The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mexico, by Charles Reginald Enock
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Title: Mexico
Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation, History, Political
Conditions, Topography, Natural Resources, Industries and
General Development
Author: Charles Reginald Enock
Editor: Martin Hume
Release Date: April 2, 2007 [EBook #20959]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEXICO ***
Produced by Ron Swanson
THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES
EDITED BY MARTIN HUME, M.A.
[Frontispiece: AN IDYLL OF MEXICO: INDIAN CARRIERS, RUINED CHURCH, AND
SNOW-CLAD PEAK OF ORIZABA.]
MEXICO
ITS ANCIENT AND MODERN CIVILISATION
HISTORY AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS
TOPOGRAPHY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
INDUSTRIES AND GENERAL DEVELOPMENT
BY
C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S.
CIVIL AND MINING ENGINEER
AUTHOR OF "PERU" AND "THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON"
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
MARTIN HUME, M.A.
WITH A MAP AND SEVENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
_First Edition_ 1909
_Second Impression_ 1910
_Third Impression_ 1912
_Fourth Impression_ 1914
_Fifth Impression_ 1919
_(All rights reserved)_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
The purpose of this work is to treat of Mexico as a topographical and
political entity, based upon a study of the country from travel and
observation; a method such as has found favour in my book upon Peru.
The method of viewing a country as a whole, with its people,
topography, and general conditions in natural relation to each other,
is one which commands growing acceptance in a busy age. I have been
able to observe much of the actual life and character of
Spanish-American countries from considerable travel therein. Both
Mexico and Peru ever lured me on as seeming to hold for me some El
Dorado, and if I have not reaped gold as the Conquistadores did, there
are nevertheless other matters of satisfaction accruing to the
traveller from his journeys in those splendid territories of mountain
and forest.
Mexico, superfluous to say, is not part of South America, although this
book appears in this series. But it is part of that vast
Spanish-speaking New World whose development holds much of interest;
and which may occupy a more important part in coming years than is
generally thought of at present.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
PAGE
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN HUME. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv
CHAPTER I
A FIRST RECONNAISSANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Romance of history--Two entrance ways--Vera Cruz--Orizaba--The Great
Plateau--Fortress of Ulua--Sierra Madre--Topographical structure--The
Gulf coast--Tropical region--Birds, animals, and vegetation of coast
zone--_Tierra caliente_--Malaria--Foothills--Romantic scenery--General
configuration of Mexico--Climatic zones--Temperate zone--Cold zone--The
Cordillera--Snow-capped peaks--Romance of mining--Devout miners--
Subterranean shrines--The great deserts--Sunset on the Great Plateau--
_Coyotes_ and _zopilotes_--Irrigated plantations--Railways--Plateau of
Anahuac--The cities of the _mesa central_--Spanish-American
civilisation--Romance of Mexican life--Mexican girls, music, and
moonlight--The _peones_ and civilisation--American comparisons--
Pleasing traits of the Mexicans--The foreigner in Mexico--Picturesque
mining-towns--Wealth of silver--Conditions of travel--Railways--
Invasions--Lerdo's axiom--Roads and horsemen--Strong religious
sentiment--Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl--Sun-god of Teotihuacan--City
of Mexico--Valley of Mexico--The Sierra Madre--_Divortia aquarum_ of
the continent--Volcano of Colima--Forests and ravines--Cuernavaca--The
trail of Cortes--Acapulco--Romantic old _haciendas_--Tropic sunset--
Unexplored Guerrero--Perils and pleasures of the trail--Sunset in the
Pacific Ocean.
CHAPTER II
THE DAWN OF MEXICO: TOLTECS AND AZTECS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Lake Texcoco--Valley of Anahuac--Seat of the Aztec civilisation--
Snow-capped peaks--Pyramids of Teotihuacan--Toltecs--The first
Aztecs--The eagle, cactus, and serpent--Aztec oracle and wanderings--
Tenochtitlan--Prehistoric American civilisations--Maya, Incas--Quito
and Peru--The dawn of history--The Toltec empire--Rise, _regime_,
fall--Quetzalcoatl--Otomies--Chichemecas--Nezahualcoyotl--Astlan--The
seven tribes and their wanderings--Mexican war-god--The Teocallis--
Human sacrifices--Prehistoric City of Mexico--The Causeways--Aztec
arts, kings, and civilisation--Montezuma--Guatemoc--Impressions of the
Spaniards--The golden age of Texcoco--Vandalism of Spanish
archbishop--The poet-king and his religion--Temple to the Unknown
God--Aztecs and Incas compared--The Tlascalans--The Otomies--Cholula--
Mexican tribes--Aztec buildings--Prehistoric art--Origin of American
prehistoric civilisation--Biblical analogies--Supposed Asiatic and
Egyptian origins--Aboriginal theory.
CHAPTER III
THE STRANGE CITIES OF EARLY MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Principal prehistoric monuments--Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan--
Pyramids of Teotihuacan--Toltec sun-god--Pyramid of Cholula--Pyramids
of Monte Alban--Ruins of Mitla--Remarkable monoliths and sculpture--
Beautiful prehistoric stone-masonry--Ruins of Palenque--Temple of the
Sun, and others--Stone vault construction--Tropical vegetation--Ruins
of Yucatan--Maya temples--Architectural skill--Temples of
Chichen-Ytza--Barbaric sculpture--Effect of geology on building--The
Aztec civilisation--Land and social laws--Slavery--Taxes, products,
roads, couriers--Analogy with Peru--Aztec homes and industries--War,
human sacrifice, cannibalism--History, hieroglyphics, picture-writing--
Irrigation, agriculture, products--Mining, sculpture, pottery--Currency
and commerce--Social system--Advent of the white man.
CHAPTER IV
CORTES AND THE CONQUEST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Landing of Cortes--Orizaba peak--The dawn of conquest--Discovery of
Yucatan--Velasquez and Grijalva--Life and character of Cortes--Cortes
selected to head the expedition--Departure from Cuba--Arrival at
Yucatan--The coast of Vera Cruz--Marina--Vera Cruz established--Aztec
surprise at guns and horses--Montezuma--Dazzling Aztec gifts--Messages
to Montezuma--Hostility of the Aztecs--Key to the situation--The
Cempoallas--Father Olmedo--Religion and hypocrisy of the Christians--
March to Cempoalla--Montezuma's tax-collectors--Duplicity of Cortes--
Vacillation of Montezuma--Destruction of Totonac idols--Cortes
despatches presents to the King of Spain--Cortes destroys his ships--
March towards the Aztec capital--Scenery upon line of march--The
fortress of Tlascala--Brusque variations of climate--The Tlascalans--
Severe fighting--Capitulation of Tlascala--Faithful allies--Messengers
from Montezuma--March to Cholula--Massacre of Cholula--The snow-capped
volcanoes--First sight of Tenochtitlan.
CHAPTER V
THE FALL OF THE LAKE CITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
The Valley of Mexico--The City and the Causeways--The _Conquistadores_
enter Mexico City--Meeting of Cortes and Montezuma--Greeting of the
Aztec emperor to the Spaniards--Tradition of Quetzalcoatl--Splendid
reception--The Teocalli--Spanish duplicity--Capture of Montezuma--
Spanish gambling--News from Vera Cruz--Forced march to the coast--
Cortes defeats Narvaez--Bad news from Mexico--Back to the capital--
Alvarado's folly--Barbarous acts of the Spaniards--The fight on the
pyramid--Destruction of Aztec idols--Death of Montezuma--Spaniards flee
from the city--Frightful struggle on the Causeway--Alvarado's leap--The
_Noche Triste_--Battle of Otumba--Marvellous victory--Spanish
recuperation--Cuitlahuac and Guatemoc--Fresh operations against the
capital--Building of the brigantines--Aztec tenacity--Expedition to
Cuernavaca--Xochimilco--Attack upon the city--Struggles and reverses--
Sacrifice of Spaniards--Desertion of the Allies--Return of the Allies--
Renewed attacks--Fortitude of the Aztecs--The famous catapult--
Sufferings of the Aztecs--Final attack--Appalling slaughter--Ferocious
Tlascalans--Fall of Mexico.
CHAPTER VI
MEXICO AND THE VICEROYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
General considerations--Character of Viceroy rule--Spanish
civilisation--Administration of Cortes--Torture of Guatemoc--Conquests
of Guatemala and Honduras--Murder of Guatemoc--Fall of Cortes--First
viceroy Mendoza--His good administration--Misrule of the _Audiencias_--
Slavery and abuse of the Indians--The Philippine islands--Progress
under the Viceroys--Plans for draining the Valley of Mexico--British
buccaneers--Priestly excesses--Raid of Agramonte--Exploration of
California--Spain and England at war--Improvements and progress in the
eighteenth century--Waning of Spanish power--Decrepitude of Spain--
Summary of Spanish rule--Spanish gifts to Mexico--The rising of
Hidalgo--Spanish oppression of the colonists--Oppression by the
colonists of the Indians--Republicanism and liberty--Operations and
death of Hidalgo--The revolution of Morelos--Mier--The dawn of
Independence--The birth of Spanish-American nations.
CHAPTER VII
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Monarchical _regime_ of Iturbide--Great area of Mexican Empire--Santa
Anna--The Holy Alliance--Execution of Iturbide--The Monroe Doctrine--
British friendship--The United States--Masonic institutions--Political
parties--Expulsion of Spaniards--Revolution and crime--Clerical
antagonism--Foreign complications--The "pie-war"--The Texan war--The
slavery question--Mexican valour--American invasion of Mexico--Fall of
Mexico--Treaty of Guadalupe--Cession of California--Gold in
California--Benito Juarez appears--Conservatives and Liberals--Massacre
of Tacubaya--The Reform laws--Disestablishment of the Church--Dishonest
Mexican finance--Advent of Maximilian--The English, Spanish, and French
expedition--Perfidy of the French--Capture of Mexico City by the
French--Crowning of Maximilian--Porfirio Diaz--Rule of Maximilian--Fall
of his empire--Death of Maximilian--The tragedy of Queretaro--Diaz
takes Mexico City--Presidency of Juarez--Lerdo--Career and character of
Diaz--First railways built--Successful administration of Diaz--
Political stability--Forward policy.
CHAPTER VIII
PHYSICAL CONDITIONS: MOUNTAINS, TABLELANDS, AND FLORA AND FAUNA. . 134
Geographical conditions--Tehuantepec--Yucatan--Boundaries and area--
Population--Vera Cruz--Elevations above sea-level--Latitude--General
topography--The Great Plateau--The Sierra Madres--The Mexican Andes--
General structure--The coasts--Highest peaks--Snow-cap and volcanoes--
Geological formation--Geological scenery--Hydrographic systems--
Rivers--Navigation--Water-power--Lakes--Climate and temperatures--The
three climatic zones--Rainfall--Snowfall--Flora and fauna--Soil--
Singular cactus forms--The desert flora--The tropical flora--Forest
regions--Wild animals--Serpents, monkeys, and felidae--Sporting
conditions--Birds.
CHAPTER IX
THE MEXICAN PEOPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Ethnic conditions--Spanish, Mestizos, Indians--Colour-line--Foreign
element--The _peones_--Land tenure--The Spanish people--The native
tribes--The Apaches--The Mexican constitution--Class distinctions--
Mexican upper class--Courtesy and hospitality--Quixotism of the
Mexicans--Idealism and eloquence--General characteristics--Ideas of
progress--American anomalies--_Haciendas_--Sport--Military
distinctions--Comparison with Anglo-Saxons--Republicanism--Language--
Life in the cities--Warlike instincts--The women of Mexico--Mexican
youths--Religious observance--Romantic Mexican damsels--The
bull-fights.
CHAPTER X
THE CITIES AND INSTITUTIONS OF MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Character of Mexican cities--Value of Mexican civilisation--Types of
Mexican architecture--Mexican homes and buildings--The _Plaza_--Social
relations of classes--The City of Mexico--Valley of Mexico--Latitude,
elevation, and temperature--Buildings--Bird's-eye view--The lakes--
Drainage works--Viga canal and floating gardens--General description--
The cathedral--Art treasures--Religious orders--Chapultepec--Pasco de
la Reforma--The President--Description of a bull-fight--Country homes
and suburbs--Colleges, clubs, literary institutions--Churches and
public buildings--Army and Navy--Cost of living--Police--Lighting and
tramways--Canadian enterprise--British commercial relations--The
American--United States influence--A general impression of Mexico.
CHAPTER XI
MEXICAN LIFE AND TRAVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Travel and description--Mexican cities--Guadalajara--Lake Chapala--
Falls of Juanacatlan--The Pacific slope--Colima--Puebla--Cities of the
Great Plateau--Guanajuato--Chihuahua--The Apaches--The _peones_--
Comparison with Americans--_Peon_ labour system--Mode of living--Houses
of the _peon_ class--Diet--_Tortillas_ and _frijoles_--Chilli--
_Pulque_--Habits of the _peon_ class--Their religion--The wayside
crosses and their tragedies--Ruthless political executions--The fallen
cross--Similarity to Bible scenes--_Peon_ superstitions--The ignis
fatuus, or _relacion_--Caves and buried treasure--Prehistoric Mexican
religion--The Teocallis--Comparison with modern religious systems--
Philosophical considerations.
CHAPTER XII
MEXICAN LIFE AND TRAVEL (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Anthropogeographical conditions--The Great Plateau--The tropical belt--
Primitive villages--Incidents of travel on the plateau--Lack of water--
Hydrographic conditions--Venomous vermin--Travel by roads and
_diligencias_--A journey with a priest--Courtesy of the _peon_ class--
The curse of alcohol--The dress of the working classes--The women of
the _peon_ class--Dexterity of the natives--The bull-fights--A narrow
escape--Mexican horse equipment--The _vaquero_ and the lasso--Native
sports--A challenge to a duel--Foreigners in Mexico--Unexplored
Guerrero--Sporting conditions--Camp life--A day's hunting.
