CHAPTER XXI

GOOD-BY TO THE HORSES

Returning from Grand Cañon we discussed plans for the coming year.

Ewart had his Scots Guards history, which he ought to finish by the

summer, and then he was going North to the Canadian Line, and proposed

to make a study of the relationship of the two peoples, Canadian and

American, for a book to be called "The Unguarded Line." I had in mind

to go to Mexico, continuing this study of the quest of El Dorado along

the traces of Cortes' conquest. The severity of the Santa Fe winter

decided Ewart against staying there any longer, and he yearned to go

with me to Mexico. Against the latter I dissuaded him. He had the

weight of the history on his mind, as something which must be done,

must be got over, for he had contracted to do it. He said he would take

the history with him and do it there. But I felt Mexico too unsafe a

place for him to be in by himself. He did not know any Spanish and

therefore would be taken for a "Gringo" and treated accordingly by a

people who had the reputation of being extremely disobliging. Ewart,

however, was about equally drawn to New Orleans, which for long had

been a city of romance to him, a place he certainly wanted to know.

There he could live very well till the spring and then, if he wished,

return to Santa Fe. We would all return to Santa Fe in the spring and

have some last gallops over the desert before the summer. Ewart decided

to go to New Orleans.

The immediate problem was the bestowal of our horses. Ewart referred

the matter to Cowboy Pete, a near neighbor, asking him if he would like

the use of a horse for the rest of the winter, or if he would like to

buy a horse.

The cowboy was abusive and amusing.

"Do I want your powny? I tell yer the on-y way I'd take that thar

broom-tail o' yourn would be with a twenty-dollar bill tied round his

neck. The best thing you can do is put a brand on him, then take him up

the mountains and leave him there. Turn him loose, I tell yar! Then if

you come back in the spring and find him, why, you've got a horse, see;

but if not, why, you've saved the price of his feed. If he's a sturdy

powny he'll last out the winter or-right. But I tell you, right now,

I can buy pownies like that o' yourn by the carload at five dollars

apiece just now. No one has any use for pownies in the winter, cost

more'n they're worth in feed. Tell yar straight I wouldn't give him

hell room on the ranch. But put a brand on him--a new brand--and take

him up the mountains."

Cowboy Pete spoke very loudly, evidently under the impression that

Ewart was deaf, for the Englishman had a habit of asking questions

twice. I stood by and interpreted the one to the other.

Ewart, however, did not trust to the idea of abandoning George among

the snows, though it is a customary way of keeping horses in the winter

in New Mexico. He had paid twenty-five dollars for him, and he thought

he ought eventually to get some of it back. He therefore sedulously

sought buyers. At length he struck a deal with a Mexican hauler of

wood. George was to be delivered up for twelve and a half dollars.

"If only you could have been there," said Ewart afterwards. "I led

old George down the street and was about to hand him over when the

Mexican's brother came flying out of a cottage and started to abuse

George in Spanish, finding every imaginable fault in him. I said he had

carried the poet hundreds of miles without misadventure before I bought

him but other Mexicans joined in the dispute and I was obliged to let

George go for ten. The last I saw of him he was hauling wood on Palace

Avenue."

My wife and I had become more attached to our horses, having had them

longer and done more on them, and the idea of parting with them made us

very sad. Only on the very last night did I part with Billy, and Buck

went a day or so before. We found good homes for both of them, and I

believe the happy life they had with us continues still, as friends

bestride them.

Just before Christmas then we parted from Santa Fe, Ewart some days

ahead of us for New Orleans and we for Mexico City. We expected to meet

in the spring or summer in the States once more, and little imagined as

we said good-by that we should be reunited at the end of the year and

then separated, as it were, forever.

BOOK VI

MEXICO

CHAPTER XXII

THE GOLD

Mexico is a country marked for conquest. It is no doubt the most

romantic country of the New World but its history has been the most

sordid. It is gilded with tales of fortune and wonder. Even its

sunsets must seem of a more marvelous coloring than those of other

shores. It has been, and is, a land of riches. And it has for that

reason attracted the violence of mankind. Even before the Spaniards

came Mexico lived in a state of war. Empire had succeeded Empire. The

crushing of the Aztecs by Cortes was not a surprise to the Indians;

they fully expected some new race to come out of the horizon and

destroy them as they themselves had destroyed others. The difference

between warfare with the Spaniard and warfare before the Spaniard came

was that the former was more racial and less covetous. Certainly there

never had been a people with such a craving for gold as the bearded men

of Cortes. Their passion for it was cited by Aztecs as a reason for

disbelieving in their supposed divine origin. They could do without

women but they could not go without gold. Though they seemed able to

command the lightning were they not slaves of the yellow metal?

Gold as presents they took greedily. When presents ceased they

took it by demand, and then by robbery. They tortured Indians to

learn secrets of hidden treasure, burned noble enemies alive; they

fought one another. Their love of it was stronger than their loyalty

to one another. When they had got it they hid it for fear of being

dispossessed of it, and when they had hidden it they lost it. And then

others sought for it and fought for it. Gold was most freely mingled

with Spanish blood.

The story of the quest of the gold is of the primitive kind that

belongs not so much to economics and politics as to the child's picture

novel. No doubt it can still cause a thrill in the pirate blood of

many a grown man. But the interest is now gloriously fictional. Mexico

is still a land of gold, but you no longer go there like Ali Baba or

Cassim, with sacks. Now, somewhere or other, you have to get that

prized _oro_ over a bank counter. There is no great difference in the

result, except that you may get more gold and lose less blood than in

the old days, but, oh, the difference in the manner, in the style of

getting it!

It seems incongruous to think of the mining enterprises, oil

concessions, and trading concerns of to-day as carrying on the

tradition of the Conquistadores of Spain. Nevertheless it is so;

there are armies and navies behind the trade and there is _policy_

correlating the significance of the whole.

One of the most profitable wars in history was that of 1848 by which

the United States obtained the greater part of her mineral wealth of

to-day, the gold of California, the silver of Nevada, the copper of

Arizona. It is true that had these vast territories remained in the

control of the Mexican people they would not have been exploited to the

extent that they are now. The new, stirring civilization of California

could hardly have sprung into existence. Under Mexican rule there would

have been no new Western Universities, but no doubt there would have

been new battlefields instead. On the other hand, if the United States

had taken over the vast metalliferous State of Chihuahua as well, what

wealth would be coming forth of it now!

Instead of wealth starting from the State of Chihuahua, revolutions

start from there. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the

wealth-seeking population of the United States should feel some urge to

change political turbulence into productive peace.

The whole of Mexico is a great treasure cave for those who know the

words which open the door. The Mexicans clearly do not know, or they

have forgotten, the word. Instead of saying "_Open Sesame_" they say

"_Open Bloodvessels_," or some such impolite cacophony. They say

very loudly, "_Make the Foreigner Pay_," and things of that sort,

but it does not open the door. President Obregon has said, rather

pathetically, that Mexico is capable of sustaining a population of one

hundred millions instead of the poverty-stricken fifteen millions which

now inhabit it. And he has pointed out the paradox that the richest

country in the world has the poorest people. Mexico and Russia are

somewhat alike in this respect; in both cases the lands are marvelously

rich and the people incredibly poor. But if they wish to be rich

there is only one way, and that is to find the means of unlocking

the potential treasures of the land. To the Anglo-Saxon that seems a

simple matter--quit fighting, begin working, cultivate honesty, educate

the illiterate, enforce the laws. But to the Mexican that seems to be

psychologically impossible.

I believe that in time the United States will finish her conquest of

Mexico. The conquest is being now furthered by peaceful penetration and

partially thwarted by a revolutionary government and by the powerful

character of General Obregon. Whether the conquest will be consummated

ultimately by force of arms depends largely on the behavior of the

politicians and generals fighting amongst themselves.

The speculative mind may pause on the thought of the material grandeur

of the United States when it gets Mexico fairly going. The gold of the

world is largely massed at Washington even now--the rich people of the

world are the Americans. America is the greatest organized unity of

peoples and unity of resources--she is already capable of initiating,

if she wished, a world policy which no other nation dare dream of.

But with the realization of the Mexican Ophir there will no longer be

any quest of El Dorado. El Dorado will be discovered and identified.

El Dorado will be the North American continent from Panama to the

"Unguarded Line." El Dorado will be America.

CHAPTER XXIII

APPROACHING MEXICO FROM THE NORTH

It came as a pleasant surprise, upon entering Mexican territory, to

receive gold coins in exchange for paper money. Mexico since 1920 has

had a gold and silver currency and no bank notes. All the depreciated

paper has been withdrawn from circulation, and there is that much

wealth in the _Estados Unidos Mexicanos_ which obtains in no European

country to-day, a stability of the value of money.

One certainly feels as if one had in one's possession something

real--with a pocketful of handsome gold pieces. The bright silver peso

is rather heavy in the pocket, it is true, but one does not soon tire

of looking at the coinage and rejoicing in it. When one has traveled

round Europe with locally printed francs and wads of worthless crowns

and marks, and even in the United States with its many shredded and

grease-stricken one-dollar bills, one feels a due astonishment that

Mexico in one respect is showing the world its way. Unfortunately

however the new "Bank of Issue" is to begin printing bank-notes again

very soon.

The ten-peso piece with "_Independencia y Libertad_" cut into its

unmilled edge reminds of the Russian ten-rouble bits. But the Mexican

twenty pesos, worth two guineas or ten dollars, is a beautiful and

distinctive gold piece with its impress of the elaborate and detailed

"Calendar Stone" of the Aztecs.

Mexico has triumphed over the currency trouble, but like Europe and the

United States she still has the passport disease, requiring photographs

and fees before you enter the land. The United States, however, has

exerted her power and influence to remove this obstruction as far as

her own nationals are concerned. American citizens go back and forth at

will without show of visa. The British Foreign Office could achieve the

same result, but is, I am told, too idle. It may seem a small matter to

those who do not travel, but it is an undoubted convenience. The sudden

demand for photographs often delays the British traveler twenty-four

hours at El Paso or Laredo. And he naturally asks himself why he should

pay ten shillings while his American neighbor gets in free.

For us these matters were arranged at El Paso. Here my wife and I spent

a few days, met Duncan Aikman working on the El Paso _Times_, and with

his hospitable assistance we viewed the frontier city. I learned from

him that Wilfrid Ewart had broken his journey to New Orleans at this

point and had decided to take a ten-day trip into Mexico. The tickets

of the Southern Pacific Railroad give travelers special facilities for

doing that. It enables Americans to get a drink if they wish. Ewart, I

found, had bought a round trip ticket to take him to Mexico City and

then back to Texas by a different route--by San Luis Potosi and Laredo.

I at once felt some apprehension for my friend. "I do hope he comes to

no harm," I exclaimed.

"He'll be all right," said Aikman. "I have given him an introduction

to the Governor of Chihuahua, General Enriquez. Mexico has become much

quieter."

I was much struck by the contrast between El Paso and the Spanish city

opposite it. El Paso grows and spreads on the desert like some super

cactus barbed with every barb of civilization. It is amazing in its

artificiality, its unwontedness. I have been in frontier cities between

the Turkestan Desert and Mongolia--low, squalid, utterly unblessed by

God or man. But El Paso on the Mexican line is nothing like them. The

sidewalks of New York and Chicago are continued there; the line of

their housetops against the Texas sky barely attenuates.

But opposite El Paso, on the southern side of the Rio Grande, is El

Paso's opposite, la Ciudad de Juarez. There is only a bridge between, a

mere thirty or forty yards of wood and iron--Mexico one side, America

the other; Mexican squalor on one hand, American civilization in full

blast on the other. The three-minutes' transition as you walk across

the muddy Rio is surely one of the most surprising in the New World.

The road is level, but you step down as into an abyss.

