initial commit of ebook 13115HEADmain

1 files changed, 11427 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/13115-0.txt b/13115-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..acc12df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/13115-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11427 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13115 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Anahuac
+
+or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern
+
+by Edward Burnett Tylor
+
+
+1861
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+ITINERARY.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Cuba. Volantes. A Cuban Railway. Voyage. Passports. Isle of Pines.
+Mosquitos. Pirates. Runaway slaves. Baths of Santa Fé. Alligators. The
+Cura. Missionary Priest. Florida Colonists. Blacks in the West Indies.
+Chinese and African slaves.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Players and Political Adventurers. Voyage. Yucatan. Slave-trade in
+Natives. The Ten Tribes. Vera Cruz. Don Ignacio Comonfort. Mexican
+Politics. Casualties. The City of the Dead. Turkey-buzzards. Northers.
+The “temperate region.” Cordova. The Chipi-chipi. The “cold region.”
+Mirage. Sand-pillars. The rainy season. Plundered passengers.
+Robber-priest. Aztec remains. Aloe-fields. Houses of mud-bricks. Huts
+of aloes. Mexican churches. Mexican roads. Making pulque.
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Palace-hotel of Yturbide. Site and building of Mexico. Changes in the
+Valley of Mexico. Dearth of Trees. Architecture. Drunkenness. Fights.
+Rattles. Judas’s Bones. Burning Judas. Churches in Holy Week. Streets.
+Barricades. People. Women. The cypress of Chapultepec. Old-fashioned
+coaches. The canal of Chalco. Canoe-travelling. “Reasonable people.”
+Taste for flowers. The “Floating Gardens.” Promenade. Flooded streets.
+Earthquakes.
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Tacubaya. Humming-birds and butterflies. Aztec feather-work. Bullfight.
+Lazoing and colearing. English in Mexico. Hedge of organ-cactus.
+Pachuca. Cold in the hills. Rapid evaporation. Mountain-roads. Real del
+Monte. Guns and pistols. Regla. The father-confessor in Mexico. Morals
+of servitude. Cornish miners. Dram-drinking. Salt-trade. The Indian
+market. Indian Conservatism. Sardines. Account-keeping. The great
+Barranca. Tropical fruits. Prickly pears. Their use. The
+“Water-Throat.” Silver-works. Volcano of Jorullo. Cascade of Regla.
+“Eyes of Water.” Fires. The Hill of Knives. Obsidian implements.
+Obsidian mines. The Stone-age. The loadstone-mountain of Mexico.
+Unequal Civilization of the Aztecs. Silver and commerce of Mexico.
+Effect of Protection-duties. Silver mines. The Aztec numerals.
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A Revolution. Siege and Capitulation of Puebla. Military Statistics.
+Highway-robbery. Reform in Mexico. The American war. Mexican army. Our
+Lady of Guadalupe. Miracles. The rival Virgins. Sacred lottery-ticket.
+Literature in Mexico. The clergy and their system of Education in
+Mexico. The Holy Office. Indian Notions of Christianity.
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+To Tezcuco. Indian Canoes. Sewer-canal. Water-snakes. Salt-lakes. A
+storm on the lake. Glass-works. Casa Grande. Quarries. Stone Hammers.
+Use of Bronze in stone-cutting in Mexico and Egypt. Prickly Pears.
+Temple-pyramids of Teotihuacán. Sacrifice of Spaniards. Old Mexico.
+Market of Antiquities. Police. Bull-dogs. Accumulation of Alluvium.
+Tezcotzinco. Ancient baths and bridge. Salt and salt-pans. Fried
+flies’-eggs. Water-pipes. Irrigation. Agriculture in Mexico. History
+repeats itself.
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Horses and their training. Saddles and bits. The Courier. Leather
+clothes. The Serape. The Rag-fair of Mexico, Thieves. Gourd
+water-bottles. Ploughing. Travelling by Diligence. Indian carriers.
+Mules. Breakfast. Bragadoccio. Robbers. Escort. Cuernavaca. Tropical
+Vegetation. Sugar-cane. Temisco. Sugar-hacienda. Indian labourers. The
+evensong. The Raya. Strength of the Indians. Xochicalco. Ruins of the
+Pyramid. Sculptures. Common ornaments. The people of Mexico and Central
+America. Their civilization. Pear-shaped heads. Miacatlán.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Cocoyotla. Indian labourers. Political Condition of the Indians. Indian
+Village and huts. Cotton-spinning. The Indian Alcalde. Great Cave of
+Cacahuamilpán. Optical phenomenon. Monk on horseback. Religion of the
+Indians. Idols. Baptism by wholesale. Village amusements. Dancing.
+Chalma. The meson and the convent. Church-dances. The miller’s
+daughter. Young friar. The Hill of Drums. Sacred cypress-tree. Oculan.
+Change of climate. Grain-districts of Mexico. The Desierto. Tenancingo.
+Toluca. Lerma. Robbers.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Museum. Fate of Antiquities. War-God. Sacrificial Stone. Mexican words
+naturalized in Europe, &c. Chamber of Horrors. Aztec Art. Wooden Drums.
+Aztec Picture-writings. The “Man-flaying” Mr. Uhde’s Collection. Mr.
+Christy’s Collection. Bones of Giants. Cortes’ Armour. Mexican
+Calendar-stone. Aztec Astronomy. Mongol Calendar. Peculiarities of
+Aztec Civilization. The Prison at Mexico. No “Criminal class.”
+Prison-discipline. The Garotte. Mexican law-courts. Statistics. The
+Compadrazgo. Leperos and Lepers. Lazoing the bull. Cockfighting.
+Gambling. Monte. The fortunate Miners.
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A travelling companion. Mexicans who live by their wits. Jackal-masks,
+&c. Mexican words used in the United States. Miraflores.
+Cotton-factory. Sacred Mount and Cypress-tree. Rainy Season. Ascent of
+Popocatepetl. The Crater. View of Anahuac. Descent from Popocatepetl.
+Plain of Puebla. Snow-blindness. Hospitable Shopkeeper. Morality of
+Smuggling. Pyramid and Antiquities of Cholula. Hybrid Legends of
+Mexico. Genuine Legends. Old-world analogies among the Aztecs.
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Puebla. The Pasadizos. Revolutions in Mexico. Festival of Corpus
+Christi. Mexican clergy. Their incomes and morals. Scourging. Religion
+of the People. Anomalous constitution of the Republic. The horse-bath.
+Debt-slaves or peons. Great fortunes in Mexico. Amozoque. Spurs.
+Nopalucán. Orizaba. Robbers. Locusts. Indian village. Inroads of
+Civilization. Lawsuits. Native Aristocracy. The vapour-bath. Scanty
+population. Its explanation. Unhealthy habits. Epidemics. Intemperance.
+Pineapples. Potrero. Negros. Mixed races. “Painted men.”
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Barrancas. Indian trotting. Flowers. Armadillo. Fire-flies. Singular
+Fandango. Epiphytes. The Junta. Indian Life. Decorative Art. Horses.
+Jalapa. Anglo-Mexicans. Insect-life. Monte. Fate of Antonio. Scorpion.
+White Negress. Cattle. Artificial lighting. Vera Cruz. Further Journey.
+St. Thomas’s. Voyage to England. Future destinies of Mexico.
+
+APPENDIX.
+I. The Manufacture of Obsidian Knives.
+II. On the Solar Eclipses recorded in the Le Tellier MS.
+III. Table of Aztec roots.
+IV. Glossary.
+V. Ancient Mexican mosaic work (in Mr. Christy’s Collection).
+VI. Dasent’s Essay on the Ethnographical value of Popular Tales and
+Legends.
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
+
+PLATES:
+
+ Cascade of Regla. _From a photograph by J. Bell, Esq._ Porter and
+ Baker in Mexico.
+ Indians bringing Country Produce to Market.
+ Indians in a Rancho, making and baking Tortillas.
+ Map to illustrate Messrs. Tylor and Christy’s journeys and excursions
+ in Mexico.
+
+WOODCUTS:
+
+_(The cuts of smaller objects of antiquity, and articles at present in
+use, have been drawn from specimens in the Collection of Henry Christy,
+Esq.)_
+
+
+ Indian Tlachiquero, collecting juice of the Agave for Pulque.
+ View of Part of the Valley of Mexico.
+ Water-carrier and Mexican Woman at the Fountain.
+ Group of Mexican Ecclesiastics.
+ Stone Spear-heads, and Obsidian Knives and Arrow-heads, from Mexico.
+ Fluted Prism of Obsidian, and Knife-flakes.
+ Mexican Arrow-heads of Obsidian.
+ Aztec Stone-knife, with wooden handle, inlaid with mosaic work.
+ Aztec Head in Terra-cotta.
+ The Rebozo and the Serape.
+ Aztec Bridge near Tezcuco.
+ Spanish-Mexican Saddle and appendages.
+ Spanish-Mexican Bit, with ring and chain.
+ Sculptured Panel, from Xochicalco. _(After Nebel)_.
+ Small Aztec Head in Terra-cotta.
+ Ixtacalco Church.
+ Spanish-Mexican Spurs.
+ Goddess of War. _(After Nebel)_.
+ Three Views of a Sacrificial Collar or Clamp, carved out of hard
+ stone.
+ Two Views of a Mask, carved out of hard stone.
+ Ancient Bronze Bells.
+ Spanish-Mexican Cock-spurs.
+ Leather Sandals.
+ Mexican Costumes. _(After Nebel)_.
+ View of Orizaba.
+ Indians of the Plateau. _(After Nebel)_.
+
+[Illustration: THE CASCADE OF REGLA. _From a Photograph by J.
+Ball Esq. of the Hacienda de Regla. March 1856._]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The journey and excursions in Mexico which have originated the
+narrative and remarks contained in this volume were made in the months
+of March, April, May, and June of 1856, for the most part on horseback.
+The author and his fellow-traveller enjoyed many advantageous
+opportunities of studying the country, the people, and the antiquities
+of Mexico, owing to the friendly assistance and hospitality which they
+received there. With this aid they were enabled to accomplish much more
+than usually falls to the lot of travellers in so limited a period; and
+they had the great advantage too, of being able to substantiate or
+correct their own observations by the local knowledge and experience of
+their friends and entertainers.
+
+Visiting Mexico during a lull in the civil turmoil of that lamentably
+disturbed Republic, they were fortunate in being able to avail
+themselves of that peaceable season in making excursions to remarkable
+places and ruins, and examining the national collection of antiquities,
+and other objects of interest,—an opportunity that cannot have occurred
+since owing to the recommencement of civil war in its worst form.
+
+The following are some of the chief points of interest in these Notes
+on Mexico, which are either new or treated more fully than hitherto:
+
+1. The evidence of an immense ancient population, shewn by the
+abundance of remains of works of art (treated of at pages 146-150), is
+fully stated here.
+
+2. The notices and drawings of Obsidian knives and weapons (at page 95,
+&c., and in the Appendix) are more ample than any previously given.
+
+3. The treatment of the Mexican Numerals (at page 108) is partly new.
+
+4. The proofs of the highly probable sophistication of the document in
+the Library at Paris, relative to Mexican eclipses, have not previously
+been advanced (see Appendix).
+
+5. The notices of objects of Mexican art, &c., in the chapter on
+Antiquities, and elsewhere (including the Appendix), are for the most
+part new to the public.
+
+6. The remarks on the connection between pure Mexican art and that of
+Central America, in the chapter on Xochicalco, are in great part new.
+
+7. The singular native bridge at Tezcuco (page 153) is another novelty.
+
+The order in which places and things were visited is shewn in the
+annexed Itinerary, or sketch of the journeys and excursions described.
+
+
+
+
+ITINERARY.
+
+
+Journey 1. Cuba. Havana. Batabano. Isles of Pines. Nueva Gerona. Baños
+de Santa Fé. Back to Havana. _Pages_ 1-14.
+
+Journey 2. Havana. Sisal. Vera Cruz. _Pages_ 15-18.
+
+Journey 3. Vera Cruz. Cordova. Orizaba. Huamantla. Otumba. Guadalupe.
+Mexico. _Pages_ 18-38.
+
+Journey 4. Mexico to Tacubaya and Chapultepec, and back. _Pages_ 55-58.
+
+Journey 5. Mexico to Santa Anita and back. _Pages_ 59-65.
+
+Journey 6. Mexico. Guadalupe. Pachuca. Real del Monte. Regla.
+Atotonilco el Grande. Soquital and back to Real del Monte. Real del
+Monte to Mount Jacal and Cerro de Navajas (obsidian-pits), and back to
+Real del Monte. Pachuca. Guadalupe. Mexico. _Pages_ 72-105.
+
+Journey 7. Mexico to Tisapán. Ravine of Magdalena. Pedrigal
+(lava-field), and back. _Pages_ 118-120.
+
+Journey 8. Mexico to Tezcuco. Pages 129—162. Tezcuco to Pyramids of
+Teotihuacán and back. Pages 136—146. Tezcuco to Tezcotzinco (the
+so-called “Montezuma’s Bath,” &c.). Aztec Bridge, and back to Tezcuco.
+_Pages_ 152-153. Tezcuco to Bosque del Contador (the grove of
+ahuehuetes, where excavations were made.) _Pages_ 154-156. Tezcuco to
+Mexico. _Page_ 62.
+
+Journey 9. Mexico. San Juan de Dios. La Guarda. Cuernavaca. Temisco.
+Xochicalco. Miacatlán. Cocoytla. _Pages_ 172-195. Cocoytla to village
+and cave of Cacahuamilpán and back. _Pages_ 196-205. Cocoytla to
+Chalma. Oculán. El Desierto. Tenancingo. Toluca. Lerma. Las Cruzes.
+Mexico. _Pages_ 214-220.
+
+Journey 10. Mexico to Tezcuco. Miraflores. Amecameca. Popocatepetl. San
+Nicolas de los Ranchos. Cholula. Puebla. Amozoque. Nopaluca. San
+Antonio de abajo. Orizaba. Amatlán. El Potrero. Cordova. San Andrés.
+Chalchicomula. La Junta. Jalapa. Vera Cruz. West Indies and Home.
+_Pages_ 260- 327.
+
+
+Illustration: MAP OF PART OF MEXICO TO ILLUSTRATE A JOURNEY FROM
+VERA CRUZ TO MEXICO AND BACK & EXCURSIONS IN THE COUNTRY, By Messrs.
+E.B. Tylor & H. Cristy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+THE ISLE OF PINES.
+
+
+In the spring of 1856, I met with Mr. Christy accidentally in an
+omnibus at Havana. He had been in Cuba for some months, leading an
+adventurous life, visiting sugar-plantations, copper-mines, and
+coffee-estates, descending into caves, and botanizing in tropical
+jungles, cruising for a fortnight in an open boat among the
+coral-reefs, hunting turtles and manatis, and visiting all sorts of
+people from whom information was to be had, from foreign consuls and
+Lazarist missionaries down to retired slave-dealers and assassins.
+
+As for myself, I had been travelling for the best part of a year in the
+United States, and had but a short time since left the live-oak forests
+and sugar-plantations of Louisiana. We agreed to go to Mexico together;
+and the present notes are principally compiled from our
+memorandum-books, and from letters written home on our journey.
+
+Before we left Cuba, however, we made one last excursion across the
+island, and to the _Isla de Pinos_—the Isle of Pines—off the southern
+coast. A volante took us to the railway-station. The volante is the
+vehicle which the Cubans specially affect; it is like a Hansom cab, but
+the wheels are much taller, six and a half feet high, and the black
+driver sits postillion-wise upon the horse. Our man had a laced jacket,
+black leather leggings, and a pair of silver spurs fastened upon his
+bare feet, which seemed at a little distance to have well polished
+boots on, they were so black and shiny.
+
+The railway which took us from Havana to Batabano had some striking
+peculiarities. For a part of the way the track passed between two walls
+of tropical jungle. The Indian fig trees sent down from every branch
+suckers, like smooth strings, which rooted themselves in the ground to
+draw up more water. Acacias and mimosas, the seiba and the mahagua,
+with other hard-wood trees innumerable, crowded close to one another;
+while epiphytes perched on every branch, and creepers bound the whole
+forest into a compact mass of vegetation, through which no bird could
+fly. We could catch the strings of convolvulus with our walking-sticks,
+as the train passed through the jungle. Sometimes we came upon a swamp,
+where clusters of bamboos were growing, crowned with tufts of pointed
+leaves; or had a glimpse for a moment of a group of royal palms upon
+the rising ground.
+
+We passed sugar-plantations with their wide cane-fields, the
+sugar-houses with tall chimneys, and the balconied house of the
+administrador, keeping a sharp look out over the village of
+negro-cabins, arranged in double lines.
+
+In the houses near the stations where we stopped, cigar-making seemed
+to be the universal occupation. Men, women, and children were sitting
+round tables hard at work. It made us laugh to see the black men
+rolling up cigars upon the hollow of their thighs, which nature has
+fashioned into a curve exactly suited to this process.
+
+At Batabano the steamer was waiting at the pier, and our passports and
+ourselves were carefully examined by the captain, for Cuba is the
+paradise of passport offices, and one cannot stir without a visa. For
+once everybody was _en règle_, and we had no such scene as my companion
+had witnessed a few days before.
+
+If you are a married man resident in Cuba, you cannot get a passport to
+go to the next town without your wife’s permission in writing. Now it
+so happened that a respectable brazier, who lived at Santiago de Cuba,
+wanted to go to Trinidad. His wife would not consent; so he either got
+her signature by stratagem, or, what is more likely, gave somebody
+something to get him a passport under false pretences.
+
+At any rate he was safe on board the steamer, when a middle-aged
+female, well dressed, but evidently arrayed in haste, and with a face
+crimson with hard running, came panting down to the steamer, and rushed
+on board. Seizing upon the captain, she pointed out her husband, who
+had taken refuge behind the other passengers at a respectful distance;
+she declared that she had never consented to his going away, and
+demanded that his body should be instantly delivered up to her. The
+husband was appealed to, but preferred staying where he was. The
+captain produced the passport, perfectly _en règle_, and the lady made
+a rush at the document, which was torn in half in the scuffle. All
+other means failing, she made a sudden dash at her husband, probably
+intending to carry him off by main force. He ran for his life, and
+there was a steeplechase round the deck, among benches, bales, and
+coils of rope; while the passengers and the crew cheered first one and
+then the other, till they could not speak for laughing. The husband was
+all but caught once; but a benevolent passenger kicked a camp-stool in
+the lady’s way, and he got a fresh start, which he utilized by climbing
+up the ladder to the paddle-box. His wife tried to follow him, but the
+shouts of laughter which the black men raised at seeing her
+performances were too much for her, and she came down again. Here the
+captain interposed, and put her ashore, where she stood like black-eyed
+Susan till the vessel was far from the wharf, not waving her lily hand,
+however, but shaking her clenched fist in the direction of the
+fugitive.
+
+To return to our voyage to the Isle of Pines.—All the afternoon the
+steamer threaded her way cautiously among the coral-reefs which rose
+almost to the surface. Sometimes there seemed scarcely room to pass
+between them, and by night navigation would have been impossible. We
+were just in the place where Columbus and his companions arrived on
+their expedition along the Cuban coast, to find out what countries lay
+beyond. They sailed by day, and lay to at night, till their patience
+was worn out. Another day or two of sailing would have brought them to
+where the coast trends northwards; but they turned back, and Columbus
+died in the belief that Cuba was the eastern extremity of the continent
+of Asia.
+
+The Spaniards call these reefs “cayos,” and we have altered the name to
+“keys,” such as _Key West_ in Florida, and _Ambergris Key_ off Belize.
+
+It was after sunset, and the phosphorescent animals were making the sea
+glitter like molten metal, when we reached the Isle of Pines, and
+steamed slowly up the river, among the mangroves that fringe the banks,
+to the village of Nueva Gerona, the port of the island. It consisted of
+two rows of houses thatched with palm-leaves, and surrounded by wide
+verandahs; and between them a street of unmitigated mud.
+
+As we walked through the place in the dusk, we could dimly discern the
+inhabitants sitting in their thatched verandahs, in the thinnest of
+white dresses, gossipping, smoking, and love-making, tinkling guitars,
+and singing seguidillas. It was quite a Spanish American scene out of a
+romance. There was no romance about the mosquitos, however. The air was
+alive with them. When I was new to Cuba, I used to go to bed in the
+European fashion; and as the beds were all six inches too short, my
+feet used to find their way out in the night, and the mosquitos came
+down and sat upon them. Experience taught us that it was better to lie
+down half-dressed, so that only our faces and hands were exposed to
+their attacks.
+
+The Isle of Pines used to be the favourite resort of the pirates of the
+Spanish main; indeed there were no other inhabitants. The creeks and
+rivers being lined with the densest vegetation, a few yards up the
+winding course of such a creek, they were lost in the forest, and a
+cruiser might pass within a few yards of their lurking-place, and see
+no traces of them. Captain Kyd often came here, and stories of his
+buried treasures are still told among the inhabitants. Now the island
+serves a double purpose; it is a place of resort for the Cubans, who
+come to rusticate and bathe, and it serves as a settlement for those
+free black inhabitants of Florida who chose to leave that country when
+it was given up to the United States. One of these Floridanos
+accompanied us as our guide next day to the Baños de Santa Fé.
+
+When we left the village we passed near the mangrove trees, which were
+growing not only near the water but in it, and like to spread their
+roots among the thick black slime which accumulates so fast in this
+country of rapid vegetable growth, and as rapid decomposition. In Cuba,
+the mangoe is the abomination of the planters, for they supply the
+runaway slaves with food, upon which they have been known to subsist
+for months, whilst the mangroves give them shelter. A little further
+inland we found the guava, a thick-spreading tree, with smooth green
+leaves. From its fruit is made guava-jelly, but as yet it was not ripe
+enough to eat.
+
+In the middle of the island we came upon marble-quarries. They are
+hardly worked now; but when they were first established, a number of
+emancipados were employed there. What emancipados are, it is worth
+while to explain. They are Africans taken from captured slavers, and
+are set to work under government inspection for a limited number of
+years, on a footing something like that of the apprentices in Jamaica,
+in the interregnum between slavery and emancipation. In Cuba it is
+remarked that the mortality among the emancipados is frightful. They
+seldom outlive their years of probation. The explanation of this piece
+of statistics is curious. The fact is that every now and then, when an
+old man dies, they bury him as one of the emancipados, whose register
+is sent in to the Government as dead; while the negro himself goes to
+work as a slave in some out-of-the-way plantation where no tales are
+told.
+
+We left the marble-quarries, and rode for miles over a wide savannah.
+The soil was loose and sandy and full of flakes of mica, and in the
+watercourses were fragments of granite, brought down from the hills.
+Here flourished palm trees and palmettos, acacias, mimosas, and
+cactuses, while the mangoe and the guava tree preferred the damper
+patches nearer to the coast. The hills were covered with the pine-trees
+from which the island has its name; and on the rising ground at their
+base we saw the strange spectacle of palms and fir trees growing side
+by side.
+
+Where we came upon a stream, the change in the vegetation was
+astonishing. It was a sudden transition from an English, plantation of
+fir trees into the jungle of the tropics, full of Indian figs, palms,
+lancewood, and great mahagua[1] trees, all knotted together by endless
+creepers and parasites; while the parrots kept up a continual
+chattering and screaming in the tree-tops. The moment we left the
+narrow strip of tropical forest that lined the stream we were in the
+pine wood. Here the first two or three feet of the trunks of the pine
+trees were scorched and blackened by the flames of the tall dry
+savannah-grass, which grows close round them, and catches fire several
+times every year. Through the pine forest the conflagration spreads
+unobstructed, as in an American prairie; but it only runs along the
+edge of the dense river-vegetation, which it cannot penetrate.
+
+ [1] The mahagua tree furnishes that curious fibrous network which is
+ known as _bast_, and used to wrap bundles of cigars in. The mahogany
+ tree is called _caoba_ in Spanish, apparently the original Indian
+ name, as the Spaniards probably first became acquainted with it in
+ Cuba. Is our word “mahogany” the result of a confusion of words, and
+ corrupted from “mahagua?”
+
+
+The Baños de Santa Fé are situated in a cleared space among the fir
+trees. The baths themselves are nothing but a cavity in the rock, into
+which a stream, at a temperature of about 80°, continually flows. A
+partition in the middle divides the ladies from the gentlemen, but
+allows them to continue their conversation while they sit and splash in
+their respective compartments.
+
+The houses are even more quaint than the bathing-establishment. The
+whole settlement consists of a square field surrounded by little
+houses, each with its roof of palm leaves and indispensable verandah.
+Here the Cubans come to stay for months, bathing, smoking cigarettes,
+flirting, gossiping, playing cards, and strumming guitars; and they
+seemed to be all agreed on one point, that it was a delightful
+existence. We left them to their tranquil enjoyments, and rode back to
+Nueva Gerona.
+
+Next morning we borrowed a gun from the engineer of the steamboat, and
+I bought some powder and shot at a shop where they kept two young
+alligators under the counter for the children to play with. The creeks
+and lagoons of the island are full of them, and the negroes told us
+that in a certain lake not far off there lived no less a personage than
+“the crocodile king”—“_el rey de los crocodilos_;” but we had no time
+to pay his majesty a visit. Two of the Floridan negroes rowed us up the
+river. Even at some distance from the mouth, sting-rays and jelly-fish
+were floating about. As we rowed upwards, the banks were overhung with
+the densest vegetation. There were mahogany trees with their curious
+lop-sided leaves, the copal-plant with its green egg-like fruit, from
+which copal oozes when it is cut, like opium from a poppy-head, palms
+with clusters of oily nuts, palmettos, and guavas. When a palm-tree on
+the river-bank would not grow freely for the crowding of other trees,
+it would strike out in a slanting direction till it reached the clear
+space above the river, and then shoot straight upwards with its crown
+of leaves.
+
+We shot a hawk and a woodpecker, and took them home; but, not many
+minutes after we had laid them on the tiled floor of our room, we
+became aware that we were invaded. The ants were upon us. They were
+coming by thousands in a regular line of march up our window-sill and
+down again inside, straight towards the birds. When we looked out of
+the window, there was a black stripe lying across the court-yard on the
+flags, a whole army of them coming. We saw it was impossible to get the
+skins of the birds, so threw them out of the window, and the advanced
+guard faced about and followed them.
+
+On the sand in front of the village the Castor-oil plant flourished,
+the _Palma Christi_; its little nuts were ripe, and tasted so innocent
+that, undeterred by the example of the boy in the Swiss Family
+Robinson, I ate several, and was handsomely punished for it. In the
+evening I recounted my ill-advised experiment to the white-jacketed
+loungers in the verandah of the inn, and was assured that I must have
+eaten an odd number! The second nut, they told me with much gravity,
+counteracts the first, the fourth neutralizes the third, and so on ad
+infinitum.
+
+We made two clerical acquaintances in the Isle of Pines. One was the
+Cura of New Gerona, and his parentage was the only thing remarkable
+about him. He was not merely the son of a priest, but his grandfather
+was a priest also.
+
+The other was a middle-aged ecclesiastic, with a pleasant face and an
+unfailing supply of good-humoured fun. Everybody seemed to get
+acquainted with him directly, and to become quite confidential after
+the first half-hour; and a drove of young men followed him about
+everywhere. His reverence kept up the ball of conversation continually,
+and showed considerable skill in amusing his auditors and drawing them
+out in their turn. It is true the jokes which passed seemed to us mild,
+but they appeared to suit the public exactly; and indeed, the Padre was
+quite capable of providing better ones when there was a market for
+them.
+
+We found that though a Spaniard by birth, he had been brought up at the
+Lazarist College in Paris, which we know as the training-school of the
+French missionaries in China; and we soon made friends with him, as
+everyone else did. A day or two afterwards we went to see him in
+Havana, and found him hard at his work, which was the superintendence
+of several of the charitable institutions of the city—the Foundling
+Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum, and others. His life was one of incessant
+labour, and indeed people said he was killing himself with over-work,
+but he seemed always in the same state of chronic hilarity; and when he
+took us to see the hospitals, the children and patients received him
+with demonstrations of great delight.
+
+I should not have said so much of our friend the Padre, were it not
+that I think there is a moral to be got out of him. I believe he may be
+taken as a type, not indeed of Roman Catholic missionaries in general,
+but of a certain class among them, who are of considerable importance
+in the missionary world, though there are not many of them. Taking the
+Padre as a sample of his class, as I think we may—judging from the
+accounts of them we meet with in books, it is curious to notice, how
+the point in which their system is strongest is just that in which the
+Protestant system is weakest, that is, in social training and
+deportment. What a number of men go to India with the best intentions,
+and set to work at once, flinging their doctrines at the natives before
+they have learnt in the least to understand what the said natives’
+minds are like, or how they work,—dropping at once upon their pet
+prejudices, mortally offending them as a preliminary step towards
+arguing with them; and in short, stroking the cat of society backwards
+in the most conscientious manner. By the time they have accomplished
+this satisfactory result, a man like our Cuban Padre, though he may
+have argued but little and preached even less, would have a hundred
+natives bound to him by strong personal attachment, and ready to accept
+anything from him in the way of teaching.
+
+We paid a regular round of visits to the Floridan settlers, and were
+delighted with their pleasant simple ways. It is not much more than
+thirty years since they left Florida, and many of the children born
+since have learnt to speak English. The patches of cultivated land
+round their cottages produce, with but little labour, enough vegetables
+for their subsistence, and to sell, procuring clothing and such
+luxuries as they care for. They seemed to live happily among
+themselves, and to govern their little colony after the manner of the
+Patriarchs.
+
+Whether any social condition can be better for the black inhabitants of
+the West Indies, than that of these settlers, I very much doubt. They
+are not a hard-working people, it is true; but hard work in the climate
+of the tropics is unnatural, and can only be brought about by unnatural
+means. That they are not sunk in utter laziness one can see by their
+neat cottages and trim gardens. Their state does not correspond with
+the idea of prosperity of the political economist, who would have them
+work hard to produce sugar, rum, and tobacco, that they might earn
+money to spend in crockery and Manchester goods; but it is suited to
+the race and to the climate. If we measure prosperity by the enjoyment
+of life, their condition is an enviable one.
+
+I think no unprejudiced observer can visit the West Indies without
+seeing the absurdity of expecting the free blacks to work like slaves,
+as though any inducement but the strongest necessity would ever bring
+it about. There are only two causes which can possibly make the blacks
+industrious, in our sense of the word,—slavery, or a population so
+crowded as to make labour necessary to supply their wants.
+
+In one house in the Floridan colony we found a _ménage_ which was
+surprising to me, after my experience of the United States. The father
+of the family was a white man, a Spaniard, and his wife a black woman.
+They received us with the greatest hospitality, and we sat in the porch
+for a long time, talking to the family. One or two of the mulatto
+daughters were very handsome; and there were some visitors, young white
+men from the neighbouring village, who were apparently come to pay
+their devoirs to the young ladies. Such marriages are not uncommon in
+Cuba; and the climate of the island is not unfavourable for the mixed
+negro and European race, while to the pure whites it is deadly. The
+Creoles of the country are a poor degenerate race, and die out in the
+fourth generation. It is only by intermarriage with Europeans, and
+continual supplies of emigrants from Europe, that the white population
+is kept up.
+
+On the morning of our departure we climbed a high hill of limestone,
+covered in places with patches of a limestone-breccia, cemented with
+sandstone, and filling the cavities in the rock. All over the hill we
+found doubly refracting Iceland-spar in quantities. Euphorbias, in
+Europe mere shrubs, were here smooth-limbed trees, with large flowers.
+From the top of the hill, the character of the savannahs was well
+displayed. Every water-course could be traced by its narrow line of
+deep green forest, contrasting with the scantier vegetation of the rest
+of the plain.
+
+As we steamed out of the river, rows of brilliant red flamingos were
+standing in the shallow water, fishing, and here and there a pelican
+with his ungainly beak. Our Chinese crew were having their meal of rice
+when we walked forward, and the national chopsticks were hard at work.
+We talked to several of them. They could all speak a little Spanish,
+and were very intelligent.
+
+The history of these Chinese emigrants is a curious one. Agents in
+China persuade them to come out, and they sign a contract to work for
+eight years, receiving from three to five dollars a month, with their
+food and clothing. The sum seems a fortune to them; but, when they come
+to Cuba, they find to their cost that the value of money must be
+estimated by what it will buy. They find that the value of a black
+labourer is thirty dollars a month, and they have practically sold
+themselves for slaves; for there is no one to prevent the masters who
+have bought the contract for their work from treating them in all
+respects as slaves. The value of such a contract—that is, of the
+Chinaman himself, was from £30 to £40 when we were in the island.
+Fortunately for them, they cannot bear the severe plantation-work. Some
+die after a few days of such labour and exposure, and many more kill
+themselves; and the utter indifference with which they commit suicide,
+as soon as life seems not worth having, contributes to moderate the
+exactions of their masters. A friend of ours in Cuba had a Chinese
+servant who was impertinent one day, and his master turned him out of
+the room, dismissing him with a kick. The other servants woke their
+master early next morning, with the intelligence that the Chinese had
+killed himself in the night, to expiate the insult he had received.
+
+Of African slaves brought into the island, the yearly number is about
+15,000. All the details of the trade are matter of general notoriety,
+even to the exact sum paid to each official as hush-money. It costs a
+hundred dollars for each negro, they say, of which a gold ounce (about
+£3 16s.) is the share of the Captain-general. To this must be added the
+cost of the slave in Africa, and the expense of the voyage; but when
+the slave is once fairly on a plantation he is worth eight hundred
+dollars; so it may be understood how profitable the trade still is, if
+only one slaver out of three gets through.
+
+The island itself with its creeks and mangrove-trees is most favourable
+for their landing, if they can once make the shore; and the Spanish
+cruisers will not catch them if they can help it. If a British cruiser
+captures them, the negroes are made emancipados in the way I have
+already explained.
+
+Hardly any country in the world is so thoroughly in a false position as
+England in her endeavours to keep down the Cuban slave-trade, with the
+nominal concurrence of the Spanish government, and the real vigorous
+opposition of every Spaniard on the island, from the Captain-General
+downwards. Even the most superficial observer who lands for an hour or
+two in Havana, while his steamer is taking in coals, can have evidence
+of the slave-trade brought before his eyes in the tattooed faces of
+native Africans, young and middle-aged, in the streets and markets;
+just as he can guess, from the scored backs of the negroes, what sort
+of discipline is kept up among them.
+
+We slept on board the steamboat off the pier of Batabano, and the
+railway took us back to Havana next morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+HAVANA TO VERA CRUZ—VERA CRUZ TO MEXICO.
+
+
+On the 8th of March, we went on board the “Méjico” steamer,
+American-built, and retaining her American engineers, but in other
+respects converted into a Spanish vessel, and now lying in the harbour
+of Havana bound for Vera Cruz, touching at Sisal in Yucatan. At eight
+o’clock we weighed anchor, and were piloted through the narrow passage
+which leads out of the harbour past the castle of El Morro and the fort
+of Cabañas, the view of whose ramparts and batteries caused quite a
+flourish of trumpets among our Spanish fellow-passengers, who firmly
+believe in their impregnability.
+
+Among our fellow-passengers were a company of fifth-rate comedians,
+going to Merida by way of Sisal. There was nothing interesting to us
+about them. Theatrical people and green-room slang vary but little over
+the whole civilized world. There were two or three Spanish and French
+tradesmen going back to Mexico. They talked of nothing but the dangers
+of the road, and not without reason as it proved, for they were all
+robbed before they got home. Several of the rest were gamblers or
+political adventurers, or both, for the same person very often unites
+the two professions out here. Spain and the Spanish American Republics
+produce great numbers of these people, just as Missouri breeds
+border-ruffians and sympathizers. But the ruffian is a good fellow in
+comparison with these well-dressed, polite scoundrels, who could have
+given Fielding a hint or two he would have been glad of for the
+characters of Mr. Jonathan Wild and his friend the Count.
+
+On the morning of the third day of our voyage we reached Sisal, and as
+soon as the captain would let us we went ashore, in a canoe that was
+like a flat wooden box. This said captain was a Catalan, and a surly
+fellow, and did not take the trouble to disguise the utter contempt he
+felt for our inquisitive ways, which he seemed quite to take pleasure
+in thwarting. It was the only place we were to see in Yucatan, a
+country whose name is associated with ideas of tropical fruits, where
+you must cut your forest-path with a machete, and of vast ruins of
+deserted temples and cities, covered up with a mass of dense
+vegetation. But here there was nothing of this kind. Sisal is a
+miserable little town, standing on the shore, with a great salt-marsh
+behind it. It has a sort of little jetty, which constitutes its claim
+to the title of _port_; and two or three small merchant-vessels were
+lying there, taking in cargoes of logwood (the staple product of the
+district), mahogany, hides, and deerskins. The sight of these latter
+surprised us; but we found on enquiry that numbers of deer as well as
+horned cattle inhabit the thinly-peopled districts round the shores of
+the Mexican Gulf, and flourish in spite of the burning climate, except
+when a year of drought comes, which kills them off by thousands.
+
+One possible article of export we examined as closely as opportunity
+would allow, namely, the Indian inhabitants. There they are, in every
+respect the right article for trade:—brown-skinned, incapable of
+defending themselves, strong, healthy, and industrious; and the creeks
+and mangrove-swamps of Cuba only three days’ sail off. The plantations
+and mines that want one hundred thousand men to bring them into full
+work, and swallow aborigines, Chinese, and negroes
+indifferently—anything that has a dark skin, and can be made to
+work—would take these Yucatecos in any quantity, and pay well for them.
+And once on a sugar-estate or down a mine, when their sham registers
+are regularly made out, and the Governor has had his ounce of gold
+apiece for passing them, and his subordinates their respective rights,
+who shall get them out again, or even find them?
+
+This idea struck us as we sat looking at the Indians hard at work,
+loading and unloading; and finding an intelligent Spaniard, we fell to
+talking with him. Indians had been carried off to Cuba, he said, but
+very few, none since 1854, when two Englishmen came to the coast with a
+schooner on pretence of trading, and succeeded in getting clear off
+with a cargo of seventy-two natives on board. But being caught in a
+heavy gale of wind, they put in for safety—of all places in the
+world—into the British port of Belize. There some one found out what
+their cargo consisted of, the vessel was seized, the Indians sent back,
+and the two adventurers condemned to hard labour, one for four years,
+the other for two and a half. In a place where the fatigue and exposure
+of drill and mounting guard is death to a European soldier, this was
+most likely a way of inflicting capital punishment, slow, but pretty
+sure.[2]
+
+ [2] We heard talk elsewhere, however, of a war going on in the
+ interior of the country between the white inhabitants and the Indian
+ race; the apparent object of the whites being to take Indian
+ prisoners, and ship them off for slaves to Cuba.
+
+
+When the Spaniards came to these countries, as soon as they had leisure
+to ask themselves what could be the origin of the people they found
+there, the answer came at once, “the lost tribes of Israel,” of course.
+And as we looked at these grave taciturn men, with their brown
+complexions, bright eyes, and strikingly aquiline noses, it did not
+seem strange that this belief should have been generally held,
+considering the state of knowledge on such matters in those days. We
+English found the ten tribes in the Red men of the north; Jews have
+written books in Hebrew for their own people, to make known to them
+that the rest of their race had been found in the mountains of Chili,
+retaining unmistakable traces of their origin and conversing fluently
+in Hebrew; and but lately they turned up, collected together and
+converted to Christianity, on the shores of the Caspian. The last two
+theories have their supporters at the present day. Crude as most of
+these ideas are, one feels a good deal of interest in the first inquiry
+that set men thinking seriously about the origin of races, and laid the
+foundation of the science of ethnology.
+
+Our return on board was a long affair, for there was a stiff breeze,
+almost in our teeth; and our unwieldy craft was obliged to make tack
+after tack before we could reach the steamer. Great Portuguese
+men-of-war were floating about, waiting for prey; and we passed through
+patches of stringy gulf-weed, trailing out into long ropes. The water
+was hot, the thermometer standing at 84° when we dipped it over the
+side.
+
+On the morning of the 12th, when we went on deck, there was a grand
+sight displayed before us. No shore visible, but a heavy bank of clouds
+on the horizon; and, high above them, towering up into the sky, the
+snowy summit of Orizaba, a hundred and fifty miles off.
+
+Before noon, we are entering the harbour of Vera Cruz. The little
+island and fort of San Juan de Ulúa just opposite the wharfs, the
+island of Sacrificios a little farther to the left. A level line of
+city-wall along the water’s edge; and, visible above it, the flat roofs
+of the houses, and the towers and cupolas of many churches. All grey
+stone, only relieved by the colored Spanish tiles on the church-roofs,
+and a flag or two in the harbour. Not a scrap of vegetation to be seen,
+and the rays of a tropical sun pouring down upon us.
+
+Established in the Casa de Diligencias, we deliberated as to our
+journey to Mexico. The diligences to the capital, having been stopped
+for some months on account of the disturbed state of the country, had
+just begun to run again, avoiding Puebla, which was being besieged. We
+were anxious to be off at once; but Mr. Christy sagaciously remarking
+that the robbers would know of the arrival of the steamer, and would
+probably take the first diligence that came afterwards, we booked our
+places for the day after.
+
+We were very kindly received by the English merchants to whom my
+companion had letters, and we set ourselves to learn what was the real
+state of things in Mexico.
+
+On an average, the Presidency of the Republic of Mexico had changed
+hands once every eight months for the last ten years; and Don Ignacio
+Comonfort had stepped into the office in the previous December, on the
+nomination of his predecessor the mulatto general Alvarez, who had
+retired to the southern provinces with his army.
+
+President Comonfort, with empty coffers, and scarcely any real
+political power, had felt it necessary to make some great effort to get
+popularity for himself and his government. He had therefore adopted the
+policy of attacking the _fueros_, the extraordinary privileges of the
+two classes of priests and soldiers, which had become part of the
+constitution under the first viceroys, and which not even the war of
+independence, and the adoption of republican forms, ever did away with.
+Neither class is amenable to the civil tribunals for debt or for any
+offences.[3] The clergy have immense revenues, and much spiritual
+influence among the lower classes; and as soon as they discovered the
+disposition of the new President, they took one Don Antonio Haro y
+Tamirez, set him up as a counter-President, and installed him at
+Puebla, the second city of the Republic, where priests swarm, and
+priestly influence is unbounded. At the same time, they tried a
+pronunciamiento in the capital; but the President got the better of
+them after a slight struggle, and marched all his regular soldiers on
+Puebla. At the moment of our arrival in the country, the siege of this
+city was going on quite briskly, ten thousand men being engaged,
+commanded by forty-three general officers.
+
+ [3] They must be judged by courts whose members belong to their own
+ body, and in these special tribunals one can imagine what sort of
+ justice is meted out to complainants and creditors. Comonfort’s hope
+ was to conciliate the mass of the people by attempting to relieve them
+ of this enormous abuse. I believe he was honest in his intentions, but
+ unfortunately the people had already had to do with too many
+ politicians who were to redress their wrongs and inaugurate a reign of
+ liberty. They had found very little to come of such movements, but
+ extra-taxation and civil war, which left them worse off than they were
+ before, and the patriots generally turned out rather more greedy and
+ unprincipled than the others; so it was not to be wondered at that no
+ one came forward to give any very energetic support to the new
+ President.
+
+
+Whenever anything disagreeable is happening in the country, Vera Cruz
+is sure to get its full share. A month before our arrival, one Salcedo,
+who was a prisoner in the castle of San Juan de Ulúa, talked matters
+over with the garrison, and persuaded them to make a pronunciamiento in
+favour of the insurgents. They then summoned the town to join their
+cause, which it declined doing for the present; and the castle opened
+fire upon it, knocking about some of the principal buildings, and doing
+a good deal of damage. A 30-pound shot went through the wall of our
+hotel, taking off the leg of an unfortunate waiter who was cleaning
+knives, and falling into the patio, or inner court. A daub of fresh
+plaster just outside our bedroom door indicated the spot; and the
+British Consul’s office had a similar decoration. The Governor of the
+city could offer no active resistance, but he cut off the supplies from
+the island, and in three or four days Salcedo—finding himself out of
+ammunition, and short of water—surrendered in a neat speech, and the
+revolution ended.
+
+We have but a short time to stay in Vera Cruz, so had better make our
+observations quickly; for when we come back again there will be a sun
+nearly in the zenith, and yellow fever—at the present moment hardly
+showing itself—will have come for the summer; under those
+circumstances, the unseasoned foreigner had better lie on his back in a
+cool room, with a cigar in his mouth, and read novels, than go about
+hunting for useful information.
+
+There are streets of good Spanish houses in Vera Cruz, built of white
+coral-rock from the reefs near the shore, but they are mildewed and
+dismal-looking. Outside the walls is the Alameda; and close by is a
+line of houses, uninhabited, mouldy, and in ruins. We asked who built
+them. “Los Españoles,” they said.
+
+Even now, when the “nortes” are blowing, and the city is comparatively
+healthy, Vera Cruz is a melancholy place, with a plague-stricken look
+about it; but it is from June to October that its name, “the city of
+the dead”—la ciudad de los muertos—is really deserved. In that season
+comes an accumulation of evils. The sun is at its height; there is no
+north wind to clear the air; and the heavy tropical rains—more than
+three times as much in quantity as falls in England in the whole
+year—come down in a short rainy season of four months. The water
+filters through the sand-hills, and forms great stagnant lagoons; a
+rank tropical vegetation springs up, and the air is soon filled with
+pestilential vapours. Add to this that the water is unwholesome; the
+city too is placed in a sand-bath which keeps up a regular temperature,
+by accumulating heat by day and giving it out into the air by night, so
+that night gives no relief from the stifling closeness of the day. No
+wonder that Mr. Bullock, the Mexican traveller, as he sat in his room
+here in the hot season, heard the church-bells tolling for the dead
+from morning to night without intermission; for weeks and weeks, one
+can hardly even look into the street without seeing a funeral.
+
+We turned back through the city, and walked along watching the
+Zopilotes—great turkey-buzzards—with their bald heads and foul
+dingy-black plumage. They were sitting in compact rows on parapets of
+houses and churches, and seemed specially to affect the cross of the
+cathedral, where they perched, two on each arm, and some on the top.
+When some offal was thrown into the streets, they came down leisurely
+upon it, one after another; their appearance and deportment reminding
+us of the undertaker’s men in England coming down from the hearse at
+the public-house door, when the funeral is over. In all tropical
+America these birds are the general scavengers, and there is a heavy
+fine for killing them.[4]
+
+ [4] No one ill uses them but the dogs, who drive them away when
+ anything better than usual is met with, and they have to stand round
+ in a circle, waiting for their turn.
+
+
+Scarcely any one is about in the streets this afternoon, except a gang
+or two of convicts dragging their heavy chains along, sweeping and
+mending the streets. This is a punishment much approved of by the
+Mexican authorities, as combining terror to evil-doers with advantage
+to the community. That it puts all criminals on a level, from murderers
+down to vagrants, does not seem to be considered as a matter of much
+consequence.
+
+At the city-gate stands a sentry—the strangest thing I ever saw in the
+guise of a soldier—a brown Indian of the coast, dressed in some rags
+that were a uniform once, shoeless, filthy in the extreme, and armed
+with an amazing old flint-lock. He is bad enough to look at, in all
+conscience, and really worse than he looks, for—no doubt—he has been
+pressed into the service against his will, and hates white men and
+their ways with all his heart. Of course he will run away when he gets
+a chance; and, though he will be no great loss to the service, he will
+add his mite to the feeling of hatred that has been growing up for
+these so many years among the brown Indians against the whites and the
+half-cast Mexicans. But more of this hereafter.
+
+One step outside the gate, and we are among the sand-hills that stretch
+for miles and miles round Vera Cruz. They are mere shifting
+sand-mounds; and, though some of them are fifty feet high, the fierce
+north wind moves them about bodily. The Texans know these winds well,
+and call them “northers.” They come from Hudson’s Bay to the Gulf of
+Mexico, right down the Continent of North America, over a level plain
+with hardly a hill to obstruct their course, the Rocky Mountains and
+the Alleghanies forming a sort of trough for them. When the “norte”
+blows fiercely you can hardly keep your feet in the streets of Vera
+Cruz, and vessels drag their anchors or break from their moorings in
+the ill-protected harbour, and are blown out to sea—lucky if they
+escape the ugly coral-reefs and sand-banks that fringe the coast. There
+are a few bushes growing outside the walls, and there we found the
+Nopal bush, the great prickly pear—the same that has established itself
+all round the shores of the Mediterranean—growing in crevices of rocks,
+and cracks in lava-beds, and barren places where nothing else will
+live. But what made us notice these Nopals was, that they were covered
+with what looked like little white cocoons, out of which, when they
+were pressed, came a drop of deep crimson fluid. This is the cochineal
+insect, but only the wild variety; the fine kind, which is used for
+dye, and comes from the province of Oajaca, miles off, is covered only
+with a mealy powder. There the Indians cultivate great plantations of
+Nopals, and spread the insects over them with immense care, even
+removing them, and carrying them up into the mountains in baskets when
+the rainy season begins in the plains, and bringing them back when it
+is over.
+
+On Friday, the 14th of March, at three o’clock in the morning, we took
+our places in a strong American-built diligence, holding nine inside,
+and began our journey by being dragged along the railroad—which was
+commenced with great energy some time ago, and got fifteen miles on its
+way to the capital, at which point it has stopped ever since. When day
+broke we had left the railroad, and were jolting along through a
+parched sandy plain, thinly covered with acacias, nopals, and other
+kinds of cactus, bignonias, and the great tree-euphorbia, with which we
+had been so familiar in Cuba, with its smooth limbs and huge white
+flowers. At last we reached the first hill, and began gently to ascend.
+The change was wonderful. Once out of the plain, we are in the midst of
+a tropical forest. The trees are crowded close together, and the
+convolvulus binds their branches into an impassable jungle, while ferns
+and creepers weave themselves into a dense mass below; and here and
+there a glimpse up some deep ravine shows great tree-ferns, thirty feet
+high, standing close to the brink of a mountain-stream, and flourishing
+in the damp shade.
+
+Indian Ranchos become more frequent as we ascend; and the
+inhabitants—squatting on the ground, or leaning against the
+door-posts—just condescend to glance at us as we pass, and then return
+to their meditations, and their cigarettes, if they happen to have any.
+These ranches are the merest huts of canes, thatched with palm-leaves;
+and close by each a little patch of ground is enclosed by a fence of
+prickly cactus, within which are growing plantains, with their large
+smooth leaves and heavy ropes of fruit, the great staple of the “tierra
+caliente.”
+
+Our road winds along valleys and through pass after pass; and now and
+then a long zig-zag brings us out of a valley, up to a higher level.
+The air grows cooler, we are rapidly changing our climate, and
+afternoon finds us in the region of the sugar-cane and the
+coffee-plant. We pass immense green cane-fields, protected from the
+visits of passing muleteers and peasants by a thick hedge of thorny
+coffee-bushes. The cane is but young yet; but the coffee-plant, with
+its brilliant white flowers, like little stars, is a beautiful feature
+in the landscape.
+
+At sunset we are rattling through the streets of the little town of
+Cordova. There is such a thoroughly Spanish air about the place, that
+it might be a suburb of the real Cordova, were it not for the crowds of
+brown Indians in their scanty cotton dresses and great flat-brimmed
+hats, and the Mexican costumes of the whiter folks. Low whitewashed
+houses, with large windows to the street, protected by the heavy
+iron-gratings, like cages, that are so familiar to travellers in
+Southern Europe. Inside the grating are the ladies of the family,
+outside stand their male acquaintance, and energetic gossiping is going
+on. The smoky little lamp inside gives us a full view of the interior.
+Four whitewashed walls; a table; a few stiff-backed chairs; a virgin or
+saint resplendent in paint and tinsel; and, perhaps, two or three
+coloured engravings, red, blue, and yellow.
+
+A few hours in the dark, and we reach Orizaba. We have changed our
+climate for the last time to-day, and have reached that district where
+tobacco flourishes at an altitude of 4,000 feet above the sea. But of
+this we see nothing, for we are off again long before daylight; and by
+the time that external objects can be made out we find ourselves in a
+new region. A valley floored with rich alluvial soil from the hills
+that rise steeply on both sides, their tops shrouded in clouds. Signs
+of wonderful fertility in the fields of maize and barley along the
+roadside. The air warm, but full of mist, which has already penetrated
+our clothes and made them feel damp and sticky. “Splendid country,
+this, Señores,” said an old Mexican, when he had twisted himself round
+on his seat to get a good stare at us. “It seems so,” said I, “judging
+by the look of the fields, but it is very unpleasantly damp just now.”
+“Just now,” said the old gentleman, echoing my words, “it is always
+damp here. You see that drizzling mist; that is the chipi-chipi. Never
+heard of the chipi-chipi! Why it is the riches and blessing of the
+country. Sometimes we never see the sun here for weeks at a time, and
+it rains a little every day nearly; but look at the fields, we get
+three crops a year from them where you have but one on the fields just
+above. And it is healthy, too; look at those fellows at work there.
+When we get up to the Llanos you will see the difference.”
+
+The valley grew narrower as we drove on; and at last, when it seemed to
+end in a great ravine, we began to climb the steep hill by a zig-zag
+road. Soon the air grows clearer again, the sunshine appears and gets
+brighter and brighter, we have left the mist behind, and are among
+ranges of grand steep hills, covered with the peculiar vegetation of
+the plateau,—Cactus, Opuntia, and the Agave Americana. In the trough of
+the valley lies a regular opaque layer of white clouds, hiding the
+fields and cottages from our view. We have already passed the zone of
+perpetual moisture, whose incessant clouds and showers are caused by
+the stratum of hot air—charged with water evaporated from the
+gulf—striking upon the mountains, and there depositing part of the
+aqueous vapour it contains.
+
+You may see the same thing happening in almost every mountainous
+district; but seldom on so grand a scale as here, or with so little
+disturbance from other agents. Yesterday was passed in the “tierra
+caliente,” the hot country; our journey of to-day and to-morrow is
+through the “tierra templada” and the “tierra fría,” the temperate and
+the cold country. Here a change of a few hundred feet in altitude above
+the sea, brings with it a change of climate as great as many degrees of
+latitude will cause, and in one day’s travel it is possible to descend
+from the region of eternal snow to the utmost heat of the tropics. Our
+ascent is more gradual; but, though we are three days on the road, we
+have sometimes scarcely time to notice the different zones of
+vegetation we pass through, before we change again.
+
+To make the account of the journey from the coast to Mexico somewhat
+clearer, a few words must be said about the formation of the country,
+as shown in a profile-map or section. The interior of Mexico consists
+of a mass of volcanic rocks, thrust up to a great height above the
+sea-level. The plateau of Mexico is 8,000 feet high, and that of Puebla
+9,000 feet. This central mass consists principally of a greyish
+trachytic porphyry, in some places rich in veins of silver-ore. The
+tops of the hills are often crowned with basaltic columns, and a soft
+porous amygdaloid abounds on the outskirts of the Mexican valley.
+Besides this, traces of more recent volcanic action abound, in the
+shape of numerous extinct craters in the high plateaus, and immense
+“pedrigals” or fields of lava not yet old enough for their surface to
+have been disintegrated into soil. Though sedimentary rocks occur in
+Mexico, they are not the predominant feature of the country. Ridges of
+limestone hills lie on the slopes of the great volcanic mass toward the
+coast; and at a still lower level, just in the rise from the flat
+coast-region, there are strata of sandstone. On our road from Vera Cruz
+we came upon sandstone immediately after leaving the sandy plains; and
+a few miles further on we reached the limestone, very much as it is
+represented in Burkart’s profile of the country from Tampico upwards
+towards San Luis Potosi. The mountain-plateaus, such as the plains of
+Mexico and Puebla, are hollows filled up and floored with horizontal
+strata of tertiary deposits, which again are covered by the constantly
+accumulating layers of alluvium.
+
+Our heavy pull up the mountain-side has brought us into a new scene.
+Every one knows how the snow lies in the valleys of the Alps, forming a
+plain which slopes gradually downward towards the outlet. Imagine such
+a valley ten miles across, with just such a sloping plain, not of snow
+but of earth. There has been no rain for months, and the surface of the
+ground is parched and cracked all over. There is hardly a tree to be
+seen except clumps of wood on the mountain-sides miles off,—no
+vegetation but tufts of coarse grass, among which herds of
+disconsolate-looking cattle are roaming; the vaqueros, (herdsmen) are
+cantering about after them on their lean horses, with their lazos
+hanging in coils on their left arms, and now and then calling to order
+some refractory beast who tries to get away from the herd, by sending
+the loop over his horns or letting it fall before him as he runs, and
+hitching it up with a jerk round his hind legs as he steps within it.
+But the poor creatures are too thirsty and dispirited just now to give
+any sport, and the first touch of the cord is enough to bring them back
+to their allegiance.
+
+From the decomposed porphyry of the mountains carbonate of soda comes
+down in solution to the valleys. Much of this is converted into natron
+by the organic matter in the soil, and forms a white crust on the
+earth. More of the carbonate of soda, mixed in various proportions with
+common salt, drains continually out in the streams, or filters into the
+ground and crystallizes there. This is why there is not a field to be
+seen, and the land is fit for nothing but pasture. But when the rains
+come on in a few months, say our friends in the diligence, this dismal
+waste will be a luxuriant prairie, and the cattle will be here by
+thousands, for most of them are dispersed now in the lower regions of
+the tierra templada where grass and water are to be had.
+
+My companion and I climb upon the top of the diligence to spy out the
+land. The grand volcano of Orizaba had been hidden from us ever since
+that morning when we saw it from far out at sea, but now it rises on
+our left, its upper half covered with snow of dazzling whiteness,—a
+regular cone, for from this side the crater cannot be seen. It looks as
+though one could walk half a mile or so across the valley and then go
+straight up to the summit, but it is full thirty miles off. The air is
+heated as by a furnace, and as we jolt along the road the clouds of
+dust are suffocating. We go full gallop along such road as there is,
+banging into holes, and across the trenches left by last year’s
+watercourses, until we begin to think that it must end in a general
+smash. We came to understand Mexican roads and Mexican drivers better,
+even before we got to the capital.
+
+Before us and behind lay wide lakes, stretching from side to side of
+the valley; but the lake behind followed us as steadily as the one
+before us receded. It was only the mirage that tantalizes travellers in
+these scorched valleys, all the long eight months of the rainless
+season. It seemed beautiful at first, then monotonous; and long before
+the day was out we hated it with a most cordial and unaffected hatred.
+
+Soon a new appearance attracted our attention. First, clouds of dust,
+which gradually took a well-defined shape, and formed themselves into
+immense pillars, rapidly spinning round upon themselves, and travelling
+slowly about the plain. At one place, where several smaller valleys
+opened upon us, these sand-pillars, some small, some large, were
+promenading about by dozens, looking much like the genie when the
+fisherman had just let him out of the bottle, and saw him with
+astonishment beginning to shape himself into a giant of monstrous size.
+Indeed I doubt not that the story-teller was thinking of such
+sand-pillars when he wrote that wonderful description. You may see them
+in the East by thousands. As they moved along, they sucked up small
+stones, dust, and leaves; and our driver declared that they had been
+known to take the roofs off houses, and carry flocks of sheep into the
+air; “but these that you see now,” said he, “are no great matter.” We
+estimated the size of the largest at about four hundred feet in height,
+and thirty in diameter; and this very pillar, walking by chance against
+a house, most decidedly got the worst of it, and had its lower limbs
+knocked all to pieces.
+
+When the sun grows hot, the bare earth heats the air that lies upon it
+so much that an upward current rises from the whole face of the valley;
+and to supply its place the little valleys and ravines that open into
+it pour in each its stream of cooler air; and wherever two of these
+streams, flowing in different directions, strike one another, a little
+whirlwind ensues, and makes itself manifest as a sand-pillar. The
+coachman’s “molino de viento,” as he called it, may very well have
+happened, but it must have been a whirlwind on a large scale, caused by
+the meeting of great atmospheric currents, not by the little apparatus
+we saw at work.
+
+There seems to be hardly a village in the plain; and the only buildings
+we see for miles are the herdsmen’s houses of stone, flat-roofed, dark
+inside, and uninviting in their appearance, and the great cattle-pens,
+the corrals, which seem absurdly too large for the herds that we have
+yet seen; but in two or three months there will be rain, the ground
+will be covered with rank grass, the corrals will be crowded with
+cattle every evening; the mirage will depart when real water comes,
+dust and sand-pillars will be no longer to be seen, and all the nine
+horses and mules of the diligence-team, floundering, splashing, and
+kicking, will hardly keep the heavy coach from settling down
+inextricably in the mire. And so on until October, and then the season
+of water, “la estación de las aguas,” will cease, and things will be
+again as they are now.
+
+In the usual course of travel to the capital, the second night would
+have been passed at Puebla. This is the second city of the Republic,
+and numbers some 70,000 inhabitants. As it was then in revolt, and
+besieged by the President and his army, we made a detour to the north
+when about 20 miles from it, in order to sleep for a few hours at
+Huamantla, a place with a most evil reputation for thieves and vermin;
+and about ten at night we drove into the court-yard of a dismal-looking
+inn. Three or four dirty fellows stood round as we alighted, wrapped in
+their serapes—great woollen blankets, the universal wear of the
+Mexicans of the plateaus. One end of the serape was thrown across from
+shoulder to shoulder, and hid the lower part of their faces; and the
+broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero was slouched over their eyes; we
+particularly disliked the look of them as they stood watching us and
+our baggage going into the inn. A few minutes after, we returned to the
+court-yard to complete our observation of them, but they were all gone.
+
+A party of Spaniards and Mexicans were at the other table in the sala
+when we marched in, and as soon as we had taken off the edge of our
+fierce hunger, we began to compare notes with them. “Had a pleasant
+journey from Mexico?” They all answered at once, delighted to find an
+audience to whom to tell their sorrows, as men always are under such
+circumstances. It appeared that they had reached Huamantla an hour or
+two before us, and to their surprise and delight no robbers had
+appeared. But between the outskirts of the town and the inn, the cords
+behind the diligence were cut, and every particle of luggage had
+disappeared. At the inn-gate they got out and discovered their loss.
+They set upon the Administrador of the diligence-company, who
+sympathized deeply with them, but had no more substantial comfort to
+offer. They declared the driver must have been an accomplice, and the
+driver was sent for, for them to wreak their fury upon. He appeared
+with his mouth full of beans, and told them, as soon as he could speak,
+that they ought to be very thankful they had come off so easily, and,
+looking at them with an expression of infinite disgust, returned to his
+supper; they followed his example, and seemed to have at last found
+consolation in hot dishes and Catalan wine. It was wonderful to hear of
+the fine things that were in the lost portmanteaus,—the rings, the gold
+watches, the rouleaux of dollars, the “papers of the utmost
+importance.”
+
+I am afraid the Spanish American has not always a very strict regard
+for truth.
+
+These gentlemen had indeed got off easily, as the driver said; for the
+last diligence from Vera Cruz, with our steamboat acquaintances in it,
+had been stopped just outside this very town of Huamantla as they left
+it before daylight in the morning. The robbers were but three, but they
+had plundered the unfortunate travellers as effectually as thirty could
+have done. Now, all this was very pretty to hear as a tale, but not
+satisfactory to travellers who were going by the same road the next
+morning; and in the disagreeable barrack-room where our beds stood in
+long lines, we, the nine passengers of the “up” diligence, held a
+council, standing, like Mr. Macaulay’s senators, and there decided on a
+most Christian line of conduct—that when the three bore down upon us,
+and the muzzle of the inevitable escopeta was poked in at our window,
+we would descend meekly, and at the command of “boca abajo,” (“mouth
+downwards,”) we would humiliate ourselves with our noses in the dirt,
+and be robbed quietly. Having thus decided beforehand, according to the
+etiquette of the road, whether we were to fight or submit, and being
+tired with a long day’s journey, we all turned in, and were fast asleep
+in a moment.
+
+It seemed that almost directly afterwards the dirtiest man possible
+came round, and shook us till we were conscious; and we washed in the
+customary saucers, by the light of a real, flaring, smoking, Spanish
+lamp with a beak, exactly what the Romans used in Pompeii, except that
+this is of brass, not bronze.
+
+With our eyes still half-shut we crawled into the kitchen for our
+morning chocolate, and demanded our bill. Such a bill! One of us, a
+stout Spaniard, sent for the landlord and abused him in a set speech.
+The “patron” divested his countenance of every trace of expression,
+scratched his head through his greasy nightcap, and stood listening
+patiently. The stout man grew fiercer and fiercer, and wound up with a
+climax. “If we meet with the robbers,” said he, rolling himself up in
+his great cloak, “we must tell them that we have passed through your
+worship’s hands, and there is none left for them.” The landlord bowed
+gravely, saw us into the diligence, and hoped we should have a
+fortunate journey, and meet with no novelty on the road. A “novelty” in
+Spanish countries means a misfortune.
+
+We met with no “novelty,” though, when we looked out of the window in
+the early dawn and spied three men with muskets, following us at a
+short distance, we thought our time had come, and watches and valuables
+were plunged into boots and under seats, and through slits into the
+padding of the diligence; but the three men came no nearer, and we
+supposed them to be an escort of soldiers. When it was light the
+difficulty was to recover the valuables—no easy matter, so securely had
+they been hidden.
+
+We heard afterwards of a little peculiarity which distinguished the
+robbers of Huamantla. It seems that no less a personage than the parish
+priest was accustomed to lead his parishioners into action, like the
+Cornish parson in old times when a ship went ashore on the coast. What
+has become of his reverence since, I do not know. He is very likely
+still in his parish, carrying on his double profession, unless somebody
+has shot him. I wonder whether it is sacrilege to shoot a priest who is
+also a highwayman, as it used to be to kill a bishop on the field of
+battle.
+
+We are at last on the high lands of Mexico, the districts which at
+least three different races have chosen to settle in, neglecting the
+fertile country below. A sharp turn in the road brings its fairly out
+into the plain; and then on our left are the two snowy mountains that
+lie at the edge of the valley of Mexico, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl,
+famous in all Mexican books. Like Orizaba of yesterday, they seem to
+rise from the plain close to us; and from the valley between them there
+pours down upon us such a flood of icy wind, that, though windows are
+pulled up and great-coats buttoned round our throats, we shiver
+piteously, and our teeth fairly chatter till we get out of the river of
+cold air; and then comes hot sunshine and dust again.
+
+Anxious to make sure that we have really got into the land of Aztec
+civilization, Mr. Christy gets down from the diligence, and hunting
+about for a few minutes by the road-side, returns in triumph with a
+broken arrowhead of obsidian. A deep channel cut by a water-course
+gives us our first idea of the depth of the soil; for these plateaus
+were once nothing but deep hollows among the mountains, which rain and
+melted snow, bringing down fragments of porphyry and basalt—partly in
+their original state and partly decomposed—have filled up and formed
+into plains. Signs of volcanic action are abundant. To say nothing of
+the two great mountains we have just left behind, there is a hill of
+red volcanic tufa just beyond us; and still further on, though this is
+anticipating, our road passes over the lava-field at the foot of the
+little volcano of Santa Barbara.
+
+There is a population here at any rate, village after village; and
+between them are great plantations of maize and aloes; for this is the
+district where the best pulque in Mexico is made, the “llanos de Apam.”
+It is the _Agave Americana_, the same aloe that is so common in
+southern Europe, where indeed it flowers, and that grows in our gardens
+and used to have the reputation of flowering once in a hundred years. I
+do not exaggerate when I say that we saw hundreds of thousands of them
+that day, planted in long regular lines. Among them were walking the
+Indian “tlachiqueros,” each with his pigskin on his back, and his long
+calabash in his hand, milking such plants as were in season.
+
+[Illustration: INDIAN TLACHIQUERO, COLLECTING JUICE OF THE AGAVE FOR
+PULQUE.]
+
+The fine buildings of the haciendas, and more especially the churches,
+contrast strongly with the generality of houses, all of one story,
+built of adobes (mud-bricks dried in the sun), with flat roofs of sand
+and lime resting on wooden rafters, and the naked ground for a floor,
+all dark, dirty, and comfortless. There are even many huts built
+entirely of the universal aloe. The stems of wild aloes which have been
+allowed to flower are stuck into the ground, side by side, and pieces
+of leaves tied on outside them with aloe-fibre. These cut leaves are
+set like tiles to form a roof, and pegged down with the thorns which
+grow at their extremities. Picturesque and cheap, though hardly
+comfortable, for we are in the “tierra fría” now, and the mornings and
+evenings in winter are often bitterly cold.
+
+But the churches! Is it possible that they can belong to these wretched
+filthy little cottages. As black Sam, our driver, a runaway Texan
+slave, suggested, it looked as though the villagers might pull down
+their houses and locate themselves and their families in their
+churches. We thought of Mr. Ruskin, who has somewhere expressed an
+earnest desire that all the money and energy that England has wasted in
+making railroads, had been spent in building churches; and we wished he
+had been here to see his principles carried out.
+
+I have travelled on rough roads in my time, but on such a road as this
+never. My companion refused for a time to award the premium of badness
+to our thoroughfare; but, just while we were discussing the question
+and recounting our experience of bone-smashing highways, we reached a
+pass where the road consisted of a series of steps, nearly a foot in
+depth, down which steps we went at a swinging trot, holding on for our
+lives, in terror lest the next jerk should fairly wrench our arms out
+of their sockets, while we could plainly hear the inside passengers
+howling for mercy, as they were shot up against the roof which knocked
+them back into their seats. Aching all over, we reached level ground
+again, and Mr. Christy withdrew his claims, and agreed that no road
+anywhere else could possibly be so bad as a Mexican road; a decision
+which later experiences only served to confirm.
