CHAPTER I

Produced by Ron Swanson

THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES

EDITED BY MARTIN HUME, M.A.

[Frontispiece: AN IDYLL OF MEXICO: INDIAN CARRIERS, RUINED CHURCH, AND

SNOW-CLAD PEAK OF ORIZABA.]

MEXICO

ITS ANCIENT AND MODERN CIVILISATION

HISTORY AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS

TOPOGRAPHY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

INDUSTRIES AND GENERAL DEVELOPMENT

BY

C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S.

CIVIL AND MINING ENGINEER

AUTHOR OF "PERU" AND "THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON"

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

MARTIN HUME, M.A.

WITH A MAP AND SEVENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

_First Edition_ 1909

_Second Impression_ 1910

_Third Impression_ 1912

_Fourth Impression_ 1914

_Fifth Impression_ 1919

_(All rights reserved)_

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

The purpose of this work is to treat of Mexico as a topographical and

political entity, based upon a study of the country from travel and

observation; a method such as has found favour in my book upon Peru.

The method of viewing a country as a whole, with its people,

topography, and general conditions in natural relation to each other,

is one which commands growing acceptance in a busy age. I have been

able to observe much of the actual life and character of

Spanish-American countries from considerable travel therein. Both

Mexico and Peru ever lured me on as seeming to hold for me some El

Dorado, and if I have not reaped gold as the Conquistadores did, there

are nevertheless other matters of satisfaction accruing to the

traveller from his journeys in those splendid territories of mountain

and forest.

Mexico, superfluous to say, is not part of South America, although this

book appears in this series. But it is part of that vast

Spanish-speaking New World whose development holds much of interest;

and which may occupy a more important part in coming years than is

generally thought of at present.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

PAGE

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi

INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN HUME. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv

CHAPTER I

A FIRST RECONNAISSANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Romance of history--Two entrance ways--Vera Cruz--Orizaba--The Great

Plateau--Fortress of Ulua--Sierra Madre--Topographical structure--The

Gulf coast--Tropical region--Birds, animals, and vegetation of coast

zone--_Tierra caliente_--Malaria--Foothills--Romantic scenery--General

configuration of Mexico--Climatic zones--Temperate zone--Cold zone--The

Cordillera--Snow-capped peaks--Romance of mining--Devout miners--

Subterranean shrines--The great deserts--Sunset on the Great Plateau--

_Coyotes_ and _zopilotes_--Irrigated plantations--Railways--Plateau of

Anahuac--The cities of the _mesa central_--Spanish-American

civilisation--Romance of Mexican life--Mexican girls, music, and

moonlight--The _peones_ and civilisation--American comparisons--

Pleasing traits of the Mexicans--The foreigner in Mexico--Picturesque

mining-towns--Wealth of silver--Conditions of travel--Railways--

Invasions--Lerdo's axiom--Roads and horsemen--Strong religious

sentiment--Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl--Sun-god of Teotihuacan--City

of Mexico--Valley of Mexico--The Sierra Madre--_Divortia aquarum_ of

the continent--Volcano of Colima--Forests and ravines--Cuernavaca--The

trail of Cortes--Acapulco--Romantic old _haciendas_--Tropic sunset--

Unexplored Guerrero--Perils and pleasures of the trail--Sunset in the

Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER II

THE DAWN OF MEXICO: TOLTECS AND AZTECS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Lake Texcoco--Valley of Anahuac--Seat of the Aztec civilisation--

Snow-capped peaks--Pyramids of Teotihuacan--Toltecs--The first

Aztecs--The eagle, cactus, and serpent--Aztec oracle and wanderings--

Tenochtitlan--Prehistoric American civilisations--Maya, Incas--Quito

and Peru--The dawn of history--The Toltec empire--Rise, _regime_,

fall--Quetzalcoatl--Otomies--Chichemecas--Nezahualcoyotl--Astlan--The

seven tribes and their wanderings--Mexican war-god--The Teocallis--

Human sacrifices--Prehistoric City of Mexico--The Causeways--Aztec

arts, kings, and civilisation--Montezuma--Guatemoc--Impressions of the

Spaniards--The golden age of Texcoco--Vandalism of Spanish

archbishop--The poet-king and his religion--Temple to the Unknown

God--Aztecs and Incas compared--The Tlascalans--The Otomies--Cholula--

Mexican tribes--Aztec buildings--Prehistoric art--Origin of American

prehistoric civilisation--Biblical analogies--Supposed Asiatic and

Egyptian origins--Aboriginal theory.

CHAPTER III

THE STRANGE CITIES OF EARLY MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Principal prehistoric monuments--Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan--

Pyramids of Teotihuacan--Toltec sun-god--Pyramid of Cholula--Pyramids

of Monte Alban--Ruins of Mitla--Remarkable monoliths and sculpture--

Beautiful prehistoric stone-masonry--Ruins of Palenque--Temple of the

Sun, and others--Stone vault construction--Tropical vegetation--Ruins

of Yucatan--Maya temples--Architectural skill--Temples of

Chichen-Ytza--Barbaric sculpture--Effect of geology on building--The

Aztec civilisation--Land and social laws--Slavery--Taxes, products,

roads, couriers--Analogy with Peru--Aztec homes and industries--War,

human sacrifice, cannibalism--History, hieroglyphics, picture-writing--

Irrigation, agriculture, products--Mining, sculpture, pottery--Currency

and commerce--Social system--Advent of the white man.

CHAPTER IV

CORTES AND THE CONQUEST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Landing of Cortes--Orizaba peak--The dawn of conquest--Discovery of

Yucatan--Velasquez and Grijalva--Life and character of Cortes--Cortes

selected to head the expedition--Departure from Cuba--Arrival at

Yucatan--The coast of Vera Cruz--Marina--Vera Cruz established--Aztec

surprise at guns and horses--Montezuma--Dazzling Aztec gifts--Messages

to Montezuma--Hostility of the Aztecs--Key to the situation--The

Cempoallas--Father Olmedo--Religion and hypocrisy of the Christians--

March to Cempoalla--Montezuma's tax-collectors--Duplicity of Cortes--

Vacillation of Montezuma--Destruction of Totonac idols--Cortes

despatches presents to the King of Spain--Cortes destroys his ships--

March towards the Aztec capital--Scenery upon line of march--The

fortress of Tlascala--Brusque variations of climate--The Tlascalans--

Severe fighting--Capitulation of Tlascala--Faithful allies--Messengers

from Montezuma--March to Cholula--Massacre of Cholula--The snow-capped

volcanoes--First sight of Tenochtitlan.

CHAPTER V

THE FALL OF THE LAKE CITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

The Valley of Mexico--The City and the Causeways--The _Conquistadores_

enter Mexico City--Meeting of Cortes and Montezuma--Greeting of the

Aztec emperor to the Spaniards--Tradition of Quetzalcoatl--Splendid

reception--The Teocalli--Spanish duplicity--Capture of Montezuma--

Spanish gambling--News from Vera Cruz--Forced march to the coast--

Cortes defeats Narvaez--Bad news from Mexico--Back to the capital--

Alvarado's folly--Barbarous acts of the Spaniards--The fight on the

pyramid--Destruction of Aztec idols--Death of Montezuma--Spaniards flee

from the city--Frightful struggle on the Causeway--Alvarado's leap--The

_Noche Triste_--Battle of Otumba--Marvellous victory--Spanish

recuperation--Cuitlahuac and Guatemoc--Fresh operations against the

capital--Building of the brigantines--Aztec tenacity--Expedition to

Cuernavaca--Xochimilco--Attack upon the city--Struggles and reverses--

Sacrifice of Spaniards--Desertion of the Allies--Return of the Allies--

Renewed attacks--Fortitude of the Aztecs--The famous catapult--

Sufferings of the Aztecs--Final attack--Appalling slaughter--Ferocious

Tlascalans--Fall of Mexico.

CHAPTER VI

MEXICO AND THE VICEROYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

General considerations--Character of Viceroy rule--Spanish

civilisation--Administration of Cortes--Torture of Guatemoc--Conquests

of Guatemala and Honduras--Murder of Guatemoc--Fall of Cortes--First

viceroy Mendoza--His good administration--Misrule of the _Audiencias_--

Slavery and abuse of the Indians--The Philippine islands--Progress

under the Viceroys--Plans for draining the Valley of Mexico--British

buccaneers--Priestly excesses--Raid of Agramonte--Exploration of

California--Spain and England at war--Improvements and progress in the

eighteenth century--Waning of Spanish power--Decrepitude of Spain--

Summary of Spanish rule--Spanish gifts to Mexico--The rising of

Hidalgo--Spanish oppression of the colonists--Oppression by the

colonists of the Indians--Republicanism and liberty--Operations and

death of Hidalgo--The revolution of Morelos--Mier--The dawn of

Independence--The birth of Spanish-American nations.

CHAPTER VII

THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Monarchical _regime_ of Iturbide--Great area of Mexican Empire--Santa

Anna--The Holy Alliance--Execution of Iturbide--The Monroe Doctrine--

British friendship--The United States--Masonic institutions--Political

parties--Expulsion of Spaniards--Revolution and crime--Clerical

antagonism--Foreign complications--The "pie-war"--The Texan war--The

slavery question--Mexican valour--American invasion of Mexico--Fall of

Mexico--Treaty of Guadalupe--Cession of California--Gold in

California--Benito Juarez appears--Conservatives and Liberals--Massacre

of Tacubaya--The Reform laws--Disestablishment of the Church--Dishonest

Mexican finance--Advent of Maximilian--The English, Spanish, and French

expedition--Perfidy of the French--Capture of Mexico City by the

French--Crowning of Maximilian--Porfirio Diaz--Rule of Maximilian--Fall

of his empire--Death of Maximilian--The tragedy of Queretaro--Diaz

takes Mexico City--Presidency of Juarez--Lerdo--Career and character of

Diaz--First railways built--Successful administration of Diaz--

Political stability--Forward policy.

CHAPTER VIII

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS: MOUNTAINS, TABLELANDS, AND FLORA AND FAUNA. . 134

Geographical conditions--Tehuantepec--Yucatan--Boundaries and area--

Population--Vera Cruz--Elevations above sea-level--Latitude--General

topography--The Great Plateau--The Sierra Madres--The Mexican Andes--

General structure--The coasts--Highest peaks--Snow-cap and volcanoes--

Geological formation--Geological scenery--Hydrographic systems--

Rivers--Navigation--Water-power--Lakes--Climate and temperatures--The

three climatic zones--Rainfall--Snowfall--Flora and fauna--Soil--

Singular cactus forms--The desert flora--The tropical flora--Forest

regions--Wild animals--Serpents, monkeys, and felidae--Sporting

conditions--Birds.

