OLD MEXICO.
OLD MEXICO.
I.
_BY WAY OF CUBA AND THE SPANISH MAIN._
I.
Boom! Two ruddy old castles domineering a narrow harbor entrance; on the
other side a city, gray, warm-colored, and time-stained, and the bells of
the Church of the Angels chiming for very early morning service! It was
Havana!
I began this journey to Old Mexico and her Lost Provinces by sailing
away from the foot of Wall Street, East River, on the 31st day of March,
1881. Some would have begun it, no doubt, by taking the railroad to our
Southern confines, and sailing by the steamers, of medium size, which ply
from New Orleans, Galveston, and Morgan City—all places feeling very much
the new stimulus lately given to Mexican trade. Others—and very likely
they could not do better—would have taken direct the excellent Alexandre
Line, which carries the mail from New York, calling at Havana, Progreso,
Campeachy, Frontera, and Vera Cruz.
Others, perchance, more adventurous, and fond of mixing as much hardship
as possible in their pleasure, might have crossed the frontier at
Texas, and, the new railroads being yet unfinished, been bumped and
thumped a thousand miles to the capital in the wretched _diligencias_
(stage-coaches) of the country.
I did none of these. I shall not be guilty of the egotism of insisting
that I did any better; but I had formed a little plan of infusing variety
into the trip without making it too onerous. I stood boldly upon the deck
of the luxurious steamer _Newport_, bound for Cuba only. From there I
was to take the French packet making regular trips from the ports of St.
Nazaire and Santander to Vera Cruz, and bringing much of the French and
Spanish migration; or a British steamer from Southampton, or a Spanish
one from Cadiz, might be taken in the same way. The fare by any and all
of the direct sea routes is about the same, and may be set down roughly
at $85.00. The time consumed, where all connections are expeditiously
made, should be about eleven days.
II.
There was no uncontrollable excitement on that raw 31st of March when we
took our departure. People in the great financial mart, hurrying about
their stocks and bonds, even blockaded us in an unthinking way as we came
down to the steamer. It might have been simply a case of going to Europe,
or anything else quite usual and of little import. It was, instead, a
case of going to a land remote far beyond its distance in miles; shrouded
in an atmosphere of mystery and danger; little travelled or sought for;
the very antipodes of our own, though adjoining it; venerable with age,
though a part of a new world; and said to have been suddenly awakened
from slumber by the first touches of a phenomenal new development.
There are those of us whose conception of Mexico has been composed
principally of the cuts in our early school geography, and the brief
telegrams in the morning papers announcing new revolutions. We rest
satisfied with this kind of concept about many another part of the
globe as well till the necessity arrives for going there or otherwise
clearing it up. I saw, I think, a snow volcano, and a string of donkeys,
conducted by a broad-brim hatted peasant across a cactus-covered plain.
I heard dimly isolated pistol-shots fired by brigands, and high-sounding
_pronunciamentos_ and cruel fusillades accompanying the overthrow from
the Presidency of General this by General that, who would be served
in the same way by General somebody else to-morrow. To this should be
added some reminiscence of actions in the Mexican War, and notably the
portraits of General Scott and bluff old Zachary Taylor.
To this, again, I would add fancies of buried cities in Central America,
and of Aztec antiquity, and the valor and astuteness of Hernando Cortez
and his cavaliers, remaining from Prescott’s history of the Conquest. One
of the most captivating of volumes, this had seemed almost mythical in
its remoteness; and as to the idea of actually verifying its scenes in
person, it was beyond the wildest imagination.
But now all at once this uncertain territory had become real. The
railroad had penetrated it, and made it accessible to the average private
citizen. Not that it could yet be reached by railway, for the first
international line is still incomplete, though its termination is near
at hand; but a multitude of lines, undertaken by American capital and
enterprise, and aided by a Government of liberal ideas, were traced over
every part of the land, and some of them in progress. The locomotive
screamed along-side the troops of laden donkeys and in sight of the snow
volcanoes. Even the brigands were said to have been dislodged from their
fastnesses, the revolutions had ceased, and a reign of peace and security
begun.
Momentous rumors from these new enterprises were frequent in the
newspapers, and predictions indulged in of the great increase of trade
and population to result to Mexico by them. General Grant, to whose
personal influence much of the turning of public attention in this
unwonted direction, after his first visit, should certainly be ascribed,
had taken the presidency of one of them. Their stocks and bonds were
being prepared in bank-parlors, but as yet there was no “boom,” little
that was overt.
III.
I did not quite know, when standing on the deck of the departing steamer,
that I was to return to this dense New York, with its tall towers and
mansards and fairy-like bridge, from the other side of the world. This
journey lengthened out into a long, desultory ramble, beginning with
Cuba, and, after Mexico, concluding with the most remote, novel, and
characteristic of our own possessions on the Pacific slope. There is
unity of subject, and even a certain pathos, in the recollection that
this latter was once Mexican territory also. Its most obvious basis of
life is still Spanish, and it may be sentimentally considered a kind of
Alsace-Lorraine—a part of the sister republic when it was well-nigh as
large and powerful as ourselves.
[Illustration: MEXICO SHOWING PRESENT & OLD FRONTIER]
It was naturally cold on the 31st day of March, and blustering weather
followed us down the coast as far as it dared. Then I awoke one morning
early, at the warm gleam of summer in the yellow lattices of my cabin
window, and, looking out, saw that we were voyaging, on an even keel, on
the placid blue sea of the tropics. Fragrant odors were wafted over to us
from Florida, though we did not see the land. The Pan of Matanzas came in
sight, and we studied the long, bold outline of the island of Cuba. It
was the Spanish Main. It was the perfection of weather for piracy. If the
“long, low, suspicious-looking craft, with raking masts,” which used to
steal out from sheltered covers to plunder rich galleons, had many such
days for their occupation, it was, so far at least, an enviable one.
We had on board a Cuban who had married a Connecticut wife, and lived so
long in a Connecticut village that he had a kind of Connecticut accent
himself, and he was taking his wife to see his family, where, no doubt,
much astonishment awaited her.
The captain, a merry and entertaining soul, had promised us, for our
last day’s dinner, a baked ice-cream. He endeavored to get up bets on
the improbability of his being able to accomplish it; but there, sure
enough, it was, and doubters were put to scorn. There was a form of
ice-cream, frozen hard and firm, and a crust over it, brown and smoking—a
dish, as it were, typical of our situation, as a hardy Northern element
in the embrace of the tropics. Not to continue the mystery of it, and as
an earnest that there shall be no “tales of a traveller” in this record
which are not strictly true, let it be explained that the ice had been
covered with a light froth of white of egg, which was rapidly browned
and scorched at the cook’s galley before the interior had time to be
dissolved.
IV.
And so, as I say, two ruddy stone castles, full of green old bronze
guns (we found that out afterward), looking down upon a narrow
harbor-entrance; and it was Havana!
It was the morning of the 5th of April on which we entered it. We steamed
up the strait to where it widens out into a basin, made fast to a buoy,
and had our first glimpse of cocoa-palms, growing, unfortunately, around
a cluster of coaling-sheds. Some harbor boats took us ashore. We landed
at broad stone steps pervaded by smells, passed into the Custom-house
(which had been an old convent), and out of it into paved lanes full
of donkeys, negroes, soldiers, sellers of fruits and lottery-tickets,
engaged in transactions in a debased fractional currency. The money of
the debt-ridden island is that of our “shin-plaster” war period, of
unhappy memory. A couple of boiled eggs in a common restaurant cost forty
cents; a ride in a horse-car, thirty-five. The wages of a minor clerk at
the same time were but $30 or $40 a month. How does he make ends meet and
provide for his future? He buys regularly a certain amount of hope in the
Government lottery. “A demoralizing system indeed!” I said, as I frowned
over the wares of a dealer who had lost a leg in the insurrection. I
think it was No. 11,014 I bought, however, in a grand extra drawing, the
first prize of which was to be a million, in paper. I trust the gentle
reader will feel that I repented when I heard the result, some months
after, in Mexico, and that I should have tried just as hard to repent had
I won.
The Havanese were exercised just then over the discovery of great frauds
in their Marine Department. Forty million dollars had been stolen, by
collusion between contractors and the commissariat, since the outbreak
of the rebellion in 1868. The Morro Castle was full of prisoners of
distinction—officers, marquises, and counts, of the sugar aristocracy
of the island, and Old Spain—awaiting their trial by court-martial. The
principal operator, one Antonio Gassol, had already been sentenced to two
years’ confinement and the restitution of a million of his ill-gotten
gains.
The talk of not a few intelligent persons was, that the ten years’
insurrection had been purposely kept alive by rings of contractors
for purposes of spoliation, and by ambition for military advancement.
Dulce, they said—going through the list of Captains-General—had married
a Cuban wife, and was secretly a traitor; De Rodas, when asked for
re-enforcements at a certain place, withdrew a portion of the troops
already there; Pieltan was occupied in intriguing for the republican
cause in Spain, and the easy-going Concha for the cause of King Alfonso.
Finally, Martinez Campos and Jovellar were sent out, and, yielding to the
demand of the universal weariness, by a little display of vigor, the one
in the cabinet, the other in the field, made an end of the languishing
struggle.
This may have been, however, merely the story of the discontented, which
should be taken with a grain of salt. It is true, on the one hand, that
the area of the island is not great, and the despatch of forces from
Spain easy; the insurgents never held a town, and received no aid worth
mentioning from without. But, on the other hand, there were no railroads
of consequence, the ordinary roads were wretched, and there was the wild
_manigua_, as it is called, half forest, half swamp, with which a good
part of the island has abounded from the date of Christopher Columbus
down. It was in the _manigua_ that the insurgents found refuge from
pursuit.
V.
It so happened that the _Ville de Brest_ was delayed in her coming, and I
had six or seven days of leisure in the island. I employed part of it in
a run down to Matanzas, the second city. I saw on the way the _manigua_,
which is sentimentally pretty, from a distance, with masses of laurel,
cypress, and graceful palms; but within it is a thicket of intertwisted
cactus, thorns, and creepers, through which a way must be opened with the
_machete_, a formidable half knife, half cleaver, carried by the peasants
for general uses on the plantations, and which served also as their
weapon in the strife.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF MEXICO.]
There was an International Exhibition in progress at Matanzas, easily
rivalled by almost any American county fair. The railway ride of three
hours and a half by a ram-shackle train, run by a Chinese engineer,
was hot and dusty, but how well repaid by the first deep draughts of
satisfaction in understanding at last the heart of a tropical country!
There was the thatched cabin, shaded by the broad-leafed banana. It
was like “Paul and Virginia.” Where was the faithful negro Domingo?