+
+Our start, every time we changed horses, was a sight to see. Nine
+half-broken horses and mules, in a furious state of excitement, were
+harnessed to our unwieldy machine; the helpers let go, and off they
+went, kicking, plunging, rearing, biting, and screaming, into ruts and
+watercourses that were like the trenches they make for gas-pipes in
+London streets, with our wheels on one side on a stone wall, and in a
+pit on the other, and Black Sam leaning back with his feet on the
+board, waiting with perfect tranquillity until the animals had got rid
+of their superfluous energy and he could hold them in. We were always
+just going to have some frightful accident, and always just missed it.
+The last stage before we reached Otumba, a small dusky urchin ran
+across the road just before us. How Black Sam contrived to pull up I
+cannot tell, though, indeed, his arms were about the size of an
+ordinary man’s thighs; but he did, and they got the child out from the
+horses’ feet quite unhurt.
+
+It was at the inn where we stopped to breakfast that we made our first
+acquaintance with the great Mexican institutions—tortillas and pulque.
+The pulque was being brewed on a large scale in an adjoining building.
+The vats were made of cow-skins (with the hair inside), supported by a
+frame of sticks; and in them was pulque in every stage, beginning with
+the sweet aguamiel—honeywater—the fresh juice of the aloe, and then the
+same in different degrees of fermentation till we come to the _madre
+pulque_, the mother pulque, a little of which is used like yeast, to
+start the fermentation, and which has a combined odour of gas-works and
+drains. Pulque, as you drink it, looks like milk and water, and has a
+mild smell and taste of rotten eggs. Tortillas are like oat-cakes, but
+made of Indian corn meal, not crisp, but soft and leathery. We thought
+both dreadfully nasty for a day or two; then we could just endure them;
+then we came to like them; and before we left the country we wondered
+how we should do without them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+CITY OF MEXICO.
+
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF PART OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.]
+
+Some thirty years ago, Don Agustín Yturbide, the first and last Emperor
+of Mexico, found that he wanted a palace wherein to house his
+newly-fledged dignity; and began to build one accordingly, in the high
+street of Mexico, close to the great convent of San Francisco. It could
+not have been nearly finished when its founder was shot: and it became
+the _Hotel d’Yturbide_. We are now settled in it, in very comfortable
+quarters. There is a restaurant down below, where the son of the late
+Yturbide dines daily, and everybody points him out to us, and moralises
+over him.
+
+Mr. Christy’s drawer-roll of letters of introduction has produced an
+immediate crop of pleasant acquaintances, whose hospitality is
+boundless. We are not idle, far from it; and a long day’s work is
+generally followed by a social dinner, and an evening spent in noting
+down the results of our investigations.
+
+Prescott’s _Conquest of Mexico_ has been more read in England than most
+historical works; and the Mexico of Montezuma has a well-defined idea
+attached to it. The amphitheatre of dark hills surrounding the level
+plain, the two snowy mountain-peaks, the five lakes covering nearly
+half the valley, the city rising out of the midst of the waters, miles
+from the shore, with which it was connected by its four causeways, the
+straight streets of low flat-roofed houses, the numbers of canals
+crowded with canoes of Indians going to and from the market, the
+floating gardens moved from place to place, on which vegetables and
+flowers were cultivated, the great pyramid up which the Spanish army
+saw their captured companions led in solemn procession, and sacrificed
+on the top—all these are details in the mental picture.
+
+Much of this has changed since the Spaniards first saw it. Cortes tried
+all ordinary means to overcome the desperate obstinacy with which the
+Aztecs defended their capital. The Spaniards conquered wherever they
+went; but, as they moved forward, the Mexicans closed in again behind,
+and from every house-top showers of darts, arrows, and stones were
+poured down upon them. Cortes resolved upon the utter demolition of the
+city. He was grieved to destroy it, he said, for it was the most
+beautiful thing in the whole world; but there was no alternative. He
+moved slowly towards the great teocalli, his fifty thousand Tlascalan
+allies following him, throwing down every house, and filling the canals
+with the ruins. When the conquest was finished, but one district of the
+city was left standing, and in it were crowded a quarter of the
+population, miserable famished wretches, who had surrendered when their
+king was taken. All that was left besides was a patch of swampy ground
+strewed with fragments of walls, a few pyramids too large for present
+destruction, and such great heaps of dead bodies that it was impossible
+to get from place to place without walking over them.
+
+Cortes had resolved that a new city should be built, but it was not so
+easy to decide where it was to be. The Aztecs, it seemed, had not
+originally established themselves on the spot where Mexico was built.
+When they came down from the north country, and across the hills into
+the valley of Mexico, they were but an insignificant tribe, and as yet
+mere savages. They settled down in one place after another, and were
+always driven out by the persecutions of the neighbouring tribes. At
+last they took possession of a little group of swampy islands in the
+lake of Tezcuco; and then at last, safe from their enemies, they
+increased and multiplied, and became a great and powerful nation.
+
+The first beginnings of Mexico, a cluster of huts built on wooden
+piles, must have borne some likeness to those curious settlements of
+early tribes in the shallow part of the lakes of Switzerland and the
+British Isles, of which numerous remains are still to be found. As the
+nation increased in numbers, Tenochtitlán, as the inhabitants called
+their city (they called themselves _Tenochques_), came to be a great
+city of houses built on piles, with canals running through the straight
+streets, along which the natives poled their flat-bottomed canoes. The
+name which the Spaniards gave to the city, the “Venice of the New
+World,” was appropriate, not only to its situation in the midst of the
+water, with canals for thoroughfares, but also to the history of the
+causes which led to its being built in such a situation.
+
+The habit of building houses upon piles, which was first forced upon
+the people by the position they had chosen, was afterwards followed as
+a matter of taste, just as it is in Holland. Even after the Aztecs
+became masters of the surrounding country, they built towns round the
+lake, partly on the shore, and partly on piles in the water. The
+Spanish chroniclers mention Iztapalapán, and many other towns, as built
+in this way. Like the Swiss tribes, the early inhabitants of Mexico
+depended much upon their fishing, for which their position gave them
+great facilities.
+
+If you look at the arms of the Mexican Republic, on a passport or a
+silver dollar, you will see a representation of a rock surrounded by
+water. On the rock grows a cactus, and on the cactus sits an eagle with
+a serpent in his beak. The story is that the wandering tribe preserved
+a tradition of an oracle which said that when they should find an
+eagle, holding a serpent, and perched on a cactus growing out of a
+rock, then they should cease their wanderings. On an island in the lake
+of Tezcuco, they found eagle, serpent, cactus, and rock, as described,
+and they settled there in due course. What fragment of truth is hidden
+in this myth it is hard to say. Tenochtitlán means “The Stone-cactus
+place;” and the Aztec picture-writings express its name by a hieroglyph
+of a prickly pear growing on a rock. Putting this history out of the
+question, the Aztecs had excellent reasons for choosing this peculiar
+site for their city; but these reasons were not equally valid in the
+case of the new invaders. For them the surrounding salt-water was not
+needed as a protection, and was merely a nuisance. Every year, when the
+lake rose, the place was flooded, with enormous damage to the property
+of the inhabitants; and sometimes an inundation of greater depth than
+usual threatened as complete a destruction as Cortes and the Tlascalans
+had made. At the best of times, the site was a salt-swamp, an ugly
+place to build upon. And, lastly, all the fresh water must be brought
+from the hills by aqueducts, which an enemy would cut off without
+difficulty, as the Spaniards themselves had done during the siege. Now
+Cortes was certainly not ignorant of all this, and he knew of many
+places on the rising ground close by, where he could found his new city
+under more favourable circumstances. He deliberated four or five months
+on the matter, and at last decided in favour of the old site, giving as
+his reason that “the city of Tenochtitlán had become celebrated, its
+position was wonderful, and in all times it had been considered as the
+capital and mistress of all these provinces.”
+
+The invaders were old hands at slave-driving, and so hard did they
+drive the conquered Mexicans, that in four years there had arisen a
+fine Spanish city, with massive stone houses of several storeys, having
+the indispensable inner courts, flat roofs, and grated windows,—every
+man’s house literally his castle, when once the great iron
+entrance-gates were closed. The Indians had, of course, been converted
+en masse, and churches were being built in all directions. The great
+pyramid where Huitzilopochtli, the God of war, was worshipped, had been
+razed to the ground, and its great sculptured blocks of basalt were
+sunk in the earth as a foundation for a cathedral. The old lines of the
+streets, running toward the four points of the compass, were kept to;
+and to this it is that the present Mexico is indebted for much of its
+beauty. Most of the smaller canals were filled up, and the
+thoroughfares widened for carriages, things of course unknown to the
+Mexicans, who had no beasts of burden. In the suburbs the natives
+settled themselves after their own fashion, baking adobes, large mud
+bricks, in the sun, and building with them one-storey houses with flat
+roofs, much as they do at the present day. And thus a new Mexico,
+nearly the same as that we are now exploring, came to be planted in the
+midst of the waters. Three centuries have elapsed since; the city has
+grown larger, churches, convents, and public buildings have increased,
+but the architectural character of the place has scarcely altered. It
+is the situation that has changed. The lake of Tezcuco is four miles
+off, though the causeways which once connected the city with the dry
+land still exist, and have even been enlarged. They look like
+railway-embankments crossing the low ground, and serve as dykes when
+there is a flood, a casualty which still often happens.
+
+This change is interesting to the student of physical geography; and
+Humboldt’s account of the causes which have brought it about is full
+and explicit. When Mexico had been built a few years, the frightful
+inundations which threatened its very existence at length awoke the
+Spaniards to a sense of the mistake that had been made in placing
+themselves but a few feet above the lowest level of the valley, in such
+a way that, from whatever point the flood might come, they were sure to
+get the benefit of it. The Spanish authorities at home, with their
+usual sagacity, sent over peremptory orders that the city should be
+abandoned, and a new capital built at Tacubaya—a proposal something
+like intimating to the inhabitants of Naples that their position, at
+the foot of Mount Vesuvius, was most dangerous, and that they must
+leave it and settle somewhere else. In those days the valley was a
+complete basin, with no outlet—at least not one worth mentioning; and
+the heavy tropical rains and the melted snow from the mountains, poured
+vast quantities of water into it. Had the valley been at the level of
+the sea, it would simply have become a great lake, surrounded by hills;
+but at three thousand feet higher, the atmosphere is rarefied, and
+evaporation goes on with such rapidity as to keep the accumulation of
+water in check. So the affair had adjusted itself in this wise, that
+the land and the five lakes should divide the valley about equally
+between them. It became necessary to alter this state of things, and a
+passage was cut at a place where the hills were but little above the
+level of the highest lake. The history of this passage, the famous
+“Desague de Huehuetoca,” is instructive enough, but it has been written
+so threadbare that I cannot touch it. Suffice it to say, that by this
+means a constant outlet was made for the lake of Zumpango, the highest
+of the five, and for the Rio de Guatitlán, a stream which formerly ran
+into it.
+
+So much for one cause of the change in the present appearance of the
+city. Then the Spaniards were great cutters down of forests. They
+rather liked to make their new country bear a resemblance to the arid
+plains of Castile, where, when you arrive in Madrid, people ask you
+whether you noticed _the tree_ on the road; and moreover, as they
+wanted wood, they cut it, without troubling themselves to plant for the
+benefit of future generations. Now, when the trees were cut down, the
+small plants which grew in their shade died too, and left the bare
+earth to serve as a kind of natural evaporating apparatus. And, between
+these two causes, it has come to pass that the extent of the lakes has
+been so much reduced, and that Mexico stands on the dry land—if,
+indeed, that may be called dry land, where you cannot dig a foot
+without coming to water.
+
+During the Tertiary period the whole valley of Mexico was one great
+lake. Whether the proportion of water to land had adjusted itself
+before the country was inhabited, or whether during historical times
+the lakes were still gradually diminishing by the excess of evaporation
+over the quantity of water supplied by rain and snow, is an open
+question. At any rate the two causes I have mentioned will account for
+the changes which have taken place since the conquest.
+
+Taking it as a whole, Mexico is a grand city, and, as Cortes truly
+said, its situation is marvellous. But as for the buildings, I should
+be sorry to inflict upon any one who may read these sketches, a
+detailed description of any one of them. It is a thousand pities that,
+just at the time when the Italians and Spaniards were most zealous in
+church-building, so very questionable an architectural taste should
+have been prevalent.
+
+The churches and convents in Mexico belong to that kind of renaissance
+style that began to flourish in southern Europe in the sixteenth
+century, and has held its ground there ever since. High façades abound,
+with pilasters crowned by elaborate Corinthian capitals, forming a
+curious contrast with the mean little buildings crouched behind the
+tall front. In the doors of the churches outside, and the chapels
+within, one is constantly coming upon that peculiar construction which
+consists of what would be an arch, resting on two pillars, were not the
+keystone wanting. Columns with shafts elaborately sculptured, and
+twisted marble pillars of the bed-post pattern, are to be seen by
+hundreds, very expensive in material and workmanship, but unfortunately
+very ugly; while the numbers of puffy cherubs, inside and out, remind
+the Englishman of the monuments of St. Paul’s.
+
+As to the interior decoration of the churches, the richer ones are
+crowded with incongruous ornaments to a wonderful degree. Gold, silver,
+costly marbles, jewels, stucco, paint, tinsel, and frippery are all
+mixed up together in the wildest manner. We found the inside of the
+churches to be generally the worst part of them. The Cathedral, for
+instance, is really a very grand building when seen from a little
+distance, with its two high towers and its cupola behind. I was greatly
+edified by finding it described in the last book of Mexican travels I
+have read, as built in the purest Doric style.
+
+The Minería, or School of Mines, is a fine building, something after
+the manner of Somerset House on a small scale. As for the famous Plaza
+Mayor, the great square, it is a very great square indeed, large enough
+to review an army in, and large enough to damage by its size the effect
+of the cathedral, and to dwarf the other buildings that surround it
+into mere insignificance. However, one thing is certain, that we have
+not come all this way to see Spanish architecture and great squares,
+but must look for something more characteristic.
+
+I have said we arrived in Mexico on the eve of Palm Sunday, and next
+morning we proceeded to consult with one of our newly-made
+acquaintances as to our prospects for the ensuing Holy Week. This
+gentleman, a man who took a practical view of things, mentioned a
+circumstance which led him to expect that the affair would go off with
+éclat. The Mexicans, both the nearly white Mestizos and the Indians of
+pure race, delight in pulque. The brown people are grave and silent in
+their sober state, but pulque stirs up their sluggish blood, and they
+get into a condition of positive enjoyment. But very soon after this
+comes a state of furious intoxication, and a general scuffle is a
+common termination to a drinking-bout. Fortunately, the Indians are not
+a bloodthirsty people; and, though every man carries a knife or
+machete, or—if he can get nothing better—a bit of hoop-iron tempered,
+sharpened, and fixed into a handle, yet nothing more serious than cuffs
+and scratches generally ensues. Even if severe wounds are given, the
+Indian has many chances in his favor, for his organization is somewhat
+different from that of white men, and he recovers easily from wounds
+that would kill any European outright.
+
+The lower orders of the half-breed population are also given to
+pulque-drinking, but with far more serious consequences. Unlike the
+pure Indians, they are a hot-blooded and excitable race, and
+drunkenness with them is utter madness while it lasts. Knives are drawn
+at the very beginning of a squabble, and scarcely an evening passes
+without one or two bodies of men killed in these drunken mêlées being
+carried to the Police Cuartel in the great square. On Sundays and
+holidays the number increases; but on this Palm Sunday there were
+fourteen, not killed in one great battle, but brought in by ones and
+twos, from different parts of the city. It was this little piece of
+statistics that induced our friend to conclude that the citizens of
+Mexico had made up their minds to enjoy themselves thoroughly, and that
+Holy Week would be a grand affair. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of
+the Semana Santa have only this to distinguish them from ordinary days,
+that the churches are crowded with men and women waiting their turn at
+the confessional; and that in the afternoons the old promenade of Las
+Vigas, down in the Indian quarter by the canal of Chalco, is patronized
+by fashionable Mexico, which, except on some four or five special days,
+frequents the new Alameda. The sight of these confessionals, so
+constantly filled, prompts one to ask—why just before Easter? Just
+after would be more appropriate; for as we find the Glasgow people much
+worse on Sundays than on week-days, so the Mexican population, not very
+virtuous at the best of times, are specially and particularly wicked
+when the great Church-festivals come round. The name of Shrove Tuesday
+survives in our Calendar, to remind us of the time when we also used to
+go to be shriven before Easter.
+
+On Thursday at noon mass is over, the bells cease to ring, the organs
+in the churches are silent, and all carriages disappear from the
+streets, except the dusty Diligence which, like French law, “est
+athée,” and cares nothing for fasts or festivals. Now we come to
+understand the wonderful wooden machine like a water-wheel, which was
+put up yesterday on one tower of the Cathedral. We had asked people in
+the great square, just below, what it was, but could get no answer
+except that it was _la Matraca_, the rattle, for to-morrow. And now we
+found that, the church bells being incapacitated, this rattle does duty
+instead, striking the hours, and occasionally going off into furious
+fits of clattering, without apparent reason, for ten minutes at a time,
+till the two men who worked it, who were either convicts or soldiers in
+fatigue-dress, were tired out. It was not this one rattle only that was
+disturbing the public peace that day and the next. Everybody was
+walking about with a rattle, and working it like mad, and all over the
+city there was a noise like the sound of the back-scratchers at
+Greenwich Fair, or of an American forest when the woodpeckers are busy.
+These little rattles stand for Judas’s bones, and all good Catholics
+express in this odd way their desire to break them. They do the same
+thing in Italy, but it is not so prominent a part of the celebration as
+in Mexico, where old and young, rich and poor, all do their part in it.
+As soon as we found out what it all meant, we bought matracas for
+ourselves, and joined the rest of the world in their noisy occupation.
+The breaking of his bones is but a preliminary measure. In the square a
+fair is being held, in the booths of which the great articles of trade
+now are Judas’s bones, of many patterns, at all prices, and Judas
+himself in pasteboard, who is to be carried about and insulted till
+Saturday morning, and then, hanging up by a string, is to burst asunder
+by means of a packet of powder and a slow match in his inside, and
+finally to perish in a bonfire.
+
+The first sight of these pasteboard Judases convinced us of one thing,
+that we had unexpectedly come upon the old custom, of which our
+processions and burning of Guy Fawkes in England are merely an
+adaptation. After giving up the old custom as a Popish rite, what a
+bright idea to revive it in this new shape, and to give the boys
+something to carry about, bang, blow up, and make a final bonfire of,
+and all in the Protestant interest! There was another thing to be
+noticed about the Judases. The makers had evidently tried to vary them
+as much as they could; and, by that very means, had shown how
+impossible it was to them to strike out anything new. There were two
+types; one was the Neapolitan _Polichinello_, whom we have naturalised
+as _Punch_; and the other the God _Pan_, with his horns, and hoofs, and
+tail, whom the whole Christian world has recognised as the devil, for
+these many ages. Well, some took one type and some the other; and a few
+tried to combine the two, of course spoiling both. But, beyond this,
+their power of invention could not go. They were always trying to
+conceal the old idea, and could do no more than to distort it. We could
+see through their flimsy pretensions to originality much as a
+schoolmaster recognises the extracts from the encyclopaedia in his
+boys’ essays.
+
+As with this Judas trade, so it is with other more important arts and
+sciences in this country. The old types descend, almost unchanged, from
+generation to generation. Everything that is really Mexican is either
+Aztec or Spanish. Among the Spanish types we may separate the Moorish.
+Our knowledge of Mexico is not sufficient to enable us to analyse the
+Aztec civilization, so we must be content with these three classes. I
+will not go further into the question here, for occasions will
+continually occur to show how—for three centuries at least—the
+inhabitants of Mexico, both white and brown, have taken their ideas at
+second-hand, always copying but never developing anything.
+
+All this time my companion and I have been walking about the streets;
+in evening-dress, as the etiquette of the place demands, on these three
+days, from the “better classes.” The Mexican ladies may be
+advantageously studied just now in their church-going black silk dress
+and mantilla, one of the most graceful costumes in the world. It is not
+often that one has the chance of seeing them out of doors, except
+hurrying to and from Mass in the morning, or in carriages on the
+Alameda; but on these festival days one meets them by hundreds. They do
+not contrast favorably with the ladies of Cadiz and Seville. The
+mixture of Aztec blood seems to have detracted from the beauty of the
+Spanish race; the dryness of the atmosphere spoils their complexions;
+and the monstrous quantity of capsicums that are consumed at every meal
+cannot possibly leave the Mexican digestion in its proper state.
+
+We dined that day with Don José de A., who, though Spanish-American by
+birth, was English by education and feeling, and had known my
+companion’s family well. Our dinner was half English, half Mexican; and
+the favourite dishes of the country were there, to aid in our
+initiation into Mexican manners and customs. The cooks at the inns,
+mindful of our foreign origin, had dealt out the red pepper with a
+sparing hand; but to-day the dish of “mole” was the genuine article,
+and the first mouthful set as coughing and gasping for breath, while
+the tears streamed down our faces, and Don Pepe and Don Pancho gravely
+continued their dinner, assuring us that we should get quite to like it
+in time. _Pepe_ and _Pancho_, by the way, are short for José and
+Francisco. Dinner over, it was time to visit the churches, to which
+people crowd by thousands, this evening and to-morrow, to see the
+monuments, as they are called. Pancho departed, being on duty as escort
+to his sisters; and we having, by Pepe’s advice, left our watches and
+valuables in his room, and put our handkerchiefs in our breast-pockets,
+started with him. Mr. Christy, always on the look-out for a new seed or
+plant, had taken possession of the seeds of two _mameis_, which are
+fleshy fruits—as big as cocoa-nuts—each containing a hard smooth seed
+as large as a hen’s egg. These not being of great value, he put one in
+each tail-pocket of his coat. When we got out, we found the streets
+full of people, hurrying from one church to another, anxious to get as
+many as possible visited in the evening. We went first to the monastery
+of San Francisco, close to our hotel, the largest, and perhaps the
+richest convent in the country. Entering through a great gate, we find
+ourselves in a large courtyard, full of people, who are visiting—one
+after another—the four churches which the establishment contains, going
+in at one door and out at the other. At the door of the largest church,
+stands a tall monk, soliciting customers for the rosaries of
+olive-wood, crosses, and medals from Jerusalem, which are displayed on
+a stall close by—shouting in a stentorian voice, every two or three
+minutes, “He who gives alms to Holy Church, shall receive plenary
+indulgence, and deliver one soul from purgatory.” We bought some, but
+there did not seem to be many other purchasers. Indeed, we found, when
+we had been longer in the country, that a few pence would buy all sorts
+of church indulgences, from the permission to eat meat on fast-days up
+to plenary absolution in the hour of death; and the trade, once so
+flourishing here, is almost used up. The churches were hung with black,
+and lighted up; and in each was a “monument,” a kind of bower of green
+branches decorated with flowers, mirror’s, and gold and silver
+church-plate, and supposed to stand for the Garden of Gethsemane.
+Inside was reclining a wax figure of our Saviour, gaudily dressed in
+silk and velvet; and there were also representations of the Last
+Supper, with wax-work figures as large as life. To visit and criticise
+these “monuments” was the object of the sort of pilgrimage people were
+making from church to church, and they seemed thoroughly to enjoy it.
+It was not a superfluous precaution that we had taken, in leaving our
+valuables in a place of safety, for, on our exit from the first church,
+we found that Pepe had lost his handkerchief and a cigar-case, which he
+had stowed away in an inner pocket, and Mr. Christy had been relieved
+of one of his mamei seeds by some “lepero” who probably took it for a
+snuff-box. His feelings must have been like those of the English
+pickpocket in Paris, when he robbed the Frenchman of the article he had
+pocketed with so much care, and found it was a lump of sugar. And so
+relieved of further care for our worldly goods, we went through with
+the work of seeing monuments, till we were tired and disgusted with the
+whole affair, and at last went home to bed.
+
+Next day, appropriate sermons in the churches, processions in the
+afternoon, in which wax figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary were
+carried by men got up in fancy dresses as soldiers and centurions, and
+so called penitents, walking covered with black shrouds and veils, with
+small round holes to look through, or in the yellow dress and
+extinguisher cap, both with flames and devils painted on them. These
+are exactly the costumes worn in old times, the first by the familiars
+of the Inquisition, and the second by the criminals it condemned; and
+the sight of them set us thinking of the processions they used to
+figure in, when the Holy Office was flourishing at Santo Domingo, a
+little way down the street where we are standing.
+
+In the evening the Crucifixion is represented in wax in the churches,
+and the visiting goes on as the night before; and the next morning is
+the Sábado de Gloria, the Saturday which ends Lent. We go to the
+Jesuits’ church in the morning to hear the last sermon. Since Thursday
+at noon, as the organs have been silenced, harps and violins have taken
+their places. The sermon is long and prosy, and we rejoice that it is
+the last. Then the service of the day goes on until they come to the
+“Gloria in excelsis.” The organ peals out again, the black
+curtain—which has hidden the high altar—parts in the middle, and
+displays a perfect blaze of gold and jewels: all the bells in the city
+begin to ring: the carriages, which have been waiting ready harnessed
+in court yards, pour out into the streets: the lumbering hackney
+coaches go racing to the great square, striving to get the first fare
+for luck: the Judases, which have been hanging all the morning out of
+windows and across streets, are set light to as the first bell begins
+to ring, and fizzing and popping burst all to pieces, and then are
+thrown into a heap in the street, where a bonfire is made of them, and
+the children join hands and dance round it. So Holy Week ends.
+
+[Illustration: THE PORTER AND THE BAKER IN MEXICO. (From Models
+made by Native Artists)]
+
+The arrangement of the day in Mexico is this. Early in the morning your
+servant knocks at your door, and brings in a little cup of coffee or
+chocolate and a small roll, which _desayuno_—literally breakfast—you
+discuss while dressing. Going down into the courtyard, you find your
+horse waiting for you, and off you go for an hour or two’s ride, and
+back to a dejeuner-à-la-fourchette somewhere between ten and one
+o’clock. Then you have seven or eight hours before dinner, so that a
+good deal of work may be got into a day so divided. Things are managed
+very differently in country places, but this is the fashion in the
+capital among the higher class, that is, of course, the class of people
+who put on dress-coats in the evening.
+
+When we had been a day or two in Mexico, we took our first ride to
+Tacubaya and Chapultepec. Mexican saddles and bridles were a novelty to
+us, but when we come to describe our Mexican and his appurtenances it
+will be time enough to speak of them.
+
+The barricades in the streets constructed during the last revolution of
+two or three weeks back had not yet been removed, but an opening at one
+side allowed men and horses to get past. Carriages had to go round, an
+easy matter in a city built as this is in squares like a chess-board.
+The barricades mount two guns each, and as the streets are quite
+straight they can sweep them in both directions, to the whole length of
+their range. As in Turin, you can look backward and forward along the
+straight streets from every part of the city, and see mountains at each
+end. The suburbs of the city are quite as repulsive as our first
+glimpse of them led us to expect; and, as far as one could judge by the
+appearance of the half-caste inhabitants, it is not good to go there
+alone after dark. Here is the end of the aqueduct of Chapultepec, the
+Salto del Agua; and—crowded round it—a thoroughly characteristic group
+of women and water-carriers, filling their great earthen jars with
+water, which they carry about from house to house. The women are simply
+and cheaply dressed, and though not generally pretty, are very graceful
+in their movements. Their dress consists of a white cotton under-dress,
+a coloured cotton skirt, generally blue, brown, or grey, with some
+small pattern upon it, but never brilliant in colour, and a rebozo,
+which is a small sober-coloured cotton shawl, long and narrow. This
+rebozo passes over the back of the head, where it is somehow fixed to a
+back hair-comb, and the two ends hang down over the shoulders in front;
+or, more often, one end is thrown over the opposite shoulder, so that
+the young lady’s face is set in it, like a picture in a frame. Add to
+this a springy step, the peculiarly unconstrained movement in walking
+which comes of living in the open air and wearing a loose dress, a
+pleasant pale face, small features, bright eyes, small hands and feet,
+little slippers and no stockings, and you have as good a picture of a
+Mexican half-caste girl as I can give. A book of Mexican engravings,
+however, will give a much better idea of her. Then we went past the
+great prison, the Acordada, and out at the gate (we had purposely gone
+out of our way to see more of the city), and so into the great
+promenade, the Paseo or Alameda. The latter is the Spanish name for
+this necessary appendage to every town. It comes from _álamo_, which
+means a poplar. Imagine a long wide level road, a mile or so long,
+generally so chosen as to have a fine view, with footpaths on each
+side, lines of poplar trees, a fountain at each end and a statue in the
+middle, and this description will stand pretty nearly for almost every
+promenade of the kind I have seen in Spain or Spanish America.
+
+[Illustration: Water-carrier and a Mexican Woman, at the Fountain]
+
+Tacubaya is a pleasant place on the side of the first hills that begin
+to rise towards the mountain-wall of the valley. Here rich Mexicans
+have country-houses in large gardens, which are interesting from the
+immense variety of plants which grow there, though badly kept up, and
+systematically stripped by the gardeners of the fruit as it gets
+ripe—for their own benefit, of course. From Tacubaya we go to
+Chapultepec (Grasshopper Mountain), which is a volcanic hill of
+porphyry rising from the plain. On the top is the palace on which the
+viceroy Galvez expended great sums of money some seventy years ago,
+making it into a building which would serve either as a palace or as a
+fortress in cases of emergency. Though the Americans charged up the
+hill and carried it easily in ’47, it would be a very strong place in
+proper hands. It is a military school now. On the hill is the famous
+grove of cypresses—ahuehuetes[5]—as they are called, grand trees with
+their branches hung with fringes of the long grey Spanish moss—barba
+Española—Spanish beard. I do not know what painters think of the effect
+of this moss, trailing in long festoons from the branches of the trees,
+but to me it is beautiful; and I shall never forget where I first saw
+it, on a bayou of the Mississippi, winding through the depths of a
+great forest in the swamps of Louisiana.[6] In this grove of
+Chapultepec, there were sculptured on the side of the hill, in the
+solid porphyry, likenesses of the two Montezumas, colossal in size. For
+some reason or other, I forget now what, one of the last Spanish
+viceroys thought it desirable to destroy them, and tried to blow them
+up with gunpowder. He only partially succeeded, for the two great
+bas-reliefs were still very distinguishable as we rode past, though
+noseless and considerably knocked about.
+
+ [5] Ahuehuete, pronounced _a-hwe-hwete_. Thus, Anahuac is pronounced
+ _Ana-hwac;_ and Chihuahua, _Chi-hwa-hwa_.
+
+
+ [6] In the Swiss Alps, between 4,000 and 5,000 feet above the sea,
+ there is a similar plant to be seen fringing the branches of the
+ pine-trees; but it only grows to the length of a few inches, and will
+ hardly bear comparison to the long trailing festoons of the Spanish
+ moss, often fifteen or twenty feet in length.
+
+
+We went home to breakfast with our friends, and looked at the
+title-deeds of their house in crabbed Spanish of the sixteenth century,
+and the great Chinese treasure-chest, still used as the strong-box of
+the firm, with an immense lock, and a key like the key of Dover castle.
+Fine old Chinese jars, and other curiosities, are often to be found in
+Mexico; and they date from the time when the great galleon from Manila,
+which was called “el nao”—the ship—to distinguish it from all other
+ships, came once a year to Acapulco.
+
+After breakfast, business hours begin; so we took ourselves off to
+visit the canal of Chalco, and the famous floating gardens—as they are
+called. On our way we had a chance of studying the conveyances our
+ancestors used to ride in, and availed ourselves of it. In books on
+Spanish America, written at the beginning of this century, there are
+wonderful descriptions of the gilt coaches, with six or eight mules, in
+which the great folks used to drive in state on the promenades. They
+are exactly the carriages that it was the height of a lady’s ambition
+to ride in, in the days of Sir Charles Grandison, and Mr. Tom Jones.
+Here, in Mexico, they were still to be found, after they had
+disappeared from the rest of the habitable globe; and even now, though
+the private carriages are all of a more modern type, there are still
+left a few of these amazing vehicles, now degraded to the cab-stand;
+and we got into one that was embellished with sculptured Cupids—their
+faces as much mutilated as the two Montezumas—and with the remains of
+the painting and gilding, which once covered the whole affair, just
+visible in corners, like the colouring of the ceilings of the Alhambra.
+We had to climb up three high steps, and haul ourselves into the body
+of the coach, which hung on strong leather straps; springs belong to a
+later period. By the time we had got to the Paseo de las Vigas we were
+glad enough to get out, wondering at the sacrifice of comfort to
+dignity those highly respectable grandees must have made, and not
+surprised at the fate of some inquisitive travellers who have done as
+we did, and have been obliged to stop by the qualms of sea-sickness. At
+the bridge we chartered a canoe to Santa Anita. This Santa Anita is a
+little Indian village on the canal of Chalco, and to-day there is to be
+a festival there. For this, however, we shall be too early, as we have
+to be back in time to see Mexico turn out for a promenade on the Paseo
+de las Vigas, and then to go out to dinner. So we must just take the
+opportunity of looking at the Indian population as they go up and down
+the canal in canoes, and see their gardens and their houses. However,
+as the Indian notion of a festival consists in going to mass in the
+morning, and getting drunk and fighting in the afternoon, we are
+perhaps as well out of it. We took our passage to Santa Anita and back
+in a canoe—a mere flat-bottomed box with sloping sides, made of boards
+put together with wooden pegs. There was a mat at the stern for us to
+squat upon, and an awning over our heads. An old Indian and his son
+were the crew; and they had long poles, which they set against the
+banks or the bottom of the shallow canal, and so pushed us along.
+Besides these two, an old woman with two little girls got in, as we
+were starting—without asking our leave, by the way—and sat down at the
+other end of the canoe. Of course, the old woman began to busy herself
+with the two little girls, in the usual occupation of old women here,
+during their idle moments; and though she left off at our earnest
+request, she evidently thought us very crotchety people for objecting.
+
+The scene on the canal was a curious one. There were numbers of boats
+going up and down; and the Indians, as soon as they caught sight of an
+acquaintance, began to shout out a long string of complimentary
+phrases, sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in Mexican: “How is your
+worship this morning?” “I trust that I have the happiness of seeing
+your worship in good health.” “If there is anything I can have the
+honour of doing for your worship, pray dispose of me,” and so forth;
+till they are out of hearing. All this is accompanied by a taking-off
+of hats, and a series of low bows and complimentary grimaces. As far as
+we could ascertain, it is all mere matter of ceremony. It may be an
+exaggeration of the formal, complimentary talk of the Spaniards, but
+its origin probably dates further back.
+
+The Indians here no longer appeared the same dull, melancholy men whom
+we had seen in the richer quarter of the town. There they were under a
+strong feeling of constraint, for their language is not understood by
+the whites and mestizos; and they, for their part, know but little
+Spanish; and besides, there is very little sympathy between the two
+classes. One thing will shew this clearly enough. By a distinct line of
+demarcation, the Indians are separated from the rest of the population,
+who are at least partly white. These latter call themselves “gente de
+razón”—people of reason,—to distinguish themselves from the Indians,
+who are people without reason. In common parlance the distinction is
+made thus: the whites and mixed breed are “gente”—_people_,—the brown
+men being merely “Indios”—Indians—and not people at all.
+
+Here, in their own quarter, and among their own people, they seem
+talkative enough. We can only tell what they are chattering about when
+they happen to speak Spanish, either for our benefit, or to show off
+their proficiency in that tongue. People who can speak the Aztec
+language say that their way of forming compound words gives constant
+occasion for puns and quibbles, and that the talk of the Indians is
+full of such small jokes. In this respect they differ exceedingly from
+the Spaniards, whose jests are generally about _things_, and seldom
+about their _names_, as one sees by their almost always bearing
+translation into other languages.
+
+Most of the canoes were tastefully decorated with flowers, for the
+Aztecs have not lost their old taste for ornamenting themselves, and
+everything about them, with garlands and nosegays. The fruits and
+vegetables they were carrying to market were very English in their
+appearance. Mexico is supplied with all kinds of tropical fruits, which
+come from a distance; but the district we are now in only produces
+plants which might grow in our own country—barley, potatoes, cabbages,
+parsnips, apples, pears, plums, peaches, and so forth, but scarcely
+anything tropical in its character. One thing surprises us, that the
+Indians, in a climate where the mornings and evenings are often very
+chilly, should dress so scantily. The men have a general appearance of
+having outgrown their clothes; for the sleeves of the kind of
+cotton-shirt they wear only reach to their elbows, and their trousers,
+of the same material, only fall to their knees. To these two garments
+add a sort of blanket, thrown over the shoulders, a pair of sandals,
+and a palm-leaf hat, and the man is dressed. His skin is brown, his
+limbs muscular—especially his legs—his lips thick, his nose Jewish, his
+hair coarse, black, and hanging straight down. The woman’s dress is as
+simple as the man’s. She has on a kind of cotton sack, very short in
+the sleeves, and very open at the shoulders, and some sort of a skirt
+or petticoat besides. Sometimes she has a folded cotton cloth on her
+head, like a Roman contadina; but, generally, nothing covers her thick
+black hair, which hangs down behind in long twisted tails.
+
+In old times, when Mexico was in the middle of a great lake, and the
+inhabitants were not strong enough to hold land on the shores, they
+were driven to strange shifts to get food. Among other expedients, they
+took to making little floating islands, which consisted of rafts of
+reeds and brushwood, on which they heaped mud from the shores of the
+lakes. On the banks of the lake of Tezcuco the mud was, at first, too
+full of salt and soda to be good for cultivation; but by pouring the
+water of the lake upon it, and letting it soak through, they dissolved
+out most of the salts, and the island was fit for cultivation, and bore
+splendid crops of vegetables.[7] These islands were called _chinampas_,
+and they were often large enough for the proprietor to build a hut in
+the middle, and live in it with his family. In later times, when the
+Mexicans came to be no longer afraid of their neighbours, the chinampas
+were not of much use; and when the water was drained off, and the city
+stood on dry land, one would have supposed that such a troublesome and
+costly arrangement would have been abandoned. The Mexican, however, is
+hard to move from the customs of his ancestors; and we have Humboldt’s
+word for it, that in his time there were some of these artificial
+islands still in the lake of Chalco, which the owners towed about with
+a rope, or pushed with a long pole. They are all gone now, at any rate,
+though the name of _chinampa_ is still applied to the gardens along the
+canal. These gardens very much resemble the floating islands in their
+construction of mud, heaped on a foundation of reeds and branches; and
+though they are not the real thing, and do not float, they are
+interesting, as the present representatives of the famous Mexican
+floating gardens. They are narrow strips of land, with a frontage of
+four or five yards to the canal, and a depth of one hundred, or a
+hundred and fifty yards. Between the strips are open ditches; and one
+principal occupation of the proprietor seems to be bringing up mud from
+the bottom of the ditch with a wooden shovel, and throwing it on the
+garden, in places where it has sunk. The reason of the narrowness of
+the strips is that he may be able to throw mud all over them from the
+ditches on either side.
+
+ [7] Chalco was and is a freshwater lake, and here they had not even
+ this to do.
+
+
+While we are busy observing all these matters, and questioning our
+boatmen about them, we reach Santa Anita. Here there are swampy lanes
+and more swampy gardens, a little village of Indian houses, three or
+four pulque-shops, and a church. Outside the pulque-shops are
+fresco-paintings, representing Aztec warriors carousing, and draining
+great bowls of pulque. These were no specimens of Aztec art, however,
+but seemed to be copied (by some white or half-caste sign-painter,
+probably) from the French coloured engravings which represent the
+events of the Conquest. These extraordinary works of art are to be seen
+everywhere in this country, where, of all places in the world, one
+would have thought that people would have noticed that the artist had
+not the faintest idea of what an Aztec was like, but supposed that his
+limbs and face and hair were like an European’s. Here, with the real
+Aztec standing underneath, the difference was striking enough. One
+ought not to be too critical about these things, however, when one
+remembers the pictures of shepherds and shepherdesses that adorn our
+English farmhouses. We drank pulque at the sign of _The Cacique_, and
+liked it, for we had now quite got over our aversion to its putrid
+taste and smell. I wonder that our new faculty of pulque-drinking did
+not make us able to relish the suspicious eggs that abound in Mexican
+inns, but it had no such effect, unfortunately.
+
+Our canoe took us back to the Promenade of Las Vigas, which is a long
+drive, planted with rows of trees, and extends along the last mile or
+two of the canal. Indeed, its name comes from the beam (Viga) which
+swings across the canal at the place where the canoes pay toll. This
+was the great promenade, once upon a time; but the new Alameda has
+taken away all the promenaders to a more fashionable quarter, except on
+certain festival days, three or four times in the year, when it is the
+correct thing for society to make a display of itself—on horseback or
+in carriages—in this neglected Indian quarter. We had happened upon one
+of these festival days; so, as we crawled along the side-path, tired
+and dusty, we had a good opportunity of seeing the Mexican beau monde.
+The display of really good carriages was extraordinary; but it must be
+recollected that many families here are content to live miserably
+enough at home, if they can manage to appear in good style at the
+theatre and on the promenade. This is one reason why so many of the
+Mexicans who are so friendly with you out of doors, and in the cafés,
+are so very shy of letting you see the inside of their houses. They
+say, and very likely it is true, that among the richer classes, it is
+customary to put a stipulation in the marriage-contracts, that the
+husband shall keep a carriage and pair, and a box at the theatre, for
+his wife’s benefit. The horsemen turned out in great style, and the
+foreigners were fully represented among them. It was noticeable that
+while these latter generally adopted the high-peaked saddle, and the
+jacket, and broad-brimmed felt hat of the country, and looked as though
+the new arrangements quite suited them, the native dandies, on the
+other hand, were prone to dressing in European fashion, and sitting
+upon English saddles—in which they looked neither secure nor
+comfortable.
+
+We walked home past the old Bull-ring, now replaced by a new one near
+the new promenade, and found, to our surprise, that in this quarter of
+the town many of the streets were under water. We knew that the level
+of the lake of Tezcuco had been raised by a series of three very wet
+seasons, but had no idea that things had got so far as this. Of course
+the ground-floors had to be abandoned, and the people had made a raised
+pathway of planks along the street, and adopted various contrivances
+for getting dryshod up to their first floors; and in some places canoes
+were floating in the street. The city looked like this some two hundred
+years ago, when Martinez the engineer tried an unfortunate experiment
+with his draining tunnel at Huehuetoca, and flooded the whole city for
+five years. It was by the interference, they tell us, of the patroness
+of the Indians, our Lady of Guadalupe, who was brought from her own
+temple on purpose, that the city was delivered from the impending
+destruction. A number of earthquakes took place, which caused the
+ground to split in large fissures, down which the superfluous water
+disappeared. For none of her many miracles has the Virgin of Guadalupe
+got so much credit as for this. To be sure, it is not generally
+mentioned in orthodox histories of the affair, that she was brought to
+the capital a year or two before the earthquakes happened.
+
+Talking of earthquakes, it is to be remembered that we are in a
+district where they are of continual occurrence. If one looks carefully
+at a line of houses in a street, it is curious to see how some walls
+slope inwards, and some outwards, and some are cracked from top to
+bottom. There is hardly a church-tower in Mexico that is not visibly
+out of the perpendicular. Any one who has noticed how the walls of the
+Cathedral of Pisa have been thrown out of the perpendicular by the
+settling down of the foundations, will have an idea of the general
+appearance of the larger buildings of Mexico. On different occasions
+the destruction caused by earthquakes has been very great. By the way,
+the liability of Mexico to these shocks, explains the peculiarity of
+the building of the houses. A modern English town with
+two-or-three-storied houses, with their thin brick walls, would be laid
+in ruins by a shock which would hardly affect Mexico. Here, the houses
+of several storeys have stone walls of such thickness that they resist
+by sheer strength; and the one-storey mud houses, in the suburbs, are
+too low to suffer much by being shaken about. A few days before we
+arrived here, our friends Pepe and Pancho were playing at billiards in
+the Lonja,[8] the Merchants’ Exchange; and Pepe described to us the
+feeling of utter astonishment with which he saw his ball, after
+striking the other, go suddenly off at an absurd angle into a pocket.
+The shock of an earthquake had tilted the table up on one side. While
+we were in Mexico there was a slight shock, which set the chandeliers
+swinging, but we did not even notice it. In April, a solemn procession
+goes from the Cathedral, on a day marked in the Calendar as the
+“Patrocinio de Señor San Jose”, to implore the “Santissimo Patriarca”
+to protect the city from earthquakes (temblores). In connection with
+this subject there is an opinion, so generally received in Mexico that
+it is worth notice. Everybody there, even the most educated people,
+will tell you that there is an earthquake-season, which occurs in
+January or February; and that the shocks are far more frequent than at
+any other time of the year. My impression is that this is all nonsense;
+but I should like to test it with a list of the shocks that have been
+felt, if such a thing were to be had. It does not follow that, because
+the Mexicans have such frequent opportunities of trying the question,
+they should therefore have done so. In fact, experience as to popular
+beliefs in similar matters rather points the other way. I recollect
+that in the earthquake districts of southern Italy, when shocks were of
+almost daily occurrence, people believed that they were more frequent
+in the middle four hours of the night, from ten to two, than at other
+times. Of course, this proved on examination to be quite without
+foundation. To take one more case in point. How many of our
+almanack-books, even the better class of them, contain prophecies of
+wet and fine weather, deduced from the moon’s quarters! How long will
+it be before we get rid of this queer old astrological superstition?
+
+ [8] The “Lonja” is a feature in the commercial towns of Spanish
+ America. It is not only the Merchants’ Exchange, but their club,
+ billiard-room, and smoking-room; in fact, their “lounge,” and I fancy
+ the two words are connected with one another.
+
+
+We made a few rough observations of the thermometer and barometer
+during our stay in Mexico. The barometer stands at about 22½ inches,
+and our thermometer gave the boiling point of water at 199 degrees. We
+could never get eggs well boiled in the high lands, and attributed
+this, whether rightly or not I cannot say, to the low temperature of
+boiling water.
+
+
+[Illustration: Group of Ecclesiastics, Mexico.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+TACUBAYA. PACHUCA. REAL DEL MONTE.
+
+
+We went one morning to the house of our friend Don Pepe, and were
+informed by the servant as we entered the courtyard that the niño, the
+child, was up stairs waiting for us. “The Child” seemed an odd term to
+apply to a young man of five and twenty. The young ladies, in the same
+way are called the nias, and keep the appellation until they marry.
+
+We went off with the niño to his uncle’s house at Tacubaya, on the
+rising ground above Mexico. In the garden there we found a vegetation
+such as one would find in southern Europe—figs, olives, peaches, roses,
+and many other European trees and flowers—growing luxuriantly, but
+among them the passion-flower, which produces one of the most delicious
+of fruits, the granadita, and other semi-tropical plants. The live
+creatures in the garden, however, were anything but European in their
+character. There were numbers of immense butterflies of the most
+brilliant colours; and the garden was full of hummingbirds, darting
+backwards and forwards with wonderful swiftness, and dipping their long
+beaks into the flowers. They call them chupa-mirtos—myrtle-suckers, and
+the Indians take them by blowing water upon them from a cane, and
+catching them before they have recovered from the shock. One day we
+bought a cage full of them, and tried to keep them alive in our room by
+feeding them with sugar and water, but the poor little things pined
+away. In old times the Mexicans were famous for their ornaments of
+humming-bird’s feathers. The taste with which they arranged feathers of
+many shades of colour, excited the admiration of the conquerors; and
+the specimens we may still see in museums are beautiful things, and
+their great age has hardly impaired the brilliancy of their tints. This
+curious art was practised by the highest nobility, and held in great
+esteem, just as working tapestry used to be in Europe, only that the
+feather-work was mostly done by men. It is a lost art, for one cannot
+take much account of such poor things as are done now, in which,
+moreover, the designs are European. In this garden at Tacubaya we saw
+for the first time the praying Mantis, and caught him as he sat in his
+usual devotional attitude. His Spanish name is “el predicador,” the
+preacher.
+
+We got back to Mexico in time for the Corrida de Toros. The bull-ring
+was a large one, and there were many thousands of people there; but as
+to the spectacle itself, whether one took it upon its merits, or merely
+compared it with the bull-fights of Old Spain, it was disgusting. The
+bulls were cautious and cowardly, and could hardly be got to fight; and
+the matadors almost always failed in killing them; partly through want
+of skill, partly because it is really harder to kill a quiet bull than
+a fierce one who runs straight at his assailant. To fill up the measure
+of the whole iniquitous proceeding, they brought in a wretch in a white
+jacket with a dagger, to finish the unfortunate beasts which the
+matador could not kill in the legitimate way. It was evidently quite
+the regular thing, for the spectators expressed no surprise at it.
+
+After the bull-fight proper was finished, there came two or three
+supplementary performances, which were genuinely Mexican, and very well
+worth seeing. A very wild bull was turned into the ring, where two
+lazadores, on beautiful little horses, were waiting for him. The bull
+set off at full speed after one of the riders, who cantered easily
+ahead of him; and the other, leisurely untying his lazo, hung it over
+his left arm, and then, taking the end in his light hand, let the cord
+fall through the loop into a running noose, which he whirled two or
+three times round his head, and threw it so neatly that it settled
+gently down over the bull’s neck. In a moment the other end of the cord
+was wound several times round the pummel of the saddle, and the little
+horse set off at full speed to get ahead of the bull. But the first
+rider had wheeled round, thrown his lazo upon the ground, and just as
+the bull stepped within the noose, whipped it up round his hind leg,
+and galloped off in a contrary direction. Just as the first lazo
+tightened round his neck, the second jerked him by the leg, and the
+beast rolled helplessly over in the sand. Then they got the lazos off,
+no easy matter when one isn’t accustomed to it, and set him off again,
+catching him by hind legs or fore legs just as they pleased, and
+inevitably bringing him down, till the bull was tired out and no longer
+resisted. Then they both lazo’d him over the horns, and galloped him
+out, amid the cheers of the spectators. The amusements finished with
+the “colear.” This is quite peculiar to Mexico, and is done on this
+wise. The coleador rides after the bull, who has an idea that something
+is going to happen, and gallops off as fast as he can go, throwing out
+his hind legs in his awkward bullish fashion. Now, suppose you are the
+coleador, sitting in your peaked Mexican saddle, that rises behind and
+before, and keeps you in your seat without an effort on your part. You
+gallop after the bull, and when you come up with him, you pull as hard
+as you can to keep your horse back; for, if he is used to the sport, as
+almost all Mexican horses are, he is wild to get past, not noticing
+that his rider has got no hold of the toro. Well, you are just behind
+the bull, a little to the left of him, and out of the way of his hind
+legs, which will trip your horse up if you don’t take care; you take
+your right foot out of the stirrup, catch hold of the end of the bull’s
+tail (which is very long), throw your leg over it, and so twist the end
+of the tail round your leg below the knee. You have either got the
+bridle between your teeth or have let it go altogether, and with your
+left hand you give your horse a crack with the whip; he goes forward
+with a bound, and the bull, losing his balance by the sudden jerk
+behind, rolls over on the ground, and gets up, looking very
+uncomfortable. The faster the bull gallops, the easier it is to throw
+him over; and two boys of twelve or fourteen years of age coleared a
+couple of young bulls in the arena, in great style, pitching them over
+in all directions. The farmers and landed proprietors are immensely
+fond of both these sports, which the bulls—by the way—seem to dislike
+most thoroughly; but this exhibition in the bull-ring was better than
+what one generally sees, and the leperos were loud in their expressions
+of delight.
+
+When we had been a week or two in the city of Mexico, we decided upon
+making an excursion to the great silver mining district of the Real del
+Monte. Some of our English friends were leaving for England, and had
+engaged the whole of the Diligence to Pachuca, going from thence up to
+the Real, and thence to Tampico, with all the pomp and circumstance of
+a train of carriages and an armed escort. We were invited to go with
+them as far as Pachuca; and accordingly we rose very early on the 28th
+of March, got some chocolate under difficulties, and started in the
+Diligence, seven grown-up people, and a baby, who was very good, and
+was spoken of and to as “leoncito.” On the high plateaus of Mexico, the
+children of European parents grow up as healthy and strong as at home;
+it is only in the districts at a lower elevation above the sea, on the
+coasts for instance, that they do not thrive. Mr. G., who was leaving
+Mexico, was the head of a great merchant-house, and it was as a
+compliment to him and Mrs. G. that we were accompanied by a party of
+English horsemen for the first two or three leagues. Englishmen take
+much more easily to Mexican ways about horses than the Mexicans do to
+ours, and a finer turn-out of horses and riders than our amateur escort
+could hardly have been found in Mexico. There was our friend Don
+Guillermo, who rode a beautiful horse that had once belonged to the
+captain of a band of robbers, and had not its equal in the city for
+swiftness; and Don Juan on his splendid little brown horse Pancho,
+lazoing stray mules as he went, and every now and then galloping into a
+meadow by the roadside after a bull, who was off like a shot the moment
+he heard the sound of hoofs. I wonder whether I shall ever see them
+again, those jovial open-hearted countrymen of ours. At last our
+companions said good-bye, and loaded pistols were carefully arranged on
+the centre cushion in case of an attack, much to the edification of my
+companion and myself, as it rather implied that, if fighting were to be
+done, we two should have to sit inside to be shot at without a chance
+of hitting anybody in return.
+
+The hedges of the Organ Cactus are a feature in the landscape of the
+plains, and we first saw them to perfection on the road between Mexico
+and Pachuca. This plant, the Cereus hexagonus, grows in Italy in the
+open air, but seems not to be turned to account anywhere except in
+Mexico for the purpose to which it is particularly suited. In its wild
+state it grows like a candelabrum, with a thick trunk a few feet high,
+from the top of which it sends out shoots, which, as soon as they have
+room, rise straight upwards in fluted pillars fifteen or twenty feet in
+height. Such a plant, with pillars rising side by side and almost
+touching one another, has a curious resemblance to an organ with its
+pipes, and thence its name “órgano.”
+
+To make a fence, they break off the straight lateral shoots, of the
+height required, and plant them closely side by side, in a trench,
+sufficiently deep to ensure their standing firmly; and it is a curious
+sight to see a labourer bearing on his shoulder one of these vegetable
+pillars, as high as himself, and carefully guarding himself against its
+spines. A hedge perfectly impassable is obtained at once; the cactus
+rooting so readily, that it is rare to see a gap where one has died.
+The villagers surround their gardens with these fences of cactus, which
+often line the road for miles together. Foreigners used to point out
+such villages to us, and remark that they seemed “well organized,” a
+small joke which unfortunately bears translation into all ordinary
+European languages, and was inflicted without mercy upon us as new
+comers.
+
+We reached Pachuca early in the afternoon, and took up our quarters in
+the inn there, and our friends went on to Real del Monte.
+
+This little town of Pachuca has long been a place of some importance in
+the world, as regards mining-operations. The Aztecs worked silver-mines
+here, as well as at Tasco, long before the Spaniards came, and they
+knew how to smelt the ore. It is true that, if no better process than
+smelting were known now, most of the mines would scarcely be worth
+working; but still, to know how to extract silver at all was a great
+step; and indeed at that time, and for long after the Conquest, there
+was no better method known in Europe. It was in this very place that a
+Spaniard, Medina by name, discovered the process of amalgamation with
+mercury, in the year 1557, some forty years after the invasion. We went
+to see the place where he first worked his new process, and found it
+still used as a “hacienda de beneficio” (establishment for extracting
+silver from the ore.) So few discoveries in the arts have come out of
+Mexico, or indeed out of any Spanish colony, that we must make the most
+of this really very important method, which is more extensively used
+than any other, both in North and South America. As for the rest of the
+world, it produces, comparatively, so little silver, that it is
+scarcely worth taking into account.
+
+We had forgotten, when we went to bed, that we were nearly seven
+hundred feet higher than Mexico; but had the fact brought to our
+remembrance by waking in the middle of the night, feeling very cold,
+and finding our thermometer marking 40 degrees Fahr.; whereupon we
+covered ourselves with cloaks, and the cloaks with the strips of carpet
+at our bedsides, and went to sleep again.
+
+We had hired, of the French landlord, two horses and a mozo to guide
+us, and sorry hacks they were when we saw them in the morning. It was
+delightful to get a little circulation into our veins by going at the
+best gallop our horses would agree to; for we were fresh from hot
+countries, and not at all prepared for having our hands and feet numbed
+with cold, and being as hoarse as ravens—for the sore throat which is
+the nuisance of the district, and is very severe upon new comers, had
+not spared us. Evaporation is so rapid at this high altitude that if
+you wet the back of your hand it dries almost instantly, leaving a
+smart sensation of cold. One may easily suppose, that when people have
+been accustomed to live under the ordinary pressure of the air, their
+throats and lungs do not like being dried up at this rate; besides
+their having, on account of the rarity of the air, to work harder in
+breathing, in order to get in the necessary quantity of oxygen.
+
+Coughs seem very common here, especially among the children, though
+people look strong and healthy, but in the absence of proper statistics
+one cannot undertake to say whether the district is a healthy one or
+not.
+
+For a wonder we have a good road, and this simply because the Real del
+Monte Company wanted one, and made it for themselves. How unfortunate
+all Spanish countries are in roads, one of the most important first
+steps towards civilization! When one has travelled in Old Spain, one
+can imagine that the colonists did not bring over very enlightened
+ideas on the subject; and as the Mexicans were not allowed to hold
+intercourse with any other country, it is easy to explain why Mexico is
+all but impassable for carriages. But if the money—or half of it—that
+has been spent in building and endowing churches and convents had been
+devoted to road-making, this might have been a great and prosperous
+country.
+
+For some three hours we rode along among porphyritic mountains, getting
+higher at every turn, and enjoying the clear bright air. Now and then
+we met or passed a long recua (train) of loaded mules, taking care to
+keep the safe side of the road till we were rid of them. It is not
+pleasant to meet a great drove of horned cattle in an Alpine pass, but
+I really think a recua of loaded mules among the Andes is worse. A
+knowing old beast goes first, and the rest come tumbling after him
+anyhow, with their loads often projecting a foot or two on either side,
+and banging against anybody or anything. Then, wherever the road is
+particularly narrow, and there is a precipice of two or three hundred
+feet to fall over, one or two of them will fall down, or get their
+packs loose, and so block up the road, and there is a general scrimmage
+of kicking and shoving behind, till the arrieros can get things
+straight again. At last we reach the top of a ridge, and see the little
+settlement of Real del Monte below us. It is more like a Cornish mining
+village than anything else; but of course the engine-houses, chimneys,
+and mine-sheds, built by Cornishmen in true Cornish fashion, go a long
+way towards making up the resemblance. The village is built on the
+awkwardest bit of ground possible, up and down on the side of a steep
+ravine, one house apparently standing on the roof of another; and it
+takes half a mile of real hard climbing to get from the bottom of the
+town to the top.
+
+We put up our horses at a neat little inn kept by an old Englishwoman,
+and walked or climbed up to the Company’s house. We made several new
+acquaintances at the Real, though we left within a few hours, intending
+to see the place thoroughly on our return.
+
+One peculiarity of the Casa Grande—the great house of the Company—was
+the warlike appearance of everybody in it. The clerks were posting up
+the ledgers with loaded revolvers on the desk before them; the
+manager’s room was a small arsenal, and the gentlemen rode out for
+exercise, morning and evening, armed to the teeth. Not that there is
+anything to be apprehended from robbers—indeed I should like to see any
+of the Mexican ladrones interfering with the Cornish miners, who would
+soon teach them better manners. I am inclined to think there is a
+positive pleasure in possessing and handling guns and pistols, whether
+they are likely to be of any use or not. Indeed, while travelling
+through the western and southern States of America, where such things
+are very generally carried, I was the possessor of a five-barrelled
+revolver, and admit that I derived an amount of mild satisfaction from
+carrying it about, and shooting at a mark with it, that amply
+compensated for the loss of two dollars I incurred by selling it to a
+Jew at New Orleans.
+
+We rode on to Regla, soon finding that our guide had never been there
+before; so, next morning, we kept the two horses and dismissed him with
+ignominy. A fine road leads from the Real to Regla, for all the
+silver-ore from the mines is conveyed there to have the silver
+separated from it. My notes of our ride mention a great water-wheel:
+sections of porphyritic rocks, with enormous masses of alluvial soil
+lying upon them: steep ravines: arroyos, cut by mountain-streams, and
+forests of pine-trees—a thoroughly Alpine district altogether. At Regla
+it became evident that our letter of introduction was not a mere
+complimentary affair. There is not even a village there; it is only a
+great hacienda, belonging to the Company, with the huts of the workmen
+built near it. The Company, represented by Mr. Bell, received us with
+the greatest hospitality. Almost before the letter was opened our
+horses and mozo were off to the stables, our room was ready, and our
+dinner being prepared as fast as might be. What a pleasant evening we
+had, after our long day’s work! We had a great wood-fire, and sat by
+it, talking and looking at Mr. Bell’s photographs and minerals, which
+serve as an amusement in his leisure-hours. The Company’s Administrador
+leads rather a peculiar life here. There is no want of work or
+responsibility; he has two or three hundred Indians to manage, almost
+all of whom will steal and cheat without the slightest scruple, if they
+can but get a chance; he has to assay the ores, superintend a variety
+of processes which require the greatest skill and judgment, and he is
+in charge of property to the value of several hundred thousand pounds.
+Then a man must have a constitution of iron to live in a place where
+the air is so rarefied, and where the temperature varies thirty and
+forty degrees between morning and noon. As for society, he must find it
+in his own family; for even the better class of Mexicans are on so
+different a level, intellectually, from an educated Englishman, that
+their society bores him utterly, and he had rather be left in solitude
+than have to talk to them. Well, it is a great advantage to travellers
+that circumstances fix pleasant people in such out-of-the-way places.
+
+One necessary part of a hacienda is a church. The proprietors are
+compelled by law to build one, and pay the priest’s fees for mass on
+Sundays and feast-days. Now, almost all the English one meets with
+engaged in business, or managing mines and plantations, are Scotch, and
+one may well suppose that there is not much love lost between them and
+the priests. The father confessor plays an important part in the great
+system of dishonesty that prevails to so monstrous an extent throughout
+the country. He hears the particulars of the thefts and cheatings that
+have been practised on the proprietor who builds his church and pays
+for his services, and he complacently absolves his penitents in
+consideration of a small penance. Not a word about restitution; and
+just a formal injunction to go and sin no more, which neither priest
+nor penitent is very sincere about. The various evils of the Roman
+Catholic system have been reiterated till the subject has become
+tiresome, but this particular practice is so contrary to the simplest
+notions of morality, and has produced such fearful effects on the
+character of this nation, that one cannot pass it by without notice. If
+the Superintendent should roast the parish priest in front of the
+oxidising furnace, till he confessed all he knew about the thefts of
+his parishioners from the Company, he would tell strange stories,—how
+Juan Fernandez carried off sixpennyworth of silver in each car every
+day for a month; and how Pedro Alvarado (the Indian names have almost
+disappeared except in a few families, and Spanish names have been
+substituted) had a hammer with a hollow handle, like the stick that
+Sancho Panza delivered his famous judgment about, and carried away
+silver in it every day when he left work; and how Vasco Nuñez stole the
+iron key from the gate (which cost two dollars to replace), walking
+twenty miles and losing a day’s work in order to sell it, and
+eventually getting but twopence for it; and plenty more stories of the
+same kind. The Padre at Regla, we heard, was not given to preaching
+sermons, but had lately favoured his congregation with a very striking
+one, to the effect that the Company paid him only three dollars a time
+for saying mass, and that he ought to have four.
+
+Almost every traveller who visits Mexico enlarges on the dishonesty
+which is rooted in the character of the people. That they are worse now
+in this respect than they were before the Conquest is highly probable.
+Their position as a conquered and enslaved people, tended, as it always
+does, to foster the slavish vices of dissimulation and dishonesty. The
+religion brought into the country by the Spanish missionaries concerned
+itself with their belief, and left their morals to shift for
+themselves, as it does still.
+
+In the mining-districts stealing is universal. Public feeling among the
+Indians does not condemn it in the least, quite the contrary. To steal
+successfully is considered a triumph, and to be found out is no
+disgrace. Theft is not even punishable. In old times a thief might be
+put in the stocks; but Burkart, who was a mining-inspector for many
+years, says that in his time, some twenty years ago, tins was
+abolished, and I believe the law has not been altered since. It is a
+miserable sight to see the Indian labourers searched as they come out
+of the mines. They are almost naked, but rich ore packs in such a small
+compass, and they are so ingenious in stowing it away, that the
+doorkeepers examine their mouths and ears, and their hair, and
+constantly find pieces that have been secreted, while a far greater
+quantity escapes. It is this system of thieving that accounts for the
+existence of certain little smelting-sheds, close to the works of the
+Company, who look at them with such feelings as may be imagined. These
+places profess to smelt ore from one or two little mines in the
+neighbourhood, but their real object is no secret. They buy the stolen
+bits of rich ore from the Indian labourers, giving exactly half the
+value for it.
+
+Of course, we must not judge these Mexican labourers as though we had a
+very high standard of honesty at home. That we should see workmen
+searched habitually in England, at the doors of our national
+dock-yards, is a much greater disgrace to us. And not merely a
+disgrace, but a serious moral evil, for to expose an honest man to such
+a degradation is to make him half a thief already.
+
+People who know the Indian population best assure us that their lives
+are a perpetual course of intrigue and dissimulation. Always trying to
+practise some small fraud upon their masters, and even upon their own
+people, they are in constant fear that every one is trying to overreach
+them. They are afraid to answer the simplest question, lest it should
+be a trap laid to catch them. They ponder over every word and action of
+their European employers, to find out what hidden intrigue lies
+beneath, and to devise some counter-plot. Sartorius says that when he
+has met an Indian and asked his name, the brown man always gave a false
+one, lest the enquirer should want to do him some harm.
+
+Never did any people show more clearly the effects of ages of servitude
+and oppression; but, hopeless as the moral condition of this mining
+population seems, there is one favourable circumstance to be put on
+record. The Cornish miners, who have been living among them for years,
+have worked quite perceptibly upon the Indian character by the example
+of their persevering industry, their love of saving, and their utter
+contempt for thieves and liars. Instead of squandering their wages, or
+burying them in the ground, many of the Indian miners take their
+savings to the Banks; and the opinions of the foreigners are
+gradually—though very slowly—altering the popular standard of honesty,
+the first step towards the moral improvement of the Mexican population.
+
+In the morning we went off for an excursion, having got a lively young
+fellow from the hacienda in exchange for our stupid mozo. There was
+hoar frost on the ground, and the feeling of cold was intense at first;
+but the sun began to warm the ground about eight o’clock, and we were
+soon glad to fasten our great coats and shawls to our saddles. Three
+leagues took us to the town of Atotonilco[9] el Grande, which gives its
+name to the plateau we were crossing. Here we are no longer in the
+valley of Mexico, which is separated from this plain by the mountains
+of the Real del Monte. We rode on two leagues more to the village of
+Soquital[10] where, it being Sunday, we found the inhabitants—mostly
+Indians—amusing themselves by standing in the sun, doing nothing. I can
+hardly say “doing nothing,” though, for we went into the tienda, or
+shop, and found a brisk trade going on in raw spirits. _Tienda_, in
+Spanish, means a tent or booth. The first shops were tents or booths at
+fairs or in market-places; and thence “tienda” came to mean a shop in
+general; a derivation which corresponds with that of the word “shop”
+itself. Such of the population as had money seemed to drop in at
+regular intervals for a dram, which consisted of a small wine-glassful
+of white-corn-brandy, called _chinguerito_. We tasted some, while the
+people at the shop were frying eggs and boiling beans for our
+breakfast; and found it so strong that a small sip brought tears into
+our eyes, to the amusement of the bystanders. It seemed that everybody
+was drinking who could afford it; from the old men and women to the
+babies in their mothers’ arms; everybody had a share, except those who
+were hard up, and they stood about the door looking stolidly at the
+drinkers. There was nothing like gaiety in the whole affair; only a
+sort of satisfaction appeared in the face of each as he took his dose.
+It is the drinkers of pulque who get furiously drunk, and fight; here
+it is different. These drinkers of spirits are not much given to that
+enormous excess that kills off the Red Indians; indeed, they are seldom
+drunk enough to lose their wits, and they never have delirium tremens,
+which would come upon a European, with much less provocation. They get
+into a habit of daily—almost hourly—dram-drinking, and go on, year
+after year, in this way; seeming, as far as we could judge, to live a
+long while, such a life as it is. As we mounted our horses and rode on,
+we agreed that we had seldom seen a more melancholy and depressing
+sight.
+
+ [9] Atotonilco, “Hot-water-place,” so called from the hot springs in
+ the neighbourhood.
+
+ [10] Soquital, “Clay-place,” from the potter’s clay which abounds in
+ the district. Earthenware is the staple manufacture here.
