It is not probable that there will soon again be serious disturbances.

“All the grabbers have got places,” say some critics of a cynical turn,

“and there will be no more revolutions.” A better saying, however, is

current: “A bad government is preferable to a good revolution.” There

is a weariness of fighting. The country seems to savor the little-known

luxury of peace with a positive gusto. The railways diminish the chance

of trouble by for the first time furnishing ample employment to the idle,

who formerly occupied themselves in plunder and were ready to follow the

banners of insurgent chiefs. They will be a potent military engine in

enabling the Government to mass its forces at points of danger. The fear,

too, may be present of interference by foreign governments, should the

enterprises of their citizens be threatened with serious damage by new

upheavals.

Still, there are great administrative abuses. The civil service is

notoriously corrupt. Opportunities for galling oppression are open to

the governments, both federal and state, and, most ominous of trouble,

redress by the ballot is not possible. The anomaly is presented of a

republic in which there is no census nor registration of voters, no

scrutiny of the ballot-box except by the party in power. There is hardly

a ray of interest in the political machine by the people themselves.

The number of votes cast at elections is pitifully small, as we have

seen. It is not considered worth while to vote. The lower classes

read no informing journals, have no public speakers. No organized

opposition exists. Such opposition as there is is purely personal. All

contests for office are personal, and not a matter of principles. The

Government—that of the centre influencing the states, and these in turn

the communities—sustains and counts in what candidates it pleases. There

are no data for objection, since nobody can point to the real number of

voters in a given place, nor their names.

When this is understood it seems to account for almost all that has

happened. There is absolutely no remedy for oppressive domination but in

rebellion. With the best of dispositions, the most entire patience, what

has happened in the past may happen again.

If there be any statesmanship in Mexico, may we not hope to see some

champion arise to remedy this, instruct the masses in their rights,

enumerate and register them, and insure them the first essential of a

free government—an accurate and unfettered suffrage?

XII.

_CUATITLAN, AND AROUND LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO._

I.

The saying is current that “Outside of Mexico all is Cuatitlan.”

It shows that the capital entertains a true Parisian esteem for itself,

and a corresponding contempt for the rest of the country. Cuatitlan

is a little village twenty-five miles to the northward, reached by a

narrow-gauge railroad, built by Mexicans, but purchased by the Mexican

Central. It was at Cuatitlan that I saw my first bull-fight. It is one

of the two places in the vicinity where the capital thus amuses itself,

the sport being prohibited in town. In some states, as Zacatecas, it is

abolished entirely.

There were five bulls killed that day, and three horses, but no

men—unfortunately, the novice in these cowardly and disagreeable

representations is inclined to think. Each bull came in ignorant of the

fate of his predecessor, and ran at the streamers with a playful air.

You felt like scratching his back and calling him “good old fellow,”

instead of waiting to see presently his pained astonishment and torture,

his glazing eye and staggering step, and death like that of an actor in

melodrama. The horses were wretched hacks, allowed to be gored purposely

as a part of the spectacle. They were driven around the ring afterward

till they dropped, and their life-blood poured with an audible noise,

like the spatter of a rivulet. Upon which the boisterous youth of Mexico,

of the lower class, cried “_Bello!_” “_Bellissimo!_” in frenzied delight.

[Illustration: ENVIRONS OF MEXICO.]

The gray old walls of the parish church, immense, and of excellent design

(as they all are), rise above the amphitheatre. Within are figures of

saints grotesquely adorned, or realistically horrible, in the usual

style. The devout Indians are not archæologists, and have no idea of

paying honor other than as they understand it. I have it on authority

that when left to themselves they have been known to equip the Saviour

of the World in a twenty-dollar hat, _chaparreras_ (a kind of riding

breeches), spurs, sabre, and revolver, sparing no expense to make him a

cavalier of the first fashion.

The houses of the town, built of concrete or adobe, sometimes plastered

and tinted, are of one story. There are some small portals for the use

of out-of-door merchants, a few _pulquerias_, and thread-needle shops,

and a _meson_, or inn, “of the Divine Providence,” where enormous-wheeled

wagons are corralled in line, and muleteers sleep upon their packs, as in

the times of _Don Quixote_.

This is Cuatitlan, this the Mexican village, which can be dreary enough

to one who does not look at it with the fresh interest of a new-comer.

You cannot take as much comfort in the lower class of people as you

would like, on account of their habits. There is no denying that in the

neighborhood of Mexico at least they are very dirty. They do not clean

up even for their festivals. I saw them dancing at a public ball at the

Theatre Hidalgo, which, among other amusements, the municipality provided

for them free, on the national festival of the 5th of May. There were

charcoal dealers and such persons, with their women, and they had not

taken the pains to remove a single smudge of their working-day condition.

Cuatitlan was the birth-place of the simple peon Juan Diego, who in 1531

saw the miraculous apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He was passing

the barren hill where her elaborate pilgrimage church now stands, and

she gave him roses which had flowered where no flower had ever been seen

before. A banner with the image of this miraculous Virgin was carried all

through the wars of the Independence. Guadalupe is still one of the spots

to be visited, and you buy such sacred knick-knacks there as at Lourdes

or Einsiedlen, but the church is stripped of its treasures now, and the

surroundings have a shabby aspect.

II.

At San Angel, Tlalpam, and other similar points in the vicinity of the

capital, there was formerly an extensive villa life. It has curiously

decayed, even while the security of living in such a way has increased.

There are no fierce heats, however, to drive people to the country. It is

always comfortable in town. No watering-places nor summer resorts in our

sense of the word exist. People who go to their haciendas visit them more

to look after their business interests than in need or love of country

life. Bills are up in the grated windows of the long, low, one-storied

villas at San Angel, and the fruits fall untasted in the orange and

myrtle gardens. The villagers endeavor to atone for this neglect of them

by feasts of flowers, and little fairs, which last a week at a time. On

these occasions, among other attractions, existing ordinances against

gambling are set aside, and their small plazas are filled with games of

hazard.

[Illustration: SUNDAY DIVERSIONS AT SANTA ANITA.]

The Viga Canal, as far as Santa Anita, is a livelier and more unique

resort. Santa Anita is the St. Cloud or Bougival of Mexico. Thither go,

especially on Sundays, lively persons to disport themselves on the water

and pass a day of the picnic order, taking lunch with them, or depending

on such cheap viands as the place offers. The wide yellow canal is more

Venetian than French at first. A mouldering red villa or two on its

banks, with private water-gates, might belong to the Brenta. Afterward

lines of willows and poplars are reflected in the water, and then it is

French again.

Flat-boats coming on, piled up with bales of hay and wood, echo each

other peacefully from distance to distance. Swift, small _chalupas_

(dug-outs) follow, managed by the Indian master in poses for a sculptor,

while his wife—or it is as often an Indian woman alone—is ensconced among

flowers and vegetables, with which it overflows. This is the region of

the _chinampas_, the gardens from which the markets of Mexico are most

liberally supplied. They are formed by the division of what was once a

marsh, by narrow branch canals, into small oblong patches. The patches

are so small that the owner passes around the borders in his canoe, and

keeps all portions moist with water, which he throws out upon them with

a calabash. By this care, and the rich character of the redeemed soil,

luxuriant crops are produced.

The houses of the village are generally of bamboo, and without windows,

sufficient light penetrating through the interstices. The first business

of the participants in the Sunday festivities here is to provide

themselves with large, thick wreaths of lovely poppies and blue and

white cornflowers, which are sold for the merest trifle. They wear these

upon their heads, in their caperings, with a highly classic effect. A

general frizzling sound is heard, where eatables, of which peppers form a

large ingredient, are prepared on little charcoal furnaces without and

primitive fire-places within. “Come in!” the busy venders cry; “come in,

señors, señoras, and señoritas, and be seated! _Aqui los niños!_ Here is

the place for the children! Here is the place where they are appreciated,

and by no means considered a nuisance!”

“_Tamales calientitos!_ dear little _tamales_, very nice and hot!” they

cry. In the same caressing way a cabman in want of a job will call you

_patroncito_, “dear little patron,” though you may be as large as a

grenadier.

They decorate their little stands with turnips and radishes cut into

ingenious shapes of flowers, and with a profusion of little birds

in wax, and the Mexican Goddess of Liberty astride of an eagle. A

swarm of flat-boat men cluster at the edge of the canal, bidding for

your patronage. Dancing is going on in almost every court-yard; the

ballad-singers strike up lazy refrains; and in the Carcel, in a dirty

little plaza, by a fountain, a single prisoner monotonously rattles

his wooden grating, and glares out at the gayety like a madman. No

self-respecting American prisoner could be induced to stay in a place so

easy to escape from. But there is no accounting for tastes.

III.

But are there no real _chinampas_, no gardens that actually float,

according to the tradition? Was all that, then, a myth?

Not at all. The soil hereabouts is solidified now, anchored down, as it

were; but it has in its time floated, and in that condition borne crops.

Farther on whole expanses are found only kept in position by stakes,

with four feet of water below, and yet strong enough to sustain grazing

cattle. An expedition was organized, in which I was privileged to set

off, under the hospitable guidance of the Director of the Drainage of

the Valley, to witness these marvels in person. We had a large row-boat,

rowed by five oarsmen; and in our party was an amiable English traveller,

who has written a book about Mexico,[2] and described, among others, this

very expedition.

We started about seven o’clock in the morning from the garita of La Viga,

an old Spanish water-gate, at which toll is taken from the market boats.

The current was against us. The canal of La Viga, a stretch of about

sixteen miles, is the outlet of Lake Xochimilco into Texcoco. Chalco

and Xochimilco are practically the same lake, being separated only by a

narrow causeway of ancient date, which is open at the centre and spanned

by a little bridge.

There are numerous hamlets along the way, built like Santa Anita, and

each with a few venerable palm-trees in its plaza. The Jefe Politico of

one embraced our Director of the Desagüe and kissed his hand. At another

a solid little bridge had lately been thrown across the canal, and we

heard of a banquet that had been given on the occasion. The orator of the

day had delivered a resounding address on human progress, and declared

that he was proud to be a resident of a village which could accomplish

such a feat. We lunched at a fort-like hacienda at Ixtapalapa, the point

where the canal issues from the lake, and there found horses awaiting to

take us to the top of the Hill of the Star. Upon this eminence, according

to Prescott, were rekindled the extinguished fires and the beautiful

captive sacrificed at the end of each of the cycles of fifty years, when

the Aztecs thought the existence of the world was to be terminated.

We found nothing on the summit but a few heavy foundation stones,

possibly remains of a sacrificial altar. Our horses had to be walked

actively about, to prevent their taking serious cold from the rapid

evaporation. It is chiefly memories that are found on such places. I

plucked there, however, to send in a letter, a dark-red common flower,

and pleased myself with the fancy that it might have drawn its sanguinary

hue from the ground so steeped in slaughter.

Though at the entrance of the lake, no shining expanse of water was

visible. The greater part of the surface, in fact, is covered with a

singular growth of entwined roots and _débris_, supporting a verdant

meadow. Passage through it is effected by canals and shifting natural

channels, which change with the wind.

Two of our men after a time got out and towed the boat. The ostensible

_terra firma_ sank under their weight like the undulations of “benders”

in thin ice. Now and then one floundered and went in waist-deep, whereat

the others laughed. The margins are kept in place along the permanent

channels by pinning them down with long stakes.