The hedges were of cactus and dwarf pine-apple. There were groves of
cocoa-nuts like apple-orchards with us, and unknown fruits too numerous
to mention. It was as if each peasant proprietor had cultivated a
gigantic conservatory, and were indulging himself in the luxuries of life
in consideration of foregoing its necessities.
Matanzas was dull, even with its Exposition, a pretty plaza, and the
memory of a locally immortal poet, Milanes, of whom a tablet in a wall
testified that he was born and died in a certain house. I looked into
his works at a book-stall. He wrote on “Tears,” “The Sea,” “Spring and
Love,” “The Fall of the Leaves,” “To Lola,” and “A Coquette.” “Your
mother little thought, when she held you an infant in her arms,” he
says, in substance, to the coquette, “of what wiles and perfidies you
would be capable. Your beauteous aspect will in time fade away, and what
remorseful memories will you not then have to look back upon!”
With this dip into the poetic inspiration of the heart of the island of
Cuba let me take the train back to town, having made a beginning of the
discovery that a glib rhyming talent—and facility in speech-making as
well—is common among the Spanish-Americans.
I visited a sugar plantation, where the negro slaves, swarming out of a
great stone barracks—the men in ragged coffee-sacks, the women in bright
calicoes—were as wild and uncouth as if just from the Congo. Next I went
to the bathing suburb of Chorrera, where there is a battered old fort
that has done service against the pirates, and where the American game of
base-ball has been acclimated.
VI.
Havana was gay with parks, opera-houses, clubs, and military music.
Awnings were stretched completely across the two narrow streets of
principal shops. Bright tinting of the modern walls contrasted with a
gray old rococo architecture. An interior court of my hotel was colored
of so pure an azure that it was puzzling at the first glance to say where
the sky began and the wall ended. The more important mansions were of
a size and stateliness within which is probably nowhere surpassed, but
neither in them nor the shabby little attempt at a gallery were there any
pictures worthy of the name.
“You will find all that—the treasures of art—in Mexico,” the Havanese
say. “Yes indeed! that is the place for them.”
They speak with great respect of Mexico, with which, perhaps, they
have no very intimate personal acquaintance. Up to the independence
of the latter, in 1821, it was the richest and greatest of all the
Spanish possessions; and Cuba, made more important in its turn by this
independence, was but a stopping-place on the way to it.
It is worth while to have seen Havana and Cuba as a preliminary to
Mexico. The Spanish tradition pervading both is the same, with local
modifications. It was here, too, that Hernando Cortez prepared his
immortal expedition of discovery and conquest. Since I am preparing my
own, to follow over exactly the same course, why should I repine that the
_Ville de Brest_ is a day or two longer in coming?
He was a wild young fellow in the island in early days, this Cortez,
his chroniclers say, and gave little promise of the great qualities
he developed in the enterprise which steadied him. The shilly-shally
Velasquez would have stopped the sailing of his expedition and thrown
him into prison, but he dropped down the harbor before his preparations
were half completed and finished them elsewhere. He put to sea at last,
with five hundred and fifty men, in nine small vessels, to undertake
the conquest of an empire teeming with millions. The largest of his
vessels was of a hundred tons, and some were mere open boats. In these
he conveyed, too, sixteen horses, which cost him, it is said of them,
“inexpressibly dear.”
We make a boast of our hardihood sometimes, yet grumble at sea-sickness,
delays, the ordinary mischances of the traveller. But think of it! To set
out in such a fashion, without steam, without charts, subject to every
bodily ill for which modern science has found a remedy, and carrying
your horses, worth well-nigh their weight in gold, to proceed against an
unknown empire! Why, we do not know the first principles of boldness!
VII.
At last, on the 11th of April, the _Ville de Brest_ came in, and went
out again on the same day. She was a steady-going, _bourgeois_-looking
craft, as compared with the elegant American steamer, and showed traces
of hard knocks in her long, plodding journey of twenty days to this
point. She treated us well enough, however, and presented the novelty of
surroundings for which I had come aboard. There was a little, gold-laced
captain, and the crew wore white canvas hats and suits of two shades of
blue cotton, as if equipped for some charming nautical opera. I believe I
was the only English-speaking passenger; and as it has never been known
to occur to a foreigner to practise his English, it was an excellent
opportunity for practising the languages likely to be needed in the new
country.
There was a young Frenchman who had been back to his own country to marry
a wife, and brought her with him. There was a French engineer coming to
report for principals in Paris on Mexican mines; an agent of a scheme
for the establishment of a national bank. A young Italian of Novara, who
had “Student” printed on his visiting-card, had secured an engagement as
clerk in the capital for three years. An elderly Spaniard was coming over
to look into the subject of forgotten heritages; another had obtained a
position in the mines at Guanajuato. There were commercial men, and a
well-to-do Mexican family, returning from their travels, with a son who
had studied law at a Spanish university.
It has been proposed to call this body of water—made up of the Caribbean
Sea and the Gulf of Mexico—the Columbian Sea, in compliment to
sadly-neglected Columbus; and it seems a good idea, but it will hardly
now be carried out. My predecessors have seen many an interesting sight
on this tropical old Spanish Main, the source, too, of that greatest of
natural mysteries, the Gulf Stream. But these must have been in times
long gone by. In the day of steam, with the swift prow always in motion,
the ocean is vacant. There is no catching of sharks and dolphins, hardly
even a covey of flying-fish. Those things were for the long, lazy periods
of calm, when the denizens of the deep gathered curiously around the
craft half quiescent among them.
One of my predecessors in 1839—Madame Calderon de la Barca, whose book
on Mexico remains full of interest still—was twenty-five days making
the voyage from Havana to Vera Cruz. She saw, too, as she approached,
the snow-clad peaks of Orizaba and the Cofre of Perote, thirty leagues
inland. We saw nothing of these. The sky was of an opaque gray above
low sand-hills, on which a white surf was tumbling. We made our transit
in three days, including some stoppage by a “norther.” The norther is
of peculiar moment to the Mexican harbors of the eastern coast; they
are little more than open roadsteads, and when it blows they cannot be
entered.
II.
_VERA CRUZ._
I.
The sea of the subsiding “norther” was still running heavily toward Vera
Cruz, as if it would overwhelm it. It was a little Venice that we saw
when we came to it. A half-mile or so of buildings, compact and solid,
with blackened old rococo domes and steeples; yellow for the most part,
scarlet, pink, green, and blue, in patches; a stone landing-quay, and a
long, light iron pier projecting from it. At the end of the pier from a
crane hung an iron hook, and to this the imagination instantly hooked on.
It was the termination of the English railway to the capital. By that
road, with all possible expedition, we should be borne up out of the
miasmatic lands of the coast—the over-luxuriant _Tierra Caliente_—to the
wonders of the interior.
To the left a reddish castellated fort. No suburbs—not a sign of
them—only long, dreary stretches of sand. Very far down on the sand, with
the sea breaking white over her, was the English steamer _Chrysolite_,
dragged from her moorings by the gale and wrecked. We came in at evening,
and joined ourselves to a little cluster of steamers and sailing-vessels
made fast to buoys under the lee of a coral reef, on which stands the
disreputable old castle of San Juan d’Ulloa. It is whitewashed in
part, and partly as blackened by time and powder as the reef itself.
A revolving lantern moved round on its summit. It was told to the
confiding that the Government kept prisoners there to turn it; and they
were instructed to look for their dark, flitting forms and hear their
lugubrious cries. We heard all night, at any rate, the creaking of the
pumps of an American bark along-side, which had come disabled into port,
with a freight of logs from Alvarado, and could barely keep afloat.
[Illustration: DOMES OF VERA CRUZ.]
It so happened that it was the anniversary of the arrival of Cortez, in
the year 1519. He had arrived on the evening of Thursday of Holy Week,
and so had I. It was on the morning of Good Friday that I went ashore.
We were taken off in small boats, and our ship unloaded by lighters, for
there is not one of these Mexican harbors where a ship can lie up to a
wharf in safety.
More than the usual embarrassments await the ordinary traveller on the
quay at Vera Cruz, by so much as he is apt to know less of Spanish than
of French—in which most of the dearly-bought early foreign experience
is acquired—and nobody will tell him the truth. Let it be fixed in mind
that but one train a day starts for the capital, and this at eleven at
night. The designing bystanders make you take your baggage to a hotel,
pretending that no other course is possible. Take it, instead, to the
depot at once and get rid of it, and then see the town.
For the town is by all means to be seen. One had not expected much of a
place the reputed home of pestilence, and I shall not advise a lengthened
stay; but, from the point of view of the picturesque, it has some
pleasant surprises.
Founded by the Count de Monterey in the early part of the seventeenth
century—for it is not quite the site of the original Vera Cruz of Cortez,
which was above—it has now attained a population of about seventeen
thousand. The principal shops had a large, well-furnished aspect,
especially those in groceries and heavy hardware. The Custom-house
square was piled to repletion with bales of cotton, railroad iron, and
miscellaneous goods awaiting transit.
I walked, the very first thing, into a large, cool public library, which
had once been a convent. It was not much of a public library, the books
being few, and to a certain extent bound in vellum, as if they too had
belonged to the convent; but it was public, and what one did not expect.
The churches were of a well-proportioned, solid, grandiose, rococo
architecture, and had charming bells. The principal one, in a little
shaded plaza, had its dome encrusted with colored china tiles, which
shone in the sun—a feature waiting in plenty farther on. They were draped
in black, and crowded with worshippers to-day, and abounded in strange
figures of bleeding Christs, with other evidences of a florid form of
devotion.
Grass grew in joints of the pavement in the minor streets, as I had seen
it, for instance, in some such place as Mantua. Long water-spouts project
from the tops of the flat-roofed white and yellow houses, and upon these
sit the solemn zopilotes. All the world knows that the street-cleaning
of Vera Cruz is conducted by the ravens, or buzzards; but all the world
does not know with what a dignity these large zopilotes, of a glossy
blackness, often pose themselves immovably on the eaves against the deep
blue sky. They might be carved there for ornament. Many a street-cleaning
department is at least less sculpturesque, and perhaps less efficient.
The principal thoroughfare, called of the Independence, leads to a short,
concrete-covered promenade, bordered with benches and a double row of
cocoanut-palms, and this to the open country. It is an early discovery
that the Mexican is patriotic. He is fond of naming his streets and
squares after his military achievements, and particularly the Cinco de
Mayo (the Fifth of May). We shall hear plenty more of it, this Cinco de
Mayo. It was won at Puebla over the French, in 1862. He attaches also to
cities the names of his heroes. Thus Vera Cruz itself is Vera Cruz of
Llave, a general and governor; Oaxaca, Oaxaca of Juarez, the sagacious
President; and Puebla, Puebla of Zaragoza, its commandant on the 5th of
May above-named.