+
+We met some arrieros, who had brought up salt from the coast; and they,
+seeing that we were English, judged we had something to do with mines,
+and proposed to sell us their goods. The price of salt here is actually
+three-pence per lb., in a district where its consumption is immense, as
+it is used in refining the silver ore. It must be said, however, that
+this is an unusual price; for the muleteers have been so victimised by
+their mules being seized, either by the government or the rebels (one
+seems about as bad as the other in this respect), that they must have a
+high price to pay them for the risk. Generally seven reals, or 3s. 6d.
+per arroba of 25 lbs. is the price. This salt is evaporated in the
+salinas of Campeche, taken by water to Tuzpan, and then brought up the
+country on mules’ backs—each beast carrying 300 lbs. Of course, this
+salt is very coarse and very watery; all salt made in this way is. It
+suits the New Orleans people better to import salt from England, than
+to make it in this way in the Gulf of Mexico, though the water there is
+very salt, and the sun very hot. The fact, that it pays to carry salt
+on mules’ backs, tells volumes about the state of the country. At the
+lowest computation, the mules would do four or five times as much work
+if they were set to draw any kind of cart—however rough—on a
+carriageable road. It is true that there is some sort of road from here
+to Tampico, but an English waggoner would not acknowledge it by that
+name at all; and the muleteers are still in possession of most of the
+traffic in this district, as indeed they are over almost all the
+country.
+
+It was mid-day by this time; and, as we could not get to the Rio Grande
+without taking our chance for the night in some Indian rancho, we
+turned back. The heat had become so oppressive that we took off our
+coats; and Mr. Christy, riding in his shirt-sleeves and holding a white
+umbrella over his head, which he had further protected with a turban,
+declared that even in the East he had not had so fatiguing a ride. We
+passed through Soquital, and there the natives were idling and drinking
+spirits as before, and seemed hardly to have moved since we left. This
+plateau of Atotonilco el Grande, called for shortness Grande, is, like
+most of the high plains of Mexico, composed mostly of porphyry and
+obsidian, a valley filled up with débris from the surrounding
+mountains, which are all volcanic, embedded in reddish earth. The
+mountain-torrents—in which the water, so to speak, comes down all at
+once, not flowing in a steady stream all the year round as in
+England—have left evidences of their immense power in the ravines with
+which the sides of the hills, from their very tops downward, are
+fluted.
+
+These fluted mountain-ridges resemble the “Kamms” (combs) of the Swiss
+Alps, called so from their toothed appearance.
+
+We had met numbers of Indians, bringing their wares to the Sunday
+market in the great square of Atotonilco el Grande; and when we reached
+the town on our way home, business was still going on briskly; so we
+put up our horses, and spent an hour or two in studying the people and
+the commodities they dealt in. It was a real old-fashioned Indian
+market, very much such as the Spaniards found when they first
+penetrated into the country. A large proportion of the people could
+speak no Spanish, or only a few words. The unglazed pottery, palm-leaf
+mats, ropes and bags of aloe-fibre, dressed skins, &c., were just the
+same wares that were made three centuries ago; and there is no
+improvement in their manufacture. This people, who rose in three
+centuries from the condition of wandering savages to a height of
+civilization that has no equal in history—considering the shortness of
+the time in which it grew up—have remained, since the Conquest, without
+making one step in advance. They hardly understand any reason for what
+they do, except that their ancestors did things so—they therefore must
+be right. They make their unglazed pottery, and carry it five and
+twenty miles to market on their heads, just as they used to do when
+there were no beasts of burden in the country. The same with their
+fruits and vegetables, which they have brought great distances, up the
+most difficult mountain-paths, at a ruinous sacrifice of time and
+trouble, considering what a miserable sum they will get for them after
+all, and how much even of this will be spent in brandy. By working on a
+hacienda they would get double what their labour produces in this way,
+but they do not understand this kind of reasoning. They cultivate their
+little patches of maize, by putting a sharp stick into the ground, and
+dropping the seed into the hole. They carry pots of water to irrigate
+their ground with, instead of digging trenches. This is the more
+curious, as at the time of the Conquest irrigation was much practised
+by the Aztecs in the plains, and remains of water-canals still exist,
+showing that they had carried the art to great perfection. They bring
+logs of wood over the mountains by harnessing horses or mules to them,
+and dragging them with immense labour over the rough ground. The idea
+of wheels or rollers has either not occurred to them, or is considered
+as a pernicious novelty.
+
+It is very striking to see how, while Europeans are bringing the newest
+machinery and the most advanced arts into the country, there is
+scarcely any symptom of improvement among the people, who still hold
+firmly to the wisdom of their ancestors. An American author, Mayer,
+quotes a story of a certain people in Italy, as an illustration of the
+feeling of the Indians in Mexico respecting improvements. In this
+district, he says that the peasants loaded their panniers with
+vegetables on one side, and balanced the opposite pannier by filling it
+with stones; and when a traveller pointed out the advantage to be
+gained by loading both panniers with vegetables, he was answered that
+their forefathers from time immemorial had so carried their produce to
+market, that they were wise and good men, and that a stranger showed
+very little understanding or decency who interfered in the established
+customs of a country. I need hardly say that the Indians are utterly
+ignorant; and this of course accounts to a great extent for their
+obstinate conservatism.
+
+There were several shops round the market-place at Grande, and the
+brandy-drinking was going on much as at Soquital. The shops in these
+small towns are general stores, like “the shop” in coal- and
+iron-districts in England. It is only in large towns that the different
+retail-trades are separated. One thing is very noticeable in these
+country stores, the certainty of finding a great stock of sardines in
+bright tin boxes. The idea of finding _Sardines à l’huile_ in Indian
+villages seemed odd enough; but the fact is, that the difficulty of
+getting fish up from the coast is so great that these sardines are not
+much dearer than anything else, and they go a long way. Montezuma’s
+method of supplying his table with fresh fish from the gulf, by having
+relays of Indian porters to run up with it, is too expensive for
+general use, and there is no efficient substitute. It is in consequence
+of this scarcity of fish, that Church-fasts have never been very
+strictly kept in Mexico.
+
+[Illustration: HIEROGLYPHICS.]
+
+The method of keeping accounts in the shops—which, it is to be
+remembered, are almost always kept by white or half-white people,
+hardly ever by Indians—is primitive enough. Here is a score which I
+copied, the hieroglyphics standing for dollars, half-dollars, medios or
+half-reals, cuartillos or quarter-reals, and tlacos—or clacos—which are
+eighths of a real, or about ¾d. While account-keeping among the
+comparatively educated trades-people is in this condition, one can
+easily understand how very limited the Indian notions of calculation
+are. They cannot realize any number much over ten; and
+twenty—cempoalli—is with them the symbol of a great number, as a
+hundred was with the Greeks. There is in Mexico a mountain called in
+this indefinite way “Cempoatepetl”—the twenty-mountain. Sartorius
+mentions the Indian name of the many-petaled
+marigold—“cempoaxochitl”—the twenty-flower. We traded for some trifles
+of aloe-fibre, but soon had to count up the reckoning with beans.
+
+I have delayed long enough for the present over the Indians and their
+market; so, though there is much more to be said about them, I will
+only add a few words respecting the commodities for sale, and then
+leave them for awhile.
+
+There seemed to be a large business doing in costales (bags) made of
+aloe-fibre, for carrying ore about in the mines. True to the traditions
+of his ancestors, the Indian much prefers putting his load in a bag on
+his back, to the far easier method of wheeling it about. Lazos sold at
+one to four reals, (6d. to 2s.) according to quality. There are two
+kinds of aloe-fibre; one coarse, _ichtli_, the other much finer,
+_pito_; the first made from the great aloe that produces pulque, the
+other from a much smaller species of the same genus. The stones with
+which the boiled maize is ground into the paste of which the universal
+tortillas are made were to be had here; indeed, they are made in the
+neighbourhood, of the basalt and lava which abound in the district. The
+metate is a sort of little table, hewn out of the basalt, with four
+little feet, and its surface is curved from the ends to the middle. The
+metalpile is of the same material, and like a rolling-pin. The
+old-fashioned Mexican pottery I have mentioned already. It is
+beautifully made, and very cheap. They only asked us nine-pence for a
+great olla, or boiling-pot, that held four or five gallons, and no
+doubt this was double the market-price. I never so thoroughly realized
+before how climate is altered by altitude above the sea as in noticing
+the fruits and vegetables that were being sold at this little market,
+within fifteen or twenty miles of which they were all grown. There were
+wheat and barley, and the piñones (the fruit of the stone-pine, which
+grows in Italy, and is largely used instead of almonds); and from these
+representatives of temperate climates the list extended to bananas and
+zapotes, grown at the bottom of the great barrancas, 3,000 or 4,000
+feet lower in level than the plateau, though in distance but a few
+miles off. Three or four thousand miles of latitude would not give a
+greater difference.
+
+It would never do to be late, and break our necks in one of the awkward
+water-courses that cut the plateau about in all directions; so we
+started homewards, soon having to unfasten great-coats and shawls from
+our saddles, to keep out the cold of the approaching sunset; and so we
+got back to the hospitable hacienda, and were glad to warm ourselves at
+the fire.
+
+Next morning, we went off to get a view of the great barranca of Regla.
+A ride over the hills brought us to a wood of oaks, with their branches
+fringed with the long grey Spanish moss, and a profusion of epiphytes
+clinging to their bark, some splendidly in flower, showing the
+fantastic shapes and brilliant colours one sees in English
+orchid-houses. Cactuses of many species complete the picture of the
+vegetation in this beautiful spot. This is at the top of the barranca.
+Then imagine a valley a mile or two in width, with sides almost
+perpendicular and capped with basaltic pillars, and at the bottom a
+strip of land where the vegetation is of the deepest green of the
+tropics, with a river winding along among palm-trees and bananas. This
+great barranca is between two and three thousand feet deep, and the
+view is wonderful. We went down a considerable way by a zig-zag road,
+my companion collecting armfuls of plants by the way, but unfortunately
+losing his thermometer, which could not be found, though a long hunt
+for it produced a great many more plants, and so the trouble was not
+wasted. The prickly pear was covered with ripe purple fruit a little
+way down, and we refreshed ourselves with them, I managing—in my
+clumsiness—to get into my fingers two or three of the little sheaves of
+needles which are planted on the outside of the fruit, and thus
+providing myself with occupation for leisure moments for three or four
+days after in taking them out.
+
+Many species of cactus, and the nopal, or prickly pear, especially, are
+full of watery sap, which trickles out in a stream when they are
+pierced. In these thirsty regions, when springs and brooks are dry, the
+cattle bite them to get at the moisture, regardless of the thorns. On
+the north coast of Africa the camels delight in crunching the juicy
+leaves of the same plant. I have often been amused in watching the
+camel-drivers’ efforts to get their trains of laden beasts along the
+narrow sandy lanes of Tangier, between hedges of prickly pears, where
+the camels with their long necks could reach the tempting lobes on both
+sides of the way.
+
+In this thirsty season, while the cattle in the Mexican plains derive
+moisture from the cactus, the aloe provides for man a substitute for
+water. It frequently happened to us to go from rancho to rancho asking
+for water in vain, though pulque was to be had in abundance.
+
+To attempt any description of the varied forms of cactus in Mexico
+would be out of the question. In the northern provinces alone,
+botanists have described above eight hundred species. The most striking
+we met with were the prickly pear (cactus opuntia), the órgano, the
+night-blowing cereus, the various mamillarias—dome-shaped mounds
+covered with thorns, varying in diameter from an inch to six or eight
+feet—and the greybeard, _el viejo_, “the old man,” as our guide called
+them, upright pillars like street-posts, and covered with grey
+wool-like filaments.
+
+Getting to the top of the ravine again, we found an old Indian milking
+an aloe, which flourishes here, though a little further down the
+climate is too hot for it to produce pulque. This old gentleman had a
+long gourd, of the shape and size of a great club, but hollow inside,
+and very light. The small end of this gourd was pushed in among the
+aloe-leaves into the hollow made by scooping out the inside of the
+plant, and in which the sweet juice, the aguamiel, collects. By having
+a little hole at each end of the gourd, and sucking at the large end,
+the hollow of the plant emptied itself into the Acocote, (in proper
+Mexican, _Acocotl_, Water-throat), as this queer implement is called.
+Then the Indian stopped the hole at the end he had been sucking at,
+with his finger, and dexterously emptied the contents of the gourd into
+a pig-skin which he carried at his back. We went up with the old man to
+his rancho, and tested his pulque, which was very good, though we could
+not say the same of his domestic arrangements. It puzzled us not a
+little to see people living up at this height in houses built of
+sticks, such as are used in the hot lands, and hardly affording any
+protection from the weather, severe as it is here. The pulque is taken
+to market in pig-skins, which, though the pig himself is taken out of
+them, still retain his shape very accurately; and when nearly full of
+liquor, they roll about on their backs, and kick up the little dumpy
+legs that are left them, in the most comical and life-like way. When we
+went away we bought the old man’s acocote, and carried it home in
+triumph, and is it not in the Museum at Kew Gardens to this day? _(See
+the illustration at page 36.)_
+
+At the hacienda of Regla are to be seen on a large scale most of the
+processes which are employed in the extraction of silver from the
+ore—the _beneficio_, or making good, as it is called.
+
+In the great yard, numbers of men and horses were walking round and
+round upon the “tortas,” tarts or pies, as they are called, consisting
+of powdered ore mixed with water, so as to form a circular bed of mud a
+foot deep. To this mud, sulphate of copper, salt, and quicksilver are
+added, and the men and mules walk round and round in it, mixing it
+thoroughly together, a process which is kept up, with occasional
+intervals of rest, for nearly two months. By that time the whole of the
+silver has formed an amalgam with the mercury, and this amalgam is
+afterwards separated from the earth by being trampled under water in
+troughs. We were surprised to find that men and horses could pass their
+lives in wading through mud containing mercury in a state of fine
+division without absorbing it into their bodies, but neither men nor
+horses suffer from it.
+
+We happened to visit the melting-house one evening, while silver and
+lead were being separated by oxidizing the lead in a reverberatory
+furnace. Here we noticed a curious effect. The melted litharge ran from
+the mouth of the furnace upon a floor of damp sand, and spread over it
+in a sheet. Presently, as the heat of the mass vaporized the water in
+the sand below, the sheet of litharge, still slightly fluid, began to
+heave and swell, and a number of small cones rose from its surface.
+Some of these cones reached the height of four inches, and then burst
+at the top, sending out a shower of red-hot fragments. I removed one of
+these cones when the litharge was cool. It had a regidar funnel-shaped
+crater, like that which Vesuvius had until three or four years ago.
+
+The analogy is complete between these little cones and those on the
+lava-field at the foot of the volcano of Jorullo, the celebrated
+“hornitos;” the concentric structure of which, as described by Burkart,
+proves that they were formed in precisely the same manner. Until
+lately, the formation of the great cone of Jorullo was attributed to
+the same kind of action as the hornitos, but later travellers have
+established the fact that this is incorrect. One of the De Saussure
+family, who was in Mexico a few years back, describes Jorullo as
+consisting of three terraces of basaltic lava, which have flowed one
+above another from a central orifice, the whole being surmounted by a
+cone of lapilli thrown up from the same opening, from which also later
+streams of lava have issued.
+
+The celebrated cascade of Regla is just behind the hacienda. There is a
+sort of basin, enclosed on three sides by a perpendicular wall of
+basaltic columns, some eighty feet high. On the side opposite the
+opening, a mountain stream has cut a deep notch in this wall, and pours
+down in a cascade. The basaltic pillars rest upon an undisturbed layer
+of basaltic conglomerate five feet thick, and that upon a bed of clay.
+The place is very picturesque; and two great Yuccas which project over
+the waterfall, crowned with their star-like tufts of pointed leaves,
+have a strange effect. These basalt-columns are very regular, with from
+five to eight sides; and are almost black in colour. They have a
+curiously well-defined circular core in the middle, five or six inches
+in diameter. This core is light grey, almost white. The Indians bring
+down numbers of short lengths or joints of the columns, and they are
+used at the hacienda in making a primitive kind of ore-crushing mill,
+in which they are dragged round and round by mule-power, on a floor
+also of basalt.
+
+When we had visited the falls we took leave of our hospitable friend,
+and set off to return to the Real. We stopped at San Miguel, another of
+the haciendas of the Company, where the German barrel-process is
+worked. Just behind the hacienda is the Ojo de Agua—the Eye of Water—a
+beautiful basin, surrounded by a green sward and a wood of oaks and
+fir-trees. A little stream takes its rise from the spring which bubbles
+up into this basin, and the name “Ojo de Agua,” is a general term
+applied to such fountain-heads. When one looks down from a high hill
+upon one of these Eyes of Water, one sees how the name came to be
+given, and indeed, the idiom is thousands of years older than the
+Spanish tongue, and belongs as well to the Hebrew and Arabic. A Mexican
+calls a lake _atezcatl_, Water-Mirror, an expressive word, which
+reminds one of the German _Wasserspiegel_.
+
+Soon after nightfall we got back to the English inn, and went to bed
+without any further event happening, except the burning of some
+outhouses, which we went out to see. The custom of roofing houses with
+pine-shingles (“tacumeniles”), and the general use of wood for building
+all the best houses, make fires very common here. During the few days
+we spent in the Real district, I find in my notebook mention of three
+fires which we saw. We spent the next day in resting, and in visiting
+the mine-works near at hand. The day after, an Englishman who had lived
+many years at the Real offered to take us out for a day’s ride; and the
+Company’s Administrador lent us two of his own horses, for the poor
+beasts from Pachuca could hardly have gone so far. The first place we
+visited was Peñas Cargadas, the “loaded rocks.” Riding through a thick
+wood of oaks and pines, we came suddenly in view of several sugar-loaf
+peaks, some three hundred feet high, tapering almost to a point at the
+top, and each one crowned with a mass of rocks which seem to have been
+balanced in unstable equilibrium on its point,—looking as though the
+first puff of wind would bring them down. The pillars were of
+porphyritic conglomerate, which had been disintegrated and worn away by
+wind and rain; while the great masses resting on them, probably of
+solid porphyry, had been less affected by these influences. It was the
+most curious example of the weathering of rocks that we had ever seen.
+From Peñas Cargadas we rode on to the farm of Guajalote, where the
+Company has forests, and cuts wood and burns charcoal for the mines and
+the refining works. Don Alejandro, the tenant of the farm, was a
+Scotchman, and a good fellow. He could not go on with us, for he had
+invited a party of neighbours to eat up a kid that had been cooked in a
+hole in the ground, with embers upon it, after Sandwich Island fashion.
+This is called a _barbacoa_—a barbecue. We should have liked to be at
+the feast, but time was short, so we rode on to the top of Mount Jacal,
+12,000 feet above the sea, where there was a view of mountains and
+valleys, and heat that was positively melting. Thence down to the Cerro
+de Navajas, the “hill of knives.” It is on the sides of this hill that
+obsidian is found in enormous quantities. Before the conquerors
+introduced the use of iron, these deposits were regularly mined, and
+this place was the Sheffield of Mexico.
+
+We were curious to see all that was to be seen; for Mr. Christy’s
+Mexican collection, already large before our visit, and destined to
+become much larger, contained numbers of implements and weapons of this
+very peculiar material. Any one who does not know obsidian may imagine
+great masses of bottle-glass, such as our orthodox ugly wine-bottles
+are made of, very hard, very brittle, and—if one breaks it with any
+ordinary implement—going, as glass does, in every direction but the
+right one. We saw its resemblance to this portwine-bottle-glass in an
+odd way at the Ojo de Agua, where the wall of the hacienda was armed at
+the top, after our English fashion, apparently with bits of old
+bottles, but which turned out to be chips of obsidian. Out of this
+rather unpromising stuff the Mexicans made knives, razors, arrow- and
+spear-heads, and
+other things, some of great beauty. I say nothing of the polished
+obsidian mirrors and ornaments, nor even of the curious masks of the
+human face that are to be seen in collections, for these were only
+laboriously cut and polished with jewellers’ sand, to us a common-place
+process.
+
+[Illustration: STONE SPEAR-HEADS AND OBSIDIAN KNIVES AND ARROW-HEADS,
+FROM MEXICO.]
+
+1. Flame shaped Arrow-head; obsidian: Teleohuacán. 2. Arrow-head; opake
+obsidian: Teleohuacán. 3. Knife or Razor of Obsidian; shown in two
+aspects; Mexico. 4. Leaf-shaped Knife or Javelin-head; obsidian: from
+Real Del Monte. 5. Spear-head of Chalcedony; one of a pair supposed to
+be spears of State: found in excavating for the Casa Grande, Tezcuco.
+(This peculiar opalescent chalcedony occurs as concretions, sometimes
+of large size, in the trachytic lavas of Mexico.)
+
+
+Cortes found the barbers at the great market of Tlatelolco busy shaving
+the natives with such razors, and he and his men had experience of
+other uses of the same material in the flights of obsidian-headed
+arrows which “darkened the sky,” as they said, and the more deadly
+wooden maces stuck all over with obsidian points, and of the priests’
+sacrificial knives too, not long after. These things were not cut and
+polished, but made by chipping or cracking off pieces from a lump. This
+one can see by the traces of conchoidal fracture which they all show.
+
+The art is not wholly understood, for it perished soon after the
+Conquest, when iron came in; but, as far as the theory is concerned, I
+think I can give a tolerably satisfactory account of the process of
+manufacture. In the first place, the workman who makes gun-flints could
+probably make some of the simpler obsidian implements, which were no
+doubt chipped off in the same way. The section of a gun-flint, with its
+one side flat for sharpness and the other side ribbed for strength, is
+one of the characteristics of obsidian knives. That the flint knives of
+Scandinavia were made by chipping off strips from a mass is proved by
+the many-sided prisms occasionally found there, and particularly by
+that one which was discovered just where it had been worked, with the
+knives chipped off it lying close by, and fitting accurately into their
+places upon it.
+
+Now to make the case complete, we ought to find such prisms in Mexico;
+and, accordingly, some months ago, when I examined the splendid Mexican
+collection of Mr. Uhde at Heidelberg, I found one or two. No one seemed
+to have suspected their real nature, and they had been classed as
+maces, or the handles of some kind of weapon.
+
+[Illustration: Fluted Prism of Obsidian: the core from which flakes
+have been struck off]
+
+I should say from memory that they were seven or eight inches long, and
+as large as one could conveniently grasp; and one or both of them, as
+if to remove all doubt as to what they were, had the stripping off of
+ribbons not carried quite round them, but leaving an intermediate strip
+rough. There is another point about the obsidian knives which requires
+confirmation. One can often see, on the ends of the Scandinavian flint
+knives, the bruise made by the blow of the hard stone with which they
+were knocked off. I did not think of looking to this point when at Mr.
+Uhde’s museum, but the only obsidian knife I have seen since seems to
+be thus bruised at the end.
+
+[Illustration: Aztec Knives or Razors. Long narrow Flakes of
+Obsidian, having a single face on one side and three facets on the
+other.]
+
+Once able to break his obsidian straight, the workman has got on a long
+way in his trade, for a large proportion of the articles he has to make
+are formed by planes intersecting one another in various directions.
+But the Mexican knives are generally not pointed, but turned up at the
+end, as one may bend up a druggist’s spatula. This peculiar shape is
+not given to answer a purpose, but results from the natural fracture of
+the stone.
+
+Even then, the way of making several implements or weapons is not
+entirely clear. We got several obsidian maces or lance-heads—one about
+ten inches long—which were taper from base to point, and covered with
+taper flutings; and there are other things which present great
+difficulties. I have heard on good authority, that somewhere in Peru,
+the Indians still have a way of working obsidian by laying a bone wedge
+on the surface of a piece, and tapping it till the stone cracks. Such a
+process may have been used in Mexico.
+
+We may see in museums beautiful little articles made in this
+intractable material, such as the mirrors and masks I have mentioned,
+and even rings and cups. But, as I have said, these are mere
+lapidaries’ work.
+
+The situation of the mines was picturesque; grand hills of porphyritic
+rock, and pine-forest everywhere. Not far off is the broad track of a
+hurricane, which had walked through it for miles, knocking the great
+trees down like ninepins, and leaving them to rot there. The vegetation
+gave evident proof of a severe climate; and yet the heat and glare of
+the sun were more intolerable than we had ever felt it in the region of
+sugar-canes and bananas. About here, some of the trachytic porphyry
+which forms the substance of the hills had happened to have cooled,
+under suitable conditions, from the molten state into a sort of slag or
+volcanic glass, which is the obsidian in question; and, in places, this
+vitreous lava—from one layer having flowed over another which was
+already cool—was regularly stratified.
+
+The mines were mere wells, not very deep; with horizontal workings into
+the obsidian where it was very good and in thick layers. Round about
+were heaps of fragments, hundreds of tons of them; and it was clear,
+from the shape of these, that some of the manufacturing was done on the
+spot. There had been great numbers of pits worked; and it was from
+these “minillas,” little mines, as they are called, that we first got
+an idea how important an element this obsidian was in the old Aztec
+civilization. In excursions made since, we travelled over whole
+districts in the plains, where fragments of these arrows and knives
+were to be found, literally at every step, mixed with morsels of
+pottery, and here and there a little clay idol. Among the heaps of
+fragments were many that had become weathered on the upper side, and
+had a remarkable lustre, like silver. Obsidian is called _bizcli_ by
+the Indians, and the silvery sort is known as _bizcli platera_.[11]
+They often find bits of it in the fields; and go with great secrecy and
+mystery to Mr. Bell, or some other authority in mining matters, and
+confide to him their discovery of a silver-mine. They go away angry and
+unconvinced when told what their silver really is; and generally come
+to the conclusion that he is deceiving them, with a view of throwing
+them off the scent, that he may find the place for himself, and cheat
+them of their share of the profits—just what their own miserable morbid
+cunning would lead them to do under such circumstances.
+
+ [11] The book-name for obsidian is _itztli_, a word which seems to
+ mean originally “sharp thing, knife,” and thence to have been applied
+ to the material knives are made of. Obsidian was also called
+ _itztetl_, knife-stone. But no Indian to whom I spoke on the subject
+ would ever acknowledge the existence of such a word as _itztli_ for
+ obsidian, but insisted that it was called _bizcli_, which is
+ apparently the corrupt modern pronunciation of another old name for
+ the same mineral, _petztli_, shiny-stone.
+
+[Illustration: Mexican Arrow-heads of Obsidian.]
+
+The family-likeness that exists among the stone tools and weapons found
+in so many parts of the world is very remarkable. The flint-arrows of
+North America, such as Mr. Longfellow’s arrow-maker used to work at in
+the land of the Dacotahs, and which, in the wild northern states of
+Mexico, the Apaches and Comanches use to this day, might be easily
+mistaken for the weapons of our British ancestors, dug up on the banks
+of the Thames. It is true that the finish of the Mexican obsidian
+implements far exceeds that of the chipped flint and agate weapons of
+Scandinavia, and still more those of England, Switzerland, and Italy,
+where they are dug up in such quantities, in deposits of alluvial soil,
+and in bone-caves in the limestone rocks. But this higher finish we may
+attribute partly to the superiority of the material; for the Mexicans
+also used flint to some extent, and their flint weapons are as hard to
+distinguish by inspection as those from other parts of the world. We
+may reasonably suppose, moreover, that the skill of the Mexican
+artificer increased when he found a better material than flint to work
+upon. Be this as it may, an inspection of any good collection of such
+articles shows the much higher finish of the obsidian implements than
+of those of flint, agate, and rock-crystal. They say there is an
+ingenious artist who makes flint arrow-heads and stone axes for the
+benefit of English antiquarians, and earns good profits by it: I should
+like to give him an order for ribbed obsidian razors and spear-heads; I
+don’t think he would make much of them.
+
+[Illustration: Aztec Knife of Chalcedony, mounted on a wooden handle,
+which is shaped like a human figure with its face appearing through an
+eagle-head mask, and has been inlaid with mosaic work of malachite,
+shell, and turquoise. Length 12½ inches.[12]]
+
+ [12] The unique Knife figured at page 101 and two masks incrusted with
+ a similar mosaic work (of turquoise and obsidian) are in Mr. Christy’s
+ collection; and a mask and head of similar workmanship are in the
+ collection at Copenhagen. These are the only known examples of this
+ advanced style of Aztec art.
+    The whole once belonged probably to one set, brought to Europe soon
+    after the Conquest of Mexico. The two at Copenhagen were obtained
+    at a convent in Rome; and, of the other three, two were for a long
+    period in a collection at Florence, and the other was obtained at
+    Bruges, where it was most probably brought by the Spaniards during
+    their rule in the Low Countries.
+
+The wonderful similarity of character among the stone weapons found in
+different parts of the world has often been used by ethnologists as a
+means of supporting the theory that this and other arts were carried
+over the world by tribes migrating from one common centre of creation
+of the human species. The argument has not much weight, and a larger
+view of the subject quite supersedes it.
+
+We may put the question in this way. In Asia and in Europe the use of
+stone tools and weapons has always characterized a very low state of
+civilization; and such implements are only found among savage tribes
+living by the chase, or just beginning to cultivate the ground and to
+emerge from the condition of mere barbarians. Now, if the Mexicans got
+their civilization from Europe, it must have been from some people
+unacquainted with the use of iron, if not of bronze. Iron abounds in
+Mexico, not only in the state of ore, but occurring nearly pure in
+aerolites of great size, as at Cholula, and at Zacatecas, not far from
+the great ruins there; so that the only reason for their not using it
+must have been ignorance of its qualities.
+
+The Arabian Nights’ story of the mountain which consisted of a single
+loadstone finds its literal fulfilment in Mexico. Not far from Huetamo,
+on the road towards the Pacific, there is a conical hill composed
+entirely of magnetic iron-ore. The blacksmiths in the neighbourhood,
+with no other apparatus than their common forges, make it directly into
+wrought iron, which they use for all ordinary purposes.
+
+Now, in supposing civilization to be transmitted from one country to
+another, we must measure it by the height of its lowest point, as we
+measure the strength of a chain by the strength of the weakest link.
+The only civilization that the Mexicans can have received from the Old
+World must have been from some people whose cutting implements were of
+sharp stone, consequently, as we must conclude by analogy, some very
+barbarous and ignorant tribe.
+
+From this point we must admit that the inhabitants of Mexico raised
+themselves, independently, to the extraordinary degree of culture which
+distinguished them when Europeans first became aware of their
+existence. The curious distribution of their knowledge shows plainly
+that they found it for themselves, and did not receive it by
+transmission. We find a wonderful acquaintance with astronomy, even to
+such details as the real cause of eclipses,—and the length of the year
+given by intercalations of surprising accuracy; and, at the same time,
+no knowledge whatever of the art of writing alphabetically, for their
+hieroglyphics are nothing but suggestive pictures. They had carried the
+art of gardening to a high degree of perfection; but, though there were
+two kinds of ox, and the buffalo at no great distance from them, in the
+countries they had already passed through in their migration from the
+north, they had no idea of the employment of beasts of burden, nor of
+the use of milk. They were a great trading people, and had money of
+several kinds in general use, but the art of weighing was utterly
+unknown to them; while, on the other hand, the Peruvians habitually
+used scales and weights, but had no idea of the use of money.
+
+To return to the stone knives; the Mexicans may very well have invented
+the art themselves, as they did so many others; or they may have
+received it from the Old World. The things themselves prove nothing
+either way.
+
+The real proof of their having, at some early period, communicated with
+inhabitants of Europe or Asia rests upon the traditions current among
+them, which are recorded by the early historians, and confirmed by the
+Aztec picture-writings; and upon several extraordinary coincidences in
+the signs used by them in reckoning astronomical cycles. Further on I
+shall allude to these traditions.
+
+On the whole, the most probable view of the origin of the Mexican
+tribes seems to be the one ordinarily held, that they really came from
+the Old World, bringing with them several legends, evidently the same
+as the histories recorded in the book of Genesis. This must have been,
+however, at a time, when they were quite a barbarous, nomadic tribe;
+and we must regard their civilization as of independent and far later
+growth.
+
+We rode back through the woods to Guajalote, where the Mexican cook had
+made us a feast after the manner of the country, and from her
+experience of foreigners had learnt to temper the chile to our
+susceptible throats. Decidedly the Mexicans are not without ideas in
+the matter of cookery. We stayed talking with the hospitable Don
+Alejandro and his sister till it was all but dark, and then rode back
+to the Real, admiring the fire-flies that were darting about by
+thousands, and listening to our companion’s stories, which turned on
+robberies and murders—-as stories are apt to do in wild places after
+dark. But, save an escape from being robbed some twenty years back, and
+the history of an Indian who was murdered just here by some of his own
+people, for a few shillings he was taking home, our friend had not much
+reason to give for the two huge horse-pistols he carried, ready for
+action. His story of the death of a German engineer in these parts is
+worth recording here. He was riding home one dark night, with a
+companion; and, trusting to his knowledge of the country, tried a short
+cut through the woods, among the old open mines near the Regla road.
+They had quite passed all the dangerous places, he thought, so he gave
+his horse the spur, and plunged sheer down a shaft, hundreds of feet
+deep. His friend pulled up in time, and got home safely.
+
+We had one more day among the mines, and then went back to Pachuca, and
+next day to Mexico in the Diligence. Everywhere the same hospitality
+and good-natured interest in us and our doings, often shown by people
+with whom we had hardly the slightest acquaintance. Travelling here is
+very different from what it is in a country on which the shadow of
+Murray’s Handbook has fallen.
+
+Almost all the interest Europe takes in Mexico, politically and
+commercially, turns upon the exportation of silver. The gold,
+cochineal, and vanilla are of small account. It is the silver dollars
+that pay for the Manchester goods, woollens, hardware, and many other
+things—those ubiquitous boxes of sardines à l’huile, for instance. The
+Mexicans send to Europe some five millions sterling in silver every
+year, that is, about twelve shillings apiece for all the population. It
+is just about what their government spends annually in promoting the
+maladministration of the country (and, looking at the matter in that
+point of view, they don’t do their work badly for the money). The
+income of the Mexican church is not quite so much, but not far off.
+
+Baron Humboldt has expressed a hope that, at some future day, the
+Mexicans will turn their attention to producing articles of real
+intrinsic value, and not those which are merely a sign to represent it.
+He tells us, quite feelingly, how the Peace of Amiens stopped the
+working of the iron-mines that had been opened when they could get no
+iron from abroad; for, when trade was reopened, people preferred buying
+in Europe probably a better article at one-third the price. He even
+hopes an enlightened government will encourage (that is, protect) more
+useful industries. This was written fifty years ago, though. If an
+enlightened government will give people some security for life and
+property, and make reasonable laws, and execute them,—leaving men of
+business to find out for themselves how it suits them to employ their
+capital, it seems probable that the balance between articles of real
+value and articles of imaginary value will adjust itself, perhaps
+better than an enlightened government could do it. The Mexican
+government has, unfortunately, followed Humboldt’s advice in some
+respects. Cotton goods, woollens, and hardware are thus protected. We
+may sum up the statistics of the Mexican cotton-manufacture in a rough
+way thus,—taking merely into question the coarse cotton cloth called
+_manta_, and used principally by the Indians. We may reckon roughly
+that for this article alone the Mexicans have to pay a million sterling
+annually more than they could get it for if there were no
+protection-duty. The only advantage anybody gets by this is that a
+certain part of the population is employed in a manufacture unsuited to
+the country, and is thus taken away from work that may be done
+profitably. The actual amount of money paid in wages to the class of
+operatives thus forced into existence is much _less_ than the amount
+which the country forfeits for the sake of making its manta at home.
+Thus a sum actually amounting to a third of the annual taxation of the
+country is thrown away upon this one article; and more goes the same
+way, to encourage similar unprofitable manufactures.
+
+With respect to the silver-mines, it is stated, on competent authority,
+that the northern States of Mexico are very rich in silver; but there
+is scarcely any population, and that consisting mostly of Red Indians
+who will not work. When this district becomes a territory of the United
+States—as seems almost certain, this silver will, no doubt, be worked.
+We may make three periods in the history of Mexican silver-mining.
+Before the Conquest, the Aztecs worked the silver-ore at Tasco and
+other places; and were very familiar with silver, though they did not
+value it much. Under the Spaniards, the working of silver became the
+prominent industry of the country; and, until the Mexican Independence,
+the production steadily increased. The Spaniards invented amalgamation
+by the _patio_-process, a most, important improvement. Then came above
+twenty years of confusion, when little was done. But when the Republic
+had fairly got under way, and the country was in some measure open to
+foreigners, Europe, especially England, in hot haste to take advantage
+of the opportunity, sent over engineers and machinery, and great sums
+of money, much of which was quite wasted, to the hopeless ruin of a
+great part of the adventurers.
+
+The improvements and the machinery remained, however; and the mines
+passed into other hands. Of late years the companies have been doing
+very well, and now export nearly as much silver as during the latter
+years of the Spanish government—nearly, but not quite. The financial
+history of the Real del Monte Company is worth putting down. The
+original English company spent nearly one million sterling on it,
+without getting any dividend. They sold it to two or three Mexicans for
+about twenty-seven thousand pounds, and the Mexicans spent eighty
+thousand more on it, and then began to make profits. The annual profit
+is now some £200,000.
+
+I have said that the modern Mexican Indian has but little idea of
+arithmetic. This was not the case with his ancestors, who had a curious
+notation, serving for the highest numbers. The Indians of the present
+day use the old Aztec numerals, and from these there is something to be
+learnt.
+
+Baron Humboldt, speaking of the Muysca Indians of South America, says
+that their word for eleven is _quihicha ata_, that is, “foot one;”
+meaning that they have counted all their fingers, and are beginning
+their toes. He proceeds to compare the Persian words, _pentcha_, hand,
+and _pendj_, five, as being connected with one another, and gives
+various other curious instances of finger-numeration. We may carry the
+theory further. The Zulu language reckons from one up to five, and then
+goes on with _tatisitupe_ (“take the thumb”), meaning _six_;
+_tatukomba_ (“take the pointer,” or forefinger), meaning _seven_, and
+so on. The Vei language counts from one up to nineteen, and for twenty
+says _mo bande_—“a person is finished”—that is, both fingers and toes.
+I venture to add another suggestion. Eichhoff gives a Sanskrit word for
+finger, “daiçini” (taken apparently from _pra-deçinî_, forefinger), and
+which corresponds curiously with “daçan,” ten; and we have the same
+resemblance running through many of the Indo-European languages, as
+δεκα and δακτυλος, _decem_ and _digitus_; German, _Zehn_ and _Zehe_,
+and so on.
+
+Here the Mexican numerals will afford us a new illustration. Of the
+meaning of the first four of them—_çe, ome, yei, nahui_—I can give no
+idea, any more than I can of the meaning of the words one, two, three,
+four, which correspond to them; but the Mexican for _five_ is
+_macuilli_, “hand-depicting.” Then we go on in the dark as far as
+_ten_, which is _matlactli_, “hand-half,” as I think it means, (from
+_tlactli_, half); and this would mean, not the halving of a hand, but
+the half of the whole person, which you get by counting his hands only.
+The syllable _ma_, which means “hand,” makes its appearance in the
+words five and ten, and no where else; just as it should do. When we
+come to twenty, we have _cempoalli_, “one counting;” that is, one whole
+man, fingers and toes—corresponding to the Vei word for twenty, “a
+person is finished.”
+
+I think we need no more examples to show that people—in almost all
+countries—reckon by fives, tens, or twenties, merely because they began
+to count upon their fingers and toes. If the strong man who had six
+fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, had invented a system
+of numeration, it would have gone in twelves, nearly like the
+duodecimals which our carpenters use; unless, indeed, he had been
+stupid after the manner of very strong men, and not gone beyond sixes.
+We see how the Romans, though they inherited from their Eastern
+ancestors a numeration by tens up to _decem_, and then beginning again
+_undecim_, &c., yet when they began to write a notation could get no
+farther than five—I., II., III., IV., V.; and then on again, VI., VII.,
+up to ten, from ten to fifteen, and so on.
+
+There is a very curious vulgar error which prevails, even among people
+who have a good practical acquaintance with arithmetic. It is that the
+number _ten_ has some special virtue which fits it for counting up to.
+The fact is that ten is not the best number for the purpose; you can
+halve it, it is true, but that is about all you can do with it, for its
+being divisible by five is of hardly any use for practical purposes.
+_Eight_ would be a much better number, for you can halve it three times
+in succession; and _twelve_ is perhaps the most convenient number
+possible, as it will divide by two, three, and four. It is this
+convenient property that leads tradesmen to sell by dozens, and
+grosses, rather than by tens and hundreds. If we used eights or twelves
+instead of tens for numeration, we might of course preserve all the
+advantages of the Indian or Arabic numerals; in the first case, we
+should discard the ciphers 8 and 9, and reckon 5, 6, 7, 10; and in the
+second case, we should want two new ciphers for ten and eleven; and 10
+would stand for twelve, and 11 for thirteen. Our happening to have ten
+fingers has really led us into a rather inconvenient numerical system.
+
+[Illustration: AZTEC HEAD, IN TERRA COTTA. (PROBABLY EITHER A
+HOUSEHOLD-GOD OR A VOTIVE OFFERING).]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+MEXICO. GUADALUPE.
+
+
+[Illustration: The Rebozo worn by the Women of Mexico; and the Serape
+worn by the Men.]
+
+While we were away at the Real del Monte, the news had reached Mexico
+that Puebla had capitulated, and that the rebel leader had fled. The
+victory was celebrated in the capital with the most triumphal entries,
+harangues, bull-fights, and illuminations done to order. If you had a
+house in one of the principal streets, the police would make you
+illuminate it, whether you liked or not. The newspapers loudly
+proclaimed the triumph of the constitutional principle, and the
+inauguration of a reign of law and order that was never to cease.
+
+As for the newspapers, indeed, one looked in vain in them for any free
+expression of public opinion. They were all either suppressed, or
+converted into the merest mouthpieces of the government. The telegraph
+was under the strictest surveillance, and no messages were allowed to
+be sent which the government did not consider favourable to their
+interests; a precaution which rather defeated itself, as the people
+soon ceased to believe any public news at all. In all these mean little
+shifts, which we in England consider as the special property of
+despotic governments, the authorities of the Mexican Republic showed
+themselves great proficients.
+
+We were left, therefore, to form what idea we could of the real state
+of Mexican affairs, from the private information received by our
+friends. Just for once it may be worth while to give a few details, not
+because the people engaged were specially interesting, but because the
+affair may serve to give an idea of the condition of the country.
+
+President Comonfort, not a bad sort of man, as it seemed, but not
+“strong enough for the place,” and with an empty treasury, tried to
+make a stand against the clergy and the army, who stood firm against
+any attempt at reform—knowing, with a certain instinct, that, if any
+real reform once began, their own unreasonable privileges would soon be
+attacked. So the clergy and part of the army set up an anti-president,
+one Haro; and he installed himself at Puebla, which is the second city
+of the Republic, and there Comonfort besieged him. So far I have
+already described the doings of the “reaccionarios.”
+
+The newspapers gave wonderful accounts of attacks and repulses, and
+reckoned the killed on both sides at 2,500. There were 10,000 regular
+troops, and 10,000 irregulars (very irregular troops indeed); and these
+were commanded by a complete regiment of officers, and _forty_
+generals. This is reckoning both sides; but as, on pretty good
+authority (Tejada’s statistical table), the troops in the Republic are
+only reckoned at 12,000, no doubt the above numbers are much
+exaggerated. As for the 2,500 killed, the fact is that the siege was a
+mere farce; and, judging by what we heard at the time in Mexico, and
+soon afterwards in Puebla itself, 25 was a much more correct estimate:
+and some facetious people reduced it, by one more division, to two and
+a half. The President had managed, by desperate efforts, to borrow some
+money in Mexico, on the credit of the State, at sixty per cent.; and it
+seems certain that it was this money, judiciously administered to some
+of Haro’s generals, that brought about the flight of the
+anti-president, and the capitulation of Puebla. The termination of the
+affair, according to the newspapers, was, that the rebel army were
+incorporated with the constitutional troops; that their officers—500 in
+number—were reduced to the ranks for a term of years; that a hot
+pursuit was made after the fugitive Haro; and that, as it was notorious
+that the clergy had found the money for the rebellion, it was
+considered suitable that they should pay the expenses of the other side
+too; and an order was made on the church-estates of the district to
+that effect. Of course, it was an understood thing that the officers
+thus degraded would desert at the first opportunity, and thus the
+Government would be rid of them. As for Haro, it is not probable that
+they ever intended to catch him; and they were very glad when he
+disguised himself in sailor’s clothes, and shipped himself off
+somewhere. When the Mexicans first took to civil wars, the victorious
+leader used to finish the contest by having his adversary shot. At the
+time of our visit, this fashion had gone out; and the victor treated
+the vanquished with great leniency, not unmindful of the time when he
+might be in a like situation himself.
+
+Whether the President ever got much of the forced contribution from the
+clergy, I cannot say. At any rate, they have turned him out since; and
+for a very poor government have substituted mere chaotic anarchy, as
+Mr. Carlyle would call it. While the siege was going on, all the
+commerce between Vera Cruz and the capital was interrupted, and, of
+course, trade and manufacturing felt the effects severely. Nothing
+shews the capabilities of the country more clearly than the fact that,
+in spite of its distracted state and continual wars, its industrial
+interests seem to be gaining ground steadily, though very slowly. The
+evil of these ceaseless wars and revolutions is not that great battles
+are here fought, cities destroyed, and men sacrificed by thousands.
+Perhaps in no country in the world are “decisive victories,”
+“sanguinary engagements,” “brilliant attacks,” and the like, got over
+with less loss of life. Incredible as it may seem to any one who knows
+how many civil wars and revolutions occur in the history of the country
+for the last four or five years, I should not wonder if the number of
+persons killed during that time in actual battle was less than the
+number of those deliberately assassinated, or killed in private
+quarrels.
+
+Cheap as Mexican revolutions are in actual bloodshed, we must recollect
+what they bring with them. Thousands of deserters prowling about the
+country, robbing and murdering, and spreading everywhere the precious
+lessons they have learnt in barracks. We know something in England of
+the good moral influence that garrisons and recruiting sergeants carry
+about with them; and can judge a little what must be the result of the
+spreading of numbers of these fellows over a country where there is
+nothing to restrain their excesses! As for the soldiers themselves, one
+does not wonder at their deserting, for they are in great part pressed
+men, carried off from their homes, and shut up in barracks till they
+have been drilled, and are considered to be tamed; and moreover their
+pay, as one may judge from the general state of the military finances,
+is anything but regular. People who understand such matters, say that
+the Mexicans make very good soldiers, and fight well and steadily when
+well trained and well officered. They are able to march surprising
+distances, day after day, to live cheerfully on the very minimum of
+food, and to sleep anyhow. This we could judge for ourselves. One thing
+there is, however, that they strongly object to, and that is to be
+moved much beyond the range of their own climate. The men of the plains
+are as susceptible as Europeans to the ill effects of the climate of
+the tierra caliente; and the men of the hot lands cannot bear the cold
+of the high plateaus.
+
+Travellers in the United States make great fun of the profusion of
+colonels and generals, and tell ludicrous stories on the subject. There
+is also talk of the absurd number of officers in the Spanish-American
+armies, but we should not, by any means, confound the two things. In
+the United States it is merely a harmless exhibition of vanity, and an
+amusing comment on their own high-minded abnegation of mere titles. In
+Spanish America it indicates a very real and serious evil indeed.
+
+Don Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, in his statistical chart for 1856, quoted
+above, estimates the soldiers in the Republic at 12,000, and the
+officers at 2,000, not counting those on half-pay. One officer to every
+six men; and among them sixty-nine generals. These are not mere militia
+heroes, walking about in fine uniforms, but have actual commissions
+from some one of the many governments that have come and gone, and are
+entitled to their pay, which they get or do not get, as may happen.
+Only a fraction of them know anything whatever about the art of war.
+They were political adventurers, friends or relatives of some one in
+power, or simply speculators who bought their commissions as a sort of
+illegitimate Government Annuities. The continual rebellions or
+pronunciamientos have increased the number of officers still further.
+Comonfort’s notion of degrading all the officers of the rebel army was
+a new and bold experiment. A very common course had been, when a
+pronunciamiento had been made anywhere against the then existing
+government, and a revolutionary army had been raised, for an
+amalgamation to take place between the two forces; intrigue and bribery
+and mutual disinclination to fight bringing matters to this peaceful
+kind of settlement. In this case, it was usual for the rebel officers
+to retain their self-conferred dignities.
+
+I think this body of soldierless officers is one of the most
+troublesome political elements at work in the Republic. The political
+agitators are mostly among them; and it is they, more than any other
+class, who are continually stirring up factions and making
+pronunciamientos (what a pleasant thing it is that we have never had to
+make an English word for “pronunciamiento”). Several times, efforts
+have been made to reduce the Army List to decent proportions, but a
+fresh crop always springs up.
+
+In the “lowest depth” of mismanagement to which Mexican military
+affairs have sunk, the newspapers still triumphantly refer to countries
+which surpass them in this respect, and, at the time of our arrival,
+were citing the statistics of the Peruvian Republic, where there are a
+general and twenty officers to every sixty soldiers, and as many naval
+officers as seamen.
+
+These officers are not subject to the civil administration at all,
+whatever they may do. They have their _fuero_, their private charter,
+and are only amenable to their own tribunals, just as the clergy are to
+theirs. To the ill effects of the presence of such armies and such
+officers in the country, we must add the continual interruptions to
+commerce arising from the distracted state of the republic, and the
+uncertain tenure by which every one holds his property, not to say his
+life; and this, in its effect on the morale of the whole country, is
+worse than the positive suffering they inflict. So much for soldiering,
+for the present. We leave the President trying, with the aid of his
+Congress, to organize the government, and set things straight
+generally. This August assembly is selected from the people by
+universal suffrage, in the most approved manner, and ought to be a very
+important and useful body, but unfortunately can do nothing but talk
+and issue decrees, which no one else cares about.
+
+In consequence of the alarming increase of highway-robbery, steps are
+taken to diminish the evil. It is made lawful to punish such offenders
+on the spot, by Lynch law. This is all. You may do justice on him when
+caught, but really you must catch him yourself. Sober citizens are even
+regretting the days of Santa Ana (recollect, I speak now of 1856, and
+they might regret him still more in 1860.) He was a great scoundrel, it
+is true; but he sent down detachments of soldiery to where the robbers
+practised their profession, and garotted them in pairs, till the roads
+were as safe as ours are in England. A President who sells states and
+pockets the money may have even that forgiven him in consideration of
+roads kept free from robbers, and some attempt at an effectual police.
+There is a lesson in this for Mexican rulers.
+
+The Congress professed to be hard at work cleaning out the Augean
+stable of laws, rescripts, and proclamations, and making a working
+constitution. We went to see them one day, and heard talking going on,
+but it all came to nothing. Of one thing we may be quite sure, that if
+this unlucky country ever does get set straight, it will not be done by
+a Mexican Congress sitting and cackling over it.
+
+On our return from the Real, we spent two days at the house of an
+English friend at Tisapán, at the edge of the great Pedrigal, or
+lava-field, which lies south of the capital. It was across this
+lava-field that a part of the American army marched in ’47, and
+defeated a division of the Mexican forces encamped at Contrevas. On the
+same day the American army attacked the Mexicans who held a strongly
+fortified position at Churubusco, some four miles nearer Mexico, and
+routed the main army there. They beat them again at Molino del Rey,
+carried the hill of Chapultepec by storm, and then entered the city
+without meeting with further resistance; though the Mexicans, after
+they had formally yielded possession of the city, disgraced themselves
+by assassinating stray Americans, stabbing them in the streets, and
+lazoing them from the tops of the low mud houses in the suburbs.
+
+An acquaintance of ours in Mexico met some American soldiers, with a
+corporal, in the street close to his house, and asked them in.
+Presently the corporal sent one of the men off into the next street to
+execute some commission; but half an hour elapsed, and the man not
+returning, the corporal went out to see what was the matter. He came
+back presently, and remarked that some of those cursed Mexicans had
+stabbed the man as he was turning the corner of the street, and left
+him lying there. “So,” said the corporal, “I may as well finish his
+brandy and water for him;” he did so accordingly, and the men went home
+to their quarters.
+
+The American soldiers were, as one may imagine, a rough lot. Only the
+smaller part of them were born Americans, the rest were emigrants from
+Europe; to judge by what we heard of them—both in the States and in
+Mexico—the very refuse of all the scoundrels in the Republic; but they
+were well officered, and rigid discipline was maintained. So
+effectually were they kept in order, that the Mexicans confessed that
+it was a smaller evil to have the enemy’s forces marching through the
+country, than their own army.
+
+An elaborate account of the American invasion is given in Mayer’s
+‘Mexico.’ To those who do not care for details of military operations,
+there are still points of interest in the history. That ten thousand
+Americans should have been able to get through the mountain-passes, and
+to reach the capital at all, is an astonishing thing; and after that,
+their successes in the valley of Mexico follow as a matter of course.
+They could never have crossed the mountains but for a combination of
+circumstances.
+
+The inhabitants generally displayed the most entire indifference;
+possibly preferring to sell their provisions to the Americans, instead
+of being robbed of them by their own countrymen. Add to this, that the
+Mexican officers showed themselves grossly ignorant of the art of war;
+and that the soldiers, though they do not seem to have been deficient
+in courage, were badly drilled and insubordinate. One would not have
+wondered at the army being in such a condition—-in a country that had
+long been in a state of profound peace; but in Mexico a standing army
+had been maintained for years, at a great expense, and continual civil
+wars ought to have given people some ideas about soldiering. We may
+judge, from the events of this war, that Mexico might be kept in good
+order by a small number of American troops. The mere holding of the
+country is not the greatest difficulty in the question of American
+annexation.
+
+One thing that struck our friends at Tisapán, among their experiences
+of the war, was the number of dead bodies of women and children that
+were found on the battle-fields. A crowd of women follow close in the
+rear of a Mexican army; almost every soldier having some woman who
+belongs to him, and who carries a heavy load of Indian corn and babies,
+and cooks tortillas for her lord and master. The number of these poor
+creatures who perished in the war was very great.
+
+We spent much of our time at Tisapán in collecting plants, and
+exploring the lava-field, and the cañada, or ravine, that leads up into
+the mountains that skirt the valley of Mexico. I recollect one
+interesting spot we came to in riding through the pine-forest on the
+northern slope of the mountains, where the course of a torrent, now
+dry, ran along a mere narrow trench in the hard porphyritic rock, some
+ten or fifteen feet wide, until it had suddenly entered a bed of
+gravel, where it had hollowed out a vast ravine, four hundred feet wide
+and two hundred deep, the inlet of the water being, in proportion, as
+small as the pipe that serves to fill a cistern.
+
+Such places are common enough in the south of Europe, but seldom on so
+grand a scale as one finds them in this country, where the floods come
+down from the hills with astounding suddenness and violence. Mr. L. had
+experience of this one day, when he had got inside his waterwheel, to
+inspect its condition, the water being securely shut off, as he
+thought. However, an aversada—one of these sudden freshets—came down,
+quite without notice; and enough water got into the channel to set the
+wheel going, so as to afford its proprietor a very curious and exciting
+ride, after the manner of a squirrel in a revolving cage, until the
+people succeeded in drawing off the water.
+
+It was after our return from Tisapán that we paid a visit to Our Lady
+of Guadalupe, rather an important personage in the history of Mexican
+church-matters. The way lies past Santo Domingo, the church of the Holy
+Office, and down a long street where live the purveyors of all things
+for the muleteers. Here one may buy mats, ropes, pack-saddles—which the
+arrieros delight to have ornamented with fanciful designs and
+inscriptions, lazos, and many other things of the same kind. Passing
+out through the city-gate, we ride along a straight causeway, which
+extends to Guadalupe. A dull road enough in itself, but the
+interminable strings of mules and donkeys, bringing in pig-skins full
+of pulque, are worth seeing for once; and the Indians, trudging out and
+in with their various commodities, are highly picturesque.
+
+On a building at the side of the causeway we notice “Estación de
+Méjico” (Mexico Station) painted in large letters. As far as we could
+observe, this very suggestive sign-board is the whole plant of the
+Railway Company at this end of the line. A range of hills ends abruptly
+in the plain, at a place which the Indians called Tepeyacac, “end of
+the hill” (literally “at the hill’s nose”). Our causeway leads to this
+spot; and there, at the foot and up the slope of the hill, are built
+the great cathedral and other churches and chapels, altogether a vast
+and imposing collection of buildings; and round these a considerable
+town has grown up, for this is the great place of pilgrimage in the
+country.
+
+The Spaniards had brought a miraculous picture with them, Nuestra
+Señora de Remedios, which is still in the country, and many pilgrims
+visit it; but Our Lady of Guadalupe is a native Mexican, and decidedly
+holds the first rank in the veneration of the people.
+
+In the great church there is a picture mounted in a gold frame of great
+value. Its distance from the altar-rails, and the pane of glass which
+covers it, prevent one’s seeing it very well. This was the more
+unfortunate, as, according to my history, the picture is in itself
+evidently of miraculous origin, for the best artists are agreed that no
+human hand could imitate the drawing or the colour! It appears that the
+Aztecs, long before the arrival of the Spaniards, had been in the habit
+of worshipping—in this very place—a goddess, who was known as
+_Teotenantzin_, “mother-god,” or _Tonantzin_, “our mother.” Ten years
+after the Conquest, a certain converted Indian, Juan Diego (John James)
+by name, was passing that way, and to him appeared the Virgin Mary. She
+told him to go to the bishop, and tell him to build her a temple on the
+place where she stood, giving him a lapful of flowers as a token. When
+the flowers were poured out of the garment, in presence of the bishop,
+the miraculous picture appeared underneath, painted on the apron
+itself. The bishop accepted the miracle with great unction; the temple
+was built, and the miraculous image duly installed in it. Its name of
+“Santa Maria de Guadalupe,” was not, as one might imagine, taken from
+the Madonna of that name in Spain (of course not!), but was
+communicated by Our Lady herself to another converted Indian. She told
+him that her title was to be _Santa Maria de Tequatlanopeuh_, “Saint
+Mary of the rocky hill,” of which hard word the Spaniards made
+“Guadalupe,”—just as they had turned Quauhnahuac into Cuernavaca, and
+Quauhaxallan into Guadalajara, substituting the nearest word of Spanish
+form for the unpronounceable Mexican names. This at least is the
+ingenious explanation given by my author, the Bachelor Tanco, Professor
+of the Aztec language, and of Astrology, in the University of Mexico,
+in the year 1666. The bishop who authenticated the miracle was no less
+a person than Fray Juan de Zumarraga, whose name is well known in
+Mexican history, for it was he who collected together all the Aztec
+picture-writings that he could find, “quite a mountain of them,” say
+the chroniclers, and made a solemn bonfire of them in the great square
+of Tlatelolco. The miracles worked by the Virgin of Guadalupe, and by
+copies of it, are innumerable; and the faith which the lower orders of
+Mexicans and the Indians have in it is boundless.
+
+On the 12th of December, the Anniversary of the Apparition is kept, and
+an amazing concourse of the faithful repair to the sanctuary. Heller, a
+German traveller who was in Mexico in 1846, saw an Indian taken to the
+church; he had broken his leg, which had not even been set, and he
+simply expected Our Lady to cure him without any human intervention at
+all. Unluckily, the author had no opportunity of seeing what became of
+him. The great miracle of all was the deliverance of Mexico from the
+great inundation of 1626, and the fact is established thus. The city
+was under water, the inhabitants in despair. The picture was brought to
+the Cathedral in a canoe, through the streets of Mexico; and between
+one and two years afterwards the inundation subsided. _Ergo_, it was
+the picture that saved the city!
+
+For centuries a fierce rivalry existed between the Spanish Virgin,
+called “de Remedios,” and Our Lady of Guadalupe; the Spaniards
+supporting the first, and the native Mexicans the second. A note of
+Humboldt’s illustrates this feeling perfectly. He relates that whenever
+the country was suffering from drought, the Virjen do Remedios was
+carried into Mexico in procession, to bring rain, till it came to be
+said, quite as a proverb, _Hasta el agua nos debe venir de la
+Gachupina_—“We must get even our water from that Spanish creature.” If
+it happened that the Spanish Madonna produced no effect after a long
+trial, the native Madonna was allowed to be brought solemnly in by the
+Indians, and never failed in bringing the wished-for rain, which always
+came sooner or later. It is remarkable that the Spanish party, who were
+then all-powerful, should have allowed their own Madonna to be placed
+at such a disadvantage, in not having the last innings. I need hardly
+say that the shrine of Guadalupe is monstrously rich. The Chapter has
+been known to lend such a thing as a million or two of dollars at a
+time, though most of their property is invested on landed security.
+They are allowed to have lotteries, and make something handsome out of
+them; and they even sell medals and prints of their patroness, which
+have great powers. You may have plenary indulgence in the hour of death
+for sixpence or less. We drank of the water of the chalybeate spring,
+bought sacred lottery-tickets, which turned out blanks, and tickets for
+indulgences, which, I greatly fear, will not prove more valuable; and
+so rode home along the dusty causeway to breakfast.
+
+As means of learning what sort of books the poorer classes in Mexico
+preferred, we overhauled with great diligence the book-stalls, of which
+there are a few, especially under the arcades (Portales) near the great
+square. The Mexican public have not much cheap literature to read; and
+the scanty list of such popular works is half filled with Our Lady of
+Guadalupe, and other miracle-books of the same kind. Father Ripalda’s
+Catechism has a large circulation, and is apparently the one in general
+use in the country. Zavala speaks of this catechism as containing the
+maxims of blind obedience to king and pope; but my more modern edition
+has scarcely anything to say about the Pope, and nothing at all about
+the government. Of late years, indeed, the Pope has not counted for
+much, politically, in Mexico; and on one occasion his Holiness found,
+when he tried to interfere about church-benefices, that his authority
+was rather nominal than real. On the whole, nothing in the Catechism
+struck me so much as the multiplication-table, which, to my unspeakable
+astonishment, turned up in the middle of the book; a table of fractions
+followed; and then it began again with the Holy Trinity.
+
+To continue our catalogue; there are the almanacks, which contain rules
+for foretelling the weather by the moon’s quarters, but none of the
+other fooleries which we find in those that circulate in England among
+the less educated classes. It is curious to notice how the taste for
+putting sonnets and other dreary poems at the beginnings and ends of
+books has survived in these Spanish countries. What used to be known in
+England as “a copy of verses” is still appreciated here, and almanacks,
+newspapers, religious books, even programmes of plays and bull-fights,
+are full of such dismal compositions. We ought to be thankful that the
+fashion has long since gone out with us (except in the religions tract,
+where it still survives). It is not merely apropos of sonnets, but of
+thousands of other things, that in these countries one is brought, in a
+manner, face to face with England as it used to be; and very trifling
+matters become interesting when viewed in this light. The last item in
+the list comprises translations, principally of French novels, those
+being preferred in which the agony is “piled up” to the highest point.
+German literature is represented by the “Sorrows of Werter.” Of course,
+“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is widely circulated here, as it is everywhere in
+countries not given to the “particular vanity” attacked in it.
+
+One need hardly say that both literature and education are at a very
+low ebb in Mexico. Referring to Tejada again, I find that he reckons
+that in the capital, out of a population of 185,000, there are 12,000
+scholars at primary schools; but of course, as in other countries, a
+large proportion of these children attend so irregularly that they can
+hardly learn anything. For the country generally, he estimates one
+child receiving instruction out of thirty-seven inhabitants, a very
+significant piece of statistics. Efforts are being made, especially in
+the capital, to raise the population out of this state. Mr. Christy
+took much trouble in investigating the subject, with the assistance of
+our friend Don José Miguel Cervantes, the head of the Ayuntamiento, or
+Municipal Council. This gentleman, with a few others, has been doing
+much up-hill work of this kind for years past, establishing schools,
+and trying to make head against the opposition of the priests and the
+indifference of the people, as yet with but small success.
+
+It seems hard to be always attacking the Roman Catholic clergy, but of
+one thing we cannot remain in doubt,—that their influence has had more
+to do than anything else with the doleful ignorance which reigns
+supreme in Mexico. For centuries they had the education of the country
+in their hands, and even at this day they retain the greater share of
+it. The training which the priests themselves receive will therefore
+give one some idea of what they teach their scholars. Unluckily, their
+course of instruction was stereotyped ages ago, when learned men
+devoted themselves to writing huge books on divinity, casuistry, logic,
+and metaphysics; concealing their ignorance of facts under an
+affectation of wisdom and clouds of long words; demonstrating how many
+millions of angels could dance on a needle’s point; writing treatises
+“_de omni re scibili_,” and on a good many things unknowable also; and
+teaching their admiring scholars the art of building up sham arguments
+on any subject, whether they know anything about it or not. This is a
+very vicious system of training for a man’s mind, the more especially
+when it is supposed to set him up with a stock of superior knowledge;
+and this is what the Roman Catholic clergy have been learning,
+generation after generation, in Mexico and elsewhere. Of course, there
+are plenty of exceptions, particularly among the higher clergy; but, so
+far as I have been able to ascertain, education in clerical schools has
+generally been of this kind. It is instinctive to talk a little, as one
+occasionally finds an opportunity of doing, to some youth just out of
+these colleges. I recollect speaking to a young man who had just left
+the Seminario of Mexico, where he had been through a long course of
+theology and philosophy. He was astonished to hear that bull-fighting
+and colearing were not universally practised in Europe; and, when his
+father began to question me about the Crimean war, the young
+gentleman’s remarks showed that he had not the faintest idea where
+England and France were, nor how far they were from one another.
+
+I happened, not long ago, to visit a celebrated monastic college in
+South Italy, where they educated, not ordinary mortals, but only young
+men of noble birth; and here I took particular care in inspecting the
+library, judging that, though the scholars need not learn all that was
+there, yet that no department of knowledge would be taught there that
+was not represented on the library-shelves. What I saw fully confirmed
+all that I had previously seen and heard about the monastic learning of
+the present day. There were to be seen many fine manuscripts, and
+black-letter books, and curious old editions of great value, good store
+of classics (mostly Latin, however), works of the Fathers by the
+hundred-weight, and quartos and folios of canon-law, theology,
+metaphysics, and such like, by the ton. But it seemed that, in the
+estimation of the librarians, the world had stood still since the time
+of Duns Scotus; for, of what we call positive knowledge, except a
+little arithmetic and geometry, and a few very poor histories, I saw
+nothing. It is easy to see how one result of the clerical monopoly of
+education has therefore come about—that the intellectual standard is
+very low in Mexico. The Holy Office, too, has had its word to say in
+the matter. This institution had not much work to do in burning
+Indians, who were anything but sceptical in their turn of mind, and,
+indeed, were too much like Theodore Hook, and would believe “forty, if
+you pleased.” They even went further, and were apt to believe not only
+what the missionaries taught them, but to cherish the memory of their
+old gods into the bargain. It was three centuries after the Conquest,
+that Mr. Bullock got the goddess Teoyaomiqui dug up in Mexico; and the
+old Indian remarked to him that it was true the Spaniards had given
+them three very good new gods, but it was rather hard to take away all
+their old ones. At any rate, the functions of the Inquisition were
+mostly confined to working the _Index Expurgatorius_, and suppressing
+knowledge generally, which they did with great industry until not long
+ago.
+
+Here, then, are two causes of Mexican ignorance, and a third may be
+this; that Mexico was a colony to which the Spaniards generally came to
+make their fortunes, with a view of returning to their own land; and
+this state of things was unfavourable to the country as regards the
+progress of knowledge, as well as in other things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+TEZCUCO.
+
+
+Across the lake of Tezcuco is Tezcuco itself, a great city and the
+capital of a kingdom at the time of the Conquest, and famous for its
+palaces and its learned men. Now it is an insignificant Spanish town,
+built, indeed, to a great extent, of the stones of the old buildings.
+Mr. Bowring, who has evaporating-works at the edge of the lake, and
+lives in the “Casa Grande”—the Great House, just outside Tezcuco, has
+invited us to pay him a visit; so we get up early one April morning,
+and drive down to the street of the Solitude of Holy Cross (Calle de la
+Soledad de Santa Cruz). There we find Mr. Millard, a Frenchman, who is
+an _employé_ of Mr. Bowling’s, and is going back to Tezcuco with us;
+and we walk down to the canal with him, half a dozen Indian porters
+with baskets following us, and trotting along in the queer shuffling
+way that is habitual to them. At the landing-place we find a number of
+canoes, and a crowd of Indians, men and women, in scanty cotton
+garments which show the dirt in an unpleasant manner. A canoe is going
+to Tezcuco, a sort of regular packet-boat, in fact; and of this canoe
+Mr. Millard has retained for us three the stern half, over which is
+stretched an awning of aloe-fibre cloth. The canoe itself is merely a
+large shallow box, made of rough planks, with sloping prow and stern,
+more like a bread-tray in shape than anything else I can think of.
+There is no attempt at making the bows taper, and indeed the Indians
+stoutly resist this or any other innovation. In the fore part of the
+canoe there is already a heap of other passengers, lying like bait in a
+box, and when we arrive the voyage begins.
+
+The crew are ten in number; the captain, eight men, and an old woman in
+charge of the tortillas and the pulque-jar. All these are brown people;
+in fact, the navigation of the lakes is entirely in the hands of the
+Indians, and “reasonable people” have nothing to do with it. Reasonable
+people—“gente de razón”—being, as I have said before, those who have
+any white blood in them; and republican institutions have not in the
+least effaced the distinction.