We fell in with wandering strips of growing verdure, called _cintas_

(ribbons), and larger ones, _bandoleros_ (bandits), drifting about

at their own sweet will. Our host told us, though this he would not

guarantee as of his own experience, that in the earlier times a garden

of flowers and vegetables was now and then wrecked along-shore after

a gale of wind, as if it had been a bark. Contrabandists, robbers

who occasionally beset the market-boats, and political refugees have

sometimes found this a favorable place of refuge, and escaped pursuit by

diving under the illusive area and coming up elsewhere.

We dined _al fresco_ at Mas Arriba, a place named quite in the

American style, literally Farther On. The margins were full of yellow

water-lilies, and the clear spaces reflected distant mountains. Evening

drew on, and then night. The frogs and crickets waked up their lonesome

refrain, and fire-flies twinkled brightly in the morass. A few drops of

rain fell, which increased in time to a shower.

IV.

We reached the long causeway between the two lakes late at night, in

pitch darkness and torrents of rain, and screened ourselves a while under

the little bridge, which barely accommodated the boat. Here was Tlahuac,

an ancient island town or village, at the centre of the causeway. Waiting

was useless. We landed in the rain, bought candles at a wretched _tienda_

kept by Indians as solemn as statues, and set out in search of a lodging.

A mozo preceded us, like a great fire-bug, sheltering a burning candle

under a straw mat as best he could, to aid us in keeping out of the

deeper puddles.

We were recommended to the Padre, as the only person capable of

entertaining visitors of our distinction, and found him in an ancient

Dominican convent looming up in the darkness. He received us with many

apologies, gave us a good supper, manifested an interest in the late

gossip of Mexico, and put us to sleep on the church carpets on the floor

of a vast, bare room, provided with a few old religious pictures and bits

of furniture.

Any temporary discomforts of this night of adventure were amply atoned

for by the beautiful bright morning of the next day. We found Tlahuac

a kind of Venetian island, a Torcello, as it were, on which some

population of New Zealanders might have put up their thatched huts. The

church rising in the centre had one of the usual shining tiled domes,

and was preceded by a court and arched gate-way. Its outer walls were

covered with a large pattern of quatre-foils in red and yellow. I do not

recollect just such a design again till I came later to the old Spanish

mission of San Juan Capistrano, in Southern California. The island has

sunk, or rather the lake has risen, in course of time, and the bases

of the columns in the church are some four feet below the level of the

ground.

Near by was the village school, and, as we got under way, we heard the

shrill little voices of the children reciting their spelling in concert.

All the shock-headed adult residents, in their garments of white cotton,

looked as stupid as possible; but it is not always safe to judge by

appearances.

From here the view of the two great snow-clad volcanoes is uninterrupted

and glorious. We were told to feel with the oars at one place in the

canal the pavements of a submerged Aztec city. Cortez mentions such a one

in his letters. In 1855 the rumor of a new Pompeii spread abroad, based

upon the finding of a few submerged Aztec huts in Lake Chalco, but no

remains of any real importance have ever come to light.

V.

On this day, in Lake Chalco, we took our mid-day meal at the base of

Xico, a little island volcano now extinct. It is of solid granite,

without so much as a blade of grass externally, and the ascent is

smooth and difficult. The boatmen sometimes see “Will-o’-the-wisps” on

its summit, which, they say, are kindled by the witches. We climbed

it, notwithstanding, and found a gently sloping crater, filled with

maize-fields, which could easily have been approached from the other side.

The water began to be charmingly clear, and the bottom was full of a red

weed like coral. We gathered ferns, lilies, the fragrant little white

flower of St. John—_flor de San Juan_, sold in large bunches in the

market—and other flowers, yellow, purple, and vivid scarlet, of unknown

names.

The clouds still hung threateningly about, and gave us now and then a

slight sprinkle of rain. But as we drew near to Chalco and the end of our

two days’ voyage they cleared away.

The prospect from this point is the subject for a landscape painting of

the grand order. The town of Chalco, with an ancient and noble church

edifice, supplies the element of human interest. In front is the blue

water in spaces, with their reflection, and a wealth of marsh plants,

arrow and lance heads, ferns, and flowers. In the distance is the great

snow-clad mountains, upon which wreathing mists throw changing lights and

shadows. Ixtacihuatl, the White Woman, though the lesser, I continually

find the more picturesque of the two, in its sharp and rugged outline.

Popocatepetl, in the more perfect symmetry of its cone, is a little

monotonous, like Orizaba.

We came, by a short branch canal, to the station of La Compañia, on the

Morelos railway, and took the train back to town. We were just in time to

hear of a disturbance near by by General Tiburcio Montiel, and his arrest

by the Government forces. It was said that he had headed a communistic

uprising of Indians for the recovery of their lands. He declared through

the press afterward that he had but gathered a posse to aid him in the

execution of some legal process. Quaint risings of a communistic sort,

however, have not been uncommon. Demagogues have more than once told the

simple-minded peons that the lands of the country were theirs—had been

wrested from their ancestors by the Spanish conquerors—and it was high

time to get them back. An ingenious hacendado, waited upon by such a

delegation, admitted their view, but met it with another.

“Yes,” said he, “the Spaniards took your lands, it is true; but before

that you Aztecs took them from the Toltecs. Find me first, therefore,

some Toltecs; I will yield my title only to them.”

XIII.

_TO OLD TEXCOCO._

I.

My next journey was by lake across Texcoco to the old capital of that

name. I had hoped to take _El Nezhualcoyotl_, which lay in the mud by the

Garita of San Lazaro, when I went to make preliminary inquiries. There

would have been a certain fitness in approaching the ancient capital in

a boat named after the sovereign who made it illustrious; but it was not

its day for sailing.

The _Nezhualcoyotl_ was clipper-built, as it were, a long, rusty,

gondola-like scow, devoted exclusively to passenger traffic. We took

instead a freight-boat of much larger and heavier build, _La Ninfa

Encantadora_, or “the Enchanting Nymph.” She would have been called the

_Mary Ann_ or _Betsy Jane_ elsewhere, but such is the difference in the

tropical imagination.

A cabin sheltered the passengers and some budgets of goods which were

done up in the inevitable _petates_, rush mats, and included two bags

of silver. There were a couple of young women going to _pasear_—take

a little vacation—at Texcoco. “It will be _triste_, of course,” they

said, “like everything out of Mexico; still, we are going to try it for

a while.” They offered a part of their lunch, as travelling companions

were continually doing wherever I went, and the skipper offered us

_pulque_. Two older women, in blue rebosas, sat like statues, holding

their parcels and an Indian baby in their laps, from one end of the long

journey to the other.

The canal of San Lazaro on this side extends about a league to the lake.

It is very much less attractive than that of Chalco. Its terminus in the

city is the point of a most animated and Venetian-like market scene, but

one earns his pleasure in dealing with this canal at the expense of many

a bad odor. Six men put a sort of harness on themselves and dragged us

along, plodding on the tow-path, as Russian peasants drag their boats in

some of their rivers. A man on horseback with a tow-rope also assisted,

on the other side.

The water, shoal in the beginning, shoaled more as we went on, till

we were aground on flats in the edge of the lake. The city sewage was

aground with us. Still, the situation was relieved by the striking

prospect. The teocalli-like Peñol, where there are warm baths, was

close at hand. Sky and water were of an identical blue; the shallow

expanse reflected the circuit of dark and purplish foot-hills and great

snow-peaks beyond as perfectly as if it had been as deep as they were

high.

Our crew walked for an hour in the mud, pushing against long poles

projected from the sides, before we could be said to be fairly afloat.

Then they came aboard and poled the rest of the way. They walked up an

inclined plane, carrying the poles over their heads, and came down,

pushing, with them supported against their shoulders, in a bold and

striking motion. It was eight o’clock when we set out, and four when we

reached the mouth of the short branch canal which makes up to Texcoco.

The distance must be about thirty miles. A cross arose out of the

lake half way over, and our polemen stopped at it and shouted three

times, with startling effect, “_Alabo al gran poder de Dios! Ave Maria

purissima!_”—“Hail to the almighty power of God! Hail, Mary the purest!”

Unexpectant of anything of the sort, I hurried out from the cabin, taking

it to be some defiance at enemies, or disturbance among ourselves. We

met other packets like our own, loaded with people. A considerable part

of the cargoes was the fine large red earthen jars and dishes we saw at

Mexico, which are made at Texcoco. The piled-up bales and pottery, the

strange figures, and the flashing poles of one of these craft, coming on,

make it a highly original and spirited subject.

Then we fell in with one of the curiosities of the lake—disbelieved in by

some—swarms of the _mosca_, a little water-fly, so thickly settled on the

water that we took them for flats and reefs. They resemble mosquitoes,

but neither sting nor even alight on the boat. They are taken in fine

nets and carried to Mexico, as food for the birds; and they have eggs,

which are sold in the market and made into tortillas, which are said to

be very palatable.

The shores are encrusted with native alkali, which has its share in the

production of the disagreeable odors. Peasants gather the crude product

and load it upon donkeys, to carry to a salt and soda works, and a

manufactory of glass, situated at Texcoco.

Was it in this same branch canal that Cortez launched his brigantines for

the destruction of the naval power of the Aztecs? There is water in but a

part of it now; and traces of substantial locks are found, where grass is

growing and cows feeding.

[Illustration: CREW OF “LA NINFA ENCANTADORA.”]

II.

I spent nearly a week at Texcoco assimilating the quiet interior life

of the country. I dined at the Restaurante Universo, both cheaply and

better as a rule than at Mexico, and found a chamber with the keeper of

the principal _tienda_, there being no inn. I even became something of

an expert in _pulque_. The true connoisseur takes it _mitad y mitad_:

half of _agua miel_ newly from the maguey field, and half the stronger

beverage of longer standing. I made the acquaintance of the Jefe

Politico, a polite, youngish man, said to be a terror to evil-doers. He

had made the roads safe. He had a way of shooting at brief notice, and

transporting to Yucatan, or if he contented himself with a mere fine

it was a sounding one. The _pulquerias_ must be closed at six o’clock,

and other shops at nine. One day the Deputy returned from his seat in

Congress, and was given a characteristic reception. A troop of twenty or

so of his constituents mounted on horseback, and preceded the omnibus in

which he was drawn, from the railway station back into the town, at the

top of their speed, shouting and firing pistols. Crackers and pistols

were fired also from the omnibus.

I made the acquaintance also of the local druggist, an intelligent

person, who had a collection of antiquities. He was of the pure Indian

race, and professed himself proud of being an Indian, and proud of

being a Texcocan. He had lately brought out a very strong distillation

of _pulque_, a kind of patent medicine, and asked my advice about

introducing it in the United States. He evidently thought we were made of

money, for I am sure we never should have been willing to pay so much a

bottle.

The place has now about six thousand people. Its churches are immense.

It has a long, shabby plaza, with a market arcade on one side, and an

Alameda, also in poor condition. The Jefe Politico might extend his

protection next to a few internal improvements. Hamlets cluster near

together in a fertile area round about. I noted one day two peons soberly

carrying on their shoulders, among the magueys, what appeared to be a

dead body. It proved to be instead the saint of the village church, which

they were quaintly conveying, as a loan, to one of the others, to assist

in a festival of the morrow.