In the United States city is every sign of wealth and self-respect, of

militant commerce and the rewards and aims of trade. Schools, theaters,

churches vie with one another to raise the population and magnify the

name of the city and the fame of America. The newspapers cry the news

of the day and the El Paso _Times_ seems no whit less vigorous or

informed than the _Tribune_ of Chicago itself. The hotels of El Paso,

the luxurious Paso del Norte, the commodious Sheldon, are grandiose in

charge and style. No drummer from another city needs to walk along a

corridor for his bath. And as for restaurants there seems to be a sort

of special El Paso _chic_. They infallibly bring you finger bowls, and

no El Pasoan drinks from one by mistake. But without a jest, one fares

better and is treated with more dignity in an El Paso café than in New

York.

The air of El Paso is pure, the roads are clean, there are no hobos

sitting in the little park where its alligators live under the

fountain, the business men wear ironed clothes, their gait is dignified

and steady except, perhaps, when coming from the direction of the

Juarez bridge. What more can one say? El Paso is real genuine United

States. And the fort above it with its barracks and soldiers worships

the Stars and Stripes no more than does the business world below.

But walk across that little bridge and the vision is gone. You have

more effectually left Uncle Sam than if you had spent a week on the

Atlantic doing so. You are in Europe. You have left the banner of

Kansas behind and are with the publicans and sinners once again.

Loungers, beggars, drunken men, saloons, gambling houses, dust and

stink, moldering mud houses and poor wooden cabins give the first

impression of Mexico in the North. Directly you cross the bridge the

beggars, as in Spain itself, are whining and extending arms. Of course

as one goes further there is a Cathedral and a bull ring, and there

are some large American shops. An American trolley car comes out of El

Paso, crosses that bridge, circles through Juarez like a figure-skater,

and goes out again into America by another bridge, and the steel lines

hypnotize one to follow back to the comfortable States.

The city of Juarez has, however, a bad name which is somewhat

exaggerated. Vice by repute is generally magnified. Juarez and the

other gate-city of old Laredo are both called the Monte Carlo of

Mexico. There are columns in the press devoted to tales of their

wickedness. There is said to be a large sale of cocaine and opium and

that many young people are under the influence of these drugs. As for

alcoholic drink there is no question but that in Juarez excessive

quantities are taken. There has been much bootlegging on a large and

petty scale. So many night excursions by aëroplane have been made by

Americans that the Mexican Government has equipped an aërial fleet to

police the frontier. Government prohibition agents of the United States

have recommended that Mexico be asked to consent to the establishment

of a "Dry Zone" all along the Border. President Obregon, when asked

about this, said Mexico would welcome the establishment of such a zone,

as he felt it humiliating that Americans, unable to satisfy their

vicious cravings in America, should come to Mexico to do so. This,

however, Obregon probably did not mean to be taken seriously. Like many

other Mexican politicians he loves making witty remarks at the expense

of America.

In connection with the American idea of control of the Border may be

mentioned the resolution adopted by the House of Representatives of the

legislature of Arizona requesting the President of the United States to

start negotiations for the "purchase, lease, or joint control" of two

hundred miles of the said border. But that is not so much to further

"Prohibition" as to further trade, the people of Arizona seeking an

outlet, a sort of Salonika on the Gulf of California. They would like

the frontier of Arizona to run due west from the town of Nogales to the

sea.

Nogales is going to be an important point in the approach to Mexico

from the North. There is a railway which was wrecked during the

revolutionary period. It ran between the Sierra Madre and the ocean,

and was the only railroad development of the Gulf of California and

the Pacific Coast for a thousand miles. It was not finished--but now

I believe the Southern Pacific Company which possesses the franchise

have been enabled to repair the damage and will soon run a service of

trains from Arizona and California to Guadalajara. It should be said

that Californians have naturally a much deeper interest in the American

development of Mexico than most States. Financial groups have lately

taken over large tracts of land near Tehuantepec and also in the State

of Vera Cruz. California has as vigorous an attitude toward Mexico on

the western side as Texas has on the east. California's destiny seems

to hold the commercial domination of the Pacific Coast.

There is another grand railroad project on foot, the "_Gran Ferrocarril

Panamericano_," which is to join New York with the Canal Zone

of Panama by a permanent way through Mexico, Guatemala, etc. The

establishment of this pan-American railway depends, however, more upon

the Central American republics than on Mexico. A thousand miles of

this road remains to be built over land much subject to earthquakes

and revolutions. But the through carriages now running from Chicago to

Mexico City via Laredo are a symptom of closer railroad connections.

I did not, however, enter by Laredo or Nogales but by El Paso. The

distance to Mexico City is nearly two thousand kilometers, mostly of

sand and piñon trees. The Santa Fe country seems to extend endlessly

southward. Desert dust enters the train and almost stifles you. From

the window of the railway carriage you see the yucca's withered stem,

and the dead cactus extends to you a dusty hand, welcoming you to

No Man's Land. The contours of the mountains are, as in New Mexico,

wind-worked, wind-shaped, and there are great rounded hats of rock,

gray and sun-wasted. Occasionally one comes to wretched, mud-built

villages whose whole population turns out in rags to sell coffee and

chili sandwiches to passengers at the halting places.

Three hundred miles south of El Paso the wilderness is broken by

Chihuahua, of which Cunninghame Graham used to write, fondly pronounced

Chihoo-a-hoo-a in London but locally Chi-wah-wah. I broke my journey in

this city and enjoyed the refreshment of spirit which comes when you

suddenly escape from winter and change one country grown familiar for

one which is unfamiliar.

Chihuahua, capital of one of the "United States of Mexico," is a fine

city, or the ruins of one. Not so deep as Pompeii, yet it lies well

under the dirt. War and revolution have battered it. Mud has swept over

its street-car lines. Economically it seems to be a peon of the United

States. American goods alone are in the shops and at prices fifty or

a hundred per cent higher than in America itself. Even food such as

butter and sugar and cheese and bacon seems to be largely imported and

heavily taxed. There is much poverty and want.

But what a spacious city it is! The gardens are fresh and flowering

with violets. Fountains are playing. The tradition of Spain is strong

in the architecture which expresses the dignity of human life--and of

being a Spaniard.

Alas, the most striking characteristic of the city is, I suppose,

characteristic of all Mexico, and that is the pearl- and ivory-mounted

revolvers. There are shop windows full of pistols. Every other man has

a pistol in his hip pocket. Pistols are discharged at all moments for

joy, or to kill, or through mere ennui. The Mexicans fire off pistols

to kill time.

The city seems to have two regular restaurants, and you either dine

with Quong or dine with Sing. The city band plays in front of Porfirio

Diaz's Palacio Nacional every afternoon. At the other end of the city

you may watch soldiers drilling. In the evening there is nothing to do

except watch "barnstormers" do an English musical comedy or look at an

American picture show. On Sunday it is true there is always, at least

in winter, a bull fight. These are not dressed as in Spain, though

flower-decked bowers are put up for the "Queens of love and beauty,"

the presiding "most distinguished ladies." Probably when famous

toreadors visit Chihuahua they wear their crimson and gold, but in the

glimpse I had of the killing of a sixth bull the fighters were just

men with their coats off--as it were the butcher had taken a holiday

from his shop and with his long knife was taking extra pleasure in the

darker side of his trade. The crowd kept calling to him to lead the

bull away and bring out an ass. And blushingly he eyed the spot in the

bull's back where the knife ought to go and made the last lunge. "He is

not a bullfighter; he's just an ordinary man," said some one as he went

away.

The State of Chihuahua has many bandits; life there is remarkably

insecure compared with North of the Rio Grande. This is not entirely

due to Mexicans; there are not a few wild Americans at large. Hundreds

of men wanted by the American police have in time past crowded into the

State of Chihuahua, there to live largely by their wits. "Two-gun Bill"

of cinema fame may be met with if you ride from the city to the mine

with gold. Political assassins and men of blood are a state product.

Thus the life of General Villa and his murder there are natural enough.

The horsemen of Chihuahua are much better mounted than the cowboys of

the American South-west--one may spend a pleasant afternoon on the Town

Hall steps merely watching the horsemen riding in and out of town. And

they are better armed and naturally more ready with hand to holster.

The State was governed by General Enriquez, a Mexican Liberal who has

since resigned--but he had little control of the wild people about

him. He had to cope with large numbers who believe they have won

revolutionary reforms and with land-owning families who are accustomed

to treat the rest like slaves. Poor people still call you "patron"

instead of "señor." Enriquez staved off the demand for the splitting up

and division of the large estates. He protected many business concerns

from spoliatory labor laws. But he allowed the rule of daily payment

of wages, a point much fought in the South. General Enriquez, who

speaks English, is probably wider in his sympathies than most Mexicans.

Wilfrid Ewart asked him the question direct--What did he think of the

prospect of annexation by America? He replied that in his opinion the

political ideals of America made that impossible.

But if the wild forces now loose in Mexico should overthrow all the

civilized elements of life? There hides the possible moment of an

effective American intervention.

I have not been surprised to read subsequently that the reason for

Enriquez's resignation was despair. Four days in Chihuahua is not

long enough to judge the whole of the State but any visitor might be

struck by the daring faces of the Spaniards and by the almost complete

savagery of the Indians. The latter, the Tarahumare, are black and

nearly naked. They wear gigantic straw sombreros, and their bodies

below are as it were triangled. Broad brows, sunstretched eyes, broad

nose but pointed chin--their faces are triangular. Their bodies from

shoulders to navel are black triangles, their loin-cloths hang in a

triangle of dull rags, their thighs from the fullness of their loins to

gaunt bony knees--two more triangles of dark dirt--and then wasted feet

with mud-caked separate toes. A strange people these Indians, for they

worship the Echino cactus and make sacrifice to it. The other citizens

of this great State worship not the cactus but the revolver.

As I resumed my journey southward over hundreds more miles of desert

I noted that the man next to me kept a loaded revolver on the couch

beside him--ready in case of bandidos. It is a wild country--what do

the foreigners go there for? Well, mostly for gold--for a fortune to be

quickly won.

We had had some hope of meeting Wilfrid Ewart at Chihuahua, but he

had left before we came. We found his signature in the register of

the Hotel Robinson. We had gone to a little Spanish hotel in the

Plaza called the San Luis. It seemed as if his ten days would be over

before we reached Mexico City. After Torreon we began to watch for

Laredo trains, not knowing that the railroad branches off at a much

earlier point, Huehuetoca. It would have been amusing and pleasant to

have shaken hands at some little station where our trains, going in

different directions, were drawn up and steaming. But as it happened he

had not left the capital.

In the train were several mining men, mostly Americans. One came

up to me and said, "I saw you at the Hotel Sheldon and I said to

my friend--'He's a mud-digger, I'll bet.'" There, however, he was

mistaken, but if you are English and in Mexico it stands to reason

you must be in the mining interest. The talk was of gold and opals

and silver. Indians brought all manner of jewelry to the trains to

sell, much of it manufactured stuff imported from Europe. They brought

also lustrous pots which were more genuine, and peasant embroideries

and boxes of sweetened cream and baskets of strawberries. At Irapuato

on the 26th of December the whole station swarmed with vendors of

strawberries. They say it always does, any time in the year.

The train emerged from the waterless sand on to the maguey plantations.

The eyes rested gratefully on the green plumes of the banana palm and

on the scarlet flowers of some tropical tree. The bougainvillæa bounced

into a crimson effulgence of bloom. We entered at last a rich and

verdant country fed by many rivers, and that was Anahuac, the fertile

land of the Aztec Empire, of which the city now called Mexico but in

their day Tenochtitlan is and was the capital.

CHAPTER XXIV

AT MONTEZUMA'S CAPITAL

Here the event happened which saddened the year: my friend was killed.

Wilfrid Ewart, to whose genius and person I was devoted, and who in

turn was very fond of us, was shot on Old Year's Night, a lamentable

taking off over which one can never cease to grieve.