CHAPTER XIII
MINERAL WEALTH. ROMANCE AND ACTUALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Forced labour in the mines--Silver and bloodshed--History of
discovery--Guanajuato--the _veta Madre_--Spanish methods--Durango--
Zacatecas--Pachuca--The _patio_ process--Quicksilver from Peru--Cornish
miners' graves--Aztec mining--Spanish advent--Old mining methods--
Romance of mining--The Cerro de Mercado--Guanajuato and Hidalgo--Real
del Monte--Religion and mining--Silver and churches--Subterranean
altars--Mining and the nobility--Spanish mining school--Modern
conditions--The mineral-bearing zone--Distribution of minerals
geographically--Silver--The _patio_ process--Gold-mining and
production--El Oro and other districts--Copper--Other minerals--General
mineral production--Mining claims and laws.
CHAPTER XIV
NATURAL RESOURCES, AGRICULTURE, GENERAL CONDITIONS . . . . . . . . 282
Principal cultivated products--Timber--The three climatic zones--
General agricultural conditions--Waste of forests--Irrigation--Region
of the river Nazas--Canal-making--Cotton and sugar-cane--Profitable
agriculture--Mexican country-houses--Fruit gardens--Food products,
cereals, and fibrous plants--_Pulque_ production--India-rubber and
_guayule_--List of agricultural products and values--Fruit culture and
values--Forestry and land--Colonisation--American land-sharks--
Conditions of labour--Asiatics--Geographical distribution of products--
The States of the Pacific slope--Sonora--Lower California--Sinaloa--
Tepic--Jalisco--Colima--Michoacan--Guerrero--Oaxaca--Chiapas.
CHAPTER XV
NATURAL RESOURCES, AGRICULTURE, GENERAL CONDITIONS (_continued_) . 308
Central and Atlantic States--Chihuahua and the Rio Grande--Mining,
forests, railways--Coahuila and its resources--Nuevo Leon and its
conditions--Iron, coal, railways, textile industries--Durango and its
great plains and mountain peaks--Aguascalientes--Zacatecas and its
mineral wealth--San Luis Potosi and its industries--Guanajuato,
Queretaro and Hidalgo, and their diversified resources--Mexico and its
mountains and plains--Tlaxcala--Morelos and its sugar-cane industry--
The rich State of Puebla--Tamaulipas, a littoral state--The historic
State of Vera Cruz, its resources, towns, and harbour--Campeche and the
peninsula of Yucatan.
CHAPTER XVI
MEXICAN FINANCE, INDUSTRIES, AND RAILWAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
Financial rise of Mexico--Tendencies toward restriction against
foreigners--National control of railways--Successful financial
administration--Favourable budgets--Good trade conditions--Foreign
liabilities--Character of exports and imports--Commerce with foreign
nations--Banks and currency--Principal industries--Manufacturing
conditions--Labour, water-power, and electric installations--Textile
industry, tobacco, iron and steel, paper, breweries, etc.--Railways--
The Mexican Railway--The Mexican Central Railway--The National
Railroad--The Interoceanic--Governmental consolidation--The Tehuantepec
Railway--Port of Salina Cruz--Other railway systems.
CHAPTER XVII
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Mexico's unique conditions--Her future--Asiatic immigrants--Fostering
of the native race--Encouraging of immigration--The white man in the
American tropics--Future of Mexican manufactures--The Pan-American
Congress--Pan-American railway--Mexico and Spain--The Monroe Doctrine--
Mexico, Europe, and the United States--Promising future of Mexico.
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
AN IDYLL OF MEXICO: INDIAN CARRIERS, RUINED CHURCH, AND SNOW-CLAD
PEAK OF ORIZABA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE ATLANTIC SLOPE: TUNNEL AND BRIDGE OF THE INFIERNILLO CANYON ON
THE MEXICAN RAILWAY, IN THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ . . . . . . . . . . 4
THE GREAT PLATEAU: NIGHTFALL IN THE DESERT . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
ON THE GREAT PLATEAU: VIEW OF THE CITY OF DURANGO . . . . . . . . 9
ORIZABA, CAPPED WITH PERPETUAL SNOW: VIEW ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY
AT CORDOBA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
PINE-CLAD HILLS FORMING THE RIM OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO, 8,000
FEET ELEVATION ABOVE SEA-LEVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
TYPICAL VILLAGE OF THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE, STATE OF COLIMA . . . . 18
THE FINDING OF THE SITE FOR THE PREHISTORIC CITY OF MEXICO BY THE
FIRST AZTECS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
(_From the painting in Mexico_.)
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: TOLTEC PYRAMID OR TEOCALLI OF THE SUN AT SAN
JUAN TEOTIHUACAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
(_Exploration and restoration work being carried on_.)
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO; VIEW ON LAKE TEXCOCO; THE MODERN CITY OF
MEXICO IN THE DISTANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
THE LAND OF THE AZTEC CONQUESTS: MAIZE FIELDS NEAR ESPERANZA,
STATE OF PUEBLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF EL FOLOC AT CHICHEN-YTZA, YUCATAN . . 35
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: THE PYRAMID OF THE SUN AT TEOTIHUACAN IN THE
VALLEY OF MEXICO, SEEN FROM THE PYRAMID OF THE MOON . . . . . . . 38
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF MITLA; FACADE OF THE HALL OF THE
COLUMNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
(_The steps have been "restored" by the photographer._)
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF MITLA; HALL OF THE MONOLITHS OR
COLUMNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF MITLA; THE HALL OF THE GRECQUES . . . 48
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF TEMPLE AT CHICHEN-YTZA, IN YUCATAN . 53
PREHISTORIC MEXICO: RUINS OF "THE PALACE" AT CHICHEN-YTZA IN
YUCATAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
THE LAND OF THE CONQUEST: STATE OF VERA CRUZ; VIEW ON THE MEXICAN
RAILWAY; THE TOWN OF MALTRATA IS SEEN THOUSANDS OF FEET BELOW . . 68
THE LAND OF THE CONQUEST: A VALLEY IN THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ, ON
THE LINE OF THE MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
THE LAKES OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO AT THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST,
SHOWING THE CAUSEWAYS TO THE AZTEC ISLAND-CITY OF TENOCHTITLAN . . 76
(_From Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico."_)
THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO: CORTES AT THE BATTLE OF OTUMBA . . . . . . 87
(_From the painting by Ramirez_.)
GUANAJUATO AS SEEN FROM THE HILLS: THE HISTORIC TREASURE-HOUSE OF
MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
STATUE OF HIDALGO AT MONTERREY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
THE CASTLE OF CHAPULTEPEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
CITY OF OAXACA: SPANISH-COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE; THE PORTALES OF THE
MUNICIPAL PALACE AND PLAZA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO, GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ . . . . . . . . . . 132
MEXICO'S ARTIFICIAL HARBOURS ON THE ATLANTIC: THE NEW PORT WORKS
AT VERA CRUZ, A SOLID AND COSTLY ENTERPRISE . . . . . . . . . . . 136
ASCENDING THE MEXICAN CORDILLERA, OR EASTERN SIERRA MADRE: THE
RAILWAY IS SEEN IN THE VALLEY FAR BELOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
THE PEAK OF ORIZABA; PLAZA OF THE CITY OF CORDOVA . . . . . . . . 140
THE FALLS OF JUANACATLAN: THE NIAGARA OF MEXICO . . . . . . . . . 144
THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY AND ENVIRONS OF
COLIMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
A RARE OCCURRENCE: SNOWFALL IN A MEXICAN TOWN; VIEW OF THE PLAZA
OF LERDO, ON THE GREAT PLATEAU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
A ROAD IN THE TEMPERATE ZONE, WITH PALMS AND VEGETATION . . . . . 151
VEGETATION IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
THE MEXICAN PEONES: STREET SCENE AT CORDOVA . . . . . . . . . . . 160
TYPES OF MEXICANS OF THE UPPER CLASS: AN ARCHBISHOP; A FAMOUS
GENERAL AND MINISTER OF PUBLIC WORKS; A FAMOUS MINISTER OF
FINANCE, SENOR LIMANTOUR; A STATE GOVERNOR . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
MEXICAN LIFE: THE CATHEDRAL AND THE PENITENTIARY, CITY OF PUEBLA . 166
THE FAMOUS MEXICAN "RURALES," OR MEXICAN MOUNTED POLICE . . . . . 172
SPANISH-COLONIAL CHURCH ARCHITECTURE: A TYPICAL MEXICAN TEMPLE . . 176
SPANISH-COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE: THE PORTALES OF CHOLULA . . . . . . 180
A PUBLIC GARDEN IN TROPICAL MEXICO: VIEW AT COLIMA . . . . . . . . 184
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO: THE GREAT DRAINAGE CANAL . . . . . . . . . . 188
THE CATHEDRAL OF THE CITY OF MEXICO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
BULL-FIGHT IN THE CITY OF MEXICO, SHOWING THE SPECTATORS OF THE
"SOL," THE PICADORES, AND THE ENTERING BULL . . . . . . . . . . . 194
MEXICAN STREET SCENE: A PULQUE SHOP WITH ARTISTICALLY-PAINTED
EXTERIOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
MEXICAN ARTILLERY: A WAYSIDE ENCAMPMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
CITY OF GUADALAJARA: INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL . . . . . . . . . . 208
A TOBACCO-PRODUCING HACIENDA: STATE OF VERA CRUZ . . . . . . . . . 213
MEXICAN PEON LIFE: TYPICAL VILLAGE MARKET-PLACE . . . . . . . . . 215
THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: COCOA-NUT PALMS AT COLIMA . . . . . . . . 230
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN MEXICO: MULES, PEON, AND CACTUS . . . . . . . . 235
NATIVE WOMEN OF TEHUANTEPEC: ORDINARY DRESS AND CHURCH-GOING
COSTUMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: THE PLAZA AND ENVIRONS OF THE CITY OF
COLIMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
MEXICAN ARTIFICIAL HARBOURS ON THE PACIFIC COAST: THE NEW PORT
WORKS OF SALINA CRUZ, TERMINUS OF THE TEHUANTEPEC RAILWAY . . . . 306
GENERAL VIEW OF THE CITY OF MONTERREY, STATE OF NUEVO LEON, UPON
THE GREAT PLATEAU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
TYPICAL SIDE STREET IN MEXICAN VILLAGE: THE TOWN OF AMECA AND
CLOUD-EFFECT ON POPOCATEPETL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
STATE OF VERA CRUZ: THE BARRANCA OR RAVINE OF MITLAC; VIEW ON THE
MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
(_Far below in the valley is seen the bridge depicted at p. 340._)
VERA CRUZ: SHIPPING IN THE NEW HARBOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
BRITISH ENGINEERING WORK IN MEXICO: BUILDING A BREAKWATER . . . . 336
THE MITLAC RAVINE: VIEW ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . 340
BRIDGES OVER THE ATOYAC RIVER: MEXICAN RAILWAY . . . . . . . . . . 342
THE SEAPORT OF VERA CRUZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
NEW PORT OF SALINA CRUZ, ON THE PACIFIC: THE GREAT DRY DOCK . . . 346
(_See also page 306._)
_The Author is indebted for some of the photographs reproduced in this
book to The Mexican Financial Agency, Senor Camacho; The Mexican
Information Bureau, Senor Barriga; The Mexican Vera Cruz Railway
Company, Ltd.; Messrs. S. Pearson and Sons, Ltd.; The London Bank of
Mexico and South America, Ltd.; Arthur H. Enock, Esq.; "Modern Mexico";
"Mexico at Chicago," Senor Manuel Caballero; Holmes: Ancient Cities of
Mexico; and others._
BIBLIOGRAPHY
HISTORY
The history of Mexico at the time of the Conquest rests upon an
accurate basis; the five letters of Cortes to the Spanish Emperor,
Carlos V. These have been recently retranslated into, and published in,
English in two excellent volumes:
The Letters of Cortes to Charles V. F. C. MacNutt. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
London. 1908.
The most famous book on the Conquest is that of Prescott, the American
historian, and this never loses its charm, although to the traveller
who knows the country it may, at times, seem somewhat highly drawn.
Prescott's Conquest of Mexico. 3 vols. London. 1845.
The writers which, after Cortes, were the participators in the Conquest
or contemporary therewith, and upon whose writings all other accounts
are based, are those of:
Bernal Diaz, Author of the Verdadera Historia de la Conquista. 1858.
Ixtlilochitl, Aztec historian.
Other famous contemporary writers whose works also furnish material for
historians were:
Bartolome de las Casas, Francisco Lopez de Gomara, Gonzalo Oviedo y
Valdez, Bernardino de Sahagun, Motolinia, Peter Martyr, Antonio de
Herrera. The works of all these writers are extant, principally in
Spanish, and they were written in the sixteenth century.
In the seventeenth century Juan de Torquemada wrote, and in the
nineteenth numerous works appeared upon Mexico. Among these may be
mentioned those of Manuel Orozco y Berra, Manuel Icazbalceta Raminez,
all modern Mexicans. Other authors, whether of historical or other
books and at varying epochs, are:
Clavigero, Duran, Tezozomoc, Camargo, Siguenza, Pizarro, Acosta, Gage,
Lorenzana, Olarte, Vetancourt, Solis, Cavo, Landa, Robertson, Irving,
Humboldt, Helps, Bancroft, Kingsborough.
Archaeological and Ethnological works are represented by the following:
Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States. 5 vols. New York. 1874-6.
Bandelier, The Art of War among the Ancient Mexicans.
Bandelier, Distribution and Land Tenure.
Bandelier, Social Organisation.
Bandelier, Archaeological Tour.
Bandelier, Indians of the South-west, U.S.
Batres, Cuadro Arquelogico de la Republica Mexicana; and other works,
including Teotihuacan.
Blake, Catalogue of Archaeological Collection of the Museum of Mexico,
&c.