CHAPTER IX

THE MEXICAN PEOPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Ethnic conditions--Spanish, Mestizos, Indians--Colour-line--Foreign

element--The _peones_--Land tenure--The Spanish people--The native

tribes--The Apaches--The Mexican constitution--Class distinctions--

Mexican upper class--Courtesy and hospitality--Quixotism of the

Mexicans--Idealism and eloquence--General characteristics--Ideas of

progress--American anomalies--_Haciendas_--Sport--Military

distinctions--Comparison with Anglo-Saxons--Republicanism--Language--

Life in the cities--Warlike instincts--The women of Mexico--Mexican

youths--Religious observance--Romantic Mexican damsels--The

bull-fights.

CHAPTER X

THE CITIES AND INSTITUTIONS OF MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Character of Mexican cities--Value of Mexican civilisation--Types of

Mexican architecture--Mexican homes and buildings--The _Plaza_--Social

relations of classes--The City of Mexico--Valley of Mexico--Latitude,

elevation, and temperature--Buildings--Bird's-eye view--The lakes--

Drainage works--Viga canal and floating gardens--General description--

The cathedral--Art treasures--Religious orders--Chapultepec--Pasco de

la Reforma--The President--Description of a bull-fight--Country homes

and suburbs--Colleges, clubs, literary institutions--Churches and

public buildings--Army and Navy--Cost of living--Police--Lighting and

tramways--Canadian enterprise--British commercial relations--The

American--United States influence--A general impression of Mexico.

CHAPTER XI

MEXICAN LIFE AND TRAVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Travel and description--Mexican cities--Guadalajara--Lake Chapala--

Falls of Juanacatlan--The Pacific slope--Colima--Puebla--Cities of the

Great Plateau--Guanajuato--Chihuahua--The Apaches--The _peones_--

Comparison with Americans--_Peon_ labour system--Mode of living--Houses

of the _peon_ class--Diet--_Tortillas_ and _frijoles_--Chilli--

_Pulque_--Habits of the _peon_ class--Their religion--The wayside

crosses and their tragedies--Ruthless political executions--The fallen

cross--Similarity to Bible scenes--_Peon_ superstitions--The ignis

fatuus, or _relacion_--Caves and buried treasure--Prehistoric Mexican

religion--The Teocallis--Comparison with modern religious systems--

Philosophical considerations.

CHAPTER XII

MEXICAN LIFE AND TRAVEL (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

Anthropogeographical conditions--The Great Plateau--The tropical belt--

Primitive villages--Incidents of travel on the plateau--Lack of water--

Hydrographic conditions--Venomous vermin--Travel by roads and

_diligencias_--A journey with a priest--Courtesy of the _peon_ class--

The curse of alcohol--The dress of the working classes--The women of

the _peon_ class--Dexterity of the natives--The bull-fights--A narrow

escape--Mexican horse equipment--The _vaquero_ and the lasso--Native

sports--A challenge to a duel--Foreigners in Mexico--Unexplored

Guerrero--Sporting conditions--Camp life--A day's hunting.

CHAPTER XIII

MINERAL WEALTH. ROMANCE AND ACTUALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Forced labour in the mines--Silver and bloodshed--History of

discovery--Guanajuato--the _veta Madre_--Spanish methods--Durango--

Zacatecas--Pachuca--The _patio_ process--Quicksilver from Peru--Cornish

miners' graves--Aztec mining--Spanish advent--Old mining methods--

Romance of mining--The Cerro de Mercado--Guanajuato and Hidalgo--Real

del Monte--Religion and mining--Silver and churches--Subterranean

altars--Mining and the nobility--Spanish mining school--Modern

conditions--The mineral-bearing zone--Distribution of minerals

geographically--Silver--The _patio_ process--Gold-mining and

production--El Oro and other districts--Copper--Other minerals--General

mineral production--Mining claims and laws.

CHAPTER XIV

NATURAL RESOURCES, AGRICULTURE, GENERAL CONDITIONS . . . . . . . . 282

Principal cultivated products--Timber--The three climatic zones--

General agricultural conditions--Waste of forests--Irrigation--Region

of the river Nazas--Canal-making--Cotton and sugar-cane--Profitable

agriculture--Mexican country-houses--Fruit gardens--Food products,

cereals, and fibrous plants--_Pulque_ production--India-rubber and

_guayule_--List of agricultural products and values--Fruit culture and

values--Forestry and land--Colonisation--American land-sharks--

Conditions of labour--Asiatics--Geographical distribution of products--

The States of the Pacific slope--Sonora--Lower California--Sinaloa--

Tepic--Jalisco--Colima--Michoacan--Guerrero--Oaxaca--Chiapas.

CHAPTER XV

NATURAL RESOURCES, AGRICULTURE, GENERAL CONDITIONS (_continued_) . 308

Central and Atlantic States--Chihuahua and the Rio Grande--Mining,

forests, railways--Coahuila and its resources--Nuevo Leon and its

conditions--Iron, coal, railways, textile industries--Durango and its

great plains and mountain peaks--Aguascalientes--Zacatecas and its

mineral wealth--San Luis Potosi and its industries--Guanajuato,

Queretaro and Hidalgo, and their diversified resources--Mexico and its

mountains and plains--Tlaxcala--Morelos and its sugar-cane industry--

The rich State of Puebla--Tamaulipas, a littoral state--The historic

State of Vera Cruz, its resources, towns, and harbour--Campeche and the

peninsula of Yucatan.

CHAPTER XVI

MEXICAN FINANCE, INDUSTRIES, AND RAILWAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

Financial rise of Mexico--Tendencies toward restriction against

foreigners--National control of railways--Successful financial

administration--Favourable budgets--Good trade conditions--Foreign

liabilities--Character of exports and imports--Commerce with foreign

nations--Banks and currency--Principal industries--Manufacturing

conditions--Labour, water-power, and electric installations--Textile

industry, tobacco, iron and steel, paper, breweries, etc.--Railways--

The Mexican Railway--The Mexican Central Railway--The National

Railroad--The Interoceanic--Governmental consolidation--The Tehuantepec

Railway--Port of Salina Cruz--Other railway systems.

CHAPTER XVII

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Mexico's unique conditions--Her future--Asiatic immigrants--Fostering

of the native race--Encouraging of immigration--The white man in the

American tropics--Future of Mexican manufactures--The Pan-American

Congress--Pan-American railway--Mexico and Spain--The Monroe Doctrine--

Mexico, Europe, and the United States--Promising future of Mexico.

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

AN IDYLL OF MEXICO: INDIAN CARRIERS, RUINED CHURCH, AND SNOW-CLAD

PEAK OF ORIZABA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

THE ATLANTIC SLOPE: TUNNEL AND BRIDGE OF THE INFIERNILLO CANYON ON

THE MEXICAN RAILWAY, IN THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ . . . . . . . . . . 4

THE GREAT PLATEAU: NIGHTFALL IN THE DESERT . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

ON THE GREAT PLATEAU: VIEW OF THE CITY OF DURANGO . . . . . . . . 9

ORIZABA, CAPPED WITH PERPETUAL SNOW: VIEW ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY

AT CORDOBA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

PINE-CLAD HILLS FORMING THE RIM OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO, 8,000

FEET ELEVATION ABOVE SEA-LEVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

TYPICAL VILLAGE OF THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE, STATE OF COLIMA . . . . 18

THE FINDING OF THE SITE FOR THE PREHISTORIC CITY OF MEXICO BY THE

FIRST AZTECS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

(_From the painting in Mexico_.)

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: TOLTEC PYRAMID OR TEOCALLI OF THE SUN AT SAN

JUAN TEOTIHUACAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

(_Exploration and restoration work being carried on_.)

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO; VIEW ON LAKE TEXCOCO; THE MODERN CITY OF

MEXICO IN THE DISTANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

THE LAND OF THE AZTEC CONQUESTS: MAIZE FIELDS NEAR ESPERANZA,

STATE OF PUEBLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF EL FOLOC AT CHICHEN-YTZA, YUCATAN . . 35

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: THE PYRAMID OF THE SUN AT TEOTIHUACAN IN THE

VALLEY OF MEXICO, SEEN FROM THE PYRAMID OF THE MOON . . . . . . . 38

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF MITLA; FACADE OF THE HALL OF THE

COLUMNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

(_The steps have been "restored" by the photographer._)

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF MITLA; HALL OF THE MONOLITHS OR

COLUMNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF MITLA; THE HALL OF THE GRECQUES . . . 48

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF TEMPLE AT CHICHEN-YTZA, IN YUCATAN . 53

PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF "THE PALACE" AT CHICHEN-YTZA IN

YUCATAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

THE LAND OF THE CONQUEST: STATE OF VERA CRUZ; VIEW ON THE MEXICAN

RAILWAY; THE TOWN OF MALTRATA IS SEEN THOUSANDS OF FEET BELOW . . 68

THE LAND OF THE CONQUEST: A VALLEY IN THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ, ON

THE LINE OF THE MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

THE LAKES OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO AT THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST,

SHOWING THE CAUSEWAYS TO THE AZTEC ISLAND-CITY OF TENOCHTITLAN . . 76

(_From Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico."_)

THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO: CORTES AT THE BATTLE OF OTUMBA . . . . . . 87

(_From the painting by Ramirez_.)