In the hamlet of Santa Cruz the population are potters. Each has a little

round tower of a furnace attached to his house, works on his own account,

and sets out the large, ruddy jars on his roof to dry. He could acquire a

competence if persevering, but the moment he has a dollar ahead he stops

work till it is spent. In other houses persons were seen at looms weaving

blue cotton stuffs for apparel.

Numbers of ancient carven stones occur, let into the church walls

and pavement, and set up in the Alameda. Remains of teocallis are

also numerous, as they might well be in a place once the seat of the

Augustinian age of Aztec culture. They are treated with no respect at

all. They are worn down into mere knolls, and planted with crops. From

the site of one now levelled a proprietor was said to have taken out a

treasure. What with its age, the destruction of haciendas in the wars,

and the practice of the Indians, still prevailing, of burying their money

in the ground, there ought to be treasure-trove in Mexico, if anywhere.

Certain it is that my host at the _tienda_, Señor Macedonia, had in his

till some beautiful old Spanish coins, which he displayed to the gossips

who came in the evening to sip beverages and play dominos.

Among the gossips thus sociably _tomando copas_ (taking cups) at the

_tienda_ there was one, a certain “Don Santiago,” who told me that he was

pulling down, in his garden, the largest pyramid of the place, to sell

the material for building purposes. This was of real interest. Going

thither, his pyramid was found to be indeed of imposing size. It was laid

up in regular courses of sun-dried brick, and there were vestiges of a

facing and superposed pavements of cement, as at San Juan Teotihuacan.

There was present in the place with me an archæologist—a newspaper

archæologist, I should call him. He termed himself an “expedition;” he

had an omnivorous taste for unearthing things, without knowledge of

the language, or apparent acquaintance with any previous researches or

theories; and his discoveries were intended principally to redound to

the fame of a journal which had sent him out. Between us we brought to

light a section of a great bass-relief which now occupies a place in the

National Museum at Mexico. It was probably seven feet in its longest

dimension and five in the other, and must have been a quarter or so of

the whole work. It contained a calendar circle, no doubt establishing the

date, and part of the figure of a warrior in elaborate regalia, possibly

that of old Nezhualcoyotl himself. The archæologist, whom perhaps I

unfairly disparage for the auspices under which he appeared, set to

work with a will, and soon had half a dozen natives taking the surface

off the rest of the soil in the vicinity, for the remaining fragments,

but without success. It was the fierce practice of the Spaniards to

break the religious emblems of the conquered pagans, to prevent them,

as far as possible, from returning to their idolatrous practices, and

most likely they rolled down one fragment of the great stone one way,

and another another, to separate them as widely as possible; so that

they will be found on different sides of the pyramid. All day long it

was “Don Santiago!” here, and “Don Santiago!” there, as the excavators

plied their labors; while I spent some part of it, shaded by an impromptu

awning of mats, noting down in a drawing the peculiarities of the “find”

we had made. I do not profess myself an archæologist, except from the

picturesque point of view. It is my private surmise that a great deal of

good investigation is lavished upon these matters which had much better

be spent upon the present; but here was a case in which the sentiment

of the picturesque was amply gratified. There was a genuine pleasure in

being one of the first to salute this interesting fragment of antiquity

after its long sleep, to tenderly brush the dirt from it and trace its

enigmatic lines.

[Illustration: THE “FIND.”]

III.

There is a decided resemblance, to this day, in looks and habits, between

the Mexican peon and the Chinaman. Writers on the subject have generally

represented America as originally peopled from Asia, the Asiatics having

crossed over, perhaps, at Behring’s Straits, and made their way south.

One Mexican writer stoutly maintains that Mexico was the cradle of the

race, and the migration was in the opposite sense. This accords, at any

rate, with Buckle’s general theory, that the thickly settled portions of

the earth were at first those where climate and a natural food-supply

made the maintenance of life easy. In these places, too, civilization

began. The warm and fertile area of Central America, therefore, would

have teemed with humanity before the waste North was peopled. There may

have been sculptured cities, one upon another, long before even Uxmal and

Palenque, the origin of which was lost in obscurity to the Aztecs.

However this may be, the Aztecs themselves, whether descendants of a race

expatriated from the South and become rugged in the North, or having

crossed over from Asia, came down from the colder regions, like the

Goths and Vandals upon Italy. The tradition on this point is clear. One

day two leading personages, Huitziton and Tecpultzin, in their far-off

northern regions, wherever they were, heard a small bird singing in

the branches _ti-hui! ti-hui!_—let us go! They listened intently and

took counsel together. “This is really very singular,” we may suppose

Huitziton saying, while Tecpultzin sagely laid a finger beside his nose

and listened again. One would like a historic picture by some competent

humorist of these two simple worthies deciding the fate of their nation.

_Ti-hui! ti-hui!_ piped the little songster inexorably, and that there

seemed nothing for it but that the Aztec people should move southward,

which they proceeded to do.

They overwhelmed the civilized Toltec capital at Tula in their progress.

They had a farther oracle saying that they were to stop when they should

arrive where an eagle was sitting on a nopal plant; and this they found

at Mexico, on the very spot which now is the plaza of San Domingo.

The whole district became filled in time with small kings and princes

tributary to the Montezumas. The most refined and peaceable type of them

all arose at Texcoco.

In the Cerro of Texcocingo, some ten or twelve miles back of the town,

remain extensive vestiges of an architectural magnificence which show

that the accounts of the historians are not made of whole cloth. We had a

trooper appointed us, as an escort and guide, by the Jefe Politico, and

rode out to visit them.

Ascending the hill, of perhaps two thousand feet in height, overgrown

with hardy nopal and maguey, you come to excellent flights of steps cut

in the solid rock, giving access to aqueducts, bathing tanks, cisterns,

and caverns, heavily sculptured within and without, which are remains of

temples and palaces.

Our trooper had little ambition in these matters, and after showing us

a part declared that there was no more, and went comfortably to sleep.

It was only by climbing alone to the top that I found the principal

display. Here the philosophic Nezhualcoyotl, in his retirement, hung in

the air, above the wide prospect of his capital, the lake, and his rival

of Mexico. And here, in the deserted mountain, with a guide who had

gone fast asleep below, his ghost might be half expected to be met with

wandering in the still sunshine, but unfortunately it was not. He wrote

poems of a pensive cast. He reflected even in his time as to whether

life is worth living, and his general theme was the vanity of all things

mortal.

“Where is Chalchintmet, the Chicameca?” he asks. “Mitl, the venerator

of the gods; Tolpiltzin, last of the Toltecs; and the beautiful

Xinlitzal—where are they?”

These no doubt once famous personages can be the better spared now,

on account of their unpronounceable names, but to the writer they

represented something very tangible and solid.

“Very brief is the realm of flowers,” he continues, “and brief is human

life.... Our careers are like the streams, which but run on to excavate

their own graves the more surely.... Let us look, then, to the immortal

life.... The stars that now so puzzle us are but the lamps that light the

palaces of the heavens.”

Such, if he be properly presented by Spanish adapters, were the

sentiments of this early monarch. Truly the latent capacities even of

the natural man are not so far below the surface; and it may be that no

agency will be found so potent to awaken them with a rush as the modern

facility in railway transportation.

IV.

On the return we visited a country residence, combined with large mills

for making paper and grinding grain. It was called the Molino del Flores,

and belonged to the wealthy Cervantes family of Mexico. One of this

Cervantes family was the subject, in 1872, of a celebrated exploit by

the _plagiarios_, or kidnappers. He was seized while coming out of the

theatre at night, a cloak was thrown over his head, and he was bundled

into a cab. He was buried a long time under the floor of a house, just

enough food being given him to sustain life. The _plagiarios_ did not

secure the large ransom they demanded, after all, but were finally

apprehended, and shot—three of them—against the wall of the house, the

Callejon Zacate, No. 8, where they had detained their victim.

The Molino del Flores was not only charming in itself, but may serve as a

text for mentioning the very different sentiment thrown around anything

in the shape of a manufactory from that prevailing with us. Mills,

residence, granaries, and chapel, terraced up into a steep hill-side

from a little entrance court, are constructed upon the same _motif_, and

form a single establishment. It is set in a striking little gorge. The

water-power, after turning the mills, is utilized for lovely gardens,

in which there are a hundred fantastic jets and surprises. There is an

out-of-door bathing tank, for instance, at the end of a secluded walk,

screened by shrubbery. The disrobing seat is managed in a small cave in

the cliff, and the shower, on pulling a ring, falls from the summit,

forty feet above. It is a place that might have served for such an

adventure as that of Susannah and the Elders.

In the novel of “Maria,” one of the most charming of stories, with which

I first made acquaintance in Mexico, though its scene is laid among

similar customs in South America, the heroine is represented as preparing

the bath for the hero in such a tank by scattering fresh roses into it

with her own fair hands.

A rustic bridge, on which La Sonnambula might have walked, is thrown

across the cataract to a quaintly frescoed, rock-cut mortuary chapel,

where, among others, the last titled ancestor of the house lies buried.

He had ten distinct surnames—was Marques de Flores, a General of Brigade,

signer of the Declaration of Independence, Captain in Iturbide’s Guard,

Cavalier of the Order of Guadalupe, Regidor, Governor, _Notabile_ under

Maximilian, and more; from which it will be seen that the pomp of the

hidalgos well survived in Mexico.

The same caressing way of looking at industrial establishments here

noticed is universal, and is, in part, no doubt, due to their rarity and

a thorough appreciation of their usefulness. I recollect everywhere the

sugar haciendas, “beneficiating” haciendas, or ore-reducing works, and

cotton-mills treated in similar fashion.

One voyage across Lake Texcoco was quite sufficient of its kind, and

I returned by diligencia to the junction point of the since completed

railway, and thence by rail to the capital. The pulling-gear of our

diligencia was a thing of shreds and patches. A boy ran beside the mules

all the way to mend the broken ropes and supplement, with whistling

and flapping, the exertions of the driver. The houses in the villages

are of unwhitewashed adobe, with palings of organ-cactus. It was like

riding through a brick-yard. Fine irrigating canals, fed from the

mountains, frequently crossed our course, indicating the substantial

scale on which agricultural works are conducted. More than one monumental

ruined hacienda, too, showed that they had formerly been on even a more

elaborate scale than now.

XIV.

_POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED._

I.

I do not know whether I advise everybody to climb Popocatepetl. There it

is always on the horizon, the highest mountain in North America, and one

of the few highest in the world—a standing inducement to the adventurous.

Few accept it, however, though among those who have done so are said to

be ladies. I should somewhat doubt this, but, even if so, there seem

to be some features of this ascent which make it uncertain whether the

effort “pays” quite as well as Alpine mountaineering.

At any rate, if one will go, let him have all the particulars and the

necessary outfit in advance, at the capital itself. Little aid or comfort

will be found elsewhere on his way. The proper preliminary for ascending

Popocatepetl is to find some one who has been there and knows all about

it, and to bear in mind besides the few following points, for his

informant will be sure to have forgotten them.