Arrived at Mexico City my wife and I sped along the Avenue Juarez to

the Hotel Cosmos where we spent a night. Next day we repaired to the

quieter and more comfortable Iturbide, a fine old structure built

around stone courts and a garden of palm trees and flowering shrubs,

with a fountain playing. I think we were fortunate, for while we paid

only a moderate price we yet had a large airy room with writing desk

and table and a pleasant outlook on the unfurling green of the banana

palms. By no possibility could we have been shot from the street whilst

standing at the window.

We wondered much whether Wilfrid Ewart were in the city. Although I

knew he had only ten days wherein his ticket would be valid I knew

the temptation was to stay longer. There is one perfectly safe and

conventional hotel in Mexico City, and that is "The Regis," run in the

American style and patronized chiefly by Americans and English. Its

agents circulate on the Pullman cars of the trains and make sure of

the English-speaking passengers. A hotel omnibus meets all trains and

takes off guests for the hotel. We felt sure, therefore, that Ewart

would have stayed there. So on our first morning we went thither and

asked for him. He was not there. We consulted the register. He had not

been there. Next day I called on Mr. Norman King, the British Consul

General, but the consulate had not heard of him. Dr. E. J. Dillon and

his wife had, however, arrived in the city and were staying at the

"Princess," but Ewart was not registered at the "Princess." We wondered

where he could have stayed. As a matter of fact a Spaniard on the train

had given him the address of a hotel several streets distant from the

center--the Hotel Isabel on the Street of the Republic of San Salvador,

a hotel chiefly patronized by Germans and Spanish.

On Friday, the 29th of December, we went to the shrine of "Our Lady of

Guadeloupe" and saw that famous image worshiped more by the Indians

than by any other. We watched the Aztecs of to-day, candle in one hand,

sombrero in the other, walk on their knees up the aisle to the altar,

and looked on those grandiose ecclesiastical pictures which adorn the

gilded church telling the story of the revelation of the Virgin and the

Pope's remark, "Such things are not done for all nations." We recalled

to mind December 12, the festival of the Guadeloupe Virgin and the

resonance of it at Santa Fe among the Mexicans there; the firing of

guns promiscuously in the streets, the lighting of festive fires. It

had much astonished Wilfrid Ewart then.

Next day, the thirtieth, at noontide we met our friend by chance on

the streets of the city. It was on the corner of San Juan de Latran

and the street of the 16th September. We were in the act of choosing

at which new restaurant we would partake of luncheon when suddenly we

saw Ewart's tall figure on the edge of the curb; he was gazing in his

short-sighted way up into the sky and did not see us till I cried out.

Then we moved joyfully together to a restaurant and had lunch.

"Well, Wilfrid Ewart, you are a wicked fellow!" I said to him

reproachfully.

He ruffled a little.

"Well, I don't know," said he. "Isn't it the chance of a lifetime? I've

been looking for a place like this all my life."

He seemed utterly charmed with Mexico City and spoke with a sort of

rapture of Chapultepec Park. We agreed to go together on the morrow to

San Angel to have lunch together on the last day of the year at the

fine inn there. It was a place nine or ten miles from the center of the

city, literally buried in flowers and palms, and he seriously thought

of taking a room at the inn and staying there for three months.

One thing troubled him: that iron box of regimental papers and his

portmanteau had gone to New Orleans; he carried only his knapsack and

staff, like a pilgrim bound for a distant shrine. He could sacrifice

his unused ticket, but how get these pieces of baggage forwarded to

Mexico. We went after luncheon to talk to the railway agent about it,

but the office was closed for the New Year holidays.

I then accompanied him to his hotel and saw the English-speaking German

who kept it, "surprisingly civil," said Ewart; "trying to ingratiate

himself with me," I thought. I went up to his room and admired the fine

view of the mountains obtained from his window, but I did not care for

the feeling of it--not a place to write in. I meditated getting him to

change over to the Iturbide.

Next day, the thirty-first of December, we sat on a street car and went

out together to San Angel. We had lunch in view of the great mountains

Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl but their summits remained wreathed in

cloud. A fine, warm air blew steadily thence, ruffling the blossoms

of the garden, disturbing the eyes. Our luncheon was spread in an

arbor. We were waited on by a French waiter. It was hardly a democratic

resort. There were other arbors and tables set in a shady patio where

rich Mexicans who had driven up in their cars dissected elegantly

cooked sole and turkey, and ate strawberries and cream, washed down

with imported wines. The straw-hatted, blanket-wrapped Mexicans, the

descendants of the Aztecs, the women with gold ornaments on their necks

and ears and flowing raven hair were hidden from view here. One might

very well have been on the Riviera--except for those gigantic volcanoes

and a certain dryness of the table-mountain air which spoke not of the

sea.

Ewart had already been to the inn several times. He had been ill at

ease in American civilization, and told us so. He thirsted for the

elegance of Paris and the easy-going ways of London. "One thing the

Americans have not yet learned to prize, and that is leisureliness,"

said he. His own marked, leisured utterance was strangely in contrast

with the rapid speech and style of Americans.

Yet he was going back to America in the spring. He felt the fascination

of modern America as much as any one. He was surprised that America had

not yet annexed Mexico. Ideal considerations did not weigh in his mind.

The only argument in favor of Mexico was that Mexico was unlike the

United States and it might be worth while conserving her as something

different.

Of them and of many things we discoursed during a long afternoon spent

mostly on the roof of the San Angel Inn. And in the dusk of evening

we took a returning tram to Mexico. As we passed the bull ring at

Chapultepec the outcoming crowds swarmed on to the streets, and ere we

reached the city the newsboys with the evening papers came clamorously

on to the cars crying, "Glorious afternoon with the bulls! Great

triumph of Rodolfo Gaon! Great triumph of Lalanda!" Gaon is an Indian

bullfighter and the idol of Mexico for a time. Ewart had seen him

kill four bulls in his garments of gold and silver, and was hideously

impressed. But he was greatly tickled by the newscry "Glorious

afternoon with the bulls!" and kept repeating it.

That evening we went together to the _Teatro Lirico_ to see a revue

called 1922. We sat in the midst of a wild crowd and looked on at

something of which we did not understand very much, allusions of all

kinds of happenings in the Republic of Mexico during 1922, danced out

by girls and clowns in colored silks. There were acts representing the

two years' peace of the Obregon régime, Liberty, the Graves of the

Martyrs of the Revolution, and through it all there stalked a hooligan,

drunk in every scene and creating a scandal in every part. In the

graveyard of the heroes he makes love to the widow grieving over her

dead husband and is only interrupted when the grave opens and the dead

man inside roars a terrible reproval--the thrill of the evening. The

whole ended on a sort of parade of the Republic and a rivalry of flags

over which in a grand burst of the National Anthem triumphed the Red,

White and Green of the Mexican nation.

By the time we came out of the theater it had become a wild night

in Mexico City. Every one who had a car had brought it out. All the

"camions" were filled with joy riders, every klaxon and horn was

yelling, the sidewalks were packed with thronging crowds carrying

colored paper flags and other baubles. Most of the men had pistols,

some had guns. Promiscuous firing rattled and banged in side streets

and about house tops. The cafés were full. Orchestras were playing.

Men everywhere were under the influence of pulque and other cactus

alcohols. I think we felt rather tired. Certainly we were ready for

supper and we sought a table where we might sit down to eat and finish

the night.

It was at the Cosmos that we sat down to supper--for the last time.

There we lingered and would no doubt have seen the Old Year out, the

New Year in, but an unkind Fate prompted otherwise. At half-past

eleven or thereabout we sallied forth once more into the wild streets.

I had a mind to go to the great central square, the Zocalo, where once

stood the Great Pyramid, but we did not agree to go. Instead we gave

one another last greetings and departed to our several hotels.

"A happy New Year!" Ewart cried, swaying his arm affectionately in a

last handshake.

"A happy New Year!" said I. "And may you soon get that iron box" I

added, involuntarily thinking of what was most on our minds.

So we parted. Even the Iturbide was in a strange condition, most of

the servants being in that menacing drunken state which comes after

drinking much pulque. But that was small matter. At midnight there

outbroke a quintupled clamor over all the city. Hundreds of thousands

of revolvers and guns must have been discharged and discharged

repeatedly. The sound was of a great general engagement in war. I stood

at the window and looked at the dark sky which, however, told nothing

of the myriads of bullets flying into it. I was astonished. But little

did I guess that Wilfrid Ewart doing the same at his window overlooking

that wild street of the "Republic of San Salvador" was in these moments

being killed--by a revolver bullet from below.

Yet so it was, and I will not say more here, except that we buried him

in the British Cemetery beside the Tlacopan Causeway along which Cortes

and the remains of his defeated army slowly retreated on the Noche

Triste of July 1, 1520. A few English people stood beside a new-dug

grave with tearful eyes and choking hearts. So we laid him to rest far

away from his home. There were white roses buried with him. There are

lilies growing near him.

I should not perhaps have narrated this happening here but that Wilfrid

Ewart has become part of Mexico as Francis Drake became part of Nombre

de Dios and the Spanish Main. It was Mexico that took him, sacrificing

yet another victim on its Aztec altars. On the day after we buried

Ewart another Englishman was killed, George W. Steabben, an English

merchant. He was walking along a street with his family when suddenly

a shooting affray took place between two parties of Mexicans in cars.

Shots went in many directions, several people were wounded, and

Steabben was killed. The quarreling parties were mostly officers and

deputies--really above the law. Members of the Mexican Parliament enjoy

immunity from arrest but nevertheless they are frequently implicated in

crimes and outrages.

The social condition of Mexico has evidently greatly changed since

Diaz' days. Porfirio Diaz ruled as a Dictator for a quarter of a

century and enforced peace upon the country. He was the type of great

man that Carlyle sought in history, the hero once found to be obeyed.

The obedience to Diaz was very gratifying to foreigners in Mexico. His

fame was extraordinary in his day. But now none so poor as to do him

reverence. His name is not heard. Streets are not named after him nor

monuments raised to him. His name represents bondage and oppression to

the masses.

The ten years of civil war and revolution which followed the Diaz

régime were no doubt strongly colored by the personal ambitions of

aspirants to the Presidency. But the violence of them came from a

popular upheaval, a rising out of the depths. What has happened in

Mexico is not un-akin to what has happened in Russia.

The Mexican revolution began before the success of the Bolsheviks but

it obtained a powerful inspiration from Russia. Mexican politicians

came to Europe to study Bolshevism and in one or two States, notably

those of Vera Cruz and Yucatan, it can be said that a dictatorship of

the proletariat has been achieved. Bourgeois society and the enormous

capitalistic concerns of Mexico are menaced by proletarianism.

The force of the law has been greatly weakened by this revolutionary

triumph. Every Mexican feels that he is a law to himself and that he

must be ready to protect himself should he be set upon. Hence the

prevalence of firearms in the possession of citizens--and the many

assaults, murders, accidents.

I suppose in no other capital in the world, not even in Russia, could

a funeral cortège of a dead Communist be followed by banners inscribed

"Viva Anarchia--Long live Anarchy!" Nor could a tram-strike such as we

had this January and in an armed battle in the streets and nobody be

punished.

There is much that is remarkable about Mexico City. It is an Indian

capital, a Spanish capital, and an American capital in one. All

three clash, producing a city of strange unrest. The Americans want

only business, the Spanish believe they want culture, the Indians

want only freedom. Spanish and Indians together make up the Mexican

people, which on the whole is mentally deficient. They are loquacious

and lose themselves talking. When they take to arms they do so without

mathematics. Impregnable as Mexico seems, any civilised nation could

defeat her in war--because, to use a colloquialism "she is not all

there." That is why, in my opinion, in the first place Cortes with

his handful of warriors was able to destroy the Aztec Empire. The

Aztecs had a fourth part lacking in their mental equipment. Montezuma,

magnificent as he was, was clearly, from a European point of view,

something of a half-wit. That half-wittedness the Spaniards married

gayly into and have not been able to throw it off. The conqueror has

become the conquered.