GUANAJUATO AS SEEN FROM THE HILLS: THE HISTORIC TREASURE-HOUSE OF

MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

STATUE OF HIDALGO AT MONTERREY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

THE CASTLE OF CHAPULTEPEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

CITY OF OAXACA: SPANISH-COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE; THE PORTALES OF THE

MUNICIPAL PALACE AND PLAZA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO, GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ . . . . . . . . . . 132

MEXICO'S ARTIFICIAL HARBOURS ON THE ATLANTIC: THE NEW PORT WORKS

AT VERA CRUZ, A SOLID AND COSTLY ENTERPRISE . . . . . . . . . . . 136

ASCENDING THE MEXICAN CORDILLERA, OR EASTERN SIERRA MADRE: THE

RAILWAY IS SEEN IN THE VALLEY FAR BELOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

THE PEAK OF ORIZABA; PLAZA OF THE CITY OF CORDOVA . . . . . . . . 140

THE FALLS OF JUANACATLAN: THE NIAGARA OF MEXICO . . . . . . . . . 144

THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY AND ENVIRONS OF

COLIMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

A RARE OCCURRENCE: SNOWFALL IN A MEXICAN TOWN; VIEW OF THE PLAZA

OF LERDO, ON THE GREAT PLATEAU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

A ROAD IN THE TEMPERATE ZONE, WITH PALMS AND VEGETATION . . . . . 151

VEGETATION IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

THE MEXICAN PEONES: STREET SCENE AT CORDOVA . . . . . . . . . . . 160

TYPES OF MEXICANS OF THE UPPER CLASS: AN ARCHBISHOP; A FAMOUS

GENERAL AND MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS; A FAMOUS MINISTER OF

FINANCE, SENOR LIMANTOUR; A STATE GOVERNOR . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

MEXICAN LIFE: THE CATHEDRAL AND THE PENITENTIARY, CITY OF PUEBLA . 166

THE FAMOUS MEXICAN "RURALES," OR MEXICAN MOUNTED POLICE . . . . . 172

SPANISH-COLONIAL CHURCH ARCHITECTURE: A TYPICAL MEXICAN TEMPLE . . 176

SPANISH-COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE: THE PORTALES OF CHOLULA . . . . . . 180

A PUBLIC GARDEN IN TROPICAL MEXICO: VIEW AT COLIMA . . . . . . . . 184

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO: THE GREAT DRAINAGE CANAL . . . . . . . . . . 188

THE CATHEDRAL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

BULL-FIGHT IN THE CITY OF MEXICO, SHOWING THE SPECTATORS OF THE

"SOL," THE PICADORES, AND THE ENTERING BULL . . . . . . . . . . . 194

MEXICAN STREET SCENE: A PULQUE SHOP WITH ARTISTICALLY-PAINTED

EXTERIOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

MEXICAN ARTILLERY: A WAYSIDE ENCAMPMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

CITY OF GUADALAJARA: INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL . . . . . . . . . . 208

A TOBACCO-PRODUCING HACIENDA: STATE OF VERA CRUZ . . . . . . . . . 213

MEXICAN PEON LIFE: TYPICAL VILLAGE MARKET-PLACE . . . . . . . . . 215

THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: COCOA-NUT PALMS AT COLIMA . . . . . . . . 230

LIFE AND TRAVEL IN MEXICO: MULES, PEON, AND CACTUS . . . . . . . . 235

NATIVE WOMEN OF TEHUANTEPEC: ORDINARY DRESS AND CHURCH-GOING

COSTUMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: THE PLAZA AND ENVIRONS OF THE CITY OF

COLIMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302

MEXICAN ARTIFICIAL HARBOURS ON THE PACIFIC COAST: THE NEW PORT

WORKS OF SALINA CRUZ, TERMINUS OF THE TEHUANTEPEC RAILWAY . . . . 306

GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY OF MONTERREY, STATE OF NUEVO LEON, UPON

THE GREAT PLATEAU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

TYPICAL SIDE STREET IN MEXICAN VILLAGE: THE TOWN OF AMECA AND

CLOUD-EFFECT ON POPOCATEPETL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

STATE OF VERA CRUZ: THE BARRANCA OR RAVINE OF MITLAC; VIEW ON THE

MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

(_Far below in the valley is seen the bridge depicted at p. 340._)

VERA CRUZ: SHIPPING IN THE NEW HARBOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324

BRITISH ENGINEERING WORK IN MEXICO: BUILDING A BREAKWATER . . . . 336

THE MITLAC RAVINE: VIEW ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . 340

BRIDGES OVER THE ATOYAC RIVER: MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . 342

THE SEAPORT OF VERA CRUZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

NEW PORT OF SALINA CRUZ, ON THE PACIFIC: THE GREAT DRY DOCK . . . 346

(_See also page 306._)

_The Author is indebted for some of the photographs reproduced in this

book to The Mexican Financial Agency, Senor Camacho; The Mexican

Information Bureau, Senor Barriga; The Mexican Vera Cruz Railway

Company, Ltd.; Messrs. S. Pearson and Sons, Ltd.; The London Bank of

Mexico and South America, Ltd.; Arthur H. Enock, Esq.; "Modern Mexico";

"Mexico at Chicago," Senor Manuel Caballero; Holmes: Ancient Cities of

Mexico; and others._

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HISTORY

The history of Mexico at the time of the Conquest rests upon an

accurate basis; the five letters of Cortes to the Spanish Emperor,

Carlos V. These have been recently retranslated into, and published in,

English in two excellent volumes:

The Letters of Cortes to Charles V. F. C. MacNutt. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

London. 1908.

The most famous book on the Conquest is that of Prescott, the American

historian, and this never loses its charm, although to the traveller

who knows the country it may, at times, seem somewhat highly drawn.

Prescott's Conquest of Mexico. 3 vols. London. 1845.

The writers which, after Cortes, were the participators in the Conquest

or contemporary therewith, and upon whose writings all other accounts

are based, are those of:

Bernal Diaz, Author of the Verdadera Historia de la Conquista. 1858.

Ixtlilochitl, Aztec historian.

Other famous contemporary writers whose works also furnish material for

historians were:

Bartolome de las Casas, Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Gonzalo Oviedo y

Valdez, Bernardino de Sahagun, Motolinia, Peter Martyr, Antonio de

Herrera. The works of all these writers are extant, principally in

Spanish, and they were written in the sixteenth century.

In the seventeenth century Juan de Torquemada wrote, and in the

nineteenth numerous works appeared upon Mexico. Among these may be

mentioned those of Manuel Orozco y Berra, Manuel Icazbalceta Raminez,

all modern Mexicans. Other authors, whether of historical or other

books and at varying epochs, are:

Clavigero, Duran, Tezozomoc, Camargo, Siguenza, Pizarro, Acosta, Gage,

Lorenzana, Olarte, Vetancourt, Solis, Cavo, Landa, Robertson, Irving,

Humboldt, Helps, Bancroft, Kingsborough.

Archaeological and Ethnological works are represented by the following:

Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States. 5 vols. New York. 1874-6.

Bandelier, The Art of War among the Ancient Mexicans.

Bandelier, Distribution and Land Tenure.

Bandelier, Social Organisation.

Bandelier, Archaeological Tour.

Bandelier, Indians of the South-west, U.S.

Batres, Cuadro Arquelogico de la Republica Mexicana; and other works,

including Teotihuacan.

Blake, Catalogue of Archaeological Collection of the Museum of Mexico,

&c.

Brinton, The American Race.

Brinton, Ancient Phonetic Alphabets of Yucatan, &c.

Chavers, Antiguedades Mexicanas.

Chavers, Mexico a traves de los siglos.

Charnay, Ancient Cities of the New World.

Garcia Cubas, Cuadro Geografico, &c.

Holmes, Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Cities of Mexico.

Maudsley, Biologia Centralia-Americana.

Kingsborough, famous work on Mexican Antiquities, &c.

Penafiel, Monumentos del arte Mexicano Antiguo. Berlin. 1890.

Payne, History of the New World. Oxford. 1899.

Starr, Maya Writing, &c. Chicago. 1895.

And many other pamphlets and books in English, Spanish, French, and

German.

For a fuller list of these, see the excellent volume on Mexico of the

International Bureau of the American Republics. Washington. 1904.

Of books on mining an excellent volume for reference is:

Southworth's Mines of Mexico.

Of mining and natural resources generally, a large complete work has

been issued in English, Spanish, and French, entitled:

El Florecimiento de Mexico. Mexico. 1906.

This work is published in Mexico, written by various authors, under the

patronage of the Government. It is a valuable book of reference, but

somewhat prolix, and the type is small and the volume unwieldy. After

the manner of books issued in Spanish-American countries, too much

space is taken up with adulations of public men. There are no less than

four full-page portraits of President Diaz in it.

Other general works are:

Mexico and the United States. Abbott. New York. 1869.

Guia General de la Republicas Mexicana. Mexico. 1899.

Barrett, Standard Guide to Mexico. Mexico. 1900.

Baedeker, The United States and Mexico. Leipzig. 1899.

Bancroft, A Popular History of the Mexican People. London. 1887.

Bancroft, Resources and Development of Mexico. San Francisco. 1893.

Baianconi, Le Mexique. Paris. 1899.

Brocklehurst, Mexico To-day. London. 1883.

Chevalier, Le Mexique Ancien et Moderne. Paris. 1886.

Congling, Mexico and the Mexicans. New York. 1883.

Garcia, Mexico, &c. Mexico. 1893.

Lummis, The Awakening of a Nation. New York. 1893.

Ober, Travels in Mexico. Boston. 1884.

Martin, Mexico of the Twentieth Century. London. 1908.

Gadow, Travels in Southern Mexico. London. 1908.

Tweedie, Mexico as I Saw It. London. 190?

Tweedie. Porfirio Diaz. London. 1905.

A. H. Noll. A Short History of Mexico. Chicago. 1903.

Romero, Mexico and the United States. New York. 1898.

Statesman's Year-book. London.

Camp Fires on Desert and Lava. Hornaday. London. 1909.

And numerous others in French, German, and English, including various

guide-books and pamphlets, scientific and otherwise.

The Mexican Year-book, London, 1908, is published by McCorquodale & Co.

The work is written under the auspices of the Mexican Government. It is

full of statistics and information, and forms a very useful work of

reference.

_Modern Mexico_, a monthly illustrated paper of high-class, issued in

Mexico and St. Louis.

_The Mexican Herald_, a daily paper published in English in Mexico, is

an excellent journal of current events.

INTRODUCTION

"From what I have seen and heard concerning the similarity between this

country and Spain, its fertility, its extent, its climate, and in many

other features of it, it seemed to me that the most suitable name for

this country would be New Spain, and thus, in the name of your Majesty,

I have christened it. I humbly supplicate your Majesty to approve of

this and order that it be so called." Thus wrote Hernan Cortes, the

greatest natural leader of men since Julius Caesar, to the sovereign

whom he endowed, as he subsequently told him bitterly, with provinces

more numerous than the cities he had inherited from his forefathers.

From the first appearance of the Spaniards upon the vast elevated

plateau upon which the Aztec empire stood the invaders were struck by

its resemblance in climate and natural products to their European

homeland. In his first letter to the Emperor Cortes wrote: "The sea

coast is low, with many sandhills.... The country beyond these

sandhills is level with many fertile plains, in which are such

beautiful river banks that in all Spain there can be found no better.

These are as grateful to the view as they are productive in everything

sown in them, and very orderly and well kept with roads and convenience

for pasturing all sorts of cattle. There is every kind of game in this

country, and animals and birds such as are familiar to us at home....

So that there is no difference between this country and Spain as

regards birds and animals.... According to our judgment it is credible

that there is everything in this country which existed in that from

whence Solomon is said to have brought the gold for the Temple."

