeless ones!
In 1754 I saw some images found in a cave, which were thought to be
idols; but I had no doubt that they were figures representing the
mystery of the Holy Nativity.”
A good illustration of the wholesale way in which the early Catholic
missionaries went about the work of conversion is given in a remark of
Clavigero’s. There is one part of the order of baptism which proceeds
thus: “Then the Priest, wetting his right thumb with spittle from his
mouth, and touching therewith in the form of a cross the right ear of
the person to be baptized, &c.” The Mexican missionaries, it seems, had
to leave out this ceremony, from sheer inability to provide enough of
the requisite material for their crowds of converts.
After mass we rode out to a mound that had attracted our attention a
day or two before, and which proved to be a fort or temple, or probably
both combined. There were no remains to be found there except the usual
fragments of pottery and obsidian. Then we returned to the hacienda to
say good-bye to our friends there, before starting on our journey back
to Mexico. All the population were hard at work amusing themselves, and
the shop was doing a roaring trade in glasses of aguardiente. The
Indian who had been our guide for some days past had opened a Monté
bank with the dollars we had given him, and was sitting on the ground
solemnly dealing cards one by one from the bottom of a dirty pack, a
crowd of gamblers standing or sitting in a semicircle before him,
silently watching the cards and keeping a vigilant eye upon their
stakes which lay on the ground before the banker. Other parties were
busy at the same game in other parts of the open space before the shop,
which served as the great square for the colony.
Under the arcades in front of the shop a fandango was going on, though
it was quite early in the afternoon. A man and a woman stood facing
each other, an old man tinkled a guitar, producing a strange, endless,
monotonous tune, and the two dancers stamped with their feet, and moved
their arms and bodies about in time to the music, throwing themselves
into affected and voluptuous attitudes which evidently met with the
approval of the bystanders, though to us, who did not see with Indian
eyes, they seemed anything but beautiful. When the danseuse had tired
out one partner, another took his place. An admiring crowd stood round
or sat on the stone benches, smoking cigarettes, and looking on gravely
and silently, with evident enjoyment. Just as we saw it, it would go on
probably through half the night, one couple, or perhaps two, keeping it
up constantly, the rest looking on and refreshing themselves from time
to time with raw spirits. Though inferior to the Eastern dancing, it
resembled it most strikingly, my companion said. It has little to do
with the really beautiful and artistic dancing of Old Spain, but seems
to be the same that the people delighted in long before they ever saw a
white man. Montezuma’s palace contained a perfect colony of
professional dancers, whose sole business was to entertain him with
their performances, which only resembled those of the Old World because
human nature is similar everywhere, and the same wants and instincts
often find their development in the same way among nations totally
separated from each other.
We left the natives to their amusement, and started on our twenty miles
ride. By the time the evening had fairly begun to close in upon us, we
crossed the crest of a hill and had a dim view of a valley below us,
but there were no signs of Chalma or its convent. We let our horses
find their way as well as they could along the rocky path, and got down
into the valley. A light behind us made us turn round, and we saw a
grand sight. The coarse grass on a large hill further down the valley
had been set fire to, and a broad band of flame stretched right across
the base of the hill, and was slowly moving upwards towards its top,
throwing a lurid glare over the surrounding country, and upon the
clouds of smoke that were rising from the flames. Every now and then we
turned to watch the line of fire as it rose higher and higher, till at
last it closed in together at the summit with one final blaze, and left
us in the darkness. We dismounted and stumbled along, leading our
horses down the precipitous sides of the deep ravines that run into the
valley, mounting again to cross the streams at the bottom, and
clambering up on the other side to the level of the road. At last a
turn in the valley showed lights just before us, and we entered the
village of Chalma, which was illuminated with flaring oil-lamps in the
streets, where men were hard at work setting up stalls and booths of
planks. It seemed there was to be a fair next day.