The feet are to be kept dry and warm, for there are hours of climbing

in wet snow. This is, perhaps, best accomplished by superposed pairs of

stout woollen stockings. The guides usually recommend strips of coarse

cotton cloth, to be bound around in Italian contadino fashion; but this

is a delusion and a snare, and they mean it to be so. They consider, very

justly, that if the traveller can be made so uncomfortable as to quit

the ascent before it is half accomplished they shall collect the price

agreed upon and be saved a great part of their trouble.

There should be shoes provided with some arrangement of spikes in the

soles, against the painful slipping backward. There should be a supply of

food and warm covering for camping-out, since absolutely nothing is to be

had, and the temperature is very cold at the shelter of Tlamaca, where

probably two nights will have to be passed.

I accomplished the ascent with two companions. We had in the beginning

such assurances of special assistance that it seemed about to be robbed

of all its terrors. The volcano is regularly owned, and worked as a

sulphur mine, by General Sanchez Ochoa, Governor of the Military School.

We were put in charge of one of his superintendents, who was to see

that we had every convenience, and that the _malacate_, or windlass,

was put in order for us to descend into the crater. I surmise that this

particular superintendent did not greatly care to encounter the needed

hardships on his own account, for certain it is that in the sequel

we were left short of many elementary necessities, and there was no

_malacate_ for the descent, nor any reference to it.

You arrive at Amecameca, forty miles from Mexico, by train. Everybody

should go there. It is one of the loveliest of places, and has inns for

the accommodation of visitors. Amecameca will one day be frequented

from many climes, if I am not much mistaken. It has features like

Interlaken. Cool airs are wafted down to it from the mountains, and its

site resembles an Alpine vale. There are points of view in the vicinity

whence a sharp minor peak separates itself from the main snow mass of

Popocatepetl, like the Silberhorn from the Jungfrau, at Interlaken. The

streets are clean, and the houses almost all neatly lime-washed in white

or colors. The market-place is a scene for an opera—a long arcade, full

of bright figures; behind this is a group of churches and court-yards;

behind these the vast snow mountains, as at Chalco, but nearer. A little

hill at the left, across a strip of maize-fields, is called the Sacro

Monte, and has a sacred chapel of some kind. I climbed thither while the

negotiations for horses and guides were in their first tedious stage, and

found a quaint Christ in the chapel, and a most engaging view from its

terrace.

II.

We set off with a captain, or chief guide, who called himself Domingo

Tenario; a peon guide, Marcellino Cardoba, who had worked for three years

at sulphur-mining in the volcano. He also acted as muleteer. We had four

horses and a mule—the whole for eight dollars a day. Domingo Tenario

would also ascend the mountain for a dollar more. We were to be gone

three days, the greater part of which the expedition consumes.

The first part of the way wound among softly undulating slopes, yellow

with barley, out of which projected here and there an ancient pyramid,

planted with a crop also. By the roadside grew charming white thistles,

tall blue lupines, and columbines. We crossed _arroyos_, brooks, and

_barrancas_, gorges. The aspect changed to that of an Alpine pasture.

There were bunch grass, tender flowering mosses, and cattle feeding.

An eccentric dog, who was attached, it seemed, to one of the horses,

and had the ambition to ascend the mountain also, instead of saving his

strength for it, here ran up and down and bit at the heels of the herds

in the most wasteful manner. It seems a small detail of an enterprise of

pith and moment to mention, but “Perro,” as we called him, for want of

acquaintance with his name, if he had one, contrived a score of sage and

amusing devices to attract an attention to himself beyond his deserts.

The horses were frescoed on the flanks with a kind of Eastlake decoration

made up of the brands of successive owners.

The English landed proprietor in our small party occupied himself with

collecting specimens, and soon had a kind of geological and botanical

pudding in his satchel. The American engineer took observations with his

barometer and thermometer. Crosses are set up at intervals along the way.

These indicate places where a death by violence has occurred, but not

always a death by the hand of man. Did the custom prevail of setting up a

cross in New York, for instance, wherever a violent death had occurred,

we too should have a liberal share of these emblems.

We entered the deep, solemn pine-woods; the night came on, and a sharp

cold seemed to penetrate to the marrow. Buildings appeared in the gloom,

with red flames dancing merrily through the windows. Aha! the rancho

of Tlamaca, with hospitable fires made up, no doubt, expressly for our

reception!

What a disappointment! The buildings proved to be but some shelters

of rough boards, with plentiful interstices, and not a whole pane of

glass. The cabin devoted to the uses of the superintendent contained

but a single cot. The dancing flames were those from the process of

smelting the crude sulphur, which is done in brick furnaces in the

principal structure. Two Indian boys stirred the fires, and coughed in a

distressing way all night long. We threw ourselves down to sleep among

the sulphur-sacks. One was choked by the fumes, if near the furnaces,

and penetrated by the draughts through crevice and broken window-pane, if

remote. Tlamaca is itself 12,500 feet above the sea, and its thermometer

ranges about 40° Fahrenheit. Without other covering than a light rubber

overcoat—for I had not been instructed to bring other—it was impossible

to sleep. I went out and paced the yard, sentry fashion, at three

o’clock in the morning, as the only resource for keeping the blood in

circulation. It was moonlight, and I had the partial compensation of

studying the volcano, bathed in a lovely silver radiance.

Mountains are rather given to making their poorest possible figure. Here

we are, at this point, already 12,500 feet above the sea, and this is

to be subtracted from the total. Shall we ever meet with a good, honest

mountain rising its whole 19,673 feet at once, without these shuffling

evasions? I fear not. They are only to be found in the designs of tyro

pictorial art.

I say 19,673 feet, because so much General Ochoa insists that

Popocatepetl is, by a late measurement with the barometer of Gay-Lussac.

He even estimates 1700 feet more for the upper rim of the crater, which

has never been scaled. I do not know that this has ever passed into

any official form, but I had it from his own lips. The latest Mexican

atlas makes it but 5400 metres, or 17,884 feet, which coincides with the

measurement of Humboldt. I much prefer to rally to General Ochoa, for

my part, and to believe that I have climbed a mountain of 21,373 feet,

instead of one of a mere 17,884.

The barometer of our own expedition, unfortunately, stopped at 17,000

feet, the limit for which it was set—a limit which barometers are not

often called upon to surpass.

III.

We left the Rancho, at six in the morning, on horseback, and rode three

hours toilsomely over rocks of basalt, and black sand. The poor animals

suffered painfully, but we needed all our own strength for the later

work, and could not spare them. They were left at a point called Las

Cruces, where a cross tops a ledge of black, jaggedly-projecting volcanic

rock. The lines of composition in this part of the ascent were noble and

magnificent, the contrasts startling. Across the vast, black undulations,

on which our shadows fell purple-black, appeared and disappeared in turn

the rich red castellated Pico del Fraile, and the dazzling white breadths

of the greater mountain engaging our efforts.

Backward from Las Cruces lay a dizzy view of the world below. Across was

the height of Ixtacihuatl, the White Woman, keeping us company in our

ascent. The valley of Mexico could be seen in one direction, the valley

of Puebla, and even the peak of Orizaba, 150 miles away, in the other.

Against the mysterious vastness stood the figures of our men and horses

on the ledge of volcanic rock, as if in trackless space.

It was here that “Perro” charged down the slope after crows, which

tantalized him and drifted lazily out of his reach, and so wasted his

forces that he was obliged to abandon the expedition. Las Cruces was

14,150 feet up. The climb now began on foot, in a soft black sand. One of

the leading difficulties of the climb is said to arise from the exceeding

thinness of the air, which makes breathing difficult. I cannot say that I

discriminated between this and the shortness of breath due to the natural

fatigue.

Isolated pinnacles of snow stood up like monuments in the black sand,

as precursors of the permanent snow-line. The cool snow-line was a

luxury for the first few moments. We sat down and lunched by it, and

from there took our last views backward. Cumulus clouds presently filled

up the valley with a symmetrical arrangement like pavement. Such bits

as appeared through furtive openings recalled the charming lines of

Holmes’s, in which a spirit, “homesick in heaven,” looks back on the

earth it has left:

“To catch perchance some flashing glimpse of green,

Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through

The opening gates of pearl.”

Up to this point—a little higher, let us say—the effort is rewarded. A

view of “the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof” has been had

which could not be got elsewhere. But above this it has little more

reward than that of being able to boast of it to your friends. A few

steps in the snow, and imperfectly protected feet were sodden, numb

with cold, and not to be dried again till the final descent. There

was a painful slipping and falling in the snow, and blood-marks were

left by ungloved hands. The grade is excessive, the top invisible. Who

can estimate when he shall attain it? The prospect consists of jagged

snow-pinnacles without cessation, an endless staircase of them reaching

up into the sky. Sometimes, in the sun, all the pinnacles glitter; again,

thick fogs, like a gray smoke, gather round. There is no more casting

yourself down now in warm scoriæ and sand. If you sit you are chilled.

Yet rest you must continually. Every step is a calculation and an

achievement. You calculate that you will allow yourself a rest after ten,

after twenty more. The snow is not dangerous; there are no crevasses to

fall into, as in the Alps; it is only monotonous and fatiguing. I seem

to have gone on for an hour after farther endurance was intolerable.

The guides encourage you—when they find that you really mean to go

up—with the adjuration, “_Poco á poco_” (little by little); so that we

paraphrased our mountain as “Poco-a-poco-catepetl.”

Finally, with sighs and groans of labored effort, instead of the

lightness with which one might be expected to salute a point of so

extreme high heaven, we staggered over the edge of the crater at about

two o’clock in the afternoon. I had doubted at one time whether the

English landed proprietor would be able to reach it. He had grown purple

in the face. Perhaps I had even hoped that he might need a friendly arm

to assist him down again on the instant; but he said, with the true

British tenacity,

“Oh, _bless_ you, I am going to the _top_, you know.”

And so he did.

IV.

It was a supreme moment. One seemed very near to eternity. It seemed easy

to topple through the ice minarets guarding the brink, and down into the

terrific chasm.

There is no comfort at the top when reached. It is frigidly cold. None

of the expected heat comes up from the interior. An elemental war rages

around, and it is no place for human beings. There is a kind of fearful

exaltation. A slope of black sand descends some fifty feet to an inner

edge, broken by rocks of porphyry and flint, which the imagination

tortures into fantastic shapes. Hence a sheer precipice drops two

thousand feet, a vast ellipse in plan. There was snow in the bottom of

the crater. Jets of steam spouted from ten _sulfataras_, or sources,

from which the native sulphur is extracted. The hands who work there

are said to live in the shelter of caves, and remain for a month at a

time without exit. They are lowered down by windlass, on a primitive

contrivance they call a _caballo de minas_—horse of the mines. The

sulphur is hoisted in bags and slid down a long groove in the snow to the

neighborhood of the rancho. It takes the palm in purity over all sulphurs

in the world. A company has been formed, it is said, for the purpose of

working the deposits more effectually and utilizing the steam-power in

the bottom for improved hoisting machinery.

The men were on strike at the time, as it happened, and the windlass was

not in place, and was not adjusted. If it had been, and we had descended,

we might have found the warmth for which we were well-nigh perishing.

Snow began to drive from the heavy cloud-banks. When it snows the crater

within is darkened, roarings are said to be heard, and strange-colored

globules and flames play above the sulfataras.