Here, for the first time, the Spanish explorers in their wanderings had

come across an organised nation with an advanced civilisation and

polity of its own. The gentle savages they had encountered in the

tropical islands and the mainland of the isthmus had offered little or

no resistance to the white men or to their uncomprehended God. The

little kinglets of Hispaniola, of Cuba, and of Darien, divided,

unsophisticated, and wonder-stricken, with their peoples bent their

necks to the yoke and their backs to the lash almost without a

struggle. Their moist tropical lands, near the coasts, were enervating,

and no united organisation for defence against the enslaving intruders

was possible to them. But here in the land of the Aztec federation

three potent states, with vast dependencies from which countless hordes

of warriors might be drawn, were ready to stand shoulder to shoulder

and resist the claims of the white demi-gods, mounted on strange

beasts, who came upon giant sea-birds from the unknown, beyond the

waste of waters. But the fatal prophecy of the coming of the avenging

white God Quetzalcoatl to destroy the Aztec power paralysed the arm and

brain of Montezuma, and rendered him, and finally his people, a prey to

the diplomacy, the daring, and the valour of Cortes, aided by the

dissentient tribes he enlisted under his banner.

The vast amphibious city of Tenochtitlan, when at length the Conquerors

reached it, confirmed the impression that the land of which it was the

capital was another wider and richer Spain. Its teeming markets, "one

square twice as large as that of Salamanca, all surrounded by arcades,

where there are daily more than sixty thousand souls buying and

selling"; the abundance of food and articles of advanced comfort and

luxury, "the cherries and plums like those of Spain"; "the skeins of

different kinds of spun silk in all colours, that might be from one of

the markets of Granada"; "the porters such as in Castile do carry

burdens"; the great temple, of which "no human tongue is able to

describe the greatness and beauty ... the principal tower of which is

higher than the great tower of Seville Cathedral"--all reminded Cortes

of his native Spain. "I will only say of this city," he concludes,

"that in the service and manners of its people their fashion of living

is almost the same as in Spain, with just as much harmony and order;

and considering that these people were barbarous, so cut off from the

knowledge of God and of other civilised people, it is marvellous to see

to what they have attained in every respect." Thus New Spain was marked

out of all the dominions of Spanish Indies as that which was in closest

relationship with the mother country.

The conquest and subjection of New Spain synchronised curiously with

the profound crisis in, and the conquest and domination of, Old Spain

by its own king, a governing genius and leader of men almost as great

as was the obscure Estramaduran squireling who was adding to the newly

unified crown of Spain that which was to be its richest jewel in the

West. When Cortes penned his first letter to the future Emperor and his

mad mother in July, 1519, telling them of the new found land, Spain was

in the throes of a great convulsion. The young Flemish prince had been

called to his great inheritance by the death of his grandfather,

Ferdinand the Catholic, and the incapacity of his Spanish mother, Queen

Juana. Charles had come to the country upon which, in a financial

sense, the burden of his future widespread empire was to depend, with

little understanding of the proud and ardent people over whom he was to

rule. He spoke no Spanish, and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish

courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and

looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which,

locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned

to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign

whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings

cast themselves upon the resources of Castile and claimed the best

offices civil and ecclesiastical; they sternly insisted upon the young

king taking a solemn oath that Spain in future should be for the

Spaniards; and when tardily and sulkily they voted supplies of money

the grant was saddled with many irritating conditions.

When the letter of Cortes arrived in Spain Charles was at close grips

with his outraged people, for he had broken all his promises to them.

Hurrying across the country to embark and claim the imperial crown of

Germany, vacant by the death of his grandfather Maximilian, eager for

the large sums of money he needed for his purpose, which Spain of all

his realms alone could provide, the sovereign was trampling upon the

dearly prized charters of his people. The great rising of the Castilian

commoners was finally crushed, thanks to class dissensions and the

diplomacy of the sovereign. Thenceforward the revenues of Castile were

at the mercy of the Emperor, whose needs for his world-wide

responsibilities were insatiable; and the Indies of the West, being the

appanage of the crown of Castile, were drained to uphold the claim of

Spain and its Emperor-King to dictate to Christendom the form and

doctrines of its religious faith. It is no wonder, therefore, that the

despatches of the obscure adventurer who announced to his sovereign

that, in spite of obstacles thrown in his way by highly placed royal

officials, he had conquered a vast civilised empire with a mere handful

of followers, were received sympathetically by the potentate to whom

the possession of fresh sources of revenue was so important. Cortes in

his various letters again and again claims the Emperor's patronage of

his bold defiance of the Emperor's officers on the ground that the

latter in their action were moved solely by considerations of their

personal gain, whereas he, Cortes, was striving to endow his sovereign

with a rich new empire and boundless treasure whilst carrying into the

dark pagan land, at the sword's point, the gentle creed of the

Christian God.

Of this religious element of his expedition Cortes never lost sight; he

was licentious in his life, unscrupulous in his methods, and regardless

of the suffering he inflicted to attain his ends; but in this he was

only a son of his country and his time; such qualities might, and in

fact did, accompany the most devout personal piety and an exalted

religious ideal. That the imposition of Christian civilisation upon

Mexico meant the sacrifice in cold blood of countless thousands of

inoffensive human creatures was as nothing when once the legal forms

had been complied with and the people could be assumed to be

recalcitrant or rebellious to a decree of which they understood not a

word. The awful holocaust of natives which followed the Spanish

advance, the enslavement of a whole people to the demon of greed,

especially after the withdrawal of Cortes from the scene, left a bitter

crop of estrangement between the native Mexicans and their white

masters, of which the rank remains have not even yet been quite

eradicated. Cortes himself, as great in diplomacy as in war, it is true

made himself rich beyond dreams, though he was defrauded of his

deserts, even as Columbus, Balboa, and Pizarro were; but he was not

wantonly cruel, and in the circumstances in which he was placed it was

difficult for him to have acted very differently from what he did. It

was not until the smaller men displaced him and came to enrich

themselves at any cost that his methods were debased and degraded to

vile ends and the policy itself was rendered hateful.

Thus, whilst New Spain was always held to be nearer to the mother

country than any other American lands and more of a white man's home

than the settlements on the Southern Continent, the distrust engendered

by the ruthless cruelty of the earlier years of the occupation

contributed powerfully to retard any intimate intermixture of the

conquerors and the conquered races, the closer connection with Spain

also keeping the Spanish-Mexican decidedly more pure in blood than any

other Spanish American people. This will account for the fact that the

various Indian races of Mexico are still, to a large extent, distinct

from each other and from the pure white Mexicans after nearly a century

of native Republican government. In the State of Oaxaca alone there are

even now at least fifteen perfectly distinguishable separate tribes of

pure Indians, of which two, the Zapotecas and the Mistecas, comprise

more than half the whole population of the State. But, this

notwithstanding, no race question now really exists in Mexico. The

pure-blooded Indians frequently occupy the highest positions in the

State, as judges, soldiers, or savants, the greatest but one of Mexican

Presidents, Juarez, having been a full-blooded Zapoteca, whilst the

present ruler of Mexico, certainly one of the most exalted figures in

American history, General Porfirio Diaz, is justifiably prouder of his

Misteca descent than of the white ancestry he also claims. Nor, as in

other countries of similar ethnological constitution, does the Indian

population here tend to decrease. The Mexican Indian or half-breed

suffers under no disability, social or political, and is in a decided

majority of the population. The number of pure whites in the country is

estimated at about three and a half millions, out of a probable

nineteen millions of total inhabitants, eight millions being pure

Indians and about seven and a half millions of mixed castes, most of

whom are more brown than white.

The future of the Republic, therefore, in an ethnological sense, is one

of the most interesting problems of the American Continent. The old

Spanish aristocratic aloofness traditional on the part of the pure

whites will take many generations entirely to break down, and the

increased communication between the Republic and the citizens of the

United States will probably reinforce the white races with a new

element of resistance to fusion; but in the end a homogeneous brown

race will probably people the whole of Mexico--a race, to judge from

the specimens of the admixture now in existence, capable of the highest

duties of civilisation, robust in body, patriotic in character,

progressive and law-abiding to a greater extent, perhaps, than are

purely Latin peoples.

The present book relates in vivid and graphic words the history of

Mexico during the time that it served as a milch cow to the insatiable

Spanish kings and their satellites. But for the gold and silver that

came in the fleet from New Spain, when, indeed, it was not captured by

English or Dutch rovers, the gigantic imposition of Spanish power in

Europe could not have been maintained even as a pretence throughout the

greater part of the seventeenth century as it was. For nearly three

centuries one set of greedy Viceroys and high officials after another

settled from the mother country upon unresisting Mexico and sucked its

blood like vampires. Some of them, it is true, made attempts to

palliate their rapacity by the introduction of improved methods of

agriculture, mining, and the civilised arts, and Mexico, in close touch

with Spain, was not allowed, as the neighbouring Spanish territory of

the isthmus was, to sink into utter stagnation. The efforts of the

Count of Tendilla to keep his Viceroyalty abreast of his times in the

mid sixteenth century are still gratefully remembered, as is the name

of his successor Velasco, who struck a stout blow for the freedom of

the native Indians enslaved in the mines, and emancipated 150,000 of

them. But on the whole, especially after the establishment of the

Inquisition in Mexico, the story of the Spanish domination is generally

one of greed, oppression, and injustice, alternating with periods of

enlightened effort on the part of individual viceroys more high-minded

than their fellows.

With the early nineteenth century came the stirring of a people long

crushed into impotence. The mother country was in the throes of a great

war against the foreign invader. Deserted and abandoned by its Spanish

sovereign, and ruled, where it was ruled at all by civilians, by a body

of self-elected revolutionary doctrinaires, the colonists of the

various Viceroyalties of America promptly shook themselves free from

the nerveless grasp that had held them so long. A demand for an immense

sum of money beyond that which had voluntarily been sent by Mexico to

aid the mother country against Napoleon was refused in 1810, and a few

months afterwards the long gathering storm burst. The man who first

formulated the Mexican cry for freedom was a priest, one Miguel

Hidalgo. He had already organised a widespread revolutionary

propaganda, and on September 16, 1810, the Viceregal authorities

precipitated matters by suppressing one of the clubs, at Queretaro, in

which the independence of the country was advocated. Hidalgo at once

called his followers to arms, and under the sacred banner of the Virgin

of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, led some 50,000 ardent

patriots through the country towards the capital that had once been

Montezuma's. Subduing all the land he crossed, Hidalgo finally met the

royal troops on the 30th of October and completely routed them. Then

the rebel army gradually fell to pieces in consequence of unskilful

management, and at a subsequent battle in January, 1811, was entirely

defeated, Hidalgo and his lieutenant being shortly afterwards captured

and shot.