+
+So it comes to pass that the canoe-traffic is carried on in much the
+same way as it was in Montezuma’s time. There is one curious
+difference, however. These canoes are all poled about the lakes and
+canals; and I do not think we saw an Indian oar or paddle in the whole
+valley of Mexico. In the ancient picture-writings, however, the Indians
+are paddling their canoes with a kind of oar, shaped at the end like
+one of our fire-shovels. But, as we have seen, the distribution of land
+and water has altered since those days; and the lakes, far greater in
+extent, were of course several feet deeper all over the present beds;
+and even at a short distance from the city poling would have been
+impossible. I suspect that the Aztecs originally used both poles and
+paddles, and that the latter went out of use when the water became
+shallow enough for the pole to serve all purposes. Otherwise, we must
+suppose that the Mexicans, since the Spanish Conquest, introduced a new
+invention; which is not easy to believe.
+
+We had first to get out of the canal, and fairly out into the lake.
+This was the more desirable, as the canal is one of the drains of the
+city, an office that it fills badly enough, seeing that there is
+scarcely any fall of water from the lower quarters of the city to the
+lake. I never saw water-snakes in numbers to compare with those in the
+canal, and by the side of it. They were swimming in the water,
+wriggling in and out; and on the banks they were writhing in heaps,
+like our passengers forward. Two of our crew tow us along, and we are
+soon clear of the canal, and of the salt-swamp that extends on both
+sides of it, where the bottom of the lake was in old times. Once fairly
+out, we look round us. We see Mexico from a new point of view, and
+begin to understand why the Spaniards called it the Venice of the New
+World. Even now, though the lake is so much smaller than it was then,
+the city, with its domes and battlemented roofs, seems to rise from the
+water itself, for the intervening flat is soon foreshortened into
+nothing. At the present moment it is evident that the level of the lake
+is much higher than usual. A little way off, on our right, is the Peñón
+de los Baños—“the rock of baths”—a porphyritic hill forced up by
+volcanic agency, where there are hot springs. It is generally possible
+to reach this hill by land, but the water is now so high that the rock
+has become an island as it used to be.
+
+When the first two brigantines were launched on the Lake of Tezcuco by
+the Spaniards, Cortes took Montezuma with him to sail upon the lake,
+soon leaving the Aztec canoes far behind. They went to a Peñón or rocky
+hill where Montezuma preserved game for his own hunting, and not even
+the highest nobility were allowed to hunt there on pain of death. The
+Spaniards had a regular battue there; killing deer, hares, and rabbits
+till they were tired. This Peñón may have been the Peñón de los Baños
+which we are just passing, but was more probably a similar hill a
+little further off, of larger extent, now fortified and known as El
+Peñón, the Hill. Both were in those days complete islands at some
+distance from the shore.
+
+Now that we are out of the canal, our Indians begin to pole us along,
+thrusting their long poles to the bottom of the shallow lake, and
+walking on two narrow planks which extend along the sides of the canoe
+from the prow to the middle point. Four walk on each plank, each man
+throwing up his pole as he gets to the end, and running back up the
+middle to begin again at the prow. The dexterity with which they swing
+the poles about, and keep them out of each other’s way, is wonderful;
+and, as seen from our end of the canoe, looks like a kind of
+exaggerated quarter-staff playing, only nobody is ever hit.
+
+The great peculiarity of the lake of Tezcuco is that it is a salt lake,
+containing much salt and carbonate of soda. The water is quite brackish
+and undrinkable. How it has come to be so is plain enough. The streams
+from the surrounding mountains bring down salt and soda in solution,
+derived from the decomposed porphyry; and as the water of the lake is
+not drained off into the sea, but evaporates, the solid constituents
+are left to accumulate in the lake.
+
+In England, I think, we have no example of this; but the Dead Sea, the
+Caspian, the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and even the Mediterranean, have
+various salts accumulated in solution in the same way. It seems to me,
+that, by taking into account the proportion of soluble material
+contained in the water that flows down from the mountains, the probable
+quantity of water that flows down in the year, and the proportion of
+salt in the lake itself, some vague guess might be made as to the time
+this state of things has been lasting. I have no data, unfortunately,
+even for such a rough calculation as this, or I should like to try it.
+
+In spite of the splendid climate, a great portion of the Valley of
+Mexico is anything but fertile; for the soil is impregnated with salt
+and soda, which in many places are so abundant as to form, when the
+water evaporates, a white efflorescence on the ground, which is called
+_tequesquite_, and regularly collected by the Indians. Some of it is
+stopped on its way down from the higher ground, by the evaporation of
+the water that was carrying it; and some is left by the lake itself, in
+its frequent floodings of the ground in its neighbourhood. So small is
+the difference of level between the lake and the plain that surrounds
+it, that the slightest rise in the height of the water makes an immense
+difference in the size of the lake; and even a strong wind will drive
+the water over great tracts of ground, from which it retires when the
+gale ceases. It must have been this, or something similar, that set
+Cortes upon writing home to Spain that the lakes were like inland seas,
+and even had tides like the ocean. Of course, this impregnation with
+salts is ruinous to the soil, which will produce nothing in such places
+but tufts of coarse grass; and the shores of the lake are the most
+dismal districts one can imagine. All the lakes, however, are not so
+salt as Tezcuco; Chalco, for instance, is a fresh-water lake, and there
+the fertility of the shores is very great, as I have already had
+occasion to notice.
+
+As soon as the novelty of this kind of travelling had worn off, we
+began to find it dull, and retired under our awning to breakfast and
+bitter beer; which latter luxury, thanks to a suitable climate and an
+English brewer, is very well understood in Mexico, and is even accepted
+as a great institution by the Mexicans themselves.
+
+We were just getting into a drowsy state, when an unusual bustle among
+the crew brought us out of our den, and we found that three hours of
+assiduous poling had taken us half-way across the lake, just six
+miles—a good test of the value of the Aztec system of navigation. Here
+was a wooden cross set up in the water; and here, from time out of
+mind, the boatmen have been used to sing a little hymn to the Madonna,
+by whose favour we had got so far, and hoped to get safe to the end of
+our voyage. Very well they sang it too, and the scene was as striking
+as it was unexpected to us. It seemed to us, however, to be making a
+great matter of crossing a piece of water only a few feet deep; but Mr.
+Millard assured us, that when a sudden gale came on, it was a
+particularly unpleasant place to be afloat in a Mexican canoe, which,
+being flat-bottomed, has no hold at all on the water, and from its
+shape is quite unmanageable in a wind. He himself was once caught in
+this way, and kept out all night, with a “heavy sea” on the lake, the
+boat drifting helplessly, and threatening to overturn every moment, and
+that in places where the water was quite deep enough to drown them all.
+The Indians lost their heads entirely, and throwing down their poles
+fell on their knees, and joined in the chorus with the women and
+children and the rest of the helpless brown people, beating their
+breasts, and presenting medals and prints of our Lady of Guadalupe to
+each wave as it dashed into them. The wind dropped, however, and Mr.
+Millard got safe to Tezcuco next morning; but, instead of receiving
+sympathy for his misfortunes when he got there, found that the idea of
+a tempest on the lake was reckoned a mere joke, and that the
+drawing-room of the Casa Grande had been decorated with a fancy
+portrait of himself, hanging to the half-way cross, with his legs in
+the water, and underneath, a poetical description of his sufferings to
+the tune of “_Malbrouke s’en va-t-en guerre, ne sais quand reviendra_.”
+
+More poling across the lake, and then another little canal, also
+constructed since the diminishing of the water of the lake (which once
+came close to the city), and along which our Indians towed us. Then
+came a short ride, which brought us to the Casa Grande, where Mrs.
+Bowring received us with overflowing hospitality. We went off presently
+into the town, to see the glassworks. In a country where all things
+imported have to be carried in rough waggons, or on mules’ backs, and
+over bad roads, it would be hard if it did not pay to make glass; and,
+accordingly, we found the works in full operation. The soda is produced
+at Mr. Bowling’s works close by, the fuel is charcoal from the
+mountains, and for sand they have a substitute, which I never heard of
+or saw anywhere else. It seems that a short distance from Tezcuco there
+is a deposit of hydrated silica, which is brought down in great blocks
+by the Indians; and this, when calcined, answers the purpose perfectly,
+as there is scarcely any iron in it. In its natural state it resembles
+beeswax in colour.
+
+It is worth while to describe the Casa Grande, which is strikingly
+different from our European notions of the “great house” of the
+village. As we enter by the gate, we find ourselves in a patio—an open
+quadrangle surrounded by a covered walk—a cloister in fact, into which
+open the rooms inhabited by the family. The second quadrangle, which
+opens into the first, is devoted to stables, kitchen, &c. The outer
+wall which surrounds the whole is very thick, and the entire building
+is built of mud bricks baked in the sun, and has no upper storey at
+all. It is a Pompeian house on a large scale, and suits the climate
+perfectly. The Aztec palaces we read so much of were built in just the
+same way. The roofs slope inwards from the sides of the quadrangle, and
+drain into the open space in the middle. One afternoon, a tremendous
+tropical rain-storm showed us how necessary it was to have the covered
+walk round the quadrangle raised considerably above this open square in
+the middle, which a few minutes of such rain converted into a pond.
+
+As for ourselves, we spent many very pleasant days at the Casa Grande,
+and thoroughly approved of the arrangement of the house, except that
+the four corners of the patio were provokingly alike, and the doors of
+the rooms also, so that we were as much bothered as the captain of the
+forty thieves to find our own doors, or any door except Mr. Millard’s,
+whose name was indicated—with more regard to pronunciation than
+spelling—with a 1 and nine 0’s chalked on it.
+
+In spite of a late evening spent in very pleasant society, we were up
+early next morning, ready for an excursion to the Pyramids of
+Teotihuacán, some sixteen miles off, or so, under the guidance of one
+of Mr. Bowring’s men. The road lies through the plain, between great
+plantations of magueys, for this is the most renowned district in the
+Republic for the size of its aloes, and the quality of the pulque that
+is made from them. We stopped sometimes to examine a particularly large
+specimen, which might measure 30 feet round, and to see the juice,
+which had collected in the night, drawn out of the great hollow that
+had been cut to receive it, in the heart of the plant. The Indians have
+a great fancy for making crosses, and the aloe lends itself
+particularly to this kind of decoration. They have only to cut off six
+or eight inches of one leaf, and impale the piece on the sharp point of
+another, and the cross is made. Every good-sized aloe has two or three
+of these primitive religious emblems upon it.
+
+Several little torrent-beds crossed the road, and over them were thrown
+old-fashioned Spanish stone bridges, as steep as the Rialto, or the
+bridge on the willow-patterned plates.
+
+Before going to see the pyramids, we visited the caves in the hill-side
+not far from them, whence the stone was brought to build them. It is
+_tetzontli_, the porous amygdaloid which abounds among the porphyritic
+hills, a beautiful building-stone, easily worked, and durable. There
+was a large space that seemed to have been quarried out bodily, and
+into this opened numerous caves. We left our horses at the entrance,
+and spent an hour or two in hunting the place over. The ground was
+covered with pieces of obsidian knives and arrow-heads, and fragments
+of what seemed to have been larger tools or weapons; and we found
+numbers of hammer-heads, large and small, mostly made of greenstone,
+some whole, but most broken.
+
+We find two sorts of stone hammers in Europe. Solid hammers belong to
+the earliest period. They are made of longish rolled pebbles; some are
+shaped a little artificially, and are grooved round to hold the handle,
+which was a flexible twig bent double and with the two ends tied
+together, so as to keep the stone head in its place. The hammers of a
+later period of the “stone age” are shaped more like the iron ones our
+smiths use at the present day, and they have a hole bored in the middle
+for the handle. In Brittany, where Celtic remains are found in such
+abundance, it is not uncommon to see stone hammers of the latter kind
+hanging up in the cottages of the peasants, who use them to drive in
+nails with. They have an odd way of providing them with handles, by
+sticking them tight upon branches of young trees, and when the branch
+has grown larger, and has thus rivetted itself tightly on both sides of
+the stone head, they cut it off, and carry home the hammer ready for
+use.
+
+Though the Mexicans carried the arts of knife and arrow-making and
+sculpturing hard stone to such perfection, I do not think they ever
+discovered the art of making a hole in a stone hammer. The handles of
+the axes shown in the picture-writings are clumsy sticks swelling into
+a large knob at one end, and the axe-blade is fixed into a hole in this
+knob. Some of the Mexican hammers seem to have had their handles fixed
+in this way; while others were made with a groove, in the same manner
+as the earlier kind of European stone hammers just described.
+
+When we consider the beauty of the Mexican stonecutter’s work, it seems
+wonderful that they should have been able to do it without iron tools.
+It is quite clear that, at the time of the Spanish Conquest, they used
+bronze hatchets, containing that very small proportion of tin which
+gives the alloy nearly the hardness of steel. We saw many of these
+hatchets in museums, and Mr. Christy bought some good specimens in a
+collection of antiquities which had belonged to an old Mexican, who got
+them principally from the suburb of Tlatelolco, in the neighbourhood of
+the ancient market-place of the city. Such axes were certainly common
+among the ancient Mexicans. One of the items of the hieroglyphic
+tribute-roll in the Mendoza Codex is eighty bronze hatchets.
+
+A story told by Bernal Diaz is to the point. He says that he and his
+companions, noticing that the Indians of the coast generally carried
+bright metal axes, the material of which looked like gold of a low
+quality, got as many as six hundred such axes from them in the course
+of three days’ bartering, giving them coloured glass-beads in exchange.
+Both sides were highly satisfied with their bargain; but it all came to
+nothing, as the chronicler relates with considerable disgust, for the
+gold turned out to be copper, and the beads were found to be trash when
+the Indians began to understand them better. Such hard copper axes as
+these have been found at Mitla, in the State of Oajaca, where the
+ruined temples seem to form a connecting link between the monuments of
+Teotihuacán and Xochicalco and the ruined cities of Yucatan and
+Chiapas.
+
+We want one more link in the chain to show the use of the same kind of
+tools from Mexico down to Yucatan, and this link we can supply. In Lord
+Kingsborough’s great work on Mexican Antiquities there is one
+picture-writing, the Dresden Codex, which is not of Aztec origin at
+all. Its hieroglyphics are those of Palenque and Uxmal; and in this
+manuscript we have drawings of hatchets like those of Mexico, and fixed
+in the same kind of handles, but of much neater workmanship.
+
+But here we come upon a difficulty. It is supposed that the pyramids of
+Teotihuacán, as well as most of the great architectural works of the
+country, were the work of the Toltec race, who quitted this part of the
+country several centuries before the Spanish Conquest. It seems
+incredible that bronze should have been in use in the country for so
+long a time, and not have superseded so bad a material as stone for
+knives and weapons. We have good evidence to show that in Europe the
+introduction of bronze was almost simultaneous with the complete disuse
+of stone for such purposes. It is true that Herodotus describes the
+embalmers, in his time, as cutting open the bodies with “an Ethiopic
+stone” though they were familiar with the use of metal. Indeed the
+flint knives which he probably meant may be seen in museums. But this
+peculiar usage was most likely kept up for some mystical reason, and
+does not affect the general question. Almost as soon as the Spaniards
+brought iron to Mexico, it superseded the old material. The “bronze
+age” ceased within a year or two, and that of iron began.
+
+The Mexicans called copper or bronze “tepuztli,” a word of rather
+uncertain etymology. Judging from the analogous words in languages
+allied to the Aztec, it seems not unlikely that it meant originally
+_hatchet_ or _breaker_, just as “itztli,” or obsidian, appears to have
+meant originally _knife_.[13]
+
+ [13] There is an Aztec word “puztequi” (_to break sticks, &c_.) which
+ may belong to the same root as “tepuztli.” The first syllable “te” may
+ be “te-tl” (_stone_).
+
+When the Mexicans saw iron in the hands of the Spaniards, they called
+it also “tepuztli,” which thus became a general word for metal; and
+then they had to distinguish iron from copper, as they do at the
+present day, by calling them “_tliltic_ tepuztli,” and “_chichiltic_
+tepuztli;” that is, “black metal,” and “red metal.”
+
+When the subject of the use of bronze in stone-cutting is discussed, as
+it so often is with special reference to Egypt, one may doubt whether
+people have not underrated its capabilities, when the proportion of tin
+is accurately adjusted to give the maximum hardness; and especially
+when a minute portion of iron enters into its composition. Sir Gardner
+Wilkinson relates that he tried the edge of one of the Egyptian mason’s
+chisels upon the very stone it had evidently been once used to cut, and
+found that its edge was turned directly; and therefore he wonders that
+such a tool could have been used for the purpose, of course supposing
+that the tool as he found it was just as the mason left it. This,
+however, is not quite certain. If we bury a brass tool in a damp place
+for a few weeks, it will be found to have undergone a curious molecular
+change, and to have become quite soft and weak, or, as the workmen call
+it, dead. We ought to be quite sure whether lying for centimes under
+ground may not have made some similar change in bronze.
+
+I have seen many prickly pears in different places, but never such
+specimens as those that were growing among the stones in this old
+quarry. They had gnarled and knotted trunks of hard wood, and were as
+big as pollard-oaks; their age must have been immense; but,
+unfortunately, one could not measure it, or it would have been a good
+criterion of the age of the quarry, which had not only been excavated
+but abandoned before their time. In one of the caves was a human
+skeleton, blanched white and clean, and near it some one has stuck a
+cross, made of two bits of stick, in the crevices of a heap of stones.
+
+Returning to the entrance of the quarry, well loaded with stone hammers
+and knives, we sat down to breakfast, in a cave, where our man had
+established himself with the horses. An attempt on my part to cut
+German sausage with an obsidian knife proved a decided failure.
+
+We had already been struck by the appearance of the two pyramids of
+Teotihuacán, when we passed by Otumba on our way to Mexico. The hills
+which skirt the plain are so near them as to diminish their apparent
+size; but even at a distance they are conspicuous objects. Now, when we
+came close to them, and began by climbing to their summits, and walking
+round their terraces, to measure ourselves against them, we began
+gradually to realize their vast bulk; and this feeling continually grew
+upon us. Modern architecture strives to unite the greatest possible
+effect with the least cost; and the modern churches of southern Europe
+and Spanish America, with their fine tall facades fronting the street,
+and insignificant little buildings behind, show this idea in its
+fullest development. Pyramids are built with no such object, and make
+but little show in proportion to their vast mass of material; but then
+one gets from them a sense of solid magnitude that no other building
+gives, however vast its proportions may be. Neither of us had ever seen
+the Egyptian pyramids. Even in Mexico these of Teotihuacán are not the
+largest; for, though the pyramid of Cholula is no higher, it covers far
+more ground. Were these monuments in Egypt, they would only rank, from
+their size, in the second class.
+
+As has often been remarked, such buildings as these can only be raised
+under peculiar social conditions. The ruler must be a despotic
+sovereign, and the mass of the people slaves, whose subsistence and
+whose lives are sacrificed without scruple to execute the fancies of
+the monarch, who is not so much the governor as the unrestricted owner
+of the country and the people. The population must be very dense, or it
+would not bear the loss of so large a proportion of the working class;
+and vegetable food must be exceedingly abundant in the country, to feed
+them while engaged in this unprofitable labour.
+
+We know how great was the influence of the priestly classes in Egypt,
+though the pyramids there, being rather tombs than temples, do not
+prove it. In Mexico, however, the pyramids themselves were the temples,
+serving only incidentally as tombs; and their size proves that—as
+respects priestly influence—the resemblance between the two people is
+fully carried out.
+
+Like the Egyptian pyramids, these fronted the four cardinal points.
+Their shape was not accurately pyramidal, for the line from base to
+summit was broken by three terraces, or perhaps four, running
+completely round them; and at the top was a flat square space, where
+stood the idols and the sacrificial altars. This construction closely
+resembled that of some of the smaller Egyptian pyramids. Flights of
+stone steps led straight up from terrace to terrace, and the procession
+of priests and victims made the circuit of each before they ascended to
+the one above.
+
+The larger of the two teocallis is dedicated to the Sun, has a base of
+about 640 feet, and is about 170 feet high. The other, dedicated to the
+Moon, is rather smaller.
+
+These monuments were called _teocallis_, not because they were
+pyramids, but because they were temples; “Teocalli” means “god’s
+house”—(_teotl_, god, _calli_, house), a name which the traveller hears
+explained for the first time with some wonder; and Humboldt cannot help
+adverting to its curious correspondence with θεου καλια, _dei cella_.
+Another odd coincidence is found in the Aztec name for their priests,
+_papahua_, the root of which _papa_, (the _hua_, is merely a
+termination). In the Old World the word _Papa_, Pope, or Priest, was
+connected with the idea of father or grandfather, but the Aztec word
+has no such origin.
+
+When the Aztecs abandoned their temples, and began to build Christian
+churches, they called them also “teocallis,” and perhaps do so to this
+day.
+
+The heavy tropical rains have to a great extent broken the sharpness of
+the outline of these structures, and brought them more nearly to the
+shape of real pyramids than they were originally; but, as we climbed up
+their sides, we could trace the terraces without any difficulty, and
+even flights of steps.
+
+The pyramids consist of an outer casing of hewn stone, faced and
+covered with smooth stucco, which has resisted the effects of time and
+bad usage in a wonderful manner. Inside this casing were adobes,
+stones, clay, and mortar, as one may see in places where the exterior
+has been damaged, and by creeping into the small passage which leads
+into the Temple of the Moon. Both pyramids are nearly covered with a
+coating of debris, full of bits of obsidian arrows and knives, and
+broken pottery. On the teocalli of the moon we found a number of recent
+sea-shells, which mystified us extremely; and the only explanation we
+could give of their presence there was that they might have been
+brought up as offerings. A passage in Humboldt, which I met with long
+after, seems to clear up the mystery. Speaking of the great teocalli of
+the city of Mexico, he says, quoting an old description, that the Moon
+had a little temple in the great courtyard, which was built of shells.
+Those that we found may be the remains of a similar structure on the
+top of the pyramid.
+
+Prickly pears, aloes, and mesquite bushes have overgrown the pyramids
+in all directions, as though they had been mere natural hills. In
+Sicily one may see the lava fields of Etna planted with prickly pears:
+in the ordinary course of things, it requires several centuries before
+even the surface of this hard lava will disintegrate into soil; but the
+roots of the cactus soon crack it, and a few years suffice to break it
+up to a sufficient depth to allow of vineyards being planted upon it.
+Here the same plant has in the same way affected the porous amygdaloid
+with which the pyramids are faced, and has cut up the surface sadly;
+but the vegetation which covers them will at any rate defend them from
+the rains, and now centuries will make but little change in the
+appearance of these remarkable buildings.
+
+Near Nice there is a hill which gives a wonderfully correct idea of the
+appearance of the terraced teocallis of Mexico, as they must have
+looked before time effaced the sharpness of their lines. Where the
+valley of the Paglione and that of St. Andre meet, the hill between
+them terminates in a half pyramid, the angle of which lies toward the
+south; and the inhabitants—as their custom is in southern Europe, have
+turned the two slopes to account, by building them up into terraces, to
+prevent the soil they have laboriously carried up from being swept down
+by the first heavy rain. Seen from the proper point of view the
+resemblance is complete.
+
+From the south side of the Temple of the Moon runs an avenue of
+burial-mounds, the Micaotli, “the path of the dead.” On these mounds,
+and round the foot of the pyramids themselves, the whole population of
+the once great city of Teotihuacán and its neighbourhood used to
+congregate, to see the priests and the victims march round the terraces
+and up the stairs in full view of them all. Standing here, one could
+imagine the scene that Cortes and his men saw from their camp, outside
+Mexico, on that dreadful day when the Mexicans had cut off their
+retreat along the causeways, and taken more than sixty Spanish
+prisoners. Bernal Diaz was there, and tells the tale how they heard
+from the city the great drum of Huitzilopochtli sending forth a strange
+and awful sound, that could be heard for miles, and with it many horns
+and trumpets; and how, when they had looked towards the great teocalli,
+they saw the Mexicans dragging up the prisoners, pushing and beating
+them as they went, till they had got them up to the open space at the
+top, “where the cursed idols stood.” Then they put plumes of feathers
+on their heads, and fans in their hands, and made them dance before the
+idol; and when they had danced, they threw them on their backs on the
+sacrificial stone that stood there, and, sawing open their breasts with
+knives of stone, they tore out their hearts, and offered them up in
+sacrifice; and the bodies they flung down the stairs to the bottom.
+More than this the Spaniards cannot have seen, though Diaz describes
+the rest of the proceedings as though they had been done in his sight;
+but it was not the first time they had witnessed such things, and they
+knew well enough what was happening down below,—how the butchers were
+waiting to cut up the carcases as they came down, that they might be
+cooked with chile, and eaten in the solemn banquet of the evening.
+
+The day was closing in by this time; and our man was waiting with the
+horses at the foot of the great pyramid; and with him an Indian, whom
+we had caught half an hour before, and sent off with a real to buy
+pulque, and to collect such obsidian arrows and clay heads as were to
+be found at the ranchos in the neighbourhood.
+
+Near the place we started from, two or three Indians were diligently at
+work at their stone-quarry, that is to say, they were laboriously
+bringing out great hewn stones from the side of the pyramid, to build
+their walls with; and indeed we could see in every house for miles
+round stones that had come from the same source, as was proved by the
+stucco still remaining upon them, smoothed like polished marble, and
+painted dull red with cinnabar.
+
+As I write this, it brings to my recollection an old Roman trophy in
+North Italy, built—like these pyramids—of a shell of hewn stone, filled
+with rough stones and cement, now as hard as the rock itself. There I
+saw the inhabitants of the town which stands at its foot, carrying off
+the great limestone blocks, but first cutting them up into pieces of a
+size that they could move about, and build into their houses. Here and
+there, in this little Italian town, there were to be seen in the walls
+letters of the old inscription which were once upon the trophy; and the
+age of the houses shewed that the monument had served as a quarry for
+centuries.
+
+As we rode home, we noticed by the sides of the road, and where ditches
+had been cut, numbers of old Mexican stone-floors covered with stucco.
+The earth has accumulated above them to the depth of two or three feet,
+so that their position is like that of the Roman pavements so often
+found in Europe; and we may guess, from what we saw exposed, how great
+must be the number of such remains still hidden, and how vast a
+population must once have inhabited this plain, now almost deserted.
+
+Two days afterwards we came back. In the ploughed fields in the
+neighbourhood we made repeated trials whether it was possible to stand
+still in any spot where there was no relic of old Mexico within our
+reach; but this we could not do. Everywhere the ground was full of
+unglazed pottery and obsidian; and we even found arrows and clay
+figures that were good enough for a museum. When we left England, we
+both doubted the accounts of the historians of the Conquest, believing
+that they had exaggerated the numbers of the population, and the size
+of the cities, from a natural desire to make the most of their
+victories, and to write as wonderful a history as they could, as
+historians are prone to do. But our examination of Mexican remains soon
+induced us to withdraw this accusation, and even made us inclined to
+blame the chroniclers for having had no eyes for the wonderful things
+that surrounded them.
+
+I do not mean by this that we felt inclined to swallow the monstrous
+exaggerations of Solis and Gomara and other Spanish chroniclers, who
+seemed to think that it was as easy to say a thousand as a hundred, and
+that it sounded much better. But when this class of writers are set
+aside, and the more valuable authorities severely criticised, it does
+not seem to us that the history thus extracted from these sources is
+much less reliable than European history of the same period. There is,
+perhaps, no better way of expressing this opinion than to say that what
+we saw of Mexico tended generally to confirm Prescott’s History of the
+Conquest, and but seldom to make his statements appear to us
+improbable.
+
+There are other mounds near the pyramids, besides the Micaotli. Two
+sides of the Pyramid of the Sun are surrounded by them; and there are
+two squares of mounds at equal distances, north and south of it,
+besides innumerable scattered hillocks. There are some sculptured
+blocks of stone lying near the pyramids, and inside the smaller one is
+buried what appears to be a female bust of colossal size, with the
+mouth like an oval ring, so common in Mexican sculptures.
+
+The same abundance of ancient remains that we found here characterizes
+the neighbourhood of all the Mexican monuments in the country, with one
+curious exception. Burkart declares that in the vicinity of the
+extensive remains of temples known as _Los Edificios_, near Zacatecas,
+no traces of pottery or of obsidian were to be found.
+
+Before going away, we held a solemn market of antiquities. We sat
+cross-legged on the ground, and the Indian women and children brought
+us many curious articles in clay and obsidian, which we bought and
+deposited in two great bags of aloe-fibre which our man carried at his
+saddle-bow. Among the articles we bought were various pipes or whistles
+of pottery, _pitos_, as they are called in Spanish, and just as we were
+mounting our horses to ride off, a lad ran to the top of one of the
+mounds, and blew on one of these pipes a long dismal note that could be
+heard a mile off. Our friends had filled our heads so full of robbers
+and ambushes, that we made sure it was a signal for some one who was
+waiting for us, and the more so as the boy ran off as soon as he had
+blown his blast; and when we looked round for the people whose
+antiquities we had been buying, they had all disappeared. But nothing
+came of it, and we got safely back to Tezcuco. As usual, we spent a
+capital evening, and separated late. The owner of the glass-works, who
+had been spending the evening with us, had an adventure on his road
+home. He was peaceably riding along, when two men rushed out from
+behind the corner of the street, and shouted “_alto ahí_!” (halte-là).
+He thought they were robbers, and started at a gallop. His hat flew
+off, and the men sent two bullets singing past his head, which sent him
+on quicker than ever, till he reached his house. There he got his
+pistols, and came back armed to the teeth to fetch the hat, which lay
+where it had fallen. The supposed robbers turned out, on enquiry next
+day, to have been national guards, patrolling the street; but certainly
+their proceedings were rather questionable.
+
+We had an unpleasant visit the same night. The custom of the Casa
+Grande was that after dark a watchman patrolled all night, giving a
+long blast every quarter of an hour on one of these same doleful
+Mexican whistles, to show that he was not sleeping on his rounds. This
+was for the outside. Inside the house, _pour surcroît de précaution_, a
+servant came round to see that every one was in his room; and having
+satisfied himself of this, let loose in the courtyard two enormous
+bulldogs, which were the terror of the household and of the whole
+neighbourhood. On this particular night, a noise at our own door woke
+me from a sound sleep; and I had the pleasure of seeing a creature walk
+deliberately in, looking huge and terrific in the moonlight. The beast
+had been into the stable two nights before, and had pinned a cow which
+was there, keeping his hold upon her till next morning, when he was got
+off by the keeper. With this specimen of the bulldog’s abilities fresh
+in my recollection, I preferred not making any attempt to resent his
+impertinent intrusion, but lay still, till he had satisfied himself
+with walking about the room and sniffing at our beds, when he lay down
+on my carpet; I soon fell asleep again, and next morning he was gone.
+The foreigners in Mexico seem to delight in fierce bull-dogs. The Casa
+Grande at Tezcuco is not by any means the only place where they form
+part of the garrison. One English acquaintance of ours in the Capital
+kept two of these beasts up in his rooms, and not even the servants
+dared go up, unless the master was there.
+
+Every one who has read Prescott’s ‘Mexico’ will recollect
+Nezahualcoyotl, the king of Tezcuco; and the palaces he built there for
+his wives, and his poets, and the rest of his great court. These
+palaces were built chiefly of mud bricks; and time and the Spaniards
+have dealt so hardly with them, that even their outlines can no longer
+be traced. Traces of two large teocallis are just visible, and Mr.
+Bowring has some burial mounds in his grounds which will be examined
+some day. There is a Mexican calendar built into the wall of one of the
+churches; and, as we walked about the streets of the present town, we
+noticed stones that must have been sculptured before the Spaniards
+brought in their broken-down classic style, and so stopped the
+development of native art. As for the rest of old Tezcuco, it has
+“become heaps.” Wherever they dig ditches or lay the foundations of
+houses, you may see the ground full of its remains.
+
+As I said before, when speaking of the stuccoed floors near
+Teotihuacán, the accumulation of alluvial soil goes on very rapidly and
+very regularly all over the plains of Mexico and Puebla, where
+everything favours its deposit; and the human remains preserved in it
+are so numerous that its age may readily be seen. We noticed this in
+many places, but in no instance so well as between Tezcuco and the
+hacienda of Miraflores. There a long ditch, some five feet deep, had
+just been cut in anticipation of the rainy season. As yet it was dry,
+and, as we walked along it, we found three periods of Mexican history
+distinctly traceable from one end to the other. First came mere
+alluvium, without human remains. Then, just above, came fragments of
+obsidian knives and bits of unglazed pottery. Above this again, a third
+layer, in which the obsidian ceased, and much of the pottery was still
+unglazed; but many fragments were glazed, and bore the unmistakable
+Spanish patterns in black and yellow.
+
+It is a pity that these alluvial deposits, which give such good
+evidence as to the order in which different peoples or different states
+of society succeeded one another on the earth, should be so valueless
+as a means of calculating the time of their duration; but one can
+easily see that they must always be so, by considering how the
+thickness of the deposits is altered by such accidents as the formation
+of a mud-bank, or the opening of a new channel,—things that must be
+continually occurring in districts where this very accumulation is
+going on. The only place where any calculation can be based upon its
+thickness is on the banks of the Nile, where its accumulations round
+the ancient monuments may perhaps give a criterion as to the time which
+has elapsed since man ceased to clear away the deposits of the
+river.[14]
+
+ [14] The researches instituted by Mr. I. Horner in the alluvium near
+ Heliopolis and Memphis _(Philos. Transact._, 1855 & 1856), although
+ very elaborate, still leave much to be desired before we can arrive at
+ definite conclusions.
+
+As an instance of the tendency of alluvial deposits to entomb such
+monuments of former ages, I must mention the temple of Segeste, which
+stands on a gentle slope among the hills of northern Sicily. I had
+heard talk of the graceful proportions of this Doric temple, built by
+the Greek colonists; and great was my surprise, on first coming in
+sight of it, to see a pediment supported by two rows of short squat
+columns, without bases, and rising directly from the ground. A nearer
+inspection showed the cause of this extraordinary distortion. The whole
+slope had risen full six feet during the 2500 years, or so, that have
+elapsed since its desertion; and the temple now stands in a large
+oblong pit, which has lately been excavated. As we left the spot, and
+turned to see it again a few yards off, the beautiful symmetry of the
+whole had disappeared again.
+
+To return to Tezcuco. Some three or four miles from the town stands the
+hill of Tezcotzinco, where Nezahualcoyotl had his pleasure-gardens; and
+to this hill we made an excursion early one morning, with Mr. Bowring
+for our guide. We did not go first to Tezcotzinco itself, but to
+another hill which is connected with it by an aqueduct of immense size,
+along which we walked. The mountains in this part are of porphyry, and
+the channel of the aqueduct was made principally of blocks of the same
+material, on which the smooth stucco that had once covered the whole,
+inside and out, still remained very perfect. The channel was carried,
+not on arches, but on a solid embankment, a hundred and fifty or two
+hundred feet high, and wide enough for a carriage-road.
+
+The hill itself was overgrown with brushwood, aloes, and prickly pears,
+but numerous roads and flights of steps cut in the rock were
+distinguishable. Not far below the top of the hill, a terrace runs
+completely round it, whence the monarch could survey a great part of
+his little kingdom. On the summit itself I saw sculptured blocks of
+stone; and on the side of the hill are two little circular baths, cut
+in the solid rock. The lower of the two has a flight of steps down to
+it; the seat for the bather, and the stone pipe which brought the
+water, are still quite perfect.
+
+His majesty used to spend his afternoons here on the shady side of the
+hill, apparently sitting up to his middle in water, like a frog, if one
+may judge by the height of the little seat in the bath. If, as some
+writers say, these were only tanks with streams of running water, and
+not baths at all, why the steps cut in their sides, which are just
+large enough and high enough for a man to sit in? No water has come
+there for centuries now; and the morning-sun nearly broiled us, till we
+got into a sort of cave, excavated in the hill, it is said, with an
+idea of finding treasure. It seems there was once a Mexican calendar
+cut in the rock at this spot; and some white people who were interested
+in such matters, used to come to see it, and poke curiously about in
+search of other antiquities. Naturally enough, the Indians thought that
+they expected to find treasure; and with a view of getting the first
+chance themselves, they cut down the calendar, and made this large
+excavation behind it.
+
+Here we sat in the shade, breakfasting, and hearing Mr. Bowring’s
+stories of the art of medicine as practised in the northern states of
+Mexico, where decoction of shirt is considered an invaluable specific
+when administered internally; and the recognised remedy for lumbago is
+to rub the patient with the drawers of a man named John. No doubt the
+latter treatment answers very well!
+
+[Illustration: OLD MEXICAN BRIDGE NEAR TEZCUCO.]
+
+There is an old Mexican bridge near Tezcuco which seems to be the
+original _Puente de las Bergantinas_, the bridge where Cortes had the
+brigantines launched on the lake of Tezcuco. This bridge has a span of
+about twenty feet, and is curious as showing how nearly the Mexicans
+had arrived at the idea of the arch. It is made in the form of a roof
+resting on two buttresses, and composed of slabs of stone with the
+edges upwards, with mortar in the interstices; the slabs being
+sufficiently irregular in shape to admit of their holding together,
+like the stones of a real arch. One may now and then see in Europe the
+roofs of small stone hovels made in the same way; but twenty feet is an
+immense span for such a construction. I have seen such buildings in
+North Italy, in places where the limestone is so stratified as to
+furnish rough slabs, three or four inches thick, with very little
+labour in quarrying them out. In Kerry there are ancient houses and
+churches roofed in the same way. What makes the Tezcuco bridge more
+curious is that it is set askew, which must have made its construction
+more difficult.
+
+The brigantines which the Spaniards made, and transported over the
+mountains in such a wonderful manner, fully answered their purpose, for
+without them Mexico could hardly have been taken. After the Conquest
+they were kept for years, for the good service they had done; but
+vessels of such size do not seem to have been used upon the lake since
+then; and I believe the only sailing craft at present is Mr. Bowring’s
+boat, which the Indians look at askance, and decidedly decline to
+imitate. It is true that, somewhere near the city, there is moored a
+little steamer, looking quite civilized at a distance. It never goes
+anywhere, however; and I have a sort of impression of having heard that
+when it was first made they got up the steam once, but the conduct of
+the machinery under these circumstances was so extraordinary and
+frantic that no one has ventured to repeat the experiment.
+
+Before we left Tezcuco, we went in a boat to explore Mr. Bowring’s
+salt-works, which are rather like the salines of the South of France.
+Patches of the lake are walled off, and the water allowed to evaporate,
+which it does very rapidly under a hot sun, and with only three-fourths
+of the pressure of air upon it that we have at the sea-level. The
+lake-water thus concentrated is run into smaller tanks. It contains
+carbonate and sesquicarbonate of soda, and common salt. The addition of
+lime converts the sesquicarbonate of soda into simple carbonate, and
+this is separated from the salt by taking advantage of their different
+points of crystallization. The salt is partly consumed, and partly used
+in the extraction of silver from the ore, and the soda is bought by the
+soap-makers.
+
+Humboldt’s remarks on the small consumption of salt in Mexico are
+curious. The average amount used with food is only a small fraction of
+the European average. While the Tlascalans were at war with the Aztecs,
+they had to do without salt for many years, as it was not produced in
+their district. Humboldt thinks that the chile which the Indians
+consume in such quantities acts as a substitute. It is to be remembered
+that the soil is impregnated with both salt and natron in many of these
+upland districts, and the inhabitants may have eaten earth containing
+these ingredients, as they do for the same purpose in several places in
+the Old World.
+
+We disembarked after sailing to the end of these great evaporating
+pans, and found horses waiting to take us to the Bosque del Contador.
+This is a grand square, looking towards the cardinal points, and
+composed of ahuehuetes, grand old deciduous cypresses, many of them
+forty feet round, and older than the discovery of America. My
+companion, not content with buying collections at secondhand, wished to
+have some excavations made on his own account, and very judiciously
+fixed on this spot, where, though there were no buildings standing, the
+appearance of the ground and the mounds in the neighbourhood, together
+with the historical notoriety of the place, made it probable that
+something would be found to repay a diligent search. This expectation
+was fully realized, and some fine idols of hard stone were found, with
+an infinitude of pottery and small objects.
+
+When I look through my notes about Tezcuco, I do not find much more to
+mention, except that a favourite dish here consists of flies’ eggs
+fried. These eggs are deposited at the edge of the lake, and the
+Indians fish them out and sell them in the market-place. So large is
+the quantity of these eggs, that at a spot where a little stream
+deposits carbonate of lime, a peculiar kind of travertine is forming
+which consists of masses of them imbedded in tho calcareous deposit.
+
+The flies[15] which produce these eggs are called by the Mexicans
+“_axayacatl_” or “water-face.” There was a celebrated Aztec king who
+was called Axayacatl; and his name is indicated in the picture-writings
+by a drawing of a man’s face covered with water. The eggs themselves
+are sold in cakes in the market, pounded and cooked, and also in lumps
+_au naturel_, forming a substance like the roe of a fish. This is known
+by the characteristic name of “_ahuauhtli_”, that is “water-wheat.”[16]
+
+ [15] _Corixa femorala_, and _Notonecta uniforciata_, according to MM.
+ Meneville and Virlet d’Aoust, in a Paper on the subject of the
+ granular or oolitic travertine of Tezcuco in the Bulletin (1859) of
+ the Geological Society of France.
+
+ [16] Huauhtli is an indigenous grain abounding in Michoacán, for which
+ “wheat” is the best equivalent I can give. European wheat was, of
+ course, unknown in the country until after the Conquest.
+
+The last thing we did at Tezcuco, was to witness the laying down of a
+new line of water-pipes for the saltworks. This I mention because of
+the pipes, which were exactly those introduced into Spain by the Moors
+and brought here by the Spaniards. These pipes are of glazed
+earthenware, taper at one end, and each fitting into the large end of
+the next. The cement is a mixture of lime, fat, and hair, which gets
+hard and firm when cold, but can be loosened by a very slight
+application of heat. A thousand years has made no alteration in the way
+of making these pipes. Here, however, the ground is so level that one
+great characteristic of Moorish waterworks is not to be seen. I mean
+the water-columns which are such a feature in the country round
+Palermo, and in other places where the system of irrigation introduced
+by the Moorish invaders is still kept up. These are square pillars
+twenty or thirty feet high, with a cistern at the top of each, into
+which the water from the higher level flowed, and from which other
+pipes carried it on; the sole object of the whole apparatus being to
+break the column of water, and reduce the pressure to the thirty or
+forty feet which the pipes of earthenware would bear.
+
+This subject of irrigation is very interesting with reference to the
+future of Mexico. We visited two or three country-houses in the
+plateaux, where the gardens are regularly watered by artificial
+channels, and the result is a vegetation of wonderful exuberance and
+beauty, converting these spots into oases in the desert. On the lower
+levels of the tierra templada where the sugar-cane is cultivated, a
+costly system of water-supply has been established in the haciendas
+with the best results. Even in the plains of Mexico and Puebla, the
+grain-fields are irrigated to some small degree. But notwithstanding
+this progress in the right direction, the face of the country shows the
+most miserable waste of one of the chief elements of the wealth and
+prosperity of the country, the water.
+
+In this respect, Spain and the high lands of Mexico may be compared
+together. There is no scarcity of rain in either country, and yet both
+are dry and parched, while the number and size of their torrent-beds
+show with what violence the mountain-streams descend into lakes or
+rivers, rather agents of destruction than of benefit to the land.
+Strangely enough, both countries have been in possession of races who
+understood that water was the very life-blood of the land, and worked
+hard to build systems of arteries to distribute it over the surface. In
+both countries, the warlike Spaniards overcame these races, and
+irrigating works already constructed were allowed to fall to ruin.
+
+When the Moriscos were expelled from their native provinces of
+Andalusia and Granada, their places were but slowly filled up with
+other settlers, so that a great part of their aqueducts and
+watercourses fell into decay within a few years. These new colonists,
+moreover, came from the Northern provinces, where the Moorish system of
+culture was little understood; and, incredible as it may seem, though
+they must have had ocular evidence of the advantages of artificial
+irrigation, they even neglected to keep in repair the water-channels on
+their own ground. Now the traveller, riding through Southern Spain, may
+see in desolate barren valleys remains of the Moorish works which
+centuries ago brought fertility to grain-fields and orchards, and made
+the country the garden of Europe.
+
+There was another nation who seem to have far surpassed both Moors and
+Aztecs in the magnitude of their engineering-works for this purpose.
+The Peruvians cut through mountains, filled up valleys, and carried
+whole rivers away in artificial channels to irrigate their thirsty
+soil. The historians’ accounts of these water-works as they were, and
+even travellers’ descriptions of the ruins that still remain, fill us
+with astonishment. It seems almost like some strange fatality that this
+nation too should have been conquered by the same race, the ruin of its
+great national works following immediately upon the Conquest.
+
+Spain is rising again after long centuries of degradation, and is
+developing energies and resources which seem likely to raise it high
+among European nations, and the Spaniards are beginning to hold their
+own again among the peoples of Europe. But they have had to pay dearly
+for the errors of their ancestors in the great days of Charles the
+Fifth.
+
+The ancient Mexicans were not, it is true, to be compared with the
+Spanish Arabs or the Peruvians in their knowledge of agriculture and
+the art of irrigation; but both history and the remains still to be
+found in the country prove that in the more densely populated parts of
+the plains they had made considerable progress. The ruined aqueduct of
+Tetzcotzinco which I have just mentioned was a grand work, serving to
+supply the great gardens of Nezahualcoyotl, which covered a large space
+of ground and excited the admiration of the Conquerors, who soon
+destroyed them, it is said, in order that they might not remain to
+remind the conquered inhabitants of their days of heathendom.
+
+Such works as these seem, however, not to have extended over whole
+provinces as they did in Spain. In the thinly peopled
+mountain-districts, the Indians broke up their little patches of ground
+with a hoe, and watered them from earthen jars, as indeed they do to
+this day.
+
+The Spaniards improved the agriculture of the country by introducing
+European grain, and fruit-trees, and by bringing the old Roman plough,
+which is used to this day in Mexico as in Spain, where two thousand
+years have not superseded its use or even altered it. Against these
+improvements we must set a heavy account of injury done to the country
+as regards its cultivation. The Conquest cost the lives of several
+hundred thousand of the labouring class; and numbers more were taken
+away from the cultivation of the land to work as slaves for the
+conquerors in building houses and churches, and in the silver-mines.
+When the inhabitants were taken away, the ground went out of
+cultivation, and much of it has relapsed into desert. Even before the
+Conquest, Mexico had been suffering for many years from incessant wars,
+in which not only thousands perished on the field of battle, but the
+prisoners sacrificed annually were to be counted by thousands more,
+while famine carried off the women and children whose husbands and
+fathers had perished. But the slaughter and famine of the first years
+of the Spanish Conquest far exceeded anything that the country had
+suffered before.
+
+At the time of the Conquest of Mexico the Spaniards let the native
+irrigating-works fall into decay; and they took still more active
+measures to deprive the land of its necessary water, by their
+indiscriminate destruction of the forests on the hills that surround
+the plains. When the trees were cut down, the undergrowth soon
+perished, and the soil which had served to check the descending waters
+in their course was soon swept away. During the four rainy months, each
+heavy shower sends down a flood along the torrent-bed which flows into
+a river, and so into the ocean, or, as in the Mexican valley, into a
+salt lake, where it only serves to injure the surrounding land. In both
+cases it runs away in utter waste.
+
+In later years the Spanish owners of the soil had the necessity of the
+system impressed upon them by force of circumstances; and large sums
+were spent upon the construction of irrigating channels, even in the
+outlying states of the North.
+
+In the American territory recently acquired from Mexico history has
+repeated itself in a most curious way. We learn from Froebel, the
+German traveller, that the new American settlers did not take kindly to
+the system of irrigation which they found at work in the country. They
+were not used to it, and it interfered with their ideas of liberty by
+placing restrictions upon their doing what they pleased on their own
+land. So they actually allowed many of the water-canals to fall into
+ruins. Of course they soon began to find out their mistake, and are
+probably investing heavily in water-supply by this time. We ought not
+to be too severe upon the Spaniards of the sixteenth century for an
+economical mistake which we find the Americans falling into under
+similar circumstances in the nineteenth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+CUERNAVACA. TEMISCO. XOCHICALCO.
+
+
+[Illustration: SPANISH-MEXICAN SADDLE AND ITS APPURTENANCES.]
+
+Much too soon, as we thought, the day came when we had arranged to
+leave Tezcuco and return to Mexico, to prepare for a journey into the
+tierra caliente. On the evening of our return to the capital there was
+a little earthquake, but neither of us noticed it; and thus we lost our
+one chance, and returned to England without having made acquaintance
+with that peculiar sensation.
+
+The purchase of horses and saddles and other equipments for our
+journey, gave us an opportunity of poking about into out-of-the-way
+corners of the city, and seeing some new phases of Mexican life; and
+certainly we made the most of the chance. We made acquaintance with
+horse-dealers, who brought us horses to try in the courtyard of the
+great house of our friends the English merchants in the Calle
+Seminario, and there showed off their paces, walking, pacing, and
+galloping. To trot is considered a disgusting vice in a Mexican horse;
+and the universal substitute for it here is the _paso_, a queer
+shuffling run, first, the two legs on one side together, and then the
+other two. You jolt gently up and down without rising in the stirrups;
+and when once you are used to it the paso is not disagreeable, and it
+is well suited to long mountain-journeys. Horses in the United States
+are often trained to this gait, and are known as “pacing” horses.
+Another peculiarity in the training of Mexican horses is, that many of
+them are taught to “rayar,” that is, to put their fore-feet out after
+the manner of mules going down a pass; and slide a short distance along
+the ground, so as to stop suddenly in the midst of a rapid gallop. To
+practise the horses in this feat, the jockey draws a lino (“_raya_”) on
+the ground, and teaches them to stop exactly as they reach it, and
+whirl round in the opposite direction. This performance is often to be
+seen on the paseo, and other places, where smart young gentlemen like
+to show off themselves and their horses; but it is only a fancy trick,
+and they acknowledge that it spoils the animal’s fore-legs.
+
+After much bargaining and chaffering we bought three horses for
+ourselves and our man Antonio, giving eight, seven, and four pounds for
+them. This does not seem much to give for good hackneys, as these were;
+but they were not particularly cheap for Mexico. While we were at
+Tezcuco, Mr. Christy used to ride one of Mr. Bowring’s horses, a pretty
+little chestnut, which carried him beautifully, and had cost just
+eleven dollars, or forty-six shillings. It had been bought of the
+horse-dealers who come down every year from the almost uninhabited
+states of Chihuahua, Durango, and Cohahuila, on the American frontier,
+where innumerable herds of horses, all but wild, roam over boundless
+prairies, feeding on the tall coarse grass. Their keep costs so little,
+that the breeders are not compelled, as in England, to break them in
+and sell them at the earliest possible moment, and they let the young
+colts roam untamed till they are five or six years old. Their great
+strength and power of endurance in proportion to their size is in great
+measure to be ascribed to this early indulgence.
+
+It is very clear that when a horse is to be sold for somewhere between
+two and six pounds, the breeder cannot afford to spend much time in
+breaking him in. The rough-rider lazos him, puts on the bridle with its
+severe bit, and springs upon his back in spite of kicking and plunging.
+The horse gallops furiously off across country of his own accord, but
+when his pace begins to flag, the great vaquero spurs come into
+requisition, and in an hour or two he comes back to the corral dead
+beat and conquered once for all. It is easy to teach him his paces
+afterwards. The anquera—as it is called—is put on his haunches, to cure
+him of trotting, and to teach him the paso instead. It is a leather
+covering fringed with iron tags, which is put on behind the saddle, and
+allows the horse to pace without annoying him; but the least approach
+to a trot brings the pointed tags rattling upon his haunches. We bought
+one of these anqueras at Puebla. It was very old, and curiously
+ornamented with carved patterns. In the last century, these anqueras
+were a regular part of Mexican horse-equipment; but now, except in
+horse-breaking yards or old curiosity-shops, they are seldom to be
+seen.
+
+Almost all the Mexican horses descend from the Arab breed—the gentlest
+and yet the most spirited in the world, which have not degenerated
+since the Spaniards brought them over in the early days of the
+Conquest, but retain unchanged their small graceful shape, their
+swiftness, and their power of bearing fatigue. There seem really to be
+no large horses bred in the country. Instead of jolting about in a
+carriage drawn by eight or ten mules, with harness covered with silver
+and gold—as rich Mexicans used to do, the proper thing now is to have a
+pair of tall carriage-horses, like ours in England; and these are
+brought at great expense from the United States, and by the side of the
+graceful little Mexicans they look as big and as clumsy as elephants.
+
+Our saddles were of the old Moorish pattern, of monstrous size and
+weight, very comfortable for the rider, but, I fear, much less so for
+the horse, whose back often gets sadly galled, in spite of the thick
+padding and the two or three blankets that are put on underneath. These
+saddles run into high peaks behind and before, so that you can hardly
+fall out of them, even when you go to sleep in the saddle on a long
+journey, as many people habitually do. In front, the saddle rises into
+a pummel which is made of hard wood, and is something like a large
+mushroom with its stalk. Round this the end of the lazo is wound, after
+the noose has been thrown. All Mexican saddles are provided with these
+heads in front, and have, moreover, several pairs of little thongs
+attached to them on each side, which serve to tie on bags, whips,
+water-gourds, and other odds and ends. Behind the seat of the saddle
+are more straps, where cloaks and serapes are fastened; and in case of
+need even a carpet-bag will travel there. We were in the habit of
+returning from our expeditions with our horses so covered with the
+plants and curiosities we had collected, that it became no easy matter
+to get our legs safely over the horses’ backs, into their proper places
+among the clusters of miscellanea. Our acquaintances used to compare us
+to the perambulating butchers’ shops, which are a feature in Mexican
+streets, and consist of a horse with a long saddle covered with hooks,
+and on every hook a joint.
+
+The flaps of our saddles, the great spatterdashes that protected our
+feet from the mud, and the broad stirrup-straps were covered with
+carved and embossed patterns; indeed almost all leather-work is
+decorated in this way, and the saddle-makers delight in ornamenting
+their wares with silver plates and bosses; so that it was not
+surprising that our saddles and bridles should have cost, though
+second-hand, nearly as much as the horses.
+
+In books of travels in Mexico up to the beginning of the present
+century, one of the staple articles of wondering description was the
+gorgeous trappings of the horses, and the spurs, bits, and stirrups of
+gold and silver. The costumes have not changed much, but the taste for
+such costly ornaments has abated; and it is now hardly respectable to
+have more than a few pounds worth of bullion on one’s saddle or around
+one’s hat, or to wear a hundred or so of buttons of solid gold down the
+sides of one’s leather trousers, with a very questionable cotton
+calzoncillo underneath.
+
+The horses’ bits are made with a ring, which pinches the under-lip when
+the bridle is tightened, and causes great pain when it is pulled at all
+hard. At first sight it seems cruel to use such bits, but the system
+works very well; and the horses, knowing the power their rider has over
+them, rarely misbehave themselves. One rides along with the loop at the
+end of the twisted horse-hair bridle hanging loose on one finger, so
+that the horse’s mouth is much less pulled about than with the bridles
+we are accustomed to in England. When it is necessary to guide the
+horse, the least pressure is enough; but, as a general rule, the little
+fellow can find his way as well as his rider can. We used continually
+to let our reins drop on our horses’ necks, and jog on careless of pits
+and stumbling-blocks. I have even seen my companion take out his
+pocket-book, and improve the occasion by making notes and sketches as
+he went.
+
+[Illustration: SPANISH-MEXICAN BIT, with its ring and chains. Length
+9 inches, width 5½ inches.]
+
+The distance from Mexico to Vera Cruz is about two hundred and fifty
+miles, and what the roads are I have in some measure described. Rafael
+Beraza, the courier of the English Mission at Mexico, used to ride this
+with despatches regularly once a month in forty hours, and occasionally
+in thirty-five. He changed horses about every ten or fifteen miles; and
+now and then, when, overcome by sleep, he would let the boy who
+accompanied him to the next stage ride first, his own horse following,
+and the rider comfortably dozing as he went along.
+
+As for our own equipment, Mr. Christy adopted the attributes of the
+eastern traveller when he came into the country, the great umbrella,
+the veil, and the felt hat with a white handkerchief over it. As for
+me, my wardrobe was scanty; so, when my travelling coat wore out at the
+elbows and my trousers were sat through—like the little bear’s chair in
+the story, I replaced the garments with a jacket of chamois leather,
+and a pair of loose trousers made of the same, after the manner of the
+country. Then came a grey felt hat, as stiff as a boiler-plate, and of
+more than quakerish lowness of crown and broadness of brim, but
+secularized by a silver serpent for a hatband; also, a red silk sash,
+which—fastening round the waist—held up my trousers, and interfered
+with my digestion; lastly, a woollen serape to sleep under, and to wear
+in the mornings and evenings. This is the genuine ranchero costume, and
+it did me good service. Indeed, ever since my Mexican journey I have
+considered that George Fox decidedly showed his good sense by dressing
+himself in a suit of leather; much more so than the people who laughed
+at him for it.
+
+In the country, all Mexicans—high and low—wear this national dress; and
+in this they are distinguished from the Indians, who keep to the cotton
+shirts and drawers, and the straw hats of their ancestors. In the
+towns, it is only the lower classes who dress in the ranchero costume,
+for “nous autres” wear European garments and follow the last Paris
+fashion, with these exceptions—that for riding, people wear jackets and
+calzoneras of the national cut, though made of cloth, and that the
+Mexican hat is often worn even by people who adopt no other parts of
+the costume. There never were such hats as these for awkwardness. The
+flat sharp brims of passers-by are always threatening to cut your head
+off in the streets. You cannot get into a carriage with your hat on,
+nor sit there when you are in. But for walking and riding under a
+fierce sun, they are perhaps better than anything else that can be
+used.
+
+The Mexican blanket—the serape—is a national institution; It is wider
+than a Scotch plaid, and nearly as long, with a slit in the middle; and
+it is woven in the same gaudy Oriental patterns which are to be seen on
+the prayer-carpets of Turkey and Palestine to this day. It is worn as a
+cloak, with the end flung over the left shoulder, like the Spanish
+_capa_, and muffling up half the face when its owner is chilly or does
+not wish to be recognized. When a heavy rain comes down, and he is on
+horseback, he puts his head through the slit in the middle, and becomes
+a moving tent. At night he rolls himself up in it, and sleeps on a mat
+or a board, or on the stones in the open air.
+
+Convenient as it is, the serape is as much tabooed among the
+“respectable” classes in the cities as the rest of the national
+costume. I recollect going one evening after dark to the house of our
+friends in the Calle Seminario with my serape on, and nearly having to
+fight it out with the great dog Nelson, who was taking charge of his
+master’s room. Nelson knew me perfectly well, and had sat that very
+morning at the hotel-gate for half an hour, holding my horse, while a
+crowd of leperos stood round, admiring his size and the gravity of his
+demeanour as he sat on the pavement, with the bridle in his mouth. But
+that a man in a serape should come into his master’s room at dusk was a
+thing he could not tolerate, till the master himself came in, and
+satisfied his mind on the subject.
+
+As I said, the equipment of ourselves and our three horses took us into
+a variety of strange places, for we bought the things we wanted piece
+by piece, when we saw anything that suited us. Among other places we
+went to the Baratillo, which is the Rag-Fair and Petticoat Lane of
+Mexico, and moreover the emporium for whips, bridles, bits, old spurs,
+old iron, and odds and ends generally. The little shops are arranged in
+long lines, after the manner of the eastern bazaar; and the
+shopkeepers, when they are not smoking cigarettes outside, are sitting
+in their little dens, within arms-length of all the wares they have to
+sell. Here we found what we had come for, and much more too, in the way
+of wonderful old spurs, combs, boxes, and ornaments; so that we came
+several times more before we left the country, and never without
+carrying away some curious old relic.
+
+Mexico, as everybody knows, is decidedly a thievish place. The shops
+are all shut at dark, after the _Oración_, for fear of thieves. Ladies
+used to wear immense tortoise-shell combs at the back of their heads,
+where the mantilla is fastened on; but, when it became a regular trade
+for thieves to ride on horseback through the streets, and pull out the
+combs as they went, the fashion had to be given up. These curiously
+carved and ornamented combs are still preserved as curiosities, and we
+bought several of them.
+
+While we were in Mexico, they knocked a man down in the great square at
+noon-day, robbed him, and left him there for dead. The square is so
+large, and the sun was so hot, that the police—whose head-quarters are
+under the arches in that very square—could not possibly walk across to
+see what was going on!—_moral_, if you will have the distinction of
+having the largest square in the world, you must take the consequences.
+
+Of course, where thieving is so general, the market for stolen goods
+must be a place of considerable trade, and this Baratillo is one of the
+principal depôts for such wares. One may realize here the story of the
+citizen, in the old book, who had his wig stolen at the beginning of
+his walk through London, and found it hanging up for sale a little
+further on. Here the deserter comes to sell his uniform and his
+ricketty old flintlock. Small blame to him. I would do the same myself
+if I were in his place, and were compelled to serve under one rascally
+political adventurer against another rascally political adventurer—to
+say nothing of being treated like a dog, half-starved, and not paid at
+all, except by a sort of half license to plunder. “Those poor soldiers!
+we can’t pay them, you know, and they must live somehow.”
+
+I have abused the Mexicans for being thieves, and not without reason,
+though, as regards ourselves personally, we never lost anything except
+a great brand-new waterproof coat which my companion had brought with
+him, promising to himself that under its shelter he should bid defiance
+to the daily rain-storms of the wet season. As we dismounted from the
+Diligence in Mexico, in the courtyard of the hotel, some one relieved
+him of it. We did not know of the Baratillo in those days, or would
+have gone to look for it there. At the time of our visit it was too
+late, for if it ever had been there, the Mexicans understand too well
+the value of an English “ulli,” as they call them, to let it hang long
+for sale. “Ulli” is not a borrowed word, but the genuine Aztec name for
+India-rubber, which was used to make playing-balls with, long before
+the time of Columbus.
+
+I mentioned the water-bottles as part of our equipment. They are
+gourds, which are throttled with bandages while young, so as to make
+them grow into the shape of bottles with necks. Then they are hung up
+to dry; and the inside being cleaned out through a small hole near the
+stalk, they are ready for use, holding two or three pints of water. A
+couple of inches of a corn-cob (the inside of a ear of Indian corn)
+makes a capital cork; and the bottle is hung by a loop of string to the
+pummel of the saddle, where it swings about without fear of breaking.
+One may see gourds, prepared in just the same way, in Italy, hanging up
+under the eaves of the little farm-houses, among the festoons of red
+and yellow ears of Indian corn; and indeed the gourd-bottle is a
+regular institution of Southern Europe.
+
+We sent Antonio on with the horses to Cuernavaca, and started by the
+Diligence early one morning, accompanied by one of our English friends,
+whom I will call—as every-one else did—Don Guillermo. It is the regular
+thing here, as in Spain, to call everybody by his or her Christian
+name. You may have known Don Antonio or Don Felipe for weeks before you
+happen to hear their surnames.
+
+The road ran at first over the plain, among great water-meadows, with
+herds of cattle pasturing, and fields of wheat and maize. Ploughing was
+going on, after the primitive fashion of the country, with two oxen
+yoked to each plough. The yoke is fastened to the horns of the oxen,
+and to the centre of the yoke a pole is attached. At the other end of
+this pole is the plough itself, which consists of a wooden stake with
+an iron point and a handle. The driver holds the handle in one hand and
+his goad in the other (a long reed with an iron point), and so they
+toil along, making a long scratch as they go. A man follows the plough,
+and drops in single grains of Indian corn, about three feet apart. The
+furrows are three feet from one another, so that each stalk occupies
+some nine square feet of ground. When the plants are growing up they
+dig between them, and heap up round each stalk a little mound of earth.
+
+We passed many little houses consisting of one square room, built of
+mud-bricks, with mud-mortar stuck full of little stones; without
+windows, but generally possessing the luxury of a chimney, with a
+couple of bricks forming an arch over it to keep out the rain. Glimpses
+of men smoking cigarettes at the doors, half-naked brown children
+rolling in the dirt, and women on their knees inside, hard at work
+grinding the corn for those eternal tortillas.
+
+At San Juan de Dios Mr. Christy climbed to the top of the Diligence,
+behind the conductor, who sat with a large black leather bag full of
+stones on the footboard before him. Whenever one of the nine mules
+showed a disposition to shirk his work, a heavy stone came flying at
+him, always hitting him in a tender place, for long practice had made
+the conductor almost as good a shot as the goat-herds in the mountains,
+who are said to be able to hit their goats on whichever horn they
+please, and so to steer them straight when they seem inclined to stray.
+But our conductor simply threw the stones, whereas the goat-herd uses
+the aloe-fibre honda, or sling, that one sees hanging by dozens in the
+Mexican shops.
+
+We pass near Churubusco, and along the line by which the American army
+reached Mexico. The field of lava which they crossed is close at our
+right hand; and just on the other side of it lie Tisapán and our friend
+Don Alejandro’s cotton-factory. On our left are the freshwater-lakes of
+Xochimilco and Chalco, which had risen several feet, and flooded the
+valley in their neighbourhood. Between us and the great mountain-chain
+that forms the rim of the valley, lies a group of extinct volcanos,
+from one of which descends the great lava-field.
+
+Passing in full view of these picturesque craters, now mostly covered
+with trees and brushwood, we begin to ascend, and are soon among the
+porphyritic range that forms a wall between us and the land of
+sugar-canes and palms. Along the road towards Mexico came long files of
+Indians, dressed in the national white cotton shirts and short drawers
+and sandals, made like Montezuma’s, though not with plates of gold on
+the soles, such as that monarch’s sandals had. Some of these Indians
+are bringing on their backs wood and charcoal from the pine-forest
+higher up among the mountains, and some have fastened to their backs
+light crates full of live fowls or vegetables; others are carrying up
+tropical fruits from the tierra caliente below, zapotes and mameis,
+nisperos and granaditas, tamarinds and fresh sugar-canes. These people
+are walking with their loads thirty or forty miles to market: but their
+race have been used as beasts of burden for ages, and they don’t mind
+it.
+
+Bright blue and red birds, and larger and more brilliant butterflies
+than are seen in Europe, show that, though we are among fields of wheat
+and maize, we are in the tropics after all. As the road rises we get
+views of the broad valley, with its lakes and green meadows, and the
+great white haciendas with their clumps of willows, their
+church-towers, and the clusters of adobe huts surrounding them—like the
+peasants’ cottages in feudal Europe, crowding up to the baron’s castle.
+
+Our mules begin to flag as we toil up the steep ascent; but the
+conductor rattles the stones in his black bag, and as the ominous sound
+reaches their ears, they start off again with renewed vigour. We pass
+San Mateo, a village of charcoal-burners, where a large and splendid
+stone church, with its tall dark cypresses, stands among the huts of
+reeds and pine-shingles that form the village.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS BRINGING CHARCOAL, &C. TO MEXICO.]
+
+Trains of mules are continually passing with their heavy loads of wood
+and charcoal, bales of goods and barrels of aguardiente de caña, which
+is rum made from the sugar-cane, but not coloured like that which comes
+to England. The men are continually rushing backwards and forwards
+among their beasts, which are not content with kicking and biting, and
+banging against one another, but are always trying to lie down in the
+road; and one of the principal duties of the arriero is constantly to
+keep an eye on all his beasts at once, and, when he sees one preparing
+to lie down, to be beforehand with him, and drive him on by a furious
+shower of blows, kicks, and curses. Certainly, the Mexican mules are
+the finest and strongest in the world; and, though they are just as
+obstinate here as elsewhere, they are worth two or three times as much
+as horses.
+
+Our road lies through a forest of pines and oaks, which reaches to the
+summit of the pass, where stands a wretched little village, La Guarda.
+There we had a thoroughly Mexican breakfast, with pulque in tall
+tumblers, and endless successions of tortillas, coming in hot and hot
+from the kitchen, where we could see brown women with bare arms, and
+black hair plaited in long tails, kneeling by the charcoal fire, and
+industriously patting out fresh supplies, and baking them rapidly on a
+hot plate. The _pièce de résistance_ was a stew, bright red with
+tomatas, and hot as fire with chile; and then came the _frijoles_—the
+black beans—without which no Mexican, high or low, considers a meal
+complete. The walls of the room were decorated with highly coloured
+engravings, one of which represented an engagement between a Spanish
+and an English fleet, in which the English ships are being boarded by
+the victorious Spaniards, or are being blown up in the background.
+Where the engagement was I cannot recollect. People in Mexico, to whom
+I mentioned this remarkable historical event, assured me that there are
+still to be seen pictures of the destruction of the English fleet by
+the French and Spaniards in the Bay of Trafalgar!
+
+Mexico was always, until the establishment of the republic, profoundly
+ignorant of European affairs. In the old times, when the intercourse
+with the mother-country was by the great ship, “el nao,” which came
+once a year, the government at home could have just such news
+circulated through the country as seemed proper and convenient to them.
+We see in our own times how despotic governments can mystify their
+subjects, and distort contemporary history into what shape they please.
