PUBLIC BUILDINGS.
Where once stood the Palace of Montezuma, now stands the national
Palace. It occupies the entire eastern side of the Plaza Mayor, with a
frontage of 675 feet, and was built in 1692. It is open to the public
all day long.
On the ground floor of the plaza front are the barracks. On the second
are the President’s chambers and those occupied by the Spanish Viceroys
and the Austrian usurper, Maximilian.
At the extreme front is the Ambassadors’ Hall, so long that the
President at one end in his chair of state seems but a pigmy, and so
narrow that three persons with outstretched hands can touch either wall.
The idea of spacious halls seems never to have entered the Mexican’s
head. Huge buildings they have, but they are only a succession of rooms
whose dimensions depend upon the usual length of building timbers, which
is never over twenty feet. It seems easy to connect the joists on
supporting pillars and enlarge the room, but, “We have always done this
way.” So the Ambassadors’ Hall has a probable length of 300 feet, and an
actual width of about twenty.
At the Southern end is a raised dais where the President presides; at
the other, under a canopy are two magnificent state chairs. One was the
property of Cortez, and has his name on the back in pure gold, and the
date 1531. It is in excellent repair, since its construction was
entirely of metal covered with brocade, and one might doubt its
antiquity were not the ear marks of old Spain everywhere visible in all
its workmanship, even in its coat-of-arms. The other is covered entirely
with pure gold and is the chair of state of the President, and must be
worth $20,000 if appearances comport with the actual value of gold. Just
opposite this chair is a painting fifteen by thirty feet, depicting the
great battle of Puebla when President Diaz first won his spurs in
defeating the French army. An old grizzled veteran who fought in the
battle will point out the notables in the picture, not omitting his own
which stands to the left of the President.
On the same wall hang the pictures of George Washington and the leaders
of Mexican Independence, Iturbide, Hidalgo and Morelos. There is no room
closed to the visitor, so we visit the President’s barber shop,
reception room, library and the Hydrographic office where maps and
charts are being made. All these rooms are furnished differently, and
are as elegant and comfortable as even a president could wish. Nearby is
the treasurer’s office, and how my feet clogged when I tried to go by! I
just want to change money all the time; I know of no better way to get
rich than to change money. Hand over one of Uncle Samuel’s ten-dollar
bills, and get eighteen dollars and sixty cents back, is just doubling
your money as fast as you can stow it away. It beats the lottery
business all to pieces. So when I passed by the treasurer’s office I
wanted to change money, but I was loaded down at that moment and could
not. When you step into a restaurant and give a U.S. dollar for your
dinner and get your dinner and another dollar in change, you want to eat
some more.
In the courtyard is a curious plant that has a flower exactly in
imitation of the human hand with all its fingers. It is the
_cheirostemon plaxanifolium_ or hand tree. Only three specimens exist in
Mexico. As all the public buildings are under one roof, we soon find
ourselves at the Post Office with its seven days wonders. No one goes to
the window and inflicts upon the unoffending young lady that much abused
old legend, “Is there a letter here for me?” O no, that is not the
style. When the mail arrives, the letters are arranged alphabetically
and numbered consecutively, then the list is typewritten and posted on
the bulletin board, where he who runs may read. Beginning with No. 1 on
the first day of the month, the numbers run to the end of the month and
start over. The foreign list is published separate from the native. If
you find your name on the bulletin you pass to the window and call for
date and number only, and a book inside has a duplicate list. The letter
is handed you, and you sign your name opposite the number of the letter,
giving street, number and hotel. At the same time a policeman stands at
your elbow, scrutinizing all persons and their handwriting, and
qualifying himself to find you again if necessary in case of forgery. To
an American the system may seem cumbersome, but he must remember that
he is in a country where letters to the United States cost five cents,
and I have seen domestic letters from one state to the other cost ten
cents, as much as many people earn, so there is not much letter writing.
Then it has its advantage. Every time a clerk is called to the window,
she knows there is a letter needed, and it saves the endless “yes, no,
yes, no” all day long, and the sorting of hundreds of letters to look
for the name of a person who is not expecting a letter at all, “but just
thought I would ask you.” The system is infinitely better than that in
Texas towns with a Mexican population. No Mexican signs his name without
a flourish which obscures the name entirely sometimes, and besides, the
Mexican names have a way of spelling themselves different from the
pronunciation.
The Texas post-mistress lumps all Mexican mail in one box, and when a
Mexican shows his head at the window she hands him all the Spanish
literature on hand, and he takes what he wishes. If he is dishonest, he
can purloin any mail he sees fit. The Mexican officials are very kind,
and always try to keep a clerk who knows English. Of course she is
always out when you need her most, but that does not detract from their
good intentions; but the Spanish language is so easy a person can learn
a hundred words a day, and if he knows Latin he has nearly half the
language to start with.
Next door to the Post Office is the National Museum, the most wonderful
repository in America, where ancient Mayan, Aztec and Toltec relics lie
side by side with the civilization of today. Here are gods without
number and idols by the thousand.