But the fire thus lit could never again be entirely extinguished. For

years the intermittent struggle went on under another priest, Morelos,

a true national Mexican hero who was betrayed to the Spaniards in 1815,

and punished first by the Inquisition as a heretic and afterwards shot

as a traitor to the King of Spain. The sun of the Spanish domination of

Mexico set in blood, for the wretched reactionary Ferdinand VII. was on

the throne of the mother country, determined if he could to terrorise

Spanish America into obedience as he had done Spain itself. His

eagerness to do so defeated itself. A large army, collected at Cadiz

for the purpose of crushing Mexico into obedience, revolted against the

despot, and then the Mexican patriots, under Iturbide, practically

dominated their country. The new Spanish Hibernian Viceroy, O'Dontroju,

could but bend his head to the storm, and in September, 1821, signed a

treaty with the insurgents by which Mexico was acknowledged to be an

independent constitutional monarchy under the Spanish king, Ferdinand

VII.

Such a solution of a great national uprising could only be temporary.

The Spanish Government refused to ratify the agreement arrived at for

Mexico's independence, and a barrack pronouncement acclaimed Agustin

Iturbide Emperor of Mexico in June, 1822. The empire of Iturbide lasted

less than a year, for the man was unworthy, and Mexican patriots had

not fought and bled for ten years against one despotism for the purpose

of handing themselves over to another. Iturbide was deposed and exiled,

and on his return for the purpose of raising his standard afresh in

Mexico, in 1824 the ex-Emperor was shot as an enemy to the peace and

tranquillity of his country.

The Republic of Mexico obtained the cordial support of England and the

United States, and when in 1825 the last Spanish man-at-arms retired

from the fortress of San Juan de Ulua, off Vera Cruz, all

Spanish-Americans on the two continents were free to work out their own

destiny. As was the case with the other Republics, inexperience in the

science of government and attempts to force the pace of progress,

condemned Mexico to fifty years of turbulence and alternating despotism

and license. Ambitious soldiers strove with each other for the place of

highest honour and profit. Texas, resenting the instability of Creole

government, separated from the Mexican States after a devastating war.

Amongst the higher classes of Mexicans the monarchical tradition which

had prompted the experiment of Iturbide's evanescent empire had not

entirely died out, and in 1840 a leading Mexican statesman, Estrada,

argued in an open letter that the republican form of government having

failed to secure peace to the country, it would be advisable to

establish a Mexican monarchy with a member of one of the old ruling

houses of Europe at its head. But the stormy petrel of Mexican

politics, General Saint Anna, pervaded the scene yet for many years

more; and in 1847 engaged in a disastrous war with the United States on

the subject of the Texan boundary, in which California was lost to

Mexico. In the meanwhile the suggestion that a monarchical experiment

should be tried never died out; and when in 1860 the country was a prey

to civil war between the anti-clericals under the great Juarez and the

Conservative elements, and the interest on the foreign debt was

suspended, a pretext offered for the intervention of France, England,

and Spain in the internal affairs of Mexico, supported by the

Conservative and monarchical parties in the country itself.

The ill-starred ambition of Napoleon III. ended in the sacrifice of a

chivalrous and well-meaning prince, but it effected for Mexico what

fifty years of internal strife had been unable to attain: it produced a

solidarity of Mexican national feeling which has since then welded the

people into a stable and united nation, in no danger henceforward of

falling a prey to foreign ambition or of lapsing into anarchy from its

own dissensions. That this happy end has been attained has been due

mainly to the genius of two men, the greatest of Mexico's sons, who

have in succession appeared at the moment when the national crisis

needed them. To Benito Juarez, the Zapoteca Indian, who held aloft the

banner of Mexican independence against the power of Napoleon's empire,

is due not alone the victory over the invaders but the firm

establishment of a federal constitutional system. Juarez, a lawyer and

a judge, insisted upon the law being supreme, and that ambitious

generals should thenceforward be the servants and not the masters of

the State.

The great Juarez died in 1872, and for the last thirty-three years,

with a break of one short interval only, Porfirio Diaz has been master

of Mexico, a benevolent autocrat, an emperor in all but name, governing

with a wise moderation which recognises that a country situated as

Mexico is, and with a population as yet far from homogeneous or

civilised in the European sense, must of necessity be led patiently and

diplomatically along the road of progress. To reach the goal of

material and moral elevation at which Diaz aims, stability of

institutions and of directors is the first need; and the President has

been re-elected seven times by his fellow citizens because they, as

well as he, can see that his brain and his hand must guide the mighty

engine of advance that he has set in motion.

The effects of this policy have already been prodigious, and there is

probably no country on earth that has made strides so gigantic as

Mexico in the last thirty years. It is due mainly to the labours of

Diaz that the national finance has been placed upon a firm and

satisfactory basis; to him are owing the extraordinary public works

which have completed the vast system of drainage of the Valley of

Mexico, initiated nearly three centuries ago; by him the Republic has

been covered by a network of primary and secondary public schools

rivalling those of the most advanced European countries. One of the

most beneficent of the President's recent acts has been the

rehabilitation in 1905 of the Mexican silver currency, by which a

fairly stable standard exchange value is secured for the national

coinage; the silver dollar fluctuating now within very narrow limits,

the normal value being one half of a United States dollar.

The constructive work of this really great man, indeed, is as yet

difficult to appraise. It covers nearly every branch of national

activity, and it is only by comparison with a past state of affairs

that anything like an adequate idea of the progress effected can be

formed. In 1876 the population of the Republic was 9,300,000; it is now

about 19,000,000. The increase in the length of railways constructed in

the same period is equally remarkable, rising from 367 miles in 1876 to

15,000 miles in 1908. The railways hitherto have been mainly built by

English and United States capitalists, and are in a great measure still

managed by English-speaking officers; but the important Transatlantic

line, which connects the port of Coatzacoalcos on the Atlantic side

with Salina Cruz on the Pacific, is a national undertaking carried out

under contract by a great English contracting firm. The future of this

Tehuantepec railway promises to be of the highest importance as

connecting Europe and America with the Far East. The geographical

situation of the line is more central than that of Panama, ensuring,

for instance, a saving of nearly a thousand miles between Liverpool and

Yokohama. The railway itself across the isthmus is under two hundred

miles in length, and the ports on both sides are capacious enough to

deal with the greatest ships afloat.

The railways running from the United States into the interior of Mexico

and the capital convey passengers thither in less than five days from

New York. They have naturally brought much Anglo-Saxon American

influence into the country, and until recent years this would have

offered some danger of the nation becoming an English-speaking land, as

its former States, Texas and California, have done. The new national

spirit and pride of race, which now justifiably stirs Mexicans, will in

future make such an eventuality improbable. It is, indeed, much more

likely that in the end the boundaries of a powerful, prosperous Mexico

may extend to the group of small and slowly-developing Central American

Republics that join it on the south, and that a vast Spanish-speaking

confederacy will under an enlightened system of government ensure for

all time the domination of this axis of the world's trade to the

descendants of the original Conquerors whose blood has mingled with

that of the peoples they subdued. This eventuality is rendered the more

probable by the advance of the Pan-American railway which is being

pushed southwest from the Tehuantepec line towards Guatemala, and will

when completed link North America with the southern continent, and

establish a continuous system from New York to the Argentine Republic.

This, however, is a dream of the future: for the present be it said

that a regenerated Mexico has saved Central and South America from

being finally swamped by Anglo-Saxondom, and has ensured the

perpetuation in "The Land of To-morrow" of the Spanish tongue and Latin

traditions. For this relief much thanks.

MARTIN HUME.

MEXICO

CHAPTER I

A FIRST RECONNAISSANCE

Romance of history--Two entrance ways--Vera Cruz--Orizaba--The Great

Plateau--Fortress of Ulua--Sierra Madre--Topographical structure--The

Gulf coast--Tropical region--Birds, animals, and vegetation of coast

zone--_Tierra caliente_--Malaria--Foothills--Romantic scenery--General

configuration of Mexico--Climatic zones--Temperate zone--Cold zone--The

Cordillera--Snow-capped peaks--Romance of mining--Devout miners--

Subterranean shrines--The great deserts--Sunset on the Great Plateau--

_Coyotes_ and _zopilotes_--Irrigated plantations--Railways--Plateau of

Anahuac--The cities of the _mesa central_--Spanish-American

civilisation--Romance of Mexican life--Mexican girls, music, and

moonlight--The _peones_ and civilisation--American comparisons--

Pleasing traits of the Mexicans--The foreigner in Mexico--Picturesque

mining-towns--Wealth of silver--Conditions of travel--Railways--

Invasions--Lerdo's axiom--Roads and horsemen--Strong religious

sentiment--Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl--Sun-god of Teotihuacan--City

of Mexico--Valley of Mexico--The Sierra Madre--_Divortia aquarum_ of

the continent--Volcano of Colima--Forests and ravines--Cuernavaca--The

trail of Cortes--Acapulco--Romantic old _haciendas_--Tropic sunset--

Unexplored Guerrero--Perils and pleasures of the trail--Sunset in the

Pacific Ocean.

Mexico, that southern land lying stretched between the Atlantic and

Pacific Oceans, upon the tapering base of North America, is a country

whose name is fraught with colour and meaning. The romance of its

history envelops it in an atmosphere of adventure whose charm even the

prosaic years of the twentieth century have not entirely dispelled, and

the magnetism of the hidden wealth of its soil still invests it with

some of the attraction it held for the old Conquistadores. It was in

the memorable age of ocean chivalry when this land was first won for

Western civilisation: that age when men put forth into a sunset-land of

Conquest, whose every shore and mountain-pass concealed some El Dorado

of their dreams. The Mexico of to-day is not less interesting, for its

vast territory holds a wealth of historic lore and a profusion of

natural riches. Beneath the Mexican sky, blue and serene, stretch great

tablelands, tropic forests, scorching deserts, and fruitful valleys,

crowned by the mineral-girt mountain ranges of the Sierra Madres; and

among them lie the strange pyramids of the bygone Aztecs, and the rich

silver mines where men of all races have enriched themselves. Mexico is

part of that great Land of Opportunity which the Spanish-American world

has retained for this century.

There are two main travelled ways into Mexico. The first lies across

the stormy waters of the Mexican Gulf to the yellow strand of Vera

Cruz, beyond which the great "star-mountain" of the Aztecs,

Citlaltepetl,[1] rears its gleaming snow-cap in mid-heavens, above the

clouds. It was here that Cortes landed, four centuries ago, and it is

the route followed by the tide of European travellers to-day.