+But in Spanish America the system was worked to a greater extent than
+in any other country I have heard of; and the undercurrent of popular
+talk, which spreads in France and Russia things and opinions not to be
+found in the newspapers, had in Mexico but little influence. Scarcely
+any Mexican travelled, scarcely any foreigner visited the country, and
+the Spaniards who came to hold offices and make fortunes were all in
+the interest of the old country; so the Mexicans went on, until the
+beginning of this century, believing that Spain still occupied the same
+position among the nations of Europe that it had held in the days of
+Charles the Fifth.
+
+While my companion was outside the Diligence, Don Guillermo and I were
+left to the conversation of an Italian fellow-passenger. One finds such
+characters in books, but never before or since have I seen the reality.
+He might have been the original of the great Braggadoccio. His
+conversation was like a chapter out of the autobiography of his
+countryman Alfieri.
+
+He had accompanied the Italian nobleman who was killed in an affray
+with the Mexican robbers, some years ago, and on that occasion his
+defence had been most heroic. He himself had shot several of the
+robbers; till at last, his friend being killed, the rest of the party
+yielded to the overwhelming numbers of the brigands, and he ran off to
+fetch assistance!
+
+Whenever he was riding along a Mexican road, and any suspicious-looking
+person asked him for a light, his habit was to hand him his cigar stuck
+in the muzzle of a pistol; “and they always take the hint,” he said,
+“and see that it won’t do to interfere with us.” Alone, he had been
+attacked by three armed men, but with a pistol in each hand he had
+compelled them to retreat. But this was not all; our champion was
+victorious in love as well as in arms. Like the great Alfieri, to whom
+I have compared him, in every country where he travelled, the most
+beautiful and distinguished ladies hardly waited for him to ask before
+they cast themselves at his feet. Refusing the rich jewels that he
+offered them, they declared that they loved him for himself alone.
+
+Weeks after, we were talking to our friend Mr. Del Pozzo, the Italian
+apothecary in the Calle Plateros, and happened to ask him if he were
+acquainted with his heroic countryman. Whereupon the apothecary went
+off into fits of unextinguishable laughter, and told us how our friend
+really had been in the skirmish he described, and had nobly run away
+almost before a shot was fired, leaving his friends to fight it out. An
+hour or two after, he was found shaking with terror in a ditch.
+
+To return to our road. The forest is on both sides of the Sierra; but
+it is on the southern slope, over which we look down from the pass,
+that the pines attain their fullest size and beauty; for here they are
+as grand as in the Scandinavian forests, with all the beauty of the
+pine-trees on the Italian hills. The pass, with its deep forest
+skirting the road, has been a resort of robbers for many years; and the
+driver pointed out to my companion a little grassy dell by the
+road-side, from which forty men had rushed out and plundered the
+Diligence just ten days before. With his mind just prepared, one may
+imagine his feelings when he caught sight of some twenty wild-looking
+fellows in all sorts of strange garments, with the bright sunshine
+gleaming on the barrels of their muskets. A man was riding a little in
+front of us, and as he approached the others they descended, and ranged
+themselves by the side of the road. They were only the guard, after
+all, and such a guard! Their thick matted black hair hung about over
+their low foreheads and wild brown faces. Some had shoes, some had
+none, and some had sandals. They had straw hats, glazed hats, no hats,
+leather jackets and trousers, cotton shirts and drawers, or drawers
+without any shirt at all; and—what looked worst of all—some had ragged
+old uniforms on, like deserters from the army, and there are no worse
+robbers than they. When the Diligence reached them, the guard joined
+us; some galloping on before, some following behind, whooping and
+yelling, brandishing their arms, and dashing in among the trees and out
+into the road again. Every now and then my friend outside got a glimpse
+down the muzzle of a musket, which did not add to his peace of mind. At
+last we got through the dangerous pass, and then we made a subscription
+for the guard, who departed making the forest ring again with
+war-whoops, and firing off their muskets in our honour until we were
+out of hearing.
+
+The top of the pass is 12,000 feet above the sea, but the clouds seemed
+as high as ever above us, and the swallows were flying far up in the
+air. Three thousand feet lower we were in a warmer region, among oaks
+and arbutus; and here, as in our higher latitudes, the climate is far
+hotter than on the northern slope at the same height. Bananas are to be
+found at an elevation of 9,000 feet, three times the height at which
+they ceased on the eastern slope, as we came up from Vera Cruz. This
+difference between the two slopes depends, in part, on the different
+quantity of sunshine they receive, which is of some importance,
+although we are within the tropics. But the sheltering of the southern
+sides from the chilling winds from the north still further contributes
+to give their vegetation a really tropical character.
+
+We felt the heat becoming more and more intense as we descended, and
+when we reached Cuernavaca we lay down in the beautiful garden of the
+inn, among orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, listening to the pleasant
+cool sound of running water, and looking down into the great barranca
+with its perpendicular walls of rock, and the luxuriant vegetation of
+the tierra caliente covering the banks of the stream that flowed far
+below us. We could easily shout to the people on the other edge of the
+ravine, but it would have taken hours of toiling down the steep paths
+and up again before we could have reached them.
+
+Here our horses were waiting for us; and an hour or two’s ride brought
+us to the great sugar-hacienda of Temisco, where we were to pass the
+night, for towns and inns are few and far between in Mexico when one
+leaves the more populous mountain-plateaus. So much the better, for my
+companion had provided himself with letters of introduction, and we had
+already seen something of hacienda life, and liked it.
+
+As we approached Temisco, we saw upon the slopes, immense fields of
+sugar-cane, now grown into a dense mass, five or six feet high, most
+pleasant to look upon for the delicate green tint of the leaves that
+belongs to no other plant. The colour of our English turf is beautiful,
+and so are the tints of our English woods in spring, but our fields of
+grain have a dull and dingy green compared to the sugar-cane and the
+young Indian corn. In this beautiful valley we cannot charge the
+inhabitants with entirely neglecting the irrigation of the land.
+Indeed, the culture of the sugar-cane cannot be carried on without it,
+and the cost of the watercourses on the large estates has been very
+great. Unfortunately, even here agriculture is not flourishing. The
+small number of the white inhabitants, and the distracted state of the
+country make both life and property very insecure; and the brown people
+are becoming less and less disposed to labour on the plantations.
+
+It is true that most of these channels were made in old times; little
+new is done now, and I could make a long list of estates that were once
+busy and prosperous, giving employment to thousands of the Indian
+inhabitants, and that are now over-grown with weeds and falling to
+ruin.
+
+Entering the iron gate of the hacienda, we found ourselves in an
+immense courtyard, into which open all the principal buildings of the
+estate, the house of the proprietor, the church—which forms a necessary
+part of every hacienda—the crushing-mill, and the boiling-houses. Into
+the same great patio open the immense stables for the many
+riding-horses and the many hundreds of mules that carry the sugar and
+rum over the mountains to market, and the tienda, the shop of the
+estate, through which almost all the money paid to the labourers comes
+back to the proprietor in exchange for goods. A mountain of fresh-cut
+canes stood near the door of the trapiche (the crushing-mill); and a
+gang of Indians were constantly going backwards and forwards carrying
+them in by armfuls; while a succession of mules were continually
+bringing in fresh supplies from the plantation to replenish the great
+heap. The court-yard was littered all over, knee-deep, with dry
+cane-trash; and mules, just freed from their galling saddles, were
+rolling on their backs in it, kicking with all their legs at once, and
+evidently in a state of high enjoyment. Part of one side of the square
+was a sort of wide cloister, and in it stood chairs and tables.
+
+Here the business of the place was transacted, and the Administrador
+could look up from his ledger, and see pretty well what was going on
+all over the establishment.
+
+It is very common for the owners of these haciendas to be absentees,
+and to leave the entire control of their estates to the administradors;
+but at Temisco, which is much better managed than most others, this is
+not the case, and the son of the proprietor generally lives there. He
+was out riding, so we sent our horses to the stable, and lounged about
+eating sugar-canes till he should return. Presently he came, a young
+man in a broad Mexican hat and white jacket and trousers, mounted on a
+splendid little horse, with his saddle glittering with silver, every
+inch a planter. He welcomed us hospitably, and we sat down together in
+the cloister looking out on the courtyard. Evening was closing in, and
+all at once the church-bell rang. Crowds of Indian labourers in their
+white dresses came flocking in, hardly distinguishable in the twilight,
+and the sound of their footsteps deadened as they walked over the dry
+stubble that covered the ground. All work ceased, every one uncovered
+and knelt down; while, through the open church-doors, we heard the
+Indian choir chanting the vesper hymn. In the haciendas of Mexico every
+day ends thus. Many times I heard the Oración chanted at nightfall, but
+its effect never diminished by repetition, and to my mind it has always
+seemed the most impressive of religious services.
+
+Then the Administrador seated himself behind a great book, and the
+calling over the “raya” began. Every man in turn was called by name,
+and answered in a loud voice, “I praise God!;” then saying how much he
+had earned in the day, for the Administrador to write down. “Juan
+Fernandez!”—“_Alabo a Dios, tres reales y medio_:” “I praise God, one
+and ninepence.” “José Valdes!”—“I praise God, eighteen pence, and
+sixpence for the boy;” and so on, through a couple of hundred names.
+
+Then came, not unacceptably, a little cup of pasty chocolate and a long
+roll for each of us. Then Don Guillermo and our host talked about their
+mutual acquaintances in Mexico, and we asked questions about
+sugar-planting, and walked about the boiling-house, where the
+night-gang of brown men were hard at work stirring and skimming at the
+boiling-pans, and ladling out coarse unrefined sugar into little
+earthen bowls to cool. This common sugar in bowls is very generally
+used by the poorer Mexicans. The sugar-boilers were naked excepting a
+cotton girdle. These men were very strong, and with great powers of
+endurance, but they did not at all resemble the strong men of Europe
+with their great muscles standing up under their skin, the men in
+Michael Angelo’s pictures, or the Farnese Hercules. They are equally
+unlike the thin wiry Arabs, whose strength seems so disproportionate to
+their lean little bodies.
+
+The pure Mexican Indian is short and sturdy; and, until you have
+observed the peculiarities of the race, you would say he was too stout
+and flabby to be strong. But this appearance is caused by the immense
+thickness of his skin, which conceals the play of his muscles; and in
+reality his strength is very great, especially in the legs and thighs,
+and in the muscles that are brought into action in carrying burdens.
+Sartorius used to observe the Indian miners bringing loads of above
+five-hundred-weight up a hundred fathoms of mine-ladders, which consist
+of trunks of trees fixed slanting across the shaft, with notches cut in
+them for steps.
+
+As I have said before, it is not the mere training of the individual
+that has produced this remarkable development of the power of carrying
+loads. The centuries before the Conquest, when there were no beasts of
+burden, had gradually produced a race whose bodies were admirably
+fitted for such work; and the persistency with which they have clung to
+their old habits has done much to prevent their losing this
+peculiarity.
+
+To complete the description of the Indians which I have been led into
+by speaking of the sugar-boilers,—they are chocolate-brown in colour,
+with curved noses, straight black hair hanging flat round their heads
+and covering their wonderfully low foreheads, and occasionally a scanty
+black beard. Their faces are broadly oval, their eyes far apart, and
+they have wide mouths with coarse lips. Not bad faces on the whole, but
+heavy and unexpressive.
+
+At ten o’clock came a heavy supper, the substantial meal of the day,
+and immediately afterwards we went to bed, and dreamt such dreams as
+may be imagined. We were off early in the morning with a wizened old
+mestizo to guide us to the ruins of Xochicalco, which are on this very
+estate of Temisco. The estate is forty miles across, however, and it is
+a long ride to the ruins. After we leave the fields of sugar-cane, we
+see scarcely a hut, nor a patch of cultivated ground. At last we get to
+Xochicalco, and find ourselves at the foot of a hill, some four hundred
+feet in height, extraordinarily regular in its conical shape, more so
+than any natural hill could be, unless it were the cone of a volcano.
+At different heights upon this hill, we could see from below broad
+terraces running round and round it. A little nearer we came upon a
+great ditch. The sides had fallen in, in many places; sometimes it was
+quite filled up, and everywhere it was overgrown with thick brushwood,
+as was the hill itself. It seems that this ditch runs quite round the
+base of the hill, and is three miles long. Climbing up through the
+thicket of thorny bushes and out upon the terraces, it became quite
+evident that the hill had been artificially shaped. The terraces were
+built up with blocks of solid stone, and paved with the same. On the
+neighbouring hills we could discern traces of more terrace-roads of the
+same kind; there must be many miles of them still remaining.
+
+But it was when we reached the summit, that we found the most
+remarkable part of the structure. The top has been cut away so as to
+form a large level space, which was surrounded by a stone wall, now in
+ruins. Inside the inclosure are several mounds of stone, doubtless
+burial-places, and all that is left of the pyramid. Ruined and defaced
+as it is, I shall never forget our feelings of astonishment and
+admiration as we pushed our way through the bushes, and suddenly came
+upon it. We were quite unprepared for anything of the kind; all we knew
+of the place when we started that morning being that there were some
+curious old ruins there.
+
+The pyramid was composed of blocks of hewn stone, so accurately fitted
+together as hardly to show the joints, and the carving goes on without
+interruption from one block to another. Some of these blocks are eight
+feet long, and nearly three feet wide. They were laid together without
+mortar, and indeed, from the construction of the building, none was
+required. The first storey is about sixteen feet high, including the
+plinth at the bottom. Above the plinth comes a sculptured group of
+figures, which is repeated in panels all round the pyramid, twice on
+each side. Each panel occupies a space thirty feet long by ten in
+height, and the bas-reliefs project three or four inches. There is a
+chief, dressed in a girdle, and with a head-dress of feathers just like
+those of the Red Indians of the north. Below the girdle he terminates
+in a scroll. In the middle of the group is what may perhaps be a
+palm-tree, with a rabbit at its foot. Close to the tree, and reaching
+nearly to the same height, is a figure with a crocodile’s head wearing
+a crown, and with drapery in parallel lines, like the wings of the
+creatures in the Assyrian bas-reliefs. Indeed this may very likely be a
+conventional representation of the robes of feather-work so
+characteristic of Mexico.
+
+[Illustration: SCULPTURED PANEL,
+From the ruined Pyramid of Xochicalco. (_After Nebel_.)]
+
+Above these bas-reliefs is a frieze between three and four feet high,
+with another sculptured panel repeated eight times on each side of the
+pyramid. This remarkable sculpture represents a man sitting barefoot
+and crosslegged. On his head is a kind of crown or helmet, with a plume
+of feathers; and from the front of this helmet there protrudes a
+serpent, just where in the Egyptian sculptures the royal basilisk is
+fixed on the crowns of kings and queens. The eyes of this personage are
+protected by round plates with holes in the middle, held on by a strap
+round the head, like the coloured glasses used in the United States to
+keep off the glare of the sun, and known as “goggles.” In front of this
+figure are sculptured a rabbit and some unintelligible ornaments or
+weapons. “Rabbit” may have been his name.
+
+The frieze is surmounted by a cornice; and above the cornice of the
+second storey enough remains to show that it was covered with reliefs,
+in the same way as the first There were five storeys originally: the
+others have only been destroyed about a century. The former proprietor
+of the hacienda of Temisco pulled down the upper storeys, and carried
+away the blocks of stone to build walls and dams with.
+
+The perfect execution of the details in the bas-reliefs and the
+accuracy with which they are repeated show clearly that it was not so
+much want of skill as the necessity of keeping to the conventional mode
+of representing objects that has given so grotesque a character to the
+Mexican scriptures. Certain figures became associated with religion and
+astrology in Mexico, as in many other countries; and the sculptor,
+though his facility in details shows that he could have made far better
+figures if he had had a chance, never had the opportunity, for he was
+not allowed to depart from the original rude type of the sacred object.
+Humboldt remarks that the same undeviating reproduction of fixed models
+is as striking in the Mexican sculptures done since the Conquest. The
+clumsy outlines of the rude figures of saints brought from Europe in
+the 16th century were adopted as models by the native sculptors, and
+have lasted without change to this day.
+
+It is evident that Xochicalco answered several purposes. It was a
+fortified hill of great strength, also a sacred shrine, and a
+burial-place for men of note, whose bodies, no doubt, still lie under
+the ruined cairns near the pyramid. The magnitude of the ditch and the
+terraces, as well as the great size of the blocks of stone brought up
+the hill without the aid of beasts of burden, indicate a large
+population and a despotic government. The beauty of the masonry and
+sculpture show that the people who erected this monument had made no
+small progress in the arts. We must remember, too, that they had no
+iron, but laboriously cut and polished the hardest granite and porphyry
+with instruments of stone and bronze; we can hardly tell how.
+
+The resemblances which people find between Assyrian and Egyptian
+sculptures and the American monuments are of little value, and do not
+seem sufficient to ground any argument upon. When slightly civilized
+races copy men, trees, and animals in their rude way, it would be hard
+if there were not some resemblance among the figures they produce. With
+reference to their ornamentation, it is true that what is called the
+“key-border” is quite common in Mexico and Yucatan, and that on this
+very pyramid the panels are divided by a twisted border, which would
+not be noticed as peculiar in a “renaissance” building. But the model
+of this border may have been suggested—on either side of the globe—by
+creepers twined together in the forest, or by a cord doubled and
+twisted, such as is represented in one of the commonest Egyptian
+hieroglyphs.
+
+The cornice which finishes the first storey of the pyramid is a
+familiar pattern, but nothing can be concluded from these simple
+geometrical designs, which might be invented over and over again by
+different races when they began to find pleasure in tracing ornamental
+devices upon their buildings. Upon the tattooed skins of savages such
+designs may be seen, and the patterns were certainly in use among them
+before they had any intercourse with white men. This is the view
+Humboldt takes of these coincidences. That both the Egyptian king and
+the Mexican chief should wear a helmet with a serpent standing out from
+it just above the forehead, is somewhat extraordinary.
+
+Now, who built Xochicalco? Writers on Mexico are quite ready with their
+answer. They tell us that, according to the Mexican tradition, the
+country was formerly inhabited by another race, who were called
+_Toltecâ_, or, as we say, _Toltecs_, from the name of their city,
+_Tollan_, “the Reed-swamp;” and that they were of the same race as the
+Aztecs, as shown by the names of their cities and their kings being
+Aztec words; that they were a highly civilized people, and brought into
+the country the arts of sculpture, hieroglyphic painting, great
+improvements in agriculture, many of the peculiar religious rites since
+practised by other nations who settled after them in Mexico, and the
+famous astronomical calendar, of which I shall speak afterwards. The
+particular Toltec king to whom the Mexican historians ascribe the
+building of Xochicalco was called Nauhyotl, that is to say, “Four
+Bells,” and died A.D. 945.
+
+We are further told that just about the time of our Norman Conquest,
+the Toltecs were driven out from the Mexican plateau by famine and
+pestilence, and migrated again southward. Only a few families remained,
+and from them the Aztecs, Chichemecs, and other barbarous tribes by
+whom the country was re-peopled, derived that knowledge of the arts and
+sciences upon which their own civilization was founded. It was by this
+Toltec nation—say the Mexican writers—that the monuments of
+Xochichalco, Teotihuacán, and Cholula were built. In their architecture
+the Aztecs did little more than copy the works left by their
+predecessors; and, to this day, the Mexican Indians call a builder a
+_toltecatl_ or _Toltec_.
+
+If we consider this circumstantial account to be anything but a mere
+tissue of fables, the question naturally arises—what became of the
+remains of the Toltecs when they left the high plains of Mexico? A
+theory has been propounded to answer this question, that they settled
+in Chiapas and Yucatan, and built Palenque, Copan, and Uxmal, and the
+other cities, the ruins of which lie imbedded in the tropical forest.
+
+At the time that Prescott wrote his History of the Conquest, such a
+theory was quite tenable; but the new historic matter lately made known
+by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg has given a different aspect to the
+question. Without attempting to maintain the credibility of this
+writer’s history as a whole, I cannot but think that he has given us
+satisfactory grounds for believing that the ruined cities of Central
+America were built by a race which flourished long before the Toltecs;
+that they were already declining in power and civilization in the
+seventh century, when the Toltecs began to flourish in Mexico; and that
+the present Mayas of Yucatan are their degenerate descendants.
+
+What I have seen of Central American and Mexican antiquities, and of
+drawings of them in books, tends to support the Abbé Brasseur de
+Bourbourg’s view of the history of these countries. Traces of
+communication between the two peoples are to be found in abundance, but
+nothing to warrant our holding that either people took its civilization
+bodily from the other. My excuse for entering into these details must
+be that some of the facts I have to offer are new.
+
+A bas-relief at Kabah, described in Mr. Stephens’ account of his second
+journey, bears considerable resemblance to that on the so-called
+“sacrificial stone” of Mexico; and the warrior has the characteristic
+Mexican _maquahuitl_, or “Hand-wood,” a mace set with rows of obsidian
+teeth.
+
+A curious ornament is met with in the Central American sculptures,
+representing a serpent with a man’s face looking out from between its
+distended jaws; and we find a similar design in the Aztec
+picture-writings, sculptures, and pottery.
+
+A remarkable peculiarity in the Aztec picture-writings is that the
+personages represented often have one or more figures of tongues
+suspended in mid-air near their mouths, indicating that they are
+speaking, or that they are persons in authority. Such tongues are to be
+seen on the Yucatan sculptures.
+
+One of the panels on the Pyramid of Xochicalco seems to have a bearing
+upon this subject, I mean that of the cross-legged chief, of which I
+have just spoken.
+
+In the first place, sitting cross-legged is not an Aztec custom. I do
+not think we ever saw an Indian in Mexico sitting cross-legged. In the
+picture-writings of the Aztecs, the men sit doubled up, with their
+chins almost touching their knees; while the women have their legs
+tucked under them, and their feet sticking out on the left side. On the
+other hand, this attitude is quite characteristic of the Yucatan
+sculptures. At Copan there is an altar, with sixteen chiefs sitting
+cross-legged round it; and, moreover, one of them has a head-dress very
+much like that of the Xochicalco chief (except that it has no serpent),
+and others are more or less similar; while I do not recollect anything
+like it in the Mexican picture-writings. The curious perforated
+eye-plates of the Xochicalco chief, which he wore—apparently—to keep
+arrows and javelins out of his eyes, are part of the equipment of the
+Aztec warrior in the picture-writings, while Palenque and Copan seemed
+to afford no instance of them; so that in two peculiarities the
+remarkable sculpture before us seems to belong rather to Yucatan than
+to Mexico, and in one to Mexico rather than to Yucatan.
+
+It is not even possible in all cases to distinguish Central American
+sculptures from those of Mexican origin. Among the numerous stone
+figures in Mr. Christy’s museum, some are unmistakably of Central
+American origin, and some as certainly Mexican; but beside these, there
+are many which both their owner and myself, though we had handled
+hundreds of such things, were obliged to leave on the debatable ground
+between the two classes.
+
+So much for the resemblances. But the differences are of much greater
+weight. The pear-shaped heads of most of the Central American figures,
+whose peculiar configuration is only approached by the wildest
+caricatures of Louis Philippe, are perfectly distinctive. So are the
+hieroglyphics arranged in squares, found on the sculptures of Central
+America and in the Dresden Codex. So is the general character of the
+architecture and sculpture, as any one may see at a glance.
+
+It is quite true that the so-called Aztec Astronomical Calendar was in
+use in Central America, and that many of the religious observances in
+both countries, such as the method of sacrificing the human victims,
+and the practice of the worshippers drawing blood from themselves in
+honour of the gods, are identical. But there were several ways in which
+this might have been brought about, and it is no real proof that the
+civilization of either country was an offshoot from that of the other.
+To consider it as such would be like arguing that the negroes of Cuba
+and the Indians of Yucatan had derived their civilization one from the
+other, because both peoples are Roman Catholics, and use the same
+almanac. On the whole I am disposed to conclude that the civilizations
+of Mexico and Central America were originally independent, but that
+they came much into contact, and thus modified one another to no small
+extent.
+
+At the risk of being prosy, I will mention the _a priori_ grounds upon
+which we may argue that the civilization of Central America did not
+grow up there, but was brought ready-made by a people who emigrated
+there from some other country. There is a theory afloat, that it is
+only in temperate climates that barbarous nations make much progress in
+civilizing themselves. In tropical countries the intensity of the heat
+makes man little disposed for exertion, and the luxuriance of the
+vegetation supplies him with the little he requires. In such
+climates—say the advocates of this theory—man acknowledges the
+supremacy of nature over himself, and gives up the attempt to shape her
+to his own purposes; and thus, in these countries, the inhabitants go
+on from generation to generation, lazily enjoying their existence,
+making no effort, and indeed feeling no desire to raise themselves in
+the social scale. Upon this theory, therefore, when we find a high
+civilization in hot countries, as in the plains of India, we have to
+account for it by supposing an immigration of races bringing their
+civilization with them from more temperate climates. This theory of
+civilization favours the idea of the Central American cities having
+been built by a people from Mexico. The climate of the Mexican
+highlands, which may be taken in a rough way to correspond with that of
+North Italy, is well suited to a nation’s development. But the cities
+of Yucatan and Chiapas, though geographically not far removed from the
+Mexican plateau, are brought by their small elevation above the sea
+into a very different climate. They are in the land of tropical heat
+and the rankest vegetation, in the midst of dense forests where
+pestilential fevers and overwhelming lassitude make it almost
+impossible for Europeans to live, and where the Indians who still
+inhabit the neighbourhood of the ruined cities are the merest savages
+sunk in the lowest depths of lazy ignorance.
+
+If this climate-theory of progress have any truth in it, no barbarous
+tribe could have raised itself in such a country to the social state
+which is indicated by the ruins of such temples and cities. They must
+have been settlers from some more temperate region.
+
+While wandering about the hill of Xochicalco we came upon a spot that
+strongly excited our curiosity. It was simply a small paved oval space
+with a little altar at one end, and, lying round about it, some
+fragments of what seemed to have been a hideous grotesque idol of baked
+clay. Perhaps it was a shrine dedicated to one of the inferior deities,
+such as often surrounded the greater temples; for, in Mexico,
+astronomy, astrology, and religion had become mixed up together, as
+they have been in other quarters of the globe, and even the
+astronomical signs of days and months had temples of their own.
+
+Xochicalco means “In the House of Flowers.” The word
+“flower,”—_xochitl_,—is often a part of the names of Mexican places and
+people, such as the lake of Xochimilco—“In the Flower-plantation.”
+_Tlilxochitl_, literally “black flower,” is the Aztec name for vanilla,
+so that the name of that famous Mexican historian, Ixtlilxochitl, whose
+name sticks in the throats of readers of Prescott, means
+“Vanilla-face.” Why the place was called “In the House of Flowers” is
+not clear. The usual explanation seems not unlikely, that it was
+because offerings of flowers and first-fruits were made upon its
+shrines. The Toltecs, say the Mexican chroniclers, did not sacrifice
+human victims; and it was not until long after other tribes had taken
+possession of their deserted temples, that the Aztecs introduced the
+custom by sacrificing their prisoners of war. It seems odd, however,
+that one of the Toltec kings should have been called Topiltzin, which
+was the title of the chief priest among the Aztecs, whose duty it was
+to cut open the breasts of the human victims and tear out their hearts.
+
+The Indians always delighted in carrying flowers in their solemn
+processions, crowning themselves with garlands, and decorating their
+houses and temples with them; and, while they worshipped their gods
+according to the simple rites which tradition says their prophet,
+Quetzalcoatl, (“Feathered Snake,”) appointed, before he left them and
+embarked in his canoe on the Eastern ocean, no name could have been
+more appropriate for their temple. This pleasant custom did not
+disappear after the Conquest; and to this day the churches in the
+Indian districts are beautiful with their brilliant garlands and
+nosegays, and are as emphatically “houses of flowers” as were the
+temples in ages long past.
+
+Since writing the above notice of the Pyramid of Xochicalco, I have
+come upon a new piece of evidence, which, if it may be depended on,
+proves more about the history of this remarkable monument than all the
+rest put together. Dupaix made a drawing of the ruins at Xochicalco in
+1805, which is to be found in Lord Kingsborough’s ‘Antiquities of
+Mexico,’ and among the sculptures of the upper tier of blocks is
+represented a reed, with its leaves set in a square frame, with three
+small circles underneath; the whole forming, in the most unmistakable
+way, the sign 3 Acatl (3 Cane) of the Mexican Astronomical Calendar.
+
+Now it must be admitted that Dupaix’s drawing of these ruins is most
+grossly incorrect; but still no amount of mere carelessness in an
+artist will justify us in supposing him to have invented and put in out
+of his own head a design so entirely _sui generis_ as this. It does not
+even follow that the drawing is wrong because the sign may not be found
+there now; for it was in an upper tier, and no doubt many stones have
+been removed since 1805, for building-purposes.
+
+If the existence of the sign 3 Acatl on the pyramid may be considered
+as certain, it will fit in perfectly with the accounts of the Mexican
+historians, who state that Xochicalco was built by a king of the Toltec
+race, and also that the Aztecs adopted the astronomical calendars of
+years and days in use among the Toltecs.
+
+It was afternoon when we left Xochicalco and rode on over a gently
+undulating country, crossing streams here and there, and had our
+breakfast at Miacatlán under a shed in front of the village shop, where
+all the activity of the little Indian town seemed to be concentrated.
+By the road-side were beautiful tamarind-trees with their dark green
+foliage, and the mamei-tree as large as a fine English horse-chestnut,
+and not unlike it at a distance. On the branches were hanging the great
+mameis, just like the inside of cocoa-nuts when the inner shell has
+been cracked off. It appeared that Nature was not acquainted with M. De
+La Fontaine’s works, or she would probably have got a hint from the
+fable of the acorn and the pumpkin, and not have hung mameis and
+cocoa-nuts at such a dangerous height.
+
+[Illustration: AZTEC HEAD IN TERRA-COTTA. (_From Mr. Christy’s
+Collection_.)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+COCOYOTLA. CACAHUAMILPÁN. CHALMA. OCULAN. TENANCINGO. TOLUCA.
+
+
+[Illustration: IXTCALCO CHURCH.]
+
+A little before dark we came to the hacienda of Santa Rosita de
+Cocoyotla, another sugar-plantation which was to be our head-quarters
+for some days to come. We presented our letter of introduction from the
+owner of the estate, and the two administradors received us with open
+arms. We were conducted into the strangers’ sleeping-room, a long
+barrack-like apartment with stone walls and a stone floor that seemed
+refreshingly dark and cool; we could look out through its barred
+windows into the garden, where a rapid little stream of water running
+along the channel just outside made a pleasant gurgling sound.
+Appearances were delusive, however, and it was only the change from the
+outside that made us feel the inside cool and pleasant. For days our
+clothes clung to us as if we had been drowned, and the
+pocket-handkerchiefs with which we mopped our faces had to be hung on
+chair-backs to dry. Except in the early morning, there was no coolness
+in that sweltering place.
+
+In one corner of our room I discerned a brown toad of monstrous size
+squatting in great comfort on the damp flags. He was as big as a
+trussed chicken, and looked something like one in the twilight. We
+pointed him out to the administrador, who brought in two fierce
+watchdogs, but the toad set up his back and spirted his acrid liquor,
+and the dogs could not be got to go near him. We stirred him up with a
+bamboo and drove him into the garden, but he left his portrait painted
+in slime upon our floor.
+
+The Indian choir chanted the Oración as we had heard it the night
+before at Temisco, and then came the calling over of the raya. After
+that we walked about the place, and sat talking in the open corridor.
+Owners of estates, and indeed all white folks living in this part of
+the country were beginning to feel very anxious about their position,
+and not without reason. Ordinary political events excite but little
+interest in these Indian districts, and so trifling a matter as a
+revolution and a change of people in power does not affect them
+perceptibly. The Indians are absolutely free, and have their votes and
+their civil privileges like any other citizens. All that the owners of
+the plantations ask of them is to work for high wages, and hitherto
+they have done this, but for years it has been becoming more and more
+difficult to get them to work. All they do with the money when they get
+it, is to spend it in drinking and gambling, if they are of an
+extravagant turn of mind; or to bury it in some out-of-the-way place,
+if they are given to saving. If they were whites or half-caste Mexicans
+they would spend their money upon fine clothes and horses, but the
+Indian keeps to the white cotton dress of his fathers, and is never
+seen on horseback. Now this being the case, it does not seem
+unreasonable that they should not much care about working hard for
+money that is of so little use to them when they have got it, and that
+they should prefer living in their little huts walled with canes and
+thatched with palm-leaves, and cultivating the little patch of
+garden-ground that lies round it—which will produce enough fruit and
+vegetables for their own subsistence, and more besides, which they can
+sell for clothes and tobacco. A day or two of this pleasant easy work
+at their own ground will provide this, and they do not see why they
+should labour as hired servants to get more. This is bad enough, think
+the hacendados, but there is worse behind. The Indians have been of
+late years becoming gradually aware that the government of the country
+is quite rotten and powerless, and that in their own districts at
+least, the power is very much in their own hands, for the few scattered
+whites could offer but slight resistance. The doctrine of “America for
+the Americans” is rapidly spreading among them, and active emissaries
+are going about reminding them that the Spaniards only got their lands
+by the right of the strongest, and that now is the time for them to
+reassert their rights.
+
+The name of Alvarez is circulated among them, as the man who is to lead
+them in the coming struggle—Alvarez the mulatto general, whose hideous
+portrait is in every print-shop in Mexico. He was President before
+Comonfort, and is now established with his Indian regiments in the hot
+pestilential regions of the Pacific coast.
+
+The undisguised contempt with which the Indians have been treated for
+ages by the whites and the mestizos has not been without its effect.
+The revolution, and the abolition of all legal distinctions of caste
+still left the Indians mere senseless unreasoning creatures in the eyes
+of the whiter races; and, if the original race once get the upper hand,
+it will go hard with the whites and their estates in these parts. Only
+a day or two before we came down from Mexico, the government had
+endeavoured to quarter some troops in one of the little Indian towns
+which we passed through on our way from Temisco. But the inhabitants
+saluted them with volleys of stones from the church-steeple and the
+house-tops, and they had to retreat most ignominiously into their old
+quarters among “reasonable people.”
+
+I have put down our notions on the “Indian Question,” just as they
+presented themselves to us at the time. The dismal forebodings of the
+planters seem to have been fulfilled to some extent at least, for we
+heard, not long after our return to Europe, that the Indians had
+plundered and set fire to numbers of the haciendas of the south
+country, and that our friends the administradors of Cocoyotla had
+escaped with their lives. The hacienda itself, if our information is
+correct, which I can hardly doubt, is now a blackened deserted ruin.
+
+At supper appeared two more guests besides ourselves, apparently
+traders carrying goods to sell at the villages and haciendas on the
+road. In such places the hacienda offers its hospitality to all
+travellers, and there was room in our caravanserai for yet more
+visitors if they had come. Our beds were like those in general use in
+the tropics, where mattresses would be unendurable, and even the
+pillows become a nuisance. The frame of the bed has a piece of coarse
+cloth stretched tightly over it; a sheet is laid upon this, and another
+sheet covers the sleeper. This compromise between a bed and a hammock
+answers the purpose better than anything else, and admits of some
+circulation of air, especially when you have kicked off the sheet and
+lie fully exposed to the air and the mosquitos.
+
+I cannot say that it is pleasant to wake an hour or two after going to
+bed, with your exact profile depicted in a wet patch on the pillow; nor
+is it agreeable to become conscious at the same time of an intolerable
+itching, and to find, on lighting a candle, that an army of small ants
+are walking over you, and biting furiously. These were my experiences
+during my first night at Cocoyotla; and I finished the night, lying
+half-dressed on my bed, with the ends of my trousers-legs tied close
+with handkerchiefs to keep the creatures out. But when we got into our
+saddles in the early morning, we forgot all these little miseries, and
+started merrily on our expedition to the great stalactitic cave of
+Cacahuamilpán.
+
+Our day’s journey had two objects; one was to see the cave, and the
+other to visit the village close by,—one of the genuine unmixed Indian
+communities, where even the Alcalde and the Cura, the temporal and
+spiritual heads of the society, are both of pure Indian blood, and
+white influence has never been much felt.
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS MAKING & BAKING TORTILLAS. (After Models
+made by a Native Artist.)]
+
+A ride of two or three hours from the hacienda brought us into a
+mountainous district, and there we found the village of Cacahuamilpán
+on the slope of a hill. In the midst of neat trim gardens stood the
+little white church, and the ranches of the inhabitants, cottages of
+one room, with walls of canes which one can see through in all
+directions, and roofs of thatch, with the ground smoothed and trodden
+hard for a floor. Everything seemed clean and prosperous, and there was
+a bright sunny look about the whole place; but to Englishmen,
+accustomed to the innumerable appliances of civilized life, it seems
+surprising how very few and simple are the wants of these people. The
+inventory of their whole possessions will only occupy a few lines. The
+_metate_ for grinding or rubbing down the maize to be patted out into
+tortillas, a few calabashes for bottles, and pieces of calabashes for
+bowls and cups, prettily ornamented and painted, and hanging on pegs
+round the walls. A few palm-leaf mats (petates) to sleep upon, some
+pots of thin unglazed earthenware for the cooking, which is done over a
+wood-fire in the middle of the floor. A chimney is not necessary in
+houses which are like the Irishman’s coat, consisting principally of
+holes. A wooden box, somewhere, contains such of the clothes of the
+family as are not in wear. There is really hardly anything I can think
+of to add to this catalogue, except the agricultural implements, which
+consist of a wooden spade, a hoe, some sharp stakes to make the drills
+with, and the machete—which is an iron bill-hook, and serves for
+pruning, woodcutting, and now and then for less peaceful purposes.
+Sometimes one sees women weaving cotton-cloth, or _manta_, as it is
+called, in a loom of the simplest possible construction; or sitting at
+their doors in groups, spinning cotton-thread with the _malacates_, and
+apparently finding as much material for gossip here as elsewhere.
+
+The Mexicans spun and wove their cotton-cloth just in this way before
+the Conquest, and malacates of baked clay are found in great numbers in
+the neighbourhood of the old Mexican cities. They are simple, like very
+large button-moulds, and a thin wooden skewer stuck in the hole in the
+middle makes them ready for use. Such spindles were used by the
+lake-men of Switzerland, but the earthen heads were not quite the same
+in shape, being like balls pierced with a hole, as are those at present
+used in Mexico.
+
+The Indians here had not the dull sullen look we saw among those who
+inhabit the colder regions; and, though belonging to the same race,
+they were better formed and had a much freer bearing than their less
+fortunate countrymen of the colder districts.
+
+Our business in the village was to get guides for the cavern. While
+some men were gone to look for the Alcalde, we walked about the
+village, and finally encamped under a tree. One of our men had got us a
+bag full of fruit,—limes, zapotes, and nisperos, which last are a large
+kind of medlar, besides a number of other kinds of fruit, which we ate
+without knowing what they were. Though rather insipid, the limes are
+deliciously refreshing in this thirsty country; and they do no harm,
+however enormously one may indulge in them. The whole neighbourhood
+abounds in fruit, and its name _Cacahuamilpán_ means “the plantation of
+_cacahuate_ nuts.”
+
+It soon became evident that the Alcalde was keeping us waiting as a
+matter of dignity, and to show that, though the white men might be held
+in great estimation elsewhere, they did not think so much of them in
+this free and independent village. At last a man came to summon us to a
+solemn audience. In a hut of canes, the Alcalde, a little lame Indian,
+was sitting on a mat spread on the ground in the middle, with his
+escribano or secretary at his left hand. Other Indians were standing
+outside at the door. The little man scarcely condescended to take any
+notice of us when we saluted him, but sat bolt upright, positively
+bursting with suppressed dignity, and the escribano inquired in a loud
+voice what our business was. We told him we wanted guides to the cave,
+which he knew as well as we did; but instead of answering, he began to
+talk to the Alcalde. We quite appreciated the pleasure it must have
+been to the two functionaries to show off before us and their assembled
+countrymen, who were looking on at the proceedings with great respect;
+and we had not minded affording them this cheap satisfaction; but at
+last the joke seemed to be getting stale, so we proceeded some to sit
+and some to lie down at full length, and to go on eating limes in the
+presence of the August company. Thereupon they informed us what would
+be the cost of guides and candles, and we eventually made a bargain
+with them and started on foot.
+
+On looking at the map of the State of Mexico, there is to be seen a
+river which stops suddenly on reaching the mountains of Cacahuamilpán,
+and begins again on the other side, having found a passage for itself
+through caves in the mountain for six or seven miles. Not far from the
+place where this river flows out of the side of the hill, is a path
+which leads to the entrance of the cave. A long downward slope brought
+us into the first great vaulted chamber, perhaps a quarter of a mile
+long and eighty feet high; then a long scramble through a narrow
+passage, and another hall still grander than the first. At the end of
+this hall is another passage leading on into another chamber. Beyond
+this we did not go. As it was, we must have walked between one and two
+miles into the cavern, but people have explored it to twice this
+distance, always finding a repetition of the same arrangement, great
+vaulted chambers alternating with long passages almost choked by fallen
+rocks. In one of the passages, I think the last we came to, the roaring
+of the river in its subterranean bed was distinctly audible below us.
+
+Excepting the great cave of Kentucky, I believe there is no stalactitic
+cavern known so vast and beautiful as this. The appearance of the
+largest hall was wonderful when some twenty of our Indian guides
+stationed themselves on pinnacles of stalagmite, each one holding up a
+blazing torch, while two more climbed upon a great mass at one end
+called the altar, and burnt Bengal lights there; the rest stood at the
+other extremity of the cave sending up rockets in rapid succession into
+the vaulted roof, and making the millions of grotesque incrustations
+glitter as if they had been masses of diamonds: All the quaint shapes
+that are found in such caverns were to be seen here on the grandest
+scale, columns, arched roof, organ-pipes, trees, altars, and squatting
+monsters ranged in long lines like idols in a temple. There may very
+well be some truth in the notion that the origin of Gothic architecture
+was in stalactites of a limestone cavern, so numerous and perfect are
+the long slender columns crowned with pointed Gothic arches.
+
+Our procession through the cave was a picturesque one. We carried long
+wax altar-candles and our guides huge torches made of threads of
+aloe-fibre soaked in resin and wrapped round with cloth, in appearance
+and texture exactly like the legs and arms of mummies. As we went, the
+Indians sang Mexican songs to strange, monotonous, plaintive tunes, or
+raced about into dark corners shouting with laughter. They talked about
+adventures in the cave, to them of course the great phenomenon of the
+whole world; but it did not seem, as far as we could hear, that they
+associated with it any recollections of the old Aztec divinities and
+the mystic rites performed in their honour.
+
+No fossil bones have been found in the cavern, nor human remains except
+in one of the passages far within, where a little wooden cross still
+marks the spot where the skeleton of an Indian was found. Whether he
+went alone for mere curiosity to explore the cave, or, what is more
+likely, with an idea of finding treasure, is not known; nothing is
+certain but that his candle was burnt out while he was still far from
+the entrance, and that he died there. I said no fossil remains had been
+found, but the level floors of the great halls are continually being
+raised by fresh layers of stalagmite from the water dropping from the
+roof, and no one knows what may lie under them. These floors are in
+many places covered with little loose concretions like marbles, and
+these concretions in the course of time are imbedded in the horizontal
+layers of the same material.
+
+As we left the entrance hall and began to ascend the sloping passage
+that leads to daylight, we saw an optical appearance which, had we not
+seen it with our own eyes, we could never have believed to be a natural
+effect of light and shade. To us, still far down in the cave, the
+entrance was only illuminated by reflected light; but as the Indians
+reached it, the direct rays of sunlight fell upon them, and their white
+dresses shone with an intense phosphoric light, as though they had been
+self-luminous. It is just such an effect that is wanting in our
+pictures of the Transfiguration, but I fear it is as impossible to
+paint it upon canvas as to describe it in words.
+
+Next morning our friend Don Guillermo said good-bye to us, and started
+to return post-haste to his affairs in the capital. We stayed a few
+days longer at Cocoyotla, never tiring of the beautiful garden with its
+groves of orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, and the river which, running
+through it, joins the stream that we heard rushing along in the cavern,
+to flow down into the Pacific.
+
+On Sunday morning the priest arrived on an ambling mule, the favourite
+clerical animal. They say it is impossible to ride a mule unless you
+are either an arriero or a priest. Not that it is by any means
+necessary, however, that he should ride a mule. I shall not soon forget
+the jaunty young monk we saw at Tezcuco, just setting out for a country
+festival, mounted on a splendid little horse, with his frock tucked up,
+and a pair of hairy goat-skin _chaparreros_ underneath, a broad Mexican
+hat, a pair of monstrous silver spurs, and a very large cigar in his
+mouth. The girls came out of the cottage doors to look at him, as he
+made the fiery little beast curvet and prance along the road; and he
+was evidently not insensible to the looks of admiration of these young
+ladies, as they muffled up their faces in their blue rebozos and looked
+at him through the narrow opening.
+
+Nearly two hundred Indians crowded into the church to mass, and went
+through the service with evident devotion. There are no more sincere
+Catholics in the world than the Indians, though, as I have said, they
+are apt to keep up some of their old rites in holes and corners. The
+administradors did not trouble themselves to attend mass, but went on
+posting up their books just outside the church-door; in this, as in a
+great many other little matters, showing their contempt for the brown
+men, and adding something every day to the feeling of dislike they are
+regarded with.
+
+We speak of the Indians still keeping up their ancient superstitious
+rites in secret, as we often heard it said so in Mexico, though we
+ourselves never saw anything of it. The Abbé Clavigero, who wrote in
+the last century, declares the charge to be untrue, except perhaps in a
+few isolated cases. “The few examples of idolatry,” he says, “which can
+be produced are partly excusable; since it is not to be wondered at
+that rude uncultured men should not be able to distinguish the
+idolatrous worship of a rough figure of wood or stone from that which
+is rightly paid to the holy images.” (There are people who would quite
+agree with the good Abbé that the distinction is rather a difficult one
+to make.) “But how often has prejudice against them declared things to
+be idols which were really images of the saints, though shapeless ones!
+In 1754 I saw some images found in a cave, which were thought to be
+idols; but I had no doubt that they were figures representing the
+mystery of the Holy Nativity.”
+
+A good illustration of the wholesale way in which the early Catholic
+missionaries went about the work of conversion is given in a remark of
+Clavigero’s. There is one part of the order of baptism which proceeds
+thus: “Then the Priest, wetting his right thumb with spittle from his
+mouth, and touching therewith in the form of a cross the right ear of
+the person to be baptized, &c.” The Mexican missionaries, it seems, had
+to leave out this ceremony, from sheer inability to provide enough of
+the requisite material for their crowds of converts.
+
+After mass we rode out to a mound that had attracted our attention a
+day or two before, and which proved to be a fort or temple, or probably
+both combined. There were no remains to be found there except the usual
+fragments of pottery and obsidian. Then we returned to the hacienda to
+say good-bye to our friends there, before starting on our journey back
+to Mexico. All the population were hard at work amusing themselves, and
+the shop was doing a roaring trade in glasses of aguardiente. The
+Indian who had been our guide for some days past had opened a Monté
+bank with the dollars we had given him, and was sitting on the ground
+solemnly dealing cards one by one from the bottom of a dirty pack, a
+crowd of gamblers standing or sitting in a semicircle before him,
+silently watching the cards and keeping a vigilant eye upon their
+stakes which lay on the ground before the banker. Other parties were
+busy at the same game in other parts of the open space before the shop,
+which served as the great square for the colony.
+
+Under the arcades in front of the shop a fandango was going on, though
+it was quite early in the afternoon. A man and a woman stood facing
+each other, an old man tinkled a guitar, producing a strange, endless,
+monotonous tune, and the two dancers stamped with their feet, and moved
+their arms and bodies about in time to the music, throwing themselves
+into affected and voluptuous attitudes which evidently met with the
+approval of the bystanders, though to us, who did not see with Indian
+eyes, they seemed anything but beautiful. When the danseuse had tired
+out one partner, another took his place. An admiring crowd stood round
+or sat on the stone benches, smoking cigarettes, and looking on gravely
+and silently, with evident enjoyment. Just as we saw it, it would go on
+probably through half the night, one couple, or perhaps two, keeping it
+up constantly, the rest looking on and refreshing themselves from time
+to time with raw spirits. Though inferior to the Eastern dancing, it
+resembled it most strikingly, my companion said. It has little to do
+with the really beautiful and artistic dancing of Old Spain, but seems
+to be the same that the people delighted in long before they ever saw a
+white man. Montezuma’s palace contained a perfect colony of
+professional dancers, whose sole business was to entertain him with
+their performances, which only resembled those of the Old World because
+human nature is similar everywhere, and the same wants and instincts
+often find their development in the same way among nations totally
+separated from each other.
+
+We left the natives to their amusement, and started on our twenty miles
+ride. By the time the evening had fairly begun to close in upon us, we
+crossed the crest of a hill and had a dim view of a valley below us,
+but there were no signs of Chalma or its convent. We let our horses
+find their way as well as they could along the rocky path, and got down
+into the valley. A light behind us made us turn round, and we saw a
+grand sight. The coarse grass on a large hill further down the valley
+had been set fire to, and a broad band of flame stretched right across
+the base of the hill, and was slowly moving upwards towards its top,
+throwing a lurid glare over the surrounding country, and upon the
+clouds of smoke that were rising from the flames. Every now and then we
+turned to watch the line of fire as it rose higher and higher, till at
+last it closed in together at the summit with one final blaze, and left
+us in the darkness. We dismounted and stumbled along, leading our
+horses down the precipitous sides of the deep ravines that run into the
+valley, mounting again to cross the streams at the bottom, and
+clambering up on the other side to the level of the road. At last a
+turn in the valley showed lights just before us, and we entered the
+village of Chalma, which was illuminated with flaring oil-lamps in the
+streets, where men were hard at work setting up stalls and booths of
+planks. It seemed there was to be a fair next day.
+
+They showed us the way to the _meson_[17] and there we left Antonio
+with the horses, while the proprietor sent an idiot boy to show us the
+way to the convent, for our inspection of the meson decided us at once
+on seeking the hospitality of the monks for the night. We climbed up
+the hill, went in at the convent-gate, across a courtyard, along a dim
+cloister, and through another door where our guide made his way out by
+a different opening, leaving us standing in total darkness. After a
+time another door opened, and a good-natured-looking friar came in with
+a lamp in his hand, and conducted us upstairs to his cell. I think our
+friend was the sub-prior of the convent. His cell was a very
+comfortable bachelor’s apartment, in a plain way, vaulted and
+whitewashed, with good chairs and a table and a very
+comfortable-looking bed.
+
+ [17] The _meson_ of Mexico is a lineal descendant of the Eastern
+ Caravanserai, and has preserved its peculiarities unchanged for
+ centuries. It consists of two court-yards, one surrounded by stabling
+ and the other by miserable rooms for the travellers, who must cook
+ their food themselves, or go elsewhere for it.
+
+We sat talking with him for a long while, and heard that the fair next
+day would be attended by numbers of Indians from remote places among
+the mountains, and that at noon there would be an Indian dance in the
+church. It is not the great festival, however, he said. That is once a
+year; and then the Indians come from fifty miles round, and stay here
+several days, living in the caves in the rock just by the town, buying
+and selling in the fair, attending mass, and having solemn dances in
+the church. We asked him about the ill feeling between the Indians and
+the whites. He said that among the planters it might be as we said, but
+that in the neighbourhood of his convent the respect and affection of
+the Indians for the clergy, whether white or Indian, was as great as
+ever. Then we gossipped about horses, of which our friend was evidently
+an amateur, and when the conversation flagged, he turned to the table
+in the middle of the room and handed us little bowls made of
+calabashes, prettily decorated and carved, and full of sweetmeats.
+There were ten or twelve of these little bowls on the table, each with
+a different kind of “tuck” in it. We inquired where all those good
+things came from, and learnt that making them was one of the favourite
+occupations of the Mexican nuns, who keep their brethren in the
+monasteries well supplied. At last the good monk went away to his
+duties and left us, when I could not resist the temptation of having a
+look at the little books in blue and green paper covers which were
+lying on the table with the sweetmeat-bowls and the venerable old
+missal. They proved to be all French novels done into Spanish, and
+“Notre-Dame de Paris” was lying open (under a sheet of paper); so I
+conclude that our visit had interrupted the sub-prior while deep in
+that improving work.
+
+Presently a monk came to conduct us down into the refectory, and there
+they gave us an uncommonly good supper of wonderful Mexican stews,
+red-hot as usual, and plenty of good Spanish wine withal. The great
+dignitaries of the cloister did not appear, but some fifteen or twenty
+monks were at table with us, and never tired of questioning us—exactly
+in the same fashion that the ladies of the harem questioned Doña Juana.
+We delighted them with stories of the miraculous Easter fire at
+Jerusalem, and the illumination of St. Peter’s, of the Sistine chapel
+and the Pope, and we parted for the night in high good humour.
+
+Next morning a monk attached himself to us as our cicerone, a fine
+young fellow with a handsome face, and no end of fun in him.
+
+Now that we saw the convent by daylight, we were delighted with the
+beauty of its situation. The broad fertile valley grows narrower and
+narrower until it becomes a gorge in the mountains; and here the
+convent is built, with the mountain-stream running through its
+beautiful gardens, and turning the wheel of the convent-mill before it
+flows on into the plain to fertilize the broad lands of the reverend
+fathers.
+
+When we had visited the gardens and the stables, our young monk brought
+us back to the great church of the convent, where we took our places
+near the monks, who had mustered in full force to be present at the
+dancing. Presently the music arrived, an old man with a harp, and a
+woman with a violin; and then came the dancers, eight Indian boys with
+short tunics and head-dresses of feathers, and as many girls with white
+dresses, and garlands of flowers on their heads. The costumes were
+evidently intended to represent the Indian dresses of the days of
+Montezuma, but they were rather modernized by the necessity of wearing
+various articles of dress which would have been superfluous in old
+times. They stationed themselves in the middle of the church, opposite
+the high altar, and, to our unspeakable astonishment, began to dance
+the polka. Then came a waltz, then a schottisch, then another waltz,
+and finally a quadrille, set to unmitigated English tunes. They danced
+exceedingly well, and behaved as though they had been used to European
+ball-rooms all their lives. The spectators looked on as though it were
+all a matter of course for these brown-skinned boys and girls to have
+acquired so singular an accomplishment in their out-of-the-way village
+among the mountains. As for us we looked on in open-mouthed
+astonishment; and when, in the middle of the quadrille, the harp and
+violin struck up no less a tune than “The King of the Cannibal
+Islands,” we could hardly help bursting out into fits of laughter. We
+restrained ourselves, however, and kept as grave a countenance as the
+rest of the lookers-on, who had not the faintest idea that anything odd
+was happening. The quadrille finished in perfect order; each dancer
+took his partner by the hand and led her forward; and so, forming a
+line in front of the high altar, they all knelt down, and the rest of
+the congregation followed their example; there was a dead silence in
+the church for about the space of an Ave Maria, then everyone rose, and
+the ceremony was over.[18]
+
+ [18] The Aztecs were accustomed, before the Conquest, to perform
+ dances as part of the celebration of their religious festivals, and
+ the missionaries allowed them to continue the practice after their
+ conversion. The dance in a church, described by Mr. Bullock in 1822,
+ was a much more genuine Indian ceremony than the one which we saw.
+    Church-dancing may be seen in Europe even at the present day. The
+    solemn Advent dances in Seville cathedral were described to me, by
+    an eyewitness, as consisting of minuets, or some such stately
+    old-fashioned dances, performed in front of the high altar by boys
+    in white surplices, with the greatest gravity and decorum.
+
+Our young monk asked permission of his superior to take us out for a
+walk, and we went down together to the convent-mill. There we saw the
+mill, which was primitive, and the miller, who was burly; and also
+something much more worth seeing, at least to our young acquaintance,
+who tucked up his skirts and ran briskly up a ladder into the upper
+regions, calling to us to follow him. A door led from the granary into
+the miller’s house, and the miller’s daughter happened, of course
+entirely by chance, to be coming through that way. A very pretty girl
+she was too, and I never in my life saw anything more intensely comic
+than the looks of intelligence that passed between her and the young
+friar when he presented us. It was decidedly contrary to good monastic
+discipline it is true, and we ought to have been shocked, but it was so
+intolerably laughable that my companion bolted into the granary to
+examine the wheat, and I took refuge in a violent fit of coughing. Our
+nerves had been already rudely shaken by the King of the Cannibal
+Islands, and this little scene of convent-life fairly finished us.
+
+We asked our young friend what his day’s work consisted of, and how he
+liked convent-life. He yawned, and intimated that it was very slow. We
+enquired whether the monks had not some parochial duties to perform,
+such as visiting the sick and the poor in their neighbourhood. He
+evidently wondered whether we were really ignorant, or whether we were
+“chaffing” him, and observed that that was no business of their’s, the
+curas of the villages did all that sort of thing. “Then, what have you
+to do?” we said. “Well,” he said, “there are so many services every
+day, and high mass on Sundays and holidays; and besides that,
+there’s—well, there isn’t anything particular. It’s rather a dull life.
+I myself should like uncommonly to go and travel and see the world, or
+go and fight somewhere.” We were quite sorry for the young fellow when
+we shook hands with him at parting, and he left us to go back to his
+convent.
+
+We had been clambering about the hill, seeing the caves with which it
+is honeycombed, but at present they were uninhabited. At the time of
+the great festival, when they are full of Indian families, the scene
+must be a curious one.
+
+The monks had hospitably pressed us to stay till their mid-day meal,
+but we preferred having it at the shop down in the village, so as to
+start directly afterwards. Here the people gave us a regular reception,
+entertained us with their best, and could not be prevailed upon to
+accept any payment whatever. The proprietor of the meson sat down
+before the barley-bin which served him for a desk, and indited a long
+and eloquent letter of introduction for us to a friend of his in
+Oculan, who was to find a night’s lodging for us. Before he sealed up
+the despatch he read it to us in a loud voice, sentence by sentence. It
+might have been an autograph letter from King Philip to some foreign
+potentate. Armed with this important missive, we mounted our horses,
+shook hands with no end of well-wishers, and rode off up the valley.
+
+For a little while our path lay through a sort of suburb of Chalma,
+houses lying near one another, each surrounded by a pleasant garden,
+and both houses and people looking prosperous and cheerful. Our
+directions for finding the way were simple enough. We were to go up the
+valley past the Cerra de los Atambores, “the hill of drums,” and the
+great _ahuehuete_. What the Cerra de los Atambores might be, we could
+not tell, but when we had followed the valley for an hour or so, it
+came into view. On the other side of the stream rose a precipitous
+cliff, several hundred feet high, and near the top a perpendicular wall
+of rock was carved with rude designs. People have supposed, it seems,
+that these carvings represented drums, and hence the name.
+
+Had we known of the place before, we should have made an effort to
+explore it, and copy the sculptured designs; but now it was too late,
+and from the other side of the valley we could not make out more than
+that there seemed to be a figure of the sun among them.
+
+A little further on we came to the “Ahuehuete.” The name means a
+deciduous cypress, a common tree in Mexico, and of which we had already
+seen such splendid specimens in the grove near Tezcuco, and in the wood
+of Chapoltepec. This was a remarkable tree as to size, some sixty feet
+round at the lower part where the roots began to spread out. A copious
+spring of water rose within the hollow trunk itself, and ran down
+between the roots into the little river. All over its spreading
+branches were fastened votive offerings of the Indians, hundreds of
+locks of coarse black hair, teeth, bits of coloured cloth, rags, and
+morsels of ribbon. The tree was many centuries old, and had probably
+had some mysterious influence ascribed to it, and been decorated with
+such simple offerings long before the discovery of America. In Brittany
+the peasants still keep up the custom of hanging up locks of their hair
+in certain chapels, to charm away diseases; and there it is certain
+that the Christians only appropriated to their own worship places
+already held sacred in the estimation of the people.
+
+Oculan is a dismal little place. We found the great man of the village
+standing at his door, but our letter to him was dishonoured in the most
+decided manner. He read the epistle, carefully folded it up and
+pocketed it, then pointed in the direction of two or three houses on
+the other side of the way, and saying he supposed we might get a
+lodging over there, he wished us good-day and retired into his own
+premises. The landlord of “over there” was very civil. He had a shed
+for the horses, and could give us palm-mats to sleep upon on the floor,
+or on the shop-counter, which was very narrow, but long enough for us
+both; and this latter alternative we chose.
+
+We walked up to the top of a hill close by the village, and were
+surveying the country from thence, keeping a sharp look-out all the
+while for Mexican remains in the furrows. For a wonder, we found
+nothing but some broken spindle-heads; but, while we were thus
+occupied, two Indians suddenly made their appearance, each with his
+_machete_ in his hand, and wanted to know what we were doing on their
+land. We pacified them by politeness and a cigar apiece, but we were
+still evidently objects of suspicion, and they were quite relieved to
+see us return to the village. There, an old woman cooked us hard-boiled
+eggs and tortillas, and then we went tranquilly to bed on our counter,
+with our saddles for pillows, and our serapes for bed-clothes.
+
+All the way from Cocoyotla our height above the sea had been gradually
+increasing; and soon after we started from Oculan next morning, we came
+to the foot of one of the grand passes that lead up into the high
+lands, where the road mounts by zig-zag turns through a splendid forest
+of pines and oaks, and at the top of the ascent we were in a broad
+fertile plain as high or higher than the valley of Mexico. It was like
+England to ride between large fields of wheat and barley, and to pick
+blackberries in the hedges. It was only April, and yet the grain was
+almost ready for the sickle, and the blackberries were fully ripe.
+Fresh green grass was growing in the woods under the oak-trees, and the
+banks were covered with Alpine strawberries.
+
+We are in the great grain-district of the Republic. Wheat is grown for
+the supply of the large towns, and barley for the horses. Green barley
+is the favourite fodder for the horses in the Mexican highlands, and in
+the hotter districts the leaves of young Indian corn. Oats are to be
+seen growing by chance among other grain, but they are never
+cultivated. Though wheat is so much grown upon the plains, it is not
+because the soil and climate are more favourable than elsewhere for
+such culture. In the plains of Toluca and Tenancingo the yield of wheat
+is less than the average of the Republic, which is from 25- to 30-fold,
+and in the cloudy valleys we passed through near Orizaba it is much
+greater. Labour is tolerably cheap and plentiful here, however; and
+then each large town must draw its supplies of grain from the
+neighbouring districts, for, in a country where it pays to carry goods
+on mules’ backs, it is clear that grain cannot be carried far to
+market.
+
+In the question of the population of Mexico, one begins to speculate
+why—in a country with a splendid climate, a fertile soil, and almost
+unlimited space to spread in, the inhabitants do not increase one-half
+so fast as in England, and about one-sixth as fast as their neighbours
+of the United States. One of the most important causes which tend to
+bring about this state of things is the impossibility of conveying
+grain to any distance, except by doubling and trebling its price. The
+disastrous effects of a failure of the crop in one district cannot be
+remedied by a plentiful harvest fifty miles off; for the peasants,
+already ruined by the loss of their own harvest, can find neither money
+nor credit to buy food brought from a distance at so great an expense.
+Next year may be fruitful again, but numbers die in the interval, and
+the constitutions of a great proportion of the children never recover
+the effects of that one year’s famine.
+
+We left the regular road and struck up still higher into the hills,
+riding amongst winding roads with forest above and below us, and great
+orchids of the most brilliant colours, blue, white, and crimson,
+shining among the branches of the oak-trees. The boughs were often
+breaking down with the bulbs of such epiphytes; but as yet it was early
+in the season, and only here and there one was in flower. At the top of
+the hill, still in the midst of the woods, is the Desierto, “the
+desert,” the place we had selected for our noon-day halt. There are
+many of these Desiertos in Mexico, founded by rich people in old times.
+They are a kind of convent, with some few resident ecclesiastics, and
+numbers of cells for laymen who retire for a time into this secluded
+place and are received gratuitously. They spend a week or two in prayer
+and fasting, then confess themselves, receive the sacrament, and return
+into the world. The situation of this quiet place was well chosen in
+the midst of the forest, and once upon a time the cells used to be full
+of penitents; but now we saw no one but the old porter, as we walked
+about the gardens and explored the quadrangle and the rows of cells,
+each with a hideous little wood-cut of a martyr being tortured, upon
+the door.
+
+Thence we rode down into the plain, looking down, as we descended, upon
+a hill which seemed to be an old crater, rising from the level ground;
+and then our path lay among broad fields where oxen were ploughing, and
+across marshes covered with coarse grass, until we came to the quaint
+little town of Tenancingo. There we found the _meson_; and the landlord
+handed us the key of our room, which was square, whitewashed, and with
+a tiled floor. There was no window, so we had to keep the door open for
+light. The furniture consisted of three articles,—two low tables on
+four legs, made of rough planks, and a bracket to stick a candle in.
+The tables were beds after the manner of the country; but, as a special
+attention to us, the patron produced two old mattresses; the first
+sight of them was enough for us, and we expelled them with shouts of
+execration. We had to go to a shop in the square to get some supper;
+and on our return, about nine o’clock, our man Antonio remarked that he
+was going to sleep, which he did at once in the following manner. He
+took off his broad-brimmed hat and hung it on a nail, tied a red cotton
+handkerchief round his head, rolled himself up in his serape, lay down
+on the flags in the courtyard outside our door, and was asleep in an
+instant. We retired to our planks inside and followed his example.
+
+The next afternoon we reached Toluca, a large and prosperous town, but
+with little noticeable in it except the arcades (portales) along the
+streets, and the hams which are cured with sugar, and are famous all
+over the Republic. Our road passed near the Nevado de Toluca, an
+extinct snow-covered volcano, nearly 15,000 feet above the sea. It
+consists entirely of grey and red porphyry, and in the interior of its
+crater are two small lakes. We were not sorry to take up our quarters
+in a comfortable European-looking hotel again, for roughing it is much
+less pleasant in these high altitudes—where the nights and mornings are
+bitterly cold—than in the hotter climate of the lower levels.
+
+Our next day’s ride brought us back to Mexico, crossing the corn-land
+of the plain of Lerma, where the soil consists of disintegrated
+porphyry from the mountains around, and is very fertile. Lerma itself
+is the worst den of robbers in all Mexico; and, as we rode through the
+street of dingy adobe houses, and saw the rascally-looking fellows who
+were standing at the doors in knots, with their horses ready saddled
+and bridled close by, we got a very strong impression that the
+reputation of the place was no worse than it deserved. After Lerma,
+there still remained the pass over the mountains which border the
+valley of Mexico; and here in the midst of a dense pine-forest is Las
+Cruzes, “the crosses,” a place with an ugly name, where several
+robberies are done every week. We waited for the Diligence at some
+little glass-works at the entrance of the pass, and then let it go on
+first, as a sop to those gentlemen if they should be out that day. I
+suppose they knew pretty accurately that no one had much to lose, for
+they never made their appearance.
+
+[Illustration: SPANISH-MEXICAN SPURS. _From 5 to 6 inches long, with
+rowels from 2½ to 3 inches in diameter. The broad instep-strap of
+embossed leather is also shewn. (From Mr. Christy’s Collection)_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+ANTIQUITIES. PRISON. SPORTS.
+
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF THE MEXICAN GODDESS OF WAR (OR OF DEATH),
+TEOYAOMIQUI.
+_(After Nebel).
+Height of the original, about Nine Feet_.]
+
+It was like getting home again to reach Mexico, we had so many friends
+there, though our stay had been so short. We were fully occupied, for
+weeks of hard sight-seeing are hardly enough to investigate the objects
+of interest to be found in the city. We saw these things under the best
+auspices, for Mr. Christy had letters to the Minister of Public
+Instruction and other people in authority, who were exceedingly civil,
+and did all they could to put us in the way of seeing everything we
+wished. Among the places we visited, the Museum must have some notice.
+It is in part of the building of the University; but we were rather
+surprised, when we reached the gate leading into the court-yard, to be
+stopped by a sentry who demanded what we wanted. The lower storey had
+been turned into a barrack by the Government, there being a want of
+quarters for the soldiers. As the ground-floor under the cloisters is
+used for the heavier pieces of sculpture, the scene was somewhat
+curious. The soldiers had laid several of the smaller idols down on
+their faces, and were sitting on the comfortable seat on the small of
+their backs, busy playing at cards. An enterprising soldier had built
+up a hutch with idols and sculptured stones against the statue of the
+great war-goddess Teoyaomiqui herself, and kept rabbits there. The
+state which the whole place was in when thus left to the tender mercies
+of a Mexican regiment may be imagined by any one who knows what a dirty
+and destructive animal a Mexican soldier is.
+
+The guardians of the Museum have treated it even worse. People who know
+how often the curators of the Museums of southern Europe are ready to
+sell anything not very likely to be missed will not be astonished to
+hear of the same thing being done to a great extent some six or eight
+years before our visit.
+
+The stone known as the statue of the war-goddess is a huge block of
+basalt covered with sculptures. The antiquaries think that the figures
+on it stand for different personages, and that it is three
+gods,—Huitzilopochtli the god of war, Teoyaomiqui his wife, and
+Mictlanteuctli the god of hell. It has necklaces of alternate hearts
+and dead man’s hands, with death’s heads for a central ornament. At the
+bottom of the block is a strange sprawling figure, which one cannot see
+now, for it is the base which rests on the ground; but there are two
+shoulders projecting from the idol, which show plainly that it did not
+stand on the ground, but was supported aloft on the tops of two
+pillars. The figure carved upon the bottom represents a monster holding
+a skull in each hand, while others hang from his knees and elbows. His
+mouth is a mere oval ring, a common feature of Mexican idols, and four
+tusks project just above it. The new moon laid down like a bridge forms
+his forehead, and a star is placed on each side of it. This is thought
+to have been the conventional representation of Mictlanteuctli (Lord of
+the Land of the Dead), the god of hell, which was a place of utter and
+eternal darkness. Probably each victim as he was led to the altar could
+look up between the two pillars and see the hideous god of hell staring
+down upon him from above.