Brinton, The American Race.
Brinton, Ancient Phonetic Alphabets of Yucatan, &c.
Chavers, Antiguedades Mexicanas.
Chavers, Mexico a traves de los siglos.
Charnay, Ancient Cities of the New World.
Garcia Cubas, Cuadro Geografico, &c.
Holmes, Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Cities of Mexico.
Maudsley, Biologia Centralia-Americana.
Kingsborough, famous work on Mexican Antiquities, &c.
Penafiel, Monumentos del arte Mexicano Antiguo. Berlin. 1890.
Payne, History of the New World. Oxford. 1899.
Starr, Maya Writing, &c. Chicago. 1895.
And many other pamphlets and books in English, Spanish, French, and
German.
For a fuller list of these, see the excellent volume on Mexico of the
International Bureau of the American Republics. Washington. 1904.
Of books on mining an excellent volume for reference is:
Southworth's Mines of Mexico.
Of mining and natural resources generally, a large complete work has
been issued in English, Spanish, and French, entitled:
El Florecimiento de Mexico. Mexico. 1906.
This work is published in Mexico, written by various authors, under the
patronage of the Government. It is a valuable book of reference, but
somewhat prolix, and the type is small and the volume unwieldy. After
the manner of books issued in Spanish-American countries, too much
space is taken up with adulations of public men. There are no less than
four full-page portraits of President Diaz in it.
Other general works are:
Mexico and the United States. Abbott. New York. 1869.
Guia General de la Republicas Mexicana. Mexico. 1899.
Barrett, Standard Guide to Mexico. Mexico. 1900.
Baedeker, The United States and Mexico. Leipzig. 1899.
Bancroft, A Popular History of the Mexican People. London. 1887.
Bancroft, Resources and Development of Mexico. San Francisco. 1893.
Baianconi, Le Mexique. Paris. 1899.
Brocklehurst, Mexico To-day. London. 1883.
Chevalier, Le Mexique Ancien et Moderne. Paris. 1886.
Congling, Mexico and the Mexicans. New York. 1883.
Garcia, Mexico, &c. Mexico. 1893.
Lummis, The Awakening of a Nation. New York. 1893.
Ober, Travels in Mexico. Boston. 1884.
Martin, Mexico of the Twentieth Century. London. 1908.
Gadow, Travels in Southern Mexico. London. 1908.
Tweedie, Mexico as I Saw It. London. 190?
Tweedie. Porfirio Diaz. London. 1905.
A. H. Noll. A Short History of Mexico. Chicago. 1903.
Romero, Mexico and the United States. New York. 1898.
Statesman's Year-book. London.
Camp Fires on Desert and Lava. Hornaday. London. 1909.
And numerous others in French, German, and English, including various
guide-books and pamphlets, scientific and otherwise.
The Mexican Year-book, London, 1908, is published by McCorquodale & Co.
The work is written under the auspices of the Mexican Government. It is
full of statistics and information, and forms a very useful work of
reference.
_Modern Mexico_, a monthly illustrated paper of high-class, issued in
Mexico and St. Louis.
_The Mexican Herald_, a daily paper published in English in Mexico, is
an excellent journal of current events.
INTRODUCTION
"From what I have seen and heard concerning the similarity between this
country and Spain, its fertility, its extent, its climate, and in many
other features of it, it seemed to me that the most suitable name for
this country would be New Spain, and thus, in the name of your Majesty,
I have christened it. I humbly supplicate your Majesty to approve of
this and order that it be so called." Thus wrote Hernan Cortes, the
greatest natural leader of men since Julius Caesar, to the sovereign
whom he endowed, as he subsequently told him bitterly, with provinces
more numerous than the cities he had inherited from his forefathers.
From the first appearance of the Spaniards upon the vast elevated
plateau upon which the Aztec empire stood the invaders were struck by
its resemblance in climate and natural products to their European
homeland. In his first letter to the Emperor Cortes wrote: "The sea
coast is low, with many sandhills.... The country beyond these
sandhills is level with many fertile plains, in which are such
beautiful river banks that in all Spain there can be found no better.
These are as grateful to the view as they are productive in everything
sown in them, and very orderly and well kept with roads and convenience
for pasturing all sorts of cattle. There is every kind of game in this
country, and animals and birds such as are familiar to us at home....
So that there is no difference between this country and Spain as
regards birds and animals.... According to our judgment it is credible
that there is everything in this country which existed in that from
whence Solomon is said to have brought the gold for the Temple."
Here, for the first time, the Spanish explorers in their wanderings had
come across an organised nation with an advanced civilisation and
polity of its own. The gentle savages they had encountered in the
tropical islands and the mainland of the isthmus had offered little or
no resistance to the white men or to their uncomprehended God. The
little kinglets of Hispaniola, of Cuba, and of Darien, divided,
unsophisticated, and wonder-stricken, with their peoples bent their
necks to the yoke and their backs to the lash almost without a
struggle. Their moist tropical lands, near the coasts, were enervating,
and no united organisation for defence against the enslaving intruders
was possible to them. But here in the land of the Aztec federation
three potent states, with vast dependencies from which countless hordes
of warriors might be drawn, were ready to stand shoulder to shoulder
and resist the claims of the white demi-gods, mounted on strange
beasts, who came upon giant sea-birds from the unknown, beyond the
waste of waters. But the fatal prophecy of the coming of the avenging
white God Quetzalcoatl to destroy the Aztec power paralysed the arm and
brain of Montezuma, and rendered him, and finally his people, a prey to
the diplomacy, the daring, and the valour of Cortes, aided by the
dissentient tribes he enlisted under his banner.
The vast amphibious city of Tenochtitlan, when at length the Conquerors
reached it, confirmed the impression that the land of which it was the
capital was another wider and richer Spain. Its teeming markets, "one
square twice as large as that of Salamanca, all surrounded by arcades,
where there are daily more than sixty thousand souls buying and
selling"; the abundance of food and articles of advanced comfort and
luxury, "the cherries and plums like those of Spain"; "the skeins of
different kinds of spun silk in all colours, that might be from one of
the markets of Granada"; "the porters such as in Castile do carry
burdens"; the great temple, of which "no human tongue is able to
describe the greatness and beauty ... the principal tower of which is
higher than the great tower of Seville Cathedral"--all reminded Cortes
of his native Spain. "I will only say of this city," he concludes,
"that in the service and manners of its people their fashion of living
is almost the same as in Spain, with just as much harmony and order;
and considering that these people were barbarous, so cut off from the
knowledge of God and of other civilised people, it is marvellous to see
to what they have attained in every respect." Thus New Spain was marked
out of all the dominions of Spanish Indies as that which was in closest
relationship with the mother country.
The conquest and subjection of New Spain synchronised curiously with
the profound crisis in, and the conquest and domination of, Old Spain
by its own king, a governing genius and leader of men almost as great
as was the obscure Estramaduran squireling who was adding to the newly
unified crown of Spain that which was to be its richest jewel in the
West. When Cortes penned his first letter to the future Emperor and his
mad mother in July, 1519, telling them of the new found land, Spain was
in the throes of a great convulsion. The young Flemish prince had been
called to his great inheritance by the death of his grandfather,
Ferdinand the Catholic, and the incapacity of his Spanish mother, Queen
Juana. Charles had come to the country upon which, in a financial
sense, the burden of his future widespread empire was to depend, with
little understanding of the proud and ardent people over whom he was to
rule. He spoke no Spanish, and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish
courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and
looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which,
locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned
to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign
whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings
cast themselves upon the resources of Castile and claimed the best
offices civil and ecclesiastical; they sternly insisted upon the young
king taking a solemn oath that Spain in future should be for the
Spaniards; and when tardily and sulkily they voted supplies of money
the grant was saddled with many irritating conditions.
When the letter of Cortes arrived in Spain Charles was at close grips
with his outraged people, for he had broken all his promises to them.
Hurrying across the country to embark and claim the imperial crown of
Germany, vacant by the death of his grandfather Maximilian, eager for
the large sums of money he needed for his purpose, which Spain of all
his realms alone could provide, the sovereign was trampling upon the
dearly prized charters of his people. The great rising of the Castilian
commoners was finally crushed, thanks to class dissensions and the
diplomacy of the sovereign. Thenceforward the revenues of Castile were
at the mercy of the Emperor, whose needs for his world-wide
responsibilities were insatiable; and the Indies of the West, being the
appanage of the crown of Castile, were drained to uphold the claim of
Spain and its Emperor-King to dictate to Christendom the form and
doctrines of its religious faith. It is no wonder, therefore, that the
despatches of the obscure adventurer who announced to his sovereign
that, in spite of obstacles thrown in his way by highly placed royal
officials, he had conquered a vast civilised empire with a mere handful
of followers, were received sympathetically by the potentate to whom
the possession of fresh sources of revenue was so important. Cortes in
his various letters again and again claims the Emperor's patronage of
his bold defiance of the Emperor's officers on the ground that the
latter in their action were moved solely by considerations of their
personal gain, whereas he, Cortes, was striving to endow his sovereign
with a rich new empire and boundless treasure whilst carrying into the
dark pagan land, at the sword's point, the gentle creed of the
Christian God.
Of this religious element of his expedition Cortes never lost sight; he
was licentious in his life, unscrupulous in his methods, and regardless
of the suffering he inflicted to attain his ends; but in this he was
only a son of his country and his time; such qualities might, and in
fact did, accompany the most devout personal piety and an exalted
religious ideal. That the imposition of Christian civilisation upon
Mexico meant the sacrifice in cold blood of countless thousands of
inoffensive human creatures was as nothing when once the legal forms
had been complied with and the people could be assumed to be
recalcitrant or rebellious to a decree of which they understood not a
word. The awful holocaust of natives which followed the Spanish
advance, the enslavement of a whole people to the demon of greed,
especially after the withdrawal of Cortes from the scene, left a bitter
crop of estrangement between the native Mexicans and their white
masters, of which the rank remains have not even yet been quite
eradicated. Cortes himself, as great in diplomacy as in war, it is true
made himself rich beyond dreams, though he was defrauded of his
deserts, even as Columbus, Balboa, and Pizarro were; but he was not
wantonly cruel, and in the circumstances in which he was placed it was
difficult for him to have acted very differently from what he did. It
was not until the smaller men displaced him and came to enrich
themselves at any cost that his methods were debased and degraded to
vile ends and the policy itself was rendered hateful.
Thus, whilst New Spain was always held to be nearer to the mother
country than any other American lands and more of a white man's home
than the settlements on the Southern Continent, the distrust engendered
by the ruthless cruelty of the earlier years of the occupation
contributed powerfully to retard any intimate intermixture of the
conquerors and the conquered races, the closer connection with Spain
also keeping the Spanish-Mexican decidedly more pure in blood than any
other Spanish American people. This will account for the fact that the
various Indian races of Mexico are still, to a large extent, distinct
from each other and from the pure white Mexicans after nearly a century
of native Republican government. In the State of Oaxaca alone there are
even now at least fifteen perfectly distinguishable separate tribes of
pure Indians, of which two, the Zapotecas and the Mistecas, comprise
more than half the whole population of the State. But, this
notwithstanding, no race question now really exists in Mexico. The
pure-blooded Indians frequently occupy the highest positions in the
State, as judges, soldiers, or savants, the greatest but one of Mexican
Presidents, Juarez, having been a full-blooded Zapoteca, whilst the
present ruler of Mexico, certainly one of the most exalted figures in
American history, General Porfirio Diaz, is justifiably prouder of his
Misteca descent than of the white ancestry he also claims. Nor, as in
other countries of similar ethnological constitution, does the Indian
population here tend to decrease. The Mexican Indian or half-breed
suffers under no disability, social or political, and is in a decided
majority of the population. The number of pure whites in the country is
estimated at about three and a half millions, out of a probable
nineteen millions of total inhabitants, eight millions being pure
Indians and about seven and a half millions of mixed castes, most of
whom are more brown than white.
The future of the Republic, therefore, in an ethnological sense, is one
of the most interesting problems of the American Continent. The old
Spanish aristocratic aloofness traditional on the part of the pure
whites will take many generations entirely to break down, and the
increased communication between the Republic and the citizens of the
United States will probably reinforce the white races with a new
element of resistance to fusion; but in the end a homogeneous brown
race will probably people the whole of Mexico--a race, to judge from
the specimens of the admixture now in existence, capable of the highest
duties of civilisation, robust in body, patriotic in character,
progressive and law-abiding to a greater extent, perhaps, than are
purely Latin peoples.
The present book relates in vivid and graphic words the history of
Mexico during the time that it served as a milch cow to the insatiable
Spanish kings and their satellites. But for the gold and silver that
came in the fleet from New Spain, when, indeed, it was not captured by
English or Dutch rovers, the gigantic imposition of Spanish power in
Europe could not have been maintained even as a pretence throughout the
greater part of the seventeenth century as it was. For nearly three
centuries one set of greedy Viceroys and high officials after another
settled from the mother country upon unresisting Mexico and sucked its
blood like vampires. Some of them, it is true, made attempts to
palliate their rapacity by the introduction of improved methods of
agriculture, mining, and the civilised arts, and Mexico, in close touch
with Spain, was not allowed, as the neighbouring Spanish territory of
the isthmus was, to sink into utter stagnation. The efforts of the
Count of Tendilla to keep his Viceroyalty abreast of his times in the
mid sixteenth century are still gratefully remembered, as is the name
of his successor Velasco, who struck a stout blow for the freedom of
the native Indians enslaved in the mines, and emancipated 150,000 of
them. But on the whole, especially after the establishment of the
Inquisition in Mexico, the story of the Spanish domination is generally
one of greed, oppression, and injustice, alternating with periods of
enlightened effort on the part of individual viceroys more high-minded
than their fellows.