Otherwise, the way lies across the Great Plateau, among the arid plains

of the north, where, between the sparsely-scattered cities and

plantations of civilised man, the fringe of Indian life is spread upon

the desert, and the shadowy forms of the _coyote_ and the cactus blend

into the characteristic landscape. Both ways are replete with interest,

but that of Vera Cruz is the more varied and characteristic. Here

stands Ulua, the promontory-fortress, where more than one of Mexico's

short-lived rulers languished and died of yellow fever, and which was

the last stronghold of Spain. Beyond it arise the white buildings and

towers of Vera Cruz, a dream-city, as beheld from the Gulf, of interest

and beauty; and to the west, are the broad coastal deserts, bounded by

the foothills and tropic valleys of the _tierra caliente_ of the

littoral. Piled up to the horizon are the wooded slopes and canyons of

the great Sierra Madre, topped by the gleaming Orizaba, towering

upwards in solitary majesty. We stand upon a torrid strand, yet gaze

upon an icy mountain.

[Footnote 1: Orizaba, 18,250 feet altitude.]

A country of singular topographic structure is before us. The Mexican

Cordillera conceals, beyond and above it, the famous Great Plateau; the

_mesa central_, running to the northwards eight hundred miles or more,

and reaching westwardly to the steep escarpments of the Pacific slope.

These plutonic and volcanic ranges encircle and bisect the great

tableland, and enclose the famous Valley of Mexico and its beautiful

capital, lying far beyond the horizon, above the clouds which rest upon

the canyons and terraces of that steep-rising country to the west. Our

journey lies upwards to this Great Plateau of Anahuac over the

intervening plains and mountain range.

It is a tropical region of foliage, flowers, and fruits, of rugged

countryside and rushing streams, this eastern slope of Mexico; and the

blue sky and flashing sun form the ambient of a perpetual summer-land.

We traverse the sandy Tertiary deserts of the coast, and thence enter

among groves of profuse natural vegetation, interspersed with

cultivated plantations. In these the gleam of yellow oranges comes from

among the foliage, and the graceful leaves of the platanos and

rubber-trees fan their protecting shade over young coffee-trees. But

away from the haunts of man along the littoral is a region of startling

beauty--of rivers and lagoons and hills, their shores and slopes

garmented with perennial verdure, the forest-seas bathing the bases of

towering peaks. Beautiful birds of variegated and rainbow colours, such

as Mexico is famous for, people these tropic southern lands of Vera

Cruz. Along the shores and in the woods and groves, all teeming with

prolific life, which the hot sun and frequent rains induce, the giant

cranes and brilliant-plumaged herons disport themselves, and gorgeous

butterflies almost outshine the feathered denizens. From the tangled

boughs the pendant boa-constrictor coils himself, and hissing serpents,

basking crocodiles, and prowling jaguars people the untrodden wilds of

jungle and lagoon. In these great virgin forests tribes of monkeys find

their home, and the tapir and the cougar have their being. Mangroves,

palms, rubber-trees, mahogany, strange _flora_, and ungathered fruits

run riot amid this tropical profusion, and flourish and fall almost

unseen of man. And here the malarias of the lowlands lurk--those

bilious disorders which man is ever fighting and slowly conquering.

This is Mexico's _tierra caliente_.

But our way lies onwards towards the mountains. A wildness of

landscape, unpictured before, opens to the view. Here rise weird

rock-forms, Nature's cathedral towers and grim facades magnificent in

solitude and awe-inspiring, as by steep bridle-paths we take our way

along the valleys, and draw rein to gaze upon them. Ponderous and

sterile, these outworks and buttresses of the great Sierra Madre rise

upwards, fortifications reared against the march of tropic verdure

beneath, cloud-swathed above and bathed below by forest-seas. Born in

that high environment of rains and snows, rippling streams descend,

falling in cascades and babbling rapids adown romantic glens, and their

life-giving waters, with boisterous ripple or murmuring softly, take

their way over silver sand-bar and polished ledge of gleaming quartz or

marble, winding thence amid corridors of stately trees and banks of

verdant vegetation, to where they fill the irrigation-channels of

white-clad peasants, far away on the plains below.

Still onwards and upwards lies the way. One of the most remarkable

railways in the world ascends this steep zone, and serpentines among

sheer descents to gain the summits of abrupt escarpments, from which--a

remarkable feature of the topography of the eastern slope of

Mexico--the traveller looks down as into another country and climate,

upon those tropical valleys which he has left below. This is the

Mexican Vera Cruz railway.

[Illustration: THE ATLANTIC SLOPE: TUNNEL AND BRIDGE OF THE INFIERNILLO

CANYON, ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY, IN THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ.]

Let us pause a moment and gain a comprehensive idea of the character of

Mexico's configuration and climate. It is to be recollected that

Mexico, like other lands of Western America, is a country of relatively

recent geological birth. The form of the country is remarkable. It

shares the topographical features of others of the Andine countries of

America--of tropical lowlands and temperate uplands, in which latter

nearness to the heat of the Equator is offset by the coolness of the

rarefied air of high elevations above sea-level. This structure is the

dominant note of the scheme of Nature in Mexico--as it is in Peru and

other similar countries--and the anthropo-geographical conditions are

correspondingly marked. The region first passed is known as the _tierra

caliente_, or hot lands. Its climatic limit extends up the slopes of

the Sierras to an elevation of some 3,000 feet or more, embracing the

lowlands, hot and humid generally, of the whole of the Gulf coast and

of the peninsula of Yucatan, all of which regions are subject to true

tropical conditions--the dense forests, the great profusion of animal

life, the wonderful abundance and colour of Nature, and in places the

swamps and their accompanying malarias, shunned by the traveller. But

yellow fever and malaria are much less dreaded now than heretofore. In

the city of Vera Cruz and in Tampico the new era of sanitation, brought

about by British and American example and seconded by the Mexican

authorities, has almost banished these natural scourges.

Rising from the _tierra caliente_, the road enters upon the more

temperate zone, the _tierra templada_, extending upwards towards the

Great Plateau. The limit of this climatic zone is at the elevation of

6,000 feet above sea-level, and here are evergreen oaks, pine, and the

extraordinary forms of the organ cactus, as well as orchids. It is,

indeed, a transition zone from the hot to the cold climates, and the

zone embraces the greater part of the area of Mexico. Rising rapidly

thence up to and over the escarpments of the Sierra Madre and the high

plains, we shall enter upon the _tierra fria_ or cold lands, ranging

from 6,000 feet to 8,000 feet above sea level. Above this rise the high

summits of the Mexican Cordilleras, with their culminating peaks, some

few of which penetrate the atmosphere above the limit of perpetual

snow. Thus, three diverse climatic zones are encountered in Mexico,

which, ever since the advent of the Spaniards, have been designated as

the _tierra fria_, _tierra templada_, and _tierra caliente_

respectively. These conditions, as will be seen later, are also

encountered upon the Pacific slope.

We now ascend the steep upper zone of the Sierra Madre, and cross it,

descending thence to the Great Plateau or _mesa central_, the

dominating topographical feature of the country. Here lies the real

Mexico of history, and here is the main theatre of the new land of

industrial awakening. Within the mountain ranges--that which we have

crossed, and those which intersect this vast tableland and bound it on

three sides--lies the great wealth of minerals--gold, silver, and

others--which have attracted men of all races and all times since

Cortes came. Here the true fairy tales of long ago, of millions won by

stroke of pick, had their setting, and indeed, have it still. Upon

these hills the thankful miner reared temples to his saints, and

blessed, in altar and crucifix, the mother of God who graciously

permitted his enrichment! And as if such devotion were to be unstinted,

he also places his shrines within the bowels of the mines, and pauses

as he struggles through the dark galleries, with heavy pack of silver

rock upon his back, to bend his knee a moment before the candle-lighted

subterranean altar.

And now great desert plains unfold to view. Upon their confines arise

the blue mountain ranges which intersect them, their canyons and

slopes, though faint in distance and blurred by shimmering heat arising

from the desert floor, yet cast into distinct tracery by the rays of

the sun. Towards the azure vault overhead, as we behold the arid

landscape, eddying dust-pillars whirl skywards upon the horizon, or

perhaps a cloud of dust, far away upon the trail which winds over the

flat expanse, denotes some evidence of man--horseman or ox-cart

pursuing its leisurely and monotonous way. Upon the edges of the dry

stream-beds, or _arroyos_, which descend from the hills and lose

themselves in wide alluvial fans upon the sandy waste, a fringe of

scant vegetation appears, nourished by the water which flows down them

in time of rain.

Beneath our horses' hoofs the white alkali crust which thinly covers

the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny

branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and

the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal

world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as we pass. We are upon

the Great Plateau. All is vast, reposeful, boundless. The sun rises and

sets as it does upon some calm ocean, describing its glowing arc across

the cloudless vault above, from Orient to Occident. Sun-scorched by

day, the temperature drops rapidly as night falls upon these elevated

steppes, 7,000 feet or more above the level of the sea, and the bitter

cold of the rarefied air before the dawn takes possession of the

atmosphere. The shivering _peones_ of the villages rise betimes to

catch the sun's first rays, and stand or squat against the eastern side

of their adobe huts, what time the orb of day shows his red disc above

the far horizon. _La capa de los pobres_--"the poor man's cloak"--they

term the sun, as with grateful benediction they watch his coming, and

stamp their sandalled feet.

[Illustration: THE GREAT PLATEAU: NIGHTFALL IN THE DESERT.]

Impressive and melancholy is the nightfall upon the Great Plateau. The

opalescent tints of the dying day, and the scarlet curtains flung

across the Occident at the sun's exit give place to that indescribable

depth of purple of the high upland's sky. The faint ranges of hills

which bound the distant horizon take on those diminishing shades which

their respective distances assign them, and stand delicately,

ethereally, against the waning colours of the sunset, whilst the

foreground rocks are silhouetted violet-black against the desert floor.

The long shadows which were projected across the wilderness, and the

roseate flush which the setting sun had cast upon the westward-facing

escarpments behind us, have both disappeared together. Impenetrable

gloom lurks beneath the faces of the cliffs, the mournful howl of the

_coyotes_ comes across the plain, and their slinking forms emerge from

the shadow of the rocks. There is a shapeless heap, the carcass of some

dead mule or ox, some jetsam of the desert, lying near at hand, at

which my horse was uneasy as I drew rein in contemplation, and which

explains the nearness of the beasts of prey, and the long line of

_zopilotes_, or buzzards, which I had observed to cross the fading

gleam of the firmament. All is solitary, deserted, peaceful. The day is

done, the night has come, "in which no man can work."