There were notices of a bull-fight posted on the dead walls. Nearly all
typical notes are struck at once—plaza, Renaissance churches, patriotism,
bull-fight, and tropical vegetation. I took a tram-car of a peculiar,
wide, open pattern (made, however, in New York) out to the open fields,
and saw a dancing-place, a ball-ground, and the dark, heavily walled-in
cemetery.
The road to this latter should not be grass-grown, if half the tales
of dread told abroad be true. And yet there are apologists even for
the yellow-fever, or rather those who say that its ravages are greatly
magnified.
I fell in with the Yankee captain of the disabled bark which had lain
by us during the night. He was sitting on a low stone post at a street
corner, and was half disconsolate, half desperate, by turns. He could
find no dry-dock in which to lie up for repairs; and he could get no
steam-pump, by the aid of which he might have kept on his way. He was
condemned to see his venture sold for a song, for want of means to save
it.
If little, as I say, was expected from the land at this place, a good
deal, on the other hand, was expected from the water, at an ancient
port, the New York of Mexico, receiving nine-tenths of the commerce of
a nation of ten million people. But not a year passes without a number
of disasters, which has led the underwriters to make their risks to Vera
Cruz about five times higher than to most other ports. The aggregate of
these losses for a brief time would pay the cost of works needed to make
the inhospitable roadstead a harbor.
A few rudimentary preparations are absolutely necessary before Mexico can
enter upon the expected period of prosperity, and the creation of harbors
in some degree commensurate with the new transportation facilities is one
of them. A breakwater plan will, no doubt, have to be adopted like that
so much in use on our great lakes and the Channel ports of Europe. It was
of interest to hear, during my stay in the country, that this need had
impressed itself upon the authorities at Vera Cruz and Tampico, and that
they had taken the step of counselling on what was best to be done with
the American engineer, Captain Eads, who was engaged in his unique scheme
of a ship railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
II.
I had the pleasure of spending the evening, pending the departure of
the train, in a large, cool, roomy house, with the American consul. He
had been a resident for twelve years, and had brought up a family of
daughters here. It did not seem, at first sight, an attractive place in
which to bring up a family; but they saw a good deal of company from the
ships in port, took an occasional run to the capital, or a vacation at
Jalapa or Cordova, above the danger-line, and seemed well content.
The consul was himself a physician, and had much to say on the subject of
the yellow-fever. He insisted that it was epidemic, but not contagious.
The local authorities put afflicted patients in their hospitals
along-side others suffering from ordinary sickness, and these latter do
not take it.
“Great damage,” he said, “is done to the commercial interests of both
countries by the annoying restrictions of quarantine arising from this
cause. There is no more need of quarantine against yellow-fever than
against common fever and ague, since it cannot be transmitted.”
He quoted eminent medical authority at New Orleans as sharing his views.
From which it would seem that the subject is worth careful looking
into from official sources, in order that, if there be a mere popular
delusion, it may be dispelled. As I write the Mexican Government has just
granted authority to the steamer line which carries the mail into New
Orleans to reduce the number of its trips to one each month during the
quarantine, increase its freight and passenger rates fifty per cent.,
and, if the traffic does not pay even under the increase, to abandon it
entirely.
The consul, in conclusion, had known but one countryman of ours to die of
it during his stay, and only a few to be attacked. I may say, however,
that the consul succeeding this one—who has since gone away—arrived fresh
from Minnesota, and died at his post within a week.
Another interesting subject of talk with the consul was the tariff laws
and the usages of the port of entry, naturally of leading importance
here. The tariff system, based on an original law of 1872, has been
greatly tampered with since, and is in a confused state; so that, with
the best intentions, importers are apt to be visited with double duties,
fines, detentions of goods, and law-suits. There are some three hundred
and seventy-eight articles in the specified list. New articles are
charged for after the manner of those which they resemble. Thus, when
the article of celluloid was first introduced there was doubt whether
it ought to be taxed twenty-nine cents a kilogram as bone, or $2.20 a
kilogram as ivory, and the decision was finally in favor of the latter.
The merchant must use the names employed in the country. Thus, our
“muslin” should be merely “shirting” or “calico;” while what is
understood here by muslin is really lawn, taxed twice as much. The least
variation in a label or form of package is visited with penalties.
Storage in the warehouses, too, is estimated, not by the space occupied,
but by the package, which is a hardship. A case is told of where ordinary
_argenté_ hooks-and-eyes, which should pay nineteen cents a kilogram,
were charged for as “plated silver,” which pays $1.15, and then a double
duty imposed for “false declaration,” making the total $2.30 a kilogram.
As a rule, a “venture” is not a success. The laws, framed with excessive
severity against contrabandists, whom they often fail to reach, afflict
well-meaning persons. They make the consignee of goods subject to all
the penalties; and many of these latter are afraid to touch, without
the most ample guarantees, consignments of goods which they have not
specifically ordered. The Germans succeed best in this traffic, through
their painstaking attention to the local requirements.
“I will tell you a story,” said the consul, “of an unlucky fellow who
came here from England with a small venture of fancy goods, part free
of duty. The whole cost him originally $1200; and he had consulted the
Mexican consul at Liverpool, and thought he knew what he was about. When
he got through the Custom-house his total charges and fines had amounted
to $2850. He sold his stock for $2000, and borrowed money to pay the
difference and get out of the country.”
III.
_UP THE LONG MOUNTAIN SLOPE._
I.
There is but one train a day, each way, on the English railway, and
the journey occupies twenty hours. The road is a great piece of
engineering, and has been described more than anything else in Mexico.
Photographs—almost the only good ones to be had in the country—are
plentiful, displaying its notable points. It climbs seven thousand six
hundred feet to the table-land in a distance of about two hundred miles,
the whole way to the capital being about two hundred and sixty. It has
the transporting of the greater amount of construction material brought
into the country for the new roads, and has lately been quite profitable.
A first-class fare is $16; a second-class, $12.50; and baggage is charged
for, as on the Continent of Europe.
Behold us at last at the station, at eleven o’clock at night, ready to
climb to the capital—but how unlike our great predecessor, Cortez—by
railway. No, indeed; poor hero! he had to linger at the coast for months
before beginning his long and painful march, with a battle at every step.
Nor was it by the same route. He went in by Tlaxcala, Cholula, Puebla,
and so over between the great snow-peaks of Popocatepetl and Ixtacihuatl
(the White Woman), down to the gleaming lakes and palaces of ancient
Tenochtitlan. In this course he was followed by General Scott in his
turn. The old diligence road—of their adventures on which my predecessors
have written so much—continued practically the same route, going first by
National Bridge and beautiful Jalapa.
[Illustration: MAP OF ENGLISH RAILROAD FROM VERA CRUZ TO MEXICO.]
I say beautiful Jalapa—although I have not been there myself—because
all testimonies point with such a unanimity to the charms of soil and
climate, and the beauty of the feminine type, in what is considered a
peculiarly favored spot, that I think there can be no doubt about it.
There were no sleeping-cars; but the carriages, divided into compartments
for eight, and comfortably padded (on the European plan), filled their
place very well. The passengers in the third-class cars had already
begun the night with a boisterous singing and playing of harmonicas.
To-morrow was the _Sabado de Gloria_ (or Holy Saturday), an occasion of
merry-making, and they were taking an earnest of it. A car containing
half a company of dusky Indian soldiers, who act as an escort, was
coupled on to the train.
The associates in the compartment in which I established myself were the
French engineer sent out to report for principals in Paris on Mexican
mines, and the young Frenchman bringing back a bride from his own
country. All at once there entered it so lawless and bizarre-looking
a figure that the French engineer sent out to report on mines to his
principals in Paris thought it prudent to descend hastily and seek
quarters elsewhere. The rest of us, though remaining, were, perhaps,
in no small trepidation. It was the first view at close quarters of a
dashing type of Mexican costume and aspect which is peculiarly national.
Our new friend was dressed in a short black jacket, under which showed
a navy revolver, in a sash; tight pantaloons, adorned up and down with
rows of silver coins; a great felt sombrero, bordered and encircled with
silver braid; and a red handkerchief knotted around his neck. A person
in such a hat seemed capable of anything. And I had forgotten to mention
silver spurs, weighing a pound or two each, upon boots with exaggerated
high and narrow heels. This last, by-the-way, is a peculiarity of all
boots and shoes in the market, which aim thus, it would seem, to continue
the old Castilian tradition of a high instep.
Would it be his plan to overawe us with his huge revolver, alone?
Or would he, at a preconcerted signal, be joined by confederates from the
third-class car or a way-station, who would assist him to slaughter us?
The traveller is rare who arrives in Mexico for the first time without a
head full of stories of violence. The numerous revolutions, the confused
intelligence which reaches us from the country, give a color to anything
of the kind; and the stories retain their hold for a time even in the
most frequented precincts.
We got under way. The new arrival, instead of devouring us, proved the
most amiable of persons, and we were soon upon excellent terms with him.
He was a wealthy young hacendado, or planter, returning to estates of
his, on which he said six hundred hands were employed. He offered cigars,
gave us details in answer to our eager curiosity about his novel dress;
and we had shortly even tried on—bride and all—the formidable sombrero,
and learned that the price of such an one in the market is from $20 to
$30. The silver-bound sombrero, and ornaments of coins, are a favorite
kind of Mexican extravagance even among the lower classes, which is
perhaps accounted for by the lack of proper places of deposit for savings
in other forms.
II.
It was moonlight. Sleep on such a night was out of the question. Not
a foot of the scenery ought to be lost. But the padded coach was
comfortable; the fatigues of the day had been severe. The lively
conversation became fitful, then lapsed into long silences. The events
of that first night, half dozing, half waking, sometimes even alighting
at the little stations, seem wholly like a dream—the waking part, if
possible, stranger than the other.
Palms and bananas and dense coffee shrubbery, with hamlets of thatched
cottages sleeping peacefully among them; a glimpse of a cataract; an
Indian mother singing to her baby; perfumes coming in at the window;
statuesque, silent men in blankets, and Moorish-looking women, offering
fruits; stations from the outer doors of which, when reached, no town was
visible, but only an immense darkness; persons taking coffee in lighted
interiors; the dusky soldiers laughing loud in their compartment; a few
startling words of English, sometimes with a Southern or even Hibernian
accent, spoken by imported employés of the line meeting to exchange
a comment, generally unfavorable, on their situation—these are the
impressions that stamp themselves upon the memory.
As soon as the first gray of daylight appears it seems incumbent on us to
begin to admire the country. We are not far past Cordoba, the centre of
its most important coffee-growing interest.
“_Pouf!_” says our friend, the hacendado, with an air of disdain.