“What if there should be an eruption?” suggested the alarmist of the

party, as we began to beat our retreat from the untenable position.

“There has not been an eruption for at least seven thousand years,” said

the scientific member, with contempt. “A certain kind of lignite in the

bottom, requiring that length of time to form, establishes it.”

“So much the more reason, then,” said the alarmist: “it is high time

there was another.”

With that we slipped and floundered down the snow-mountain with the same

celerity with which Vesuvius is descended. We crossed again the black

volcanic fields, mounted our horses, and spent once more the night at

Tlamaca, having learned by experience how to make it slightly more

comfortable than the other. The next day we rode back to Amecameca.

When Señor Llandesio, Professor of the Fine Arts at Mexico, made this

ascent, as he did in 1866, he says that he found two attempts necessary

before he succeeded. I have the pamphlet in which he describes it. “The

guide and peon whispered together continually,” he says, “which made me

think they were going to play us some trick.”

Sure enough, they did. After a good way up they represented that it was

perilous, impossible, to go farther. He descended, and had taken his seat

in the diligencia to return to Mexico, when he met another party, with

more honest guides, and, turning back with them, this time succeeded. He

describes a young man so fatigued on the mountain that he desired, with

tears in his eyes, to be left to die. Another succumbed owing to the

singular cause, that he had fancied that ardent spirits would have no

effect in the peculiarly attenuated atmosphere, and had emptied nearly a

whole bottle of brandy.

Señor Llandesio was told by the Indians that they believed in a genius of

the mountain, whom they called Cuantelpostle. He was a queer little man,

who dwelt about the Pico del Fraile, helped the workmen at their labors

when in a good humor, and embarrassed them as much as possible when in a

bad. They said, also, that presents were offered by some to propitiate

the volcano, for the purpose of obtaining rain, and the like. These were

buried in the sand, and the places marked by a flat stone. This practice

may account for some of the discoveries of Charnay, who unearthed about

the foot of the mountain much interesting pottery.

XV.

_A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, AT CUAUTLA-MORELOS._

I.

When I saw Amecameca again it was to pass it on board a gala train going

down to celebrate the completion of the Morelos railway to Cuautla, in

_Tierra Caliente_. The Morelos railway is a native Mexican work. It was

built under the auspices of Delfin Sanchez, a son-in-law of President

Juarez, was rushed forward with great expedition, in order to secure

valuable premiums, added to the regular subsidy by Government, and there

was much defective work in its construction. It is laid to the narrow

gauge, and projected ultimately to reach Acapulco, but this latter need

hardly be looked for in any predicable time. At present it reaches about

seventy-five miles—to Cuautla-Morelos, capital of the state of Morelos.

All official and distinguished Mexico was aboard that day—the President,

the justices of the Supreme Court, generals, senators, _littérateurs_,

and, greatest of all, Porfirio Diaz. “Porfirio” wore a felt hat with a

tall top, and his manner with his friends was easy and unpretentious. Had

the accident of a week later happened that day instead, the Republic of

Mexico would have needed to be reconstructed from the bottom upward.

[Illustration: IN TIERRA CALIENTE.]

A locomotive _exploradora_, a lookout engine, went on ahead of us to

see that all was safe. Every little place had its music and firing of

crackers, and the local detachment of _Rurales_ reined up at the station.

At Amecameca there were as many as fifty of the latter, with drawn

swords, all on white horses, which the firing made plunge with great

spirit. At Ozumba was a battalion of mounted riflemen, under command of

a handsome young officer in an eye-glass, who might have come fresh from

the military school of Saint Cyr. The Indian populations, who could never

have seen the locomotive before, maintained nevertheless, as their way

is, a certain stoicism. There were no wild manifestations of surprise, no

shouts; they even fired off their crackers with a serious air.

The line is a congeries of curves without end, to overcome the

three-quarters of a mile grade perpendicular from Amecameca to Cuautla.

Cuautla has seven thousand people. For the ten years, up to this time,

there had not been even diligence communication with it, and the railway

was an event indeed. The enterprise was carried through chiefly by the

exertions of a Señor Mendoza Cortina, who has great sugar estates in the

neighborhood.

The streets were decorated with triumphal arches, and borders of tall

banana-plants. They were shabby, and the place more squalid than is

the rule in the temperate climates above. The Indians had an apathetic

look. Few young and interesting faces were seen among them, but an

extraordinary number of hags. I found in use some very pretty pottery,

which I was told was made at Cuernavaca, forty miles away. Simple bits of

stone and shell were impasted in the common earthen-ware with an effect

like that of old Roman mosaic. There was a distinctly Indian Christ in

the parish church. In the plaza in front stands a great tree, somehow

connected with a _noche triste_ of the patriot Morelos. Like Cortez at

Mexico, he was forced to retreat one night in 1812, after a gallant

resistance of sixty-two days to a siege by the Spaniards.

II.

The extremely civilized company pouring down to this shabby little

place had a grand banquet in an old convent now adapted to the uses of

a railway station, and plentiful speech-making afterward. There were

a number of merry young journalists of the party, and they comported

themselves as merry young journalists are apt to. They rapped on the

table and called “otro!” “otro!”—another!—with pretended enthusiasm, even

after the dullest speeches. It seemed typical of something curiously

illogical in the Mexican mind that in festoons about the banqueting hall

were set impartially the names of the presidents and other great men

of the past, from Iturbide down to Manuel Gonzales. Iturbide adjoined

Bravo and Guerrero, by whom he was shot as a usurper and enemy of the

public peace; and Lerdo Porfirio Diaz, by whom he was ousted as traitor

and tyrant. In the same way these personages, alternately one another’s

Cæsars and Brutuses, are honored impartially in the series of portraits

in the long gallery of the National Palace.

There was naturally prominent here the portrait of the Padre Morelos,

with the usual handkerchief around his head, and bold air of bandit

chief. It is curious that priests should have taken such a share in

the early insurrection. They recall those warrior ecclesiastics of

the Middle Ages, who used to put on quite as often the secular as the

spiritual armor. Probably the oppressions of the Spaniards were often too

intolerable even for ecclesiastical endurance. Morelos, strangely enough,

when the revolt broke out, was curate under Hidalgo at Valladolid, in

Michoacan, and followed him to the field. He came, in his turn, to be

generalissimo of the Mexican forces, and to have the name of Valladolid

changed to Morelia in his honor. He had undoubtedly the military gift.

His defence of Cuautla is considered one of the most glorious deeds of

Mexican history. It was the third in the trio of priests, Matamoras, his

intimate and lieutenant, who broke the siege with a hundred horse and

aided his retreat when it finally became necessary.

Matamoras in due course was taken and shot, at Valladolid, by no other

than Iturbide, the future liberator. Iturbide, then in the Spanish

forces, “had signalized himself,” to quote our history again, “by his

repeated victories over the insurgents, and the excessive cruelty

of which he made use on frequent occasions.” He routed Matamoras at

Puruapan, took him prisoner, and put him to death, as has been said.

To repay this, Morelos butchered two hundred Spanish prisoners in cold

blood. So the strife of incarnate cruelty went on. Morelos himself was

made prisoner by an act of treachery, and shot, after the customary fate

of Mexican leaders, at San Cristobal Ecatapec, at four o’clock in the

afternoon of the 21st of December, 1815.

Iturbide’s account, in his minutes, of the insurgent chiefs whom he was

so active in exterminating is very far from flattering. And here they

are all apotheosized together. Verily it seems as if some high court

of inquiry and review should be constituted for apportioning out a

little the relative merits and defects of the past. The Mexican national

anthem, a stirring and martial air, invokes among other things the

sacred memory of Iturbide. But if Iturbide really deserved to be shot on

setting foot on shore after his banishment, it seems much as if Americans

should invoke the sacred name of Benedict Arnold. Arnold, too, rendered

excellent services to his country. Nobody was a braver or better soldier

than he before he attempted to betray it to the British.

Well, I suppose the Mexicans understand it, but I don’t. Are they content

with such a mixed ideal of good? Can a person have been such a patriot at

one time that no subsequent crimes can weigh against him? One very simple

lesson from it all would seem to be a less impatience with the ruling

powers, on the one hand, and much less haste with powder and shot, on the

other.

III.

I stayed a couple of days at Cuautla, to visit the sugar haciendas. The

sugar product is large, and the district one of the most convenient

sources of supply for central Mexico. A week afterward the newly

inaugurated road was the scene of an accident unequalled, I think, in

the annals of railway horrors. Five hundred lives were lost, in a little

barranca, an insecure bridge over which had been washed out by the rain.

A regiment in garrison at Cuautla was ordered to Mexico, and started

in a train of open “flat” cars, there not having been passenger cars

sufficient for the purpose. On other flat cars was a freight of barrels

of _aguardiente_. The start was made in the afternoon. There was delay

on the track. The shower came on, the night fell, and the men, pelted by

the storm, without protection, broke open the _aguardiente_, and drank

their fill. Some say that the engineer reported the road unsafe, but was

forced by an exasperated officer to go on with a pistol at his head.

They came to the broken bridge, and the train went through. The soldiers

who were not mangled and incapacitated outright—drunk, and crazed with

excitement—stabbed and shot one another. The barrels of _aguardiente_

burst and took fire; the cartridges in the belts exploded; the swollen

torrent claimed its own; and the fury of a tropical storm, in a night as

black as Erebus, beat down upon the writhing mass of horror.

It was at this price that the extra subventions for speedy completion

of the work were earned. A whitewashing report was made afterward, I

believe, but the Government caused the road to be put in order before

it was again opened; and the case may serve as a needed lesson to all

railway builders in Mexico.

XVI.

_SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED._

I.

The impressions of the first journey upward from the coast are too vague

to satisfy, yet it is better to push on to the capital and not take off

the edge of the novelty by dallying on the way. The intervening places

are returned to afterward.

How different the feeling now! The things that had seemed so formidable

are harmless enough. You take now with gusto the _pulque_, handed up at

Apam. You understand the motley figures, the interiors, the flavors of

the strange fruits and cakes, the proper expressions to use, and prices

to pay. The helpless feeling of standing in need of continual directions

is got rid of, and travel has become a matter of confidence and pleasure.

Our Mexicans of the lower class are not over-quick in the matter of

directions, to tell the truth. I recollect, as an example, asking a small

shop-keeper, one day, the way to a neighboring street.

“There it is,” he said; “but” (insisting, in a flustered way, on being

puzzled by my accent, though he had comprehended what I meant) “_no

hablamos Americano aqui_”—“We don’t speak American here.”

I found a lodging at a tienda at San Juan Teotihuacan, the ancient city

of the dead. The owner had before entertained Americans. He had a dog to

which he had given, in pleasant recollection of one of them, as he said,

the remarkable name of “Lovis,” which afterward proved to be “Lewis.”

Adjoining was a barracks of _Rurales_, whose bugles sounded a cheerful

_réveille_ in the morning. The central plaza is perhaps three miles

from the station. On the way you cross a handsome stone bridge built by

Maximilian. The river San Juan had vanished from under it and left a mere

gulch, as is the way with most of the streams in the dry season.

