A CRUISE IN NORTHERN MEXICO.--IV.
Twenty-six miles from Corralitos lay Casas Grandes, a place containing
between two and three thousand inhabitants, and a fair type of the
collection of ruins, partial ruins, patched ruins, ruins deserted, ruins
inhabited, and a few passable adobe houses, that in Northern Mexico is
dignified by the denomination, town. The site occupied by it appears to
have been a favourite one from early times, some interesting ruins of
Aztec buildings still remaining here, and traces of labour that must be
referred to an even more remote date, occurring in the neighbourhood.
I had visited Casas Grandes twice without seeing the ruins (or "Casas
Grandes de Montezuma," as they are called), when one morning I found
myself in the company of the priest of the village. This functionary
spoke some English--some Ollendorf, perhaps I should say--very little of
which was intelligible, and still less coherent. But this did not seem
to concern him. In an unfortunate moment I invited him to take some
bottled beer at the principal store. He finished four bottles gaily, and
was preparing to accept a further renewal of the invitation, when it
occurred to me that, inasmuch as I did not drink beer, and the division
of labour was scarcely a fair one, it would be wise to vary the
entertainment. I proposed to visit the ruins, and leaving the shop we
proceeded in the direction of the "big houses." The _padre's_ somewhat
high action, the moment that he began to feel the heat of the sun,
reminded me a good deal of what Skippy had said about Mac's dancing:
namely, that "he only touched on the high places as he went round the
room." The successor of the Apostles dipped and soared, and set to every
pig, passer-by, or obstruction in our way, with bewitching grace and
lightness. It would not have surprised me at any moment to have seen him
pause, cover his face in his mantle, and, after an interval of
self-communion, burst into a prophetic denunciation of the degenerate
inhabitants of the surrounding hovels. He was in that sort of mood. We
reached the ruins, however, without this having occurred. To stand
amidst such remarkable traces of past industry and civilisation, in
company with an inebriated priest, a mouthpiece of the God of the race
that expunged the Aztec authors of them from the list of nations, was
not altogether without its moral.
The ruins still visible lie on the top of the artificial mounds on which
the Aztecs often built, and extend over a wide surface. Doubtless they
would still be in a state of much greater preservation but for the fact
that the Mexicans have been accustomed to borrow materials from them, to
employ in the construction of their houses and corrals. I am told that
Coronado, who took part in the expedition of Cortez, refers to these
remains in his history as being "already old;" but I have had no
opportunity of consulting his work. The ruins that I saw seemed to be
those of a large palace, or of some building of that nature, and were
composed of blocks of a species of adobe cement, 18 x 18 x 24 inches in
size. The rooms are long and rather narrow; some plaster still adheres
to the walls in the interior of one of them. Judging from the elevation
to which the walls still standing rise, the building appears to have
been two or three storeys high--noteworthy evidence of architectural
advance if the supposition be correct.
It seemed likely that the natives would from time to time have
discovered Aztec relics here, but inquiry brought nothing of the kind to
light, save some "_oyas de Montezuma_," earthenware pots of more or less
fantastic shapes. The designs in black and red on some of them showed
considerable finish and skill, and the things themselves were far
superior to anything of the kind made in the country at the present
time.
To turn from the Casas Grandes of the Aztecs to the modern town which
derives its name from them, is to turn from ruined buildings to ruined
people. In this instance the ruined people are certainly the more
picturesque. Walls of mud, be they never so mighty, and dust, though it
be the dust of ages, have not the charm of one of the little groups of
loafers that may be seen at every street corner in a Mexican village.
Bronze faces, luminous-eyed; hair, beards, and moustaches black as
ravens' wings; big _sombreros_ covered with tarnished silver braiding;
deep-toned, rich-hued _zarapas_, contrasting with white (?) shirts, and
perhaps a rose-coloured knot at the wearer's throat; great jangling
spurs, braided breeches, a trailing _lariat_, a wreath or two of
cigarette smoke, a bit of green foliage, deep shadows, golden sunlight;
and all mellowed with dirt and perfect repose as a picture mellows with
age. Turn where you will, such scenes may be found.