He will not take the trouble to look out of the window. He expects things
very much better. We have, in fact, passed remarkable scenes in the
night, but the best is still before us, and presently begins.
At a little station called Fortin we commence to wind along the side of
one of the vast sudden gorges which impede travel in the country, the
_barranca_ of Metlac. There are horseshoe curves which almost permit the
traditional feat in which the brakeman of the rear car is said to light
his pipe at the locomotive. We pass tunnels and trestle bridges, see our
route above and below us on the hills in such varied ways that it is
hardly possible to understand that these are not so many different roads
instead of the same. There is a point above Maltrata, distant but two and
a half miles in a direct line, which must be reached by twenty miles of
zigzag.
The history of this road, from the political point of view, presents
hardly fewer obstacles and vicissitudes than those opposed by nature
to its engineers. It has passed, in its time, under the rule of forty
different presidencies, and lost and recovered its charter in the
revolutions. Though of so moderate length it required over thirty years
and $30,000,000 to build it.
The passengers ran out at the small stations for flowers, with which we
adorned ourselves. So, too, wreaths were hung about the neck of Cortez’s
horse in his progress, and a chaplet of roses upon his helmet. We gave
the new bride heliotrope, roses, jasmine, and the splendid large scarlet
flower—the tulipan—which may pass for the type of tropical beauty.
The sun came up and lighted Orizaba, rising 17,375 feet beside us to
the right, making it first rosy-red, then golden. The peak is a perfect
sugar-loaf in form, with nothing splintered and savage about it, as in
Switzerland. It seems almost too tame at first—a sort of drawing-master’s
mountain—and, above the tropical landscape, is like snow in sherbet.
The city of Orizaba is an important small place, the scene of a dashing
surprise of the Mexicans by the French, at the hill of El Borrego. It
has charming torrents, which furnish water-power for cotton and paper
mills. One of these torrents, conveyed in an arched aqueduct, turns the
machinery of the _ingenio_, or sugar plantation, of Jalapilla, once a
country residence of Maximilian.
A delegation of relatives had come down the night before to await our
young couple here. What embracing and chattering! A Mexican embrace has
a character of its own. The parties fall upon each other’s necks, as we
are accustomed to see done on the stage. It is given, too, between mere
acquaintances, almost as commonly as shaking hands.
A vivacious sister-in-law aimed to give the new-comer an idea of what
was before her in her future home. “Such flowers as I have in the
court-yard!” she said, raising her eyes, with an expressive gesture;
“such oranges, camellias, azaleas! Ah yes, indeed, I believe it well.”
“And Jack?” inquired the husband, addressed as Prosper; “how always goes
poor Jack?”
“Ah! he is dead,” replied the vivacious sister-in-law. “I regret to tell
you, but so it is.”
It appeared that Jack was a favorite monkey, and for a moment his
untimely fate cast a certain gloom over the company.
III.
From the heights where we were little villages, with squares of
cultivated fields around them, were seen at vast distances below, with
the effect of those miniature topographical preparations in relief
displayed at international exhibitions.
It greatly simplifies Mexico to remember that, in profile, it is a
long, continuous mountain-slope, rising from the Atlantic to a central
table-land, and falling, though more gradually, on the other side to the
Pacific. Along the ascents, as well as at the top, are some benches,
or level breathing-places. These table-lands are the chief seats of
population, and they are utilized as much as possible for the lines of
the north and south railways.
[Illustration: TRANSCONTINENTAL PROFILE OF MEXICO.]
This steep formation accounts for absence of navigable streams and for
the existence of climates verging from tropical to temperate, nearly
side by side. The sharpness of contrasts in climate is scarcely to be
appreciated by the hasty voyager. The really tropical vegetation is
succeeded by a kind which to the eye of the American of the North is
quite as exotic. Banana and cocoa-nut are followed by a hardy kind of
fan-palm; by nopal, or prickly-pear, as large as the apple-tree with us;
by the tall, straight organ-cactus, in use for hedges; and the remarkable
maguey, or century-plant.
What would not some of our American conservatories or a certain
well-known New York club give for some of these splendid specimens! The
spiky maguey, like a sheaf of sword-blades, grows eight and ten feet
high. It is the typical production of the central table-land. Its sap
furnishes in extraordinary quantities the beverage called _pulque_—the
wine of the country. From it, in addition, are made thatch, fuel, rope,
paper, and even stuffs for wearing apparel.
Our third-class passengers celebrated their _Sabado de Gloria_ with
great spirit, by shouting, and firing pistols and Chinese crackers from
the car windows. Teams of mules, with their load, whatever it might be,
gayly adorned, showed that it was being equally observed in the country.
It is a day devoted by custom to the particular abasement of Judas, who
is treated as a kind of Guy Fawkes and dishonored in effigy. Venders
parade the streets with grotesque images of him, and children at this
time estimate their fortune in the number of Judases they possess, just
as at the season of All-Souls it is in cakes, gingerbread, and even
more substantial viands, fashioned into death’s-heads, cross-bones, and
coffins.
At Apizaco, the junction of a branch-road to Puebla, we met a merry
excursion, decorated with rosettes and streamers. It had two mammoth
Judases, stuffed with fire-works, one on the locomotive, the other on a
baggage-car. The former was blown up, as a kind of compliment to us by
way of exchange of ceremonies with our own train, amid hilarious uproar.
We had now entered upon the central table-land of Mexico. Long,
dotted, perspective lines of maize and maguey stretched to distant
volcanic-looking hills. A few laborers in white cotton were ploughing
with wooden ploughs, after the pattern of the ancient Egyptians. At the
stations squads of a mounted rural police, in buff leather uniforms and
crimson sashes, which give them a certain resemblance to Cromwell’s
troopers, salute the train.
The sparse towns consist of a nucleus of excellently built old churches
amid an environment of mud-colored habitations. They are in crying need
of whitewash. Will they ever get it?
[Illustration: A RAILWAY JUDAS.]
The face of the country was not the verdant paradise that may have
been expected, but parched and brown. We had come at the end of the
rainy season. Small columns of dust, whirling like water-spouts, were a
constant feature of the landscape. A stage-coach going along a distant
road was marked by its own dust, as a locomotive by its smoke.
Isolated houses there were none, with the exception of (at long
intervals) some gloomy, square, fort-like hacienda, with straw-stacks and
flocks and herds near it. Indian peasants offered for sale, all along
the way, cakes spiced with green and red peppers. The village of Apam is
the centre of the Bordelais of the _pulque_ industry. The new-comer here
usually makes his first trial of that beverage, milk-like in aspect, but
somewhat viscid and sour to the taste, with heady properties. It does not
commend itself to favor on a first acquaintance. Wry and contemptuous
grimaces are made over it, but in time, as occurred in my own case, it
may become very palatable, as it is said to be healthful. It is poured
into little earthen pitchers from bags of whole sheep-skins, with
the wool-side in, like the wine-skins of the East and “Don Quixote.”
These bags, resembling dressed pigs, lie about on the ground or the
freight-car, with their legs dumbly kicking up in the air, in many a
grotesque attitude.
But one glimpse of real Aztec antiquity along the way, and that at San
Juan Teotihuacan, thirty miles from the capital. The deceptive shapes
of the hills, which assume symmetrical forms, had frequently produced a
throb of half self-delusion, but here are two genuine pagan teocallis,
pyramids dedicated to the sun and moon, and a great area covered with
broken fragments and vestiges of tombs. It is thought to have been old
and ruined even in the time of the Aztecs. Children offer at the train
_caritas_, as they call them (“little faces”), and other fragments of
earthen-ware, together with occasional pots and idols of large size,
which they represent as having been dug up out of the soil. They
have certainly been buried in the soil; but later, finding that the
manufacture of spurious antiquities is a thriving industry, one takes
leave to question for what length of time.
And yet, what can it matter? These ancient-seeming jars, with their
symbols and images of the war-god and what not upon them, are at least
unique and historically correct. One does well to bring home what he can
get, for default of better, and not ask too many questions.
San Juan is a place that one mentally makes a note of as to be returned
to; and I spent some pleasant days there later, poking among the
potsherds of the past, and picking up ordinary _caritas_ and bits of
flint weapons, for myself.
IV.
But no dallying now. The shades of evening draw on. We are weary and
travel-stained with the twenty hours’ journey and the many excitements
of the day; but the great moment is at hand. Gleams of distant water,
thickets of maguey and cacti, with a peasant stealing mysteriously among
them, behind a troop of donkeys! The geography picture is realized to
the life. The water comes nearer; we skirt its borders. Can it be that
these lonesome, shallow expanses, without vestige of sail or even skiff,
their muddy shores white with a deposit of salt and alkali—can it be
that these are the great lakes of Tenochtitlan, on which Cortez launched
his brigantines? And the famous floating gardens, where are they? All in
good time! We shall see. The sacred hill of the Virgin of Guadalupe, with
a cluster of interesting-looking churches upon it, is passed. Remains
of ruined haciendas and fortifications, and dilapidated adobe hovels,
appear. We run out upon a long, low causeway, skirted by the arches of
an aqueduct, over marshes. Other similar causeways are seen converging
from a distance. One had not expected to find everything so unrelievedly
flat. It is like climbing the mountain to find the Louisiana lowlands. A
chain of yet higher mountains surrounds it, it is true; the snowy summits
of Popocatepetl and its mate, the White Woman, always shine upon it from
a distance, but Mexico itself is a basin. It has been under water, and
would be yet, but for artificial works by which the lakes have been made
to recede and left behind them these alkali-whitened margins.
It is a disillusionment very like that of approaching Venice at low tide.
IV.
_THE CAPITAL._
I.
There was a custom-house at the Buena Vista station. Part of its profits
are national, part municipal. The capital is in a Federal District, ruled
by a governor, not unlike the District of Columbia. There is little
inter-state comity as yet among the different parts of the republic. Each
state still collects dues at its own frontiers, and the towns take tolls
(the alcabalas) on merchandise and food entering their gates.
Mexico is not a cheap city of abode. Its hackney-coaches, as in European
countries as well, are an exception to the general rule; but even these,
with the various commissionaires, who zealously aid you in putting your
baggage upon them, after getting it through the custom-house, are dear
for the first time. Travelling is like so many other things in the world:
you pay a bonus, or initiation fee, in the beginning, after which the
charges are in a declining series. The particular hackney-coach which
conveyed us, a travelling companion and myself, may have been a trifle
dearer on account of a driver who aspired to a few words of English. Not
that we greatly wanted it. The injury to one’s feelings in these cases
of the indifferent reception by the native of your first overtures in
his own language (as if his own language were not good enough for him,
forsooth), is sufficient, without a pecuniary burden added. But he
charged for it, as I say.
“Well, good-night,” he said, saluting us as patrons. “Wass you wants?”