They showed us the way to the _meson_[17] and there we left Antonio
with the horses, while the proprietor sent an idiot boy to show us the
way to the convent, for our inspection of the meson decided us at once
on seeking the hospitality of the monks for the night. We climbed up
the hill, went in at the convent-gate, across a courtyard, along a dim
cloister, and through another door where our guide made his way out by
a different opening, leaving us standing in total darkness. After a
time another door opened, and a good-natured-looking friar came in with
a lamp in his hand, and conducted us upstairs to his cell. I think our
friend was the sub-prior of the convent. His cell was a very
comfortable bachelor’s apartment, in a plain way, vaulted and
whitewashed, with good chairs and a table and a very
comfortable-looking bed.
[17] The _meson_ of Mexico is a lineal descendant of the Eastern
Caravanserai, and has preserved its peculiarities unchanged for
centuries. It consists of two court-yards, one surrounded by stabling
and the other by miserable rooms for the travellers, who must cook
their food themselves, or go elsewhere for it.
We sat talking with him for a long while, and heard that the fair next
day would be attended by numbers of Indians from remote places among
the mountains, and that at noon there would be an Indian dance in the
church. It is not the great festival, however, he said. That is once a
year; and then the Indians come from fifty miles round, and stay here
several days, living in the caves in the rock just by the town, buying
and selling in the fair, attending mass, and having solemn dances in
the church. We asked him about the ill feeling between the Indians and
the whites. He said that among the planters it might be as we said, but
that in the neighbourhood of his convent the respect and affection of
the Indians for the clergy, whether white or Indian, was as great as
ever. Then we gossipped about horses, of which our friend was evidently
an amateur, and when the conversation flagged, he turned to the table
in the middle of the room and handed us little bowls made of
calabashes, prettily decorated and carved, and full of sweetmeats.
There were ten or twelve of these little bowls on the table, each with
a different kind of “tuck” in it. We inquired where all those good
things came from, and learnt that making them was one of the favourite
occupations of the Mexican nuns, who keep their brethren in the
monasteries well supplied. At last the good monk went away to his
duties and left us, when I could not resist the temptation of having a
look at the little books in blue and green paper covers which were
lying on the table with the sweetmeat-bowls and the venerable old
missal. They proved to be all French novels done into Spanish, and
“Notre-Dame de Paris” was lying open (under a sheet of paper); so I
conclude that our visit had interrupted the sub-prior while deep in
that improving work.
Presently a monk came to conduct us down into the refectory, and there
they gave us an uncommonly good supper of wonderful Mexican stews,
red-hot as usual, and plenty of good Spanish wine withal. The great
dignitaries of the cloister did not appear, but some fifteen or twenty
monks were at table with us, and never tired of questioning us—exactly
in the same fashion that the ladies of the harem questioned Doña Juana.
We delighted them with stories of the miraculous Easter fire at
Jerusalem, and the illumination of St. Peter’s, of the Sistine chapel
and the Pope, and we parted for the night in high good humour.
Next morning a monk attached himself to us as our cicerone, a fine
young fellow with a handsome face, and no end of fun in him.
Now that we saw the convent by daylight, we were delighted with the
beauty of its situation. The broad fertile valley grows narrower and
narrower until it becomes a gorge in the mountains; and here the
convent is built, with the mountain-stream running through its
beautiful gardens, and turning the wheel of the convent-mill before it
flows on into the plain to fertilize the broad lands of the reverend
fathers.
When we had visited the gardens and the stables, our young monk brought
us back to the great church of the convent, where we took our places
near the monks, who had mustered in full force to be present at the
dancing. Presently the music arrived, an old man with a harp, and a
woman with a violin; and then came the dancers, eight Indian boys with
short tunics and head-dresses of feathers, and as many girls with white
dresses, and garlands of flowers on their heads. The costumes were
evidently intended to represent the Indian dresses of the days of
Montezuma, but they were rather modernized by the necessity of wearing
various articles of dress which would have been superfluous in old
times. They stationed themselves in the middle of the church, opposite
the high altar, and, to our unspeakable astonishment, began to dance
the polka. Then came a waltz, then a schottisch, then another waltz,
and finally a quadrille, set to unmitigated English tunes. They danced
exceedingly well, and behaved as though they had been used to European
ball-rooms all their lives. The spectators looked on as though it were
all a matter of course for these brown-skinned boys and girls to have
acquired so singular an accomplishment in their out-of-the-way village
among the mountains. As for us we looked on in open-mouthed
astonishment; and when, in the middle of the quadrille, the harp and
violin struck up no less a tune than “The King of the Cannibal
Islands,” we could hardly help bursting out into fits of laughter. We
restrained ourselves, however, and kept as grave a countenance as the
rest of the lookers-on, who had not the faintest idea that anything odd
was happening. The quadrille finished in perfect order; each dancer
took his partner by the hand and led her forward; and so, forming a
line in front of the high altar, they all knelt down, and the rest of
the congregation followed their example; there was a dead silence in
the church for about the space of an Ave Maria, then everyone rose, and
the ceremony was over.[18]
[18] The Aztecs were accustomed, before the Conquest, to perform
dances as part of the celebration of their religious festivals, and
the missionaries allowed them to continue the practice after their
conversion. The dance in a church, described by Mr. Bullock in 1822,
was a much more genuine Indian ceremony than the one which we saw.