Mexico is a city of some enchantment. It is not a place that can be

understood at once--like Kalamazoo or a standard American city. It

holds you, puzzled. The squads of Arum lilies, the joyous fountains

playing under evergreen trees, the prattling children, and the noonday

tropical sun, do not entirely give the mood of the city. It is not one

of innocence.

Or again, the busy American and English business men, the gay modish

shops of the Avenida Madero, the foyer of "the most exclusive" American

hotel, or the buzz of English talk from mining men and drummers in

Sanborn's café--they also do not convey the mood of the old Aztec

capital. Its air of modern business is deceptive.

The daytime activities seem to be a veil of the real city. It is in

many respects very pleasant by day, more pleasant for the business

people than for any one else, I think. At night the city is different.

The sense of security is less, the feeling of the presence of the

unknown is much greater.

The underworld of the city is terrible, and no student of life could

shut his eyes to it--poverty widespread and staring; a morose, drunken

male population, women who suffer more than most poor women--every one

morose, melancholy; fierce threatening faces much commoner than smiling

ones.

There is a thin upper crust of rich people, very thin and very swell,

who own fine villas and have their cars. And their womenfolk _dress_

and parade in the motor-car parade which at a certain hour continually

blocks the way on the Avenida Madero, while their chauffeurs with their

horns shriek importance to the traffic police. These people shop at the

fine shops and pay three prices for American goods, foregoing their own

Mexican foods and manufactured ware for expensive imports. The real

Mexican population is herded into a district called by Americans the

Thieves' Market, a great open place where the Aztecs used to exercise

themselves. And there you may see the women lined up in scores,

holding in their hands chili sandwiches, all they have to sell, and

supplicating you to buy. In their faces you see something of the mood

of the city.

When Cortes came he found a stately city. He found also a place of

gloom and awe, a city of slavery, of human sacrifice, of fanatical

unbending paganism. His brutal adventurous four hundred tasted there

the greatest fear of their lives and met of course in one battle the

greatest disaster that Spanish arms ever met at Indian hands. At that

time the greatest feature of the city was the grand square of the

Pyramid which is now called the Zocalo and has become the terminus of

all the swirling street cars and of hundreds of pirate buses. There

eight great causeways approached a grand open place, the center of

which was the stone-faced pyramid, the altar of Huitzilopochtli, god of

war. The pyramid was cemented, its base was conglomerated with jade,

emerald and gold, and for that reason was picked to bits by Spanish

soldiers. Not one stone remained _in situ_ when the Christian Cathedral

was started to be built. On top of the pyramid stood the gigantic

sacrificial stone, now in a museum hard by, and into the cavity in the

middle of the stone were flung thousands of warm hearts, still beating

in death. Did not the barbarity of the Aztec rituals go far to justify

the brutality of Cortes' followers?

One night, the _Noche Triste_ of July 1, 1520, Cortes saw his own

Spaniards led to ghastly sacrifice, whilst hundreds of sacred fires

lit up the sides and stone stairways and platforms of this pyramid and

shone luridly on the faces of the priests and the Spanish victims and

the ecstatic Indians. That marked the end of Montezuma's reign. That

great square is all encroached on now by shops and wretched arcades,

and instead of the Pyramid a squat cathedral, trying as it were to

cover an original ground plan of paganism without any architectural

plan. Half the open space has gone. Groves of low electric light

standards supplied by an American foundry shed unnecessary glimmer on

petty garden plots--and all the grandeur has gone.

Nevertheless, somehow at night the gloom and ancient horror of the

square creeps out. Aztec beggars, half Aztecs, quarter Aztecs,

shades of Aztecs, make for you threateningly and yet supplicatingly.

Pulque-stricken men stare at you from their doped eyesockets--The

eight streets are there, ill-lit, full of darkness, noise and beggars.

The drivers and the hangers-on of the pirate buses yell their

destinations--Takk-uba, Rom-a, Pi-e-dad, Sa-nangel. In churches in the

gloom you may see converted Indians creep from the door to the altar on

their knees. Outside the churches beggars are seen kneeling in silence,

their lean faces and fevered eyes set as it were upon some star. They

kneel and stare, hour after hour, and it seems nothing to them who

passes by or what they receive in alms. There is something of the

spirit of Quahpopoca and Cauhtemoc whom the Spanish burned over slow

fires, who fixed their eyes upon a point and burned and did not say a

word.

What is truly remarkable is that no ten minutes passes in the night

without the sound somewhere of a gun shot, a revolver shot. To the

violent street crowds shooting in air is an amusement. You walk

carefully and circumspectly in the streets at night. It is true, of

course, that they killed my friend here, and it preys on the mind. But

to me Mexico City refuses to correspond to any type of civilization. It

is still the city of the Pyramid of Huitzilopochtli.

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF CORTES

1. CORTES

Yucatan, the site of the ruins of the Maya civilization, was the first

part of Mexico to be discovered, for it was the point of the mainland

nearest to the Indies. De Cordova visited it in 1516-1517; Juan de

Grijalva called there in 1518 and going further, searched the coast

of the Gulf for islets. He was recalled and dishonored, though it is

recorded that he was a most honorable man. Honor among pirates is no

saving virtue. Cortes followed him, and he had the craft and style to

play hero or villain as occasion offered. The Spanish wanted gold;

they did not want glory, least of all any one else's glory. Cortes,

however, had as great an eye for glory as he had for gold. That he was

a great man few who read his history can doubt. He had to fight not

only the Indians but the headstrong Spaniards of his own following,

the malevolent Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, who had control of his

supplies, and even enemies in far-off Spain who hid his glories from

the Emperor.

How he resigned his office and got himself elected by his own troops,

how he persuaded them to burn their boats so that there could be no

return, how he reinforced his army by capturing an army sent against

him, how he beguiled Montezuma and fooled him--is a great story,

revealing a character which it might have delighted Shakespeare to

describe.

But what Cortes was and what he and his followers achieved are two

different matters. The brilliance of the exploits of Cortes has blinded

many to the sordid material nature of the deeds effected. It is true

he cast down a thousand altars of blood and washed away the hideous

scarlet stain, putting up white crosses with flowers and Madonnas to

whom could be no reproach. But there the ideal side of the adventure

ended. The rest was vulgar spoliation, the furtherance of one quest

only--the making of a fortune to take back to Spain.

Before Cortes' expedition no one had surmised the wealth of Mexico. The

Spanish of the Indies wasted their time, kidnaping natives and selling

them to the slavers, not knowing that El Dorado was just a little

further out of doors. But Cortes readily grasped that there were rich

kingdoms to sack. He founded Vera Cruz with the name "Rich City of the

True Cross." He marched to meet the Totonacs at Cempoalla and found

a people who wore golden necklaces and bracelets and rings of gold,

gems in their noses and ears, headdresses of gold. Spanish eyes stared

sultrily at these ornaments on the persons of a tribe who were friends.

Some must have wished the Totonacs were enemies.

The fame of Mexico City determined Cortes to march toward it. Health

lay in that direction. For a mountain wall had to be scaled, and even

a day's march took the army out of the fever flats of Vera Cruz. He

climbed up to Jalapa, the city of flowers, and thence to the heights

of the plateau where at Xocotlan he found thirteen high temples and

pyramids made of tens of thousands of human skulls. The Totonacs

accompanied him all the way, for they told of another tribe which might

ally itself with Cortes, the Tlascaltecs, who had constantly fought the

Aztecs and never been beaten by them. The Tlascaltecs fought Cortes

first to see what his troops were made of--and nearly worsted him. But

afterwards, having tested him and liked him, they became his best and

most lasting friends. Through them more than through his own Spaniards

or through the help of God, he won. A month after he left the shore

Cortes entered Tlaxcala and was given a marvelous flower festival.

Thence Cortes marched to the pious Cholultecs at the Pyramid of Cholula

and massacred them, and then he built a causeway over the collar which

holds the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, and marched by

Izcalpan and Ayotzinco to the lakes and canals of the Valley of Mexico.

From Iztapalapan, now at the end of a tramway, he marched to the great

meeting of welcome with Montezuma and his nobles.

2. VERA CRUZ

Mexico City had become haunted for us since Wilfrid Ewart's death, and

we were glad when occasion offered to go down to the lower country, to

Vera Cruz and the historical country between that city and the capital.

Up and down these heights soldiers have constantly streamed in battle.

It is Mexico's fighting ground, scene of her victories and of her

defeats.

Of the port of Vera Cruz, the old Villa Rica, I will say little except

that it has become a place of great commercial and military importance.

It is not so great a port as Habana or New Orleans, but it is clearly

capable of development to a point of rivalry with these. With all her

great seaboard Mexico is nevertheless greatly deficient in natural

harbors. The Pacific side is even poorer than the Atlantic side. For

that reason Vera Cruz ought to have an enormous trade.

Strategically also an attacking force is somewhat dependent on Vera

Cruz. It is the obvious base for an invading army. Cortes started

thence in 1520, the Americans in 1846, the French in 1860, and, in the

abortive war of 1913-1914, it was occupied by the American marines who

had outposts even as far inland as Los Cocos. The Great War showed how

easily it could be defended--by mines, but I doubt if the Mexicans have

enough intelligence to apply the lessons of the War to the defense of

their own country. The Turks learned the use of mines in Asia Minor and

cleared Smyrna of foreign ships. But the Mexicans are less intelligent

than the Turks, less capable of defending themselves against foes.

During the American occupation of 1913-1914 a great work of sanitation

and cleansing was carried out, and the city has never been again the

pesthole it was. Some of the scavenging then begun has been carried

on. There is a notable decrease in fevers and plague. Yellow fever,

for which it had a very evil name, has almost disappeared. It is worth

noting that wherever the American army has been sent to keep order or

to take possession the general physical health of the community has

been benefited.

Vera Cruz now, under a revolutionary administration, is not a pleasant

city for visitors. "Make the Foreigner Pay" is applied by all and

sundry, to those who have to pass through the port, for business or

pleasure. Porters, hotels, shops, are all operated on this plan, and it

defeats itself, for no one stays in the city longer than he can help.

The whole State suffers from economic disorganization, personal greed,

sloth, and violence. Against this strive many American and British

and German companies. If there is anything clean or practical or

prepossessing it derives from these countries. It is easy to grasp

that if these companies were forced to retreat the Spanish-speaking

community would revert to the primitive state.

It is a very Indian State, though Negro blood is mixed in on the

coast as it is not in the interior. Negroes in company with Jews and

Moors have generally been excluded from Mexico. But at Vera Cruz and

Tampico and Puerto Mexico there has naturally been some admixture.

The Indian mentality has triumphed but it is a weak one. The favorite

buffoonery of the natives when Cortes called on them to surrender and

they refused, was to cry out--"We shall eat you with chili to-morrow.

We believe you will taste well." To-day modern civilization is in the

place of Cortes and still it challenges the Mexicans and they cry out,

"We'll have you with chili."

3. THE CITY OF JALAP

Cortes marched up to it from the sea. Montezuma's messengers met him

with golden ducks, discs of the sun in gold, large stones of jade,

gifts of plumed armor and golden arrows, and they prayed him to go

away. Jalapa was the chief city of the Totonac Indians--it was a city

of flowers; there were silver houses there. There were blood altars.

Cortes said "No," he would not go away till he had delivered in

person a message which he bore from the King of Spain. That message

he invented--but he had a message nevertheless, obtained out of the

book of Fate, and in due time he delivered it. His message dissolved

the Aztec Empire and laid low the greatest cultural achievement of the

Indians. Anahuac became New Spain.

Four hundred years have just passed since that conquest was achieved,

but the Mexicans have not marked it with festivity. Cortes' bones have

been driven from cathedral to cathedral and his memory has become

unhallowed.