There are streets, it is true; but building and rebuilding have rendered
their lines extremely vague. Here a householder has trenched upon the
road for space for his pig-sty; there a wattled fence encloses a
fowl-yard; yonder is a small corral built of old Aztec blocks;
elsewhere, a stable-shed abuts upon the right of way. But none of the
domestic animals for whom these offices have been built appear to
inhabit them. A lean horse, with ribs protruding, stands, looking like a
big knot, at one end of a raw-hide lasso, which, trailing loosely on the
ground, is lost to sight inside the door of his master's hotel. Cows
repose placidly in the thick dust of the path, chewing an apparently
inexhaustible cud. Cocks and hens stalk here, there, and everywhere, in
search of their precarious livelihood. There is a large floating
population of dogs that have neither name nor home; and the pigs of a
Mexican town (save in the instances of those obese monstrosities that
are tethered out) have evidently a strolling license to go
whithersoever they list. There are busy pigs and idle pigs, clean,
dirty, blatant, pensive, friendly, and aggressive pigs, cynical pigs
with cold, cruel, alligator eyes, pigs that look the very incarnation of
sensualism, and pigs that look chaste and pure as matrons of old Rome.
Few animals have so human an eye as this unjustly despised benefactor of
mankind. For my own part, although reluctantly confessing that vulgar
prejudice has educated in me a preference for him when he has fallen
into his baconage, I can never entirely overlook the debt of gratitude
that is his due. Science has greater records than his; there are figures
in statecraft, art, theology, and war, to whom it is the custom of giddy
historians to assign greater prominence when recounting the world's
great names; but of few can it be said that their unaided genius and
research has awakened the taste of civilised humanity to a source of
gratification so universally admitted, and so entirely free from alloy,
as has the pig. For what, indeed, is the detecter of a new planet, the
finder or conqueror of a new continent, beside the great discoverer of
the truffle? Not for us is the planet, to new continents we are
indifferent. These are vanities for our children to reach and cry for.
But, as weary and disillusionised we drive "Life's sad post-horses o'er
the dreary frontier of age," and Time, great proselytiser, gently turns
the mind to solemn thoughts of turtle-fat and beaver-tail, water-rails
and canvas-back ducks, caviare, _foie gras_, some fishes, and a few
wines, the truffle will be found to be connected with most of our
comfortablest dreams and sweetest hopes. Yet, how have we treated its
inspired inventor? Have we cherished him, and encouraged his
investigations? No! The sensitive, tip-tilted nose to which we owe so
much has been ruthlessly pierced and torn. The iron hath entered into
poor piggy's snout. The marvellous faculty possessed by him of going to
the root of things is wantonly destroyed. He will never electrify us
with another discovery, never present the epicurean world with another
truffle. When I speak of the truffle, by the way, I no more allude to
the usual dry chips of black leather of English dinner-tables than I
should be referring to the London orange, if, with the memory of the
glorious fruit of the gardens of Chio in my mind, I spoke of oranges.
I could linger for pages in any one of these Mexican towns--now
sketching a smallpox-marked, villainous-visaged horse-thief, with the
seat of a centaur, engaged in mid-street in breaking in a colt,
barebacked, and bridled only with a hackamore; and, whilst the animal
bucks and bucks untiringly, exchanging jokes and laughter with the
idlers near; now depicting a dark-eyed, black-haired, slatternly
_senorita_ (not beautiful--that is extremely rare--but picturesque
certainly), standing with her pail by the old derrick over the public
well, in a cotton skirt of pink, a shawl or veil of similar though
lighter colour covering her head and shoulders and falling to her waist,
the whole vaguely reminding one of a cloud of apple-blossom; now
describing the obscure interior of a cottage, and the group of women
crouching round the wide, open hearth, crushing maize in the _matate_,
or cooking one of their simple dishes; now picturing----But enough! As
it is we proceed much too slowly; and many of the towns, ranches, Mormon
camps, and scenes that I saw, will find no record in the limits that I
have here assigned myself. For, when the originality of a generation may
be registered in few lines, no book can be too short.