And, after having passed the long, shady strip of park called the
Alameda, he even ventured upon a certain facetiousness, as, “Wills you to
want a wiskey?”
He had learned this proud acquirement in the military service on the
frontiers of Texas.
A long, dark ride conveyed us to the principal hotel. As it was once the
palace of the Emperor Iturbide, after whom it is named, it should have
something stately about it, and so it has. There is a high, sculptured
door-way, of an Aztec touch in the design, though not in the details,
and long, grotesque water-spouts project into the street. Within is a
large, dark, arcaded court, from which open _café_ and billiard-room, the
leading resort of the golden youth of the town.
The office is a dark little box of a place, with two serious
functionaries, who seem to receive the visitor only with suspicion. The
gorgeous and affable hotel clerk of northern latitudes is unknown. In the
rear are more courts, not arcaded; and around all of these the rooms are
ranged in several stories.
It is not so late on the evening of his arrival but that the traveller
may, after dinner, still take a stroll. He will be apt to fancy at
first, from the quietude, that his hotel is not on a principal street;
but it is in the most central part of the city—on the street which, with
three others running parallel for say half a mile, and the included
cross-streets, contain the principal retail traffic.
It is an early discovery that Mexico is a grave and not a gay city. There
are no crowds on the sidewalks, no eating of ices in public, no _cafés
chantants_, nothing Parisian. By nine or ten o’clock the people seem to
have retired, perhaps to be up betimes in the morning for the work of the
day. A military band plays three evenings in the week, but even these
concerts, except on Sundays, are so sparsely attended that the men seem
discoursing the music for their own amusement.
Policemen are stationed at short intervals apart in the quiet streets,
with their lanterns set in the middle of the roadway. They are obliged,
by regulation, to signal their whereabouts every quarter of an hour. The
sound of their whistles, which have a shrill, doleful note, like that
of a November wind, is heard repeated from one to another all the night
through.
II.
As Mexico has not, until lately, at any rate, expected tourists, there
are almost none of the usual appurtenances for their pleasure and
information to be met with. While this may have its annoyances, if an
ardent curiosity be baffled too long, on the other hand freedom from the
sense of responsibility to exacting Baedekers and Murrays has advantages
of its own. The visitor with an eye for the picturesque dips into a
delicious feast of novelties, makes discoveries on every hand, and has
the pleasure of testing the value of his own unaided conclusions. By
daylight, with all its bright colors upon it, and its normal stir of life
going on, the famous capital is a very different place from what it was
at night. By little and little misapprehensions are shaken off. After the
first moments of disappointment we like it always more instead of less,
and in the end it takes a powerful hold.
Here at length is the great central plaza, in which events of such moment
have been transacted. To actually sit down upon a bench in the midst of
it, and gaze comfortably about—can it be possible?
The imposing cathedral makes a new pyramid on the spot where once stood
the pyramid of the Aztec war-god. These stones should be ankle-deep with
all the blood of various sorts that has been spilled upon them. For a
moment one renews the pagan superstition. I would gladly see set up
again, for a brief instant, old Hutzilopotchli, the war-god, aloft on his
ancient terrace, hear the beat of the lugubrious war-drum, and see the
mournful procession of captives winding up to the sacrifice, in charge
of the sinister priests with their black locks flowing down upon their
shoulders.
But not one instant too long. What! hideous priests, you will indeed lay
them down on the sacrificial stone, and raise the knives of flint above
their bared breasts for the monstrous slaughter? Not one hair of their
heads shall be harmed. San Jago and Spain! When was Castilian ever known
to turn his back upon a foe? Up the pyramid we go, leaping from step to
step, though with no better weapon than a sun-umbrella in hand, to their
deliverance. Ay, howl if you will, baffled miscreants, and rattle your
spears and arrows like hail upon us! Down with your old Hutzilopotchli
till he crashes in fragments below there. Your carven sacrificial stone
shall be set up in the court-yard of the Academy of Fine Arts of San
Carlos for this, and your great calendar-stone, a show-piece, against the
side of the cathedral.
It is a good day’s work. I estimate that there were in that train of
captives not less than a hundred souls!
But it is hard to conjure up images of desperate conflicts, though
there have been so many, in this bright sunshine, with the multitude of
pretty, novel sights. On one side of the square a beneficent institution,
the National Loan Establishment, occupies what was once the site of
the palace of Cortez; on another, the long, white, monotonous National
Palace, the site of that of Montezuma. In the centre is a charming little
garden, with benches, the Zocalo.
The cathedral, like most of the earlier architecture, is in the
Renaissance style, far gone to the vagaries of rococo. It is saved from
finicality, however, by its great size and massiveness, except in respect
to the terminations of its towers, which are in the shape of immense
bells. Adjoining, and forming a part of it, is a parish church, in a
rich, dark-red volcanic stone, with carving that recalls the fantastic
façades of Portuguese Belem. What a painting it would make, on one of the
perfect moonlight nights, which bring out every line of the sculpture
softly, and show the whole like a lovely vision!
There are little book-stalls in front, and gay booths devoted to the sale
of refreshing drinks—_aguas nevadas_—from large, simple jars and pitchers
of most noble and pleasing shapes. The drinks are dispensed by dusky
Juanas and Josefas of Indian blood, with straight black braids of hair
down their backs. With a characteristic taste the fronts of their booths
are often wholly studded and banked up with flowers, and furnished with
inscriptions formed in letters of carnation pinks and blue cornflowers.
Figures go by in blankets which one hankers to take from them for
_portières_ or rugs. The men of the poorer sort wear or carry,
universally, the _serape_—a blanket with a slit in the centre for the
insertion of the head. Apart from its artistic patterns, it is a useful
garment in many emergencies. It is not the most improbable thing in
the world that, in the course of the Mexican revival, we may yet see
it introduced in the States, and running a course of popularity like
the ulster. The corresponding garment of the women is the _rebozo_, a
shawl or scarf, generally of blue cotton, which, crossed over the head
and lower part of the face, gives a Moorish appearance. The background
of life here seems more like opera than sober existence. Two other
sides of the square are occupied by long arcades, among the merchants
of which, protected from the sun and rain, one may wander by the hour,
watching the shrewd devices of trade, and picking up those knick-knacks,
trifling in the country of their origin, which are certain to be
curiosities elsewhere. From time to time pass across the view, dark and
Egyptian-like, in a peculiar dress of bluish woollen, trudging under
heavy burdens, Indians who have yet preserved the tradition of their
race. Followed to their homes, they are found to dwell, among the ruined
walls of the outskirts, in adobe huts which can have changed little since
the time of the Conquest.
These genuine Aztecs have peculiarly soft, pleasant voices, in contrast
with the Spanish voice, which is apt to be harsh. They are shiftless and
squalid, but their manners are above their surroundings. It is a favorite
way with the Mexican to say, “This is your house;” and I have had said to
me on being introduced, “Well, now, remember! number so-and-so, such a
street, is your house.”
Having looked into one of these Indian abodes, and asked an elderly
woman, by way of making talk, if it were hers, she replied, “Yes, Señor,
and yours also.”
Neither in the Zocalo nor the Alameda (a park, which holds somewhat
the position of the Common, in Boston), are there trees with the hoary
antiquity one might expect in such time-honored places. But it appears
that the setting out of the trees, and the formation of the Zocalo
entirely, is of modern date, the work of Maximilian, a monarch who, in
his short, ill-fated reign, had many excellent projects.
[Illustration: A FLOWER-SHOW IN THE ZOCALO.]
The Zocalo is occasionally allowed to be enclosed, and an admission-fee
charged, for select festivities. The orations were delivered there,
for instance, on the national festival of the 5th of May. When I first
arrived a flower-show was in progress. I have never seen anything more
charming of the sort. Our florists might get a score of new ideas for
the arrangement of bouquets. Strawberries were introduced into some for
effects of color. Little streamers with gallant mottoes floated from
others. There were lanterns, and birds in cages. A military band played,
and people promenaded—dandies with silver-braided hats, stout duennas,
and fathers of families, and slender, lithe señoritas, wearing the
graceful mantilla instead of the Paris bonnet.
In front of the Zocalo a permanent flower market is held every morning,
which is almost as pleasing.
Tramway cars run out of the plaza in numerous directions. The city early
utilized this invention, and boasts of having one of the most complete
systems existing. The inscriptions on them have an attractive look. One
would like to take all the different routes at once. Patience! it is
all accomplished in time. Shall we go to Guadalupe Hidalgo, with its
treasures and its miraculous Virgin; to Tacubaya and San Angel, with
their villas; Dolores, with its pensive cemetery, full of sculptures; La
Viga, with its picturesque canal, giving access to the _chinampas_ of
flowers and vegetables; the gates of Belem and Niño Perdido, familiar
in the story of the American conquest; Chapultepec? Yes, that shall be
the very first—Chapultepec, theatre of exploits of American valor and of
moving events in every historic epoch.
Mexico is extraordinarily flat, and laid out as regularly at right angles
as our own symmetrical towns. At the ends of all the streets the view
is closed by mountains. Its flatness, together with its position in
reference to the adjoining lakes, are circumstances which have occasioned
great solicitude in the past, and still call for almost as much, on
a different ground. Formerly it was danger of inundation; now it is
defective drainage. Bad odors offend the nostrils, and stagnant gutters
and heaps of garbage the sight, of the wayfarer about the interesting
streets.
[Illustration: COMPARATIVE LEVELS OF LAKES.]
The drainage problem, divested of the mystery with which it has been
surrounded in learned treatises, is simply this. When the vast slope
from the sea has been surmounted, and the Valley of Mexico—as high
as the Swiss pass of St. Gothard—is reached, it is found to be a
shallow depression, containing six lakes. These are of many different
levels—Texcoco the largest and lowest. On the edge of Texcoco, or in the
midst of it, like another Venice, with canals for streets, was built
ancient Mexico. This principal lake received the overflow of the others,
and the city was subject to frequent inundations. It is even now, after
a large shrinkage in the lakes, but a little more than six feet, at its
central portion, above Texcoco. The waters of the three upper lakes—San
Cristoval, Xaltocan, and Zumpango—were turned back as has been done with
the Chicago River of late. A great Spanish drain in the early seventeenth
century, the Tajo of Nochistongo, was cut through the mountains, and got
rid of it in the direction of the Atlantic.
But Texcoco itself has no outlet, and, as experience has proved, even
with only Chalco and Xochimilco to be taken care of, is still liable
to overflow. With relief from this peril is inseparably bound up the
drainage problem. The fall is so slight at best, that though Lake Texcoco
be preserved at a normal level, and kept from backing up into the sewers,
there is no destination for the sewage received by it, which lies
festering in the stagnant water. With the rest is complicated also the
irrigation of the valley. No end of plans have been offered to resolve
these difficulties. Their history would make an interesting chapter by
itself. Some have proposed to pump out the lake by steam; others, to
intercept the waters running into it, and allow it to dry up naturally;
another, to exhaust it by means of a great siphon of stone and cement.