With the early nineteenth century came the stirring of a people long
crushed into impotence. The mother country was in the throes of a great
war against the foreign invader. Deserted and abandoned by its Spanish
sovereign, and ruled, where it was ruled at all by civilians, by a body
of self-elected revolutionary doctrinaires, the colonists of the
various Viceroyalties of America promptly shook themselves free from
the nerveless grasp that had held them so long. A demand for an immense
sum of money beyond that which had voluntarily been sent by Mexico to
aid the mother country against Napoleon was refused in 1810, and a few
months afterwards the long gathering storm burst. The man who first
formulated the Mexican cry for freedom was a priest, one Miguel
Hidalgo. He had already organised a widespread revolutionary
propaganda, and on September 16, 1810, the Viceregal authorities
precipitated matters by suppressing one of the clubs, at Queretaro, in
which the independence of the country was advocated. Hidalgo at once
called his followers to arms, and under the sacred banner of the Virgin
of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, led some 50,000 ardent
patriots through the country towards the capital that had once been
Montezuma's. Subduing all the land he crossed, Hidalgo finally met the
royal troops on the 30th of October and completely routed them. Then
the rebel army gradually fell to pieces in consequence of unskilful
management, and at a subsequent battle in January, 1811, was entirely
defeated, Hidalgo and his lieutenant being shortly afterwards captured
and shot.
But the fire thus lit could never again be entirely extinguished. For
years the intermittent struggle went on under another priest, Morelos,
a true national Mexican hero who was betrayed to the Spaniards in 1815,
and punished first by the Inquisition as a heretic and afterwards shot
as a traitor to the King of Spain. The sun of the Spanish domination of
Mexico set in blood, for the wretched reactionary Ferdinand VII. was on
the throne of the mother country, determined if he could to terrorise
Spanish America into obedience as he had done Spain itself. His
eagerness to do so defeated itself. A large army, collected at Cadiz
for the purpose of crushing Mexico into obedience, revolted against the
despot, and then the Mexican patriots, under Iturbide, practically
dominated their country. The new Spanish Hibernian Viceroy, O'Dontroju,
could but bend his head to the storm, and in September, 1821, signed a
treaty with the insurgents by which Mexico was acknowledged to be an
independent constitutional monarchy under the Spanish king, Ferdinand
VII.
Such a solution of a great national uprising could only be temporary.
The Spanish Government refused to ratify the agreement arrived at for
Mexico's independence, and a barrack pronouncement acclaimed Agustin
Iturbide Emperor of Mexico in June, 1822. The empire of Iturbide lasted
less than a year, for the man was unworthy, and Mexican patriots had
not fought and bled for ten years against one despotism for the purpose
of handing themselves over to another. Iturbide was deposed and exiled,
and on his return for the purpose of raising his standard afresh in
Mexico, in 1824 the ex-Emperor was shot as an enemy to the peace and
tranquillity of his country.
The Republic of Mexico obtained the cordial support of England and the
United States, and when in 1825 the last Spanish man-at-arms retired
from the fortress of San Juan de Ulua, off Vera Cruz, all
Spanish-Americans on the two continents were free to work out their own
destiny. As was the case with the other Republics, inexperience in the
science of government and attempts to force the pace of progress,
condemned Mexico to fifty years of turbulence and alternating despotism
and license. Ambitious soldiers strove with each other for the place of
highest honour and profit. Texas, resenting the instability of Creole
government, separated from the Mexican States after a devastating war.
Amongst the higher classes of Mexicans the monarchical tradition which
had prompted the experiment of Iturbide's evanescent empire had not
entirely died out, and in 1840 a leading Mexican statesman, Estrada,
argued in an open letter that the republican form of government having
failed to secure peace to the country, it would be advisable to
establish a Mexican monarchy with a member of one of the old ruling
houses of Europe at its head. But the stormy petrel of Mexican
politics, General Saint Anna, pervaded the scene yet for many years
more; and in 1847 engaged in a disastrous war with the United States on
the subject of the Texan boundary, in which California was lost to
Mexico. In the meanwhile the suggestion that a monarchical experiment
should be tried never died out; and when in 1860 the country was a prey
to civil war between the anti-clericals under the great Juarez and the
Conservative elements, and the interest on the foreign debt was
suspended, a pretext offered for the intervention of France, England,
and Spain in the internal affairs of Mexico, supported by the
Conservative and monarchical parties in the country itself.
The ill-starred ambition of Napoleon III. ended in the sacrifice of a
chivalrous and well-meaning prince, but it effected for Mexico what
fifty years of internal strife had been unable to attain: it produced a
solidarity of Mexican national feeling which has since then welded the
people into a stable and united nation, in no danger henceforward of
falling a prey to foreign ambition or of lapsing into anarchy from its
own dissensions. That this happy end has been attained has been due
mainly to the genius of two men, the greatest of Mexico's sons, who
have in succession appeared at the moment when the national crisis
needed them. To Benito Juarez, the Zapoteca Indian, who held aloft the
banner of Mexican independence against the power of Napoleon's empire,
is due not alone the victory over the invaders but the firm
establishment of a federal constitutional system. Juarez, a lawyer and
a judge, insisted upon the law being supreme, and that ambitious
generals should thenceforward be the servants and not the masters of
the State.
The great Juarez died in 1872, and for the last thirty-three years,
with a break of one short interval only, Porfirio Diaz has been master
of Mexico, a benevolent autocrat, an emperor in all but name, governing
with a wise moderation which recognises that a country situated as
Mexico is, and with a population as yet far from homogeneous or
civilised in the European sense, must of necessity be led patiently and
diplomatically along the road of progress. To reach the goal of
material and moral elevation at which Diaz aims, stability of
institutions and of directors is the first need; and the President has
been re-elected seven times by his fellow citizens because they, as
well as he, can see that his brain and his hand must guide the mighty
engine of advance that he has set in motion.
The effects of this policy have already been prodigious, and there is
probably no country on earth that has made strides so gigantic as
Mexico in the last thirty years. It is due mainly to the labours of
Diaz that the national finance has been placed upon a firm and
satisfactory basis; to him are owing the extraordinary public works
which have completed the vast system of drainage of the Valley of
Mexico, initiated nearly three centuries ago; by him the Republic has
been covered by a network of primary and secondary public schools
rivalling those of the most advanced European countries. One of the
most beneficent of the President's recent acts has been the
rehabilitation in 1905 of the Mexican silver currency, by which a
fairly stable standard exchange value is secured for the national
coinage; the silver dollar fluctuating now within very narrow limits,
the normal value being one half of a United States dollar.
The constructive work of this really great man, indeed, is as yet
difficult to appraise. It covers nearly every branch of national
activity, and it is only by comparison with a past state of affairs
that anything like an adequate idea of the progress effected can be
formed. In 1876 the population of the Republic was 9,300,000; it is now
about 19,000,000. The increase in the length of railways constructed in
the same period is equally remarkable, rising from 367 miles in 1876 to
15,000 miles in 1908. The railways hitherto have been mainly built by
English and United States capitalists, and are in a great measure still
managed by English-speaking officers; but the important Transatlantic
line, which connects the port of Coatzacoalcos on the Atlantic side
with Salina Cruz on the Pacific, is a national undertaking carried out
under contract by a great English contracting firm. The future of this
Tehuantepec railway promises to be of the highest importance as
connecting Europe and America with the Far East. The geographical
situation of the line is more central than that of Panama, ensuring,
for instance, a saving of nearly a thousand miles between Liverpool and
Yokohama. The railway itself across the isthmus is under two hundred
miles in length, and the ports on both sides are capacious enough to
deal with the greatest ships afloat.
The railways running from the United States into the interior of Mexico
and the capital convey passengers thither in less than five days from
New York. They have naturally brought much Anglo-Saxon American
influence into the country, and until recent years this would have
offered some danger of the nation becoming an English-speaking land, as
its former States, Texas and California, have done. The new national
spirit and pride of race, which now justifiably stirs Mexicans, will in
future make such an eventuality improbable. It is, indeed, much more
likely that in the end the boundaries of a powerful, prosperous Mexico
may extend to the group of small and slowly-developing Central American
Republics that join it on the south, and that a vast Spanish-speaking
confederacy will under an enlightened system of government ensure for
all time the domination of this axis of the world's trade to the
descendants of the original Conquerors whose blood has mingled with
that of the peoples they subdued. This eventuality is rendered the more
probable by the advance of the Pan-American railway which is being
pushed southwest from the Tehuantepec line towards Guatemala, and will
when completed link North America with the southern continent, and
establish a continuous system from New York to the Argentine Republic.
This, however, is a dream of the future: for the present be it said
that a regenerated Mexico has saved Central and South America from
being finally swamped by Anglo-Saxondom, and has ensured the
perpetuation in "The Land of To-morrow" of the Spanish tongue and Latin
traditions. For this relief much thanks.
MARTIN HUME.
MEXICO
CHAPTER I
A FIRST RECONNAISSANCE
Romance of history--Two entrance ways--Vera Cruz--Orizaba--The Great
Plateau--Fortress of Ulua--Sierra Madre--Topographical structure--The
Gulf coast--Tropical region--Birds, animals, and vegetation of coast
zone--_Tierra caliente_--Malaria--Foothills--Romantic scenery--General
configuration of Mexico--Climatic zones--Temperate zone--Cold zone--The
Cordillera--Snow-capped peaks--Romance of mining--Devout miners--
Subterranean shrines--The great deserts--Sunset on the Great Plateau--
_Coyotes_ and _zopilotes_--Irrigated plantations--Railways--Plateau of
Anahuac--The cities of the _mesa central_--Spanish-American
civilisation--Romance of Mexican life--Mexican girls, music, and
moonlight--The _peones_ and civilisation--American comparisons--
Pleasing traits of the Mexicans--The foreigner in Mexico--Picturesque
mining-towns--Wealth of silver--Conditions of travel--Railways--
Invasions--Lerdo's axiom--Roads and horsemen--Strong religious
sentiment--Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl--Sun-god of Teotihuacan--City
of Mexico--Valley of Mexico--The Sierra Madre--_Divortia aquarum_ of
the continent--Volcano of Colima--Forests and ravines--Cuernavaca--The
trail of Cortes--Acapulco--Romantic old _haciendas_--Tropic sunset--
Unexplored Guerrero--Perils and pleasures of the trail--Sunset in the
Pacific Ocean.
Mexico, that southern land lying stretched between the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, upon the tapering base of North America, is a country
whose name is fraught with colour and meaning. The romance of its
history envelops it in an atmosphere of adventure whose charm even the
prosaic years of the twentieth century have not entirely dispelled, and
the magnetism of the hidden wealth of its soil still invests it with
some of the attraction it held for the old Conquistadores. It was in
the memorable age of ocean chivalry when this land was first won for
Western civilisation: that age when men put forth into a sunset-land of
Conquest, whose every shore and mountain-pass concealed some El Dorado
of their dreams. The Mexico of to-day is not less interesting, for its
vast territory holds a wealth of historic lore and a profusion of
natural riches. Beneath the Mexican sky, blue and serene, stretch great
tablelands, tropic forests, scorching deserts, and fruitful valleys,
crowned by the mineral-girt mountain ranges of the Sierra Madres; and
among them lie the strange pyramids of the bygone Aztecs, and the rich
silver mines where men of all races have enriched themselves. Mexico is
part of that great Land of Opportunity which the Spanish-American world
has retained for this century.
There are two main travelled ways into Mexico. The first lies across
the stormy waters of the Mexican Gulf to the yellow strand of Vera
Cruz, beyond which the great "star-mountain" of the Aztecs,
Citlaltepetl,[1] rears its gleaming snow-cap in mid-heavens, above the
clouds. It was here that Cortes landed, four centuries ago, and it is
the route followed by the tide of European travellers to-day.
Otherwise, the way lies across the Great Plateau, among the arid plains
of the north, where, between the sparsely-scattered cities and
plantations of civilised man, the fringe of Indian life is spread upon
the desert, and the shadowy forms of the _coyote_ and the cactus blend
into the characteristic landscape. Both ways are replete with interest,
but that of Vera Cruz is the more varied and characteristic. Here
stands Ulua, the promontory-fortress, where more than one of Mexico's
short-lived rulers languished and died of yellow fever, and which was
the last stronghold of Spain. Beyond it arise the white buildings and
towers of Vera Cruz, a dream-city, as beheld from the Gulf, of interest
and beauty; and to the west, are the broad coastal deserts, bounded by
the foothills and tropic valleys of the _tierra caliente_ of the
littoral. Piled up to the horizon are the wooded slopes and canyons of
the great Sierra Madre, topped by the gleaming Orizaba, towering
upwards in solitary majesty. We stand upon a torrid strand, yet gaze
upon an icy mountain.
[Footnote 1: Orizaba, 18,250 feet altitude.]
A country of singular topographic structure is before us. The Mexican
Cordillera conceals, beyond and above it, the famous Great Plateau; the
_mesa central_, running to the northwards eight hundred miles or more,
and reaching westwardly to the steep escarpments of the Pacific slope.
These plutonic and volcanic ranges encircle and bisect the great
tableland, and enclose the famous Valley of Mexico and its beautiful
capital, lying far beyond the horizon, above the clouds which rest upon
the canyons and terraces of that steep-rising country to the west. Our
journey lies upwards to this Great Plateau of Anahuac over the
intervening plains and mountain range.
It is a tropical region of foliage, flowers, and fruits, of rugged
countryside and rushing streams, this eastern slope of Mexico; and the
blue sky and flashing sun form the ambient of a perpetual summer-land.