Church-dancing may be seen in Europe even at the present day. The
solemn Advent dances in Seville cathedral were described to me, by
an eyewitness, as consisting of minuets, or some such stately
old-fashioned dances, performed in front of the high altar by boys
in white surplices, with the greatest gravity and decorum.
Our young monk asked permission of his superior to take us out for a
walk, and we went down together to the convent-mill. There we saw the
mill, which was primitive, and the miller, who was burly; and also
something much more worth seeing, at least to our young acquaintance,
who tucked up his skirts and ran briskly up a ladder into the upper
regions, calling to us to follow him. A door led from the granary into
the miller’s house, and the miller’s daughter happened, of course
entirely by chance, to be coming through that way. A very pretty girl
she was too, and I never in my life saw anything more intensely comic
than the looks of intelligence that passed between her and the young
friar when he presented us. It was decidedly contrary to good monastic
discipline it is true, and we ought to have been shocked, but it was so
intolerably laughable that my companion bolted into the granary to
examine the wheat, and I took refuge in a violent fit of coughing. Our
nerves had been already rudely shaken by the King of the Cannibal
Islands, and this little scene of convent-life fairly finished us.
We asked our young friend what his day’s work consisted of, and how he
liked convent-life. He yawned, and intimated that it was very slow. We
enquired whether the monks had not some parochial duties to perform,
such as visiting the sick and the poor in their neighbourhood. He
evidently wondered whether we were really ignorant, or whether we were
“chaffing” him, and observed that that was no business of their’s, the
curas of the villages did all that sort of thing. “Then, what have you
to do?” we said. “Well,” he said, “there are so many services every
day, and high mass on Sundays and holidays; and besides that,
there’s—well, there isn’t anything particular. It’s rather a dull life.
I myself should like uncommonly to go and travel and see the world, or
go and fight somewhere.” We were quite sorry for the young fellow when
we shook hands with him at parting, and he left us to go back to his
convent.
We had been clambering about the hill, seeing the caves with which it
is honeycombed, but at present they were uninhabited. At the time of
the great festival, when they are full of Indian families, the scene
must be a curious one.
The monks had hospitably pressed us to stay till their mid-day meal,
but we preferred having it at the shop down in the village, so as to
start directly afterwards. Here the people gave us a regular reception,
entertained us with their best, and could not be prevailed upon to
accept any payment whatever. The proprietor of the meson sat down
before the barley-bin which served him for a desk, and indited a long
and eloquent letter of introduction for us to a friend of his in
Oculan, who was to find a night’s lodging for us. Before he sealed up
the despatch he read it to us in a loud voice, sentence by sentence. It
might have been an autograph letter from King Philip to some foreign
potentate. Armed with this important missive, we mounted our horses,
shook hands with no end of well-wishers, and rode off up the valley.
For a little while our path lay through a sort of suburb of Chalma,
houses lying near one another, each surrounded by a pleasant garden,
and both houses and people looking prosperous and cheerful. Our
directions for finding the way were simple enough. We were to go up the
valley past the Cerra de los Atambores, “the hill of drums,” and the
great _ahuehuete_. What the Cerra de los Atambores might be, we could
not tell, but when we had followed the valley for an hour or so, it
came into view. On the other side of the stream rose a precipitous
cliff, several hundred feet high, and near the top a perpendicular wall
of rock was carved with rude designs. People have supposed, it seems,
that these carvings represented drums, and hence the name.