The inhabitants have their houses, gardens, and all, often above the

cement floors left by the extinct race, and the edges of these floors

crop out beside the road, worn down through them. Nobody has framed a

satisfactory theory of the place, but it is supposed to have been a

great pantheon, or burial-place, for the dead of importance. Maximilian

encouraged excavations, and a great Egyptian-looking head, unearthed

in his time, is seen. Charnay dug there later, and so did my friend of

the newspaper expedition. Probably a commission ought to be issued by

the Government for tunnelling, without impairing their form, the two

pyramids, to ascertain if there be not something of importance within. It

is at present both conservative and apathetic in such matters. The larger

pyramid, that of the Sun, has an excellent zigzag plane approaching

its summit. A long road, called the “Street of the Dead,” strewn on

both sides with heaps of weather-worn stones, indicating constructions,

extends from it to that of the Moon. Both are now grown with scrubby

nopals and pepper-trees.

A couple of children ran out from a cottage at the foot of the Pyramid

of the Sun, to sell “_caritas_,” the little antiquities, the day I

approached to climb it. From the top you see other villages, as San

Francisco, Santa Maria Cuatlan, San Martin. The inhabitants of San

Francisco have erected a cross here, where an idol, with a burnished

shield, once stood to catch the first rays of the rising sun, and come in

procession each year, on the 3d of May, to conduct a religious ceremonial

and drape it with flowers. The white summit of Popocatepetl barely shows

itself above the intervening range of the Rio Frio. The officiators

at the pagan altar may have hailed it sparkling afar, like another

sacrificial fire. The country round about is garden-like, abounding in

maize and maguey, sheep and cattle. I observed some large straw-ricks,

fashioned by leisurely employés, in the prevailing taste for adornment,

into the form of houses, with a figure of a saint chopped out in

bass-relief. It was a calm, lovely Sunday. A fresh breeze played, though

the sun was warm; cumulus clouds piled themselves up magnificently; and

the tinkle of the church-bells came up from the surrounding villages.

The clouds—“luminous Andes of the air,” as a poet has aptly called

them—are of especial impressiveness, I think, above this great plain.

I noted them again with great pleasure at Huamantla, in the state of

Tlaxcala. It is a shabby place of unpainted adobe, out of which rise the

fine domes and belfries of a dozen churches, as if they were enclosed in

a brick-yard. Thither Santa Anna retired for his last futile resistance,

after the Americans under Scott had taken the capital; and there,

according to the school history, “the terrible American guerilla, Walker,

was killed in personal combat by an intrepid Mexican officer, Eulalio

Villaseñor.” Near by is Malinche, a mountain dubbed with a nickname

given by the Aztecs to Cortez, which is a feature of all this part of

the country. It is not of great height, but of peculiar, volcanic shape.

It is a long slope, made up of knobs and jags, reaching to a central

point as sharp as an arrow-head. Peons are ploughing, with oxen and the

primitive wooden plough, in fertile ground around its base, and its dark

mass is thrown out boldly against dazzling banks of cloud.

II.

At Orizaba you are down in the tropics again, but not tropics of too

oppressive a kind. A young friend from Mexico was making a visit there

in a family to which I was admitted, and I was glad to see something of

the place in a domestic way. It has, say, fifteen thousand inhabitants.

The Alameda, with its two fountains, stone seats, orange-trees, and other

shrubberies, is very charming; so is the little Zocalo, by the Cathedral.

There grows in the gardens here the splendid tulipan, a shrub in size

like the oleander, the large flowers of which glow from a distance like

scarlet lanterns. Tall bananas bend over the neatly whitened houses.

My Hotel de Diligencias was white and attractive. Next to it a torrent

tumbled down a wild little gorge, amid a growth of bananas, and, passing

under a bridge, turned flouring and paper mills. I had this under my

eyes from my window; and I had also an expanse of red-tiled roofs, gray

belfries and domes, and the bold hill of El Borrego beyond. The city is

enclosed by a rim of hills. It was now the season when the rains were

growing frequent; and a humid atmosphere, and wet clouds, dragging low

and occasionally dropping their contents, kept the vegetation of a fresh,

vivid green.

At the hotel _table d’hôte_ a couple of young men of very Indian

physiognomy—lawyers, I should judge, by profession—talked pantheism and

such-like subjects in the tone of Victor Hugo’s students. A lady whose

husband was a general officer told me that she had been in the United

States—at New Orleans—accounting thus for a little knowledge of English.

That meant that she had shared her husband’s exile there. One comes to

understand and smile at it after a while. “_Tomo el rumbo á la costa,

y salio de la Republica, embarcandose para Orleans_”—“He took the road

to the coast and sallied from the Republic, embarking himself for New

Orleans”—has passed almost into a formula in the accounts of public men,

New Orleans having always been a notable place of temporary refuge and

plotting for their return.

[Illustration: THE HILL OF EL BORREGO, AT ORIZABA.]

There was a gay party, of station, who had come down to _pasear_ a

little, in a private car, and were taking back with them a great supply

of the flowers and fruits of the tropics. Shall I reluctantly admit that

they all ate with their knives, and with the sharp edge foremost? Our

waiter gave us, smilingly, soup without a spoon, this and that other

dish without a fork, and hastened off for long absences; or he would

apathetically say, “_No hay_”—“There is none”—of a dish, but would bring

it if it were insisted on with decision. A fellow-guest informed me at

dessert that he had been in New York, and that the American fruits and

_dulces_—sweets—were all alike and insipid. This shows that there is a

natural equilibrium in things, for it is precisely the complaint that

visitors from the North first make of those of the tropics.

My acquaintances in the place were the family of the Licenciado—let

us say—Herrera y Arroyo. The names of both masculine and feminine

progenitors are thus usually linked together by the “_y_”—and. They told

me that there was very little formal entertaining done. They occupied

themselves with embroidery, studying English, and domestic matters. Their

house was roomy, but had little furniture. The rocking-chair can never

again be called a peculiarly Yankee feature by anybody who has seen it

in the lower latitudes. The typical Mexican parlor, or living-room, has,

like the one here, a mat spread down in the centre, on a brick floor, and

two cane rocking-chairs on one side and two on the other, in which the

inmates spend much of their time.

We had a kind of picnic one day to the Barrio Nuevo, a very pretty

coffee-and-milk-like cascade of the Rio Orizaba. Boys ran out from

thatched cottages in the edge of town to pick flowers and offer them

to the señoritas, expecting to be rewarded, of course, with a little

consideration. There is another cascade, even prettier—the Rincon Grande.

The next day we went to the sugar _ingenio_ of Jalapilla. A fine wide

avenue of trees stretched up to it. The locusts were singing in them.

The grass and trees were exquisitely green. The snow-peak of Orizaba,

hidden at the town itself, here rises above intervening hills. There

were arcades, and monumental gateways, and a massive aqueduct on arches,

which brings the water from a fine torrent. In the sunless green archways

of the old aqueduct the señoritas found with rapture specimens of rare

and delicate ferns growing. Ox-wains brought the cane to the mills. We

watched it through the processes of crushing in the machinery, and tasted

the pleasant sap when first expressed, and later at some of the stages of

boiling down. _Aguardiente_ is also made on a large scale. The peasants

along the road sell you a draught of it in its unfermented state, with

tamales. The residence attached is a large, two-story white house, with

a high iron gate between white posts. It was loaned to Maximilian as

a country retreat by the conservative owners at one time. At present

it is shabby and unfurnished, but a single room being occupied by the

proprietor, who has the rough-and-ready tastes of a ranchero, and little

taste for display.

III.

At one of the theatres at this time was playing, by a Zarazuela, or

“variety” company, “La Torre de Neslo ó Margarita de Borgogno;” at the

other, by a juvenile company, “La Fille de Madame Angot.”

Whoever would thoroughly enjoy Mexico must have the taste for old

architecture. There is no end to it, and it is often the only resource.

It is of that fantastic rococo into which the Renaissance fell, in

the luxury and florid invention of its later stages; but even where

least defensible, from the point of view of logic and fitness, it is

redeemed now by its mouldering, its time-stains, and superposed layers

of half-obliterated colors. Little can be said, except in this way, for

the carvings and various detail, but the masses are invariably of a

grand and noble simplicity. The material is generally rubble-stone and

cement, and cannot be very expensive. The principal lines of the style

are horizontal. The dome, semi-circular in shape, plays a great part

in it. I have counted not less than eight, like those of St. Mark’s,

at Venice, on a single church. The dome is built, if I mistake not, of

rubble and cement also, on a centring of regular masonry, perhaps even of

wood. It is a reminiscence of the Moors. These edifices were put up three

hundred years ago, by builders in the flush of the Byzantine influence,

which radiated from Granada, then lately conquered. I know of no school

in which the niggling, petty, and expensive character of our own efforts

in this line could be better corrected. _Vamenos!_ Will not some of our

leisurely young architects with a taste for the picturesque travel here,

with their sketch-books, and bring us back plans and suggestions from

this impressive work, for use among ourselves?

Some of the old churches take an added interest from their present fate.

It would have been monotonous to have them all alike in full ceremonial,

and now they are pathetic. I used to linger to hear the buglers practise

in the cloistered church of Carmen, used as a barracks. It is stripped

of everything, the pavement broken, the walls full of bullet-holes,

and painted with the names of detachments, as 18º _de Infanteria_, 7º

_Compaña de Grenaderos_, which have occupied it. In the smoke-stains,

the damp, to which patches of gilding still adhere, and the vestiges of

scaling fresco, dim, mysterious visions are made out. The bare chancel

daïs, still surviving, gives to the interior the aspect of some noble

throne-room. In our own country such a monument would be inestimably

prized, and would become a pilgrimage-place from far and near; but here

it is simply one of a great number.

In the little public plaza outside a few convicts were repairing

the paths. A pair of them would bring some dirt, about an ordinary

wheel-barrow full, on a stretcher, dump it in a leisurely way, and go

back for more, all with plentiful deliberation. They might have been

laborers, engaged by the city aldermen, on a New York boulevard. A couple

of soldiers with muskets lounged on the stone benches to guard them as

they worked. The punishment of the prisoners could hardly have been in

what they did, but principally in the exposure—unless, indeed, they were

taken from a different part of the country. I wondered if their friends

came here sometimes and watched them; and what a pain it must have been

for the sensitive to work thus, hedged round by an invulnerable restraint

and infamy, in sight of the homes where they had lived and all the

ordinary avocations of life in which they had engaged.

An important cotton-factory at Orizaba has a fine architectural

gate-way, and a statue of the founder, Manuel Escandon (1807 to 1862),

in the court, after the practice heretofore adverted to. Paper is also

made here. A series of fines is prescribed, in printed rules, for the

hands coming late in the morning and falling into other misdemeanors.

The sum of these makes up a fund for charitable use among themselves.

A savings-bank department is also conducted for the benefit of the

operatives. To encourage savings an extra liberal interest is paid when

the amount on deposit has reached fifty dollars. To avoid in part the

interruption of the frequent church holidays, a dispensation had been

obtained from the ecclesiastical authorities, allowing work to go on, on

most of them, as usual.

IV.