But the judgment of most is in favor of establishing a current, through
a canal, to some point lower than the lake; and the mountains in the
neighborhood have been searched for the most favorable point of exit for
such a canal.
The plan was officially adopted, in fact, and a considerable beginning
made, under the direction of an able engineer of foreign education,
Don Francisco Garay. But the works were allowed to languish. Neither
government nor community seemed more than half-hearted in the effort to
get rid of evils to which they had so long been used. The problem still
remains one of the most pressing of those to be resolved, and one of the
most interesting to foreigners intending to make Mexico their home.
III.
Choosing any street at random where all are so attractive, and
proceeding to its termination, in this direction or that, you arrive
now at a mere _cul-de-sac_, now at a city gate, now at vestiges of
adobe fortifications, with a moat. Few vehicles, apart from the
hackney-coaches, are to be seen, but plenty of troops of laden donkeys,
and everywhere the cotton-clad natives themselves bearing loads under
which the regular beasts of burden might stagger. There is a story that
when wheelbarrows were first introduced to their notice on the railroad
works, the natives filled them in the usual way, and then carried them on
their backs.
Each separate kind of business has its distinctive emblem. The
butcher—elsewhere not a person noted for great taste in ornament—displays
a crimson banner, and has his brass scales decked with rosettes. His
supplies are brought him by a mule, trotting along with quarters of beef
or carcasses of mutton on each side hung from hooks. But it is especially
the _pulque_ shops (corresponding to our corner liquor stores) which
devote themselves to decoration in its most florid form. Not one so poor
as to be without its great colored tumblers, and ambitious fresco of a
battle scene, or subject from mythology or romance. They delight in such
titles as “The Ancient Glories of Mexico,” “The Famous St. Lorenzo,” “The
Sun For All,” “The Terrestrial Paradise,” and even “The Delirium,” which
often enough expresses the condition of customers who imbibe too freely.
[Illustration: THE HOMES OF THE POOR.]
On the tramways pass not only passenger-cars, but others for freight.
They move the household goods of a family, for instance. There are also
impressive catafalques and mourning-cars, running smoothly along, with
funeral processions. You may graduate from a hearse with six horses,
driver, lackey, and four pall-bearers, all in livery, for $120, to one
drawn by a single mule for $3; and there are cars for the mourners in the
grand style at $12 and plain for $4.
Both these ideas, it would seem, might be advantageously adopted by
suburban lines of our own.
Presently comes by a more economical funeral—a couple of _peons_ (as the
Indian laborers are called), at a jog-trot, bearing a pine coffin on
their shoulders.
Battered old churches and convents on a great scale, and of a grand
architecture, now for the most part devoted to other purposes, are
extraordinarily frequent. Before the sequestration of Church property—in
the war called of the Reform, under Juarez, in 1859—Mexico was well-nigh
one great ecclesiastical estate. Without going into the religious
question, and supposing only the operation of ordinary causes, it is
easy to see how the Church corporations—repositories of the gifts of the
faithful, moved by no feverish haste in speculation, and with no reckless
heirs to spend their gains—must in course of time have become possessed
of an enormous share of worldly goods.
There is no lack of sculptured old rococo palaces, of the conquerors
and their successors, either. Many of these are of a peculiar, rich red
stone, with carved escutcheons above their door-ways. There is one of
which I was fond, in the Calle de Jesus, with immense water-spouts to its
cornice, in the shape of field-pieces. Wheels and all project in high
relief.
Only infinitesimal quantities of vacant land exist within the compass
of the city. All is compactly built. The Continental system of _portes
cochères_ and interior court-yards prevails. How many glimpses, both
pleasing and curious, into these interiors! What a pity that the severity
of our winters prevents building in a style which would be so admirably
adapted to our summers! Over the entrances of some tenement-houses are
placed pious dedicatory signs, as “Casa de la Santisima,” “Casa de la
Divina Providencia.”
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO A TENEMENT-HOUSE.]
One day, as I made a hasty sketch of one of these, with a water-carrier
lying asleep in the archway, the custodian came out and offered strenuous
objections. “You are mapping the house” (_mappando la casa_), he said,
“and I do not see how it can be for other than evil purposes.”
One of the most charming of all the mansions I saw stood nearly opposite
our hotel, and was faced up entirely with china tiles, chiefly blue and
white, and set with old bronze balconies, as dainty and quaint as a
dwelling in fairy-land. I examined the interior of this house also, and
found it faced within as well with the same simple, Moorish-looking,
tiles, in staircase walls, ceilings, and even the high, banked-up
furnace, or range, in the kitchen. An affable major-domo occupied his
leisure with painting, in a large library on the ground-floor. He was
just now engaged in copying and enlarging, very poorly, the photograph of
a lady, over which he held up his brush for criticism. A maroon carpet
was laid up the centre of a grand staircase, and the same uniform color
prevailed in the carpets throughout. The rooms were large and high, the
principal ones opening both on the street, and, by means of light glass
doors draped with lace, on the balconies running around the courts. These
balconies are edged in the general practice with climbing vines and rows
of handsome plants. In one of the rear courts could be heard and seen
the family carriage-horses, together with others for the saddle, stabled
according to custom under the common roof.
There was a large saloon, with divans, and old-fashioned mirrors, sloped
forward from the walls, instead of pier-glasses; and a little boudoir,
with furniture entirely in gilded wood and cane. There was a pretty
family chapel, with two _prie-dieux_ for the master and mistress, and
a couple of benches for the use of the servants. In the bedrooms of
such houses are usually religious pictures, copies of Murillo and the
like; and there are also found quaint effigies of sacred things, as a
representation of the Nativity; a Christ, with purple mantle and crown
of thorns; a life-size Virgin, in raiment of tissue of silver, standing
upon the globe and a serpent’s head. The men of the country are very
widely imbued with the sceptical spirit of the age, but the women, whose
property these objects are, are still devoutly Catholic.
These rooms, in such interiors, though less lofty and impressively
finished perhaps than those at Havana, have not the complexity of objects
with which we, in an ill-understood passion for decoration, overload
our own in the United States. They are large, and contain a few simple
articles, with plenty of space around, and have an unmistakable dignity
of effect. When we can make up our minds to do that, instead of depending
upon a complication of costly rarities in little space, we shall begin to
be palatial, and not merely _bon bourgeois_.
We do not know how republican we are, after all our travelling abroad
and reverence for things European, till we come to where the stately old
Continental traditions are actually in force.
One of the enthusiasts of the new progressive movement, writing of late
of Monterey, a city of 40,000 people, in the north, already connected
with us by the Mexican Central Railway, and coming into notice as a
winter resort, notes, as one of the signs of improvement, that “the old
Latin style of building, the square, flat-roofed house, with interior
court, is giving place, in the new quarters, to American architecture.”
To which I reply, Heaven forbid! Let us never “improve” away with
“American architecture” the Moorish-looking dwellings which, to lovers of
the picturesque, should be one of the principal inducements for visiting
the country.
V.
_THE PROJECTORS._
I.
Meanwhile the court-yard of our hotel, the palace of the ancient Emperor
Iturbide, is full of a curious group of English-speaking foreigners,
discussing a multitude of projects. They sit usually in chairs on a
little terrace at the left of the court, behind which is a modest
little parlor, with a piano. As a general rule, the Mexican hotel is
without parlor, reading-room, or any other of those appurtenances we are
accustomed to look upon as an essential part of the composition of a
hotel.
The guests take their meals at a restaurant, entered from the second
court, or at other restaurants in the town where they please, there being
no provision by the hotel itself. They look up wearily at their rooms
around the circumscribing galleries, push their hats on the back of their
heads, and pass their hands across their brows. The atmosphere, at this
elevation of 7600 feet, is very rare, it will be remembered, and most are
affected at first by a feeling of dizziness and loss of appetite. They
do not find themselves quite right in health; and even the most athletic
pause once or twice, and hold by the balusters, on their way up-stairs.
The same amount of exercise cannot be taken, in fact, by either men
or animals, as in a more dense atmosphere. The horses, for instance,
though good and speedy, can only be run short distances, and then, as
evaporation is rapid and draughts particularly dangerous, must not be
let stand, but must be walked up and down till gradually cooled.
I recollect my first glimpse of my room, to which, after an interview
with the sepulchral clerks below, I was shown by the barefooted boy,
“Pancho,” carrying a tallow dip. It was without windows or other
opening except through a large transom above the door, and seemed hot
and suffocating. This may have been the influence of imagination,
however, for the climate is rarely either hot or cold, but noted for its
remarkable evenness. There is no provision for heating during the winter.
It is said that even after a very few minutes of fire, in stove or grate,
the already thin air becomes so much farther expanded as to produce
discomfort. Later, in my long stay at this hotel, I had a room higher up,
on the sculptured front, looking down upon the life in the thoroughfare,
which, taking a separate name at every block, is here the Calle de
San Francisco. Again, I had one with a window commanding the shining,
tile-covered dome and part of a garden approach to the lovely old convent
of San Francisco, now devoted to the uses of an Episcopal mission, and
beyond that the mountains, with the fair blue sky above them. Rising to
begin the day, the mornings were found peaceful and lovely, the genial
sunshine bathing the prospect, the blue sky but varied with the piled-up
clouds out of which castles in the air are constructed. The visitor,
having got over his temporary oppression, remarks upon this almost
unbroken series with increasing wonder and admiration. It is hardly the
custom to comment on the weather in Mexico, at least in the agreeable
season, though the rainy season is a different matter.
“A pleasant day?” says the listener, with lifted eyebrows, should you do
so. “Well, why not?”
[Illustration: OLD SPANISH PALACE IN THE CALLE DE JESUS.]
Most familiar among the group of English-speaking foreigners in the
court-yard during my stay was General Grant, who has lent a part of
his great fame to the development of the resources of a much-suffering
people. Did he ever reflect in these historic halls, one wondered, on
the career of the Emperor Iturbide? Had all the talk on Cæsarism in the
Press ever put the idea the least bit in his head? Rumors, mischievous to
the cause of amity, ran at the very time that it was in Mexico, not the
United States, that he proposed to found his empire. Certainly it would
be difficult to imagine so unmelodramatic a figure in the robes and stars
and crosses in which Iturbide has arrayed himself, after the pattern of
Napoleon the Great, in his portrait at the National Palace.
Iturbide wrote in his memoirs—which, as a display of egotism, are highly
interesting reading—one sagacious sentence. “Devotees of theories,” he
says, “are apt to forget that in the moral as in the physical order only
a gradual progress can be expected.”