Had we known of the place before, we should have made an effort to
explore it, and copy the sculptured designs; but now it was too late,
and from the other side of the valley we could not make out more than
that there seemed to be a figure of the sun among them.
A little further on we came to the “Ahuehuete.” The name means a
deciduous cypress, a common tree in Mexico, and of which we had already
seen such splendid specimens in the grove near Tezcuco, and in the wood
of Chapoltepec. This was a remarkable tree as to size, some sixty feet
round at the lower part where the roots began to spread out. A copious
spring of water rose within the hollow trunk itself, and ran down
between the roots into the little river. All over its spreading
branches were fastened votive offerings of the Indians, hundreds of
locks of coarse black hair, teeth, bits of coloured cloth, rags, and
morsels of ribbon. The tree was many centuries old, and had probably
had some mysterious influence ascribed to it, and been decorated with
such simple offerings long before the discovery of America. In Brittany
the peasants still keep up the custom of hanging up locks of their hair
in certain chapels, to charm away diseases; and there it is certain
that the Christians only appropriated to their own worship places
already held sacred in the estimation of the people.
Oculan is a dismal little place. We found the great man of the village
standing at his door, but our letter to him was dishonoured in the most
decided manner. He read the epistle, carefully folded it up and
pocketed it, then pointed in the direction of two or three houses on
the other side of the way, and saying he supposed we might get a
lodging over there, he wished us good-day and retired into his own
premises. The landlord of “over there” was very civil. He had a shed
for the horses, and could give us palm-mats to sleep upon on the floor,
or on the shop-counter, which was very narrow, but long enough for us
both; and this latter alternative we chose.
We walked up to the top of a hill close by the village, and were
surveying the country from thence, keeping a sharp look-out all the
while for Mexican remains in the furrows. For a wonder, we found
nothing but some broken spindle-heads; but, while we were thus
occupied, two Indians suddenly made their appearance, each with his
_machete_ in his hand, and wanted to know what we were doing on their
land. We pacified them by politeness and a cigar apiece, but we were
still evidently objects of suspicion, and they were quite relieved to
see us return to the village. There, an old woman cooked us hard-boiled
eggs and tortillas, and then we went tranquilly to bed on our counter,
with our saddles for pillows, and our serapes for bed-clothes.
All the way from Cocoyotla our height above the sea had been gradually
increasing; and soon after we started from Oculan next morning, we came
to the foot of one of the grand passes that lead up into the high
lands, where the road mounts by zig-zag turns through a splendid forest
of pines and oaks, and at the top of the ascent we were in a broad
fertile plain as high or higher than the valley of Mexico. It was like
England to ride between large fields of wheat and barley, and to pick
blackberries in the hedges. It was only April, and yet the grain was
almost ready for the sickle, and the blackberries were fully ripe.
Fresh green grass was growing in the woods under the oak-trees, and the
banks were covered with Alpine strawberries.
We are in the great grain-district of the Republic. Wheat is grown for
the supply of the large towns, and barley for the horses. Green barley
is the favourite fodder for the horses in the Mexican highlands, and in
the hotter districts the leaves of young Indian corn. Oats are to be
seen growing by chance among other grain, but they are never
cultivated. Though wheat is so much grown upon the plains, it is not
because the soil and climate are more favourable than elsewhere for
such culture. In the plains of Toluca and Tenancingo the yield of wheat
is less than the average of the Republic, which is from 25- to 30-fold,
and in the cloudy valleys we passed through near Orizaba it is much
greater. Labour is tolerably cheap and plentiful here, however; and
then each large town must draw its supplies of grain from the
neighbouring districts, for, in a country where it pays to carry goods
on mules’ backs, it is clear that grain cannot be carried far to
market.
In the question of the population of Mexico, one begins to speculate
why—in a country with a splendid climate, a fertile soil, and almost
unlimited space to spread in, the inhabitants do not increase one-half
so fast as in England, and about one-sixth as fast as their neighbours
of the United States. One of the most important causes which tend to
bring about this state of things is the impossibility of conveying
grain to any distance, except by doubling and trebling its price. The
disastrous effects of a failure of the crop in one district cannot be
remedied by a plentiful harvest fifty miles off; for the peasants,
already ruined by the loss of their own harvest, can find neither money
nor credit to buy food brought from a distance at so great an expense.