We traverse the sandy Tertiary deserts of the coast, and thence enter
among groves of profuse natural vegetation, interspersed with
cultivated plantations. In these the gleam of yellow oranges comes from
among the foliage, and the graceful leaves of the platanos and
rubber-trees fan their protecting shade over young coffee-trees. But
away from the haunts of man along the littoral is a region of startling
beauty--of rivers and lagoons and hills, their shores and slopes
garmented with perennial verdure, the forest-seas bathing the bases of
towering peaks. Beautiful birds of variegated and rainbow colours, such
as Mexico is famous for, people these tropic southern lands of Vera
Cruz. Along the shores and in the woods and groves, all teeming with
prolific life, which the hot sun and frequent rains induce, the giant
cranes and brilliant-plumaged herons disport themselves, and gorgeous
butterflies almost outshine the feathered denizens. From the tangled
boughs the pendant boa-constrictor coils himself, and hissing serpents,
basking crocodiles, and prowling jaguars people the untrodden wilds of
jungle and lagoon. In these great virgin forests tribes of monkeys find
their home, and the tapir and the cougar have their being. Mangroves,
palms, rubber-trees, mahogany, strange _flora_, and ungathered fruits
run riot amid this tropical profusion, and flourish and fall almost
unseen of man. And here the malarias of the lowlands lurk--those
bilious disorders which man is ever fighting and slowly conquering.
This is Mexico's _tierra caliente_.
But our way lies onwards towards the mountains. A wildness of
landscape, unpictured before, opens to the view. Here rise weird
rock-forms, Nature's cathedral towers and grim facades magnificent in
solitude and awe-inspiring, as by steep bridle-paths we take our way
along the valleys, and draw rein to gaze upon them. Ponderous and
sterile, these outworks and buttresses of the great Sierra Madre rise
upwards, fortifications reared against the march of tropic verdure
beneath, cloud-swathed above and bathed below by forest-seas. Born in
that high environment of rains and snows, rippling streams descend,
falling in cascades and babbling rapids adown romantic glens, and their
life-giving waters, with boisterous ripple or murmuring softly, take
their way over silver sand-bar and polished ledge of gleaming quartz or
marble, winding thence amid corridors of stately trees and banks of
verdant vegetation, to where they fill the irrigation-channels of
white-clad peasants, far away on the plains below.
Still onwards and upwards lies the way. One of the most remarkable
railways in the world ascends this steep zone, and serpentines among
sheer descents to gain the summits of abrupt escarpments, from which--a
remarkable feature of the topography of the eastern slope of
Mexico--the traveller looks down as into another country and climate,
upon those tropical valleys which he has left below. This is the
Mexican Vera Cruz railway.
[Illustration: THE ATLANTIC SLOPE: TUNNEL AND BRIDGE OF THE INFIERNILLO
CANYON, ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY, IN THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ.]
Let us pause a moment and gain a comprehensive idea of the character of
Mexico's configuration and climate. It is to be recollected that
Mexico, like other lands of Western America, is a country of relatively
recent geological birth. The form of the country is remarkable. It
shares the topographical features of others of the Andine countries of
America--of tropical lowlands and temperate uplands, in which latter
nearness to the heat of the Equator is offset by the coolness of the
rarefied air of high elevations above sea-level. This structure is the
dominant note of the scheme of Nature in Mexico--as it is in Peru and
other similar countries--and the anthropo-geographical conditions are
correspondingly marked. The region first passed is known as the _tierra
caliente_, or hot lands. Its climatic limit extends up the slopes of
the Sierras to an elevation of some 3,000 feet or more, embracing the
lowlands, hot and humid generally, of the whole of the Gulf coast and
of the peninsula of Yucatan, all of which regions are subject to true
tropical conditions--the dense forests, the great profusion of animal
life, the wonderful abundance and colour of Nature, and in places the
swamps and their accompanying malarias, shunned by the traveller. But
yellow fever and malaria are much less dreaded now than heretofore. In
the city of Vera Cruz and in Tampico the new era of sanitation, brought
about by British and American example and seconded by the Mexican
authorities, has almost banished these natural scourges.
Rising from the _tierra caliente_, the road enters upon the more
temperate zone, the _tierra templada_, extending upwards towards the
Great Plateau. The limit of this climatic zone is at the elevation of
6,000 feet above sea-level, and here are evergreen oaks, pine, and the
extraordinary forms of the organ cactus, as well as orchids. It is,
indeed, a transition zone from the hot to the cold climates, and the
zone embraces the greater part of the area of Mexico. Rising rapidly
thence up to and over the escarpments of the Sierra Madre and the high
plains, we shall enter upon the _tierra fria_ or cold lands, ranging
from 6,000 feet to 8,000 feet above sea level. Above this rise the high
summits of the Mexican Cordilleras, with their culminating peaks, some
few of which penetrate the atmosphere above the limit of perpetual
snow. Thus, three diverse climatic zones are encountered in Mexico,
which, ever since the advent of the Spaniards, have been designated as
the _tierra fria_, _tierra templada_, and _tierra caliente_
respectively. These conditions, as will be seen later, are also
encountered upon the Pacific slope.
We now ascend the steep upper zone of the Sierra Madre, and cross it,
descending thence to the Great Plateau or _mesa central_, the
dominating topographical feature of the country. Here lies the real
Mexico of history, and here is the main theatre of the new land of
industrial awakening. Within the mountain ranges--that which we have
crossed, and those which intersect this vast tableland and bound it on
three sides--lies the great wealth of minerals--gold, silver, and
others--which have attracted men of all races and all times since
Cortes came. Here the true fairy tales of long ago, of millions won by
stroke of pick, had their setting, and indeed, have it still. Upon
these hills the thankful miner reared temples to his saints, and
blessed, in altar and crucifix, the mother of God who graciously
permitted his enrichment! And as if such devotion were to be unstinted,
he also places his shrines within the bowels of the mines, and pauses
as he struggles through the dark galleries, with heavy pack of silver
rock upon his back, to bend his knee a moment before the candle-lighted
subterranean altar.
And now great desert plains unfold to view. Upon their confines arise
the blue mountain ranges which intersect them, their canyons and
slopes, though faint in distance and blurred by shimmering heat arising
from the desert floor, yet cast into distinct tracery by the rays of
the sun. Towards the azure vault overhead, as we behold the arid
landscape, eddying dust-pillars whirl skywards upon the horizon, or
perhaps a cloud of dust, far away upon the trail which winds over the
flat expanse, denotes some evidence of man--horseman or ox-cart
pursuing its leisurely and monotonous way. Upon the edges of the dry
stream-beds, or _arroyos_, which descend from the hills and lose
themselves in wide alluvial fans upon the sandy waste, a fringe of
scant vegetation appears, nourished by the water which flows down them
in time of rain.
Beneath our horses' hoofs the white alkali crust which thinly covers
the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny
branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and
the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal
world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as we pass. We are upon
the Great Plateau. All is vast, reposeful, boundless. The sun rises and
sets as it does upon some calm ocean, describing its glowing arc across
the cloudless vault above, from Orient to Occident. Sun-scorched by
day, the temperature drops rapidly as night falls upon these elevated
steppes, 7,000 feet or more above the level of the sea, and the bitter
cold of the rarefied air before the dawn takes possession of the
atmosphere. The shivering _peones_ of the villages rise betimes to
catch the sun's first rays, and stand or squat against the eastern side
of their adobe huts, what time the orb of day shows his red disc above
the far horizon. _La capa de los pobres_--"the poor man's cloak"--they
term the sun, as with grateful benediction they watch his coming, and
stamp their sandalled feet.
[Illustration: THE GREAT PLATEAU: NIGHTFALL IN THE DESERT.]
Impressive and melancholy is the nightfall upon the Great Plateau. The
opalescent tints of the dying day, and the scarlet curtains flung
across the Occident at the sun's exit give place to that indescribable
depth of purple of the high upland's sky. The faint ranges of hills
which bound the distant horizon take on those diminishing shades which
their respective distances assign them, and stand delicately,
ethereally, against the waning colours of the sunset, whilst the
foreground rocks are silhouetted violet-black against the desert floor.
The long shadows which were projected across the wilderness, and the
roseate flush which the setting sun had cast upon the westward-facing
escarpments behind us, have both disappeared together. Impenetrable
gloom lurks beneath the faces of the cliffs, the mournful howl of the
_coyotes_ comes across the plain, and their slinking forms emerge from
the shadow of the rocks. There is a shapeless heap, the carcass of some
dead mule or ox, some jetsam of the desert, lying near at hand, at
which my horse was uneasy as I drew rein in contemplation, and which
explains the nearness of the beasts of prey, and the long line of
_zopilotes_, or buzzards, which I had observed to cross the fading
gleam of the firmament. All is solitary, deserted, peaceful. The day is
done, the night has come, "in which no man can work."
At daylight the uncultivated desert gives place to human habitations;
and we approach the _hacienda_ of a large landowner, with its irrigated
plantations, and adobe buildings which form the abodes of the workers.
All around are vast fields of _maguey_, or plantations of cotton,
stretching as far as can be seen. Great herds of cattle, rounded up by
picturesque _vaqueros_ with silver-garnished saddles and strange hats
and whirling lassoes, paw the dusty ground, shortly to writhe beneath
the hot imprint of the branding-iron. Long irrigation ditches, brimming
with water from some distant river, and fringed with trees, wind away
among the plantations; and white-clad _peones_, hoe in hand, tend the
long furrows whose parallel lines are lost in perspective. Centre of
the whole panorama is the dwelling-house of the _hacendado_, the owner
of the lands; and almost of the bodies and souls of the inhabitants!
Quaint and old-world, the place and its atmosphere transport the
imagination to past centuries, for the aspect of the whole still bears
the stamp of its mediaeval beginning, save where the new Mexican
millionaire-landowner has planted some luxurious abode, replete with
modern convenience.
But these are not isolated from the world upon this Great Plateau so
much as might appear at first glance. There is a puff of smoke upon the
horizon, and the whistle of a locomotive strikes upon the ear. The
railway which links this great oasis of cultivated fields with others
similar, and with the world beyond, runs near at hand, and will bear
us, do we wish it, away to the confines of the Republic in the north,
to the United States, and in five days to New York. Southwards it winds
away to the great capital City of Mexico, to Vera Cruz, and thence on
towards the borders of Guatemala. But let us avoid the railway yet. Not
thus, in the comfort of the Pullman cushions, do we know the spirit and
atmosphere of Mexico; but the saddle and the dusty road shall be our
self-chosen portion. Indeed, it will be so from sheer necessity, for
our way will lie onwards to the Pacific Ocean, and no railway of the
plateau quite reaches this yet.
Throughout the Great Plateau of Anahuac, separated by long stretches of
dusty wilderness, unclothed except by scanty thorny shrubs, and
scarcely inhabited except by the _coyote_ and the _tecolote_,[2] are
handsome cities with their surrounding cultivation and characteristic
life. As we top the summit of a range and behold these centres of
population from afar, a bird's-eye view and philosophical comprehension
of their _ensemble_ is obtained. Seen from the outside, they present a
picturesque view of cathedral spires and gleaming domes and white
walls; the towers rising from the lesser buildings amid groves of
verdant trees, forming a striking group, all backed by the blue range
of some distant sierra. The main group shades off into a fringe of
_jacales_--the squalid habitations of the _peones_, and of the city's
poor and outcast, with rambling, dusty roads bordered by hedges of
prickly pear, or _nopales_; picturesque, quaint, the roads ankle-deep
in white adobe dust, which rises from beneath our horse's hoofs and
covers us with an impalpable flour upon traversing the environs of the
place. Clattering over the cobble-paved streets, we rapidly approach
the central pulse of the town, the _plaza_. Singular shops, where
fruits and meats and clothing are displayed in windowless array, line
the streets, and quaint dwelling-houses, with iron grilles covering
their windows, giving them the mediaeval Hispanic aspect familiar to
the Spanish-American traveller. Into these we gaze down from the height
of the saddle in passing, and perchance some dark-haired Mexican
damsel, who has been snatching a moment from her household duties to
gaze at the outside world, retires suddenly from the balcony with
well-simulated haste and modesty before the rude gaze of the
approaching stranger. Indians or _peones_ in loose white garments of
cotton _manta_, with huge Mexican straw hats, and scarlet blankets
depending from their shoulders, stalk through the street, or issue from
ill-smelling _pulque_ shops, whose singularly-painted exteriors arrest
the attention. Gaunt dogs prowl about and lap the water of the open
_acequias_, or ditch-gutters, between the road and the footpath,
fighting for some stray morsel thrown into the street from the open
doors of the shops aforesaid. Of stone or of adobe--generally the
latter--according to the geology of the particular neighbourhood, the
houses are whitened or tinted outside, with flat roofs, or _azoteas_.
Through the wide entrance-door a glimpse is obtained of an interior
paved _patio_, adorned, in the better-class homes, with tubs of palms
and flowers; and before one of such a character we draw rein--the
_meson_ or _fonda_, the hotel under whose roof temporary shelter shall
be sought. This abode faces the _plaza_, and opposite rises the quaint
church--or cathedral if it be a State capital city--which is the
dominating note of the community.
[Footnote 2: Mexican night owl.]
[Illustration: ON THE GREAT PLATEAU: VIEW OF THE CITY OF DURANGO.]
Exceedingly picturesque are the fine cities which form Mexico's chief
centres of civilisation along the Great Plateau--Chihuahua, Durango,
Guadalajara, Puebla, and many others. They have that quaint, old-world
air ever characteristic of Spanish-America, unspoilt by the elements of
manufacturing communities. Their shady _plazas_ are centres of
recreation and social life, always in evidence, distinctive of
Spanish-American civilisation, where music is a part of the government
of the people; a feature far more prominent than in Britain or the
United States. The cathedrals, the quaint architecture of the streets,
the barred windows, and the picturesque dress of the working class,
form an atmosphere of distinctive life and colour. Let us halt a moment
in the _plaza_. The band is discoursing soft music, varied by some
stirring martial air; the Mexican moon has risen, and now that the
sunset colours pale, vies with the lamps of the well-lit promenade to
illumine a happy but simple scene. Its rays shine through the feathery
boughs of the palms, and glisten on the broad, elegant leaves of the
_platanos_--which grow even in the upland valleys--whilst the scent of
orange-blossoms falls softly through the balmy air, as in ceaseless
promenade fair maidens and chatting youths, with coquetry and stolen
glance, pass round the square untiringly. White dresses and black eyes
and raven tresses--the olive-complexioned beauties of the Mexican
uplands take their fill of passing joy. The moment is sweet, peaceful,
even romantic; let us dally a moment, nor chafe our cold northern blood
for more energetic scenes. Do we ask bright glances? Here are such.