+
+There is little doubt that this is the famous war-idol which stood on
+the great teocalli of Mexico, and before which so many thousands of
+human victims were sacrificed. It lay undisturbed underground in the
+great square, close to the very site of the teocalli, until sixty years
+ago. For many years after that it was kept buried, lest the sight of
+one of their old deities might be too exciting for the Indians, who, as
+I have mentioned before, had certainly not forgotten it, and secretly
+ornamented it with garlands of flowers while it remained above ground.
+
+The “sacrificial stone,” so called, which also stands in the court-yard
+of the Museum, was not one of the ordinary altars on which victims were
+sacrificed. These altars seem to have been raised slabs of hard stone
+with a protuberant part near one end, so that the breast of the victim
+was raised into an arch, which made it more easy for the priest to cut
+across it with his obsidian knife. The Breton altars, where the slab
+was hollowed into the outline of a human figure, have some analogy to
+this; but, though there were very many of these altars in different
+cities of Mexico, none are now known to exist. The stone we are now
+observing is quite a different thing, a cylindrical block of basalt
+nine feet across and three feet high: and Humboldt considers it to be
+the stone described by early Spanish writers, and called _temalacatl_
+(spindle-stone) from its circular shape, something like a distaff-head.
+Upon this the captive chiefs stood in the gladiatorial fights which
+took place within the space surrounding the great teocalli. Slightly
+armed, they stood upon this raised platform in the midst of the crowd
+of spectators; and six champions in succession, armed with better
+weapons, came up to fight with them. If the captive worsted his
+assailants in this unequal contest, he was set free with presents; but
+this success was the lot of but few, and the fate of most was to be
+overpowered and dragged off ignominiously to be sacrificed like
+ordinary prisoners. On the top of the stone is sculptured an outline of
+the sun with its eight rays, and a hollow in the centre, whence a
+groove runs to the edge of the stone, probably to let the blood run
+down. All round it is an appropriate bas-relief repeated several times.
+A vanquished warrior is giving up his stone-sword and his spears to his
+conqueror, who is tearing the plumed crest from his head.
+
+The above explanation by Humboldt is a plausible one. But in Central
+America altars not unlike this, and with grooves upon the top, stand in
+front of the great stone idols; and this curious monument may have been
+nothing after all but an ordinary altar to sacrifice birds and small
+animals upon.
+
+[Illustration: THREE VIEWS OF A SACRIFICIAL COLLAR,
+_Carved out of hard mottled greenstone. (In Mr. Christy’s Collection.)
+This is 17 inches long, and varies from 11 to 16 inches in width. The
+arms are 4 inches wide and 3 inches deep; and are 8 inches apart at
+about half their length._]
+
+Señor Leon Ramirez, the curator, had come to the Museum to meet us, and
+we went over the collection of smaller objects, which are kept up
+stairs in glass-cases,—at any rate out of the way of the soldiers.
+
+Here are the stone clamps shaped like the letter U, which were put over
+the wrists and ankles of the victims, to hold them down on the
+sacrificial stone. They are of hard stone, very heavy and covered with
+carvings. It is remarkable that, though the altars for human sacrifices
+are no longer to be found, these accessory stone clamps, or yoke-like
+collars, are not uncommon. A fine one from Mr. Christy’s collection is
+figured. _(See opposite page.)_
+
+The obsidian knives and arrow-heads are very good, but these I have
+spoken of already, as well as of the stone hammers. The axes and
+chisels of stone are so exactly like those found in Europe that it is
+quite impossible to distinguish them. The bronze hatchet-blades are
+thin and flat, slightly thickened at the sides to give them strength,
+and mostly of a very peculiar shape, something like a T, but still more
+resembling the section of a mushroom cut vertically through the middle
+of the stalk.
+
+The obsidian mask is an extraordinary piece of work, considering the
+difficulty of cutting such a material. It was chipped into a rude
+outline, and finished into its exact shape by polishing down with
+jeweller’s sand. The polish is perfect, and there is hardly a scratch
+upon it. At least one of the old Spanish writers on Mexico gives the
+details of the process of cutting precious stones and polishing them
+with _teoxalli_ or “god’s sand.” Masks in stone, wood, and terra-cotta
+are to be seen in considerable number in museums of Mexican
+antiquities. Their use is explained by passages in the old Mexican
+writers, who mention that it was customary to mask the idols on the
+occasion of the king being sick, or of any other public calamity; and
+that men and women wore masks in some of the religious ceremonies. A
+fine mask of brown lava (from Mr. Christy’s collection), which has been
+coloured, is here figured. _(See illustration.)_ The mirrors of
+obsidian have the same beautifully polished surface as the obsidian
+mask shows; and those made of nodules of pyrites, cut and polished, are
+worth notice.
+
+The Mexicans were very skilful in making pottery; and of course there
+is a good collection here of terra-cotta vases, little altars and
+incense-dishes, rattles, flageolets, and whistles, tobacco-pipes and
+masks. Some of the large vases, which were formerly filled with skulls
+and bones, are admirable in their designs and decorations; and many
+specimens are to be seen of the red and black ware of Cholula, which
+was famous at the time of the Conquest, and was sent to all parts of
+the country. The art of glazing pottery seems only to have been
+introduced by the Spaniards, and to this day the Indians hardly care to
+use it. The terra-cotta rattles are very characteristic. They have
+little balls in them which shake about, and they puzzled us much as the
+apple-dumpling did good King George, for we could not make out very
+easily how the balls got inside. They were probably attached very
+slightly to the inside, and so baked and then broken loose. We often
+got little balls like schoolboys’ marbles, among lots of Mexican
+antiquities, and these were most likely the balls out of broken
+rattles.
+
+Burning incense was always an important part of the Mexican ceremonies.
+When the white men were on their march to the capital, the inhabitants
+used to come out to meet them with such plates as we saw here, and burn
+copal before the leaders; and in Indian villages to this day the
+procession on saints’ days would not be complete without men burning
+incense, not in regular censers, but in unglazed earthen platters such
+as their forefathers used.
+
+[Illustration: THE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF AN AZTEC MASK.
+_Sculptured out of hard brown lava. Twelve inches high; ten inches
+wide.
+(From Mr. Christy’s Collection.)_]
+
+Our word _copal_ is the Mexican _copalli_. There are a few other
+Mexican words which have been naturalized in our European languages, of
+course indicating that the things they represent came from Mexico.
+_Ocelotl_ is _ocelot_; _Tomatl_ is _tomata_; _Chilli_ is the Spanish
+_chile_ and our _chili_; _Cacahuatl_ is _cacao_ or cocoa; and
+_Chocolatl_, the beverage made from the cacao-bean with a mixture of
+vanilla, is our chocolate.
+
+Cacao-beans were used by the Mexicans as money. Even in Humboldt’s
+time, when there was no copper coinage, they were used as small change,
+six for a halfpenny; and Stephens says the Central Americans use them
+to this day. A mat in Mexican is _petlatl_, and thence a basket made of
+matting was called _petlacalli_—“mathouse.” The name passed to the
+plaited grass cigar-cases that are exported to Europe; and now in Spain
+any kind of cigar-case is called a _petaca_.
+
+The pretty little ornamented calabashes—used, among other purposes, for
+drinking chocolate out of—were called by the Mexicans _xicalli_, a word
+which the Spaniards made into _jícara_, and now use to mean a
+chocolate-cup; and even the Italians have taken to it, and call a
+tea-cup a _chicchera_.
+
+There is a well-known West Indian fruit which we call an _avocado_ or
+_alligator-pear_, and which the French call _avocat_ and the Spaniards
+_aguacate_. All these names are corruptions of the Aztec name of the
+fruit, _ahuacatl_.
+
+Vanilla and cochineal were first found in Mexico; but the Spaniards did
+not adopt the unpronounceable native names, _tlilxochitl_ and
+_nocheztli_. Vanilla, _vainilla_, means a little bean, from _vaina_,
+which signifies a scabbard or sheath, also a pod. _Cochinilla_ is from
+_coccus_, a berry, as it was at first supposed to be of vegetable
+origin. The Aztec name for cochineal, _nocheztli_, means
+“cactus-blood,” and is a very apt description of the insect, which has
+in it a drop of deep crimson fluid, in which the colouring matter of
+the dye is contained.
+
+The turkey, which was introduced into Europe from Mexico, was called
+_huexolotl_ from the gobbling noise it makes. (It must be remembered
+that x and j in Spanish are not the same letters as in English, but a
+hard guttural aspirate, like the German ch). The name, slightly altered
+into _guajalote_, is still used in Mexico; but when these birds were
+brought to Europe, the Spaniards called them peacocks (_pavos_). To get
+rid of the confusion, it became necessary to call the real peacock
+“_pavón_” (big peacock), or “_pavo real_” (royal peacock). The German
+name for a turkey, “Wälscher Hahn,” “Italian fowl,” is reasonable, for
+the Germans got them from Italy; but our name “turkey” is wonderfully
+absurd.
+
+There may be other Mexican words to be found in our language, but not
+many. The Mexicans were cultivating maize and tobacco when the
+Spaniards invaded the country, and had done so for ages; but these
+vegetables had been found already in the West India islands, and had
+got their name from the language of Hayti, _mahiz_ and _tabaco_; the
+latter word, it seems, meaning not the tobacco itself, but the cigars
+made of it.
+
+I do not recollect anything else worthy of note that Europe has
+borrowed from Ancient Mexico, except Botanic Gardens, and dishes made
+to keep hot at dinner-time, which the Aztecs managed by having a pan of
+burning charcoal underneath them.
+
+To return to the Museum. There are stamps in terra-cotta with
+geometrical patterns, for making lines and ornaments on the vases
+before they were baked, and for stamping patterns upon the cotton cloth
+which was one of their principal manufactures, as it is now. Connected
+with the same art are the _malacates_, or winders, which I have already
+described. Little grotesque heads made of baked clay, like those I have
+mentioned as being found in such immense numbers on the sites of old
+Mexican cities, are here by hundreds. I think there were, besides, some
+of the moulds, also in terra-cotta, in which they were formed; at any
+rate, they are to be seen, so that making the little heads must have
+been a regular trade. What they were for is not so easy to say. Some
+have bodies, and are made with flat backs to stand against a wall, and
+these were probably idols. The ancient Mexicans, we read, had
+household-gods in great numbers, and called them _Tepitotons_, “little
+ones.” The greatest proportion, however, are mere heads which never had
+had bodies, and will not stand anyhow. They could not have been
+personal ornaments, for there is nothing to fasten them on by. They are
+rather a puzzle. I have seen a suggestion somewhere, that when a man
+was buried, each surviving member of his family put one of these heads
+into his grave. This sounds plausible enough, especially as both male
+and female heads are found.
+
+One shelf in the museum is particularly instructive. We called it the
+“Chamber of Horrors,” after the manner of Marlborough House, and it
+contains numbers of the sham antiquities, the manufacture of which is a
+regular thing in Mexico, as it is in Italy. They are principally vases
+and idols of earthenware, for the art of working obsidian is lost, and
+there can be no trickery about that;[19] and as to the hammers,
+chisels, and idols in green jade, serpentine, and such like hard
+materials, they are decidedly cheaper to find than to make. The Indians
+in Mexico make their unglazed pottery just as they did before the
+Conquest, so that, if they imitate real antiques exactly, there is no
+possibility of detecting the fraud; but when they begin to work from
+their own designs, or even to copy from memory, they are almost sure to
+put in something that betrays them.
+
+ [19] This assertion must be qualified by a remark of the Abbé Brasseur
+ de Bourbourg, who tells us that in some places the Indians still use
+ lancets of obsidian to bleed themselves with. I believe there is
+ nothing of the kind to be found in the part of Mexico which we
+ visited.
+
+As soon as the Spaniards came, they began to introduce drawing as it
+was understood in Europe; and from that moment the peculiarities of
+Mexican art began to disappear. The foreheads of the Mexican races are
+all very low, and their painters and sculptors even exaggerated this
+peculiarity, to make the faces they depicted more beautiful,—so
+producing an effect which to us Europeans seems hideously ugly, but
+which is not more unnatural than the ideal type of beauty we see in the
+Greek statues. After the era of the Spaniards we see no more of such
+foreheads; and the eyes, which were drawn in profiles as one sees them
+in the full face, are put in their natural position. The short squat
+figures become slim and tall; and in numberless little details of
+dress, modelling, and ornament, the acquaintance of the artist with
+European types is shown; and it is very seldom that the modern
+counterfeiter can keep clear of these and get back to the old standard.
+
+Among the things on the condemned shelf were men’s faces too correctly
+drawn to be genuine, grotesque animals that no artist would ever have
+designed who had not seen a horse, head-dresses and drapery that were
+European and not Mexican. Among the figures in Mayer’s _Mexico_, a vase
+is represented as a real antique, which, I think, is one of the worst
+cases I ever noticed. There is a man’s head upon it, with long
+projecting pointed nose and chin, a long thin pendant moustache, an eye
+drawn in profile, and a cap. It is true the pure Mexican race
+occasionally have moustaches, but they are very slight, not like this,
+which falls in a curve on both sides of the mouth; and no Mexican of
+pure Indian race ever had such a nose and chin, which must have been
+modelled from the face of some toothless old Spaniard.
+
+Mention must be made of the wooden drums—_teponaztli_—of which some few
+specimens are still to be seen in Mexico. Such drums figured in the
+religious ceremonies of the Aztecs, and one often hears of them in
+Mexican history. I have mentioned already the great drum which Bernal
+Diaz saw when he went up the Mexican teocalli with Cortes, and which he
+describes as a hellish instrument, made with skins of great serpents;
+and which, when it was struck, gave a loud and melancholy sound, that
+could be heard at two leagues’ distance. Indeed, they did afterwards
+hear it from their camp a mile or two off, when their unfortunate
+companions were being sacrificed on the teocalli.
+
+The Aztec drums, which are still to be seen, are altogether of wood,
+nearly cylindrical, but swelling out in the middle, and hollowed out of
+solid logs. Some have the sounding-board made unequally thick in
+different parts, so as to give several notes when struck. All are
+elaborately carved over with various designs, such as faces,
+head-dresses, weapons, suns with rays, and fanciful patterns, among
+which the twisted cord is one of the commonest.
+
+Besides the drums which are preserved in museums, there are others,
+carefully kept in Indian villages, not as curiosities, but as
+instruments of magical power. Heller mentions such a _teponaztli_,
+which is still preserved among the Indians of Huatusco, an Indian
+village near Mirador in the tierra templada, where the inhabitants have
+had their customs comparatively little altered by intercourse with
+white men. They keep this drum as a sacred instrument, and beat it only
+at certain times of the year, though they have no reason to give for
+doing so. It is to be regretted that Heller did not take a note of the
+particular days on which this took place; for the times of the Mexican
+festivals are well known, and this information would have settled the
+question whether the Indians of the present day have really any
+definite recollection of their old customs.
+
+Drums of this kind do not belong exclusively to Mexico. Among all the
+tribes of North America they were one of the principal “properties”
+used by the Medicine-men in their ceremonies; and among the tribes
+which have not been christianized they are still to be found in use.
+After we left Mexico, Mr. Christy visited some tribes in the Hudson’s
+Bay Territory; and on one occasion, happening to assist at a festival
+in which just such a wooden drum was used, he bought it of the
+Medicine-man of the tribe, and packed it off triumphantly to his
+museum.
+
+A few picture-writings are still to be seen in the Museum, which, with
+the few preserved in Europe, are all we have left of these interesting
+records, of which there were thousands upon thousands in Mexico and
+Tezcuco. Some were burnt or destroyed during the sieges of the cities,
+some perished by mere neglect, but the great mass was destroyed by
+archbishop Zumarraga, when he made an attempt—and, to some extent, a
+successful one—to obliterate every trace of heathenism, by destroying
+all the monuments and records in the country. One of the
+picture-writings hanging on the wall is very probably the same that was
+sent up from Vera Cruz to Montezuma, with figures of the newly-arrived
+white men, their ships and horses, and their cannons with fire and
+smoke issuing from their mouths. Another shows a white man being
+sacrificed, of course one of the Spanish prisoners. The pictorial
+history of the migration of the Aztecs is here, and a list of tributes
+paid to the Mexican sovereign; the different articles being drawn with
+numbers against each, to show the quantities to be paid, as in the
+Egyptian inscriptions. Lord Kingsborough’s great work contains
+fac-similes of several Mexican manuscripts, and in Humboldt’s _Vues des
+Cordillères_ some of the most remarkable are figured and described.
+
+One of the most curious of the Aztec picture-writings is in the
+Bodleian Library, and in fac-simile in Lord Kingsborough’s _Antiquities
+of Mexico_. In it are shown, in a series of little pictures, the
+education of Mexican boys and girls, as prescribed by law. The child
+four days old is being sprinkled with water, and receiving its name. At
+four years old they are to be allowed one tortilla a meal, which is
+indicated by a drawing above their heads, of four circles representing
+years, and one cake; and the father sends the son to carry water, while
+the mother shows the daughter how to spin. A tortilla is like an
+oat-cake, but is made of Indian corn.
+
+At seven years old the boy is taken to learn to fish, while the girl
+spins; and so on with different occupations for one year after another.
+At nine years old the father is allowed to punish his son for
+disobedience, by sticking aloe-points all over his naked body, while
+the daughters only have them stuck into their hands; and at eleven
+years old, both boy and girl were to be punished by holding their faces
+in the smoke of burning capsicums.
+
+At fifteen the youth is married by the simple process of tying the
+corner of his shirt to the corner of the bride’s petticoat (thus
+literally “splicing” them, as my companion remarked). And so on; after
+scenes of cutting wood, visiting the temples, fighting and feasting, we
+come to the last scene of all, headed “_seventy years_,” and see an old
+man and woman reeling about helplessly drunk with pulque; for
+drunkenness, which was severely punished up to that age, was tolerated
+afterwards as a compensation for the sorrows and infirmities of the
+last period of life.
+
+Astrological charts formed a large proportion of these
+picture-writings. Here, as elsewhere, we may trace the origin of
+astrology. The signs of the days and years were represented, for
+convenience sake, by different animals, and objects, like the signs of
+the Zodiac which we still retain. The signs remained after the history
+of their origin was lost; and then—what more natural than to imagine
+that the symbols handed down by their wise ancestors had some
+mysterious meaning, connected with the days and years they stood for;
+and then, that a man’s destiny had to do with the names of the signs
+that “prevailed” at his birth?
+
+There is little to be seen here or elsewhere, of one kind of work in
+which the Mexicans excelled perhaps more than in any other, the
+goldsmith’s work. Where are the calendars of solid gold and silver—as
+big as great wheels, and covered with hieroglyphics, and the cups and
+collars, the golden birds, beasts, and fishes? The Spaniards who saw
+them record how admirable their workmanship was, and they were good
+judges of such matters. Benvenuto Cellini saw some of these things, and
+was filled with admiration. They have all gone to the melting-pot
+centuries ago! How important the goldsmith’s trade was accounted in old
+times is shown by a strange Aztec law. It was no ordinary offence to
+steal gold and silver. Criminals convicted of this offence were not
+treated as common thieves, but were kept till the time when the
+goldsmiths celebrated their annual festival, and were then solemnly
+sacrificed to their god Xipe;[20] the priests flaying their bodies,
+cooking and eating them, and walking about dressed in their skins, a
+ceremony which was called _tlacaxipehualiztli_, “the man-flaying.”
+
+ [20] The Aztecs had but one word to denote both gold and silver, as
+ they afterwards made one serve for both iron and copper. This curious
+ word _teocuitlatl_ we may translate as “Precious Metal,” but it means
+ literally “Dung of the Gods.” Gold was “Yellow Precious Metal,” and
+ silver “White Precious Metal.” Lead they called _temetztli_,
+ “Moon-stone;” and when the Spaniards showed them quicksilver, they
+ gave it the name of _yoli amuchitl_, “Live Tin.”
+
+Museums of Mexican antiquities are so much alike, that, in general, one
+description will do for all of them. Mr. Uhde’s Museum at Heidelberg is
+a far finer one than that at Mexico, except as regards the
+picture-writings. I was astonished at the enormous quantity of stone
+idols, delicately worked trinkets in various hard stones and even in
+obsidian, terra-cotta tobacco-pipes, figures, and astronomical
+calendars, &c., displayed there.
+
+Mr. Christy’s collection is richer than any other in small sculptured
+figures from Central America. It contains a squatting female figure in
+hard brown lava, like the one in black basalt which is drawn in
+Humboldt’s _Vues des Cordillères_, and there called (I cannot imagine
+why) an Aztec priestess. Above all, it contains what I believe to be
+the three finest specimens of Aztec decorative art which exist in the
+world. One of these is the knife of which the figure at page 101 gives
+some faint idea, the other two being a wooden mask overlaid with
+mosaic, and a human skull decorated in the same manner, of which a more
+particular description will be found in the Appendix. There are two
+kinds of Aztec articles in Mr. Christy’s collection which I did not
+observe either at Mexico or Heidelberg. These are bronze needles,
+resembling our packing-needles, and little cast bronze bells, called in
+Aztec _yotl_, not unlike small horse-bells made in England at the
+present day; these are figured in the tribute-lists in the
+picture-writings.
+
+[Illustration: ANTIQUE BRONZE BELLS FROM MEXICO.
+_Such as are often sculptured on Aztec Images._]
+
+Apropos of the mammoth bones preserved in the Mexican Museum, I must
+insert a quotation from Bernal Diaz. It is clear that the traditions of
+giants which exist in almost every country had their origin in the
+discovery of fossil bones, whose real character was not suspected until
+a century ago; but I never saw so good an example of this as in the
+Tlascalan tradition, which my author relates as follows.—“And they”
+(the Tlascalan chiefs) “said that their ancestors had told them that,
+in times past, there lived amongst them in settlements men and women of
+great size, with huge bones; and, as they were wicked and of evil
+dispositions, they (the ancestors of the Tlascalans) fought against
+them and killed them; and those who were left died out. And that we
+might see what stature they were of, they brought a bone of one of
+them, and it was very big, and its height was that of a man of
+reasonable stature; it was a thigh-bone, and I (Bernal Diaz) measured
+myself against it, and it was as tall as I am, who am a man of
+reasonable stature; and they brought other pieces of bones like the
+first, but they were already eaten through and rotted by the earth; and
+we were all amazed to see those bones, and held that for certain there
+had been giants in that land; and our captain, Cortes, said to us that
+it would be well to send the great bone to Castile, that His Majesty
+might see it; and so we did send it by the first messengers who went.”
+
+Among other things belonging to the Spanish period is the banner, with
+the picture of the Virgin, which accompanied the Spanish army during
+the Conquest. Authentic or not, it is certainly very well painted.
+There is a suit of armour said to have belonged to Cortes. Its
+genuineness has been doubted; but I think its extreme smallness seems
+to go towards proving that it is a true relic, for Bullock saw the tomb
+of Cortes opened some thirty years ago, and was surprised at the small
+proportions of his skeleton. Specimens of the pottery and glass now
+made in the country, and other curiosities, complete the catalogue of
+this interesting collection.
+
+The Mexican calendar is not in the Museum, but is built into the wall
+of the cathedral, in the Plaza Mayor. It is sculptured on the face of a
+single block of basalt, which weighs between twenty and thirty tons,
+and must have been transported thirty miles by Mexican labourers, for
+the stone is not found nearer than that distance from the city; and
+this transportation was, of course, managed by hand-labour alone, as
+there were no beasts of burden.
+
+We know pretty well the whole system of Mexican astronomy from this
+calendar-stone and a few manuscripts which still exist, and from the
+information given in the work of Gama the astronomer and other writers.
+The Aztecs and Tezcucans who used it, did not claim its invention as
+their own, but said they had received it from the Toltecs, their
+predecessors. The year consisted of 365 days, with an intercalation of
+13 days for each cycle of 52 years, which brought it to the same length
+as the Julian year of 365 days 6 hours. The theory of Gama, that the
+intercalation was still more exact, namely, 12½ days instead of 13,
+seems to be erroneous.
+
+Our reckoning only became more exact than this when we adopted the
+Gregorian calendar in 1752, and the people marched about the streets in
+procession, crying “Give us back our eleven days!” Perhaps this is not
+quite a fair way of putting the case, however, for the new style would
+have been adopted in our country long before, had it not been a Romish
+institution. It was the deliberate opinion of the English, as of people
+in other Protestant countries, that it was much better to have the
+almanack a few days wrong than to adopt a Popish innovation. One often
+hears of the Papal Bull which settles the question of the earth’s
+standing still. The history of the Gregorian calendar is not a bad
+set-off against it on the other side. At any rate, the new style was
+not introduced anywhere until sixty or seventy years after the
+discovery of Mexico, and five hundred years after the introduction of
+the Toltec calendar in Mexico.
+
+The Mexican calendar-stone should be photographed on a large scale, and
+studied yet more carefully than it has been, for only a part of the
+divided circles which surround it have been explained. It should be
+photographed, because, to my certain knowledge, Mayer’s drawing gives
+the year, above the figure of the sun which indicates the date of the
+calendar, quite wrongly; and yet, presuming on his own accuracy, he
+accuses another writer of leaving out the hieroglyph of the winter
+solstice. What is much more strange is, that Humboldt’s drawing in the
+small edition of the _Vues des Cordillères_ is wrong in both points.
+The drawing in Nebel’s great work is probably the best. As to the wax
+models which Mr. Christy and I bought in Mexico, in the innocence of
+our hearts, a nearer inspection showed that the artist, observing that
+the circle of days would divide more neatly into sixteen parts than
+into twenty, had arranged his divisions accordingly; apparently leaving
+out the four hieroglyphics which he considered the ugliest.
+
+The details made out at present on the calendar are as follows:—the
+summer and winter solstices, the spring and autumn equinoxes, the two
+passages of the Sun over the zenith of Mexico, and some dates which
+possibly belong to religious festivals. The dates of the two
+zenith-transits are especially interesting; for, as they vary with the
+latitude, they must have been made out by actual observation in Mexico
+itself, and not borrowed from some more civilised people in the distant
+countries through which the Mexicans migrated. This fact alone is
+sufficient to prove a considerable practical knowledge of astronomy.
+
+Besides this, the Mexican cycle of fifty-two years seems to be
+indicated in the circle outside the signs of days, and also the days in
+the priestly year of 260 days; but to make these numbers, we must allow
+for the compartments supposed to be hidden by the projecting rays of
+the sun.
+
+The arrangement of the Mexican cycle of fifty-two years is very
+curious. They had four signs of years, _tochtli, acatl, tecpatl_, and
+_calli_,—_rabbit, canes, flint_, and _house_; and against these signs
+they ranged numbers, from 1 to 13, so that a cycle exactly corresponds
+to a pack of cards, the four signs being the four suits, thirteen of
+each. Now, any one would suppose that in making such a reckoning, they
+would first take one suit, count _one, two, three_, &c. in it, up to
+13, and then begin another suit. This is not the Mexican idea, however.
+Their reckoning is 1 _tochtli_, 2 _acatl_, 3 _tecpatl_, &c., just as it
+may be made with the cards thus: ace of hearts, two of diamonds, 3 of
+spades, 4 of clubs, 5 of hearts, 6 of diamonds, and so on through the
+pack. The correspondence between the cycle of 52 years, divided among 4
+signs, and our year of 52 weeks, divided among 4 seasons, is also
+curious, though as entirely accidental as the resemblance to the pack
+of cards, for the Mexican week (if we may call it so) consisted of 5
+days instead of 7, which to a great extent nullifies the comparison.
+
+The reckoning of days is still more cumbrous. It consists of the days
+of the week written in succession from 1 to 13, underneath these the 20
+signs of days, and underneath these again another series of 9 signs; so
+that each day was distinguished by a combination of a number and two
+signs, which combination could not belong to any other day.
+
+The date of the year at the top of the calendar is 13 _acatl_ (13
+canes), which stands for 1479, 1427, 1375, 1323, and so on, subtracting
+52 years each time. Now, why was this year chosen? It was not the
+beginning of a cycle, but the 26th year; and so, in ascertaining the
+meaning of the dates on the calendar, allowance has to be made for six
+days which have been gained by the leap-years only being adjusted at
+the end of the cycle; but this certainly offers no advantage whatever;
+and if an arbitrary date had been chosen to start the calendar with, of
+course it would have been the first year of a cycle. The year may have
+been chosen in commemoration of the foundation of Mexico or
+Tenochtitlán, which historians give as somewhere about 1324 or 1325.
+The sign 13 _acatl_ would stand for 1323. It is more likely that the
+date merely refers to the year in which the calendar was put up. As
+such a massive and elaborate piece of sculpture could only belong to
+the most flourishing period of the Aztec empire, the year indicated
+would be 1279, nine years before the building of the great pyramid
+close by.
+
+Baron Humboldt’s celebrated argument to prove the Asiatic origin of the
+Mexicans is principally founded upon the remarkable resemblance of this
+system of cycles in reckoning years to those found in use in different
+parts of Asia. For instance, we may take that described by Hue and
+Gabet as still existing in Tartary and Thibet, which consists of one
+set of signs, _wood, fire, earth_, &c., combined with a set of names of
+animals, _mouse, ox, tiger_, &c. The combination is made almost exactly
+in the same way as that in which the Aztecs combine their signs and
+numbers, as for instance, the year of the fire-pig, the iron-hare, &c.
+If these were simple systems of counting years, or even if, although
+difficult, they had some advantages to offer, we might suppose that two
+different races in want of a system to count their years by, had
+devised them independently. But, in fact, both the Asiatic and the
+Mexican cycles are not only most intricate and troublesome to work, but
+by the constant liability to confound one cycle with another, they lead
+to endless mistakes. Hue says that the Mongols, to get over this
+difficulty, affix a special name to all the years of each king’s reign,
+as for instance, “the year Tao-Kouang of the fire-ram;” apparently not
+seeing that to give the special name and the number of the year of the
+reign, and call it the 44th year of Tao-Kouang, would answer the same
+purpose, with one-tenth of the trouble.
+
+Not only are the Mexican and Asiatic systems alike in the singular
+principle they go upon, but there are resemblances in the signs used
+that seem too close for chance.[21]
+
+ [21] It is curious that these latter resemblances (as far as I have
+ been able to investigate the subject) disappear in the signs of the
+ Yucatan calendar, though its arrangement is precisely that of the
+ Mexican. Any one interested in the theory of the Toltecs being the
+ builders of Palenque and Copan will see the importance of this point.
+ If the Toltecs ever took the original calendar, with the traces of its
+ Asiatic origin fresh upon it, down into Yucatan with them, it is at
+ any rate not to be found there now.
+
+The other arguments which tend to prove that the Mexicans either came
+from the Old World or had in some way been brought into connexion with
+tribes from thence, are principally founded on coincidences in customs
+and traditions. We must be careful to eliminate from them all such as
+we can imagine to have originated from the same outward causes at work
+in both hemispheres, and from the fact that man is fundamentally the
+same everywhere. To take an instance from Peru. We find the Incas there
+calling themselves “Child of the Sun,” and marrying their own sisters,
+just as the Egyptian kings did. But this proves nothing whatever as to
+connexion between the two people. The worship of the Sun, the giver of
+light and heat, may easily spring up among different people without any
+external teaching; and what more natural, among imperfectly civilized
+tribes, than that the monarch should claim relationship with the
+divinity? And the second custom was introduced that the royal race
+might be kept unmixed.
+
+Thus, when we find the Aztecs burning incense before their gods, kings,
+and great men, and propitiating their deities with human sacrifices, we
+can conclude nothing from this. But we find them baptizing their
+children, anointing their kings, and sprinkling them with holy water,
+punishing the crime of adultery by stoning the criminals to death, and
+practising several other Old World usages of which I have already
+spoken. We must give some weight to these coincidences.
+
+Of some of the supposed Aztec Bible-traditions I have already spoken in
+no very high terms. There is another tradition, however, resting upon
+unimpeachable evidence, which relates the occurrence of a series of
+destructions and regenerations of the world, and recalls in the most
+striking manner the Indian cosmogony; and, when added to the argument
+from the similarity of the systems of astronomical notation of Mexico
+and Asia, goes far towards proving a more or less remote connection
+between the inhabitants of the two continents.
+
+There is another side to the question, however, as has been stated
+already. How could the Mexicans have had these traditions and customs
+from the Old World, and not have got the knowledge of some of the
+commonest arts of life from the same source? As I have said, they do
+not seem to have known the proper way of putting the handle on to a
+stone-hammer; and, though they used bronze, they had not applied it to
+making such things as knives and spear-heads. They had no beasts of
+burden; and, though there were animals in the country which they
+probably might have domesticated and milked, they had no idea of
+anything of the kind. They had oil, and employed it for various
+purposes, but had no notion of using it or wax for burning. They
+lighted their houses with pine-torches; and in fact the Aztec name for
+a pine-torch—_ocotl_—was transferred to candles when they were
+introduced.
+
+Though they were a commercial people, and had several substitutes for
+money—such as cacao-grains, quills of gold-dust, and pieces of tin of a
+particular shape, they had no knowledge of the art of weighing
+anything, but sold entirely by tale and measure. This statement, made
+by the best authorities, their language tends to confirm. After the
+Conquest they made the word _tlapexouia_ out of the Spanish “peso,” and
+also gave the meaning of weighing to two other words which mean
+properly _to measure_ and _to divide equally_. Had they had a proper
+word of their own for the process, we should find it. The Mexicans
+scarcely ever adopted a Spanish word even for Spanish animals or
+implements, if they could possibly make their own language serve. They
+called a sheep an _ichcatl_, literally a “_thread-thing_,” or
+“_cotton_”: a gun a “_fire-trumpet_:” and sulphur
+“_fire-trumpet-earth_.” And yet, a people ignorant of some of the
+commonest arts had extraordinary knowledge of astronomy, and even knew
+the real cause of eclipses,[22] and represented them in their sacred
+dances.
+
+ [22] The Aztec name for an eclipse of the sun is worthy of remark.
+ They called it _tonatiuh qualo_, literally “the sun’s being eaten.”
+ The expression seems to belong to a time when they knew less about the
+ phenomenon, and had some idea like that of the Asiatic nations who
+ thought the sun was occasionally swallowed up by the great dragon.
+
+Set the difficulties on one side of the question against those on the
+other, and they will nearly balance. We must wait for further evidence.
+
+Our friend Don José Miguel Cervantes, the President of the
+Ayuntamiento, took us one day to see the great prison of Mexico, the
+Acordada. As to the prison itself, it is a great gloomy building, with
+its rooms and corridors arranged round two courtyards, one appropriated
+to the men, the other to the women. A few of the men were at work
+making shoes and baskets, but most were sitting and lying about in the
+sun, smoking cigarettes and talking together in knots, the young ones
+hard at work taking lessons in villainy from the older hands; just the
+old story.
+
+Offenders of all orders, from drunkards and vagrants up to highway
+robbers and murderers, all were mixed indiscriminately together. But we
+should remember that in England twenty years ago it was usual for
+prisons to be such places as this; and even now, in spite of model
+prisons and severe discipline, the miserable results of our
+prison-system show, as plainly as can be, that when we have caught our
+criminal we do not in the least know how to reform him, now that our
+colonists have refused him the only chance he ever had.
+
+It is bad enough to mix together these men under the most favourable
+circumstances for corrupting one another. Every man must come out worse
+than he went in; but this wrong is not so great as that which the
+untried prisoners suffer in being forced into the society of condemned
+criminals, while their trials drag on from session to session, through
+the endless technicalities and quibbles of Spanish law.
+
+We made rather a curious observation in this prison. When one enters
+such a place in Europe, one expects to see in a moment, by the faces
+and demeanour of the occupants, that most of them belong to a special
+criminal class, brought up to a life of crime which is their only
+possible career, belonging naturally to police-courts and prisons,
+herding together when out of prison in their own districts and their
+own streets, and carefully avoided by the rest of society. You may know
+a London thief when you see him; he carries his profession in his face
+and in the very curl of his hair. Now in this prison there was nothing
+of the kind to be seen. The inmates were brown Indians and half-bred
+Mexicans, appearing generally to belong to the poorest class, but just
+like the average of the people in the streets outside. As my companion
+said, “If these fellows are thieves and murderers, so are our servants,
+and so is every man in a serape we meet in the streets, for all we can
+tell to the contrary.” There was positively nothing at all peculiar
+about them.
+
+If they had been all Indians we might have been easily deceived.
+Nothing can be more true than Humboldt’s observation that the Indian
+face differs so much from ours that it is only after years of
+experience that a European can learn to distinguish the varieties of
+feature by which character can be judged of. He mistakes peculiarities
+which belong to the race in general for personal characteristics; and
+the thickness of the skin serves still more to mask the expression of
+their faces. But the greater part of these men were Mexicans of mixed
+Indian and Spanish blood, and their faces are pretty much European.
+
+The only explanation we could give of this identity of character inside
+the prison and outside is not flattering to the Mexican people, but I
+really believe it to be true. We came to the conclusion that the
+prisoners did not belong to a class apart, but that they were a
+tolerably fair specimen of the poorer population of the table-lands of
+Mexico. They had been more tempted than others, or they had been more
+unlucky, and that was why they were here.
+
+There were perhaps a thousand prisoners in the place, two men to one
+woman. Their crimes were—one-third, drunken disturbance and vagrancy;
+another third, robberies of various kinds; a fourth, wounding and
+homicides, mostly arising out of quarrels; leaving a small residue for
+all other crimes.
+
+Our idea was confirmed by many foreigners who had lived long in the
+country and had been brought into personal contact with the people.
+Every Mexican, they said, has a thief and a murderer in him, which the
+slightest provocation will bring out. This of course is an
+exaggeration, but there is a great deal of truth in it. The crimes in
+the prison-calendar belong as characteristics to the population in
+general. Highway-robbery, cutting and wounding in drunken brawls, and
+deliberate assassination, are offences which prevail among the
+half-white Mexicans; while stealing is common to them and the pure
+Indian population. We noticed several instances of bigamy, a crime
+which Mexican law is very severe upon. As far as we could judge by the
+amount of punishment inflicted, it is a greater crime to marry two
+women than to kill two men. In one gallery are the cells for criminals
+condemned to death, but the occupants were allowed to mix freely with
+the rest of the prisoners, and they seemed comfortable enough.
+
+Everybody knows how much in England the condition of a prisoner depends
+on the disposition of the governor in office and the system in vogue
+for the moment. The mere words of his sentence do not indicate at all
+what his fate will be. He comes in—under Sir John—to light labour, much
+schoolmaster and chaplain, and the expectation of a ticket-of-leave
+when a fraction of his time is expired. All at once Sir James
+supersedes Sir John, and with him comes in a régime of hard work, short
+rations, and the black hole. If he had been “in” a month sooner, he
+would have been “out” now with those more fortunate criminals, his late
+companions.
+
+Things ought not to be so in England, but we need hardly wonder at
+their being still worse in Mexico in this respect as in all others.
+There have been twenty changes of government in ten years, and
+sometimes extreme severity has been the rule, which may change at a
+day’s notice into the extreme of mildness. In Santa Ana’s time the
+utmost rigour of the law prevailed. Our friends in the Calle Seminario,
+as they came back from their morning’s ride in the Paseo, had to pass
+through the great square; and used to see there, day after day, pairs
+of garotted malefactors sitting bolt upright in the high wooden chairs
+they had just been executed in, with a frightful calm look on their
+dead faces.
+
+For the last year or so all this had ceased, and there had scarcely
+been an execution. It seems that one principal reason of this lenity is
+that the government is too weak to support its judges; and that the
+ministers of justice are actually intimidated by threats mysteriously
+conveyed to witnesses and authorities, that, if such or such a criminal
+is executed, his friends have sworn to avenge his death, and are on the
+look-out, every man with his knife ready. To political offences the
+same mercy is extended. In the early times of the war of independence,
+and for years afterwards, when one leader caught an officer on the
+other side, he had him tried by a drum-head court-martial, and shot.
+Since then it has come to be better understood that civil war is waged
+for the benefit of individuals who wish for their turn of power and
+their pull at the public purse; and the successful leader spares his
+opponent, not caring to establish a precedent which might prove so very
+inconvenient to himself.
+
+We were taken to see the garotte by the President, who took it out of
+its little mahogany case, into which it was fitted like any other
+surgical instrument. We noticed that it was rusty, and indeed it had
+not been used for many months. It is not worth while to describe it.
+
+Mexican law well administered is bad enough, not essentially unjust,
+but hampered with endless quibbles and technicalities, quite justifying
+the Spanish proverb, “_Mas vale una mala composición que un buen
+pleito_,”—a bad compromise is better than a good lawsuit. As things
+stand now, the law of any case is the least item in the account, there
+are so many ways of working upon judges and witnesses. Bribery first
+and foremost; and—if that fails—personal intimidation, political
+influence, private friendship, and the _compadrazgo_. Naturally, if you
+have a lawsuit or are tried for a crime, you should lay a good
+foundation. This is done by working upon the _Juez de primera
+instancia_, who corresponds in some degree to the _Juge d’instruction_
+in France. This functionary is wretchedly paid, so that a small sum is
+acceptable to him; and, moreover, the records of the case, as tried by
+him, form the basis of all future litigation, so that it is very bad
+economy not to get him into proper order. If you do not, it will cost
+you three times as much afterwards. If your suit is with a soldier or a
+priest, the ordinary tribunals will not help you. These two classes—the
+most influential in the community—have their _fuero_, their special
+jurisdiction; and woe to the unfortunate civilian who attacks them in
+their own courts!
+
+Don Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, whose sense of humour occasionally peeps
+out from among his statistics, remarks gravely that “the clergy has its
+special legislation, which consists of the Sacred Volumes, the decision
+of General and Provincial Councils, the Pontifical Decretals, and
+doctrines of the Holy Fathers.” Of what sort of justice is dealt out in
+that court, one may form some faint idea.
+
+One of our friends in Mexico had a house which was too large for him,
+and in a moment of weakness he let part of it to a priest. Two years
+afterwards, when we made his acquaintance, he was hard at work trying,
+not to get his rent, he had given up that idea long before, but to get
+the priest out. I believe that, eventually, he gave him something
+handsome to take his departure.
+
+I have often quoted Don Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, and shall do so again.
+His statistics of the country for 1856 are given in a broad sheet, and
+seem to be generally reliable. The annual balance-sheet of the country
+he sums up in three lines—
+
+     Annual Expenditure . . . . . . 25,000,000 dollars.
+     Annual Revenue . . . . . . . . 15,000,000 dollars.
+                                    ——————————
+    Annual Deficit . . . . . . . . 10,000,000 dollars.
+
+The President of the Ayuntamiento was a pleasant person to know, among
+the dishonest, intriguing Mexican officials. He received but little pay
+in return for a great deal of hard work; but he liked to be in office
+for the opportunities it afforded him of improving the condition of the
+poor of the city. It was a sight to see the prisoners crowd round him
+as he entered the court. They all knew him, and it was quite evident
+they all considered him as a friend. In what little can be done for the
+ignorant and destitute under the unfavourable circumstances of the
+country, Don Miguel has had a large share; but until an orderly
+government, that is, a foreign one, succeeds to the present anarchy,
+not very much can be done.
+
+I mentioned the word “_compadrazgo_” a little way back. The thing
+itself is curious, and quite novel to an Englishman of the present day.
+The godfathers and godmothers of a child become, by their participation
+in the ceremony, relations to one another and to the priest who
+baptizes the child, and call one another ever afterwards _compadre_ and
+_comadre_. Just such a relationship was once expressed by the word
+“gossip,” “God-sib,” that is “akin in God.” Gossip has quite
+degenerated from its old meaning, and even “sib,” though good English
+in Chaucer’s time, is now only to be found in provincial dialects; but
+in German “sipp” still means “kin.”
+
+In Mexico this connexion obliges the compadres and comadres to
+hospitality and honesty and all sorts of good offices towards one
+another; and it is wonderful how conscientiously this obligation is
+kept to, even by people who have no conscience at all for the rest of
+the world. A man who will cheat his own father or his own son will keep
+faith with his _compadre_. To such an extent does this influence become
+mixed up with all sorts of affairs, and so important is it, that it is
+necessary to count it among the things that tend to alter the course of
+justice in the country.
+
+The French have the words _compère_ and _commère_; and it is curious to
+observe that the name of _compère_ is given to the confederate of the
+juggler, who stands among the crowd, and slyly helps in the performance
+of the trick.
+
+We went one day to the Hospital of San Lazaro. I have mentioned the
+word “_lepero_” as applied to the poor and idle class of half-caste
+Mexicans. It is only a term of reproach, exactly corresponding to the
+“_lazzarone_” of Naples, who resembles the Mexican lepers in his social
+condition, and whose name implies the same thing; for, of course, Saint
+Lazarus is the patron saint of lepers and foul beggars. There are some
+few real lepers in Mexico, who are obliged by law to be shut up in this
+hospital. We rather expected to see something like what one reads of
+the treatment of lepers which prevailed in Europe until a few years
+ago—shutting them up in dismal dens cut off from communication with
+other human beings. We were agreeably disappointed. They were confined,
+it is true, but in a spacious building, with court-yard and garden;
+their nurses and attendants appeared to be very kind to them; and it
+seems that many charitable people come to visit the inmates, and bring
+them cigars and other small luxuries, to relieve the monotony of their
+dismal lives. Some had their faces horribly distorted by the falling of
+the corners of the eyes and mouth, and the disappearance of the
+cartilage of the nose; and a few, in whom the disease had terminated in
+a sort of gangrene, were frightful objects, with their features
+scarcely distinguishable; but in the majority of cases the leprosy had
+caused a gradual disappearance of the ends of the fingers and toes, and
+even of the whole hands and feet. The limbs thus mutilated looked as
+though the parts which were wanting had been amputated, and the wound
+had quite healed over, but it is caused by a gradual absorption without
+wound and without pain. As every one knows, leprosy of these kinds was
+held until quite lately to be dangerously contagious; but, fortunately
+for the poor creatures themselves, this is quite clearly proved to be
+false, and the lepers are only shut up that they may have no children,
+for the affection appears to be hereditary.
+
+It was early one morning, when we were going out to breakfast at
+Tisapán, that Don Juan recounted to us his experience of garrotted
+malefactors sitting dead in their chairs in the great square across
+which we were riding. “It was really almost enough to spoil a fellow’s
+breakfast,” he added pathetically. Though an Englishman, and only
+arrived in the country a few years before, Don Juan was as clever with
+the lazo as most Mexicans, and could _colear_ a bull in great style.
+Indeed, we had started early that morning in order to have time enough
+to look at the bulls in the _potreros_—the great grass-meadows—that lie
+for miles outside the city, and which are made immensely fertile by
+flooding from time to time. Wherever we saw a bull in the distance, Don
+Juan and his grand little horse _Pancho_ plunged over a bank and
+through a gap, and we after him. No one ever leaps anything in this
+country, indeed the form of the saddle puts it out of the question. One
+or two bulls looked up as we entered the enclosure, and bolted into
+other fields, pushing in among the thorns of the aloes which formed
+close hedges of fixed bayonets round the meadows. At last Don Juan cut
+off the retreat of an old bull, and galloping after him like mad, flung
+the running loop of the lazo over his horns, at the same time winding
+the other end round the pummel of his saddle. The bull was still
+standing on all four legs, pulling with all its might against Pancho.
+Galloping after him, so as to slacken the end of the lazo, we contrived
+to transfer it from Don Juan’s saddle to mine. Now my own horse
+happened to be a little lame, and I was riding a poor little black
+beast whose bones really seemed to rattle in his skin. Our
+acquaintances in the Paseo had been quite facetious about him,
+recommending us to be careful and not to smoke up against him, for fear
+we should blow him over, and otherwise whetting their wit upon him. He
+acquitted himself very creditably, however, and when the bull began to
+pull against him, he leant over on the other side, as if he had been
+galloping round a circus; and the bull could not move him an inch. It
+was quite evident that it was not his first experiment. In the mean
+time Don Juan had dropped the noose of my lazo just before the bull’s
+nose, and presently that animal incautiously put his foot into it, when
+Don Juan whipped it up round his leg and went off at full gallop. My
+little black horse knew perfectly well what had happened, though his
+head was exactly in the opposite direction; and he tugged with all his
+might, and leant over more than ever. The two lazos tightened with a
+twang, as though they had been guitar-strings; and in a moment the
+unfortunate bull was rolling with all his legs in the air, in the midst
+of a whirlwind of dust. Having thus humiliated him we let him go, and
+off he went at full speed. All this time the proprietor of the field
+was tranquilly standing on a bank, looking on. Far from raging at us
+for treating his property in this free and easy manner, he returned our
+salutation when we rode up to him, and, addressing our sporting
+countryman, said, “Well done, old fellow, come another day and try
+again.”
+
+Our whole ride to Tisapán was enlivened by a series of Don Juan’s
+exploits. He raced after bulls, got hold of their tails, and coleared
+them over into the dust. He lazo’d everything in the road, from
+milestones and trunks of trees upwards; and I shall never forget our
+meeting with a great mule which was trotting along the road without a
+burden,—just as he passed us, our companion slipped the noose round his
+hind leg, and the beast went down as if he had been shot, the muleteers
+pulling up on purpose to have a good open-mouthed laugh at the
+incident.
+
+We seemed to be in rather a sporting line that day, for, after our
+return from Tisapán, Don Juan and I went to see a cockfight. In Mexico,
+as in Cuba and all Spanish America, this is the favourite sport of the
+people. In Cuba, the principal shopkeeper in every village keeps the
+cockpit—the “_plaza de gallos_.” The people from the whole district
+round about come in on Sunday to the village, with a triple object;
+_first_, to hear mass; _secondly_, to buy their supplies for the
+ensuing week; and _thirdly_, to spend the afternoon in cockfighting, at
+which amusement it is easy to win or lose two or three hundred pounds
+in an afternoon. The custom that the cockpit brings to the shop more
+than repays the proprietor for the expense and trouble of keeping it.
+In Cuba, the spurs of the cock are artificially pointed by paring with
+a penknife, but the Mexican way of arming them is even more abominable.
+
+[Illustration: STEEL COCK-SPURS (_4 inches long_), WITH SHEATH AND
+PADDING.]
+
+Each bird has a sharp steel knife three or four inches long, just like
+a little scythe-blade, fastened over the natural spur before the fight
+commences. A leather sheath covers the weapon while the cocks are being
+put into the ring, and held with their beaks almost touching till they
+are furious. Then they are drawn back to opposite sides of the ring,
+the sheaths are taken off, and they fly at one another, giving
+desperate cuts with the steel blades.
+
+The cockpit was a small round wooden shed, with the ring in the middle,
+and circular benches round it, rising one above another. The place was
+full of people, mostly Mexicans of the lower orders, smoking, betting,
+and talking sporting-slang. The betting was surprising, when one
+compared its amount with the appearance of the spectators, among whom
+there was hardly a decent coat to be seen. Every now and then, a dirty
+scoundrel in a shabby leather jacket would walk round the ring with a
+handful of gold, offering the odds—ten to five, ten to seven, ten to
+nine, or whatever they might be, in gold ounces, which coins are worth
+above three pounds apiece.
+
+Cockfighting is such a passion here that we thought it as well to see
+it for once. Santa Ana, now he has retired from politics, spends his
+time at Carthagena pretty much entirely in this his favourite sport,
+which forms one of the great items among the pleasures and excitements
+of a Mexican life. We saw a couple of mains fought, in which the
+victorious birds were dreadfully mangled, while the vanquished were
+literally cut to pieces; as much money changed hands as we should have
+thought sufficient to buy up the whole of the people present, cockpit
+and all. Then, being both agreed that it was a disgusting sight, we
+went away.
+
+Before we left Mexico we were taken by our man Antonio to a cutler’s
+shop, where the principal trade seemed to be the making of these
+_cuchillos_ to arm the cocks with. We bought a couple of pairs of them,
+and had them carefully fitted up. The old cutler was quite delighted,
+and remarked that foreigners must acknowledge that there were some
+things which were done better in Mexico than anywhere else. I fear we
+left him under the pleasing impression that we were taking home the
+blades to introduce as models in our own benighted country.
+
+The Mexican is a great gambler. Bad fortune he bears with the greatest
+equanimity. You never hear of his committing suicide after being ruined
+at play; he just goes away, and sets to work to earn enough for a fresh
+stake. The government have tried to put down gambling in the State of
+Mexico, but not with much success. For three days in the year, however,
+at the festival of San Agustín de las Cuevas, public gambling-tables
+are tolerated, though soldiers and officials are strictly forbidden to
+play, an injunction which they carefully set at nought. Oddly enough,
+the government, while doing all it could to keep its own functionaries
+away from the _monte_ table, did not scruple to send a military escort
+to convoy the bankers with their bags of gold from Mexico to San
+Agustín. On one of the three days, Mr. Christy and I went there. There
+was a great crowd, this time mostly a well-dressed one, and the cockpit
+was on a large scale. But of course the great attraction was the
+_monte_, which was being played everywhere, the stakes in some places
+being coppers, in others silver, while more aristocratic establishments
+would allow no stake under a gold ounce. Dead silence prevailed in
+these places, and the players seemed to pride themselves upon not
+showing the slightest change in their countenances, whether they won or
+lost. The game itself is very simple, and has some points of
+resemblance to that of lansquenet, known in Europe. The first two cards
+in the pack, say a four and a king, are laid down, face up, on the
+table, and the gamblers put down their money against one or the other.
+Then the _croupier_ deals the cards out slowly and solemnly one after
+another, calling out their names as they fall, until he comes—say to a
+king; when those who have betted on the king have their stakes doubled,
+and the others lose theirs. The banker has a great advantage to
+compensate him for his expense and risk. If the first card which is
+thrown out be one of the two numbers on the table, the banker withholds
+a quarter of the stake he would otherwise have lost, paying only a
+stake and three-quarters, instead of two stakes. Now, as there are
+forty cards in a Spanish pack, two of which have been already thrown
+out, the chances for a throw favourable to the banker are about one in
+six, so that he may reckon on an average profit of about two per cent,
+on all the money staked.
+
+As for the players, they sat round the table, carefully noticing the
+course of the games, and regulating their play accordingly, as they do
+at Baden-Baden and Hombourg. I suppose that now and then these
+scientific calculators must be told that their whole theory of chances
+is the most baseless delusion, but they certainly do not believe it;
+and at any rate this curious pseudo-science of winning by skill at
+games of pure chance will last our time, if not longer.
+
+On some tables there were as much as three or four thousand gold
+ounces. This struck us the more because we had often tried to get gold
+coin for our own use, instead of the silver dollars, the general
+currency of the country, of which twenty pounds’ worth to carry home on
+a hot day was enough to break one’s heart. We often tried to get gold,
+but the answer was always that what little there was in the country was
+in the hands of the gamblers, whose operations could not be worked on a
+large scale without it.
+
+The prevalence of mining, as a means of getting wealth, has contributed
+greatly to make the love of gambling an important part of the national
+character. Silver-mining in the old times was a most hazardous
+speculation, and people engaged in it used to make and lose great
+fortunes a dozen times in their lives. The miners worked not on fixed
+wages, but for a share of the produce, and so every man became a
+gambler on his own account. To a great extent the same evils prevail
+now, but two things have tended to lessen them. Poor ores are now
+worked profitably which used to be neglected by the miners; and, as
+these ores occur in almost inexhaustible masses, their mining is a much
+less speculative affair than the old system of mining for rich veins.
+Moreover, the men are, in some of the largest mines, paid by the day,
+so that their life has become more regular. In many places, however,
+the work is still done on shares by the miners, who pass their lives in
+alternations of excessive riches and all kinds of extravagance,
+succeeded by times of extreme poverty.
+
+An acquaintance of ours was telling us one day about the lives of these
+men. One week, a party of three miners had come upon a very rich bit of
+ore, and went away from the _raya_, each man with a handkerchief full
+of dollars. This was on Saturday evening. On Monday morning our
+informant went out for a ride, and on the road he met three dirty
+haggard-looking men, dressed in some old rags; one of the three came
+forward, taking off the sort of apology for a hat which he had on, and
+said, “Good morning, Señor Doctor, would you mind doing us the favour
+of lending us half a dollar to get something to eat?” They were the
+three successful miners; and when, a few days afterwards, the man who
+had asked for the money came back to return it, the Doctor inquired
+what had happened.
+
+It seemed that the three, as soon as they had received their money on
+Saturday, got a lift to the nearest town, and there rigged themselves
+out with new clothes, silver buttons, five-pound serapes, and a horse
+for each, with magnificent silver mountings to the saddle and spurs.
+Here they have dinner, and lots of pulque, and swagger about outside
+the door, smoking cigarettes. There, quite by chance, an acquaintance
+meets them, and admires the horses, but would like to see their paces
+tried a little outside the town. So they pace and gallop along for half
+a mile or so; when, also quite accidentally, they find two men sitting
+outside a rancho, playing at cards. The two men—strangely enough—are
+old acquaintances of the curious friend, and they produce a bowl of
+cool pulque from within, which our miners find quite refreshing after
+the ride. Thereupon they sit down to have a little game at _monte_,
+then more pulque, then more cards; and when they awake the next
+morning, they find themselves possessed of a suit of old rags, with no
+money in the pockets. They had dim recollections of losing—first money,
+then horses, and lastly clothes, the night before; but—as they were
+informed by the old woman, who was the only occupant of the place
+besides themselves—their friends had been obliged to go away on urgent
+business, and could not be so impolite as to disturb them. So they
+walked back to the mines, ragged and hungry, and borrowed the doctor’s
+half-dollar.
+
+[Illustration: LEATHER SANDALS, WORN BY THE NATIVE INDIANS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+TEZCUCO. MIRAFLORES. POPOCATEPETL. CHOLULA.
+
+
+[Illustration: WALKING AND RIDING COSTUMES IN MEXICO.
+_(After Nebel.)_]
+
+The wet season was fast coming on when we left Mexico for the last
+time. We had to pass through Vera Cruz, where the rain and the yellow
+fever generally set in together; so that to stay longer would have been
+too great a risk.
+
+Our first stage was to Tezcuco, across the lake in a canoe, just as we
+had been before. We noticed on our way to the canoes, a church,
+apparently from one to two centuries old, with the following doggerel
+inscription in huge letters over the portico, which shows that the
+dogma of the Immaculate Conception is by no means a recent institution
+in Mexico:
+
+     _Antes de entrar afirma con tu vida,
+     S. Maria fué sin pecado concebida:_
+
+Which may be translated into verse of equal quality,
+
+     _Confess on thy life before coming in,
+     That blessed Saint Mary was conceived without sin._
+
+Nothing particular happened on our journey, except that a well-dressed
+Mexican turned up at the landing-place, wanting a passage, and as we
+had taken a canoe for ourselves, we offered to let him come with us. He
+was a well-bred young man, speaking one or two languages besides his
+own; and he presently informed us that he was going on a visit to a
+rich old lady at Tezcuco, whose name was Doña Maria Lopez, or something
+of the kind. When we drove away from the other end of the lake, towards
+Tezcuco, we took him as far as the road leading to the old lady’s
+house; when he rather astonished us by hinting that he should like to
+go on with us to the Casa Grande, and could walk back. At the same
+time, it struck us that the youth, though so well dressed, had no
+luggage; and we began to understand the queer expression of the
+coachman’s face when he saw him get into the carriage with us. So we
+stopped at the corner of the road, and the young gentleman had to get
+out.
+
+At the Casa Grande, our friends laughed at us immensely when we told
+them of the incident, and offered us twenty to one that he would come
+to ask for money within twenty-four hours. He came the same evening,
+and brought a wonderful story about his passport not being _en règle_,
+and that unless we could lend him ten dollars to bribe the police, he
+should be in a dreadful scrape. We referred him to the master of the
+house, who said something to him which caused him to depart
+precipitately, and we never saw him again; but we heard afterwards that
+he had been to the other foreigners in the neighbourhood with various
+histories. We made more enquiries about him in the town, and it
+appeared that his expedition to Tezcuco was improvised when he saw us
+going down to the boat, and of course the visit to the rich old lady
+was purely imaginary. Now this youth was not more than eighteen, and
+looked and spoke like a gentleman. They say that the class he belonged
+to is to be counted rather by thousands than by hundreds in Mexico.
+They are the children of white Creoles, or nearly white mestizos; they
+get a superficial education and the art of dressing, and with this
+slender capital go out into the world to live by their wits, until they
+get a government appointment or set up as political adventurers, and so
+have a chance of helping themselves out of the public purse, which is
+naturally easier and more profitable than mere sponging upon
+individuals. One gets to understand the course of Mexican affairs much
+better by knowing what sort of raw material the politicians are
+recruited from.
+
+We saw some good things in a small collection of antiquities, on this
+second visit to Tezcuco. Among them was a nude female figure in
+alabaster, four or five feet high, and—comparatively speaking—of high
+artistic merit. Such figures are not common in Mexico, and they are
+supposed to represent the Aztec Venus, who was called _Tlazolteocihua_,
+“Goddess of Pleasure.” A figure, laboriously cut in hard stone,
+representing a man wearing a jackal’s head as a mask, was supposed to
+be a figurative representation of the celebrated king of Tezcuco,
+_Nezahualcoyotl_, “hungry jackal,” of whom Mexican history relates that
+he walked about the streets of his capital in disguise, after the
+manner of the Caliph in the Arabian Nights. The explanation is
+plausible, but I think not correct. The _coyote_ or jackal was a sacred
+animal among the Aztecs, as the Anubis-jackal was among the Egyptians.
+Humboldt found in Mexico the tomb of a coyote, which had been carefully
+interred with an earthen vase, and a number of the little cast-bronze
+bells which I noticed in the last chapter. The Mexicans used actually
+to make a kind of fetish—or charm—of a jackal’s skin, prepared in a
+peculiar way, and called by the same name, _nezahualcoyotl_, and very
+likely they do so still. From this fetish the king’s name was, no
+doubt, borrowed; and it is not improbable that the whole story of the
+king’s walking in disguise may have grown up out of his name being the
+same as that of the figure we saw, muffled up in a jackal’s skin.
+
+It is curious that the jackal, or the human figure in a jackal-mask,
+should have been an object of superstitious veneration both in Mexico
+and in Egypt. This, the extraordinary serpent-crown of Xochicalco, and
+the pyramids, are the three most striking resemblances to be found
+between the two countries; all probably accidental, but not the less
+noteworthy on that account.
+
+The collection contained a number of spherical beads in green jade,
+highly polished, and some as large as pigeon’s eggs. They were found in
+an alabaster box, of such elaborate and beautiful workmanship that the
+owner deemed it worthy to be presented as a sort of peace-offering to
+the wife of President Santa Ana.
+
+The word _coyotl_ in the name of the Tezcucan king is the present word
+_coyote_—a jackal. Though unknown in English, it has passed, with
+several Spanish words, into what we may call the American dialect of
+our language. Prairie-hunters and Californians have introduced several
+other words in this way, such as _ranch_, _gulch, corral_, &c.
+
+The word _lariat_ one is constantly meeting with in books about
+American prairies. A horse-rope, or a lazo, is called in Spanish
+_reata_; and, by absorbing the article, _la reata_ is made into lariat,
+just as such words as _alligator_, _alcove_, and _pyramid_ were formed.
+The flexible leather riding-whip or _cuarta_ is apparently the _quirt_
+that some American politicians use in arguing with their opponents.
+
+Our last day at Tezcuco was spent in packing up antiquities to be sent
+to England, the express orders of the Government against such
+exportation to the contrary notwithstanding. Next morning we rode off
+to Miraflores, passing on our way the curious stratum of alluvial soil
+containing pottery, &c., which I have described already. Miraflores is
+a cotton-factory, in the opening of a picturesque gorge just at the
+edge of the plain of Mexico. The machinery is American, for the mill
+dates from the time when it was considered expedient to prohibit the
+exportation of cotton-mill machinery from England; and having begun
+with American work, it naturally suits them to go on with it. It is
+driven by a great Barker’s mill, which works in a sort of well, having
+an outlet into the valley, and roars as though it would tear the place
+down. It is not common to see this kind of machine working on a large
+scale; but here, with a great fall of water, it does very well.
+Otherwise the place was like an ordinary cotton-factory, and one cannot
+be surprised at people thinking that such establishments are a source
+of prosperity to the country. They see a population hard at work and
+getting good wages, masters making great profits, and no end of bales
+going off to town; and do not consider that half the price of the cloth
+is wasted, and that the protection-duty sets the people to work which
+they cannot do to advantage, while it takes them away from occupations
+which their country is fit for.
+
+Next morning took us to Amecameca, a town in a little plain at the foot
+of Popocatepetl, whose snow-covered top towers high up in the clouds,
+like Mont Blanc over Sallanches. We had at one time cherished hopes of
+getting to the top of this grand volcano, but had heard such frightful
+reports of difficulties and dangers that we had concluded not to do
+more than look at it from a distance, the more especially as there had
+been a heavy fall of snow upon it a day or two before. We presented our
+letter to the Spaniard who kept the great shop at Amecameca, and asked
+him, casually, about the mountain. He assured us that the surface of
+the snow would be frozen over, and that instead of being a disadvantage
+the fall of snow was in our favour, for it was easier to climb over
+frozen snow than up a loose heap of volcanic ashes. So we sent for the
+guide, a big man, who used to manage the sulphur-workings in the crater
+until that undertaking was given up. He set to work to get things ready
+for the expedition, and we strolled out for a walk.
+
+Close by the town is a “sacred mount,” with little stations, and on one
+day in the year numbers of pilgrims come to visit the place. Near the
+top, the Indian lad who came with us showed us the mouth of a cavern,
+which leads by subterranean passages under the sea to Rome—as caverns
+not unfrequently do in Roman Catholic countries! What was more worth
+noticing was that here there was a cypress-tree, covered with votive
+offerings, like the great ahuchuete in the valley above Chalma; so that
+it is likely that the place was sacred long before chapels and stations
+were built upon it. Our guide told us that whenever a man touched the
+tree, all feeling of weariness left him. How characteristic this
+superstition is of a nation of carriers of burdens!
+
+In the afternoon we started—ourselves, our guide, and an Indian to
+carry cloaks, &c. up the mountain. We soon left the cultivated region,
+and entered upon the pine-forest, which we never left during our
+afternoon journey. One of the first showers of the rainy season came
+down upon us as we rode through the forest. It only lasted half an
+hour, but it was a deluge. In a shower of the same kind at Tezcuco, a
+day or two before, rain to the amount of 1-1/10 inches fell in the
+hour. By dusk we reached the highest habitation in North America, the
+place where the sulphur used to be sublimed from the pumice brought
+down from the crater. This place was shut up, for the undertaking has
+been abandoned; but in a _rancho_ close by we found some Indian women
+and children, and there we took up our quarters. The _rancho_ was a
+circular hut, built and thatched with reeds, though in the midst of a
+pine-forest; and presently a smart shower began, which came in upon us
+as though the roof had been a sieve.
+
+The Indian women were kneeling all the evening round the wood-fire in
+the centre of the hut, baking _tortillas_ and boiling beans and coffee
+in earthen pots. The wood was green, and the place was full of
+suffocating smoke, except within eighteen inches of the ground, where
+lay a stratum of purer air. We were obliged to lie down at once, upon
+mats and serapes, for we could not exist in the smoke; and as often as
+we raised ourselves into a sitting posture, we had to dive down again,
+half suffocated. The line of demarcation was so accurately drawn that
+it was like the Grotto del Cane, only reversed.
+
+After a primitive supper in earthen bowls, we lay round the fire,
+listening to the talk of our men and the Indian women. It was mostly
+about adventures with wolves, and about the sulphur-workings, now
+discontinued. The weather had cleared, and as we lay we could see the
+stars shining in through the roof. About three in the morning I awoke,
+feeling bruised all over, as was natural after sleeping on a mat on the
+ground. Moreover, the fire had gone out, and it was horribly cold, as
+well it might be at 13,000 feet above the sea. I shook some one up to
+make up the fire, and went out into the open air. It was nearly full
+moon; but the moonlight was very different from what we can see in
+England, even on the clearest nights. On the plateau of Mexico, the
+rarity and dryness of the air are such that distant objects are seen
+far more distinctly than at the level of the sea, and the European
+traveller’s measurements of distance by the eye are always too small.
+The sunlight and moonlight, for the same reason, are more intense than
+at lower levels. Here, at about the same elevation as the top of the
+Jungfrau, the effect was far more striking, and I shall never forget
+the brilliant flood of light that illuminated that grand scene. Far
+down below I could see the plain, with houses and fields dimly visible.
+At the bottom of the slope began the dark pine-forest, which enveloped
+the mountains up to the level at which I stood, and there broke into an
+uneven line, with straggling patches running up a few hundred feet
+higher in sheltered crevices. Above the forest came a region of bare
+volcanic sand, and then began the snow. The highest peak no longer
+looked steep and pointed as from below, but seemed to rise from the
+darker line of sand in a gentle swelling curve up into the sky. There
+did not seem to be a speck or a wrinkle on this smooth snowy dome, the
+brilliant whiteness of which contrasted so wonderfully with the dark
+pine-forest below.