This is very true; but the short-lived Emperor forgot, as have many of
his republican successors, that despotism can never educate the citizen
for the duties of freedom.
Only once before—namely, on the coming of Maximilian—has there been
a stir that might be compared to the present in a country which the
progress of the century has heretofore seemed to ignore. Could a secure
government then have been established, much would have been done. But the
new-comers arrived as masters, not as friends; and the conditions were
wholly unfavorable. The real improvements, too, apart from those intended
for the glitter and the comfort of the throne, were but the shadow of
those proposed to-day.
[Illustration: SEMI-VILLA ON THE PASEO OF BUCARELLI.]
Here the more efficient lighting of the city by electric light was heard
discussed; there the opening of coal mines; here the establishment of
sugar refineries, shoe factories, cotton mills. There were archæologists,
constructors of telegraph lines, and engineers starting out or
returning from reconnoissances. This person had come down to look into
coffee-plantations; that, to establish a new line of steamers. This
discourses of the improving tranquillity of the country, and asserts
that three ploughs are now sold to one revolver. He names over prominent
bandits who have become peaceable contractors and farmers.
Some will organize banks of issue, and rid us of the cumbrous silver
dollar. Another is up from the interior with a scheme for a colony and
mines—much too rose-colored, one would say—with which he will start back
to New York to organize a syndicate. Mines of gold and silver are one
of the specialties of the country; but they seem to present fully the
uncertainties of mines elsewhere.
[Illustration: THE MODERN STYLE.]
Some organized dinners, at which Mexican senators and deputies were
enlisted for the cultivation of more friendly relations. These were held
at the Concordia restaurant, or the Tivoli of Bucarelli, or of the Eliseo
(summer gardens), with spacious banqueting halls. Much international
good-feeling was manifested, and the Mexican national anthem and the
“Star Spangled Banner” were played alternately after the speeches.
Everything was to be made over anew. A few of the younger men were
going and returning from expeditions of pleasure. They came back from a
bull-fight; from the baths of Alberca Pane, where there is a fine tank
for swimming, covered with an awning; or the theatre. They had many an
amusing gibe, after our American way, on the backwardness of things, and
the difference of manners and customs in the country.
[Illustration: PORCELAIN HOUSE IN SAN FRANCISCO STREET.]
But pleasure had as yet few votaries; the object of most was serious
work. The business of railroad-building, and procuring of charters and
subventions from government, threw all else into the shade. Five great
lines, two of which had already made long strides, were to traverse the
country from north to south, and more than twice as many from east to
west, connecting the oceans. There were said to be six hundred American
engineers in Mexico. They are often young graduates of Cornell and
other polytechnic schools. In the capital the engineers and employés
form settlements in boarding-houses of their own; make resorts of
certain economical restaurants where little but English is spoken. They
associate but little with the natives, but go about their work rather
rough-and-ready in appearance, and seem to postpone adornment till the
heat and burden of the campaign are over. There was a noticeable Southern
element among them; and it will be found, generally, that the enterprises
in Mexico have attracted a large representation from the Southern States.
There is still, among the rest, a remnant of the ex-Confederate officers
who came hither after the war, to engage—without great success, as it
happened—in coffee-planting and the like.
Not a few of the young engineers, however, particularly those who have
their field of operations in the provinces, have already found wives
among the slender señoritas of the country. It seems another case of
going after the women of Moab, as it were, for the rumor comes back that
these exacting helpmeets have often made them change their religion, as a
preliminary to naming the happy day.
II.
A leading point with the projectors, is whether or not Mexico is likely
to become a large or metropolitan city. It seems difficult, when on the
ground, to doubt it. Great cities have sprung up at a mere intersection
of railroads. But here is one with a population of 250,000 people
already, a seat of government and of schools, colleges, museums, and
galleries of fine arts, with an admirable climate and extraordinary
scenery, and three hundred and sixty years and traditions of great
fascination behind it. There are to come into or connect with it, when
all is complete, the Mexican Central, National, and International
roads, from the north; the Mexican Oriental, on the eastern sea-board,
and Occidental, on the western; and General Grant’s road, the Mexican
Southern, from the south—all to have interoceanic branches and feeders;
the Morelos road, the Acapulco road, the English road to Vera Cruz;
another, now constructing, to the same point by Puebla and Jalapa; and a
number of short lines of less importance.
A small portion only of this would be sufficient to create a metropolis
outright, while Mexico has grown to a certain greatness with no
advantages at all—not even wagon-roads. It seems its manifest destiny,
with its central position on transcontinental lines, and its established
prestige, to become the chief depository and place of exchange for the
whole country. It ought to be a favorable point, too, for manufactures,
and to become the metropolitan residence of the wealthy from the
interior. These have rarely come to the capital heretofore. Not even the
senators and deputies bring their families, owing to the barbarous state
of the roads. The existing difficulties of communication can hardly be
conceived. There are perfectly authentic accounts of persons who have
gone from Mexico to Vera Cruz, thence to New York, thence across to San
Francisco, and thence by Pacific mail-steamer to Acapulco, rather than
make the direct journey of three hundred miles on muleback over the
sierra.
It is fair to say, however, that there are those who think the future
metropolis may be farther to the north, as at San Luis Potosi.
If Mexico, then, is to be a great city, whither is it to spread? It is
compactly built within, and much of the land about it is low, traversed
by causeways. There is no better place to think about it, nor to look
down upon the capital as a whole, than Chapultepec.
My first visit there was made on the tramway, where I fell in with a
Mexican colonel, who told me that he liked the Americans very well. He
had spent some time in captivity among them, having been taken prisoner
at San Jacinto, and had learned to know them as they are. They mean
well, he said, and are enterprising and appreciative of the arts of
life; and you can depend upon what they say. Most of his countrymen, he
said, very sensibly, did not understand this, but were distrustful and
jealous. Their idea of American character, in fact, is largely derived
from foreign books in which it is conventionalized and caricatured in an
unfriendly way. There is evidence of it on every hand. The American, as
touched upon in the newspapers and current literature, is the “Yankee”
of Dickens and followers of less intelligence on the Continent. He is
a sordid person, exclusively wrapped up in “dollars,” and can know
but little of the chivalrous nature of those who thus superciliously
disapprove of him.
There is nothing very warlike about Chapultepec at present. A glimpse
is got, as you approach, of a light, oblong, colonnaded edifice, with a
lookout on the top, which is now a part of the government observatory.
The hill is not precipitously high, though of a good elevation. There is
a monument at its foot to the memory of the pupils of the military school
who fell in its defence in 1847, and in the grounds moss-grown cypresses
and a tank of clear water. I found the main part of the building, when
an upper terrace was reached, in a state of ruin. The light iron columns
of an arcade had been coquettishly painted and gilded, and its walls
decorated in the Pompeian style, under Maximilian, but all had been
wrecked in the revolutions. There was a little garden, in which a small
guide picked me some flowers. He answered, “_Quien sabe?_” in a childish
lisp, to most inquiries, just as his father, the custodian, if he had
been there, would have answered in his deeper base. “_Quien sabe?_” (Who
knows?) is a more dreamy and speculative rendering of our own “Give it
up,” or perhaps “Dunno!”
[Illustration: THE DRIVE TO CHAPULTEPEC.]
The most prominent object, in the long line of the distant city against
the bright gleam of Lake Texcoco behind it, is a sudden little volcanic
hill—El Peñon—which rises out of it like a teocalli; and next to this the
cathedral.
As the lay of the land is studied from here it seems rather natural that
the city of the future, on grounds of good drainage, ease of access,
and scenery, should advance in this direction to Chapultepec, ex-palace
of the Montezumas and of viceroys, military school, fortress, and
observatory, on the foremost spur of the foot-hills.
This was the intelligent forecast of Maximilian—a ruler, it must be
admitted, much better fitted to cope with such pleasant matters than the
ferocity of Mexican war and diplomacy. And such was the view of a rather
wild-cat American Improvement Company, found among the projectors in
the court-yard, which professed to intend a large purchase of land for
building upon, to sell part of it, with houses, on the instalment plan,
and to put up a mammoth hotel.
It seemed a little incongruous, this selling of the heritage of Montezuma
on the instalment plan; but we are a people who do not stop even at the
most venerable of traditions; and the scheme might not be a bad one in
responsible hands.
Maximilian also made Chapultepec his summer palace, and laid out to it
the handsome Paseo de la Reforma, the afternoon drive and promenade—the
Bois and Central Park of fashionable Mexico. During Lent, however,
fashion takes the caprice of changing to the Paseo de la Viga, along
the canal by which vegetables and flowers are brought to the capital
from the floating gardens. The Paseo de la Reforma is a wide, straight
boulevard, nearly two miles long, starting from a certain equestrian
statue of Charles IV. of Spain—the first bronze cast in this hemisphere,
and fine and excellent work. It is two hundred feet wide, and has a
double row of trees—eucalyptus and ash—shading its sidewalks. The Mexican
equestrian dandy should be observed as he curvets his horse along it
among the fine carriages. He wears now not only his weighty spurs and
silver-braided sombrero, but a cutlass at his saddle-bow, and larger
revolvers than ever. Not that there is need of them, since a couple of
mounted carbineers—of whom there seems no great need either—are stationed
at nearly every hundred yards; but they are a part of his peculiar
display. Some of our young Americans, too, in the country, it must be
said, almost out-Mexican the Mexicans themselves, carrying all their
customs to an exaggerated extreme.
There are to be six circles, with statues, spaced at proper intervals
along the way. The first, containing a fine Columbus, is finished; a
Guatemozin, for the second, is in progress. The next, it is said, will
contain Cortez. There at last will stand, face to face—their countrymen
now one people—the heroic defender and the heroic conqueror, the two
characters of such contradictory traits within themselves, who both acted
according to their lights in their day and generation, and but followed
the path of inevitable destiny.
The causeways of La Veronica and La Romita—containing ancient
small-arched aqueducts, which bring water to the city—branch off from
Chapultepec, and form two sides of an obtuse triangle, which the Paseo
(or Calzada) de la Reforma bisects. It was along these causeways that
the Americans ran, in that invasion of a very different character, in
1847. It is said that as Shields was charging on that to the right,
after the fall of the castle, Scott, fearing his imprudent haste, sent
to detain him. The aide had got as far as the preliminary “General Scott
presents his compliments, and begs to say—” when Shields, apprehending
the message, cut him short with, “I have no time for compliments now,”
and hurried on, and got into the city before he could be overtaken.