At daylight the uncultivated desert gives place to human habitations;

and we approach the _hacienda_ of a large landowner, with its irrigated

plantations, and adobe buildings which form the abodes of the workers.

All around are vast fields of _maguey_, or plantations of cotton,

stretching as far as can be seen. Great herds of cattle, rounded up by

picturesque _vaqueros_ with silver-garnished saddles and strange hats

and whirling lassoes, paw the dusty ground, shortly to writhe beneath

the hot imprint of the branding-iron. Long irrigation ditches, brimming

with water from some distant river, and fringed with trees, wind away

among the plantations; and white-clad _peones_, hoe in hand, tend the

long furrows whose parallel lines are lost in perspective. Centre of

the whole panorama is the dwelling-house of the _hacendado_, the owner

of the lands; and almost of the bodies and souls of the inhabitants!

Quaint and old-world, the place and its atmosphere transport the

imagination to past centuries, for the aspect of the whole still bears

the stamp of its mediaeval beginning, save where the new Mexican

millionaire-landowner has planted some luxurious abode, replete with

modern convenience.

But these are not isolated from the world upon this Great Plateau so

much as might appear at first glance. There is a puff of smoke upon the

horizon, and the whistle of a locomotive strikes upon the ear. The

railway which links this great oasis of cultivated fields with others

similar, and with the world beyond, runs near at hand, and will bear

us, do we wish it, away to the confines of the Republic in the north,

to the United States, and in five days to New York. Southwards it winds

away to the great capital City of Mexico, to Vera Cruz, and thence on

towards the borders of Guatemala. But let us avoid the railway yet. Not

thus, in the comfort of the Pullman cushions, do we know the spirit and

atmosphere of Mexico; but the saddle and the dusty road shall be our

self-chosen portion. Indeed, it will be so from sheer necessity, for

our way will lie onwards to the Pacific Ocean, and no railway of the

plateau quite reaches this yet.

Throughout the Great Plateau of Anahuac, separated by long stretches of

dusty wilderness, unclothed except by scanty thorny shrubs, and

scarcely inhabited except by the _coyote_ and the _tecolote_,[2] are

handsome cities with their surrounding cultivation and characteristic

life. As we top the summit of a range and behold these centres of

population from afar, a bird's-eye view and philosophical comprehension

of their _ensemble_ is obtained. Seen from the outside, they present a

picturesque view of cathedral spires and gleaming domes and white

walls; the towers rising from the lesser buildings amid groves of

verdant trees, forming a striking group, all backed by the blue range

of some distant sierra. The main group shades off into a fringe of

_jacales_--the squalid habitations of the _peones_, and of the city's

poor and outcast, with rambling, dusty roads bordered by hedges of

prickly pear, or _nopales_; picturesque, quaint, the roads ankle-deep

in white adobe dust, which rises from beneath our horse's hoofs and

covers us with an impalpable flour upon traversing the environs of the

place. Clattering over the cobble-paved streets, we rapidly approach

the central pulse of the town, the _plaza_. Singular shops, where

fruits and meats and clothing are displayed in windowless array, line

the streets, and quaint dwelling-houses, with iron grilles covering

their windows, giving them the mediaeval Hispanic aspect familiar to

the Spanish-American traveller. Into these we gaze down from the height

of the saddle in passing, and perchance some dark-haired Mexican

damsel, who has been snatching a moment from her household duties to

gaze at the outside world, retires suddenly from the balcony with

well-simulated haste and modesty before the rude gaze of the

approaching stranger. Indians or _peones_ in loose white garments of

cotton _manta_, with huge Mexican straw hats, and scarlet blankets

depending from their shoulders, stalk through the street, or issue from

ill-smelling _pulque_ shops, whose singularly-painted exteriors arrest

the attention. Gaunt dogs prowl about and lap the water of the open

_acequias_, or ditch-gutters, between the road and the footpath,

fighting for some stray morsel thrown into the street from the open

doors of the shops aforesaid. Of stone or of adobe--generally the

latter--according to the geology of the particular neighbourhood, the

houses are whitened or tinted outside, with flat roofs, or _azoteas_.

Through the wide entrance-door a glimpse is obtained of an interior

paved _patio_, adorned, in the better-class homes, with tubs of palms

and flowers; and before one of such a character we draw rein--the

_meson_ or _fonda_, the hotel under whose roof temporary shelter shall

be sought. This abode faces the _plaza_, and opposite rises the quaint

church--or cathedral if it be a State capital city--which is the

dominating note of the community.

[Footnote 2: Mexican night owl.]

[Illustration: ON THE GREAT PLATEAU: VIEW OF THE CITY OF DURANGO.]

Exceedingly picturesque are the fine cities which form Mexico's chief

centres of civilisation along the Great Plateau--Chihuahua, Durango,

Guadalajara, Puebla, and many others. They have that quaint, old-world

air ever characteristic of Spanish-America, unspoilt by the elements of

manufacturing communities. Their shady _plazas_ are centres of

recreation and social life, always in evidence, distinctive of

Spanish-American civilisation, where music is a part of the government

of the people; a feature far more prominent than in Britain or the

United States. The cathedrals, the quaint architecture of the streets,

the barred windows, and the picturesque dress of the working class,

form an atmosphere of distinctive life and colour. Let us halt a moment

in the _plaza_. The band is discoursing soft music, varied by some

stirring martial air; the Mexican moon has risen, and now that the

sunset colours pale, vies with the lamps of the well-lit promenade to

illumine a happy but simple scene. Its rays shine through the feathery

boughs of the palms, and glisten on the broad, elegant leaves of the

_platanos_--which grow even in the upland valleys--whilst the scent of

orange-blossoms falls softly through the balmy air, as in ceaseless

promenade fair maidens and chatting youths, with coquetry and stolen

glance, pass round the square untiringly. White dresses and black eyes

and raven tresses--the olive-complexioned beauties of the Mexican

uplands take their fill of passing joy. The moment is sweet, peaceful,

even romantic; let us dally a moment, nor chafe our cold northern blood

for more energetic scenes. Do we ask bright glances? Here are such.

Shall we refuse to be their recipient? And moonlight, palms, and music,

and evening breeze, and convent tolling bell, and happy crowd--no, it

is not a scene from some dream of opera, but a phase of every-day life

in Mexico.

In many respects it is an atmosphere of charm and interest which the

traveller encounters in Mexican life, especially if he has recently

arrived from among the prosaic surroundings of Mexico's great northern

neighbour, the United States. Indeed, the transition from the busy

Anglo-Saxon world which hurries and bustles in strenuous life northward

from the Rio Grande, to that pastoral and primitive land of

Spanish-America is as marked as that between Britain and the Orient.

Yet it is only divided by a shallow stream--the Rio Grande. As the

traveller crosses this boundary he leaves behind him the twentieth

century, and goes back in time some hundreds of years--a change, it

maybe said _en passant_, which is not without benefit, and attractive

in some respect. The brusque and selfish American atmosphere is left

behind, the patience and courtesy of Mexico is felt. The aggressive

struggle for life gives place to the recollection that to acquire

wealth is not necessarily the only business of all men and all nations;

for the patient _peon_ lives in happiness without it. You may scorn

him, but he is one of Nature's object-lessons.

Singularly un-American--that is if United States and Canadian manners

and customs shall be considered typical of America--are the customs of

the Mexican. The influence and romance of the long years of Spanish

domination and character have been crystallised upon the Mexican soil.

The mien and character of the race created here in New Spain is marked

for all time as a distinctive type, which may possess more for the

future than the votary of Anglo-Saxon civilisation and strenuous

commercialism may yet suspect. Whatever critical comparison may be

applied to these people, the foreigner will acknowledge the pleasing

trait of courtesy they invariably show. The elegance and grace of

Spanish manners, wafted across the Atlantic in the days of ocean

chivalry, were budded to the gentle courtesy of the native; and the

brusque Anglo-Saxon is almost ashamed of his seeming or intended

brusqueness before the graceful salutation of the poorest _peon_. Hat

in hand, and with courteous or devout wish for your welfare on his

lips, the poor Mexican seems almost a reproach to the harbinger of an

outside world which seemingly grows more hard and commercial as time

goes on.

The picturesque and the simple are, of course, bought at the expense,

too often, of hygiene and comfort, and Mexico does not escape this

present law. Yet it is remarkable how soon the Briton or the American

in Mexico adapts himself to his surroundings, and grows to regard them

with affection. It is true that the government of the country is

practically a military despotism, yet the foreigner is respected, and

none interfere with him. On the contrary, he is often looked up to as a

representative of a superior State, and if he be worthy he acquires

some of the demeanour of race-_noblesse oblige_.

There are cities set on steep hill-sides, which we shall enter. Terrace

after terrace climb the rocky ribs of arid hills. Houses, interspersed

with gardens; communities backed by the soft outlines of distant

ranges, seen adown the widening valley; and walls, houses, streets,

people, landscape; all are of that distinctive colour and character of

the Mexican upland, over-arched by the cloudless azure of its sky.

Clustered upon these same steep mineral-bearing hills--and, indeed,

they are the _raison d'etre_ of the town at all in that spot--are the

great mining places, ancient and modern, which form so important a

feature of the life of the country on the Great Plateau.

Fabulous wealth of silver has been dug from these everlasting hills.

Grim and abandoned mine-mouths, far away like black dots upon the

slopes, and strange honeycombed galleries and caverns far beneath the

outcropping of the lodes, have vomited rich silver ore for centuries:

and the clang of miners' steel and the dropping candle are now, as

ever, the accompaniment of labour of these hardy _peones_. The very

church, perhaps, is redolent of mining, and was raised by some pious

delver in the bowels of the hill whereon it stands--a thank-offering

for some great luck of _open sesame_ which his saints afforded him.

But we will not linger here; Guanajuato and Zacatecas and Pachuca shall

be our theme in another chapter, and the tale of toil and silver which

they tell. For the moment the way lies down the Great Plateau, among

its intersecting ranges of hills, through the fertile valleys, which

alternate with the appalling sun-beat deserts.

The conditions of travel in this great land of Mexico--it is nearly two

thousand miles in length--are, perhaps, less arduous than in

Spanish-American countries generally. Mexico has lent itself well to

the building of railways in a longitudinal direction, upon the line of

least resistance from north-west to south-east, paralleling its general

Andine structure. Several great trunk lines thus connect the capital

City of Mexico and the southern part of the republic with the

civilisation of the United States, over this relatively easy route. Yet

the earliest railway of Mexico, that from Vera Cruz to the City of

Mexico, traverses the country in the most difficult direction,

transversely, rising from tide-water and the Atlantic littoral, and

ascending the steep escarpments of the Eastern Sierra Madre to fall

down into the lake-valley of Mexico, bringing outside civilisation to

that isolated interior world. But Mexico's singular topographical

position did not secure her from invasion. Three times the city on the

lakes has fallen to foreign invaders--the Spaniards of the Conquest,

the French of Napoleon, and the Americans of the United States. Indeed,

the flat and arid tableland stretching away for such interminable

distances to the north was formerly a more potent natural defence than

the Cordilleran heights which front on the Atlantic seas; and the axiom

of Lerdo is well brought to mind in considering the geographical

environment: "Between weakness and strength--the desert!"