+
+About seven in the morning we started on horseback, rode up across the
+sandy district, and entered upon the snow. After we left the pines,
+small bushes and tufts of coarse Alpine grass succeeded. Where rocks of
+basaltic lava stood out from the heaps of crumbling ashes, after the
+grass had ceased, lichens—the occupants of the highest zone—were still
+to be seen. Before we reached the snow, we were in the midst of utter
+desolation, where no sign of life was visible. From this point we sent
+back the horses, and started for the ascent of the cone. On our
+yesterday’s ride we had cut young pine-trees in the forest, for
+alpenstocks; and we tied silk handkerchiefs completely over our faces,
+to keep off the glare of the sun. Our guide did the same; but the
+Indian, who had been many times before up to the crater to get sulphur,
+had brought no protection for his face. We marched in a line, the guide
+first, sounding the depth of the snow with his pole, and keeping as
+nearly as he could along ridges just covered with snow, where we did
+not sink far. It was from the lower part of the snow that we began to
+understand the magnificent proportions of Iztaccihuatl—the “White
+Woman,” the twin mountain which is connected with Popocatepetl by an
+immense col, which stretches across below the snow-line. This mountain
+is not conical like Popocatepetl, but its shoulders are broader, and
+break into grand peaks, like some of the _Dents_ of Switzerland, and it
+has no crater.[23] Indeed, the two mountains, joined together like
+Siamese twins, look as though they had been set up, side by side, to
+illustrate the two contending theories of the formation of volcanos.
+Von Buch and Humboldt might have made Iztaccihuatl on the “upheaval
+theory,” by a force pushing up from below, without breaking through the
+crust to form a crater; while Poulett Scrope was building Popocatepetl
+on the “accumulation theory,” by throwing up lava and volcanic ashes
+out of an open vent, until he had formed a conical heap some five
+thousand feet high, with a great crater at the top.
+
+ [23] I was surprised to find Iztaccihuatl classed among the active
+ volcanos in Johnston’s Physical Atlas, and supposed at first that a
+ crater had really been found. But it is likely to be only a mistake,
+ caused by the name of “Volcan” being given to both mountains by the
+ Mexicans, who used the word in a very loose way.
+
+As we toiled slowly up the snow, we took off our veils from time to
+time, to look more clearly about us. The glare of the sun upon the snow
+was dazzling, and its intense whiteness contrasted wonderfully with the
+cloudless dark indigo-blue of the sky. Between twelve and one we
+reached the edge of the crater, 17,884 feet above the sea. The ridge
+upon which we stood was only a few feet wide, and covered with snow;
+but it seemed that there was still heat enough to keep the crater
+itself clear, for none lay on the bottom, or in clefts on the steep
+sides.
+
+The crater was oval, full a mile in its longest diameter, and perhaps
+700 to 800 feet in depth; and its almost perpendicular walls of
+basaltic lava are covered with red and yellow patches of sublimed
+sulphur. We climbed a little way down into it to get protection from
+the wind, but to descend further unassisted was not possible, so we sat
+there, with our legs dangling down into the abyss. Part of the
+_malacate_, or winder, used by the Indians in descending, was still
+there; but it was not complete, and even if it had been, so many months
+had elapsed since it was last used that we should not have cared to try
+it. It consisted of a rope of hide, descending into the bottom of the
+crater in a slanting direction; and the sulphur-collectors were lowered
+and drawn up it by a windlass, in a basket to which another rope was
+attached. A few years back, the volcano used to send up showers of
+ashes, and even large stones; but now it has sunk to the condition of a
+mere _solfatara_, sending out, from two crevices in the floor, great
+volumes of sulphurous acid and steam, with a loud roaring noise. The
+sulphur-working merely consisted in looking for places where the
+pumice-stone was fully impregnated with sulphur, and breaking out
+pieces, which were hauled up in the basket. The chief risk which the
+labourers ran was from the terrific snow-storms, which come on suddenly
+and without the slightest notice. Men at work collecting sulphur have
+once or twice been caught by such storms in parts of the crater at a
+distance from the rope, and buried in the snow.
+
+The appearance of the “White Woman,” but little lower than the point
+where we stood, was very grand, but all other objects looked small. The
+two great plains of Mexico and Puebla, with their lakes and towns, were
+laid out like a map; and the ranges of mountains which hem them in made
+them look like Roman encampments surrounded by earthworks. Even now
+that the lakes have shrunk to a fraction of their former size, we could
+see the fitness of the name given in old times to the Valley of Mexico,
+_Anahuac_, that is, “By the Water-side.” The peaks of Orizaba and
+Perote were conspicuous to the east; to the north lay the
+silver-mountains of Pachuca; and to the south-west a darker shade of
+green indicated the forests and plantations of the _tierra caliente_,
+below Cuernavaca.
+
+It was a novel sensation to be at an altitude where the barometer
+stands at 15½ inches, so that the pressure on our lungs was hardly more
+than one-half what we are accustomed to in England; but we did not
+experience much inconvenience from it. The last thousand feet or so had
+been very hard work, and we were obliged to stop every few steps, but
+on the comparatively level edge of the crater we felt no difficulty in
+moving about.
+
+_Popocatepetl_ means “Smoking Mountain.” The Indians naturally enough
+considered it to be the abode of evil spirits, and told Cortes and his
+companions that they could never reach the top. One of the Spaniards,
+Diego Ordaz, tried to climb to the summit, and got as far as the snow;
+whereupon he returned, and got permission to put a burning mountain in
+his coat of arms, in commemoration of the exploit! If, as he declared,
+a high wind was blowing, and showers of ashes falling, his turning back
+was excusable, though his bragging was not. He seems to have afterwards
+told Bernal Diaz that he got to the top, which we know, by Cortes’
+letters to Spain, was not true. A few years later, Francesco Montano
+went up, and was lowered into the crater to get sulphur. When Humboldt
+relates the story, in his _New Spain_, he seems incredulous about this;
+but since the _Essai Politique_ was written the same thing has been
+regularly done by the Indians, as the merest matter of business, until
+the crater has been fairly worked out.
+
+We took our last look at Mexico from the ridge of the crater, and,
+descending twenty feet at a stride, soon reached the bottom of the
+cone. As far as we could see, the substance of the hill seemed to be of
+basaltic lava, which was mostly covered with the _lapilli_ which I have
+spoken of before as ashes and volcanic sand. Even before we reached the
+pine-forest there was evidence of the action of water, which had
+covered the slope of the mountain with beds of thick compact tufa,
+composed of these lapilli mixed with fragments of lava. The
+water-courses had cut deep channels through these beds, and down into
+the rock below; so that the streams from the melted snow rushed down
+between walls of lava, in which traces of columnar structure were
+observable.
+
+The snow we had travelled over was sometimes dry and powdery, and
+sometimes hard and compact. There were no glaciers, and no glacier-ice,
+properly so called. It never rains at this elevation; and, though
+evaporation goes on rapidly with half the pressure taken off the air,
+and a great increase in the intensity of the sun’s rays, the snow
+either passes directly into vapour, or carries the water off
+instantaneously, as it is formed. Only so much water seems to be
+produced and re-frozen as suffices to make the snow hard, and in some
+favourable places near the rocks to form lumps of ice, and some of
+those great icicles which the Spaniards brought down from the mountain
+on their first expedition, so greatly astonishing their companions.
+
+When we reached the rancho we thought of passing another night there;
+but the Indians who had gone down to the valley for corn had not
+returned, and everything was eaten up except beans, which are all very
+well as accessories to dinner, but our English digestions could not
+stand living upon them; so we started at once for San Nícolas de los
+Ranchos. Our ride was down a deep ravine, by the side of a
+mountain-torrent coming down from the snows of Popocatepetl; and, when
+we stopped now and then to look behind us, we had one of the grandest
+views which I have ever witnessed. The elements of the picture were
+simple enough. A deep gorge at our feet, with a fierce torrent rushing
+down it, dark pine-trees all round us, and above us—on either side—a
+snow-covered mountain towering up into the sky. We were just in the
+track of the Spanish invaders, who crossed most likely by this very
+road between the two volcanos; and they record the amazement which they
+felt that in the tropics snow should be unmelted upon the mountains.
+
+A few hours riding down the steep descent, and we were in the flat
+plain of Puebla. There were our two mountains behind us, but now they
+looked as we had so often seen them before from a distance. The power
+of realizing their size was gone, and with it most of their grandeur
+and beauty. Nothing was left us but a vivid recollection of the
+wonderful scenes that were before us a few hours ago, impressions not
+likely to be ever effaced from our minds, where the picture of the
+great snowy cone seen in the bright moonlight, and the descent between
+the mountains, remain indelibly impressed as the types of all that is
+most grand and impressive in the scenery of lofty mountains.
+
+We slept at San Nícolas de los Ranches, “St. Nicholas of the huts,”
+where the shopkeeper, to whom we had a letter, insisted upon turning
+out of his own room for us, and treated us like princes. The reason of
+our often being provided with letters to the shopkeepers in small
+places, was, that they are the only people who have houses fit for
+entertaining travellers. Many of them are very rich, and in the United
+States they would call themselves merchants. Next morning our Indian
+carrier, who had ascended the mountain without a veil, was brought in
+by our guide, a pitiful object. All the skin of his face was peeling
+off, and his eyes were frightfully inflamed, so that he was all but
+blind, and had to be led about. Fortunately, this blindness only lasts
+for a time, and no doubt he got well in a few days.
+
+We rode through the plain to Cholula. Our number was now four; for,
+besides Antonio, we had engaged another servant a few days before. We
+wanted some one who knew this district well; and when a friend of ours
+mentioned that there was a young man to be had who had a good horse and
+was a smuggler by profession, we engaged him directly, and he proved a
+great acquisition. Of course, from the nature of his trade, he knew
+every bypath between Mexico and the tobacco-districts towards which we
+were going; he was always ready with an expedient whenever there was a
+difficulty, he was never tired and never out of temper. As for the
+morality of his peculiar profession, it probably does harm to the
+honesty of the people; but, considering it as a question of abstract
+justice, we must remember that almost the whole of the taxes which the
+Mexicans are compelled to pay to the general government are utterly
+wasted upon paying officials who do nothing but intrigue, and keeping
+up armies which—far from being a protection to life and property—are a
+permanent and most destructive nuisance. The contract between
+government and subject ought to be a two-sided one; and when the
+government so entirely misuses the taxes paid by the people, I am quite
+inclined to sympathize with the subjects who will not pay them if they
+can help it.
+
+We scarcely entered the town of Cholula, which is a poor place now,
+though it was a great city at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The
+Spanish city of Puebla, only a few miles off, quite ruined it.
+
+We went straight to the great pyramid, which lies close to the town,
+and which had been rising before us like a hill during the last miles
+of our journey. This extraordinary structure is perhaps the oldest ruin
+in Mexico, and certainly the largest. A close examination of its
+structure in places where the outline is still to some extent
+preserved, and a comparison of it with better preserved structures of
+the same kind, make it quite clear that it was a terraced _teocalli_,
+resembling the drawing called the “Pyramid of Cholula,” in Humboldt’s
+_Vues des Cordillères_. But let no one imagine that the well-defined
+and symmetrical structure represented in that drawing is in the least
+like what we saw, and from which Humboldt made the rough sketch, which
+he and his artist afterwards “idealized” for his great work. At the
+present day, the appearance of the structure is that of a shapeless
+tree-grown hill; and until the traveller comes quite close to it he may
+be excused for not believing that it is an artificial mound at all.
+
+The pyramid is built of rows of bricks baked in the sun, and cemented
+together with mortar in which had been stuck quantities of small
+stones, fragments of pottery, and bits of obsidian knives and weapons.
+Between rows of bricks are alternate layers of clay. It was built in
+four terraces, of which traces are still to be distinguished; and is
+about 200 feet high. Upon the platform at the top stand some trees and
+a church. The sides front the four cardinal points, and the base line
+is of immense length, over thirteen hundred feet, so that the ascent is
+very gradual.
+
+When we reached Cholula we sent the two men to enquire in the
+neighbourhood for antiquities, of which numbers are to be found in
+every ploughed field round. At the top of the pyramid we held a market,
+and got some curious things, all of small size however. Among them was
+a mould for making little jackal-heads in the clay, ready for baking;
+the little earthen heads which are found in such quantities in the
+country being evidently made by wholesale in moulds of this kind, not
+modelled separately. We got also several terra-cotta stamps, used in
+old times for stamping coloured patterns upon the native cloth, and
+perhaps also for ornamenting vases and other articles of earthenware.
+Cholula used to be a famous place for making pottery, and its
+red-and-black ware was famous at the time of the Conquest, but the
+trade now seems to have left it. We were struck by observing that,
+though there was plenty of coloured pottery to be found in the
+neighbourhood of the pyramid, the pyramid itself had only fragments of
+uncoloured ware imbedded in its structure; which seems to prove that it
+was built before the art of colouring pottery was invented.
+
+They have cut a road through one corner of the pyramid, and this
+cutting exposed a chamber within. Humboldt describes this chamber as
+roofed with blocks, each overlapping the one before, till they can be
+made to meet by a block of ordinary size. This is the false arch so
+common in Egypt and Peru, and in the ruined cities of Central America.
+Every child who builds houses with a box of bricks discovers it for
+himself. The bridge at Tezcuco, already described, is much more
+remarkable in its structure. Whether our inspection was careless, or
+whether the chamber has fallen in since Humboldt’s time, I cannot say,
+but we missed this peculiar roof.
+
+There are several legends about the Pyramid of Cholula. That recorded
+by Humboldt on the authority of a certain Dominican friar, Pedro de los
+Rios, I mention—not because of its intrinsic value, which is very
+slight, but because it will enable us to see the way in which legends
+grew up under the hands of the early missionaries, who were delighted
+to find fragments of Scripture-history among the traditions of the
+Ancient Mexicans, and who seem to have taken down from the lips of
+their converts, as native traditions, the very Bible-stories that they
+had been teaching them, mixed however with other details, of which it
+is hard to say whether they were imagined on purpose to fill up gaps in
+the story, or whether they were really of native traditional origin.
+
+Pedro de los Rios’ story tells us that the land of Anahuac was
+inhabited by giants; that there was a great deluge, which devastated
+the earth; that all the inhabitants were turned into fishes, except
+seven who took refuge in a cave (apparently with their wives). Years
+after the waters had subsided, and the earth had been re-peopled by
+these seven men, their leader began to build a vast pyramid, whose top
+should reach to heaven. He built it of bricks baked in the sun, which
+were brought from a great distance, passing them from hand to hand by a
+file of men. The gods were enraged at the presumption of these men, and
+they sent down fire from heaven upon the pyramid, which caused its
+building to be discontinued. It is stated that at the time of the
+Spanish Conquest, the inhabitants of Cholula preserved with great
+veneration a large aerolite, which they said was the thunderbolt that
+fell upon the top of the pyramid when the fire struck it.
+
+The history of the confusion of tongues seems also to have existed in
+the country, not long after the Conquest, having very probably been
+learnt from the missionaries; but it does not seem to have been
+connected with the Tower-of-Babel legend of Cholula. Something like it
+at least appears in the Gemelli table of Mexican migrations, reproduced
+in Humboldt, where a bird in a tree is sending down a number of tongues
+to a crowd of men standing below.
+
+I think we need not hesitate in condemning the legend of Cholula, which
+I have just related, as not genuine, or at least as partly of late
+fabrication. But we fortunately possess another version of it, which
+shows the legend to have developed itself farther than was quite
+discreet. A MS. history, written by Duran in 1579, and quoted by the
+Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, relates that people built the pyramid to
+reach heaven, finding clay or mud _(“terre glaise”)_ and a very sticky
+_bitumen (“bitume fort gluant”)_, with which they began at once to
+build, &c. This is evidently the slime or bitumen of the Book of
+Genesis; but I believe I may safely assert that the Mexicans never used
+bitumen for any such purpose, and that it is not found anywhere near
+Cholula.
+
+The Aztec historians ascribe the building of the Pyramid of Cholula to
+the prophet Quetzalcoatl. The legends which relate to this celebrated
+personage are to be found in writers on Mexican history, and, more
+fully than elsewhere, in the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg’s work.
+
+I am inclined to consider Quetzalcoatl a real personage, and not a
+mythical one. He is said to have been a white, bearded man, to have
+come from the East, to have reigned in Tollan, and to have been driven
+out from thence by the votaries of human sacrifices, which he opposed.
+He took refuge in Cholollan, now called Cholula (which means the “place
+of the fugitive”), and taught the inhabitants to work in metals, to
+observe various fasts and festivals, to use the Toltec calendar of days
+and years, and to perform penance to appease the gods.
+
+A relic of the father of Quetzalcoatl is said to have been kept until
+after the Spanish Conquest, when it was opened, and found to contain a
+quantity of fair human hair. The prophet himself departed from Cholula,
+and put to sea in a canoe, promising to return. So strong was the
+belief in the tradition of these events among the Aztecs, that when the
+Spaniards appeared on the coast, they were supposed to be of the race
+of the prophet, and the strange conduct of Montezuma to Cortes is to be
+ascribed to the influence of this belief.
+
+There is a singular legend, mentioned by the Abbé Brasseur de
+Bourbourg, of a white man, with a hooded robe and white beard, bearing
+a cross in his hand, who lands at Tehuantepec (on the Pacific coast of
+Mexico), and introduces among the Indians auricular confession,
+penance, and vows of chastity.
+
+The coming of white, bearded men from the East, centuries before the
+Spanish invasion in the 16th century, and the introduction of new arts
+and rites by them in Mexico, is as certain as most historical events of
+which we have only legendary knowledge. As to who they were I cannot
+offer an opinion. There are, however, one or two points connected with
+the presence of the Irish and Northmen in America in the 9th and
+following centuries—a period not very far from that ascribed to
+Quetzalcoatl—which are worthy of notice.
+
+The Scandinavian antiquarians make the “white-man’s land”
+_(Hvitramannaland)_ extend down as far as Florida, on the very Gulf of
+Mexico. It is curious to notice the coincidence between the remark of
+Bernal Diaz, that the Mexicans called their priests _papa_ (more
+properly _papahua_), and that in the old Norse Chronicle, which tells
+of the first colonization of Iceland by the Northmen, and relates that
+they found living there “Christian men whom the Northmen call _Papa_.”
+These latter are shown by the context to have been Irish priests. The
+Aztec root _teo (teo-tl, God)_ comes nearer to the Greek and Latin, but
+is not unlike the Irish _dia_, and the Norse _ty-r_. The Aztec root
+_col_ (charcoal) is exactly the Norse _kol_ (our word _coat_), but not
+so near to the Irish _gual_. It is desirable to notice such
+coincidences, even when they are too slight to ground an argument upon.
+
+This seems to be the proper place to mention the many Christian
+analogies to be found in the customs of the ancient Aztecs.
+
+Children were sprinkled with water when their names were given to them.
+This is certainly true, though the statement that they believed that
+the process purified them from original sin is probably a monkish
+fiction. Water was consecrated by the priests, and was supposed thus to
+acquire magical qualities. In the coronation of kings, anointing was
+part of the ceremony, as well as the use of holy water. The festival of
+All Souls’ Day reminds us of the Aztec feasts of the Dead in the autumn
+of each year; and in Mexico the Indians still keep up some of their old
+rites on that day. There was a singular rite observed by the Aztecs,
+which they called the _teoqualo_, that is, “the eating of the god.” A
+figure of one of their gods was made in dough, and after certain
+ceremonies they made a pretence of killing it, and divided it into
+morsels, which were eaten by the votaries as a kind of sacred food.
+
+We may add to the list the habitual use of incense in the ceremonies:
+the existence of monasteries and nunneries, in which the monks wore
+long hair, but the nuns had their hair cut off: and the use of the
+cross as a religious emblem in Mexico and Central America.
+
+Less certain is the recorded use of knotted scourges in performing
+penance, and the existence of a peculiar kind of auricular confession.
+
+It is difficult to ascribe this mass of coincidences to mere chance,
+and not to see in them traces of connexion, more or less remote, with
+Christians. Perhaps these peculiar rites came, with the Mexican system
+of astronomy, from Asia; or perhaps the white, bearded men from the
+East may have brought them. It is true that such a supposition runs
+quite counter to the argument founded on the ignorance of the Mexicans
+of common arts known in Europe and Asia. We should have expected
+Christian missionaries to have brought with them the knowledge of the
+use of iron, and the alphabet. Perhaps our increasing knowledge of the
+ancient Mexicans may some day allow us to adopt a theory which shall at
+least have the merit of being consistent with itself; but at present
+this seems impossible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+PUEBLA. NOPALUCÁN. ORIZABA. POTRERO.
+
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE VOLCANO ORIZABA.]
+
+We reached Puebla in the afternoon, and found it a fine Spanish city,
+with straight streets of handsome stone houses, and paved with
+flag-stones. We rather wondered at the _pasadizos_, a kind of arched
+stone-pavement across the streets at short intervals, very much
+impeding the progress of the carriages, which had to go up and down
+them upon inclined planes. In the evening we saw the use of them
+however, for a shower of rain came down which turned every street into
+a furious river within five minutes after the first drop fell. For half
+an hour the pasadizos did their duty, letting the water pass through
+underneath, while passengers could get across the streets dryshod. At
+last, the flood swept clear along, over bridges and all; but this only
+lasted a few minutes, and then the way was practicable again. The
+moveable iron bridges on wheels, which are to be seen standing in the
+streets of Sicilian cities, ready to be wheeled across them for the
+benefit of foot-passengers whenever the carriage-way is flooded, are on
+the whole a better arrangement.
+
+We should never have thought, from looking at Puebla, that it had just
+been undergoing a siege; for, beyond a few patches of whitewash in the
+great square, where the cannon-balls had knocked the houses about,
+there were no traces of it.
+
+We made many enquiries about the siege, and found nothing to invalidate
+our former estimate of twenty-five killed,—one per cent of the number
+stated in the government manifestos. Among the casualties we heard of
+an Englishman who went out to see the fun, and was wounded in a
+particularly ignominious manner as he was going back to his house.
+
+Revolutions and sieges form curious episodes in the life of the foreign
+merchants in the Republic. Their trade is flourishing, perhaps,—plenty
+of buyers and good prices; and hundreds of mules are on the road,
+bringing up their wares from the coast. All at once there is a
+pronunciamiento. The street-walls are covered with proclamations. Half
+the army takes one side, half the other; and crowds of volunteers and
+self-made officers join them, in the hope of present pillage or future
+emolument. Barricades appear in the streets; and at intervals there is
+to be heard the roaring of cannon, and desultory firing of musketry
+from the flat roofs, killing a peaceable citizen now and then, but
+doing little execution on the enemy.
+
+Trade comes to a dead stop. Our merchant gets his house well furnished
+with provisions, shuts the outer shutters, locks up the great gates,
+and retires into seclusion for a week or a fortnight, or a month or
+two, as may be. At the time we were there he used to run no great risk,
+for neither party was hostile to him; and if a stray cannon-ball did
+hit his house, or the insurgents shot his cook going out on an
+expedition in search of fresh beef, it was only by accident.
+
+Having no business to do, the counting-house would probably take stock,
+and balance the books; but when this is finished there is little to be
+done but to practice pistol-shooting and hold tournaments in the
+court-yard, and to teach the horses to rayar; while the head of the
+house sits moodily smoking in his arm-chair, reckoning up how many of
+his debtors would be ruined, and wondering whether the loaded mules
+with his goods had got into shelter, or had been seized by one party or
+the other.
+
+At last the revolution is over. The new president is inaugurated with
+pompous speeches. The newspapers announce that now the glorious reign
+of justice, order, and prosperity has begun at last. If the millennium
+had come, they could not make much more talk about it. Our unfortunate
+friend, coming out of his den only to hear dismal news of runaway
+debtors and confiscated bales, has to illuminate his house, and set to
+getting his affairs into something like order again.
+
+Since we left the country things have got even worse. Formerly, all
+that the foreign merchants had to suffer were the incidental miseries
+of a state of civil war. Now, the revolutionary leaders put them in
+prison; and, if threats are not sufficient, they get forced loans out
+of them, much as King John did out of his Jews.
+
+Even in times of peace, foreign goods must be dear in Mexico. In a
+country where they have to be carried nearly three hundred miles on
+mules’ backs, and where credit is so long that the merchant can never
+hope to see his money again in less than two years, he cannot be
+expected to sell very cheaply. But the continual revolutions and the
+insecurity of property make things far worse, and one almost wonders
+how foreign trade can go on at all.
+
+One of our friends in Mexico had three or four hundred mules coming up
+the country laden with American cotton for his mill, just when Haro’s
+revolution began. He got off much better than most people, however;
+for, greatly to the disgust of the legitimate authorities, he went down
+into the enemy’s camp, and gave the revolutionary chief a dollar a bale
+to let them go.
+
+As may be supposed, commercial transactions have often very curious
+features here. Strange things happen in the eastern states; but people
+there say that they are nothing to the doings on the Pacific coast,
+where the merchants get up a revolution when their ships appear in the
+offing, and turn out the Custom-house officers, who do not enter upon
+their functions again until the rich cargos have started for the
+interior.
+
+One little incident, which happened—-I think—at Vera Cruz, rather
+amused us. When the Government is hard-up, a favourite way of raising
+ready money is to sell—of course at a very low price—orders upon the
+Custom-house, to pass certain quantities of goods, duty-free. Such a
+transaction as this was concluded between the Minister of Finance and a
+merchant’s house who gave hard dollars in exchange for an order to pass
+so many hundred bales of cotton, free of duty. When the ship arrived at
+port, however, the Yankee captain brought in his manifest with a broad
+grin upon his face. The inspectors went down to the ship, and stood
+aghast. There were the bales of cotton, but such bales! They had to be
+shoved and coaxed to get them up through the hatchways at all. The
+Customhouse officials protested in vain. The order was for so many
+bales of cotton, and these overgrown monsters were bales of cotton, and
+the merchants sent them up to Mexico in triumph.
+
+To us, Puebla was not an interesting city. It was built by the
+Spaniards, and called _Puebla de los Angeles_, because angels assisted
+in building the cathedral, which does no great credit to their good
+taste. Its costly ornaments of gold, silver, jewels, and variegated
+marbles, are most extraordinary. One does not know which to wonder at
+most, the value and beauty of the materials, or the unmitigated
+ugliness of the designs.
+
+We saw the festival of Corpus Christi while we were in Puebla; but were
+to a certain extent disappointed in the display of plate and jewelled
+vestments for the clergy, whose attempt to overthrow Comonfort’s
+government had only resulted in themselves being heavily fined, and who
+were in consequence keeping their wealth in the background, and making
+as little display as possible. The most interesting part of the
+ceremonial to us was to see the processions of Indians from the
+surrounding villages, walking crowned with flowers, and carrying
+Madonnas in bowers of green branches and blossoms.
+
+At the head of each procession walked an Indian beating a drum, _tap,
+tap, tap_, without a vestige of time. The other processions with stoles
+and canopies, and the officials of the city in dress-coats and yellow
+kid gloves, were paltry affairs enough.
+
+Neither during this ceremonial, nor at Easter in the Capital were any
+miracles exhibited, like the performances of the Madonna at Palermo,
+which the coachmen of the city carry about at Easter, weeping real
+tears into a cambric pocket-handkerchief; nor is anything done in the
+country like the lighting of the Greek fire, or the melting of the
+blood of St. Januarius.
+
+Puebla pretty much belongs to the clergy, who are paramount there. A
+population of some sixty thousand has seventy-two churches, some of
+them very large. It is the focus of the church-party, whose steady
+powerful resistance to reform is one of the causes of the unhappy
+political state of the country. As is usual in cathedral-towns, the
+morality of the people is rather lower than elsewhere. I have said
+already that the revenues of the Mexican Church are very large. Tejada
+estimates the income at twenty millions of dollars yearly, more than
+the whole revenue of the State; but this calculation far exceeds that
+given by any other authority. He remarks that the Church has always
+tried as much as possible to conceal its riches, and probably he makes
+a very large allowance for this. At any rate, I think we may reasonably
+estimate the annual income of the Church at $10,000,000, or £2,000,000,
+two-thirds of the income of the State.
+
+There is nothing extraordinary in the Church having become very rich by
+the accumulations of three centuries in a Spanish colony, where the
+manners and customs remained in the 18th century to a great extent as
+they were in the 16th, and the practice of giving and leaving great
+properties to the Church was in full vigour—long after it had declined
+in Europe. It is considered that half the city of Mexico belongs to the
+Church. This seems an extraordinary statement; but, if we remember that
+in Philip the Second’s time half the freehold property of Spain
+belonged to the Church, we shall cease to wonder at this. The
+extraordinary feature of the case is that, counting both secular and
+regular clergy, there are only 4600 ecclesiastics in the country. The
+number has been steadily decreasing for years. In 1826 it was 6,000; in
+1844 it had fallen to 5,200, in 1856 to 4,600, giving, on the lowest
+reckoning, an average of over £200 a year for each priest and monk. A
+great part of this income is probably left to accumulate; but, when we
+remember that the pay of the country curas is very small, often not
+more than £30 to £50, there must be fine incomes left for the
+church-dignitaries and the monks. Now any one would suppose that a
+profession with such prizes to give away would become more and more
+crowded. Why it is not so I cannot tell. It is true that the lives of
+the ecclesiastics are anything but respectable, and that the profession
+is in such bad odour that many fathers of families, though good
+Catholics, will not let a priest enter their houses; but we do not
+generally find Mexicans deterred by a little bad reputation from
+occupations where much money and influence are to be had for very
+little work.
+
+The ill conduct of the Mexican clergy, especially of the monks, is
+matter of common notoriety, and every writer on Mexico mentions it,
+from the time of Father Gage—the English friar—who travelled with a
+number of Spanish monks through Mexico in 1625, and described the
+clergy and the people as he saw them. He was disgusted with their ways,
+and, going back to England, turned Protestant, and died Vicar of Deal.
+
+To show what monastic discipline is in Mexico, I will tell one story,
+and only one. An English acquaintance of mine was coming down the Calle
+San Francisco late one night, and saw a man who had been stabbed in the
+street close to the convent-gate. People sent into the convent to fetch
+a confessor for the dying man, but none was to be had. There was only
+one monk in the place, and he was bed-ridden. The rest were enjoying
+themselves in the city, or fast asleep at their lodgings in the bosom
+of their families.
+
+In condemning the Mexican clergy, some exception must be made. There
+are many of the country curas who lead most exemplary lives, and do
+much good. So do the priests of the order of St. Vincent de Paule, and
+the Sisters of Charity with whom they are associated; but then, few of
+these, either priests or sisters, are Mexicans.
+
+Among the curious odds and ends which we came upon in Puebla, in the
+shop of a dealer in old iron and things in general, were two or three
+very curious old scourges, made of light iron chains with projecting
+points on the links—terrific instruments, once in very general use. Up
+to the present time, there are certain nights when penitents assemble
+in churches, in total darkness, and kneeling on the pavement, scourge
+themselves, while a monk in the pulpit screams out fierce exhortations
+to strike harder. The description carries us back at once to the
+Egyptian origin of this strange custom; and we think of the annual
+festival of Isis, where the multitudes scourged themselves in memory of
+the sufferings of Osiris. A story is told of a sceptical individual who
+got admission to this ceremony by making great professions of devotion,
+and did terrific execution on the backs of his kneeling
+fellow-penitents. Before he began, the place was resounding with
+doleful cries and groans; but he noticed that the cry which arose when
+he struck was not like these other sounds, but had quite a different
+accent. The practice of devotional scourging is still kept up in Rome,
+but in a very mild form, as it appears that the penitents keep their
+coats on, and only use a kind of miniature cat-o’-nine-tails of thin
+cord, with a morsel of lead at the end of each tail, and not such
+bloodthirsty implements as those we found at Puebla.
+
+It seemed to us that the great influence of the priests in Mexico was
+among the women of all classes, the Indians, and the poorer and less
+educated half-castes. The men of the higher classes, especially the
+younger ones, did not appear to have much respect for the priests or
+for religion, and, indeed, seemed to be sceptical, after the manner of
+the French school of freethinking. It was quite curious to see the
+young dandies, dressed in their finest clothes, at the doors of the
+fashionable churches on Sunday morning. None of them seemed to go to
+mass, but they simply went to stare at the ladies, who, as they came
+out, had to run the gauntlet through a double line of these critical
+young gentlemen. As far as we could see, however, they did not mind
+being looked at. The poorer mestizos and Indians, on the other hand,
+are still zealous churchmen, and spend their time and money on masses
+and religious duties so perseveringly that one wishes they had a
+religion which was of some use to them. As it is, I cannot ascertain
+that Christianity has produced any improvement in the Mexican people.
+They no longer sacrifice and eat their enemies, it is true, but against
+this we must debit them with a great increase of dishonesty and general
+immorality, which will pretty well square the account.
+
+Practically, there is not much difference between the old heathenism
+and the new Christianity. We may put the dogmas out of the question.
+They hear them and believe in them devoutly, and do not understand them
+in the least. They had just received the Immaculate Conception, as they
+had received many mysteries before it; and were not a little delighted
+to have a new occasion for decorating themselves and their churches
+with flowers, marching in procession, dancing, beating drums, and
+letting off rockets by daylight, as their manner is. The real essence
+of both religions is the same to them. They had gods, to whom they
+built temples, and in whose honour they gave offerings, maintained
+priests, danced and walked in processions—much as they do now, that
+their divinities might be favourable to them, and give them good crops
+and success in their enterprises. This is pretty much what their
+present Christianity consists of. As a moral influence, working upon
+the character of the people, it seems scarcely to have had the
+slightest effect, except, as I said, in causing them to leave off human
+sacrifices, which were probably not an original feature of their
+worship, but were introduced comparatively at a late time, and had
+already been almost abolished by one king.
+
+The Indians still show the greatest veneration for a priest; and Heller
+well illustrates this feeling when he tells us how he happened to ride
+through the country in a long black cloak, and the Indians he met on
+the road used to fall on their knees as he passed, and ask for his
+blessing, regardless of the deep mud and their white trousers. However,
+this was ten years before we were in the country, and I doubt whether
+the cloak would get so much veneration now. The best measure of the
+influence of the Church is the fact that when Mexico adopted a
+republican constitution, in imitation of that of the United States, it
+was settled that no Church but that of Rome should be tolerated in the
+country; and this law still remains one of the fundamental principles
+of the State, in which universal liberty and equality, freedom of the
+press, and absolute religious intolerance form rather a strange jumble.
+It is curious to observe that, though the Independence confirmed the
+authority of the Roman Catholic religion, it considerably reduced the
+church-revenues, by making the payment of tithes a matter of mere
+option. The Church—of course—diligently preaches the necessity of
+paying tithes, putting their obligation in the catechism, between the
+ten commandments and the seven sacraments, and they still get a good
+deal in this way.
+
+We sent our horses to the bath at Pueblo. This is usually done once a
+week in the cities of Mexico. We went once to see the process while we
+were in the capital, and were very much amused. The horses had been to
+the place before, and turned in of their own accord through a gateway
+in a shabby back street; and when they got into the courtyard, began to
+dance about in such a frantic manner that the _mozos_ could hardly hold
+them in while their saddles and bridles were being taken off. Then they
+put their heads down, and bolted into a large shed, with a sort of
+floor of dust several inches deep, in which six or eight other horses
+were rushing about, kicking, prancing, plunging, and literally
+screaming with delight. I will not positively assert that I saw an old
+white horse stand upon his head in a corner and kick with all his four
+legs at once, but he certainly did something very much like it.
+Presently the old _mozo_ walked into the shed, with his lazo over his
+arm, and carelessly flung the noose across. Of course it fell over the
+right horse’s neck, when the animal was quiet in a moment, and walked
+out after the old man in quite a subdued frame of mind. One horse came
+out after another in the same way, took his swim obediently across a
+great tank of water, was rubbed down, and went off home in high
+spirits.
+
+Though slavery has long been abolished in the Republic, there still
+exists a curious “domestic institution” which is nearly akin to it. It
+is not peculiar to the plains of Puebla, but flourishes there more than
+elsewhere. It is called “_peonaje_,” and its operation is in this wise.
+If a debtor owes money and cannot pay it, his creditor is allowed by
+law to make a slave or _peon _of him until the debt is liquidated.
+Though the name is Spanish, I believe the origin of the custom is to be
+found in an Aztec usage which prevailed before the Conquest.
+
+A _peon_ means a man on foot, that is, a labourer, journeyman, or
+foot-soldier. We have the word in English as “_pioneer_” and as the
+“_pawn_” among chessmen; but I think not with any meaning like that it
+has come to bear in Mexico.
+
+On the great haciendas in the neighbourhood of Puebla, the Indian
+labourers are very generally in this condition. They owe money to their
+masters, and are slaves; nominally till they can work off the sum they
+owe, but practically for their whole lives. Even should they earn
+enough to be able to pay their debt, the contract cannot be cancelled
+so easily. A particular day is fixed for striking a balance, generally,
+I believe, Easter Monday, just after a season when the custom of
+centuries has made it incumbent upon the Indians to spend all that they
+have and all that they can borrow upon church-fees, wax-candles, and
+rockets, for the religious ceremonies of the season, and the drunken
+debauches which form an essential part of the festival. The masters, or
+at least the _administradors_, are accused of mystifying the annual
+statement of accounts between the labourer and the estate, and it is
+certain that the Indian’s feeble knowledge of arithmetic leaves him
+quite helpless in the hands of the bookkeeper; but whether this is mere
+slander or not, we never had any means of ascertaining.
+
+Long servitude has obliterated every feeling of independence from the
+minds of these Indians. Their fathers were slaves, and they are quite
+content to be so too. Totally wanting in self-restraint, they cannot
+resist the slightest temptation to run into debt; and they are not
+insensible to the miserable advantage which a slave enjoys over a free
+labourer, that his master, having a pecuniary interest in him, will not
+let him starve. They have a cat-like attachment to the places they live
+in; and to be expelled from the estate they were born on, and turned
+out into the world to get a living, we are told by writers on Mexico,
+is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted upon them.
+
+There was nothing that we could see in the appearance of these _peons_
+to distinguish them from ordinary free Indians; and our having
+travelled hastily through the district where the system prevails does
+not give us a right to judge of its working. We can but compare the
+opinions of writers who have studied it, and who speak of it in terms
+of the strongest reprobation, as deliberately using the moral weakness
+of the Indians as a means of reducing them to slavery. Sartorius,
+however, takes the other side, and throws the whole blame upon the
+careless improvident character of the brown men, whose masters are
+obliged to lend them money to supply their pressing wants, and must
+take the only security they can get. He says, and truly enough, that
+the system works wretchedly both for masters and labourers. Any one who
+knows the working of the common English system of allowing workmen to
+run into debt with the view of retaining them permanently in their
+master’s service may form some faint idea of the way in which this
+Mexican debt-slavery destroys the energy and self-reliance of the
+people.
+
+But in one essential particular Sartorius mis-states the case. It is
+not the money which the masters lend the _peons_ to help them in
+distress and sickness that keeps them in slavery. It is the money spent
+in wax-candles and rockets, and such like fooleries, for Easter and All
+Saints; in the reckless profusion of drunken feasts on the days of
+their patron saints, and on the occasion of births, deaths, and
+marriages. These feasts are as utterly disproportioned to the means of
+the givers as the Irish wakes which reduce whole families to beggary.
+The sums of money spent upon them are provided by the owners of the
+estates, who know exactly how they are to be spent. If they preferred
+that their labourers should be free from debt, they could withhold this
+money; and their not doing so proves that it is their desire to keep
+the _peons_ in a state of slavery, and throws the whole blame of the
+system upon them.
+
+I have spoken of the _peons_ as Indians, and so they are for the most
+part in the districts we visited; but travellers who have been in
+Chihuahua and other northern states tell stories of creditors
+travelling through the country to collect their debts, and, where money
+was not forthcoming, collecting their debtors instead,—not merely brown
+Indians, but also nearly white mestizos.
+
+Mexico is one of the countries in which the contrast between great
+riches and great poverty is most striking. No traveller ever enters the
+country without making this remark. The mass of the people are hardly
+even with the world; and there are some few capitalists whose incomes
+can scarcely be matched in England or Russia. Yet this state of things
+has not produced a permanent aristocracy.
+
+The general history of great fortunes repeats itself with monotonous
+regularity. Fortunate miners or clever speculators, who have happened
+to possess the gift of accumulating in addition to that of getting,
+often make colossal fortunes. Miners have made the greatest sums, and
+made them most rapidly. Fortunes of two or three millions sterling are
+not uncommon now, and we often meet with them in the history of the
+last century. They never seem to have lasted many years. Before the
+Independence, the capitalist used to buy a patent of nobility, and
+leave great sums to his children to maintain the new dignity; but they
+hardly ever seem to have done anything but squander away their
+inheritance, and we find the family returning to its original poverty
+by the third or fourth generation.
+
+Mexico is an easy place to make money in, in spite of the continual
+disorders that prevail. In the mining-districts most men make money at
+some time or other. The difficulty lies in keeping it. There seems to
+be no training better suited for making a capitalist than the life of
+the retail shopkeeper, especially in the neighbourhood of a mine. A
+good share of all the money that is won and of all that is lost stops
+in his till. Whoever makes a lucky hit in a mining-speculation, he has
+a share of the profits, and when there is a “good thing” going, he is
+on the spot to profit by it.
+
+When once a man becomes a capitalist, there are many very profitable
+ways of employing his money. Mines and cotton-factories pay well, so do
+cattle-haciendas in the north, when honest administradors can be got to
+manage them; and discounting merchants’ bills is a lucrative business.
+But far better than these ordinary investments are the monopolies, such
+as the farming of the tobacco-duty, the mints, and those mysterious
+transactions with the government in which ready cash is exchanged for
+orders to pass goods at the Custom-house, and the other financial
+transactions familiar to those who know the shifts and mystifications
+of that astonishing institution, the Finance-department of Mexico.
+
+We rode from Puebla to Orizaba. Amozoque, the first town on the road,
+is a famous place for spurs, and we bought some. They are of blue steel
+inlaid with strips of silver, and the rowel is a sort of cogged wheel,
+from an inch and a half to three inches in diameter. _(See page 220.)_
+They look terrific instruments, but really the cogs or points of the
+rowels are quite blunt, and they keep the horse going less by hurting
+him than by their incessant jingling, which is increased by bits of
+steel put on for the purpose. Monstrous as the spurs now used are, they
+are small in comparison with those of a century or two ago. One reads
+of spurs, of gold and silver, with rowels in the shape of five-pointed
+stars six inches in diameter. These have quite gone out now, and seem
+to have been melted up, for they are hardly ever to be seen; but we
+bought at the _baratillo_ of Mexico spurs of steel quite as large as
+this.
+
+My companion sent to the Art-exhibition at Manchester a couple of pairs
+of the ordinary spurs of the country, such as we ourselves and
+everybody else wore. They were put among the mediæval armour, and
+excited great admiration in that capacity!
+
+We slept at Nopalucán that night, and rode on next day to San Antonio
+de Abajo, a little out-of-the-way village at the foot of the mountain
+of Orizaba. Our principal adventure in the day’s ride was that, finding
+that our road made a détour of a mile or so round a beautiful piece of
+green turf, we boldly struck across it, and nearly lamed our horses
+thereby; for the ground was completely undermined by moles, and at
+every third step the horses’ feet went into a deep hole. We had to get
+off and lead them back to the road.
+
+Orizaba is the great feature in the scenery of this district of Mexico.
+It is one point in the line of volcanos which stretches across the
+continent from east to west. It is a conical mountain, like
+Popocatepetl, and about the same height; measurements vary from twenty
+feet higher to sixty feet lower. The crater has fallen in on one side,
+leaving a deep notch clearly visible from below. At present, as we hear
+from travellers who have ascended it, the crater, like that of
+Popocatepetl, is in the condition of a _solfatara_, sending out jets of
+steam and sulphurous acid gas. About three centuries ago its eruptions
+were frequent; and its Mexican name, _Citlaltepetl_, “Mountain of the
+Star,” carries us back to the time when it showed in the darkness a
+star-like light from its crater, like that of Stromboli at the present
+time, when one sees it from a distance.
+
+San Antonio de Abajo is a quaint little village, frequented by
+muleteers and smugglers. Tobacco, the principal contraband article, is
+grown in the plains just below; and, once carried up into the paths
+among the mountains, it is hard for any custom-house officer to catch
+sight of it.
+
+When there was a government, there used sometimes to be fighting
+between the revenue-officers and the smugglers; but now, if there is a
+meeting, a few dollars will settle the disputed question to the
+satisfaction of both parties, so that the contraband trade, though
+profitable, is by no means so exciting as it used to be.
+
+On the road towards San Antonio we saw ancient remains in the banks by
+the road-side, but had no time for a regular examination. We slept on
+damp mattresses in a room of the inn, where the fowls roosted on the
+rafters above our heads, and walked over our faces in the early morning
+in an unpleasant manner. We started before daybreak, and a descent down
+a winding road, through a forest of pines and oaks, brought us by seven
+in the morning from the region of pines and barley down to the district
+where tobacco and the sugar-cane flourish, at the level of 3,000 to
+4,000 feet above the sea.
+
+We met a jaunty-looking party in the valley, two women and five or six
+men, all on good horses, and dressed in the extreme of fashion which
+the Mexican _ranchero_ affects—broad-brimmed hats with costly gold and
+silver serpents for hat-bands, and clothes and saddles glittering with
+silver. Martin rode up to us as they passed, and said he knew them well
+for the boldest highwaymen in Mexico. Had we started an hour or two
+later we should have met them in the forest, and have had an adventure
+to tell of. As it was, the descent of three thousand feet had brought
+us from a land of thieves to a region where highway robbery is never
+known, unless when a party from the high lands come down on a marauding
+expedition. It is an unquestionable fact that the Mexican robbers,
+whose exploits have become a matter of world-wide notoriety, all belong
+to the cold region of the plateaus, the _tierra fría_. Once down in the
+_tierra templada_, or the _tierra caliente_, the temperate or the hot
+regions, you hear no more of them; or at least this is the case in the
+parts of Mexico we visited. The reason is clear; it is only on the
+plateaus that the whites, preferring a region where the climate was not
+unlike that of Castile, settled in large numbers; so that it is there
+that Creoles and mestizos predominate, and they are the robbers.
+
+We rode over great beds of gravel, cut up in deep trenches by the
+mountain-streams; then along the banks of the river, among plantations
+of tobacco, looking like beds of lettuces. As we were riding along the
+valley, we saw before us a curious dark cloud, hanging over some fields
+near the river. Our men, who had seen the appearance before, recognized
+it at once as a flight of locusts, and, turning out of the high-road,
+we came upon them just as they had settled on a clump of trees in a
+meadow. They covered the branches and foliage until only the outline of
+the trees was visible, while the rest of the swarm descended on a green
+hedge, and on the grass. As for us, we went and knocked them down with
+our riding-whips, and carried away specimens in our hats; but the
+survivors took no manner of notice of us, and in about ten minutes they
+left the trees mere skeletons, leafless and stripped of their bark, and
+moved across the field in a dense mass towards some fruit-trees a
+little way off. For days after this, when we met with travellers on the
+road, or stopped at the door of a cottage to get a light or something
+to drink, and chatted a few minutes with the inhabitants, we found that
+our descent of the mountain-pass had brought us into a new set of
+interests. News of the government and of the revolutionary party
+excited no curiosity,—talk of robbers still less. At every house the
+question was, “¿_De donde vienen, Señores_?” “Where are you from,
+gentlemen?”—and when we told them, “¿_Y estaban allí las langostas_?”
+“And were the locusts there?” The whole country was being devastated by
+them; and the large rewards offered for them to the peasants, though
+they caused dead locusts to be brought by tons, seemed hardly to
+diminish their numbers. Firing guns had some slight effect in driving
+off the swarms of locusts; and in some places the reports of muskets
+were to be heard, at short intervals, all day long. Some idea of the
+destruction caused by the locusts may be formed from the fact that in
+six weeks they doubled the price of grain in the district. Fortunately,
+they only appear in such numbers about once in half a century.
+
+We had ridden a hundred miles over a rough country in the last
+forty-eight hours, and were glad to get a rest at Orizaba; but on the
+morning of the third day we were in the saddle again, accompanied by a
+new friend, the English administrador of the cotton-mill at Orizaba.
+Until we left the high-road, the country seemed well cultivated, with
+plantations of tobacco, coffee, and sugar-cane; but as soon as we
+turned into by-paths and struck across country, we found woods and
+grassy patches, but little tilled ground, until we arrived at the
+Indian village which we had gone out of our way to visit, Amatlán, that
+is to say, “_The place of paper_.”
+
+In its arrangement this village was like the one that I have already
+described, with its scattered huts of canes and palm-leaf thatch; but
+the vegetation indicated a more tropical climate. Large fields, the
+joint property of the community, were cultivated with pine-apples in
+close rows, now just ripening; and bananas, with broad leaves and heavy
+clusters of fruit, were growing in the little garden belonging to each
+hut. The inhabitants stared at us sulkily, and gave short answers to
+our questions. We went to the cottage of the Indian alcalde, who
+declared that there was nothing to eat or drink in the village, though
+we were standing in his doorway and could see the strings of plantains
+hanging to the roof, and the old women were hard at work cooking.
+However, when Mr. G. explained who he was, the old man became more
+placable; and we were soon sitting on mats and benches inside the hut,
+on the best of terms with the whole village. The life of these people
+is simple enough, and not unsuited to their beautiful climate. The
+white men have never interfered much with them; and it has been their
+pride for centuries to keep as much as possible from associating with
+Europeans, whom they politely speak of as _coyotes_, jackals. The
+priest was a _mestizo_, and, as the Alcalde said, he was the only
+_coyote_ in the settlement; but his sacred office neutralized the
+dislike that his parishioners felt for his race.
+
+These Indian communities always rejoiced in being able to produce for
+themselves almost everything necessary for their simple wants; but of
+late years the law of supply and demand has begun to undermine this
+principle, and the cotton-cloth, spun and woven at home, is yielding to
+the cheaper material supplied by the factories. Though so averse to
+receiving Europeans among them, they do not object to go themselves to
+work for good wages on the plantations. Those who leave their native
+place, however, bring back with them tastes and wants hitherto unknown,
+and inconsistent with their primitive way of life.
+
+Another habit of theirs brings them into contact with the “reasonable
+people,” not to their advantage. They are excessively litigious, and
+their continual law-suits take them to the large towns where the courts
+of justice are held, and where lawyers’ fees swallow up a large
+proportion of their savings. There is a natural connexion between
+farming and law-suits; and the taste for writs and hard swearing is as
+remarkable among this agricultural people as it is among our own small
+farmers in England.
+
+Theoretically, the Indians in their villages live under the general
+government, like any other citizens; for, since the establishment of
+the republic, the civil disabilities which had kept them down for three
+centuries were all abolished at a sweep, and the brown people have
+their votes, and are eligible for any office. Practically, these
+advantages do not come to much at present, for custom, which is
+stronger than law, keeps them under the government of their own
+aristocracy, composed of certain families whose nobility dates beyond
+the Conquest, and was always recognized by the Spaniards. These noble
+Indians seem to be pretty much as dirty, as ignorant, and as idle as
+the plebeians—the ordinary field-labourers or “_earth-hands_”
+(_tlalmaitl_), as they were called in ancient times,—and a stranger
+cannot recognize their claims to superiority by anything in their
+houses, dress, language, or bearing; nevertheless, they are the
+patrician families, and republicanism has not yet deprived them of
+their power over the other Indians. In early times, when men of white
+or mixed blood were few in the country, it suited the Spanish
+government to maintain the authority of these families, who collected
+the taxes and managed the estates of the little communities. The common
+people were the sufferers by this arrangement, for the Alcaldes of
+their own race cheated them without mercy, and were harder upon them
+than even their white rulers, just as on slave-estates a black driver
+is much severer than a white one.
+
+Near some of the houses we noticed that curious institution—the
+_temazcalli_, which corresponds exactly to the Russian vapour-bath. It
+is a sort of oven, into which the bather creeps on all fours, and lies
+down, and the stones at one end are heated by a fire outside. Upon
+these stones the bather sprinkles cold water, which fills the place
+with suffocating steam. When he feels himself to have been sufficiently
+sweated, he crawls out again, and has jars of cold water poured over
+him; whereupon he dresses himself (which is not a long process, as he
+only wears a shirt and a pair of drawers), and so goes in to supper,
+feeling much refreshed. If he would take the cold bath only, and keep
+the hot one for his clothes, which want it sadly, it would be all the
+better for him, for the constant indulgence in this enervating luxury
+weakens him very much. One would think the bath would make the Indians
+cleanly in their persons, but it hardly seems so, for they look rather
+dirtier after they have been in the _temazcalli_ than before, just as
+the author of _A Journey due North_ says of the Russian peasants.
+
+To us the most interesting question about the Mexican Indians of this
+district was this, _Why are there so few of them?_ There are five
+thousand square leagues in the State of Vera Cruz, and about fifty
+inhabitants to the square league. Now, let us consider half the State,
+which is at a low level above the sea, as too hot and unhealthy for men
+to flourish in, and suppose the whole population concentrated on the
+other half, which lies upon the rising ground from three thousand to
+six thousand feet above the sea. This is not very far from the truth,
+and gives us one hundred inhabitants to the square league—about
+one-sixth of the population of the plains of Puebla, in a climate which
+may be compared to that of North Italy, and where the chief products
+are maize and European grain.
+
+In the district of the lower temperate region, which we are now
+speaking of, nature would seem to have done everything to encourage the
+formation of a dense population. In the lower part of this favoured
+region the banana grows. This plant requires scarcely any labour in its
+cultivation; and, according to the most moderate estimate, taking an
+acre of wheat against an acre of bananas, the bananas will support
+twenty times as many people as the wheat. Though it is a fruit of
+sweet, rather luscious taste, and only acceptable to us Europeans as
+one small item of our complicated diet, the Indians who have been
+brought up in the districts where it flourishes can live almost
+entirely upon it, just as the inhabitants of North Africa live upon
+dates.
+
+In the upper portion of this district, where the banana no longer
+flourishes, nutritious plants produce an immense yield with easy
+cultivation. The _yucca_ which produces cassava, rice, the sweet
+potato, yams, all flourish here, and maize produces 200 to 300 fold.
+According to the accepted theory among political economists, where the
+soil produces with slight labour an abundant nutriment for man, there
+we ought to find a teeming population, unless other counteracting
+causes are to be found.
+
+The history of the country, as far as we can get at it, indicates a
+movement in the opposite direction. Judging from the numerous towns the
+Spanish invaders found in the district, the numbers of armed men they
+could raise, and the abundance of provisions, we must reckon the
+population at that time to have been more dense than at present; and
+the numerous ruins of Indian settlements that exist in the upper
+temperate region are unquestionable evidence of the former existence of
+an agricultural people, perhaps ten times as numerous as at present.
+The ruins of their fortifications and temples are still to be seen in
+great numbers, and the soil all over large districts is full of the
+remains of their pottery and weapons.
+
+How far these settlements were depopulated by wars before the Spanish
+Conquest, it is not easy to say. During the Conquest itself they did
+not offer much resistance to the European invaders, and consequently
+they escaped the wholesale destruction which fell upon the more
+patriotic inhabitants of the higher regions. Since that time the
+country has been peaceable enough; and even since the Mexican
+Independence, the wars and revolutions which have done so much injury
+to the inhabitants of the plateaus have not been much felt here.
+
+In reasoning upon Mexican statistics we have to go to a great extent
+upon guess-work. A very slight investigation, however, shows that the
+calculation made in Mexico, that the population increases between one
+and two per cent. annually, is incorrect. The present population of the
+country is reckoned at a little under eight millions; and in 1806, it
+seems, from the best authorities we can get, to have been a little
+under six millions. Even this rate of increase, one-third every
+half-century, is far above the rate of increase since the Conquest;
+for, at that rate, a population a little over a million and a quarter
+would have brought up the number to what it is at present, and we
+cannot at the lowest estimation suppose the inhabitants after the siege
+of Mexico to have been less than three or four millions. So that, badly
+as Mexico is now going on with regard to the increase of its
+population, about ½ per cent. per annum, while England increases over
+1½ per cent., and the United States twice as much, we may still discern
+an improvement upon the times of the Spanish dominion, when it was
+almost stationary.
+
+Why then has this fertile and beautiful country only a small fraction
+of the number of inhabitants that formerly lived in it? That it is not
+caused by the climate being unfavourable to man is clear, for this
+district is free from the intense heat and the pestilential fevers of
+the low lands which lie nearer the sea.
+
+It is a noticeable fact that the remains of the old settlements
+generally lie above the district where the banana grows; and the higher
+we rise above the sea, the more abundant do we find the signs of
+ancient population, until we reach the level of 8,000 feet or a little
+higher. The actual inhabitants at the present day are distributed
+according to the same rule, increasing in numbers, according to the
+elevation, from 3,000 to 8,000 feet, after which the severity of the
+climate causes a rapid decrease.
+
+In making these observations, I leave out of the question the hot
+unhealthy coast-lands of the _tierra caliente_, and the cold and
+comparatively sterile plains of the _tierra fría_, and confine myself
+to that part of the country which lies between the altitudes of 3,000
+and 8,000 feet, between which limits the European races flourish under
+circumstances of climate which also suited the various Mexican races,
+who probably came from a colder northern country. Now, if we begin to
+descend from the level of the Mexican plateau—say 8,000 feet above the
+sea—we find that less and less labour will provide nourishment for the
+cultivator of the soil, until we reach the limit of the banana, where
+the inhabitants ought to be crowded together like Chinese on their
+rice-grounds, or the inhabitants of Egypt in the time of Herodotus.
+Exactly the opposite rule takes effect; the banana-country is a mere
+wilderness, and the higher the traveller rises the more abundant become
+both present population and the remains of ancient settlements.
+
+I suppose the reason of this is to be found in the habits and
+constitution of the tribes who colonized the country, and preferred to
+settle in a climate resembling that of their native land, without
+troubling themselves about the extra labour it would cost them to
+obtain their food. The European invaders have acted precisely in the
+same way; and the distribution of the white and partly white
+inhabitants of the country follows the same rule as that of the
+Indians.
+
+So far the matter is intelligible, on the principle that the
+constitution and habits of the races which have successively taken up
+their residence in the country have been strong enough to prevail over
+the rule which regulates the supply of men by the abundance of food;
+but this does not explain the fact of an actual diminution of the
+inhabitants of the lower temperate districts. They were not mere
+migratory tribes, staying for a few years before moving forward. They
+had been settled in the country long enough to be perfectly
+acclimatized; and yet, under circumstances apparently so favourable to
+their increase, they have been diminishing for centuries, and are
+perhaps even doing so now.
+
+The only intelligible solution I can find for this problem is that
+given by Sartorius, whose work on Mexico is well known in Germany, and
+has been translated and published in England. This author’s remarks on
+the condition of the Indians are very valuable; and, as he was for
+years a planter in this very district, he may be taken as an excellent
+authority on the subject. He considers the evil to lie principally in
+the diet and habits of the people. The children are not weaned till
+very late, and then are allowed to feed all day without restriction on
+boiled maize, or beans, or whatever other vegetable diet may be eaten
+by the family. The climate does not dispose them to take much exercise;
+so that this unwholesome cramming with vegetable food has nothing to
+counteract its evil effects, and the poor little children get miserably
+pot-bellied and scrofulous,—an observation of which we can confirm the
+truth. A great proportion of the children die young, and those that
+grow up have their constitutions impaired. Then they live in close
+communities, and marry “in-and-in,” so that the effect of unhealthy
+living becomes strengthened into hereditary disease; and habitual
+intemperance does its work upon their constitutions, though the
+quantities of raw spirits they consume appear to produce scarcely any
+immediate effect. Among a race in this bodily condition, the ordinary
+epidemics of the country—cholera, small-pox, and dysentery—make fearful
+havoc. Whole villages have often been depopulated in a few days by
+these diseases; and a deadly fever which used to appear from time to
+time among the Indians, until the last century, sometimes carried off
+ten thousand and twenty thousand at once. It seemed to me worth while
+to make some remarks about this question, with a view of showing that
+the theory as to the relation between food and population, though
+partly true, is not wholly so; and that in the region of which we have
+been speaking it can be clearly shown to fail.
+
+After spending a long morning with the Indians and their _cura_, we
+took quite an affectionate leave of them. Their last words were an
+apology for making us pay threepence apiece for the pineapples which we
+loaded our horses with. In the season, they said, twelve for sixpence
+is the price, but the fruit was scarce and dear as yet.
+
+Our companion, besides being engaged in the Orizaba cotton-mill, was
+one of the owners of the sugar-hacienda of the Potrero, below Cordova,
+and we all rode down there together from the Indian village, and spent
+the evening in walking about the plantation, and inspecting the new
+machinery and mills. It was a pleasant sight to see the people coming
+to the well with their earthen jars, after their work was done, in an
+unceasing procession, laughing and chattering. They were partly Indian,
+but with a considerable admixture of negro blood, for many black slaves
+were brought into the country in old times by the Spanish planters.
+Now, of course, they and their descendants are free, and the hotter
+parts of Mexico are the paradise of runaway slaves from Louisiana and
+Texas; for, so far from their race being despised, the Indian women
+seek them as husbands, liking their liveliness and good humour better
+than the quieter ways of their own countrymen. Even Europeans settled
+in Mexico sometimes take wives of negro blood.
+
+I have never noticed in any country so large a number of mixed races,
+whose parentage is indicated by their features and complexion. In
+Europe, the parent races are too nearly alike for the children of such
+mixed marriages to be strikingly different from either parent. In
+America and the West Indies we are familiar with the various mixtures
+of white and negro, mulatto, quadroon, &c.; but in Mexico we have three
+races, Spanish, pure Mexican, and Negro, which, with their
+combinations, make a list of twenty-five varieties of the human race,
+distinguishable from one another, and with regular names, which Mayer
+gives in his work on Mexico, such as _mulatto, mestizo, zambo, chino_,
+and so forth. Here all the brown Mexican Indians are taken as one race,
+and the Red Indians of the frontier-states are not included at all. If
+we come to dividing out the various tribes which have been or still are
+existing in the country, we can count over a hundred and fifty, with
+from fifty to a hundred distinct languages among them.
+
+Out of this immense variety of tribes, we can make one great
+classification. The men of one race are brown in complexion, and have
+been for ages cultivators of the land. It is among them only that the
+Mexican civilization sprang up, and they still remain in the country,
+having acquiesced in the authority of the Europeans, and to a great
+extent mingled with them by marriage. This class includes the Aztecs,
+Acolhuans, Chichemecs, Zapotecs, &c., the old Toltecs, the present
+Indians of Central America, and, if we may consider them to be the same
+race, the nations who built the now ruined cities of Palenque, Copan,
+Uxmal, and so forth. The other race is that of the Red Indians who
+inhabit the prairie-states of North Mexico, such as the Apaches,
+Comanches, and Navajos. They are hunters, as they always were, and they
+will never preserve their existence by adopting agriculture as their
+regular means of subsistence, and settling in peace among the white
+men. As it has been with their countrymen further north, so it will be
+with them; a few years more, and the Americans will settle Chihuahua
+and Sonora, and we shall only know these tribes by specimens of their
+flint arrow-heads and their pipes in collections of curiosities, and
+their skulls in ethnological cabinets.
+
+One of the strangest races (or varieties, I cannot say which) are the
+_Pintos_ of the low lands towards the Pacific coast. A short time
+before we were in the country General Alvarez had quartered a whole
+regiment of them in the capital; but when we were there they had
+returned with their commander into the tierra caliente towards
+Acapulco. They are called _“Pintos”_ or painted men, from their faces
+and bodies being marked with great daubs of deep blue, like our British
+ancestors; but here the decoration is natural and cannot be effaced.
+
+They have the reputation of being a set of most ferocious savages; and,
+badly armed as they are with ricketty flint- or match-locks, and sabres
+of hoop-iron, they are the terror of the other Mexican soldiery,
+especially when the war has to be carried on in the hot pestilential
+coast-region, their native country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+CHALCHICOMULA. JALAPA. VERA CRUZ. CONCLUSION.
+
+
+[Illustration: INDIANS OF THE PLATEAU.
+_(After Nebel.)_]
+
+The mountain-slopes which descend from the Sierra Madre eastward toward
+the sea are furrowed by _barrancas_—deep ravines with perpendicular
+sides, and with streams flowing at the bottom. But here all these
+_barrancas_ run almost due east and west, so that our journey from Vera
+Cruz to Mexico was made, as far as I can recollect, without crossing
+one. Now, the case was quite different. We had to go from the Potrero
+to the city of Jalapa, about fifty miles on the map, nearly northward,
+and to get over these fifty miles cost us two days and a half of hard
+riding.
+
+By the road it cannot be much less than eighty miles; but people used
+to tell us that, during the American war, an Indian went from Orizaba
+to Jalapa with despatches within the twenty-four hours, probably by
+mountain-paths which made it a little shorter. He came quite easily
+into Jalapa at the same shuffling trot which he had kept up almost
+without intermission for the whole distance. This is the Indian’s
+regular pace when he is on a journey, and I believe that the Red
+Indians of the north have a similar gait.
+
+We used sometimes to see a village or a house three or four miles off,
+and count upon reaching it in half an hour. But a few steps further on
+there would be a barranca, invisible till we came close to it, perhaps
+not more than a few hundred feet wide, so that it was easy to talk to
+people on the other bank. But the bottom of the chasm might be five
+hundred or a thousand feet below us; and the only way to cross was to
+ride along the bank, often for miles, until we reached a place where it
+had been possible to make a steep bridle-path zigzagging down to the
+stream below, and up again on the other side. It is only here and there
+that even such paths can be made, for the walls of rock are generally
+too steep even for any vegetation, except grass and climbing plants in
+the crevices. Our half-hour’s ride, as we supposed it would be, would
+often extend to two or three hours, for on these slopes two or three
+barrancas—large and small—-have sometimes to be crossed within as many
+miles.
+
+If our journey had been even slower and more difficult, we should not
+have regretted it; the country through which we were riding was so
+beautiful. There were but few inhabitants, and the landscape was much
+as nature had left it. The great volcano of Orizaba came into view now
+and then with its snowy cone,[24] mountain-streams came rushing along
+the ravines, and the forests of oaks were covered with innumerable
+species of orchids and creepers, breaking down the branches with their
+weight. Many kinds were already in flower, and their great blossoms of
+white, purple, blue, and yellow, stood out against the dark green of
+the oak-leaves. Wherever a mountain-stream ran down some shady little
+valley, there were tree-ferns thirty feet high, with the new fronds
+forming a tuft at the top of the old scarred trunk. Round the Indian
+cottages were cactuses with splendid crimson flowers, daturas with
+brilliant white blossoms, palm- and fruit-trees of fifty kinds. We
+stopped at one of the cottages, and bought an armadillo that had just
+been caught in the woods close by, while routing among his favourite
+ants’ nests. He was put into a palm-leaf basket, which held him all but
+the tip of his long taper tail, which, like the rest of his body, was
+covered with rings of armour fitting beautifully into one another. One
+of our men carried him thus in his arms to Jalapa.
+
+ [24] See the illustration at page 281.
+
+The Mexicans call an armadillo “_ayotochtli_,” that is,
+“tortoise-rabbit,” a name which will be appreciated by any one who
+knows the appearance of the little animal.
+
+The villages and towns we passed were dismal places enough, and the
+population scanty; but that this had not always been the case was
+evident from the numerous remains of ancient Indian mound-forts or
+temples which we passed on our road, indicating the existence of large
+towns at some former period. There is a drawing in Lord Kingsborough’s
+work of a _teocalli_ or pyramid at San Andrés Chalchicomula, which we
+seem to have missed on account of the darkness having come on before we
+reached the town. We were several times deceived that evening by the
+fireflies, which we took for lights moving about in some village just
+ahead of us; and we became so incredulous at last that we would not
+believe we had reached our journey’s end until we could made out the
+dim outlines of the houses. At the inn at San Andrés we found that we
+could have no rooms, as all the little windowless dens were occupied by
+people from the country who had come in for a _fiesta_. There were
+indeed a good many men loafing about the courtyard, but scarcely any
+women, and we could hardly understand a fandango happening without
+them. They thought otherwise, however; and presently, hearing the
+tinkling of a guitar, we went out and saw two great fellows in broad
+hats, jackets, and serapes, solemnly dancing opposite to one another;
+while more men looked on, smoking cigarettes, and an old fellow with a
+face like a baboon was squatting in one corner and producing the music
+we had heard. To do them justice, I must say that we found, on further
+enquiry, they had not come from their respective ranchos merely to make
+fools of themselves in this way, but that there was to be some
+horsefair in the neighbourhood next day, and they were going there.