Do the Mexicans bear us a grudge for all that? They seem just now to
have amiably forgotten it, and far be it from me to revive such memories
in a boasting spirit. There is a behind-the-scenes to it, here, upon
the ground. It is pathetic, and by no means calculated to produce
complacency, to read in the small history studied in the schools the
Mexican account of what took place. The almost unbroken series of defeats
from which they went up, without hope of success, to the slaughter are
frankly admitted. The country was torn by internal dissensions. The
generals went back from the field to put down or sustain governments,
refused to aid one another in their operations, and availed themselves
of the troops given them to seize upon power, instead of fighting the
Americans. There were not less than eleven changes of government, chiefly
violent, during the short course of the war. In February and March of the
year in which, in September, the invaders made their entry there had been
fighting in the streets of the capital for well-nigh a month between two
presidents, neither strong enough to put the other down. Want of courage
is not a Mexican failing. It was want of leaders, unity, everything that
gives steadiness in a great crisis.
The land ostensibly aimed at by the so-called Improvement Company follows
the Calzada of the Reform for a considerable part of its length. It lies
vacant, except for use as pasture. It has not been safe to live too far
from the thickly-settled district till the establishment of law and order
by the present administration, and the city itself has furnished room
enough. But what new accommodations are to be needed in the great future,
with the vision of which imaginations are regaling themselves, it is not
an easy matter to determine.
Villas were spoken of, to be built with restricted rights, so as to
preserve a select and park-like aspect. There were to be front lots
enough on the Calzada alone to pay the cost. The grand hotel talked of
was to surpass anything on the continent.
If somebody would but put up a hotel equal to our own of the second grade
it would be a boon to American travellers. It might expect to draw, too,
not a few of the Mexicans themselves, who are hardly slower than the rest
of the world in recognizing a good thing when they see it. The magnates
who shall have made fortunes in the new enterprises, and others who have
them already, could, no doubt, be relied on for a liberal patronage.
III.
This project is of no farther importance than as a text for a mention
of the Mexican tax and real estate laws, which have their features of
decided interest. “In the moral as in the physical order,” as our friend
Iturbide tells us, “only a gradual progress can be expected.” A nation
of nine or ten millions, two-thirds of whom are of pure Indian blood,
used only to the most primitive and poverty-stricken ways of life, cannot
be too suddenly pushed forward. They must be allowed to go at a certain
pace, even with the best of intentions, and slowly adapt themselves to
the improvements designed for their good; for it is by them, the rank
and file, after all, that these must be supported.
The country might seem, at first sight, the most glorious place for real
estate speculation in the world. Real property is not taxed except upon
such income as it produces. When not actually producing income, it may be
idle indefinitely, and escape scot-free, however much it may enhance in
value meanwhile. But there are embarrassing restrictions, devised through
fear and jealousy of the foreigner, which make the prospect much less
attractive. The traveller of means cannot follow his whim, as he might
almost anywhere else in the world, of buying a pretty bit of land or
house that attracts him and leaving it, to return to when he will, or do
what he please with it.
By the Mexican Civil Code “no foreigner may, without previous permission
of the President of the Republic, acquire real estate in the frontier
states or territory within twenty leagues of the frontier.” And “it is
absolutely prohibited to foreigners to acquire rustic or urban property
within five leagues of the coast.”
This may be well enough, and is aimed principally at the United States,
as a way of preventing any gradual encroachments from the borders; but
farther, and more important: no foreigner may own real property at all,
except on condition of remaining permanently and looking after it. If he
be absent from the country for two years, his property may be denounced
and entered by the first comer, the same as if it were a mine. He cannot
even have an agent in the country to hold it for him. Nor, even should he
comply with the rigid condition named, could he then sell it to another
foreigner.
The transient foreigner, so far as he is concerned, cannot acquire real
estate on any condition.
All this is set down in the Code in the most explicit terms. The most
driving improvement company, therefore, could sell lots only to Mexicans.
The class of wealthy Americans expected as winter residents would be
ruled out of the calculation, though, of course, they may stop at the
hotel.
There is also some ambiguity as to what commercial corporations, with
one-third of their directors resident in the country, may or may not do,
since the construction of the term “corporation” is not the same as with
us. Some construing or explanatory enactments are needed to remedy the
ambiguity last mentioned, and an entire sweeping away is needed of all
the rest.
If there be sincerity in the manifestations of desire for progress,
and aid from without, Mexico must sweep away narrow and benighted
restrictions. If outside capital be demanded for works of amelioration
and embellishment, how can it be expected at such a price?
And why, in the name of goodness, in this enlightened day, should not the
foreigner be put upon the same footing as the native in these matters,
and allowed to hold property wherever he will throughout the civilized
world?
Let the foreigner bear in mind, too, that he must be matriculated at
the Department of Foreign Affairs, through the Consul-general, in
order to have any recognized standing in a court of justice, in cases
of difficulty. Without this formality even his foreignness is not
necessarily conceded to him as a protection.
VI.
_THE FERRO-CARRILES._
I.
The _ferro-carriles_, the _caminos de fierro_, or railways, were the
business of the hour. In speaking of the coming greatness of the capital
I mentioned glibly the principal ones which are supposed to have a part
in it. They are by no means all built. Far from it! It is not even
certain that some of the most promising of them, on paper, ever will be
built.
The matter of granting railroad charters in Mexico is by no means new.
They have been granted for thirty years or so, to Europeans and natives,
who did little or nothing with them. It was only when, under the adoption
of a more enlightened policy, they came to be granted to Americans that
the roads were built and the charters had a value. At once everybody who
prided himself upon the necessary influence began to desire a charter
also. He might not want to use it at once, but could keep it and see what
turn things were to take. Or he might transfer it to some more powerful
ownership to which it would be worth a consideration. This new ownership,
too, might wait to see what was likely to happen. If railways promised to
be profitable in the country, it was well for certain great corporations
in the United States to have their feeders or extensions there; at any
rate, they could keep others from the field till they should be satisfied
of its character.
It is in this way, I surmise, that some of the present franchises have
been got, and are reflectively held. There have been henchmen to procure
them and turn them over to patrons, who wait a while before going to
work, trusting to influence to procure the proper extensions and renewals
of time, if needed.
Stories were afloat of practices employed in the obtaining of concessions
and subsidies, which I should prefer to believe falsifications. I heard
one or two of them, it is true, from somewhat inside sources, and such
practices are not unknown elsewhere; yet I like much better to think
that there are no persons of standing and influence in Mexico who could
prostitute their high position, and put a shameless greed for gain before
the public interest in a crisis like the present, as these stories seem
to indicate.
“Why, in our great West,” said an American visitor, settling himself back
in his chair to complain vigorously of certain treatment he had received,
“if an immigrant comes among us, we give him a lift. We help him build
his house, or perhaps put him up a barn; and are glad to do it. If he has
capital to start some kind of factory, we give him a piece of land free
of charge. That is the American style. We put our hands in our pockets
and pay out a little, knowing full well that we shall get it back in time
in the greater prosperity of the town.”
“Yes,” I said, by way of sympathy with his aggrieved situation, and a
proper pride in the American style of doing things, “and I am told that,
in Chicago and St. Louis, they pay his hotel bills a while, and try to
keep him, if not as a permanent resident, at least long enough to get out
a new census, in which he may be included.”
“But here,” my interlocutor continued, “there is nothing of the kind. The
first thing they ask about a new-comer is, ‘How much can we make out of
him?’ They want pay for permitting him to do something for them. There is
no public spirit, no local pride. What they want is exorbitant gains.”
He went on to tell of an application for a charter by an American
company, which was absolutely refused. They were afterward approached
and told that the privilege would be granted to a committee of Mexican
senators, who would in their turn transfer it to the company for a
handsome consideration. The go-betweens in this negotiation declared that
the personages who were to have the final voice in the granting of the
charter, as well as themselves, would require to be paid, which might
have been true, and might not. A liberal share of the subsidy to be voted
for the railway was to be exhausted in this way.
I do not know whether this be anything more than political “striking,”
or black-mailing, with which we are familiar at Albany and elsewhere,
and whether the corruption ever really reaches to head-quarters. At any
rate, it was said that some part of the aid devoted to each several
enterprise was diverted in this way to private benefit. The drainage
of the valley had been offered in the United States at a reduction of
forty per cent. from the amount voted by the appropriation bill, the
difference to be retained by the purveyors of the opportunity. One
hundred thousand dollars in cash was demanded, again, as a preliminary,
for the opportunity to fill in the works of a certain harbor with
stone at a reasonable rate. Such accounts may be worth looking into by
Mexican authority, with the interest of good and economical work and
the abatement of scandal at heart. There is probably no better form of
patriotism for Mexico just now than a strict and uncompromising honesty
of administration.
II.
There were entered in the convenient statistical hand-book known as the
“Annuario Universal,” for the year, a list of forty-one railways as
in _explotacion_ (running), or under construction. But after many of
those enumerated was inserted a note, to the effect that, owing to some
unforeseen delay, the works were not yet begun. Taking out these, and
a larger number on which, though technically begun, little or no labor
had been expended, there was still an unlooked for array of constructed
roads. Taking out the English road from Vera Cruz, and what had been
done by the American companies, almost at the moment, these were
found to consist of short bits of local line scattered throughout the
country. There was not a through line among them; many were operated by
animal traction only; they had been built by natives, been afflicted by
bankruptcies and other troubles; and represented the railway situation
of the country apart from outside assistance. You were even drawn a
good part of the way by animals on the English branch from Vera Cruz to
Jalapa; and in going from Mexico to the mines at Pachuca, after leaving
the main line at Ometusco, we took first a diligence, and were then
pulled by mules in a Philadelphia-built horse-car. The number of these
isolated bits has not increased in the mean time, several of them having
been bought up and incorporated in the larger enterprises.
In the mean time, however, the list of projected roads at least has
been liberally increased. The Congressional session of 1881 was the
most active ever known in the authorization of new enterprises on a
great scale. The great Mexican Central, trunk line, had, however, been
chartered in 1878, and the Mexican National in 1880. The first charter
under the modern movement dates from October, 1867; and since then the
Mexican Government has issued charters for over 20,000 miles of road,
with subsidies probably to the amount of $200,000,000. Many of these,
with their subsidies, have lapsed, of course. The Government is now held
for about 15,000 miles of road, and subsidies of $90,000,000.
The enterprises on a great scale are all American, and the chief ones
among them may be estimated roughly as follows:
Miles.
Mexican Central (Boston Company) 2,000
Mexican National (Palmer-Sullivan) 2,000
Sonora (Boston Company) 500
Mexican Southern (General Grant, President) 1,000
Oriental (De Gress and Jay Gould) 1,200
Topolobambo (Senator Windom, President) 1,200
International (Frisbie and Huntington) 1,400
Pacific Coast (Frisbie) 3,000
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Total 12,300