[Illustration: ORIZABA, CAPPED WITH PERPETUAL SNOW: VIEW ON THE MEXICAN

RAILWAY AT CORDOVA.]

But away from the railways, and the roads where _diligencias_ ply their

lumbering and dusty course, the saddle is the only, and indeed the most

characteristic, mode of travel; and the _arriero_ and his string of

pack-mules is the common carrier, and the mountain road or dusty desert

trail the means of communication from place to place. Along these the

horseman follows, day after day, his hard but interesting road, for to

the lover of Nature and incident the saddle ever brings matter of

interest unattainable by other means of locomotion. The glorious

morning air, the unfolding panorama of landscape--even the desert and

the far-off mountain spur which he must round ere evening falls, are

sources, of exhilaration and interest. The simple people and their

quaint dwellings, where in acute struggle for life with Nature they

wrest a living from rocks and thorns--are these not subjects, even,

worthy of some passing philosophical thought? Not a hilltop in the

vicinity of any human habitations--be they but the wretched _jacales_

or wattle-huts of the poorest peasants--but is surmounted by a cross:

not a spring or well but is adorned with flowers in honour of that

patron saint whose name it bears; and not a field or hamlet or mine but

has some religious nomenclature or attribute. For the Mexicans are a

race into which the religion of the Conquistadores penetrated

indelibly, whose hold upon them time scarcely unlooses. The creeds of

the priests, moreover, are interwoven with the remains of Aztec

theistic influence, and the superstitions of both systems hold the

ignorant peasantry of Mexico in enduring thrall. Much of beauty and

pathetic quaintness there is in this strong religious sentiment, which

no thinking observer will deride; much of retrograde ignorance, which

he will lament to see.

The Great Plateau tapers away towards the south, terminating in the

Valley of Mexico, bounded by the snowy Cordillera of Anahuac. Within

this range are two great volcanic uplifts, two beautiful mountain

peaks, crowned with perpetual snow--the culminating orographical

features of the Sierras, and the highest points in Mexico. The loftiest

of these is Popocatepetl, "the smoking mountain," and its companion is

Ixtaccihuatl, the "sleeping woman," both of poetical Indian

nomenclature. These beautiful solitary uplifts rise far above the

canyons and forests at their bases: penetrate the clouds which

sometimes wreath them, terminating in a porcelain-gleaming summit of

perpetual snow. The mid-day sun flashes upon them, rendering them

visible from afar, and its declining rays paint them with that carmine

glow known to the Andine and Alpine traveller, which arrests his vision

as evening falls. So fell, indeed, the morning rays of the orb of day

upon the burnished golden breastplates of the image set on the sacred

pyramid of Teotihuacan: the sun-god, Tonatiuah, as in the shadowy

Toltec days he faced the flashing east.

Prehistoric fact and fable press hard upon us as we approach the famous

Valley of Mexico and its fine capital. This is the region where that

singular "stone age" flourished, of pyramid-building and stone-shaping

peoples. Here both geology and history have written their pages, as if

Nature and Fate had conspired together to mark epochs of time and space

in ancient temple, dead revolution, and slumbering volcano. And now

below us lies the City of Mexico. From the wooded uplands and

hill-summits--redolent of pine and exhilarating with the tonic

air--which form the rim of the valley, the panorama of the capital and

its environs lies open to the view. Plains crossed by white streaks of

far-off roads, intersecting the chequered fields of green _alfalfa_ and

yellow maize; _haciendas_ and villages embowered in luxuriant foliage;

the gleam of domes and towers, softened in the glamour of distance and

bathed by a reposeful atmosphere and mediaeval tints--such is Mexico,

this fair city of the West.

[Illustration: PINE-CLAD HILLS FORMING THE RIM OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO,

8,000 FEET ELEVATION ABOVE SEA-LEVEL.]

The City of Mexico, like most centres of human habitation in whatever

part of the world, is most beautiful when seen from afar, and in

conjunction with Nature's environment. But the old Aztec city, the

dark, romantic seat of the viceroys, the theatre of revolutionary

struggle, and the modern centre of this important Mexican civilisation,

is a really handsome and attractive city. Indeed, the capitals of many

Spanish-American republics, and their civilisation and social _regime_,

are often in the nature of a revelation to the traveller from Europe or

the United States, who has generally pictured a far more primitive

State. With its handsome institutions and public buildings, and

extensive boulevards and parks, and characteristic social, literary,

and commercial life, the City of Mexico may be described as

Americo-Parisian, and it is rapidly becoming a centre of attraction for

United States tourists, who, avid of historical and foreign colour,

descend thither in Pullman-car loads from the north. The city lies some

three miles from the shore of Lake Texcoco, which, with that of Chalco

and others, forms a group of salt- and fresh-water lagoons in the

strange Valley of Mexico. At the time of the Conquest the city stood

upon an island, connected with the mainland by the remarkable stone

causeways upon which the struggles between the Spaniards and the Aztecs

took place, during the siege of the city at the time of the Conquest.

But these lakes, after the manner of other bodies of water, generally,

in the high elevations of the American Cordilleras--Titicaca, in Peru,

to wit--are gradually perishing by evaporation, their waters

diminishing century by century. The Valley of Mexico, however, of

recent years has received an artificial hydrographic outlet in the

famous drainage canal and tunnel, which conducts the overflow into a

tributary of the Panuco river, and so to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Valley of Mexico is surrounded by volcanic hills, forming a more

recent formation of the Andine folds, of which the Sierra Madres

compose the Mexican Cordilleras. We have now to cross this, for our

faces are set towards the Pacific Ocean. We ascend and pass the Western

Sierra Madre, the _divortia aquarum_ of the Pacific watershed, leaving

the intra-montane plateau of Anahuac and the _mesa central_ behind us.

Again the climate changes as the downward journey is begun, and again

the _tierra caliente_ is approached. The culminating peaks--the

beautiful Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl--sink now below the eastern

horizon, but as we journey to the west Colima's smoking cone will rise

before the view. The descent from the highlands to the west coast is

even more rapid than to the east, and the temperate climate of the

valleys, and the bitter cold of the early morning on the uplands, soon

give place to tropical conditions. Extensive forests of oak and pine,

clothing the sides of the canyons and _barrancas_ of the high Sierra

Madre, are succeeded by the profuse vegetation of the torrid zone. Down

in the soft regions of the west, where tropical agriculture yields its

plentiful and easily-won harvests, are romantic old _haciendas_ and

villages hidden away in the folds of the landscape, such as are a

delight to the traveller and the lover of the picturesque. The "happy

valley" of Cuernavaca is reached by railway from the capital, but

beyond this the road to the seaboard is still that ancient trail which

Cortes used, which descends to Acapulco, for the railway builders have

not yet completed their works to the Pacific waters.

Away from the main route of travel lie sequestered old sugar estates,

and villages of romantic and picturesque charm, yet untouched by

speculator or capitalist. Antique piles of stone buildings are there,

redolent of that peculiar poetry of the pastoral life of Mexico in the

tropics. The old Spaniards built well; their solid masonry defies the

centuries; and their most prosaic structures were invested with an

architectural charm which the rapid money-seeker of to-day cares little

for, in his corrugated iron and temporary materialism. Near to the

arches, columns, and turrets of the old _haciendas_ the garden lies,

replete with strange fruits and flowers. The gleam of oranges and limes

comes from the tangled groves; grapes and pomegranates vie with each

other in unattended profusion. The iguana sports among the old stone

walls of the great garden, and humming-birds and butterflies hover in

the subtle atmosphere. The tropic sunset throws a peaceful glamour and

serenity over all. The cocoanut palms, with feathery grace above and

slender column upward rearing, stir not against their ethereal setting

as we watch, and the passing water in the old aqueduct scarce breaks

the tropic silence, or if, perchance, it whisper, murmurs of centuries

past, a low refrain.

But we shall journey away from the haunts of man again, and penetrate

the deep dark _barrancas_ and little-known mountain-fastnesses of the

western slope of the State of Guerrero. Here are great uninhabited and

unexplored stretches of country, rugged and wild, replete with matters

of interest, whether for hunter, sportsman, or archaeologist. Indeed,

it would be difficult to find a region offering so varied a nature of

resource and interest in any part of the world, except possibly in the

still less accessible wilds of the Amazonian slopes of the Peruvian

Andes. The botanist will find on this Pacific side of Mexico an

unstudied _flora_, and the ethnologist and the antiquarian a number of

native races, speaking strange separate languages; and the ruins of

thousands of the habitations of prehistoric man. The climate in these

rugged regions ranges from the heat of the fierce tropical sun to the

bitter cold of the mountain summits. Abundant _bosques_ or forests of

oak cover the higher regions, and the wild and broken nature of the

country renders it difficult to traverse, and calls for the adventurous

spirit of the pioneer and explorer, without which the traveller will

but meet with discomfort and danger.

Yet the true traveller finds pleasure in these matters. The impressive

grandeur of the mountain landscape, the endless forests, the profound

ravines do but serve to divert his mind from the peril and discomfort

of the trail. Here he may revel in Nature's untamed handiwork of

mountain, forest, and flood, as day after day he journeys onward in the

saddle towards the Pacific Ocean. Here are the imposing _barrancas_ of

Jalisco which he traverses, and marks how they are buried in the

profuse vegetation which presses up to the very border of the lava of

smoking Ceboruco. Thence the myrtle forests of Tepic are penetrated. On

the tropic lakes thousands of log-like alligators lie, gloomily

awaiting their prey. From the verge, which rich forests fringe, and

where brilliant water-weeds encircle the shoals, dainty pink and white

herons rise, and below the blue surface gleams the sheen of myriad

fish. Far to the southwards the fitful volcanic flames of Colima light

up the landscape at night. A day's journey more across the coastal

plains, and our reconnaissance is finished. The long-drawn surf beats

upon the shore of the vast western ocean, for we have crossed the

continent; and the sun's glowing disc dips to the blood-red

waves--sunset in the Pacific.

[Illustration: TYPICAL VILLAGE OF THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: STATE OF

COLIMA.]