+
+Our not being able to get any supper but eggs and bread, and having to
+sleep on the supper-table afterwards, confirmed us in the theory we
+were beginning to adopt, that nature and mankind vary in an inverse
+ratio; and we were off at daybreak, delighted to get into the forest
+again. We rode over hill and dale for four or five hours, and then
+along the edge of a barranca for the rest of the day. This was one of
+the grandest chasms we had ever seen, even in Mexico. It was four or
+five miles wide, and two or three thousand feet deep, and its floor was
+a mass of tropical verdure, with here and there an Indian rancho and a
+patch of cultivated ground on the bank of the rapid river, whose sound
+we heard when we approached the edge of the barranca. There were more
+orchids and epidendrites than ever in the forest. In some places they
+had killed every third tree, by forming so and close a covering over
+its branches as to destroy its life; they were flourishing unimpaired
+on the rotting branches of trees which they had brought down to the
+ground years before. The rainy season had not yet set in in this part
+of the country; and, though we could hear the rushing of the torrent
+below, we looked in vain for water in the forest, until our man Martin
+showed us the _bromelias_ in the forks of the branches, in the inside
+of whose hollow leaves nature has laid up a supply of water for the
+thirsty traveller.
+
+We loaded our horses with the bulbs of such orchids as were still in
+the dry state, and would travel safely to Europe. Sometimes we climbed
+into the trees for promising specimens, but oftener contented ourselves
+with tearing them from the branches as we rode below. When saddle-bags
+and pockets were full, we were for a time at fault, for there seemed no
+place for new treasures, when suddenly I remembered a pair of old
+trousers. We tied up the ends of the legs, which we filled with
+orchids; and the garment travelled to Jalapa sitting in its natural
+position across my saddle, to the amazement of such Mexican society as
+we met. The contents of the two pendant legs are now producing splendid
+flowers in several English hothouses.
+
+By evening we reached the _Junta_, a place where the great ravine was
+joined by a smaller one, and a long slanting descent brought us to the
+edge of the river. There was a ferry here, consisting of a raft of logs
+which the Indian ferryman hauled across along a stout rope. The horses
+were attached to the raft by their halters, and so swam across. On the
+point of land between the two rivers the Indians had their huts, and
+there we spent the night. We chose the fattest _guajalote_ of the
+turkey-pen, and in ten minutes he was simmering in the great earthen
+pot over the fire, having been cut into many pieces for convenience of
+cooking, and the women were busy grinding Indian corn to be patted out
+into tortillas. While supper was getting ready, and Mr. Christy’s day’s
+collection of plants was being pressed (the country we had been passing
+through is so rich that the new specimens gathered that day filled
+several quires of paper), we had a good deal of talk with the brown
+people, who could all speak a little Spanish. Some years before, the
+two old people had settled there, and set up the ferry. Besides this,
+they made nets and caught much fish in the river, and cultivated the
+little piece of ground which formed the point of the promontory. While
+their descendants went no further than grandchildren the colony had
+done very well; but now great-grandchildren had begun to arrive, and
+they would soon have to divide, and form a settlement up in the woods
+across the river, or upon some patch of ground at the bottom of one of
+the barrancas.
+
+We were interested in studying the home-life of these people, so
+different from what we are accustomed to among our peasants of Northern
+Europe, whose hard continuous labour is quite unknown here. For the
+men, an occasional pull at the _balsas_ (the rafts of the ferry), a
+little fishing, and now and then—when they are in the humour for it— a
+little digging in the garden-ground with a wooden spade, or dibbling
+with a pointed stick. The women have a harder life of it, with the
+eternal grinding and cooking, cotton-spinning, mat-weaving, and tending
+of the crowds of babies. Still it is an easy lazy life, without much
+trouble for to-day or care for to-morrow. When the simple occupations
+of the day are finished, the time does not seem to hang heavy upon
+their hands. The men lie about, “thinking of nothing at all;” and the
+women—old and young—gossip by the hour, in obedience to that beneficent
+law of nature which provides that their talk shall increase inversely
+in proportion to what they have to talk about. We find this law
+attaining to its most complete fulfilment when they shut themselves up
+in nunneries, to escape as much as possible from all sources of worldly
+interest, and gossip there more industriously than anywhere else, as we
+are informed on very good authority.
+
+Like all the other Mexican Indians whose houses we visited, the people
+here showed but little taste in adorning their dwellings, their dresses
+and their household implements. Beyond a few calabashes scraped smooth
+and ornamented with coloured devices, and the blue patterns on the
+women’s cotton skirts, there was scarcely anything to be seen in the
+way of ornament. How great was the skill of the Mexicans in ornamental
+work at the time of the Conquest, we can tell from the carved work in
+wood and stone preserved in museums, the graceful designs on the
+pottery, the tapestry, and the beautiful feather-work; but this taste
+has almost disappeared in the country. Just in the same way, contact
+with Europeans has almost destroyed the little decorative arts among
+most barbarous people, as, for example, the Red Indians and the natives
+of the Pacific Islands; and what little skill in these things is left
+among them is employed less for themselves than in making curious
+trifles for the white people, and even in these we find that European
+patterns have mixed with the old designs, or totally superseded them.
+
+The Indians lodged us in an empty cane-hut, where they spread mats upon
+the ground, and we made pillows of our saddles. We were soon tired of
+looking up at the stars through the chinks in the roof, and slept till
+long after sunrise. Then the Indians rafted us across the second river;
+and we rode on to Jalapa, having accomplished our horseback journey of
+nearly three hundred miles with but one accident, the death of a horse,
+the four-pound one. He had been rather overworked, but would most
+likely have got through, had we not stopped the last night at the
+Indian _ranchos_, where there was no forage but green maize leaves, a
+food our beasts were not accustomed to. It seems our men gave him too
+much of this, and then allowed him to drink excessively; and next
+morning he grew weaker and weaker, and died not long after we reached
+Jalapa. Our other two horses were rather thin, but otherwise in good
+condition; and the horse-dealers, after no end of diplomacy on both
+sides, knocked under to our threat of sending them back to Mexico in
+charge of Antonio, and gave us within a pound or two of what they had
+cost us. There, is a good deal of trading in horses done at Jalapa,
+where travellers coming down from Mexico sell their beasts, which are
+disposed of at great prices to other travellers coming up from the
+coast. Between here and Vera Cruz, people prefer travelling in the
+Diligence, or in some covered carriage, to exposing themselves to the
+sun in the hot and pestilential region of the coast.
+
+Jalapa is a pleasant city among the hills, in a country of forests,
+green turf, and running streams. It is the very paradise of botanists;
+and its products include a wonderful variety of trees and flowers, from
+the apple- and pear-trees of England to the _mameis_ and _zapotes_ of
+tropical America, and the brilliant orchids which are the ornament of
+our hot-houses. The name of the town itself has a botanical celebrity,
+for in the neighbouring forests grows the _Purga de Jalapa_, which we
+have shortened into _jalap_.
+
+A day’s journey above it, lies the limit of eternal snow, upon the peak
+of Orizaba; a day’s journey below it is Vera Cruz, the city of the
+yellow fever, surrounded by burning sands and poisonous exhalations, in
+a district where, during the hot months now commencing, the thermometer
+scarcely ever descends below 80°, day or night. Jalapa hardly knows
+summer or winter, heat or cold. The upper current of hot air from the
+Gulf of Mexico, highly charged with aqueous vapour, strikes the
+mountains about this level, and forms the belt of clouds that we have
+already crossed more than once during our journey. Jalapa is in this
+cloudy zone, and the sky is seldom clear there. It is hardly hotter in
+summer than in England, and not even hot enough for the mosquitoes,
+which are not to be found here though they swarm in the plain below.
+This warm damp climate changes but little in the course of the year.
+There are no seasons, in our sense of the word, for spring lasts
+through the year.
+
+We walked out on the first afternoon of our arrival; and sat on stone
+seats on a piece of green turf surrounded by trees, that reminded us
+pleasantly of the village-greens of England. There we talked with the
+children of an English acquaintance who had been settled for many years
+in the town, and had married a Mexican lady. They were fine lads; but,
+as very often happens in such cases, they could only speak the language
+of the country. Nothing can show more clearly how thoroughly a
+foreigner yields to the influences around him, when he settles in a
+country and marries among its people. An Englishman’s own character,
+for instance, may remain to some extent; but his children are scarcely
+English in language or in feeling, and in the next generation there is
+nothing foreign about his descendants but the name.
+
+When we reached our hotel it was about sunset, and the heavy dew had
+wetted us through, as though we had been walking in the rain. This was
+no exceptional occurrence. All the year round such dews fall morning
+and evening, as well as almost daily showers of rain. The climate is
+too warm for this dampness to injure health, as it would in our colder
+regions. To us, who had just left the bracing air of the high plateaus,
+it seemed close and relaxing; but the inhabitants are certainly strong
+and healthy, and one can imagine the enjoyment which the white
+inhabitants of Vera Cruz must feel, when they can get away from that
+city of pestilence into the pure air of the mountains.
+
+Our quarters were at the _Veracruzana_, where we occupied a great
+whitewashed room. A large grated window opened into the garden, where
+the armadillo was fastened to a tree by a long string, and had soon dug
+a deep hole with his powerful fore-claws, as the manner of the creature
+is. The necessity of supplying the “little man in armour” with insects
+for his daily food gave us some idea of the amazing abundance and
+variety of the insects of the district. We caught creeping things
+innumerable in the garden, but narrowly escaped being stung by a small
+scorpion; and therefore delegated the task to an old Indian, who walked
+out into the fields with an earthen pot, and returned with it full of
+insects in about half an hour. We reckoned that there were over fifty
+species in the pot.
+
+Many of the houses and Indian huts were adorned with collections of
+insects pinned on the walls in patterns, among which figured scorpions
+some three inches long; and the centre-ornament was usually a
+tarantula, said to be one of the most poisonous creatures of the
+tropics, a monstrous spider, whose dark grey body and legs are covered
+with hairs. A fine specimen will have a body about as large as a small
+hen’s egg, and, with his legs in their natural position, will just
+stand in a cheese-plate. The Boots of the hotel went out and caught a
+fine scorpion for our amusement; he brought it into our room wrapped in
+a piece of brown paper, and was on the point of letting it out on our
+table for us to see it run. We protested against this, and had it put
+into a tumbler and covered it up with a book.
+
+The inner _patio_ of the hotel was surrounded with the usual arcade,
+into which the rooms opened. Close to our door was a long table, with a
+green cloth, where the Jalapenians were constantly playing _monte_,
+from nine in the morning till late at night. All classes were
+represented there, from the muleteer who came to lose his hard-earned
+dollars, to the rich shopkeepers and planters of the town and
+neighbourhood.
+
+I went early one afternoon to the house of the principal agent for the
+Vera Cruz carriers, to arrange for sending down our heavy packages to
+the coast. There was no one at the office but a girl. I enquired for
+the master—“_Está jugando_,”—“He is playing,” she said. I need not have
+gone so far to look for him, for he was sitting just outside our
+bedroom door, and indeed had been there all day. Before he condescended
+to arrange our business, he waited to see the fate of the dollar he had
+just put down, and which I was glad to see he lost.
+
+Jalapa was not always the stagnant place it is now. Its pleasant houses
+and gardens date from a period when it was a town of some importance.
+In old times the only practicable road from Vera Cruz to Mexico passed
+this way; and Jalapa was the entrepôt where the merchants had their
+warehouses, and from whence the trains of mules distributed the
+European merchandise from the coast to the different markets of the
+country. By this arrangement, the carrying from the coast was done by a
+small number of muleteers, who were seasoned to the climate, while the
+great mass of traders and carriers were not obliged to descend from the
+healthy region. This was of the more importance, because, though the
+pure Indians are not liable to the attacks of yellow fever, the disease
+is as deadly to the other inhabitants of the high lands as to
+Europeans; and even those of the _mestizos_ who have the least
+admixture of white blood are subject to it. Of late years, this system
+has been given up, and the carriers from the high lands go down to the
+coast to fetch their loads, and every year they leave some of their
+number in the church-yards of the City of the Dead; while many others,
+though they recover from the fever, never regain their former health
+and strength. The high-road to Mexico now goes by Orizaba, so that the
+importance of Jalapa as a trading-place has almost ceased.
+
+Our Mexican journey was now all but finished, and I left my companion
+here, and took the Diligence to Vera Cruz, to meet the West India
+Mail-packet. Mr. Christy followed a day or two later, and went to the
+United States. We dismissed our two servants, Martin and Antonio.
+Martin invested his wages in a package of tobacco, which he proposed to
+carry home on his horse, travelling by night along unfrequented
+mountain-paths, where custom-house officers seldom penetrate. We never
+heard any more of him; but no doubt he got safe home, for he was
+perfectly competent to take care of himself, and he probably made a
+very good thing of his journey. It was quite with regret that we parted
+from him, for he was a most sensible, useful fellow, with a continual
+flow of high spirits, and no end of stories of his experiences in
+smuggling, and hunting wild cattle in the _tierra caliente_, in which
+two adventurous occupations most of his life had been passed. In his
+dealings with us, he was honesty itself, notwithstanding his equivocal
+profession.
+
+We offered Antonio a cheque on Mexico for his wages, as he was going
+back there, but he said he would rather have hard dollars. We paid his
+fare to Mexico by the Diligence, and gave him his money, telling him at
+the same time, that he was a fool for his pains. He started next
+morning; and we heard, a month or two later, that the coach was stopped
+the same afternoon in the plains of Perote, and Antonio was robbed not
+only of his money but even of his jacket and serape, and reached Mexico
+penniless and half-naked. He was always a silly fellow, and his last
+exploit was worthy of him.
+
+Mr. Christy sat up till daybreak to see me off, filling up his time by
+writing letters and pressing plants. When I was gone, he lay down in
+his bed, in rather a dreamy state of mind, looking up at the ceiling.
+There was a large beam just above his head, and at one side of it a
+hole, which struck him as being a suitable place for a scorpion to come
+out of. This idea had come into his head from the sight of the specimen
+in the tumbler on the table, who had with great difficulty been drowned
+in _aguardiente_. Presently something moved in the hole, and the
+spectator below instantly became wide awake. Then came out a claw and a
+head, and finally the body and tail of a very fine scorpion, two inches
+and a half long. It was rather an awkward moment, for it was not safe
+to move suddenly, for fear of startling the creature, whose footing
+seemed anything but secure; and if he fell, he would naturally sting
+whatever he might come in contact with. However, he met with no
+accident on his way, and getting into another hole, about a yard off,
+he drew up his tail after him and disappeared. Mr. Christy slipped out
+of his bed with a sense of considerable relief; and having ascertained
+that there were no holes in the ceiling above the bed on the other side
+of the room, he turned in there, and went comfortably to sleep.
+
+My only companion in the Diligence was a German shopman from Vera Cruz,
+who was sociable, but not of an instructive turn of conversation. When
+we had descended for a few hours, the heat became intolerable. Scarcely
+any habitation but a few Indian cane-huts by the way-side, with bananas
+and palm-trees. We stopped, about three in the afternoon, at a _rancho_
+in a small village, and did not start again until next morning, a
+little before day-break. Negroes and people of negro descent began to
+abound in this congenial climate. I remember especially the
+waiting-maid at the _rancho_, who was a “white negress,” as they are
+called. Her hair and features showed her African origin; but her hair
+was like white wool, and her face and hands were as colourless as those
+of a dead body. This animated corpse was healthy enough, however; and
+this peculiarity of the skin is, it seems, not very uncommon.
+
+The coast-regions through which I was passing abound in horned cattle,
+but they are mostly far away from the high-roads. In spite of the
+intense heat of the climate they thrive as well as in the higher lands.
+Some are tolerably tame, and are kept within bounds by the _vaqueros_;
+but the greater proportion, numbering tens of thousands, roam wild
+about the country. In comparison with these cattle of the _tierra
+caliente_, the fiercest beasts of the plateaus are safe and quiet
+creatures. The only way of bringing them into the _corral_ is by using
+tame animals for decoys, just as wild elephants are caught.
+
+Our man Martin, who had once been a _vaquero_ on the Vera Cruz coast,
+used to look upon the bulls of the high lands with great contempt. If
+you chase them they run away, he said. If you lazo a bull of the hot
+country, you have to gallop off with all your might, with the _toro_
+close at your heels; and, if the horse falls, it may cost his life or
+his rider’s.
+
+We thus find the horned cattle flourishing at every elevation, from the
+sea-level to the mountain-pastures ten thousand feet above it. Horses
+and sheep show less adaptability to this variety of climates. The
+horses and mules come mostly from the States of the North, at a level
+of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet; that remarkable country of which
+Humboldt’s observation gives us the best idea, when he says that,
+although there are no made roads, wheel-carriages can travel distances
+of a thousand miles over gently-undulating prairies, without meeting
+any obstruction on the way.
+
+Numbers of sheep are reared in the mountains, principally for the sake
+of the tallow, for the consumption of tallow-candles in the mines is
+enormous. The owners scarcely care at all for the rest of the animal;
+and popular scandal accuses the sheep-farmers of driving their flocks
+straight into the melting-coppers, without going through the
+preliminary ceremony of killing them. People told us that the tallow
+made in the cold regions loses its consistency when brought down into
+hotter climates, but we had no means of ascertaining the truth of this.
+
+Artificial lighting by means of tallow was not known to the ancient
+Mexicans, who could not indeed have procured tallow except from the fat
+of deer and smaller animals.
+
+Bernal Diaz tells how the Spanish invaders used to dress their wounds
+with “Indian Ointment.” He explains the nature of this preparation in
+another place. The Spaniards could get no oil in the country, nor
+anything else to make salve with, so they took some fat Indian who had
+just been killed in battle, and simply boiled him down.
+
+Our ride next morning was but a few hours, the journey being so divided
+in order that the passengers may reach Vera Cruz before the heat of the
+day begins. We passed over a dreary district, generally too dry for
+anything but cactus and acacias, but now and then, when a little water
+was to be found, displaying clumps of bamboos with their elegant
+feathery tufts. Then the railway took us through the dismal downs, with
+their swamps and sand-hills, and so into Vera Cruz.
+
+The English merchants we had already made acquaintance with were as
+kind and hospitable as ever, and I found an Englishman, whom we had
+known before, going as far as Havana by the same packet. The yellow
+fever was unusually late this year, and, though June had begun, there
+were but few cases. We heard afterwards that it set in a week or two
+after our departure, and by its extraordinary severity made ample
+amends for the lateness of its arrival.
+
+After sunset, the air was alive with mosquitos, and the floors of the
+hotel swarmed with cockroaches. The armadillo took quite naturally to
+the latter creatures, and crunched them up as fast as we could catch
+them for him. I was surprised to find that our word “cockroaches” does
+not come from the German stock, like most of our names for insects and
+small creatures, but from the Latin side of the house. The Spanish
+waiter called them _cucarachas_, and the French ones _coqueraches_. The
+history of the armadillo ends unfortunately: for some days he seemed to
+take quite kindly to the diet of bits of meat which we had to put him
+on, on shipboard, but he fell sick at Havana, and died.
+
+My late companion travelled up into the Northern States, went to the
+Indian assembly at Manitoulin Island, paid a visit to various tribes of
+Red Men in the Hudson’s Bay Territory—as yet unmissionized, carried
+away in triumph the big medicine-drum I have already spoken of, and saw
+and did many other things not to be related here. One sight that he
+saw, some months later, reminded him of the wild country where we had
+travelled together. He was in Iowa City, a little town of a year or
+two’s growth, out in the prairie States of the Far West. As he stood
+one morning in the outskirts, among the plank-houses and half-made
+roads, there came a solitary horseman riding in. Evidently he had come
+from the Mexican frontier, a thousand miles and more away across the
+plains; and no doubt, his waggons and the rest of his party were behind
+him on the road, beyond the distant horizon of the prairie. By his face
+he was American, but his costume was the dress of old Mexico, the
+leather jacket and trousers, the broad white hat and huge jingling
+spurs. His lazo hung in front of his high-peaked saddle, and his
+well-worn serape was rolled up behind him like a trooper’s cloak. As he
+approached the town, he spurred his jaded beast, who broke into the old
+familiar _paso_ of the Mexican plains. “It was my last sight of
+Mexico,” said my companion. He saluted the horseman in Spanish, and the
+well-known words of welcome made the grim man’s haggard sunburnt
+features relax into a smile as he returned the salutation and rode on.
+
+As for myself, my voyage home was short and unadventurous. From Vera
+Cruz to Havana, most of my companions were Mexican refugees who had
+been turned out of the country for being mixed up with Haro’s
+revolution or Santa Ana’s intrigues. They were showily got-up men,
+elaborately polite, and with much to say for themselves; but every now
+and then some casual remark showed what stuff they were made of, and I
+pitied more than ever the unfortunate countries whose political
+destinies depend on the intrigues of these adventurers.
+
+In the hot land-locked bay of St. Thomas’s we, with the contents of
+eight or nine more steamers, were shifted into the great steamer bound
+homeward. I went ashore with an old German gentleman, and walked about
+the streets. St. Thomas’s is a Danish island, and a free port, that is,
+a smuggling depôt for the rest of the West India islands, much as
+Gibraltar is for the Mediterranean. It is a stifling place, full of
+mosquitos and yellow fever, and the confusion of tongues reigns there
+even more than in Gibraltar, for the blacks in the streets all speak
+three or four languages, and the shopkeepers six or seven.
+
+We were a strange mixture on board the ‘Atrato’, over two hundred of
+us. Peruvians and Chilians from across the isthmus, Spaniards and
+Cubans, black gentlemen from Hayti, French colonists from Martinique,
+but English preponderating above all other nationalities. One or two
+governors of small islands, with their families, maintaining the
+dignity of Government House, at least as far as Southampton, and
+unapproachable by common mortals. Army men from West India stations,
+who appeared to spend their mornings in ordering the wine for dinner,
+and their evenings in abusing it when they had drunk it. West India
+planters, who thought it was rather hard that the Anti-slavery Society,
+after ruining them and their plantations, should moreover insist on
+their believing themselves to be great gainers by the change. We were
+all crowded, hot, and uncomfortable, and showed our worst side, but as
+we neared England better influences got the ascendant again.
+
+It was pleasant to breathe a cooler air, and to feel that I was getting
+back to my own country and my own people; but with this feeling there
+was mixed some regret for the beautiful scenes I had left. The evenings
+of our latitudes seemed poor when we lost the gorgeous sunsets of the
+tropics, and the sea alive with luminous creatures. When I came on deck
+one evening and missed the brightest ornament of the sky—the Southern
+Cross, I felt that I had left the tropics, and that all my efforts to
+realize the life of the last half-year would produce but a vague and
+shadowy picture.
+
+Since we left Mexico, I have not cared to follow very accurately even
+the newspaper intelligence of what has been and still is going on
+there. It is a pitiable history. Continual wars and revolutions, utter
+insecurity of life and property, the Indians burning down the haciendas
+in the South and turning out the white people, the roads on the plains
+impassable on account of deserters and robbers; sometimes no practical
+government at all, then two or three at once, who raise armies and
+fight a little sometimes, but generally confine themselves to
+plundering the peaceable inhabitants. An army besieges the capital for
+months, but appears to do nothing but cut the water off from the
+aqueducts, shoot stragglers, and levy contributions. One leader raises
+a forced loan among the foreign residents, and imprisons or expels
+those who do not submit. The leader on the other side does the same in
+his part of the country, putting the British merchant in prisons where
+a fortnight would be a fair average life for an European, and
+threatening him with summary courtmartial and execution if he does not
+pay.
+
+London newspapers dwell on these details, and tell us that we may learn
+from the condition of this unfortunate country how useless are
+democratic forms among a people incapable of liberty, and that very
+weak governments can commit all sorts of crimes with impunity, from the
+fact that they have no official existence which foreign powers can
+recognize; and various other weighty moral lessons, which must be
+highly edifying to our countrymen in the Republic, who are meanwhile
+left pretty much to shift for themselves.
+
+All this time the United States are steadily advancing; and the destiny
+of the country is gradually accomplishing itself. That its total
+absorption must come, sooner or later, we can hardly doubt. The chief
+difficulty seems to be that the American constitution will not exactly
+suit the case. The Republic laid down the right of each citizen to his
+share in the government of the country as a universal law, founded on
+indefeasible lights of humanity, fundamental laws of nature, and what
+not, making, it is true, some slight exceptions with regard to red and
+black men. The Mexicans, or at least the white and half-caste Mexicans,
+will be a difficulty. Their claims to citizenship are unquestionable,
+if Mexico were made a State of the Union; and, as everybody knows, they
+are totally incapable of governing themselves, which they must be left
+to do under the constitutional system of the United States; moreover,
+it is certain that American citizens would never allow even the whitest
+of the Mexicans to be placed on a footing of equality with themselves.
+Supposing these difficulties got over by a Protectorate, an armed
+occupation, or some similar contrivance, Mexico will undergo a great
+change. There will be roads and even rail-roads, some security for life
+and property, liberty of opinion, a nourishing commerce, a rapidly
+increasing population, and a variety of good things. Every intelligent
+Mexican must wish for an event so greatly to the advantage of his
+country and of the world in general.
+
+Some of our good friends in Mexico have bought land on the American
+frontier by the hundred square leagues, and can point out patches upon
+the map of the world as large as Scotland or Ireland—as their private
+property. What their gains will be when enterprising western men begin
+to bring the country under cultivation, it is not an easy matter to
+realize.
+
+As for ourselves individually, we may be excused for cherishing a
+lurking kindness for the quaint, picturesque manners and customs of
+Mexico, as yet un-Americanized; and for rejoicing that it was our
+fortune to travel there before the coming change, when its most curious
+peculiarities and its very language must yield before foreign
+influences.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+I. THE MANUFACTURE OF OBSIDIAN KNIVES, ETC. (_Note to p. 97._)
+
+Some of the old Spanish writers on Mexico give a tolerably full account
+of the manner in which the obsidian knives, &c., were made by the
+Aztecs. It will be seen that it only modifies in one particular the
+theory we had formed by mere inspection as to the way in which these
+objects were made, which is given at p.97; that is, they were cracked
+off by pressure, and not, as we conjectured, by a blow of some hard
+substance.
+
+Torquemada (_Monarquía Indiana, Seville_, 1615) says; (free
+translation)
+
+“They had, and still have, workmen who make knives of a certain black
+stone or flint, which it is a most wonderful and admirable thing to see
+them make out of the stone; and the ingenuity which invented this art
+is much to be praised. They are made and got out of the stone (if one
+can explain it) in this manner. One of these Indian workmen sits down
+upon the ground, and takes a piece of this black stone, which is like
+jet, and hard as flint, and is a stone which might be called precious,
+more beautiful and brilliant than alabaster or jasper, so much so that
+of it are made tablets[25] and mirrors. The piece they take is about 8
+inches long or rather more, and as thick as one’s leg or rather less,
+and cylindrical; they have a stick as large as the shaft of a lance,
+and 3 cubits or rather more in length; and at the end of it they fasten
+firmly another piece of wood, 8 inches long, to give more weight to
+this part; then, pressing their naked feet together, they hold the
+stone as with a pair of pincers or the vice of a carpenter’s bench.
+They take the stick (which is cut off smooth at the end) with both
+hands, and set it well home against the edge of the front of the stone
+(_y ponenlo avesar con el canto de la frente de la piedra_) which also
+is cut smooth in that part; and then they press it against their
+breast, and with the force of the pressure there flies off a knife,
+with its point, and edge on each tide, as neatly as if one were to make
+them of a turnip with a sharp knife, or of iron in the fire. Then they
+sharpen it on a stone, using a hone to give it a very fine edge; and in
+a very short time these workmen will make more than twenty knives in
+the aforesaid manner. They come out of the same shape as our barbers’
+lancets, except that they have a rib up the middle, and have a slight
+graceful curve towards the point. They will cut and shave the hair the
+first time they are used, at the first cut nearly as well as a steel
+razor, but they lose their edge at the second cut; and so, to finish
+shaving one’s beard or hair, one after another has to be used; though
+indeed they are cheap, and spoiling them is of no consequence. Many
+Spaniards, both regular and secular clergy, have been shaved with them,
+especially at the beginning of the colonization of these realms, when
+there was no such abundance as now of the necessary instruments, and
+people who gain their livelihood by practising this occupation. But I
+conclude by saying that it is an admirable thing to see them made, and
+no small argument for the capacity of the men who found out such an
+invention.”
+
+ [25] In the original, _aras_. In the Latin of Hernandez, _arae_ I
+ suppose to be the little polished stone slabs which are set on the
+ altars in Roman Catholic churches, and in which their sacred quality
+ is, so to speak, contained.
+
+Vetancurt (_Teatro Mejicano_) gives an account, taken from the above.
+Hernandez (_Rerum Med. Nov. Hisp. Thes.: Rome_, 1631) gives a similar
+account of the process. He compares the wooden instrument used to a
+cross-bow. It was evidently a T-shaped implement, and the workman held
+the cross-piece with his two hands against his breast, while the end of
+the straight stick rested on the stone. He furthermore gives a
+description of the making of the well-known _maquahuitl_, or Aztec
+war-club, which was armed on both sides with a row of obsidian knives,
+or teeth, stuck into holes with a kind of gum. With this instrument, he
+says, a man could be cut in half at a blow—an absurd statement, which
+has been repeated by more modern writers.
+
+
+II. ON THE SOLAR ECLIPSES RECORDED IN THE LE TELLIER MS.
+
+The curious Aztec Picture-writing, known as the _Codex
+Telleriano-Remenensis_, preserved in the Royal Library of Paris,
+contains a list or calendar of a long series of years, indicated by the
+ordinary signs of the Aztec system of notation of cycles of years.
+Below the signs of the years are a number of hieroglyphic pictures,
+conveying the record of remarkable events which happened in them, such
+as the succession and death of kings, the dates of wars, pestilences,
+&c. The great work of Lord Kingsborough, which contains a fac-simile of
+this curious document, reproduces also an ancient interpretation of the
+matters contained in it, evidently the work of a person who not only
+understood the interpretation of the Aztec picture-writings, but had
+access to some independent source of information,—probably the more
+ample oral traditions, for the recalling of which the picture-writing
+appears only to have served as a sort of artificial memory. It is not
+necessary to enter here into a fuller description of the MS., which has
+also been described by Humboldt and Gallatin.
+
+Among the events recorded in the Codex are four eclipses of the sun,
+depicted as having happened in the years 1476, 1496, 1507. 1510.
+Humboldt, in quoting these dates, makes a remark to the effect that the
+record tends to prove the veracity of the Aztec history, for solar
+eclipses really happened in those years, according to the list in the
+well-known chronological work, _L’Art de Vérifier les Dates_, as
+follows: 28 Feb., 1476; 8 Aug., 1496; 13 Jan., 1507; 8 May, 1510. The
+work quoted, however, has only reference to eclipses visible in Europe,
+Asia, and Africa, and not to those in America. The question therefore
+arises, whether all these four eclipses recorded in _L’Art de Vérifier
+les Dates_, were visible in Mexico. As to the last three, I have no
+means of answering the question; but it appears that Gama, a Mexican
+astronomer of some standing, made a series of calculations for a
+totally distinct purpose about the end of the last century, and found
+that in 1476 _there was no eclipse of the sun visible in Mexico_, but
+that there was a great one on the 13th Feb., 1477, and another on the
+28th May, 1481.
+
+Supposing that Gama made no mistake in his calculations, the idea at
+once suggests itself, that the person who compiled or copied the Le
+Tellier Codex, some few years after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico,
+inserted under the date of 1476 (long before the time of the Spaniards)
+an eclipse which could not have been recorded there had the document
+been a genuine Aztec Calendar; _as, though visible in Europe, it was
+not visible in Mexico_. The supposition of the compiler having merely
+inserted this date from a European table of eclipses is strengthened by
+the fact that _the great eclipse of 1477, which was visible in Mexico,
+but not in Europe, is not to be found there_. These two facts tend to
+prove that the Codex, though undoubtedly in great part a copy or
+compilation from genuine native materials, has been deliberately
+sophisticated with a view of giving it a greater appearance of
+historical accuracy, by some person who was not quite clever enough to
+do his work properly. It may, however, be urged as a proof that the
+mistake is merely the result of carelessness, that we find in the MS.
+no notice of the eclipse of 25th May, 1481, which was visible both in
+Mexico and in Europe, and so ought to have been in the record. This
+supposition would be consistent with the Codex being really a document
+in which the part relating to the events before the Spanish Conquest in
+1521 is of genuine ancient and native origin, though the whole is
+compiled in a very grossly careless manner. It would be very desirable
+to verify the years of all the four eclipses with reference to their
+being visible in Mexico, as this might probably clear up the
+difficulty.
+
+
+III. TABLE OK AZTEC ROOTS COMPARED WITH SANSCRIT, ETC.
+
+Several lists of Aztec words compared with those of various
+Indo-European languages have been given by philologists. The present is
+larger than any I have met with; several words in it are taken from
+Buschmann’s work on the Mexican languages. It is desirable in a
+philological point of view that comparative lists of words of this kind
+should be made, even when, as in the present instance, they are not of
+sufficient extent to found any theory upon.
+
+As the Aztec alphabet does not contain nearly all the Sanscrit
+consonants, many of them must be compared with the nearest Aztec
+sounds, as:
+
+SANSCRIT, t, th, d, dh, &c.     AZTEC, t.
+SANSCRIT, k, kh, g, gh, &c.     AZTEC c. q.
+SANSCRIT, l, r.                 AZTEC, l.
+SANSCRIT, b, bh, v.             AZTEC, v. or u.
+
+The Aztec c is soft (as s) before e and i, hard (as k) before a, o, u.
+The Aztec ch as in _cheese_. I have followed Molina’s orthography in
+writing such words as _uel_ or _vel_ (English, _well_) instead of the
+more modern, but I think less correct way, _huel_.
+
+
+1. a-, _negative prefix_ (_as_ qualli, _good_; aqualli, _bad_). SANS.,
+a-; GREEK, a-, &c.
+
+2. o-, _preterite augment_ (_as_ nitemachtia, _I teach_; onitemachti,
+_I taught_); SANS., a-; compare GREEK ε-.
+
+3. pal, _prep. by_: compare SANS. _prep._, para, _back_; pari,
+_circum_; pra, _before_; GREEK, παρα; LAT., per.
+
+4. ce-, cen-, cem-, _prefix collective_ (_as_ tlalla, _to place_,
+centlalla, _to collect_); SANS., sa-, san-, sam-; GREEK, συν; LAT.,
+syn.
+
+5. ce, cen-, cem-, _one_. SANS., sa (_in_ sa-krit, _once_: comp. Bopp,
+Gloss., p. 362.) LAT., se-_mel_, si-_mul_, sim-_plex_.
+
+6. metz (metz-tli), _moon_. SANS., mas.
+
+7. tlal (tlal-li), _earth_. SANS., tala, dhara. LAT., terra, tellus.
+
+8. citlal (citlal-in), _star_. SANS., stri, stâra. LAT., stella. Eng.,
+star.
+
+9. atoya (atoya-tl), _river_. SANS., udya.
+
+10. teuh (teuh-tli), _dust_. Sans., dhû-li (_from_ dhû, to drive
+about.)
+
+11. teo (teo-tl), _god_. Sans., deva. Greek, θεος. Lat., deus.
+
+12. qual (qual-li), _good_. Sans., kalya, kalyâna. Greek, καλος.
+
+13. uel, _well_. Sans., vara, _excellent_; vli, _to choose_. Lat.,
+velle. Icel., vel. Eng., well.
+
+14. uel, _power, brave, &c_., (uel-e, tla-uel-e.) Sans., bala,
+_strength_. Lat., valeo, valor.
+
+15. auil, _vicious, wasteful_. Sans., âvila, _sinful, guilty;_ abala,
+_weak_. Eng., evil.
+
+16. miec, _much_. Sans., mahat, _great_; manh _or_ mah, _to grow_.
+Icel., miok, _much_. Eng., much.
+
+17. vey, _great_. Sans., bahu, _much_.
+
+18. -pol, _augmentative affix_ (as tepe-tl. _mountain_; tepepol, _great
+mountain_.) Sans., puru, _much_; pula, _great, ample_. Greek, πολυς.
+
+19. naua (naua-c), _near, by the side of_. Sans., nah, _to join or
+connect_. German, nah, _near_.
+
+20. ten (ten-qui), _fuil_. Sans., tûn, _to fill_.
+
+21. izta (izta-c), _white_. Sans., sita.
+
+22. cuz (cuz-tic), _red_. Sans, kashãya, kasãya.
+
+23. ta (ta-tli), _father_. Sans., tãta.
+
+24. cone (cone-tl), _child. Compare_ Sans., jan, _to beget_. Lat.,
+gen-itus. German, kin-d. Eng., kin.
+
+25. pil (pil-li), _child. Compare_ Sans., bâla, _boy, child_; bhri, _to
+bear children_, &c. Greek, πωλος, _foal_. Lat., pullus, filius. Eng.,
+_foal_, &c., &c.
+
+26. cax (cax-itl), _cup_. Sans., chasbaka.
+
+27. paz(?)(a-paz-tli), _vase, basin_. Sans., bajana. _Compare_ Lat.,
+vas. Eng., vase.
+
+28. com (com-itl), _earthen pot_. Sans., kumbha.
+
+29. xuma (xuma-tli), _spoon_. Sans., chamasa; _from_ Sans., cham, _to
+eat_.
+
+30. mich (mich-in), _fish_. Sans., machcha.
+
+31. zaca (zaca-tl), _grass_. Sans., sâka.
+
+32. col (te-col-li, col-ceuia, &c.), _charcoal_. Sans., jval, _to burn,
+flame_; Icel., kol; Eng., coal; Irish, gual.
+
+33. cen (cen-tli), _grain, maize_. Sans., kana, _grain_.
+
+34. ehe (ehe-catl), _wind_. Sans., vâyu.
+
+35. mix (mix-tli), _cloud_. Sans., megha; Icel., and Eng., mist.
+
+36. cal (cal-ii), _house_. Sans., sâlâ. Greek, καλια; Lat., cella.
+
+37. qua (qua-itl), _head_. Sans., ka.
+
+38. ix (ix-tli), _eye, face_. Sans., aksha, _eye_; âsya, _face_.
+
+39. can (can-tli), _cheek_, Sans., ganda; Lat., gena.
+
+40. chichi (chichi-tl), _teat_. Sans., chuchuka.
+
+41. nene (nene-tl), _pupil of eye_. Sans., nayanâ.
+
+42. choloa, _to run or leap_. Sans., char.
+
+43. caqui (caqui-ztli), _sound_. Sans., kach, _to sound_.
+
+44. xin (xi-xin-ia), _to cut, ruin, destroy_. Sans., ksin, _to hurt,
+kill._
+
+45. tlacç (tlacç-ani), _to run_. Sans., triks, _to go_; Greek, τρεχω.
+
+46. patlani, _to fly_. Sans., pat.
+
+47. mati, _to know_. Sans., medh, _to understand_; mati, _thought,
+mind_; Greek root μαθ.
+
+48. it (it-ta), _to see_. Sans., vid; Greek root ιδ, ειδομαι, &c.;
+Lat., video.
+
+49. meya, _to flow, trickle_. Sans., mih.
+
+50. mic (mic-tia), _to kill_. Sans., mi, mith.
+
+51. cuica, _to sing_. Sans., kûj. _to sing, as birds_, &c.
+
+52. chichi _to suck_. SANS., chûsh.
+
+53. ahnachia, _to sprinkle_: _compare_ SANS. uks.
+
+54. coton (coton-a), _to cut_. SANS. kutt.
+
+55. nex (nex-tia), _to shine_. SANS, nad; LAT., niteo.
+
+55. notz (notz-a), _to call_. SANS., nad.
+
+57. choc (choc-a), _to lament, cry_. SANS, kuch, _to cry aloud,
+scream;_ such, _to wail_.
+
+58. me(?)(in me-catl, _binding-thing, chain?) to bind_ SANS., mû, mava.
+
+59. qua, _to eat, bite_: compare SANS. charv, _to chew, bite, gnaw_;
+chah, _to bruize_; khad, _to eat_.; GERMAN, kauen; ENG., to chew.
+
+60. te, _thou_. SANS. tvam; LAT., tu.
+
+61. quen, _how?_ SANS. kena.
+
+_Other curious resemblances between the Aztec and European languages
+are_:
+
+62. pepeyol, _poplar_. LAT., populus; ICEL., popel.
+
+63. papal (papal-otl), _butterfly_; LAT., papilio.
+
+64. ul (ul-li), _juice of the India-rubber tree, used as oil for
+anointing, &c._ LAT., oleum; ENG., oil, &c.
+
+
+IV. GLOSSARY.
+
+ANAHUAC. _Aztec_. “By the water-side.” The name at first applied to the
+Valley of Mexico, from the situation of the towns on the banks of the
+lakes; afterwards used to denote a great part of the present Republic
+of Mexico.
+
+ACOCOTE (_Aztec_, acocotl, water-throat), aloe-sucker’s gourd; _see p._
+91.
+
+ADOBE, a mud-brick, baked in the sun. (Perhaps a _Moorish-Spanish_
+word. _Ancient Egyptian_, tobe, a mud-brick; _Arabic_, toob, pronounced
+with the article _at-toob_, whence adobe?)
+
+AGUAMIEL (honey-water), unfermented aloe-juice.
+
+AGUARDIENTE (burning-water), ardent spirits.
+
+AHUEHUETE (_Aztec_, ahuehuetl), the deciduous cypress.
+
+ALAMEDA (poplar-avenue), public promenade; _see p._ 57.
+
+ALCALDE, a magistrate (_Moorish-Spanish_, al cadi, “the cadi”).
+
+ANQUERA (hauncher), covering for horses’ haunches; _see p._ 164 (_and
+cut, p._ 260).
+
+ARRIERO, a muleteer.
+
+ARROYO, a rivulet, mountain-torrent.
+
+ATAMBOB, a drum.
+
+ATOLE (_Aztec_, atolli), porridge.
+
+AVERSADA, a freshet.
+
+BARATILLO, a Rag-fair, market of odds and ends; _see p._ 169.
+
+BARBACOA, whence English “barbecue;” _see p._ 95; a native Haitian
+word.
+
+BARRANCCA, a ravine.
+
+CALZONCILLOS, drawers.
+
+CAPA, a cloak.
+
+CAYO, a coral-reef.
+
+CHAPARREROS, over-trousers of goatskin with the hair on, used in
+riding.
+
+CHINAMPA (_Aztec_, “a place fenced in),” a Mexican “floating garden;”
+_see p._ 62.
+
+CHINGUERITO, Indian-corn brandy.
+
+CHIPI-CHIPI (_Aztec_, chipini, drizzling rain); _see p._ 26.
+
+CHUPA-MIRTO (myrtle-sucker), a humming-bird.
+
+COLEAR, to throw a bull over by the tail (cola); _see p._ 71.
+
+COMPADRE. COMADRE; _French_, compère, commère; _see p._ 250.
+
+CORRAL, an enclosure for cattle.
+
+COSTAL, a bag, or sack.
+
+COYOTE (_Aztec_, coyotl), a jackal.
+
+CUARTA, a leather horse-whip; _see_ p. 264.
+
+CUARTEL, a barrack.
+
+CUCARACHA, a cockroach.
+
+CUCHILLO, a knife.
+
+CURA, a parish-priest.
+
+DESAGUE, a draining-cut.
+
+DESAYUNO, breakfast.
+
+EMANCIPADO (emancipated negro); see p. 6.
+
+ESCOPETA, a musket.
+
+ESCRIBANO, a scribe or secretary.
+
+FANDANGO, a dance.
+
+FIESTA, a church-festival.
+
+FRIJOLES, beans.
+
+FUERO, a legal privilege; _see pp._ 19, 249.
+
+GACHUPIN, a native of Spain. Supposed to be an Aztec epithet,
+_cac-chopina_, that is, “prickly shoes,” applied to the Spanish
+conquerors from their wearing spurs, which to the Indians were strange
+and incomprehensible appendages.
+
+GARROTE, an instrument for strangling criminals.
+
+GENTE DE RAZÓN (reasonable people), white men and half-breed Mexicans,
+but not Indians;_ see p._ 61.
+
+GUAJALOTE (Aztec, huexolotl), a turkey: _see p._ 228.
+
+GULCHE, a ravine.
+
+HACENDADO, a planter, landed proprietor, from HACIENDA (literally
+“doing,” from _hacer_, or _facer_, to do). An estate, establishment,
+&c.
+
+HACIENDA DE BENEFICIO, an establishment for “benefiting” silver, i.e.,
+for extracting it from the ore.
+
+HONDA, a sling.
+
+HORNITOS (little ovens), the small cones near the volcano of Jorullo,
+which formerly emitted steam; see p. 92.
+
+HULE (_Aztec, _ ulli. India-rubber?) a waterproof coat.
+
+ICHTL (_Aztec, _ thread), thread or string of aloe-fibre.
+
+ITZTLI (Aztec), obsidian; _see_ p. 100.
+
+LAZADOR, one who throws the lazo.
+
+LAZO. a running noose.
+
+LEPERO, lazzarone, or prolétaire; _see p._ 251.
+
+LLANOS, plains.
+
+MACHETE, a kind of bill-hook.
+
+MALACATE (_Aztec, _ malacatl), a spindle, spindle-head, windlass, &c.
+
+MANTA, cotton-cloth.
+
+MATRACA, a rattle; _see p._ 49.
+
+MESON, a Mexican caravansery; _see p._ 209.
+
+MESTIZO (mixtus) a Mexican of mixed Spanish and Aztec blood.
+
+METATE (_Aztec_, metlatl) the stone used for rubbing down Indian corn
+into paste; see p. 88.
+
+METALPILE (_Aztec_, metlapilli, i.e. little metlatl), the stone
+rolling-pin used in the same process.
+
+MOLE (_Aztec, _ mulli), Mexican stew.
+
+MOLINO DE VIENTO (literally a windmill), a whirlwind; _see p._ 31.
+
+MONTE (literally a mountain), the favourite Mexican game; _see p. _256.
+
+MOZO, a lad, servant, groom.
+
+NIÑO, a child.
+
+NOPAL (_Aztec_, nopalli), the prickly pear.
+
+NOETE, the north wind; see p. 21.
+
+OCOTE (_Aztec_, ocotl), a pine-tree, pine-torch. OLLA, a boiling-pot.
+
+PASADIZO, a passage; _see p._ 231.
+
+PASEO, a public promenade.
+
+PASO, a kind of amble; _see p._ 163.
+
+PATIO, a court-yard, especially the inner court of a house.
+
+PATIO-PROCESS, method of extracting the silver from the ore, so called
+from its being carried on in paved yards; _see p. _92.
+
+PATRON, a master, landlord.
+
+PEDRIGAL, a lava-field.
+
+PEOS, a debt-slave; _see_ p. 291.
+
+PETATE (_Aztec_, petlatl), a palm-leaf mat.
+
+PITO, 1, a whistle, pipe; 2, aloe-fibre thread.
+
+POTRERO, a water-meadow.
+
+PULQUE, a drink made from the juice of the aloe; _see_ p. 38. (It is a
+corruption of a native South American word, introduced into Mexico by
+the Spaniards).
+
+RANCHERO, a cottager, yeoman.
+
+RANCHO, a hut.
+
+RAYA (literally a line), the paying of workmen at a hacienda, &c.
+
+RAYAR, to pull a horse up short at a line; _see_ p. 163.
+
+REATA, a horse-rope; _see_ p. 264.
+
+REBOZO, a woman’s shawl; _see_ p. 56.
+
+RECUA, a train of mules.
+
+SALA, a hall, dining-room.
+
+SERAPE, a Mexican blanket; _see_ p. 169.
+
+SOMBRERO, a hat.
+
+TACUMENILES, pine-shingles for roofing.
+
+TEMAZCALLI, Indian vapour-bath; _see_ p. 301.
+
+TEOCALLI (_Aztec_, god’s house), an Aztec pyramid-temple.
+
+TEFONAZTLI, Indian wooden drum.
+
+TEQUESQUITE (_Aztec_, tequesquiti), an alkaline efflorescence abundant
+on the soil in Mexico, used for soap-making, &c.
+
+TETZONTLI, porous amygdaloid lava, a stone much used for building in
+Mexico.
+
+TIENDA, a shop; _see_ p. 82.
+
+TIERRA CALIENTE, the hot region.
+
+TIERRA FRÍA, the cold region.
+
+TIERRA TEMPLADA. the temperate region.
+
+TLACHIQUEBO (_Aztec_, tlacbiqui, an overseer, from tlachia, to see), a
+labourer in an aloe-field, who draws the juice for pulque; _see_ p. 36.
+
+TORO, a bull.
+
+TORTA (literally, a cake); _see_ p. 92.
+
+TORTILLAS, thin cakes made of Indian corn, resembling oat-cakes; _see_
+p. 33.
+
+TRAPICHE, a sugar-mill.
+
+ULEI, _see_ Hule.
+
+VAQUERO, cow-herd.
+
+ZOPILOTE (_Aztec_, zopilotl), a turkey-buzzard.
+
+
+V. DESCRIPTION OF THREE VERY RARE SPECIMENS OF ANCIENT MEXICAN
+MOSAIC-WORK (IN THE COLLECTION OF HENRY CHRISTY, ESQ.).
+
+These Specimens, two Masks and a Knife, (_see_ _page_ 101.) are
+interesting as presenting examples of higher art than has been supposed
+to have been attained to by the ancient Mexicans, or any other of the
+native American peoples. Their distinctive feature is an incrustation
+of Mosaic of Turquoise, cut and polished, and fitted with extreme
+nicety,—a work of great labour, time, and cost in any country, and
+especially so amongst a people to whom the use of iron was unknown,—and
+carried out with a perfection which suggests the idea that the art must
+have been long practised under the fostering of wealth and power,
+although so few examples of it have come down to us.
+
+Although considerably varied, they are all three of one family of work,
+so to speak; the predominant feature being the use of turquoise; and
+the question which presents itself at the outset is—what are the
+evidences that this unique work is of Aztec origin?
+
+The proofs are so interwoven with the style and structure of the
+specimens that their appearance and nationality are best treated of
+together.
+
+The Mask of wood is covered with minute pieces of turquoise—cut and
+polished, accurately fitted, many thousands in number, and set on a
+dark gum or cement. The eyes, however, are acute-oval patches of
+mother-of-pearl; and there are two small square patches of the same on
+the temples, through which a string passed to suspend the mask; and the
+teeth are of hard white shell. The eyes are perforated, and so are the
+nostrils, and the upper and lower teeth are separated by a transverse
+chink; thus a wearer of the mask (which sits easily on one’s face) can
+see, breathe, and speak with ease. The features bear that remarkably
+placid and contemplative expression which distinguishes so many of the
+Aztec works, in common with those of the Egyptians, whether in their
+massive stone sculptures, or in the smallest and commonest heads of
+baked earth. The face, which is well-proportioned, pleasing, and of
+great symmetry, is studded also with numerous projecting pieces of
+turquoise, rounded and polished.
+
+In addition to the character of the work and the style of face, the
+evidence of the Aztec origin of this mask is confirmed by the wood
+being of the fragrant cedar or cypress of Mexico. It may be remarked
+also that the inside is painted red, as are the wooden masks of the
+Indians of the North-west coast of America at the present day.
+
+The Knife presents, both in form and substance, more direct evidence of
+its Aztec origin; for, in addition to its incrustation with the unique
+mosaic of turquoise, blended (in this case) with malachite and white
+and red shell, its handle is sculptured in the form of a crouching
+human figure, covered with the skin of an eagle, and presenting the
+well-known and distinctive Aztec type of the human head issuing from
+the mouth of an animal. (_See cut_, p. 101.) Beyond this there is in
+the stone blade the curious fact of a people which had attained to so
+complex a design and such an elaborate ornamentation remaining in the
+Stone-age; and, somewhat curiously, the locality of that stone blade is
+fixed, by its being of that semi-transparent opalescent calcedony which
+Humboldt describes as occurring in the volcanic districts of Mexico—the
+concretionary silex of the trachytic lavas.
+
+The second Mask is yet more distinctive. The incrustation of
+turquoise-mosaic is placed on the forehead, face, and jaws of a human
+skull, the back part of which has been cut away to allow of its being
+hung, by the leather thongs which still remain, over the face of an
+idol, as was the custom in Mexico thus to mask their gods on
+state-occasions. The mosaic of turquoise is interrupted by three broad
+transverse bands, on the forehead, face, and chin, of a mosaic of
+obsidian, similarly cut (but in larger pieces) and highly polished,—a
+very unusual treatment of this difficult and intractable material, the
+use of which in any artistic way appears to have been confined to the
+Aztecs (with the exception, perhaps, of the Egyptians).
+
+The eye-balls are nodules of iron-pyrites, cut hemispherically and
+highly polished, and are surrounded by circles of hard white shell,
+similar to that forming the teeth of the wooden mask.
+
+The Aztecs made their mirrors of iron-pyrites polished, and are the
+only people who are known to have put this material to ornamental use.
+
+The mixture of art, civilization, and barbarism which the hideous
+aspect of this green and black skull-mask presents accords with the
+condition of Mexico at the time of the Conquest, under which human
+sacrifices on a gigantic scale were coincident with much refinement in
+arts and manners.
+
+The European history of these three specimens is somewhat curious. With
+the exception of two in the Museum at Copenhagen, obtained many years
+ago by Professor Thomsen from a convent in Rome, and, though greatly
+dilapidated, presenting some traces of the game kind of ornamentation,
+they are believed to be unique.
+
+The Wooden Mask and the Knife were long known in a collection at
+Florence. Thirty years ago the mask was brought into England from that
+city, as Egyptian: and, somewhat later, the knife was obtained from
+Venice.
+
+Subsequently the Skull-mask, with a wig of hair said to be a scalp, was
+found at Bruges; a locality which leads to the presumption that the
+mask was brought from Mexico soon after the Conquest in 1521, and prior
+to the expulsion of the Spaniards from Flanders consequent on the
+revolt of the Low Countries in 1579.
+
+_Note_.—It happens singularly enough, that a curious old work,
+_Aldrorandus, Musaeum Metallicum, Bologna_, 1613, contains drawings of
+a knife and wooden mask ornamented with mosaic-work of stone, made just
+in the came way as those described above, and only differing from them
+in the design. What became of them I cannot tell.
+
+
+VI. DASENT’S ESSAY ON THE ETHNOGRAPHICAL VALUE OF POPULAR TALES AND
+LEGENDS.
+
+Whilst treating of legendary lore in connection with Ethnographry, we
+must not forget to refer the reader to the highly useful and
+philosophical remarks on this subject in Dasent’s Introduction to his
+_Popular Tales from the Norse_.[26] Here we see that not only are the
+popular tales of any nation indicative of its early condition and its
+later progress, but also that the legends, fables, and tales of the
+Indo-European nations, at least, bear internal evidence of their having
+grown out of a few simple notes—of having sprung from primæval germs
+originating with the old Aryan family, from whom successive migrations
+carried away the original myth to be elaborated or degraded according
+to the genius and habits of the people.
+
+ [26] _Popular Tales from the Norse_. (Translated from Asbjörnsen and
+ Moe’s Collection.) By George Webbe Dasent, D.C.L. With an Introductory
+ Essay on the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales.—_Second Edition,
+ Edinburgh_: 1859.
+
+Thus other means of resolving the relations of the early races of Man
+are added to those previously afforded by ethnographical and
+philological research.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Account-keeping, 87.
+
+Acodada, 57.
+
+Africans and Chinese, 13.
+
+Agriculture, 26, 61, 63, 89, 157-161, 172, 216.
+
+Ahuehuetes, 57, 155, 215, 265.
+
+Alameda, 57.
+
+Alluvial Deposits, 150.
+
+Aloes, 35, 136; huts built of, 36.
+
+Aloe-fibre, manufacture of, 88.
+
+Aloe-juice, collected for Pulque, 36, 91.
+
+Amatlan, 299.
+
+Amecameca, 265.
+
+American War, 118-120.
+
+Amozoque, 295.
+
+Anahuac, 57, 270.
+
+Antiquities, collections of, 222-236, 262.
+
+Antonio, our man, 321.
+
+Ants, 8.
+
+Aqueduct of Chapultepec, 55.
+
+Arch, Aztec, 153, 276.
+
+Armadillo, 312, 319, 325.
+
+Arms of Mexico, 42.
+
+Army, Mexican, 114-119.
+
+Arrow-heads, 137.
+
+Art, Aztec, 186, 230, 316.
+
+Astronomy, Aztec, 237-241, 244.
+
+Atotonilco, 82, 85.
+
+Aztec Antiquities, 35, 137, 141-148, 150-156, 183-195, 222-244,
+262-264, 274-280.
+
+Aztec Civilization, 103.
+
+Aztec Language, 143, 227, 235, 243, 279, 333.
+
+Bananas, 178.
+
+Baratillo, 169-171.
+
+Barometer, height of, 68.
+
+Barrancas, 89, 179, 310, 313.
+
+Barricades, 55.
+
+Batabano, 3.
+
+Baths of Santa Fé, 7.
+
+Bells, ancient, 235.
+
+Bits, 167.
+
+Books, 124.
+
+Bronze-age, 139.
+
+Bronze,
+  stone-cutting with, 138-140;
+  hatchets, 225;
+  bells and needles, 235.
+
+Bull-fights, 70.
+
+Bull-dogs in Mexico, 149.
+
+Bull, lazoing the, 253, 323.
+
+Cacahuamilpán, 200-205.
+
+Cacao-beans, 227.
+
+Cactuses, 73, 90, 140, 144.
+
+Calendar-stone of Mexico, 237-240.
+
+Canals, 58, 130.
+
+Canoes, 60, 129, 132, 134.
+
+Capitalists, 295.
+
+Cascade of Regla, 93.
+
+Castor-oil plant, 9.
+
+Casa Grande, 77, 135.
+
+Cattle, 16, 31, 323.
+
+Cave of Cacahuamilpán, 203-205.
+
+Central American Antiquities, 189-193.
+
+Cerro de Navajas, 95-100.
+
+Chalco,
+  Canal of, 58;
+  Lake, 173;
+
+Chalma, 208-214.
+
+Chapultepec, 55, 57.
+
+Chinampas, 62.
+
+Chinese in Cuba, 12.
+
+Chipi-chipi, 26.
+
+Cholula, 274-278.
+
+Church, the, 113, 213, 285-290.
+
+Church-dances, 211.
+
+Churches in Mexico, 36, 46.
+
+Civil-war, 112, 283, 328.
+
+Cigar-making, 3.
+
+Clergy of Mexico, 7, 79, 287.
+
+Clay figures, 229, 275.
+
+Coach, old-fashioned, 59.
+
+Cochineal-insect, 24.
+
+Cockfighting, 254, 256.
+
+Cockroaches, 325.
+
+Cocoyotla, 196.
+
+Colearing, 71.
+
+Columbus, 4.
+
+Comonfort, President, 19, 112.
+
+Compadrazgo, 250.
+
+Commerce of Mexico, 105.
+
+Convents in Mexico, 46, 287.
+
+Convicts, 22.
+
+Cordova, 25.
+
+Corrida de Toros, 70.
+
+Costumes, 51, 62, 168.
+
+Courier, 167, 310.
+
+Criminals, 245-249.
+
+Cuba, 2.
+
+Cuernavaca, 179.
+
+Cura of New Gerona, 9.
+
+Cypress-trees, 57, 155, 215, 265.
+
+Dancing, 207, 211.
+
+Dasent on Popular Legends, &c., 339.
+
+Debt-slavery, 291.
+
+Diligence, travelling by, 37, 173.
+
+Dishonesty of Mexicans, 80-82.
+
+Dram-drinking, 83.
+
+Dress of the Indians, 61.
+
+Drums, 231.
+
+Earthquakes, 66.
+
+Eclipses observed in Mexico, 333.
+
+Education, 125-128.
+
+Emancipados, 6, 14.
+
+English in Mexico, 73, 318.
+
+Estación de Méjico, 121.
+
+Ethnology, 17, 102-104, 187-195, 241-244, 276-280.
+
+Evaporation, rapid, 75.
+
+Feather-work, 70.
+
+Flies’ eggs, 156.
+
+Floating gardens, 62.
+
+Flooded streets, 65.
+
+Florida, free blacks from, 5, 10-12.
+
+Forests, destruction of by Spaniards, 45.
+
+Fueros, 19.
+
+Future of Mexico, 329.
+
+Gambling, 15, 207, 256-258, 320.
+
+Glass-works, 135.
+
+Glossary, 335.
+
+Goddess of War, 222.
+
+Gold and Silver work, 234.
+
+Gourd-bottles, 171.
+
+Grove of Cypresses, 57.
+
+Guadalupe (Our Lady of), 66, 120-224.
+
+Hams, Toluca, 219.
+
+Havana, 1, 326.
+
+Hedges of Cactus, 73.
+
+Highlands of Mexico, 35.
+
+Hill of Drums, 215.
+
+Holy Week, 47-54.
+
+Horse-bath, 290.
+
+Horses, 163-165, 317.
+
+Hotel d’Yturbide, 39.
+
+Houses, 25, 36, 91, 135, 172; built on piles, 41.
+
+Huamantla, 31.
+
+Huehuetoca, draining-cut of, 45.
+
+Humming-birds, 69.
+
+Indian Baptism, 207.
+
+Indian Ointment, 324.
+
+Indians of Mexico, 47,60-64, 80-88, 173, 182, 197-199, 200-208,
+299-309, 314-316.
+
+Indian Soldiers, 23, 120, 122.
+
+Indulgences, 52, 124.
+
+Inquisition, the, 128.
+
+Insects, 319.
+
+Intemperance, 47, 83, 307.
+
+Inundations, 44, 65, 123.
+
+Iron, 102, 140.
+
+Irrigation, 86, 157-161, 179.
+
+Isle of Pines, 4.
+
+Iztaccihnatl, 268.
+
+Jacal, Mount, 95.
+
+Jalapa, 317-321.
+
+Jorullo, 92.
+
+Judas, 50.
+
+Judas’s Bones, 49.
+
+Junta, La, 314.
+
+Justice, Administration of, 246-248, 300.
+
+Lakes in Valley of Mexico, 44-46, 65, 130-134, 173.
+
+Lava-fields, 28, 35, 118.
+
+Law-courts of Mexico, 249.
+
+Lazoing, 71, 252-254, 323.
+
+Legends, 236, 276-279, 340.
+
+Leper Hospital, 251.
+
+Leperos, 251.
+
+Lerma, 219.
+
+Le Tellier MS., on Eclipses, 332.
+
+Loadstone mountain, 102.
+
+Locusts, 298.
+
+Lonja, 66.
+
+Machinery in Mexico, 109.
+
+Magnetic Iron-ore, 102.
+
+Manufacture of Obsidian Knives, 97, 331.
+
+Marble Quarries in the Isle of Pines, 6.
+
+Market, Indian, 85, 89.
+
+Martin, our servant, 273, 321.
+
+Masks, 110, 226, 235, 337.
+
+Matracas, 49.
+
+Mestizos, 48, 61, 300.
+
+Metate, 88.
+
+Mexican Dishes, 51;
+  Ladies, 51;
+  Words, 227, 263.
+
+Mexican Police, 149;
+  War with United States, 118.
+
+Mexico, City of, 41-44, 111;
+  Old, 147;
+  Formation of the country of, 27;
+  Future of, 329;
+  People of, 55;
+  Valley of, 40-46, 270.
+
+Military Statistics, 115.
+
+Miners, 79, 258.
+
+Miraflores, 264.
+
+Minería, or School of Mines, 47.
+
+Mirage, 30.
+
+Mongolian Calendar, 241.
+
+Monks, 205, 209, 213.
+
+Morals of Servitude, 81, 293.
+
+Mosaic work, 101, 110, 235.
+
+Mosquitos, 5, 325.
+
+Mules, Mexican, 175.
+
+Museum of Mexico, 222-237.
+
+Negress, white, 323.
+
+Negros in Mexico, 13, 323.
+
+Nevado de Toluca, 219.
+
+Nopals, Plantations of, 24.
+
+Nopalucán, 296.
+
+Nortes, 21, 23.
+
+Nuestra Señora de Remedies, 121.
+
+Nueva Gerona, 4, 8.
+
+Numerals, Mexican, &c., 107-110.
+
+Obsidian, mines of, 95, 99; knives, &c., 95-102, 137, 229, 331.
+
+Oculan, 215.
+
+Old Mexico, 147;
+  Baths near Tezcuco, 153;
+  Bridge near Tezcuco, 153.
+
+Organ-cactus, 73.
+
+Orizaba, town of, 26; volcano of, 18, 29, 226.
+
+Ornament, common styles of, 185.
+
+Pachuca, 69, 74.
+
+Palma Christi, 9.
+
+Paseo, or Alameda, 57.
+
+Passport-system (Cuba), 3.
+
+Peñón de los Baños, 131.
+
+Peons, 291-294.
+
+People of Mexico, 55.
+
+Picture-writings, 104, 130, 232-234.
+
+Pintos, 309.
+
+Pirates of the Spanish Main, 5.
+
+Ploughing, 172.
+
+Police, Mexican, 149.
+
+Political Economy, 105, 217, 264, 294, 302-309, 328.
+
+Politics of Mexico, 19, 111-118, 282-284, 290, 328.
+
+Popocatepetl, ascent of, 265-273.
+
+Population, 217, 302-309.
+
+Potrero, 307.
+
+Pottery, 85, 88, 151, 226, 275.
+
+Priests, 9, 79, 285-290.
+
+Prisons, 244-248.
+
+Promenade of Las Vigas, 64.
+
+Protective duties, 104, 264.
+
+Puebla, 113, 281-291.
+
+Pulque, 35, 37, 91.
+
+Pulque-shops, 63.
+
+Pyramids, 43, 141-148, 190, 274-278.
+
+Quarries in the Isle of Pines, 6; of obsidian, 99; of Teotihuacán, 137.
+
+Rag-fair in Mexico, 169.
+
+Railway, 2, 24, 121.
+
+Rain, 136, 266.
+
+Rainy Region, 26.
+
+Ranches, 25, 266, 299.
+
+Rattles, 49.
+
+Real del Monte, 77.
+
+Rebozo, 56.
+
+Reform in Mexico, 117.
+
+Regla, 78; cascade of, 93.
+
+Revolutions, 20, 114, 282-284.
+
+Roads in Mexico, 29, 37, 76.
+
+Robbers, 32, 117, 170, 297;
+  Priest-captain of, 34.
+
+Sacred trees, 215, 265.
+
+Sacrifice of Spaniards, 145.
+
+Sacrificial
+  Clamps, 225;
+  Stone, 223.
+
+Saddles, &c., 162-167.
+
+St. Thomas’s, W. Indies, 327.
+
+Salinas of Campeche, 84.
+
+Saline condition of the soil, 133.
+
+Salt, 83, 154.
+
+Salt-pans, 155.
+
+Salto del Agua, 55.
+
+Sand-pillars, 30.
+
+San Andrés Chalchicomula, 312.
+
+San Antonio de Abajo, 296.
+
+San José and Earthquakes, 67.
+
+San Nícolas, 272.
+
+Santa Anita, 63.
+
+Santa Maria de Guadalupe, 121.
+
+Santa Rosita de Cocoyotla, 196.
+
+Sardines, 87.
+
+School of Mines, 47.
+
+Scorpions, 319, 322.
+
+Sculptures at Xochicalco, 185.
+
+Serape, 169.
+
+Sheep, 324.
+
+Shrines of Xochicalco, 193.
+
+Silver-mines, &c., 74, 92, 105, 107.
+
+Siege & Capitulation of Puebla, 113, 282.
+
+Sisal, 16.
+
+Skull decorated with mosaic work, 337.
+
+Slave-trade, 13, 16.
+
+Smuggling, 273, 296.
+
+Solar Eclipses observed in Mexico, 331.
+
+Soldiers, 23, 114, 171.
+
+Soquital, 82.
+
+Spanish-moss, 57.
+
+Spurs, 295.
+
+Stalactitic Cave, 200.
+
+Statistics of Mexico, 115, 249, 286.
+
+Stone-hammers, 137.
+
+Stone knives and weapons, 90, 103.
+
+Streets of Mexico, 41, 55.
+
+Sugar-canes, 179.
+
+Sugar-hacienda, of Santa Rosita, 196; of Temisco, 180.
+
+Sugar-plantations of Havana, 2.
+
+Tacubaya, 57, 69.
+
+Tallow, 324.
+
+Tasco, Silver-mines at, 74.
+
+Temisco, 179.
+
+Temple-pyramids—_see_ Pyramids.
+
+Tenancingo, 218.
+
+Tenochtitlán, 41.
+
+Ten Tribes, the, 17.
+
+Teocallis, _see_ Pyramids.
+
+Teotihuacán,
+  Pyramids of, 141-148;
+  Quarries of, 137, 141.
+
+Tequesquite, 133.
+
+Tezcotzinco, 152.
+
+Tezcuco, 129, 150, 260-264;
+  Aztec Bridge at, 153.
+
+Tezcuco, Lake of, 65, 129, 138.
+
+Thieves, 52, 170, 245.
+
+Tisapán, 118-120.
+
+Toluca, 219.
+
+Tortillas, 38.
+
+Tropical Vegetation, 2, 24, 179.
+
+Turkey-buzzards, 22.
+
+Valley of Mexico, 45.
+
+Yapour-bath, native, 301.
+
+Vegetation, zones of, 21-27, 178, 216.
+
+Vera Cruz, 18-21, 325.
+
+Virjen de Remedios, 123.
+
+Virgins, the rival, 123.
+
+Volantes, 2.
+
+War-idol, 222.
+
+Water-bottles, 171.
+
+Water-pipes, 157.
+
+Xochimilco, Lake of, 173.
+
+Xochicalco, Ruins of, 183-195.
+
+Yucatan, 16.
+
+Zopilites, 22.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Anahuac, by Edward Burnett Tylor
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13115 ***