Shall we refuse to be their recipient? And moonlight, palms, and music,
and evening breeze, and convent tolling bell, and happy crowd--no, it
is not a scene from some dream of opera, but a phase of every-day life
in Mexico.
In many respects it is an atmosphere of charm and interest which the
traveller encounters in Mexican life, especially if he has recently
arrived from among the prosaic surroundings of Mexico's great northern
neighbour, the United States. Indeed, the transition from the busy
Anglo-Saxon world which hurries and bustles in strenuous life northward
from the Rio Grande, to that pastoral and primitive land of
Spanish-America is as marked as that between Britain and the Orient.
Yet it is only divided by a shallow stream--the Rio Grande. As the
traveller crosses this boundary he leaves behind him the twentieth
century, and goes back in time some hundreds of years--a change, it
maybe said _en passant_, which is not without benefit, and attractive
in some respect. The brusque and selfish American atmosphere is left
behind, the patience and courtesy of Mexico is felt. The aggressive
struggle for life gives place to the recollection that to acquire
wealth is not necessarily the only business of all men and all nations;
for the patient _peon_ lives in happiness without it. You may scorn
him, but he is one of Nature's object-lessons.
Singularly un-American--that is if United States and Canadian manners
and customs shall be considered typical of America--are the customs of
the Mexican. The influence and romance of the long years of Spanish
domination and character have been crystallised upon the Mexican soil.
The mien and character of the race created here in New Spain is marked
for all time as a distinctive type, which may possess more for the
future than the votary of Anglo-Saxon civilisation and strenuous
commercialism may yet suspect. Whatever critical comparison may be
applied to these people, the foreigner will acknowledge the pleasing
trait of courtesy they invariably show. The elegance and grace of
Spanish manners, wafted across the Atlantic in the days of ocean
chivalry, were budded to the gentle courtesy of the native; and the
brusque Anglo-Saxon is almost ashamed of his seeming or intended
brusqueness before the graceful salutation of the poorest _peon_. Hat
in hand, and with courteous or devout wish for your welfare on his
lips, the poor Mexican seems almost a reproach to the harbinger of an
outside world which seemingly grows more hard and commercial as time
goes on.
The picturesque and the simple are, of course, bought at the expense,
too often, of hygiene and comfort, and Mexico does not escape this
present law. Yet it is remarkable how soon the Briton or the American
in Mexico adapts himself to his surroundings, and grows to regard them
with affection. It is true that the government of the country is
practically a military despotism, yet the foreigner is respected, and
none interfere with him. On the contrary, he is often looked up to as a
representative of a superior State, and if he be worthy he acquires
some of the demeanour of race-_noblesse oblige_.
There are cities set on steep hill-sides, which we shall enter. Terrace
after terrace climb the rocky ribs of arid hills. Houses, interspersed
with gardens; communities backed by the soft outlines of distant
ranges, seen adown the widening valley; and walls, houses, streets,
people, landscape; all are of that distinctive colour and character of
the Mexican upland, over-arched by the cloudless azure of its sky.
Clustered upon these same steep mineral-bearing hills--and, indeed,
they are the _raison d'etre_ of the town at all in that spot--are the
great mining places, ancient and modern, which form so important a
feature of the life of the country on the Great Plateau.
Fabulous wealth of silver has been dug from these everlasting hills.
Grim and abandoned mine-mouths, far away like black dots upon the
slopes, and strange honeycombed galleries and caverns far beneath the
outcropping of the lodes, have vomited rich silver ore for centuries:
and the clang of miners' steel and the dropping candle are now, as
ever, the accompaniment of labour of these hardy _peones_. The very
church, perhaps, is redolent of mining, and was raised by some pious
delver in the bowels of the hill whereon it stands--a thank-offering
for some great luck of _open sesame_ which his saints afforded him.
But we will not linger here; Guanajuato and Zacatecas and Pachuca shall
be our theme in another chapter, and the tale of toil and silver which
they tell. For the moment the way lies down the Great Plateau, among
its intersecting ranges of hills, through the fertile valleys, which
alternate with the appalling sun-beat deserts.
The conditions of travel in this great land of Mexico--it is nearly two
thousand miles in length--are, perhaps, less arduous than in
Spanish-American countries generally. Mexico has lent itself well to
the building of railways in a longitudinal direction, upon the line of
least resistance from north-west to south-east, paralleling its general
Andine structure. Several great trunk lines thus connect the capital
City of Mexico and the southern part of the republic with the
civilisation of the United States, over this relatively easy route. Yet
the earliest railway of Mexico, that from Vera Cruz to the City of
Mexico, traverses the country in the most difficult direction,
transversely, rising from tide-water and the Atlantic littoral, and
ascending the steep escarpments of the Eastern Sierra Madre to fall
down into the lake-valley of Mexico, bringing outside civilisation to
that isolated interior world. But Mexico's singular topographical
position did not secure her from invasion. Three times the city on the
lakes has fallen to foreign invaders--the Spaniards of the Conquest,
the French of Napoleon, and the Americans of the United States. Indeed,
the flat and arid tableland stretching away for such interminable
distances to the north was formerly a more potent natural defence than
the Cordilleran heights which front on the Atlantic seas; and the axiom
of Lerdo is well brought to mind in considering the geographical
environment: "Between weakness and strength--the desert!"
[Illustration: ORIZABA, CAPPED WITH PERPETUAL SNOW: VIEW ON THE MEXICAN
RAILWAY AT CORDOVA.]
But away from the railways, and the roads where _diligencias_ ply their
lumbering and dusty course, the saddle is the only, and indeed the most
characteristic, mode of travel; and the _arriero_ and his string of
pack-mules is the common carrier, and the mountain road or dusty desert
trail the means of communication from place to place. Along these the
horseman follows, day after day, his hard but interesting road, for to
the lover of Nature and incident the saddle ever brings matter of
interest unattainable by other means of locomotion. The glorious
morning air, the unfolding panorama of landscape--even the desert and
the far-off mountain spur which he must round ere evening falls, are
sources, of exhilaration and interest. The simple people and their
quaint dwellings, where in acute struggle for life with Nature they
wrest a living from rocks and thorns--are these not subjects, even,
worthy of some passing philosophical thought? Not a hilltop in the
vicinity of any human habitations--be they but the wretched _jacales_
or wattle-huts of the poorest peasants--but is surmounted by a cross:
not a spring or well but is adorned with flowers in honour of that
patron saint whose name it bears; and not a field or hamlet or mine but
has some religious nomenclature or attribute. For the Mexicans are a
race into which the religion of the Conquistadores penetrated
indelibly, whose hold upon them time scarcely unlooses. The creeds of
the priests, moreover, are interwoven with the remains of Aztec
theistic influence, and the superstitions of both systems hold the
ignorant peasantry of Mexico in enduring thrall. Much of beauty and
pathetic quaintness there is in this strong religious sentiment, which
no thinking observer will deride; much of retrograde ignorance, which
he will lament to see.
The Great Plateau tapers away towards the south, terminating in the
Valley of Mexico, bounded by the snowy Cordillera of Anahuac. Within
this range are two great volcanic uplifts, two beautiful mountain
peaks, crowned with perpetual snow--the culminating orographical
features of the Sierras, and the highest points in Mexico. The loftiest
of these is Popocatepetl, "the smoking mountain," and its companion is
Ixtaccihuatl, the "sleeping woman," both of poetical Indian
nomenclature. These beautiful solitary uplifts rise far above the
canyons and forests at their bases: penetrate the clouds which
sometimes wreath them, terminating in a porcelain-gleaming summit of
perpetual snow. The mid-day sun flashes upon them, rendering them
visible from afar, and its declining rays paint them with that carmine
glow known to the Andine and Alpine traveller, which arrests his vision
as evening falls. So fell, indeed, the morning rays of the orb of day
upon the burnished golden breastplates of the image set on the sacred
pyramid of Teotihuacan: the sun-god, Tonatiuah, as in the shadowy
Toltec days he faced the flashing east.
Prehistoric fact and fable press hard upon us as we approach the famous
Valley of Mexico and its fine capital. This is the region where that
singular "stone age" flourished, of pyramid-building and stone-shaping
peoples. Here both geology and history have written their pages, as if
Nature and Fate had conspired together to mark epochs of time and space
in ancient temple, dead revolution, and slumbering volcano. And now
below us lies the City of Mexico. From the wooded uplands and
hill-summits--redolent of pine and exhilarating with the tonic
air--which form the rim of the valley, the panorama of the capital and
its environs lies open to the view. Plains crossed by white streaks of
far-off roads, intersecting the chequered fields of green _alfalfa_ and
yellow maize; _haciendas_ and villages embowered in luxuriant foliage;
the gleam of domes and towers, softened in the glamour of distance and
bathed by a reposeful atmosphere and mediaeval tints--such is Mexico,
this fair city of the West.
[Illustration: PINE-CLAD HILLS FORMING THE RIM OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO,
8,000 FEET ELEVATION ABOVE SEA-LEVEL.]
The City of Mexico, like most centres of human habitation in whatever
part of the world, is most beautiful when seen from afar, and in
conjunction with Nature's environment. But the old Aztec city, the
dark, romantic seat of the viceroys, the theatre of revolutionary
struggle, and the modern centre of this important Mexican civilisation,
is a really handsome and attractive city. Indeed, the capitals of many
Spanish-American republics, and their civilisation and social _regime_,
are often in the nature of a revelation to the traveller from Europe or
the United States, who has generally pictured a far more primitive
State. With its handsome institutions and public buildings, and
extensive boulevards and parks, and characteristic social, literary,
and commercial life, the City of Mexico may be described as
Americo-Parisian, and it is rapidly becoming a centre of attraction for
United States tourists, who, avid of historical and foreign colour,
descend thither in Pullman-car loads from the north. The city lies some
three miles from the shore of Lake Texcoco, which, with that of Chalco
and others, forms a group of salt- and fresh-water lagoons in the
strange Valley of Mexico. At the time of the Conquest the city stood
upon an island, connected with the mainland by the remarkable stone
causeways upon which the struggles between the Spaniards and the Aztecs
took place, during the siege of the city at the time of the Conquest.
But these lakes, after the manner of other bodies of water, generally,
in the high elevations of the American Cordilleras--Titicaca, in Peru,
to wit--are gradually perishing by evaporation, their waters
diminishing century by century. The Valley of Mexico, however, of
recent years has received an artificial hydrographic outlet in the
famous drainage canal and tunnel, which conducts the overflow into a
tributary of the Panuco river, and so to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Valley of Mexico is surrounded by volcanic hills, forming a more
recent formation of the Andine folds, of which the Sierra Madres
compose the Mexican Cordilleras. We have now to cross this, for our
faces are set towards the Pacific Ocean. We ascend and pass the Western
Sierra Madre, the _divortia aquarum_ of the Pacific watershed, leaving
the intra-montane plateau of Anahuac and the _mesa central_ behind us.
Again the climate changes as the downward journey is begun, and again
the _tierra caliente_ is approached. The culminating peaks--the
beautiful Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl--sink now below the eastern
horizon, but as we journey to the west Colima's smoking cone will rise
before the view. The descent from the highlands to the west coast is
even more rapid than to the east, and the temperate climate of the
valleys, and the bitter cold of the early morning on the uplands, soon
give place to tropical conditions. Extensive forests of oak and pine,
clothing the sides of the canyons and _barrancas_ of the high Sierra
Madre, are succeeded by the profuse vegetation of the torrid zone. Down
in the soft regions of the west, where tropical agriculture yields its
plentiful and easily-won harvests, are romantic old _haciendas_ and
villages hidden away in the folds of the landscape, such as are a
delight to the traveller and the lover of the picturesque. The "happy
valley" of Cuernavaca is reached by railway from the capital, but
beyond this the road to the seaboard is still that ancient trail which
Cortes used, which descends to Acapulco, for the railway builders have
not yet completed their works to the Pacific waters.
Away from the main route of travel lie sequestered old sugar estates,
and villages of romantic and picturesque charm, yet untouched by
speculator or capitalist. Antique piles of stone buildings are there,
redolent of that peculiar poetry of the pastoral life of Mexico in the
tropics. The old Spaniards built well; their solid masonry defies the
centuries; and their most prosaic structures were invested with an
architectural charm which the rapid money-seeker of to-day cares little
for, in his corrugated iron and temporary materialism. Near to the
arches, columns, and turrets of the old _haciendas_ the garden lies,
replete with strange fruits and flowers. The gleam of oranges and limes
comes from the tangled groves; grapes and pomegranates vie with each
other in unattended profusion. The iguana sports among the old stone
walls of the great garden, and humming-birds and butterflies hover in
the subtle atmosphere. The tropic sunset throws a peaceful glamour and
serenity over all. The cocoanut palms, with feathery grace above and
slender column upward rearing, stir not against their ethereal setting
as we watch, and the passing water in the old aqueduct scarce breaks
the tropic silence, or if, perchance, it whisper, murmurs of centuries
past, a low refrain.