Jalapa, famous for centuries for the export of jalap, is to-day very

different from anything it ever was in the past. It is the capital of

a Bolshevik State. Nowhere during the ten years revolutionary struggle

which followed the fall of Diaz did the proletariat gain more control

than in the State of Vera Cruz, and Jalapa is its capital. It should

be understood that the United States of Mexico are very much disunited

in politics. In five or six of them, such as Tlaxcala, there are

actually two legislatures, old and new régime, trying to sit at the

same time. But it is safe to say that the majority in all Mexico is

Radical and very decidedly anticapitalistic. Where the distribution

of the land among the peasants has not been carried out there are

continual armed raids. The Mexican landowners and bourgeois are busy

organizing a "Fascisti" movement, but that has little chance of success

unless the President of the Republic favored them. Obregon, however,

is an enigmatical personage. He is anticapitalistic but he is ready

with Federal troops to quell riots of the proletariat. His popularity

with the masses is waning, but his ability to govern the country shows

itself more and more powerfully. The trial of his strength comes

between now and the 1924 elections. Mexico depends on him almost as it

depended on Diaz. When he goes from power the revolution in its fury

may easily break out again.

Jalapa, in which we spent some ten days, is a city of "Red"

demonstrations. The "Agrarians" and the Coöperatists parade with their

blood-red banners and violent inscriptions. They occupy the Town

Hall or the Governor's Palace, and their leaders harangue the crowds

from the balconies; the Governor himself lends a hand. Men with red

flags climb the steeple of the cathedral and whenever a strong break

of oratory is made from the Town Hall balcony below, they ring the

cathedral bells with a grand clash.

What is the matter? The workmen of the Maritime Zone have boycotted an

Oil Company on which depend for fuel all the railways of the South and

most of the factories. Half Mexico is in danger of economic paralysis.

It was so all the winter of 1922-23. The company, an English one, was

holding out against a proposed seventy-five per cent increase in wages,

wages to be paid daily, premiums on dismissal, etc. Wages paid daily

is a great feature of the Labor demand, the idea being to make it more

easy to go on strike.

There has also been a no-rent campaign, whole populations refusing to

pay rent. When in Vera Cruz you decide no longer to pay rent you hang

out a red flag from your window. There is also here, as in most of the

States, a strained relationship between the Indian peasants and their

former masters the landowners.

Against Red rule, the newspapers of Mexico have arrayed themselves,

especially _Excelsior_, Mr. Lloyd George's Mexican platform, and _El

Dictamen_, both run in favor of capitalism and "common sense." But

one of the latest phenomena has been a boycott of these papers in the

Maritime Zone largely organized by the Governor of Vera Cruz himself.

It is lucky for the people of Jalapa that the currency of Mexico is

federally controlled and is of gold and silver. Otherwise one can

imagine the inflation of paper money that would take place in a State

run on the lines of that of Vera Cruz. As it is, the disorganization

caused by strikes has raised the cost of living to almost double that

of the quieter States of Oaxaca and Puebla.

How important this condition of affairs is may be judged from the fact

that Vera Cruz is the key of the Republic. Mexico has been three times

conquered and its capital taken, by Spain, by the United States, and

by France; and all three campaigns started from Vera Cruz. Did not the

American soldiers in 1848 play baseball in Jalapa with the President

of Mexico's wooden leg? That was the time of one-legged Santa Ana. Now

is the time of one-armed Obregon. Despite the great army of Mexico

to-day one cannot help feeling that in case of foreign intervention via

Vera Cruz and Jalapa there would not be enough moral power to resist

invasion.

Still, whatever happens, there is one thing in which Jalapa will not

change, never has changed; that is, in the grandeur of her scenery.

The city is unfortunately often in the clouds, and warm rolling mists

enwrap its stone ways and houses whilst jackdaws innumerable create

an unearthly hubbub in the twilight. But when the clouds vanish the

landscape appears. The mountains lift themselves in great steps to

Himalayan heights. Jalapa is on a ledge five thousand feet above the

sea--she is halfway up the Sierra Madre. And above her, above all

her clouds, stands Orizaba, twenty thousand feet high, which great

snow-crowned mountain has often been called the guardian spirit of

Mexico. Orizaba watches the sea, and should she see approaching gods

or men she passes word to Popocatepetl, the guardian of the capital.

Orizaba must have passed on many messages in her time, though not with

much avail.

4. AT TLAXCALA

Tlaxcala surely is the most romantic place in Mexico, the little

mountain city whence Cortes gleaned his greatest allies, an Indian

Sparta. The Tlascaltecs displayed a devotion to the Spaniards which

in its unthinking generosity was very characteristic of the Indians.

At a word from Malinche, as they affectionately called him, they even

changed their religion and consented to be baptized. They never foresaw

how the Spaniards in victory would prove ungrateful. They reinforced

Cortes in thousands and went with him to Cholula. The Cholultecs hated

them, and, while pretending to receive Cortes amiably, demanded that

the Tlascaltecs camp outside and not inside their city bounds. When

with his allies Cortes fell upon the Cholultecs it was natural that

the insulted Tlascaltecs did great execution, had in fact eventually

to be restrained. The Highlanders of Tlaxcala spared neither breath

nor spoil. They were almost as avid in victory as the Spaniards

themselves. But a nod from Cortes was enough to hold them in check.

They gladly followed his horses and men to Montezuma and made no small

show of danger to the hated Aztecs. The Aztecs were the imperialists

of their days, oppressing all the lower races, but unable to quell the

Tlascaltecs. Tlaxcala, therefore, marched against Montezuma. And when

Cortes on the "Dreadful Night" was beaten, Tlaxcala still stood by him

enabling him to return to the field and win.

You approach Tlaxcala by narrow lanes all fenced with candelabra

cactus. This cactus, branching near its root, grows in green pillars

as regularly as the stems of a branched candlestick. Sometimes it is

called the "organ" cactus from its likeness in shape to organ pipes.

These pipes or pillars grow close to one another to a height of six or

seven feet when young, often to twenty feet when matured. They make the

simplest and most effective of palings, for their barbs forbid any one

struggling to get through them. The old stone ways of Tlaxcala, worn by

myriads of bare feet of Indians, are now hedged with this cactus and

you walk from the old fields up to what were once citadels, temples,

palaces, now in shapeless ruin and overheaped with mold and overgrown

with flowers. You may sit up there among the mountains and muse on what

was Tlaxcala.

Eight thousand feet up, the ancient city was higher than the new one.

And it was much larger. Tlaxcala has decayed. It supported the sturdy

warriors and their families of pure Tlascaltic origin. Seemingly the

half-Spanish breed is idler, lazier, and has not taken kindly to a

bleak site of civilization and life. The windy city is cold and poor.

Its chief life is in its soldiery who make of it a stamping ground.

The drums and fifes make a great clangor in the stone-walled, echoing

city, a hubbub which does not cease all day. The soldiers march well

on the cobbles and certainly make a smart turn-out. One's sympathies

are with them and with Mexico until a plain-clothes colonel with riding

whip comes on the scene and flogs the soldiers as they march. That

brutality immediately alienates one's affections. Surprising that the

soldiers stand it--after the revolution! But they are bound in the

traditions of peonage. Disaffection takes longer to breed in them than

it has done in the ex-serfs of Russia.

The most remarkable objects in Tlaxcala are, however, in the churches.

There you may see the large stone font in which Xicotencatl, the old

general, and all the leading Indians consented to be baptized in 1520,

in their nakedness and with the rites of the Catholic Church. The mind

can visualize a remarkable scene. The old pulpit whence after they were

baptized they were sermonized in Spanish is also there and _in situ_.

And you may see the first pictures of the new gods, the first pictures

of Christ and the Madonna specially painted by Cortes' men and sent as

gifts to the first Christian chapel of the Indians. These are appalling

in their ugliness. The ugliness of Death has been added to the ugliness

of madness, and together in one face something has been obtained worthy

of fear. No loving Savior was presented to the Tlascaltecs, but a worse

bogy than their own. Their god of war was ugly, and authorized terrible

deeds in his name. But the God of the Christians was more terrible

and, as would be proved, would apparently preside over worse human

acts--over slaughters, tortures, and human fires innumerable.

It is curiously naïve that the Spanish missionaries to Mexico

constantly averred--"Your religion is not unlike ours; only the names

of the gods are different."

5. THE PYRAMID OF CHOLULA

Since the discovery of the tomb of King Tut-ankh-a-men there has been

in Mexico an amusing feeling of jealousy of Egypt. The era of the

mythical Atlantis has been pitted against the era of the biblical

Pharaohs. Archeologists in Yucatan are reputed to be digging feverishly

for some remains of the Maya civilization which will divert the

interest of the world from Luxor.

I have, however, stood in the Kings Chamber in the center of Cheops

Pyramid and now I have stood on the apex of the great pyramid of

Cholula, and though the remains of Mexico's great past are impressive

Egypt is by far the more haunting to a European mind. The thought,

however, strikes one--what if in that era of the past when these

pyramids were built, the people of these lands so far apart knew one

another? Is it possible that the repute of the pyramids of Egypt raised

the pyramids of Mexico?

At the time when Cortes came the Aztecs were building pyramids as fast

as we build churches; but there were several pyramids in the land

which had been there before the Aztecs came to the country ascribed to

Toltecs and Chichimecs and other imperial races which had had their

day. The Aztecs hewed massive altars of stone and raised them to the

heights of the old pyramids, and they made human sacrifice on them and

lit votive flames, which glared red in the night as the army of Cortes

marched inland from the sea.

Cholula was the holy city of Anahuac, possessing many temples. It was

a center of pagan piety, conservative, uncompromising. Cortes did not

believe its people could possibly be his friends, and so, with the

psychology of a tragedy villain, he suddenly in the midst of friendly

seeming accused them of treachery and put them to the sword. The

populace took refuge on the hundred and twenty steps of the great

pyramid, which had then superstructures of wood, but the Spaniards

fired it and all who stood on the pyramid perished, even the priest who

came out on the apex invoking Quetzalcoatl, the God of the Air. The

priest in a shroud of flame burned to death in the sight of all who

were below. The remaining Cholultecs fled to the hills. Cortes put up a

cross on the apex of the pyramid and then rode away.

The massacre of Cholula was one of the chief crimes charged against

Cortes by his enemies in Spain. That it was a dark and impolitic act

was not denied, and had the Emperor Montezuma been a warlike monarch

he would have met the Spaniards straightway in arms and have certainly

destroyed them. He had hundreds of thousands at his command, but the

army of Cortes was only a little over four hundred men. But Montezuma,

abounding in manners and piety, was notably deficient in brains and

pluck. Cortes built a causeway from Cholula to the saddle of the ridge

which separates Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, the great volcanoes, and

from the height he and his followers looked down on the rich valley of

the capital and upon the scene of a decade of loot and centuries of

struggle. When they reached the city the Emperor came out in friendly

guise to meet them and Montezuma bade Cortes sit upon his right hand as

an equal.

So the destruction of Cholula was proved no error The Spaniards won

their way. They obtained vast quantities of gold, later to be lost;

they sacked the pagan temples and destroyed not only the false gods

but all the records of the people. They put up Christian churches. They

carved out the vice-royalty of New Spain. As they had no women of their

own they took Indian wives. Every Spaniard in those days was a Solomon.

And they bred the Mexican who now appears.

I stood on the top of that old pyramid of Cholula. I climbed by an old

stone way, not seldom stepping over stones graven with hieroglyphics of

a lost religion. Beside an old cross and in the shadow of a Catholic

church I looked on what was Cholula; a squat city with a petrol street

car running through it, a dozen old rusty-colored churches built of the

stones of shattered Aztec temples, a vast ill kept city square where a

large army could be assembled but now tenanted by fifty Indian women

selling wares which were spread on the dirt--herbs, fruits, cottons,

imitation jewelry--a fountain with stone angels but no water inscribed

to Philip III, King of Spain and the Indies; poor people, beshawled

women, bare-footed men with ancient, grimy, high-crowned hats of straw.