From Orizaba the next stage was to Cordoba. Cordoba is in the full

tropics, and there I first made acquaintance with the coffee culture,

the leading industry of the place. The plant is less striking in aspect

than I had expected. It is a bush, with small, dark, glossy leaves,

its stem never over six or seven inches in diameter, even at an age of

fifty years. It is twelve feet high at most, but usually topped and

kept lower for greater convenience in harvesting the product. It bears

a little axillary white flower, fragrant like jasmine, and the green

berries at the same time. A coffee plantation has not the breadth of the

_platanaras_, the fields of towering bananas; but it needs shade, and

large oaks are left distributed through it which accomplish this purpose.

If left to the sun wholly it yields large crops at first, then dies. The

coffee plant should bear after the fourth or fifth year, and yield a

half-pound yearly for fifty or sixty years. It should have cost, up to

the time of beginning to bear, about twenty-five cents. This is supposing

a high cultivation. By the more shiftless method commonly found in use

here it costs but half as much, but, on the other hand, yields no more

than three ounces on an average.

Some few Americans, and other foreigners, have established themselves at

Cordoba, and lead a dreamy existence in the shade. At one time it was

the scene of an extensive coffee-planting by ex-Confederate generals,

but these attempts were not successful. I was fortunate enough to be

conducted about by an old gentleman, of German birth, who had lived

here forty years. He had the tastes of a naturalist and farmer, and the

existence pleased him. He took in his hand a _machete_ from the wall, and

we set forth for a walk, with much improving discourse by the way, in the

fields and plantations. The _machete_, a long half cleaver, half sword,

opens you a path through a thicket, cuts you a coffee or an orange stick,

lops an orchid from its high perch on the rugged tree-bark, or brings

down a tall banana, and splits open its covering to serve as a protection

to a budget of botanical specimens. Some small grandchildren of the house

begged to accompany us. They had hardy, out-of-door habits, and ran by

our sides with merry clamor, finding a hundred things to interest them

along the way.

My genial guide had planted coffee himself. Much money has been lost at

it, it seems, and it cannot be very profitable except under economical

processes and an improved market. When transportation becomes cheaper we

shall have introduced into the United States from Mexico also many choice

fruits, notably the fine Manilla mango, not now known. The fruits of the

country grow on you with experience. To my taste the juicy mango, which

at its best combines something of the melon, pine-apple, peach, and pear,

is the most delicious of them all. Other fruits are the chirimoya, guava,

mamé, granadita (or pomegranate), zapote, chazapote, tuna, aguacate, and

many more, the distinctive peculiarities of which I could not describe in

a week.

The best soil for the coffee is that of virgin slopes, capable of being

well manured. It should be manured once in two years. The planting takes

place in the rainy season, and the principal harvest is in November and

December. Women and children cut off the berries, which are then dried

five or six weeks, and barked; or are barked earlier by a machine. The

chief labor consists in destroying the weeds, which must be done from

two to six times a year. The plants are set in squares, at a distance of

about seven feet apart. The trees recommended for shade are the fresno,

or ash, cedro (cedar), the huisache, aguacate, maxcatle, cajiniquil,

and tepehuajé, the characteristics of which I could hardly explain,

more than those of the fruits, except that they are generally dark and

glossy-leaved, and many of them as large as our elms. There is a theory,

too, in favor of shading by bananas, and plantations are found where the

two grow together.

But a native proprietor with whom I talked objects to this. “The platano

is a selfish and grasping plant,” he says, indignantly. “It draws twice

and thrice its proportionate amount of nourishment from the soil. Is it

not beaten down, too, in every storm? And the ravaging hedgehog comes in

search of it, and, while he is about it, destroys the coffee as well. No,

indeed, no combination of platano and coffee for me!”

The poor platano! However, it can stand abuse. How quickly it grows!

Its great leaves, more or less tattered by friction, flap and rustle

above your head like banners and sails as you walk about in the tropical

plantation. It is called the “bread of the tropics.” An acre of land

will produce enough of it to support fifty people, whereas an acre in

wheat will support only two. If the tropics had had a good deal harder

time in getting their bread, by-the-way, they would not have been in so

down-trodden and slipshod a condition.

I will not say that we had the better coffee at our hotel for being in

its own country. It is the old story of “shoemaker’s children” again,

I suppose. On the contrary, I recollect it as especially poor. The

hotel—possibly it has improved by this time—was wretchedly kept and

served. They gave us half a dozen kinds of meat in succession, without

ever a vegetable, in such a luxuriance of them. The waiters were sunk in

apathy, the management even more so. They seem often to say to you, with

an ill-concealed aversion, at a Mexican hotel, “If you _will_ stay, if

you will insist on bringing your traps in, we will do what we can for

you, but we are not at all anxious for it.”

Pack-mules were kept in the court, and under a cloister at one side women

and girls were stripping tobacco. Your room, at a provincial hotel, opens

upon a gallery in which mocking-birds are hung in wooden cages—always

one at least. It is the practice of the Mexican mocking-bird to sleep

continuously throughout the day, so as to be in health and spirits for

the exercise of the night. He begins at midnight, and continues his

dulcet ingenuity of torture till daybreak. Naturalists have had much

to say of the mocking-bird, comparing him to a whole forest full of

songsters, and the like. It may be unwise to set up in opposition to so

much praise, but there are times when a planing-mill in the vicinity, or

a whole foundery full of trip-hammers, would be a blessing and relief in

comparison.

Should the mocking-bird have injudiciously impaired his strength during

the day, so as to allow of a brief respite, the interval is filled in by

the shrill, quavering whistles of the street watchmen, who blow to each

other every quarter of an hour during the night, to show that they are

awake and vigilant.

You leave Cordoba at 4.30 in the morning; that is, if you go by the

up-train. I was awakened an hour too soon at my hotel, which, having

to call me, wanted it over as soon as possible. I had leisure while

waiting to collect the views of one of these watchmen. He showed me

the Remington rifle with which he was armed. He said that he went on

duty at 7 P.M. and finished at 5.30 A.M., and received three and a half

reals—forty-two cents—a day, which he did not think enough. There are no

cabs at Cordoba. It is a tram-car, making a total of two trips a day,

that takes you, bag and baggage, two dark miles or so to the station.

V.

But I did not leave before first visiting the Indian village of Amatlan.

I do not insist that erudition of incalculable value has been brought

to light in these travels, but they were a succession of excursions

into the actual heart of things. I was pleased when I could find

something unmodified by the innovations of railway travel, and witness

the familiar, every-day life of the people. Perhaps we never thoroughly

understand anybody until we learn his routine. A stimulus to what we

usually neglect, and take as a matter of course, is aroused abroad.

Law-making, education, buying and selling, eating and drinking, marriage,

and the burial of the dead, all yield entertainment. The traveller who

spreads before us only the _outré_ and startling that he has seen may

still leave us very much in the dark about where he has been. In Mexico,

however, almost everything is _outré_.

To Amatlan and back is a comfortable day’s excursion. We found

saddle-horses for hire, and a young Indian as a guide, and set off. My

companion on this excursion was a commercial traveller, a sprightly

young American of Spanish origin. Commercial traveller in machetes and

other cutlery: such was his profession. The machetes were of American

make. I have one hanging in my room at this writing which came from

Water Street, in New York. This agent had taken his last order (having

canvassed the little store-keepers in the plaza under my own view, as if

they had been those of Kalamazoo, Aurora, or Freeport), and was awaiting

the sailing of his steamer from Vera Cruz. Having nothing more to do, he

entered into the examination of manners and customs for their own sake

with a certain zest, though perhaps comprehending for the first time that

such things could be worth anybody’s notice.

Amatlan is the richest Indian village in—well, one of the richest of

Indian villages. Its plantations of pine-apples are the finest in the

state of Vera Cruz, to which all this territory from Orizaba down

belongs, Orizaba being its capital. The pines grow about sixteen inches

in height, and should last ten years. They are set in narrow lines, and

the general aspect of the field from a little distance is that of large

sedge-grass. You will buy three of them sometimes for a _tlaco_, one

cent and a half. We met natives driving donkey-loads of them to market.

There were some fields of tobacco, of fine quality, in flower. The Peak

of Orizaba is magnificently seen from all this district. It is lovelier

and bolder than at first upon familiar acquaintance. Church, the painter,

finds the preferable point of view farther up the railroad, using the

wild gorges of Fortin as a foreground. The village proved to be composed

chiefly of wooden and cane huts, shingled or thatched, and the population

to be exclusively Indian. They do not wish any others to join them. They

display everywhere the same clannish disposition. If persons of European

origin who might come to remain could not be got rid of by churlishness,

it is thought that severer means would be resorted to.

The Indian race, as a rule, is patient and untiring in certain minor

directions. They make long, swift journeys, for instance, acting as

beasts of burden or messengers, so that, seeing their performances, the

words of Buffon come forcibly to mind: “The civilized man knows not

half his powers.” But in the greater concerns of life, those requiring

forethought for a permanent future, they are very improvident. Perhaps,

however, those of Amatlan differ from others, or perhaps the general

reputation may not be wholly deserved, for the Cordobans tell you that

Amatlan is even richer than Cordoba.

There are said to be a number of native residents worth from $50,000 to

$80,000 each. They buy land, and bury their surplus cash in the ground.

It may well enough be that the lack of savings-banks, or any more secure

place of deposit for money than the ground, has something to do with the

improvidence complained of. The alcalde, the chief of them, was estimated

as worth a million, though this I should very much doubt. He had no

large ways of using his wealth, but was said to incline to avarice and

delight in simply piling it up. There was a project at one time to build

a tram-road hence to Cordoba, the capital to be supplied in part by the

Indians, but it fell through. Some of the well-to-do send their sons to

good schools, and even to Mexico, to take the degree of licentiate. These

favored scions, on their return, must put on the usual dress, and live in

no way differently from the rest. The daughters, on the other hand, are

never educated, but set, without exception, to rolling tortillas and the

other domestic drudgery.

VI.

We dined at an open-air shanty posada, with dogs and pigs running freely

about under our feet. Coffee, without milk, sugar, and pine-apples were

all supplied by the fields about. Some few spectators were interested,

but not very much, in a slight sketch I made of their buildings and

costume. My commercial traveller, by way of arousing greater enthusiasm

in this, represented that it was to be “put in a machine” afterward, and

showed, by a dexterous chuckle and twist of the thumb, how it would then

be so improved that you would never know it. But even this stirred them

only indifferently.

We visited the alcalde in his quarters. He was bristly-haired, clad

in cotton shirt and drawers, and bare-legged, like the rest. Official

business for the day was over, but he showed us the cell in which on

occasion he locked up evil-doers. He was said to administer justice

impartially to the rich and poor alike, and with a natural good-sense.

But for occasional perversions of justice effected by a Spanish secretary

he was obliged to employ, he himself being illiterate, it was thought

that his court averaged well with the more pretentious tribunals of the

country.

We rode back by a different way, through a large, cool wood. It abounded

in interesting orchids, and there was an undergrowth of coffee run

wild, the glossy green of its leaves as shining as if just wet by

rain. There was not that excessive tangle and luxuriance supposed to

be characteristic of the tropics; our own woods are quite as rampant.

All that is found, you learn, in Tehuantepec, for instance, and Central

America. There tree-growths seize upon a dwelling, crunch its bones, as

it were, and bear up part of the walls into the air; and it is vegetable

more than animal life that is feared. We forded three pretty brooks, and

came to an upland where cows were pasturing, and the steeples of Cordoba

were again in sight. Our young guide lassoed a cow, led her to a shed

where tobacco was drying, and offered us the refreshment of a draught of

new milk.