But we shall journey away from the haunts of man again, and penetrate
the deep dark _barrancas_ and little-known mountain-fastnesses of the
western slope of the State of Guerrero. Here are great uninhabited and
unexplored stretches of country, rugged and wild, replete with matters
of interest, whether for hunter, sportsman, or archaeologist. Indeed,
it would be difficult to find a region offering so varied a nature of
resource and interest in any part of the world, except possibly in the
still less accessible wilds of the Amazonian slopes of the Peruvian
Andes. The botanist will find on this Pacific side of Mexico an
unstudied _flora_, and the ethnologist and the antiquarian a number of
native races, speaking strange separate languages; and the ruins of
thousands of the habitations of prehistoric man. The climate in these
rugged regions ranges from the heat of the fierce tropical sun to the
bitter cold of the mountain summits. Abundant _bosques_ or forests of
oak cover the higher regions, and the wild and broken nature of the
country renders it difficult to traverse, and calls for the adventurous
spirit of the pioneer and explorer, without which the traveller will
but meet with discomfort and danger.
Yet the true traveller finds pleasure in these matters. The impressive
grandeur of the mountain landscape, the endless forests, the profound
ravines do but serve to divert his mind from the peril and discomfort
of the trail. Here he may revel in Nature's untamed handiwork of
mountain, forest, and flood, as day after day he journeys onward in the
saddle towards the Pacific Ocean. Here are the imposing _barrancas_ of
Jalisco which he traverses, and marks how they are buried in the
profuse vegetation which presses up to the very border of the lava of
smoking Ceboruco. Thence the myrtle forests of Tepic are penetrated. On
the tropic lakes thousands of log-like alligators lie, gloomily
awaiting their prey. From the verge, which rich forests fringe, and
where brilliant water-weeds encircle the shoals, dainty pink and white
herons rise, and below the blue surface gleams the sheen of myriad
fish. Far to the southwards the fitful volcanic flames of Colima light
up the landscape at night. A day's journey more across the coastal
plains, and our reconnaissance is finished. The long-drawn surf beats
upon the shore of the vast western ocean, for we have crossed the
continent; and the sun's glowing disc dips to the blood-red
waves--sunset in the Pacific.
[Illustration: TYPICAL VILLAGE OF THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: STATE OF
COLIMA.]
CHAPTER II
THE DAWN OF MEXICO: TOLTECS AND AZTECS
Lake Texcoco--Valley of Anahuac--Seat of the Aztec civilisation--
Snow-capped peaks--Pyramids of Teotihuacan--Toltecs--The first
Aztecs--The eagle, cactus, and serpent--Aztec oracle and wanderings--
Tenochtitlan--Prehistoric American civilisations--Maya, Incas--Quito
and Peru--The dawn of history--The Toltec empire--Rise, _regime_,
fall--Quetzalcoatl--Otomies--Chichemecas--Nezahualcoyotl--Astlan--The
seven tribes and their wanderings--Mexican war-god--The Teocallis--
Human sacrifices--Prehistoric City of Mexico--The Causeways--Aztec
arts, kings, and civilisation--Montezuma--Guatemoc--Impressions of the
Spaniards--The golden age of Texcoco--Vandalism of Spanish
archbishop--The poet-king and his religion--Temple to the Unknown
God--Aztecs and Incas compared--The Tlascalans--The Otomies--Cholula--
Mexican tribes--Aztec buildings--Prehistoric art--Origin of American
prehistoric civilisation--Biblical analogies--Supposed Asiatic and
Egyptian origins--Aboriginal theory.
Like the misty cloud-streaks of the early dawn, the beginning of the
story of the strange empire of prehistoric Mexico unfolds from fable
and fact as we look back upon it. We are to imagine ourselves upon the
shores of Lake Texcoco, in the high valley-plateau of Anahuac, "the
land amid the waters." It is the year 1300, or a little later, of the
Christian era. The borders of the lake are marshy and sedgy, the
surrounding plain is bare and open, and there is no vestige of man and
his habitation. Far away, east, west, and north, faint mountain ranges
rise, shimmering to the view in the sun's rays through the clear upland
air, whilst to the south two beautiful gleaming snow-capped peaks are
seen,[3] and over all is the deep blue vault of the tropic highland
sky.
[Footnote 3: Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl.]
We have said that there are no vestiges of man or his structures to be
seen, yet upon gazing penetratingly towards the north-east there might
be observed the tops of two high ruined pyramids,[4] the vestiges of
the civilisation of the shadowy Toltecs. But we are not for the moment
concerned with these ruined structures, for, as we watch, a band of
dusky warriors, strangely clad, comes over the plain. They come like
men on some set purpose, glancing about them, at the shores of the
lake, at the horizon, expectantly, yet with a certain vague wistfulness
as of deferred hope. Suddenly their leader halts and utters an
ejaculation; and with one hand shading the sun's rays from his eyes he
points with outstretched arm towards the water's edge. His companions
gaze intently in the direction indicated, and then run forward with
joyous shouts and gesticulations. What is it that has aroused their
emotions? Near the lake-shore a rock arises, overgrown with a thorny
_nopal_, or prickly-pear cactus, and perched upon this is an eagle with
a serpent in its beak.
[Footnote 4: Teotihuacan: pyramids of the sun and moon.]
Who are these men and whence have they come? They are the first Aztecs,
and they have come "from the north"; and for centuries they have been
wandering from place to place, seeking a promised land which their
deity had offered them, a land where they should found a city and an
empire. The hoped-for oracle is before them, the promised symbol which
they had been bidden to seek, by which they should know the destined
spot--an eagle perched upon a _nopal_ with a serpent in its beak: and
their wanderings are at an end. Here they pitched their camp, and here
as time went on the wonderful city of Tenochtitlan arose, the centre of
the strange Aztec civilisation. Thus, fable records, was first
established the site of Mexico City; prehistoric, despotic, barbaric,
first; mediaeval, dark, romantic, later; handsome and interesting
to-day.
[Illustration: THE FINDING OF THE SITE FOR THE PREHISTORIC CITY OF
MEXICO BY THE FIRST AZTECS. (From the painting in Mexico.)]
But whence came these men? That, indeed, who shall say? Whence came the
strange civilisation of the American races--Maya, Toltec, Aztec, Inca?
To Mexico and Yucatan and Guatemala, to Quito and Peru, whence came the
peoples who built stone temples, pyramids, halls, tombs, inscribed
hieroglyphics, and wrought cunning arts, such as by their ruins,
relics, and traditions arouse our admiration even to-day. History does
not say, yet what glimmerings of history and legend there are serve to
take us farther back in time, although scarcely to a fixed
starting-point, for the thread of the tale of wanderings and
developments of these people of Mexico--a thread which seems traceable
among the ruined structures of Anahuac.
The first glimmerings of this history-legend refer to an unknown
country "in the north." About the middle of the third century of the
Christian era there proceeded thence the people known as the Mayas, who
traversed Mexico and arrived in Yucatan; and they are the reputed
originators of the singular and beautiful temples encountered there,
and the teachers of the stone-shaping art whose results arouse the
admiration of the archaeologist and traveller of to-day, in that part
of Mexico. The descendants of the Mayas are among the most intelligent
of the native tribes inhabiting the Republic, doubtless due to the
influence of the polity and work of their ancestors. Time went on.
About the middle of the sixth century A.D. another people came "out of
the north"--the famous Toltecs, and in their southward migration they
founded successive cities, ultimately remaining at Tollan, or Tula, and
to them are attributed the remarkable pyramids of Teotihuacan, Cholula,
and other structures. Tula is some fifty miles to the north of the
modern city of Mexico, and it formed the centre of the powerful empire
and civilisation of this cultured people. Eleven monarchs reigned, but
the Toltec Empire was overthrown; the people dispersed, and they
mysteriously disappeared at the beginning of the twelfth century A.D.,
after some 450 years of existence. None of these dates, however, can be
looked upon as really belonging to the realm of exact history.
[Illustration: PREHISTORIC MEXICO: TOLTEC PYRAMID OR TEOCALLI OF THE
SUN AT SAN JUAN, TEOTIHUACAN. (Exploration and restoration work being
carried on.)]
Tradition also has it that the Toltecs were dispersed by reason of a
great famine due to drought, followed by pestilence, only a few people
surviving. Banished from the scene of their civilisation by these
disasters, the few remaining inhabitants made their way to Yucatan and
Central America; and their names and traditions seem to be stamped
there. Beyond this little is known of the Toltecs. Possibly some of
them found their way still further south to Ecuador and Peru, and
influenced the Inca civilisations of the South American continent. To
the Toltecs is ascribed the most refined civilisation of prehistoric
America, a culture which was indeed the source of the far inferior one
of the Aztecs, which we shall presently observe. The Toltecs wrought
cleverly in gold and silver, and in cotton fabrics; whilst the
remarkable character of their buildings and structures is shown by the
ruins of these to-day, as at Cholula and Teotihuacan. The art of
picture-writing is attributed to them; and the famous Calendar stone of
Mexico has also been ascribed to these people. From amid the shadowy
history of the Toltecs the traditions of the deity which so largely
influenced prehistoric Mexican religion arose: the mystic Quetzalcoatl,
the "god of the air," "the feathered serpent." This strange personage
was impressed upon the people's mind as a white man of a foreign race,
with noble features, long beard, and flowing garments; and he taught
them a sane religion, in which virtue and austerity were dominant, and
the sacrifice of human beings and animals forbidden. This singular
personage, runs the fable, disappeared after twenty years' sojourn
among them, in the direction of the rising sun, having promised to
return. When the Spaniards came out of the East their coming was hailed
as the return of Quetzalcoatl, and the reverence and superstition
surrounding these supposed "children of the sun" protected the
Spaniards and permitted their advance into the country, and indeed, was
at length conducive to the downfall of Montezuma and the Aztec Empire.
So pass the cultured, shadowy Toltecs from our vision. They had been
preceded in their southward migration by the Otomies, in the seventh
century A.D., an exceedingly numerous and primitive people who almost
annihilated the Spaniards during the Conquest, and whose descendants
to-day occupy a vast region, and still largely speak their own
language, rather than Spanish. The Toltecs were succeeded by yet
another tribe "from the north," the Chichemecas, who came down and
occupied their civilisation of Tula. These people, warlike and inferior
in culture to the Toltecs, allied themselves with the neighbouring
Nahua tribes, and an empire came into being, with its capital at
Texcoco, on the shore of the great lake. The famous Nezahualcoyotl, the
poet-king of this empire, who ascended the throne of Texcoco in 1431,
was one of the most remarkable figures of prehistoric Anahuac, and his
genius and fortunes recall the history of Alfred of England, to the
student's mind. He built a splendid palace at Texcotzinco, and ruins of
its walls and aqueducts remain to this day. His life is sketched in
these pages subsequently, and something of the beauty of his philosophy
set forth.
And thus history has brought us again to the Aztecs, the founders of
Tenochtitlan by the lake-shore, on the spot indicated by their oracle.
They had come "from the north," one of seven tribes or families, all of
which spoke the Nahuatl or Mexican tongue. This unknown country, called
Astlan, or "the land of the herons," was the home of these seven
tribes--the Mexicas, or Aztecs, the Tlascalans, Xochimilcas, Tepanecas,
Colhuas, Chalcas and Tlahincas--and has been varyingly assigned a
locality in California, and in Sinaloa. Why the Aztecs left their
northern home is not known, even in legend, but they were instigated to
their wanderings, tradition says, by their fabled war-god,
Huitzilopochtli, or Mexitl, from whom came the name "Mexica" or
"Azteca," by which these people called themselves. From the beginning
of the tenth to the beginning of the thirteenth century A.D. this tribe
journeyed and sojourned on its southward way, from valley to valley,
from lake to lake, from Chapala to Patzcuaro, and thence to Tula, the
old Toltec capital. Once more dispersed, they wandered on, and, guided
by their oracle, reached their final resting-place at Tenochtitlan.
This name, by which they designated their capital, was derived either
from that of Tenoch, their venerated high priest, or from the Aztec
words meaning "stone-serpent," in reference to the emblem they had
followed.
The first work of the people was to raise a great temple to their
god--the bloodthirsty Huitzilopochtli--who had led them on. It was
begun at once, and around it grew the habitations of the people, the
huts made of reeds and mud called _xacali_, such as indeed to-day form
the habitations of a large part of Mexican people under the name of
_jacales_.[5] This great Teocalli, or "house of god," at the time of
the arrival of the Spaniards, was a structure pyramidal in form, built
of earth and pebbles and faced with cut stone, square at base, its
sides--300 to 400 feet long--facing the cardinal points of the heavens.
Flights of steps on the outside, winding round the truncated pyramid,
gave access to the summit. Here in the sanctuary was the colossal image
of the Aztec war-god--the abominable conception of a barbaric
people--and the stone of sacrifice upon which the sacrificial captives
were laid. Upon its convex surface the unhappy wretches were
successively bound, their breasts cut open with obsidian knives, and
the still beating hearts, torn forth by the hand of the priest, were
flung smoking before the deity!
[Footnote 5: _X_ and _j_ are often interchangeable in Spanish.]
Upon the marshy borders of this lake, set in the beautiful and fertile
valley of Anahuac, the city rose to elegance and splendour. The
_jacales_ gave place to buildings of brick and stone, founded in many
cases upon piles, and between them were streets and canals, giving
access to the city from the lake. Centre of all was the great Teocalli.
The position of the city was peculiar. It was founded upon an island,
and was subject to inundations from the salt waters of the lake; for
the Valley of Mexico had at that time no outlet for its streams. It
formed a hydrographic entity; and in this connection it reminds the
traveller of the birthplace of that other strange, prehistoric American
civilisation, three thousand miles away to the south-east--Lake
Titicaca and the cradle of the Incas. To protect the city from these
inundations embankments were made, and other works which attest the
engineering capabilities of the people. Four great causeways gave
access to the marshy island upon which the capital was
situated--structures of stones and mortar, the longest being some four
or five miles in length. To-day one of these forms part of a modern
street, and the waters of the lake have retired more than two miles
from the city.
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF MEXICO: VIEW ON LAKE TEXCOCO; THE MODERN
CITY OF MEXICO IN THE DISTANCE.]
The habitations of the principal people were built of stone, and the
interior of polished marbles and rare woods. Painting and sculpture
embellished these interiors and exteriors, although these were
generally crude and barbaric in their execution and representation.