Change has followed change. By the last revolution in Mexico the

Indian has attained equality with the Spaniard; he has in many parts

seized the lands of the Spanish; the great _haciendas_ are no more.

As workingman the Indian terrorizes capital. And as for the Catholic

Church into which his forefathers were forcibly baptized, he comes

daily to spurn it more. In no other Catholic country in the world is

Catholicism more openly humiliated than in Mexico. Is not the popular

craze of the time a climbing of the façades of the cathedrals by

acrobats and small boys, a kicking off of the noses of the saints in

order to advertise beer! Whilst the Papal Nuncio is told sharply to

pack up and quit the country with less notice than would be given a

general servant, the petty indignities are manifold and great.

As I go from Cholula in the night and look behind me I see a

light burning above the apex of the pyramid--no, not the fires of

Quetzalcoatl broken out again, only an electric lamp hung above the

cross of the church that you may know that it is there.

6. TENOCHTITLAN

Puebla, the third largest city in modern Mexico, has grown up near

Cholula--one of the few cities that has no Indian history behind

it. Puebla was built by the Spaniards and exclusively populated by

Spaniards. There at least the Indian woman was not a bride. Something

purely Spanish was bred there--as a racial bulwark against possible

foes. It remains to-day the most Spanish of all the cities of Mexico

and therefore the most conservative and the most unalterably Catholic.

Puebla is a beautiful and quiet city, largely adorned by the brightly

colored tiles which are a feature of its architecture. Façades of terra

cotta and gold, purple and yellow tiled domes, are common features

of the churches. Around the great Cathedral are pillars supporting

a hundred angels and each angel holds an electric light which is

generally burning all day as well as all night. Mimosa and palm trees

grow over the cool green lawns of the Plaza and lilies bloom beside

many fountains. There is some military parade, as at Tlaxcala, and

upon occasion "reactionary" demonstrations. The industrial life is

greatly hit by revolutionary economics, and it seems impossible for the

city to get back to the prosperity which it used to enjoy.

Like Jalapa, Puebla is an important strategic point. It has been the

scene of many battles, and a short walk outside the gates of the

city brings you to the old trenches of Frenchmen and Spaniards. In

the American War of 1846-1848 the plaza of the town was occupied by

a little army and many wounded and sick, and the Americans defended

it against all comers, talking and bluffing as well as firing and

barricading, for a whole month, when they received reinforcements and

were able to withdraw.

This can be said for Puebla and its more purely Spanish population--it

is more honest, more dignified, less drunken than Mexico City or Vera

Cruz or any of the cities where the Indians are in strength.

The way to Mexico City from Puebla tells something of the debauch of

the people. It is over a hundred miles and the country is rich either

for pasture or for the cultivation of grain. Rainfall is abundant. Heat

and cold are seldom in extremes. But you see no herds grazing there,

and few, very few, cornfields. Instead, there are interminable vistas

of cultivated cactus, the maguey, raised merely for _pulque_, for the

drink that stupefies the nation that takes to it. The freight cars

marked "pulque only" block the lines. At the railway stations women

in scores come to the trains with pulque bottles. The only rich are

the owners of the pulque farms, and you see them on silver-mounted

saddles, pricking their fine horses with silver spurs. They are on the

one hand and a vast ragged sodden population on the other.

Thus to San Juan and the Pyramids of the Sun and the salt lakes and the

canals and the floating gardens, to Texcoco and Chalco and Xochimilco,

to Iztapalapa and the metal-shod causeway by which Cortes marched to

the city. Iztapalapa is a sad place now, like a sort of Arab village

except for the visiting tram car which comes out from the great

metropolis, loops a loop at the Plaza, and returns through the dust and

dirt to the _Zocalo_, the square of the great pyramid in Mexico City.

Near where Montezuma and Cortes met now stand ugly but powerful

and suggestive national monuments--of Indian warrior and squaw,

designed for the Zocalo but felt by the Mexicans to be too indelicate

for a prominent public place. The Mexicans of to-day are proud of

their Indian blood but do not care to be reminded too realistically

of what the Indians were. The squat, broad-nosed, large-mouthed,

pendulous-cheeked faces, the short legs, the barrel-shaped bodies,

the feather ornaments, the war clubs and darts, do not appeal to the

mind of the modern Mexican who would rather think of his ancestors as

debonnair, Frenchified, with faces and bodies like those of Greek or

Roman heroes.

Montezuma regaled the Spaniards very well, not only feeding them and

gilding them with presents, but bestowing upon each soldier a bevy of

wives. There was not one who had less than ten wives. Cortes could not

find his men, they were lost among the young squaws. He was obliged

to limit the numbers of female servants--but Montezuma hearing of the

trouble arranged special quarters for the harems of the soldiers.

Cortes himself was much embarrassed by the number of princesses he was

called upon to marry. He had his troubles with the women--did he not

push his first wife down a well--and according to the historians made

great scruple against taking new ties. However, he took to himself the

peerless Marina, who helped him greatly in his conquest of her brother

Indians.

The Aztecs, it appears, had no code of morals kin to those current in

the Old World. Sensual lust was not a violent passion amongst them.

They bought and sold their women, lived polygamously, but women were

not centers of voluptuousness. This, it seems, has remained. The

Mexican is not hot-blooded over women. He is comparatively cold, and

the women are demure and chaste. The contrast, for instance, between

Cuban and Mexican is considerable; the mixed blood of Spaniard and

Negro is very lustful, the mixed blood of Spaniard and Indian is cold

and self-sufficient in the matter of sex.

One reads of the bestowal of beautiful girls upon the Spaniards, but

the beauty was doubtless exaggerated. It is difficult to find much

feminine beauty among the Aztecs now. There is a moment of unearthly

beauty, just a moment, early in the teens, and then the Aztec girl goes

heavy and repulsive-looking; her coal-black hair becomes coarse as a

horse's mane, her bosom spreads, dirt gets the better of her body. The

Mexicans of all classes are remarkably indelicate and dirty. As for

their children, a foreigner might be tempted to caress them or play

with them, but a glance at the faces causes him to draw away his hands

from unwashed skins and sores.

There is no doubt that the Spaniards in allying themselves to the

Aztecs joined themselves to a race which was lower than themselves. In

the romantic attitude to the Aztecs it is often forgotten that they

were cannibals and ate their prisoners of war. A race whose instincts

permitted them to do that was obviously in a degraded state. It may

safely be said that the Aztecs had no great future, even if Cortes had

not come; they were brutal, mentally deficient and depraved, possessed

of rites and customs repellent to all who possess a living God.

7. IN THE MARQUISATE OF OAXACA

Cortes was recognized and rewarded and he made a happy end of life. He

overcame all the intrigues. His success, like a rising sun, triumphed

over all mists and clouds and at its zenith shone over half the world.

His Emperor honored him and granted to him and his heirs in perpetuity

the lands of the Valley of Oaxaca with all the wealth therein

contained, both potential and actual. On the strength of it the Cortes

of to-day ought to be Morgans or Rothschilds. Oaxaca is one of the most

golden valleys of Mexico, a marvelous place, _El Dorado_ itself in the

eyes of the first pioneers who grabbed what they could carry and lost

what they could not defend.

Hernando Cortes became the "Marquis of the Valley," known commonly in

Spanish annals as "the great Marquis," a title which in British history

is, however, associated with a nobler man, the Marquis of Montrose.

Oaxaca, pronounced Wahahca, is some three hundred miles southwest of

the capital, reached by rocky, narrow, and often precipitous trails

once the secret knowledge of Indians but now followed by a railroad

considered a marvel of scientific engineering. No motor road goes

through--and it is adventurous going for either horseman or pedestrian.

It is one of the ways to the Pacific shore, and once the capital of the

marquisate is reached it is not a difficult journey on horseback to

Tehuantepec or Salina Cruz, down on the quiet beaches of the Southern

Sea.

It should be said that Oaxaca is now a State and that the heirs

of Cortes have long since dissipated their fortunes. English and

Americans now own the most valuable properties of the Valley which is

recognized still as one of the richest mining districts of Mexico.

Oaxaca has enriched thousands of individuals. Mexicans without doing

work pathetically hope to stumble suddenly on large fortunes. The

legends they preserve of hidden gold are many. The Indians especially

are supposed to hold secrets which they hand down from generation

to generation, of the shrines and treasures of their lost gods. As

cupidity is not a vice of the pure-blood Indian this seems always

conceivable. You can find out nothing by asking Indians questions.

Their innocent mirthfulness under cross-examination has always been one

of the most baffling matters to the Spaniard. The days of burning them

alive to find their secrets has of course long passed, but the Indians

told little under stress of pain. Over the slow fire their innocent

mirth changed to a suffering taciturnity and that unearthly fixed gaze

which showed a race that had conquered pain.

Out in this valley most of the people now are pure-blood Indians,

either Zapotecs or Mixtecs, unambitious, easy-going, fruitful, and

true to the soil on which they have always lived. They were never an

imperial race like the Aztecs, nor revengeful like the Totonacs. They

have no inheritance of ill-will, and all seem as happy as kings. Oaxaca

to-day, despite the turmoil of the revolution, presents a picture of

what Mexico as a whole might be if her peoples possessed the right

temperament. For my part, I count the three weeks I spent in the

Marquisate as the happiest in Mexico. One could easily become content

to live a long while there. The people retain their national customs

and are marvelously good-humored; crime is rare, pistols infrequent,

and the cost of living is less than half that of the capital--you can

live very well on two dollars a day--and the winter climate is perfect.

The happiness of the little city is greatly enhanced by a large city

square where a fine brass band plays every evening amid palms and

electric lights and lilies and hanging rosy pomegranates.

The cathedral faces the Palacio, and colored stone porticos of shops

face porticos of other shops. The broad efflorescent square or _plaza_

is between. The cathedral, alas, looks like a ruin and has been taken

and retaken by soldiers in many fights! The Church is too poor to

repair it. I saw the "Hombre Mosca," the "Human Fly" climb its pretty

façade one morning, stepping on the carved saints and patting the

Infant Christ in St. Christopher's arms on his way up, and the Church

was quite impotent to stop the insult, even on a Sunday when Mass was

observed within. A curious contrast surely, a whole congregation on

its knees listening to the sermon of an archbishop within, a hilarious

crowd outside cheering the Human Fly and the brass band playing

lustily. Something of the destiny of Mexico in that! But in my opinion

the human flies hold the future. Sitting on the top of the Cross on the

turret of the Cathedral an American acrobat called "Babe White" unfurls

a flag on which is printed "Drink Montezuma Beer." Poor old Pope, dead

and gone Holy Inquisition, what think you of that?

The Palacio, where I saw the Governor, Garcia Vigil, just before he

left for Mexico City where he was badly shot by a hired assassin, is a

fine building rendered more impressive by its Indian sentries, some of

whom are extremely handsome and fine-looking soldiers. The legislative

business of the State is transacted in this palacio and it occupies

the whole of one side of the square. Here one may commonly see in the

evenings and on Saturday morning long lines of Indians waiting for

wages. On Saturday mornings the band enters the interior square of the

palacio and plays while waiting for its pay.

The shops which flank the other two sides exhibit various _novedades_

in dress and many marvelous hats ranging in price from ten to a

hundred dollars. As Mexicans are more proud of their head wear than of

any other part of their attire they are ready to pay fantastic prices

for hats. These sombreros which are usually of felt or velour are

sometimes two feet high and three feet across from rim to rim. When a

little dark man puts on one of these he changes in aspect and looks

like some sort of fantastic magician.

In front of the shops and yet under the covered way of the porticos are

many tables and booths, and at the tables men wearing these sombreros

and long black moustachios play dominoes and drink beer. At the booths

quiet-eyed women sell cigarettes and sweets, and all along the curb

outside the colored arches of the porticos sit Indian women with their

hair hanging to the pavement, breasts exposed and papooses sucking

there.

The scene in the plaza at nightfall, when the whole population comes

out in parade, is in its way a ballet, unrehearsed and yet faultless.