Strangest among these symbols is the ever-present serpent, that subtile
being that has left its stamp in the mythology of the old world.
Wherever native religions have had their sway, this symbol is certain to
appear. It appears in Egypt, Greece, Assyria and among the superstitions
of the Celts, Hindoos and Chinese, and here upon these ancient idols he
is carved upon porphyry and granite in natural size and heroic
dimensions, but always in coil, with the rattlesnake fangs and tail
conspicuous.
Here is also the Aztec sacrificial stone of basalt, nine feet in
diameter and three feet thick, within whose bloody arms, from Spanish
authority, twenty-thousand victims were annually offered up. All of the
Spanish under Cortez would have been killed upon that awful retreat of
Noche Triste, were it not for the zeal of the Mexicans to capture them
alive to offer as sacrifice rather than kill them in battle. The central
figure of all this interesting collection is the calendar stone upon
whose mysterious records the scholars of Europe and America have labored
with only partial success. The stone is circular, is hewn from a solid
piece of porphyry, and weighs fifty tons. How it ever reached this
island is a mystery, when the people had no beasts of burden; how it was
carved is a mystery as the people did not know iron. The greatest wonder
is the inscription which accurately records the length of the solar,
lunar and siderial year, calculated eclipses, and is a more perfect
calendar than any European country possesses.
From this stone we learn that the Aztecs divided the year into 365
days; these were divided into 18 months of 20 days each, and, like the
ancient Egyptians, they had 5 complementary days to make out 365. But
the year is composed of six hours more than 365 days, and in America we
add the six hours every four years and make leap-year. The Aztecs waited
52 years, and then interposed 13 days, or rather 12½, which brought the
length of their tropical year to within the smallest fraction of the
figures of our most skillful astronomers. Like the Persians and
Egyptians, a cycle of 52 years was represented by a serpent, so
prominent in mythology.
This interpolation of 25 days in every 104 years showed a nicer
adjustment of civil to solar time than that presented by any European
calendar, since more than five centuries must elapse before the loss of
an entire day. Their astrological year was divided into months of 13
days each, and there were 13 years in their indications which contained
each 365 periods of 18 days each. It is also curious that their number
of lunar months of 13 days each were contained in a cycle of 52 years
with the interpolation of 13 days (12½) should correspond exactly with
the Great Sothic period of the Egyptians, viz: 1461. By means of this
calendar, the priests kept their own records, regulated the festivals
and sacrifices, and made all their astronomical calculations. They had
the means of setting the hours with precision; the periods of the
solstices and equinoxes and the transit of the sun across the zenith of
Mexico. This stone was dug up in the great square in 1790 where it had
lain buried since the Conquest in 1520, but its high scientific
deductions are out of all proportion to the advance of the Aztec in
other branches of learning, since the stone is more exact today than any
European calendar in existence, therefore it must have been made by
another race. The characters are in the Toltec language, but there are
many points of it which the Toltecs copied from the Mayas of Yucatan,
and the Mayas seem to have copied from the Egyptians, of which we shall
speak in another chapter.
There are other relies more ancient than the Calendar Stone, and others
more recent. There is the ideographic picture-writing, through which we
learn the history of the race previous to the Conquest. Here is
Montezuma’s shield, the armor worn by Cortez in the Conquest, his
battle-flag, the statue of the war god Huitzilopochtle, Tula monoliths,
the Goddess of Water, Palenque cross, Chacmol, and the finest carriage
in the world, built by Maximilian for his Mexican capital. The body is
painted red, the wheels are gilded, and the interior is lined with white
silk brocade, heavily trimmed with silver and gold thread.
In Ethnology and Zoology the exhibits would require days to see. The
museum is open every day but Saturday, and is thronged ever. The Indians
never tire gazing on the scenes which recall the times when they were
masters. In the midst of the quadrangle is a beautiful garden of rare
plants and tall palms.
Soldiers guard the entrance and police welcome you and ask for your
camera and umbrellas, and as your party starts, a uniformed lad will
fall in at your heel, attach himself to your shadow and never leave you
till you descend the steps to the exit. He does not seek your
companionship necessarily for publication, “but as an evidence of good
faith.” He is not intrusive nor garrulous; his duty is simply to be ever
present. With tens of thousands of valuable relics in easy reach,
probably they are acting wisely upon past experience.
The next door leads to San Carlos, the National Art Gallery. Here are
the famous paintings of “Padre Los Casas,” “The Deluge,” and Murillo’s
“San Juan de Dios” and “The Lost Sheep.” In the fourth and fifth salons
are the works of native Mexicans, and their love to old Spain is shown
by their paintings; whole sides of the salons are given to the cruel
tale of the Conquest and the Inquisition: Spanish Cavaliers, holding up
the cross in one hand and the drawn sword in the other, and cutting down
the ignorant natives who would not confess the Virgin; the death of
Montezuma, surrounded by heaps of gold so gluttonously hoarded by the
Spaniards; the fate of his brother, Guatemotzin, the last of the Aztec
chieftains, whose feet are held in the fire by his Christian torturers,
to disclose his hidden treasures, and the haughty chieftain still kept
his heroic mien without a murmur.