Being asked if this were quite regular and correct, he answered that the

cows were there at pasturage in charge of his uncle. I trust that this

was so.

XVII.

_PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA._

I.

You turn off from the junction of Apizaco, on the Vera Cruz railway, to

go to the large, fine city of Puebla. It is the capital of the state of

the same name, and has a population of about seventy-seven thousand. Many

prosperous _fabricas_ (factories) are seen along the fertile valley of

approach; then the forts, attacked and defended on the great Cinco de

Mayo, appear on the hills, looking down, like Mont Valerien and Charenton

above Paris.

Certainly everything out of Mexico is not Cuatitlan. Puebla is very

clean, well paved, and well drained. The streets are not too wide, as

many of them are at the capital. I thought our hotel, De Diligencias,

which was very well kept, by a Frenchman, much better than the Iturbide.

It had been a palace in its day, and had traces yet of armorial

sculptures. Our rooms opened upon a wide upper colonnade, where the

table was spread. It was full of flowers, which shut out whatever

might have been disagreeable to the eye below. I am bound to admit

that the remorseless mocking-bird sang all night among them. I have

mentioned heretofore the tiled front of a shop, “La Ciudad de Mexico.”

A picturesque mosaic-work in tiles of earthen-ware and china upon a

ground of blood-red stone abounds. Sometimes it is a diagonal pattern,

covering a whole surface; again only a broad wainscot or frieze.

Plaques, representing saints, which you take at first for hand-bills,

are let into walls. These tiles are made at Puebla, where there are as

many as ten _fabricas_ of them, the best in the country. I visited one

of these, found the manufacture cheap, and brought away some specimens.

The workmanship is rude and hasty, but the effect artistic and adapted to

its purpose. The most liberal example of their use, and one of the most

charming interiors I have ever seen, was that of what is now the _Casa

de Dementes_, or lunatic asylum for men, of the state of Puebla. It was

formerly a convent of the nuns of Santa Rosa, and was decorated after

their taste. Entrance, vestibule, stairs, central court, and cloisters,

with fountain in the centre; balustrade, benches, tanks and bath-tubs,

kitchen furnace, and numberless little garden courts, are all encrusted

with quaint ceramics. It is like walking about in some magnified piece

of jewelry. The blue-and-yellow fountain in its court is as Moorish as

anything in Morocco.

There are forty-two patients in this institution, with an attendant

appointed to each ten. The rich among them pay $16 a month, the rest

nothing. Another one, San Roque, contains thirty-two women, also

maintained by the state. The general hospital, of San Pedro, another

large ex-convent, with a nice garden, was clean, cool, and well ordered;

and—curious feature to note—departments for allopath and homœopath

arranged impartially side by side. These governments take, officially, no

sides with either, but give them both a showing.

The Cathedral at Puebla is equal in magnificence to that at Mexico.

There is the usual Zocalo, full of charming plants, before it. The large

theatre, “De Guerrero,” entered by a passage from the portales, had but a

scant audience on the evening of our attendance, but was itself worthy

of inspection. It had four tiers of boxes and a pit; the decoration was

in white and gold, upon a ground of blue-and-white wall-paper, the whole

of a chaste and elegant effect. The peasant costumes of women in each of

the provinces vary in colors and material, though the same general shapes

are preserved. At Cordoba, white and striped cotton stuffs were in order;

at Mexico, Egyptian-looking blue-and-black woollen goods. Those in all

this part of the country I thought particularly pleasing; and the great

market and gay Parian, or bazaar, where they are principally displayed,

were not soon exhausted as a spectacle. The men are usually bare-legged,

and in white cotton. In the warm part of the day they carry their

bright-colored serapes folded over one shoulder, and when it is cooler

put them on, by simply inserting their heads through the slit.

Now comes by a woman in white, with a red cap and girdle; now two girls

of fourteen, all in white, hurrying swiftly along under heavy burdens.

Here are women in embroidered jackets, others in chemises, with profuse

bands of colored beads, or rebosos of rayed stuff, like the Algerian

burnous. Skirts are of white blanket material, with borders of blue,

or blue with white, or yellow. The principal garment is a mere skirt

of uncut goods, wrapped around the hips and kept in place by a bright

girdle. Above this is whatever fantastic waist one pleases, or a garment

with an opening for the head, after the fashion of the serape. To all

this is added a profusion of necklaces of large beads, amber, blue, and

green, and large silver ear-rings, or others of glass, in the Mexican

national colors, green, white, and red. There is a universal carrying of

burdens. The men accommodate theirs in a large wooden cage divided into

compartments. The women tie over their backs budgets done up in a rug of

coarse maguey fibre. Often they carry a child or an earthen jar in it;

or, when full, pile a large green or red water-jar on the top.

Affording so abundant material for the artist, they were excessively

suspicious of any attempt to turn it to account. There were traditions

among them that bad luck would be encountered should they allow pictures

to be taken. It was to take away something from themselves, and they

would be left incomplete—probably to waste and die. Nor could their

costumes be bought from them except with great difficulty. Much as still

remains, there has been a great change, and disappearance, since the

close of Maximilian’s empire, of local peculiarities in dress. There has

been a disappearance, too, with the advent of machinery and imported

notions, of many pretty hand-made articles that formerly adorned the

markets. Among these were carvings in charcoal, once of a peculiar

excellence. Of those that remain still of great interest are life-like

puppets, in wax and wood, of figures of the country, costumed after their

several types.

On the evening of May 19th, as we sat at dinner in the hotel corridor,

down came the rain in the court. In a few moments a row of long gargoyles

were spouting streams which were white against the blackness, and crossed

one another like a set display. “_Va!_ for the rainy season!” said the

host. It usually begins by the 15th. “_Voilà!_ ten months past in which

we have had scarcely a drop!”

As almost any desired climate can be had by varying more or less the

altitude, the rainy season is of variable date in different parts of the

country. At Mexico it is very much later. I did not find it, either here

or elsewhere, so incommoding as might be fancied. It rains principally

at night, and the succeeding day is bright and clear. In Mexico, as in

California, the rainy season means that in which rain falls about as with

us, while the dry season is that in which there is none at all.

II.

Have any forgotten the tragic advent, and preliminary agitations, of

the entry of Cortez into the sacred city of Cholula? He assembled the

caciques and notables in the great square, and at a given signal, turned

his arms upon them and slew them, to the number of three thousand. He had

discovered an artful plot among them for the destruction of his army, and

it was his aim in this way to strike such a terror into the country that

he should have done with such things once for all. The god worshipped

at Cholula was a far milder one than the bloody war god at Mexico—the

peaceful Quetzalcoatl, God of the Air. He instructed the people in

agriculture and the arts. His reign was a golden age. Cotton grew already

tinted with gorgeous dyes, and a single ear of maize was as much as a man

could carry. To his honor the largest of all the teocallis and temples

was erected. He was represented with painted shield, jewelled sceptre,

and plumes of fire. Could Cortez have waited till now (such are the

changes of time) he might have gone into Cholula from Puebla, to the foot

of this very pyramid, in a beautiful horse-car. A tramway, ultimately to

be extended, and operated by steam, reached to this point, a distance of

six miles, and our conveyance was a horse-car with a glass front (New

York built) which I have never seen equalled elsewhere. The driver of it

was a Tennessee negro, who had married an Indian maid and settled, much

respected, in the country. He had formerly been body-servant of a Mexican

general, had travelled with him in the United States and Europe, and

picked up several languages. He called upon us afterward at our hotel, to

politely inquire our impressions of his tramway.

The principal features of the trip were exquisite views of Popocatepetl

and Ixtacihuatl across yellow grain-fields; a dilapidated convent turned

to an iron foundery; an old aqueduct crossing the plain; a Spanish

bridge, sculptured with armorial bearings, across the river Atoyac; and a

fine grist-mill; and farther on a cotton-mill, turned by the water-power

of the same river.

There has been a controversy as to whether the great mound was natural

or artificial in origin. I do not see how there can be doubt about it

now, for where numerous deep cuts have been made in it, for roads or

cultivation, the artificial structure of adobe bricks is plainly visible.

Such a place as it is to lie upon at ease and dream and go back to the

traditions of the past! You may cast yourself down under large trees

growing on the now ragged slopes, or by the pilgrimage chapel on the

crest, where the God of the Air once reared his grotesque bulk. There

is a sculptured cross, dated 1666, at the edge of the terrace, and

rose-bushes grow out of the pavement. I know of no prospect of fertile

hill and dale, scattered with quaint villages, in any country that

surpasses it. An American was there that day with the purpose of buying a

hacienda, if he could find one suitable, and I for one thought there were

many plans much less sensible.

Cholula had four hundred towers in its pagan times, and it may have

had round about it almost as many spires when the Christian domination

succeeded. Let me recite the names of a few of the villages seen from the

top of the great pyramid, all with their churches, by twos and threes,

or more: San Juan; San Andres; Santiago; Chicotengo; La Santissima; La

Soledad; San Rafael; San Pablo Mexicalcingo; San Diego; La Madalena;

Santa Marta; Santa Maria; San Isidoro; San Juan Calvario; San Juan

Tlanutla; San Mateo; San Miguelito (Little Saint Michael); Jesus; San

Sebastian.

One of the old churches lying deserted in the fields might be purchased,

no doubt, and utilized for the basis of a picturesque manor-house.

Suppose we should take yonder one, for instance, down by the Haciendita

de Cruce Vivo—the Little Hacienda of the Living Cross? A cloud is just

now passing over, marking the place with a dark patch. A brook is leaping

white through the meadow, trees stretch back from the walls, and the rest

lying in strong light is divided by patches of an exquisite cultivation

with the regularity of market-gardens.

We dined, at Cholula, at the clean Fonda de la Reforma, in a large,

brick-floored room, invaded by flowers from a court-yard garden. No

people can fashion such charming homes without excellent traits; so much

is positive beyond dispute. We were admitted, I think, to the residence

portion of the house, the owner of which was a doctor, and we examined,

while waiting for our repast, a lot of his antiquated medical books, some

dating from 1700.

The plaza is as large as at Mexico, but grass-grown—for the place is of

but modest pretensions now—and lonely, except on market-day, when the

scene is as gay and the costumes even prettier than at Puebla itself.

In the centre is a Zocalo; at one side a vast array of battlemented

churches. That of the Capilla Real, consisting of three in one, is now

decayed and abandoned. On the other is a fine colonnade devoted to the

Ayuntamienta, or town council, with the jail. What a pity it is that we

have so scant accounts left us of the life of Mexico when all this feudal

magnificence was in full blast!

[Illustration: PRISONERS WEAVING SASHES AT CHOLULA.]

I cannot say just why I visited so many prisons. Perhaps because they

were always under the eye, adjoining the public offices, and the

prisoners were a cheerful lot, who did what they could to attract

attention. At Cholula we found them weaving, on a primitive kind of

hand-loom, bright sashes of red and blue, which are sold in part for

their own benefit. Their accommodations compared favorably with the

barracks along-side. When we asked questions about them they stopped work

and listened attentively. The guards, I fancy, thought we were trying to

identify some persons who had robbed us—not conceiving of such a visit

for the pure pleasure of it.

III.