The life of the whole seems to be the band up in the fine stand in the

central circle of the square. There stands the perfect little Zapotec

conductor facing another Indian who with gourds in his hands waves his

rattle with long arms, and on each side of them and around them is

resounding brass. A fine discipline has been achieved and a military

precision in play. German and Spanish compositions alternate. Marches

and Spanish dances seem to have a preference and with joyous clamor and

seductive melodies take possession of every man, woman and child in the

plaza. Most remarkable are the tatterdemalion crowds of Indians who in

cotton slops and bits of old blankets tied together tramp into town and

creep out of the dirt and the dust to the inner court of the bandstand.

There they crouch and stare, though they get the music in ear-breaking

blasts, being far too close. But they love to hear in the midst of it

the rattle of the gourd players, the rattle of the rain drops as in

their own half-forgotten rituals. Huddled together they stare at the

brass, at the gourds, at the Zapotec bandmaster in his perfectly ironed

regimentals.

From the inner court of the bandstand go six shady tracks under palms,

and scarlet-flowering trees, and orange fruits dripping from boughs,

and pomegranate trees; and these tracks reach the broad outer court,

round which like mystic shapes the great crowd comes and goes.

Here run the newsboys crying, "Patria, Patria," and the boys with

dozens of bottles on their little heads shouting, "Frescos, frescos,"

and scores of bootblacks with little wooden stools calling to all and

sundry "Grasar, grasar." Here walk stately icecream merchants with

colored barrels balanced on their heads, and swarthy, sunburned men

with sheaves of blankets for sale. Every Indian wears a blanket either

slit at the middle for his head to go through or swathed about his body

from head to foot as the Arab wears his burnous. Scarlet and orange

are the commonest colors of these blankets. They wear their sombreros,

the poor ones of straw, the rich ones of felt, Popocatepetls of felt,

high-domed, vastly brimmed, embroidered. Here are gray hats all

decorated with sailing ships and anchors worked in brown silk. Here

are white hats bedizened with silver tinsel sewn on as the Indian women

sew beetle-backs and butterfly wings into their embroideries in India.

The great hats flock, they shadow the pavement. And all the while

_tran-tan-tan_ above it dominates the band.

Little boys carrying sugar canes eight feet long all hung with tiny

flags add great color to the scene. The canes are perforated with tiny

holes and in each hole is a sugar plum mounted on a long match or wire

and each sugar plum has a tiny flag hanging from it. A dozen boys are

carrying these resplendent poles; several others are carrying gourds

perforated and adorned in the same way.

There are park seats all the way round and there sit the more leisurely

of the listeners, and the tired, and watch the world go by. Old dames

with trays of pineapple and girls with baskets of pine kernels go from

seat to seat selling their wares.

The Zapotec women are straight as pine trees. They wear voluminous

cotton skirts but their feet are bare. Above the waist they do not mind

how much of their bodies they expose; they wear commonly a slightly

embroidered cotton vest cut as low as the rise of their bosoms and

leaving their arms bare from just below the shoulders. They have broad,

open faces, carved mouths, lined brows, and an enormous flow of raven

hair almost to their knees which they allow to hang. They wear earrings

of filigree gold and beautiful gold chains round their bare necks. They

may be on the point of beggary and yet wear these. The young ones are

very beautiful, but quiet-eyed and never lascivious. They hold their

heads so far back that if they wore hairpins and dropped one it would

always fall clear of their bodies.

Outside the Palacio the sentries march to and fro with bayonets fixed

and loaded rifles. The sergeant of the guard has golden bobinets

hanging from six golden chevrons. At the changing of the guard

bugles sound within the Palace yard in a sort of counterblast to the

triumphant choruses of brass coming from the branches of the palm trees

and the electric lights of the bandstand. Oaxaca, birthplace of Diaz,

birthplace of Juarez, is proud of itself and makes some show under the

Mexican sky.

Round and round walks the crowd and there mingle with the Indians

American men and women, jaunty men dressed anyhow and women in low-cut

evening gowns, simpering to one another and to their male companions.

Mexican belles also come out, with highly painted faces and dainty,

manicured hands. Girls in their teens join one another and all holding

arms walk in strings of sevens and eights. Youths of similar age walk

in similar strings. Horsemen with tight trousers and silver spurs

dismount and tie up their steeds and join the throng. The Governor

himself, the legislature of the State, joins the parade. There is the

highest and also the lowest. Bow, bow, bow, come the beggars. You give

them centavos or you give them cakes. They wear old dusty sombreros of

straw and you put the cakes in the brim. You see beggars with dozens of

cakes and _tortillas_ and rolls in the brims of their straw sombreros.

The blind beggars walk in tandems; blind mother led by seeing child,

sister by sister, grandfather by grandson. There are two pseudo

beggars, too proud actually to beg, and they get more alms than all the

rest. One is a magnificent fellow with a gigantic straw sombrero. He

has lost both legs at the knee, but he must have been very handsome.

He has large pads now like the wooden boots put on horses drawing the

heavy roller over a lawn, and on these pads he walks like any other

man using hip muscles where we use the muscles of the knee. His yellow

hat points backward from his head--he carries a bootblack's stool and

wherever he goes the crowd makes way for him--a king of the pavement

and of all beggars and bootblacks. The other pseudo beggar is a boy

with curved spine and twisted body. He walks on all fours and has a

basket of matches or sweets hung from his neck. All among the people he

jumps like a frog--and whose heart can be so hard as to refuse him when

he looks up with angel smile, so sweetly, so appealingly? You pretend

to buy, he looks at what you give him, meditatively. He looks up at you

smiling, but perhaps a little troubled in expression.

"_Adios?_" he asks as if it were a question.

"_Adios_," you reply.

The trouble clears from his face; he is perfectly happy.

"_Adios, adios_," he exclaims and hops on like a frog amid the bare

brown feet of the Indians and the polished boots of Mexicans and

Americans.

_Tran-tan-tan_ goes the band all the while, and the Zapotec bandmaster

with narrowed waist and rigid little head and shoulders looks like

Juarez himself. And the rattle of the gourds is like tambourines

struck on the knees of dancing girls.

8. UNDER THE GREAT TREE OF TULE

The greatest tree in the Americas, though not the highest, is in the

far south of Mexico at Tule, some ten miles from Oaxaca; the highest

and perhaps the oldest is to be found among the Californian sequoias.

But in girth and grandeur the cypress of our Lady of Tule has no rival.

The Aztecs called it the Ahuehuetl, but it was a fine old tree at the

dawn of their history. It must have been a great tree in the time of

the Toltecs and was before them too. Perhaps some Emperor planted it

two thousand years ago. Who can say?

Cortes and his horsemen, on their way to Honduras, stood under it four

centuries ago, and their followers built a chapel there beside it, that

men might fitly turn from a marvelous creation to a marvelous Creator.

It is a pleasant ride from the city in the early hours of the morning.

The Zapotecs found us horses (with hooded stirrups and corded bridles)

and my wife and I rode out to Tule. It was market-day in the city and

we threaded our way through innumerable Indians and droves of asses

laden with panniers.

The astonishment of the Indian women at seeing a lady in riding attire

was very amusing. They for their part pick up their long flounced

cotton skirts and sit with their bare feet balanced on the asses'

shoulders. Flanked by baskets and sitting on heaps of merchandise

on the ass's back, so they ride to market, often suckling a baby

the while. But one of their sex astride! "Good Saint Anne!"--"Jesus

Maria!"--"Look sister!"--"Adios!" Their conventions were not our

conventions. They carried pigs strung by the legs to the asses' sides

and dangling turkeys and fowls. They brought pots innumerable and

baskets of eggs and tomatoes and alligator pears. Some Indians on foot

plunged through the dust, and waddling all across the broad highway the

asses came on in droves.

When we had ridden out of this turmoil into the fresher air we were in

a land of wild mimosa and that "smell of wattle" of which Kipling has

written memorable words--

The smell of the wattle at Lichtenberg

Riding in in the rain.

But there is no rain in Mexico all the winter long and all odors that

come on the air are warm. Trees with scarlet flowers bend over us.

The pomegranate hangs its rosy fruit, the coffee berries ripen on

the shrubs, and trees that know no fall, no nakedness of limb, hang

everlasting canopies of green. We ride gayly over plowed cornfields and

along the borders of plantations where sugar canes chatter with the

wind.

Then anon towards noon we descry a settlement veiled in verdure, and

like a green knoll rising above it the vast upper story of a mighty

tree. There is no need to ask. It must be Tule and its tree. And we

ride by narrow shady lanes between banana palms, date palms, and

flowering shrubs, crisscross from the highway to the tree.

Behold a great cliff of wood, gray like a willow or an ash, with an

underbark of nut-fiber color, going upward in a grand sweep to the

branches. At the five bays of the tree one might build five fair-sized

houses.

All is silent, all is beautiful round about it. A beggar only is

sitting under the tree. The large white church behind it reflects a

blaze of sunshine. A bougainvillæa, twenty feet high, is one mass of

crimson bloom all attended by bees and wasps. The solid white wall

which runs round with blockhouse at one corner is unimpaired. On

the white façade of the high broad church are painted tall Moorish

decorations in an intense royal blue, tall slender mosques of gleaming

blue, and big, red, empty niches for saints beside them.

The tree lifts its voluminous green bulk higher than the church,

but all its branches, all its stems and leaves, hang as it were in

reverence to the high-placed figure of the Virgin. It is plume-leaved,

and the tree is held sacred by many tribes as the tree of mourning. It

has the grand dignity of sorrow for the dead.

What a tree! A hundred horses could stand under it. Halfway up, in

the midst of the giant growth, starts straight and bolt upright, a

new tree, larger itself than any King Charles' Oak, larger even than

that tree in Palestine under which the Greek monks tell you Abraham

and Sarah entertained their Lord. The German Baron Humboldt, famous

traveler in his day, scratched his name on it in the year 1802, the

only name, the only vandalism which has been permitted. It is a

perfect tree in full maturity, the same species of cypress as the

Tree of the Dreadful Night at Mexico City, but in incomparably better

condition and much larger and older. If it could tell its story, the

lingering of Cortes and his men in its shade would be but a page. For

it must ever have attracted the attention of whoever passed that way.

The old cities like Mitla, twenty miles away, are choked in dust. But

with the freshness of spring the tree lives on.

Outside the walled churchyard which holds the tree is the town plaza

swarming with wasps but without gardens or bandstand or any of the

common adornments of such places, not even a statue of Juarez. But

there is an old _portal_ and one shut shop bearing the curious name of

_La Vuelta al Mundo_, the Return to the World. But they have all gone

their way, those who sat under the tree in ages past, and none return

to tell us how it was in their day.

So--we to our horses once more, leaving, like the others, the Tree

behind like old Time itself.

9. FROM THE RUINS OF MITLA

Mitla is the American Luxor, and in the quieter days of Diaz' rule in

Mexico many were the travelers who went there, to gaze and wonder.

The ruins are those of some great city of a bygone civilization but

what civilization, whose civilization, none can tell. History does

not work for them as for the ruins of ancient Athens or Thebes--for

they are entirely without record and their story, whatever it may be,

interweaves in no way with the story of mankind as we know it. How rash

the _Outline of History_ seems when we look at the broken outlines of

what is called Mitla! And the biblical traditions can hardly be felt to

have any reference to Mitla either, unless, as some archeologists have

believed, the country was originally settled by one of the lost tribes

of Israel.