Around the city and upon the shores of the lakes, numerous villages
arose, surrounded by luxurious gardens and orchards, and the singular
_chinampas_, or floating gardens, were made, with their wealth of
flowers, such as the early Mexicans both loved and demanded for
sacrificial ceremonies.
Naturally, all this development took time. Yet the rise of this
civilisation must be considered rapid--probably it was largely
inherited in principle. The first Aztec government was the theocratic
and military _regime_ established in the fourteenth century under
Tenoch, a military priest and leader who died in 1343. Less than two
hundred years afterwards the city of Tenochtitlan was in the zenith of
power and culture at the moment when it fell before the Spaniards. Ten
kings followed Tenoch, the first being Itzcoatl, who may be considered
the real founder of the empire. He was followed by the first Montezuma,
who greatly extended its sway, dying in 1469. Then came Axayacatl, who
is considered to be the constructor of the famous Mexican Calendar
stone. Tizoc, his successor, hoped to win the favour of the war-god by
the reconstruction of the great Teocalli, whose service was inaugurated
by the infamous Ahuizotl in 1487 and at whose dedication an appalling
number of human sacrifices were made. Then at the beginning of 1500 the
throne was ascended by Montezuma the Second, who further extended the
beauty and power of the Aztec capital, but who, vacillating and weighed
down by the fear of destiny, lived but to witness the beginning of the
fall of Mexico before the Spaniards in 1519. The brave Guatemoc, the
last of his line, strove vainly to uphold the dynasty against the
invaders.
There is no doubt that the Aztecs created a remarkable centre of
semi-barbaric civilisation, and the descriptions given by the Spanish
historians--whether those who accompanied Cortes, as Bernal Diaz, or
those who drew their colouring from these accounts--are such as to
arouse the interest and enthusiasm even of the reader of to-day. In
this connection, of course, it is to be recollected that Cortes and his
followers were not all men of education or trained knowledge of the
great cities of the civilised world, and there is no doubt that they
lacked somewhat the faculty of comparison, and over-estimated what they
beheld. Let us translate from Clavijero, a Spanish historian and Jesuit
who wrote later, and who describes the scene which the Spaniards beheld
from the summit of the great Teocalli as "many beautiful buildings,
gleaming, whitened, and burnished; the tall minarets of the temples
scattered over the various quarters of the city; the canals; verdant
plantations and gardens--all forming a beautiful whole which the
Spaniards never ceased to admire, especially observing it from the
summits of the great temples which dominated not only the city
immediately below, but its environs and the large towns beyond. No less
marvellous were the royal palaces and the infinite variety of plants
and animals kept there; but nothing caused them greater admiration than
the great market plaza." "Not a Spaniard of them," according to Bernal
Diaz, the soldier-historian of the Conquest, who was there and saw it
all, although he wrote about it long afterwards, "but held it in high
praise, and some of them who had journeyed among European cities swore
they had never seen so vast a concourse of merchants and merchandise."
Returning to our history, it is not to be supposed that this powerful
Aztec nation, with their fine capital of Tenochtitlan, were the only
people inhabiting the land of Anahuac at that time. Several other
peoples held sway there. On the eastern side of Lake Texcoco, a few
leagues away, lived the Texcocans, already mentioned; one of the tribes
who also had come "from the north" in early days and who had settled
there. They also had developed or inherited a civilisation akin to that
of the Toltecs, far more refined and important than that of their
neighbours and kindred, the Aztecs. It was about the end of the twelfth
century when the Texcocans established themselves, building a splendid
capital and developing an extensive empire. But misfortune fell upon
them as the centuries went on. Soon after the beginning of the
fifteenth century they were attacked and overwhelmed by the Tepanecas,
another of the seven kindred tribes: their city reduced and their
monarch assassinated. But there arose a picturesque figure, the saviour
of his country--Prince Nezahualcoyotl, son of the dead king. The prince
passed years in disguise, as a fugitive, but at length was permitted to
return to the capital, where he led a life of study. But his talents
aroused the jealousy of the Tepanec usurper, who saw a danger of the
people acclaiming him as their rightful lord and throwing off the yoke
of the strangers. Nezahualcoyotl again became a fugitive, having
escaped with his life by a stratagem, disappearing through a cloud of
incense into a secret passage. But as the years went on the Texcocans,
goaded to revolt by grievous taxation, arose: and seizing the moment,
the outlawed prince put himself at the head of his people and regained
his rightful position, largely with the assistance of the neighbouring
Mexicans of Tenochtitlan.
Then followed what has been termed the golden age of Texcoco. Its art,
poets, and historians became renowned throughout Anahuac, and its
collected literature was the centre of historical lore. Indeed, this it
was that was so perversely destroyed by the first Archbishop of Mexico,
Zumarraga, after the Conquest--an irremediable loss. The prince or
emperor was a philosopher and a poet, and he has left some remarkable
examples of his philosophical prayers to the "Unknown God," in whom he
believed, abhorring the human sacrifices of his neighbours the Aztecs.
He has been termed the "Solomon of Anahuac," although the severe code
of laws he instituted have earned him a harsher name in addition.
Under this _regime_ agriculture prospered exceedingly, and a large
population cultivated all the available ground, just as under the Incas
of Peru the Andine slopes were terraced and cultivated. Splendid
buildings were erected, and a style of luxurious living inaugurated
somewhat after the fashion of Oriental history, and the descriptions of
the magnificence of the royal appurtenances fill pages of the
historians' accounts. Most of this history was written by the famous
Ixtlilxochitl, son of this great emperor, who occupied the throne at
the time of the Conquest and became an ally of the Spaniards against
the Aztec. It is upon the writings of this prince-historian that much
of the material of the later writers of the history of Mexico and the
Conquest is founded.
In the construction of his palaces and buildings Nezahualcoyotl
employed vast bodies of natives, after the manner of an Egyptian
potentate of old. Baths, hanging-gardens, groves of cedar, harems,
villas, temples formed the beautiful and luxurious Texcotzinco, the
prince's residence, as described by its historian. To-day the mounds
and _debris_ of sculptured stone which formed the place scarcely arrest
the traveller's attention. In the midst of his luxury the emperor fell
a prey to a passion for the betrothed of one of his subjects, a
beautiful maiden. The unhappy individual who had thus become his
monarch's rival--he was a veteran chief in the army--was needlessly
sent on a military expedition, where he fell, and the hand of his
promised bride was free for the monarch's taking. So was enacted upon
these high regions of Anahuac a tragic episode, as of David and Uriah,
to the blemish of an otherwise noble name and of a mind above the
superstitions of his time.
"Truly, the gods which I adore; idols of stone and wood: speak not, nor
feel, neither could they fashion the beauty of the heavens--the sun,
the moon, and the stars ... nor yet the earth and the streams, the
trees and the plants which beautify it. Some powerful, hidden, and
unknown God must be the Creator of the universe, and he alone can
console me in my affliction or still the bitter anguish of this
heart."[6] So spake Nezahualcoyotl.
[Footnote 6: I have translated this from the Spanish of Ixtlilxochitl
as quoted by Prescott.--C. R. E.]
Urged probably by the feelings of the philosopher (whose ponderings on
the infinite may occasion him more anguish perhaps than the ordinary
vicissitudes of life), the monarch raised up a temple to the "Unknown
God," in which neither images nor sacrifices were permitted.
After somewhat more than half a century of his reign, and at a time
calculated as the beginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth
century, this remarkable philosopher-king died, and was succeeded by
his son Nezahualpilli, who in a measure followed in his father's
footsteps. But he also passed away, his life having been overshadowed
to some extent by the singular belief or prediction of the fall of his
people in the coming of the white man from the East--a belief which
influenced both the Texcocans and the Aztecs. His son Ixtlilxochitl,
the historian above named, was in power at the time of the conquest by
the Spaniards, but he hated the Aztecs with a bitter hatred in
consequence of their influence upon his people, and the installing by
the machinations of Montezuma of an elder brother upon the throne,
which had plunged the kingdom into civil war. This was in the second
decade of the sixteenth century.
The Texcocans, in conjunction with yet another and smaller people
living on the west side of the lake at Tlacopan, formed with the Aztecs
a confederation or triple alliance of three republics, by which they
agreed to stand together against all comers, and to divide all
territory and results of conquest in agreed proportion. They carried on
war and annexation around them for a considerable period, extending
their sway far beyond the Valley of Mexico, or Anahuac, which formed
their home, passing the Sierra Madre mountains to the east, until about
the middle of the fifteenth century--under Montezuma--the land and
tribes acknowledging their sway reached to the shores of the Gulf of
Mexico. To the south their arms and influence penetrated into what are
now Guatemala and Nicaragua, whilst to the west they exercised
sovereignty to the shores of the Pacific.
[Illustration: THE LAND OF THE AZTEC CONQUEST: MAIZE FIELDS NEAR
ESPERANZA, STATE OF PUEBLA.]
These conquered territories were not necessarily of easy subjugation.
On the contrary, they were plentifully inhabited by races of
warrior-peoples, many of them with strong and semi-civilised social and
military organisations. The analogy between this confederation of the
Aztecs and the extending area of their dominion and civilisation, and
the Incas of the Titicaca plateau of Peru, surrounded on all sides by
savage warlike tribes, presents itself to the observer in this as in
other respects. Like the Incas, the Aztec emperors[7] returned from
campaign after campaign loaded with trophies and embarrassed with
strings of captives from the vanquished peoples who had dared oppose
this powerful confederation. The rich tropical regions of both the
eastern and western slopes of the tableland of Anahuac thus paid
tribute to the Aztecs, as well as the boundless resources of the south.
[Footnote 7: Both these nations have been likened to the Romans in this
respect.]
But not all the nations of Anahuac fell under the dominion of the
Aztecs. Far from it. The spirits of the people of Tlascala would rise
from their graves and protest against such an assertion! Tlascala was a
brave and warlike little republic of mountaineers--a kind of
Switzerland--who inhabited the western slopes of the Eastern Sierra
Madre and the eastern part of the plateau of Anahuac, under the shadow
of the mighty Malinche, whose snow-crowned head arises on the eastern
confines of the tableland. Tlascala, indeed, was a thorn in the side of
Montezuma and the Aztecs. The latter had demanded that the little
republic pay homage and tribute, and acknowledge the hegemony of the
dominant nation, to which the Tlascalans made reply, "Neither our
ancestors nor ourselves ever have or will pay tribute to any one.
Invade us if you can. We beat you once and may do it again!" or words
to that effect, as recorded by the historians. For in the past history
of the Tlascalans--who were of the same original migratory family as
the Aztecs--a great conflict had been recorded, in which they had
vanquished their arrogant kindred.
Deadly strife and hatred followed this, but Tlascala withstood all
attacks from without, and, moreover, was strengthened by an alliance
with the Otomies, a warlike race inhabiting part of the great _mesa_ or
central tableland north of Anahuac. These were the people who so
grievously harassed the Spaniards after the _Noche Triste_ and against
whom the heroic battle of Otumba was fought. Except to the east, whence
approach was easy from the coast, the territory of Tlascala was
surrounded by mountains, and this natural defence was continued by the
building of an extraordinary wall or fortification at the pregnable
point. Through this the Spaniards passed on their journey of invasion,
and, indeed, its ruins remained until the seventeenth century. The name
of the Tlascalans well deserves to be written on the pages of the
history of primitive Mexico, for it was largely due to their alliance
with the Spaniards that the conquest of Mexico by Cortes and his band
was rendered possible.
In addition to these various and petty powers and independent republics
upon the tableland of Anahuac and its slopes, must be mentioned that of
Cholula, a state to the south of Tenochtitlan, in what now is the State
of Puebla. This region, which contains the remarkable mound or pyramid
bearing its name--Cholula--the construction of which is ascribed to the
Toltecs, was, with its people, dominated by and under tribute to the
Aztecs. So was the nation of the Cempoallas, upon the Vera Cruz coast,
who rendered assistance to the landing _Conquistadores_; and, indeed,
almost all the natives of that vast region acknowledged the sway and
lived in awe of the empire of Montezuma.
It is seen that Mexico, in prehispanic times, was fairly well
populated--comparatively speaking, of course. Indeed, at the present
time there are ten times as many Indians in that part of North America
which forms modern Mexico, as ever existed in the whole of the much
vaster area which forms the United States. The inhabitants of Mexico
were divided into two main classes--those living under a civilised or
semi-civilised organisation, such as the Aztecs and others already
enumerated, and those which may be looked upon as savages. These latter
were exceedingly numerous, and at the present day something like 220
different tribal names have been enumerated. This serves to show the
wide range of peoples who inhabited the land before the Conquest,
principally as clans, or _gentiles_, as in South America also.
Having seen, thus, what were the anthropo-geographical conditions of
primitive Mexico, we may cast a brief glance at the arts and
institutions of these semi-civilised peoples. Their buildings--most
indelible records of these civilisations--cover a considerable range of
territory, as has been observed: yet the antiquities of less important
nature cover one very much greater. The true stone edifices, the real
mural remains, are, however confined to certain limits--between the
16th and 22nd parallel of north latitude--that is to say, the southern
half of Mexico. Roughly, these buildings may be divided into three
classes--_adobe_, or sun-dried earthen brick, unshaped stone and
mortar, and cut and carved stone. In some cases a combination of these
was used in the same structure. The best elements of construction do
not seem to have been used. Domes and arches were not known to these
builders, although they had a system of corbelling-out over openings,
which, in the case of the Maya "arch," approximates thereto. They also
used lintels of stone and wood, and these last were the weak points,
and their decaying has sometimes brought down part of the facade. The
work of the sculptor is crude, like that of the Incas of Peru, of which
it reminds the traveller in some cases, but shows signs of evolving
power and a sense of the beautiful, as has been averred by the most
learned antiquarians who have studied it. It is held that there were
several schools of architecture represented.
The various kinds of structures and relics found throughout the country
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