One of his generals who was similarly tortured appealed to him. Turning
a look of scorn upon him Guatemotzin replied: “And say, am I on a bed of
roses?” There is a weird fascination about the paintings that makes you
feel that the paintings have just stepped from the pages of Prescott’s
Conquest of Mexico. It is the Chamber of Horrors where the Spanish
Inquisition is depicted by men who knew. Overhead are scores of
medallions of famous men of Mexican birth, and beneath each a famous
picture. Leaving this salon we come to a well lighted hall with several
hundred easels and folding stools. This is the instruction room, and is
filled with students and models and casts and charts, where lessons are
given to all who apply without regard to creed or race or color. The
Color Line has no place in Mexico. Beneath the salon are halls filled
with statuary, where clay modeling and sculpture is taught, and as you
leave with weary limb you are convinced that it is in truth a National
Academy.
Then there is the Mineria, the School of Engineering and Mines, on San
Andres and Betlemita streets. It cost a million and a half of dollars,
and was the work of the sculptor and architect, Tolsa. It contains rich
collections of geological and minerological specimens, and a
meteorological observatory, also a fossil of the Pleiocene horse of
three toes. The mint on Apartado Street struck its first coin in 1535,
and since then the coins of republics, empires and dictatorships have
run from it in a constant stream of gold and silver to the enormous sum
of $2,200,000,000.
Then there is the National Library and the Preparatory School on San
Ildefonso Street, with a thousand students and fine equipment and
botanical garden. Public instruction is free and gratuitous in every
respect, without regard to race or religion.
Just beyond the Cathedral is a National Pawnshop, Monte de Piedad,
“Mountain of Mercy.” It was founded more than a hundred years ago by
Count Regla, the owner of the famous silver-mine of Real de Monte, who
gave three hundred thousand dollars for the purpose, so that the poor
and needy could get money on their belongings at reasonable interest.
Any article deposited is valued by two disinterested parties, and
three-fourths of its value is promptly advanced. If the party ceases to
pay interest on the loan, the article is kept six months longer, and
then exposed for sale. If not sold in the next six months, it is sold at
public auction, and all that is realized from the sale above the
original pawn, is placed to the borrower’s credit. If this money is not
called for in a specified time, it reverts to the bank of the
institution. This is a government institution, and has entirely broken
up the small pawn-shops that charge unreasonable interest. The rate of
interest is never raised, and it lends a million dollars a year, and has
fifty thousand customers. One dollar is the smallest sum loaned, and ten
thousand the largest, and the loans are about three hundred daily. About
one-third of the articles pawned are never redeemed, and tourists can
find some wonderful bargains here. The Diamond snuff-box presented Santa
Anna when he was Dictator is here. $25,000 will buy the little trifle.
In all the wars and revolutions this old city has seen, all parties have
respected this grand institution, with one exception: When Gonzales was
president in 1884, he ran so short of money, that to keep the National
credit, he levied upon its treasury. An English syndicate with a capital
of $25,000,000 has recently bought the institution for one million, and
will still carry on the banking business.
Chapultepec, “The hill of the Grass-hopper,” is the president’s White
House and the West Point of Mexico. It is three miles from the city, and
is situated upon a perpendicular rock, two hundred feet high, and was a
veritable Gibraltar in war times when cannon were unknown. This castle
was the pride and ambition of Carlotta, the wife of Maximilian, and she
spent half a million dollars on the interior furnishings. The interior
is remodeled on the Pompeiian style. The castle is reached by a winding
road around the hill, and also by a secret cavern through the hill. On
the rock in front are the engraved pictures of Montezuma I. and his
successor. In the rear is the immense park of _ahuehuete_ or cypress
trees, next in size to the redwoods of California. One of these
venerable monarchs is fifty feet in circumference and one hundred and
seventy feet high, under which was Montezuma’s favorite seat. This park
measures two miles in length, and reaches to Molino del Rey, “The King’s
Mill,” which figured in the war with the United States. It is now the
National Arsenal.
The Military Academy is at Chapultepec, and the whole hill is a military
camp. From the citadel a view can be had of the whole valley of Mexico,
forty miles long and thirty wide. To the left of the road leading up to
the castle is a cave, closed with an iron gate. This is said to have
been the treasure house of both Montezuma and Cortez. A stairway leads
up through the hill to the castle. A large collection of animals are in
the park and a beautiful flower garden. From here leads an aqueduct
that supplies the city with water, just as it did before the Conquest.
Here was made the last stand against the American army under General
Pillow, and U. S. Grant was one of the first to mount the hill, and the
flower of the cadet army was slain here, and they were only boys. The
occasion has been remembered by the government, and at the foot of the
hill stands a large monument with the names of all the boys who fell. On
one side is this inscription:
“DEDICATED TO THE STUDENTS
WHO FELL
IN DEFENDING THEIR COUNTRY AGAINST
THE AMERICAN INVASION.”
[Illustration]