The greater part of the North American continent is without ruins,

unless one thinks of the evidences of primitive man living there for

ages. The mounds on the high banks of the Mississippi and the cliff

dwellings of New Mexico tell not of a romantic past but of the uncouth

savagery of the Stone Age. But away south, in the latitude of what is

now British Honduras, are evidences of a way of living not unlike that

of Greeks and Romans, or of Egyptians. In fact the dumbfounding truth

is that the ruins are of a convincing resemblance to the ruins of the

East. Whoever lived there prized gold and gems as did humanity in the

Old World, and there is evidence enough that they lived for Empire as

did Persians and Babylonians. But they also built as humanity built

in ages past, in Egypt, in the East. The ruins of Mitla would not

be supremely remarkable in the vicinity of Athens or Tyre or on the

Nile. They would be almost in place. It is not merely because of the

pyramids. The principal site of pyramids in Mexico is two hundred and

more miles to the north, and though of course one is tempted to link

the Mexican pyramids with those of Egypt the likeness is less startling

than at first appears.

It is common in peoples to imitate in their architecture the natural

contours of their surroundings, and I think the Mexican pyramids with

their truncated tops are imitations in stone of the altarlike pyramidal

mountains, the little _mesas_ so characteristic of the Anahuac plateau.

First, victims were offered for sacrifice on sacred mountains, and then

as a stage of progress on stone piles shaped like mountains.

But Mitla, and again Palenque in a similar latitude two hundred and

fifty miles east, are not imitations of anything in Nature, but rather

triumphs over ordinary life in vast untamed wildernesses. Their

buildings have tradition and style. Whoever lived at Mitla lived

sumptuously there.

I traveled to the little mining town of Tlacolula where the high road

hastens downward to Tehuantepec and the Pacific, and then took horses

from the Zapotecs. Here all the inhabitants are either Zapotec or

Mixtec Indians. And I spent a dusty day at Mitla. Riding up a strange

valley betwixt cavernous rock walls marked by splurges of ancient color

I thought of an immemorial road and slaves with pots on their heads and

princes in chariots drawn by men. I thought of wars, invasions, and the

massacre and destruction in what must have been the last days of that

Mitla Empire when some barbarous race which cared not for Art swept in

upon the people and destroyed them.

There is a Zapotec village now. There were Kings of Zapotec when Cortes

came and he made nothing of their kingship, though the greatest ruler

that the Mexican people now acknowledge was a Zapotec, the famous and

beloved President, Benito Juarez.

Behind the village, scorched and sunbleached, lie the heaps of what was

Empire, of what was ancient wreckage in the days when the Spaniards

came. Some of it lies in shapeless ruin--perhaps the homes of the poor.

Zapotec houses of adobe have added to the heaps. There were Zapotec

buildings which the Spaniards sacked; there were tombs of Zapotec Kings

or the mummies of Kings, stored with gold and gems in the ancient

vaults of stone. Mitla figured for long in the quest for El Dorado. And

still to-day it is believed by the Indians that vast sacred treasures

are here stored away. They guard the place with superstitious horror

still, and a grand work of excavation leading to the discovery of

subterranean temples and mausoleums might credibly lead to an uprising.

But I stood there undisturbed and looked at the great monoliths

and halls, the stamps of classic pillars, the great walls with

their conventional carvings and crosses. I went underground into an

atmosphere hot and close as the interior of a pyramid--into mysterious

chambers. I crept, candle in hand, into an abyss of darkness, as it

were into the hidden past of the dead. And with relief I returned to

the tropic blaze of light outside.

There stand long, low, white walls with fretted battlements, and there

are hieroglyphics which tell no story, and there in the dust lie the

footmarks of barefooted Indians. What does it all mean? Who has the

book of the words? There is no answer. I write my name in a register

which an Indian workman keeps--"Year 1923, Nationality British." I

came and I passed. I have a signature, but Mitla has none. That is not

even its name. But fitly might one read--

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

10. AD ASTRA

The story of gold commences in Genesis when of a certain country we

are told "The gold of that land is good." It does not say for what or

for whom it was good. It was just good. Gold is good: that was in the

beginning.

Primitive man held gold in his hand as children do bright pebbles and

he was pleased with it, as God the Creator Himself was reputed to be

pleased with the world when He had made it. Man in the earliest days

kept the gold which he picked up, made a possession of it, fought to

keep it, fought also to get other men's gold. Or he stole it and was

sued at law for its return.

He burnished his gold, he cut it, he melted it, he cast it as personal

adornment, he recast it as idols, he saw that fire had no power to

destroy it, he put its power above the power of the Sun, he worshiped

it.

No animal prizes gold, not even the ape. Desire for it is a human

passion.

After gold the greatest possession was in brides who were bought and

sold for a weight of gold somewhat less than their own weight of flesh.

And after men's wives their cattle were most precious and sold also

for gold. Primitive man worshiped the idea of the perfect bride in

a goddess of gold and he worshiped his herds in the golden calf and

golden bulls.

Judah's gods were largely gold and sex. Moses gave, however, their

vital revelation. His creative spirit distilled the idea of Jehovah,

invisible lawgiver and controller set above all visible creation. Still

the weakness of the Israelites has remained until this day--a passion

for sex and gold.

Gold in itself has nothing of evil in it. It is as innocent as iron or

tin. If we call gold fine and lead base it is because we ascribe to

them our human ideas about them. Gold at best was prized for its beauty

and its scarcity. It could fittingly adorn a bride, it could fittingly

be devoted to Jehovah, as in the building of the Temple; but once it

had been used to make a golden calf it had been defouled and could not

be worn again or devoted to the True God. Moses made the children of

Israel _eat_ that disgraced gold--after the calf which they made of

their Egyptian spoils had been consumed by fire.

It is, however, possible that much of the gold of the Egyptians is

worn and used by men and women to-day. Gold does not easily perish and

yet is not easily recognizable. It exists from age to age, cast and

recast in ever new forms, gilding ever new superstitions, glories, and

ambitions. The gold of Darius was the gold of Alexander, and the gold

of Alexander was gold in the triumphs of the Romans. In turn it adorned

the rude limbs of Hans and Goths and Franks and Saracens. It glittered

in the Field of the Cloth of Gold. It was part of the treasure of the

Popes--but why labor the point? Gold has not been allowed to disappear.

Tombs are rifled for it. Ocean's bottom is dredged for it. Every man

who digs the soil is ready to identify it.

The gold of the New World proved a marvelous accession and drew men to

it more than did the Cross of our religion. The Wise Men fixed their

eyes on the East, seeking to lay aside their pride and bow to the

spiritual new birth. But the young men of our era set their eyes upon

the West, saying, "Gold--we will go there for gold." And the older men

looked there also, asking for Power, of which gold is the index.

Ah, it has been and is the great _desideratum_, gold, pockets full,

coffers full, bank full, heart full--to be finished with the practical

problem of life and to have at our disposal all that gold can command.

With their gold the rich gild temples as of old, forgetting the lesson

that our God "preferreth above all temples the upright heart and pure."

The cynics and the buffoons and the rabble make also their golden

calves which in turn some spiritual Moses will cast down.

But where is the poetry of the quest of El Dorado? Surely always in the

quest and never in the attainment. If ever in life you find what you

are seeking you have gone wrong. Finding, you lose. The whole of life

is balanced betwixt the aching heart and the golden dream.

When the quest is transmuted to music, which at its highest strives to

express the inexpressible, the ineffable, the unqualified _x_ of life,

gold is represented in deep notes and remote superterrestrial harmonies

suggesting a golden age, a golden dream, all that we have missed, the

pathos of mortality, the forever lost, the infinitely precious past.

There were beautiful women, myriads of them, each distinct and lovely,

in far-off other times, centuries, ages ago, Queens of Sheba, Helens.

They sleep like the daughter of Pharaoh beside a lotus flower, gone to

dust, going to dust, to infinite fineness. Your eyes never saw them;

they lifted their faces in the morning, at sunrise in the valleys, or

on the mountains, far away, in other times. We look back to them from

the afternoon, from the evening, from a later time; we cannot see them.

They are hidden forever, like the heart of the world.

"Seek and ye shall find" means "Seek forever and ye shall find."

"Knock, and it shall be opened" means "Knock forever and it shall be

opened." How can we in our mortality find the gold? We cannot. The true

El Doradoist, hammer in hand, is knocking and tapping forever, seeking

veins of gold, seeking hollow chambers, seeking and opening tombs,

climbing westward after a vision which forsakes him every day of his

life.

But whither have we led our thoughts, into what starlit unreality? This

volume, the like of which was no doubt burned at Alexandria thousands

of years ago, is a study of reality, is it not?--the study of the quest

of an everlasting substance by those who cannot last. It concerns

largely the five last centuries of the second millennium after Christ,

and certain peoples called Spanish, Indian, Anglo-Saxon. The Spanish

people obtained a great hold on the gold, but it has fallen from

their grasp. Americans now are foremost on the track of El Dorado, a

super-race who seek gold, it is true, but seek more the Power of which

gold is the index. They will take gold by machinery; power giving gold

and gold giving power. They have seen in the mirage a golden dream and

called it Pan-America.

There, most fittingly, closes this volume of the study of the Quest of

El Dorado. A thought, however, comes to me while looking at the Pyramid

of the Sun at Teotihuacan--When America has consolidated Pan-America

from Alaska to Panama she may build a great imperial memorial, a

pyramid greater than all other pyramids, a massive work of stone on

which Time can play but little havoc. And ultimately that pyramid alone

will survive her. In the long night of history it will stand, in the

starlit unreality of forgotten Time. Others, somewhere afar, will be

seeking still.

THE END

CONDITIONS IN FOREIGN LANDS

A JOURNEY IN IRELAND

By WILFRID EWART, author of "Way of Revelation"

Both sections of Ireland in its stormiest period. Real light on the

conditions and public feeling of all shades out of which the present

situation grew.

FROM BERLIN to BAGDAD and BABYLON

By Rev. J. A. ZAHM, C.T.C., author of "Following the

Conquistadores," etc.

The pathway of civilization and of war between East and West, described

by a true scholar of history and men's affairs.

ISLANDERS OF THE PACIFIC

By Lieut.-Col. T. R. ST. JOHNSTON

A graphic account of the strange and fascinating customs and folk-lore

of Polynesia.

THE TANGANYIKA TERRITORY

By F. L. JOELSON

A full description of the territory which was formerly German East

Africa, and an account of its development.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN

By J. W. ROBERTSON SCOTT

The real life of the people throughout the whole country of Japan.

Rural, social and industrial conditions intimately described.

SWINGING LANTERNS

By ELIZABETH CRUMP ENDERS

A woman's intimate view of China and Chinese life, in little known

districts as well as in more traveled places.

EUROPE--WHITHER BOUND?

By STEPHEN GRAHAM, author of "Tramping with a Poet in the

Rockies," "With Poor Immigrants to America," etc.

European conditions in 1921, as they impressed a trained observer who

journeyed from capital to capital.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

New York London

PICTURESQUE AND INTERESTING REGIONS

ON THE GORILLA TRAIL

By MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY

Besides its value as a picture of a great gorilla hunt, this book has

unusual interest because of the presence of the author's six year old

daughter with the expedition.

CAMPS AND TRAILS IN CHINA

By ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS and YVETTE BORUP ANDREWS

Explorations along the frontiers of Tibet and Burma where the Blue

Tiger lairs.

ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS

By ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS

A naturalist's experiences in China's great Northwest.

VIVA MEXICO

By CHARLES M. FLANDRAU

The life, the people, and the country of Mexico.

KIPLING'S SUSSEX

By R. THURSTON HOPKINS

The quaint and picturesque Old World county, which forms the setting of

some of Kipling's finest tales.

THOMAS HARDY'S DORSET

By R. THURSTON HOPKINS

The countryside and the country folk whose influence is woven into much

of Thomas Hardy's work.

TRAMPING WITH A POET in the ROCKIES

By STEPHEN GRAHAM

Graham's hike with Vachel Lindsay through Glacier Park and nearby

districts.

MEMORIES OF OLD RICHMOND

By ESTELLA, VICOUNTESS CAVE

Tales of events and people connected with a once famous Royal Palace.

JERSEY: An Isle of Romance

By BLANCHE B. ELLIOTT

Historical and descriptive account of a fascinating island.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

New York London

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