Next year may be fruitful again, but numbers die in the interval, and
the constitutions of a great proportion of the children never recover
the effects of that one year’s famine.
We left the regular road and struck up still higher into the hills,
riding amongst winding roads with forest above and below us, and great
orchids of the most brilliant colours, blue, white, and crimson,
shining among the branches of the oak-trees. The boughs were often
breaking down with the bulbs of such epiphytes; but as yet it was early
in the season, and only here and there one was in flower. At the top of
the hill, still in the midst of the woods, is the Desierto, “the
desert,” the place we had selected for our noon-day halt. There are
many of these Desiertos in Mexico, founded by rich people in old times.
They are a kind of convent, with some few resident ecclesiastics, and
numbers of cells for laymen who retire for a time into this secluded
place and are received gratuitously. They spend a week or two in prayer
and fasting, then confess themselves, receive the sacrament, and return
into the world. The situation of this quiet place was well chosen in
the midst of the forest, and once upon a time the cells used to be full
of penitents; but now we saw no one but the old porter, as we walked
about the gardens and explored the quadrangle and the rows of cells,
each with a hideous little wood-cut of a martyr being tortured, upon
the door.
Thence we rode down into the plain, looking down, as we descended, upon
a hill which seemed to be an old crater, rising from the level ground;
and then our path lay among broad fields where oxen were ploughing, and
across marshes covered with coarse grass, until we came to the quaint
little town of Tenancingo. There we found the _meson_; and the landlord
handed us the key of our room, which was square, whitewashed, and with
a tiled floor. There was no window, so we had to keep the door open for
light. The furniture consisted of three articles,—two low tables on
four legs, made of rough planks, and a bracket to stick a candle in.
The tables were beds after the manner of the country; but, as a special
attention to us, the patron produced two old mattresses; the first
sight of them was enough for us, and we expelled them with shouts of
execration. We had to go to a shop in the square to get some supper;
and on our return, about nine o’clock, our man Antonio remarked that he
was going to sleep, which he did at once in the following manner. He
took off his broad-brimmed hat and hung it on a nail, tied a red cotton
handkerchief round his head, rolled himself up in his serape, lay down
on the flags in the courtyard outside our door, and was asleep in an
instant. We retired to our planks inside and followed his example.
The next afternoon we reached Toluca, a large and prosperous town, but
with little noticeable in it except the arcades (portales) along the
streets, and the hams which are cured with sugar, and are famous all
over the Republic. Our road passed near the Nevado de Toluca, an
extinct snow-covered volcano, nearly 15,000 feet above the sea. It
consists entirely of grey and red porphyry, and in the interior of its
crater are two small lakes. We were not sorry to take up our quarters
in a comfortable European-looking hotel again, for roughing it is much
less pleasant in these high altitudes—where the nights and mornings are
bitterly cold—than in the hotter climate of the lower levels.
Our next day’s ride brought us back to Mexico, crossing the corn-land
of the plain of Lerma, where the soil consists of disintegrated
porphyry from the mountains around, and is very fertile. Lerma itself
is the worst den of robbers in all Mexico; and, as we rode through the
street of dingy adobe houses, and saw the rascally-looking fellows who
were standing at the doors in knots, with their horses ready saddled
and bridled close by, we got a very strong impression that the
reputation of the place was no worse than it deserved. After Lerma,
there still remained the pass over the mountains which border the
valley of Mexico; and here in the midst of a dense pine-forest is Las
Cruzes, “the crosses,” a place with an ugly name, where several
robberies are done every week. We waited for the Diligence at some
little glass-works at the entrance of the pass, and then let it go on
first, as a sop to those gentlemen if they should be out that day. I
suppose they knew pretty accurately that no one had much to lose, for
they never made their appearance.
[Illustration: SPANISH-MEXICAN SPURS. _From 5 to 6 inches long, with
rowels from 2½ to 3 inches in diameter. The broad instep-strap of
embossed leather is also shewn. (From Mr. Christy’s Collection)_]