ANAHUAC

or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern

by

EDWARD B. TYLOR

1861



INTRODUCTION.

The journey and excursions in Mexico which have originated the narrative and remarks contained in this volume were made in the months of March, April, May, and June of 1856, for the most part on horseback. The author and his fellow-traveller enjoyed many advantageous opportunities of studying the country, the people, and the antiquities of Mexico, owing to the friendly assistance and hospitality which they received there. With this aid they were enabled to accomplish much more than usually falls to the lot of travellers in so limited a period; and they had the great advantage too, of being able to substantiate or correct their own observations by the local knowledge and experience of their friends and entertainers.

Visiting Mexico during a lull in the civil turmoil of that lamentably disturbed Republic, they were fortunate in being able to avail themselves of that peaceable season in making excursions to remarkable places and ruins, and examining the national collection of antiquities, and other objects of interest,—an opportunity that cannot have occurred since owing to the recommencement of civil war in its worst form.

The following are some of the chief points of interest in these Notes on Mexico, which are either new or treated more fully than hitherto:

1. The evidence of an immense ancient population, shewn by the abundance of remains of works of art (treated of at pages 146-150), is fully stated here.

2. The notices and drawings of Obsidian knives and weapons (at page 95, &c., and in the Appendix) are more ample than any previously given.

3. The treatment of the Mexican Numerals (at page 108) is partly new.

4. The proofs of the highly probable sophistication of the document in the Library at Paris, relative to Mexican eclipses, have not previously been advanced (see Appendix).

5. The notices of objects of Mexican art, &c., in the chapter on Antiquities, and elsewhere (including the Appendix), are for the most part new to the public.

6. The remarks on the connection between pure Mexican art and that of Central America, in the chapter on Xochicalco, are in great part new.

7. The singular native bridge at Tezcuco (page 153) is another novelty.

The order in which places and things were visited is shewn in the annexed Itinerary, or sketch of the journeys and excursions described.



ITINERARY:

Journey 1. Cuba. Havana. Batabano. Isles of Pines. Nueva Gerona. Banos de Santa Fe. Back to Havana. Pages 1-14.

Journey 2. Havana. Sisal. Vera Cruz. Pages 15-18.

Journey 3. Vera Cruz. Cordova. Orizaba. Huamantla. Otumba. Guadalupe. Mexico. Pages 18-38.

Journey 4. Mexico to Tacubaya and Chapultepec, and back. Pages 55-58.

Journey 5. Mexico to Santa Anita and back. Pages 59-65.

Journey 6. Mexico. Guadalupe. Pachuca. Real del Monte. Regla. Atotonilco el Grande. Soquital and back to Real del Monte. Real del Monte to Mount Jacal and Cerro de Navajas (obsidian-pits), and back to Real del Monte. Pachuca. Guadalupe. Mexico. Pages 72-105.

Journey 7. Mexico to Tisapan. Ravine of Magdalena. Pedrigal (lava-field), and back. Pages 118-120.

Journey 8. Mexico to Tezcuco. Pages 129—162. Tezcuco to Pyramids of Teotihuacan and back. Pages 136—146. Tezcuco to Tezcotzinco (the so-called "Montezuma's Bath," &c.). Aztec Bridge, and back to Tezcuco. Pages 152-153. Tezcuco to Bosque del Contador (the grove of ahuehuetes, where excavations were made.) Pages 154-156. Tezcuco to Mexico. Page 62.

Journey 9. Mexico. San Juan de Dios. La Guarda. Cuernavaca. Temisco. Xochicalco. Miacatlan. Cocoytla. Pages 172-195. Cocoytla to village and cave of Cacahuamilpan and back. Pages 196-205. Cocoytla to Chalma. Oculan. El Desierto. Tenancingo. Toluca. Lerma. Las Cruzes. Mexico. Pages 214-220.

Journey 10. Mexico to Tezcuco. Miraflores. Amecameca. Popocatepetl. San Nicolas de los Ranchos. Cholula. Puebla. Amozoque. Nopaluca. San Antonio de abajo. Orizaba. Amatlan. El Potrero. Cordova. San Andres. Chalchicomula. La Junta. Jalapa. Vera Cruz. West Indies and Home. Pages 260- 327.



TABLE OF CONTENTS.



CHAPTER I.

Cuba. Volantes. A Cuban Railway. Voyage. Passports. Isle of Pines. Mosquitos. Pirates. Runaway slaves. Baths of Santa Fe. Alligators. The Cura. Missionary Priest. Florida Colonists. Blacks in the West Indies. Chinese and African slaves.



CHAPTER II.

Players and Political Adventurers. Voyage. Yucatan. Slave-trade in Natives. The Ten Tribes. Vera Cruz. Don Ignacio Comonfort. Mexican Politics. Casualties. The City of the Dead. Turkey-buzzards. Northers. The "temperate region." Cordova. The Chipi-chipi. The "cold region." Mirage. Sand-pillars. The rainy season. Plundered passengers. Robber-priest. Aztec remains. Aloe-fields. Houses of mud-bricks. Huts of aloes. Mexican churches. Mexican roads. Making pulque.



CHAPTER III.

Palace-hotel of Yturbide. Site and building of Mexico. Changes in the Valley of Mexico. Dearth of Trees. Architecture. Drunkenness. Fights. Rattles. Judas's Bones. Burning Judas. Churches in Holy Week. Streets. Barricades. People. Women. The cypress of Chapultepec. Old-fashioned coaches. The canal of Chalco. Canoe-travelling. "Reasonable people." Taste for flowers. The "Floating Gardens." Promenade. Flooded streets. Earthquakes.



CHAPTER IV.

Tacubaya. Humming-birds and butterflies. Aztec feather-work. Bullfight. Lazoing and colearing. English in Mexico. Hedge of organ-cactus. Pachuca. Cold in the hills. Rapid evaporation. Mountain-roads. Real del Monte. Guns and pistols. Regla. The father-confessor in Mexico. Morals of servitude. Cornish miners. Dram-drinking. Salt-trade. The Indian market. Indian Conservatism. Sardines. Account-keeping. The great Barranca. Tropical fruits. Prickly pears. Their use. The "Water-Throat." Silver-works. Volcano of Jorullo. Cascade of Regla. "Eyes of Water." Fires. The Hill of Knives. Obsidian implements. Obsidian mines. The Stone-age. The loadstone-mountain of Mexico. Unequal Civilization of the Aztecs. Silver and commerce of Mexico. Effect of Protection-duties. Silver mines. The Aztec numerals.



CHAPTER V.

A Revolution. Siege and Capitulation of Puebla. Military Statistics. Highway-robbery. Reform in Mexico. The American war. Mexican army. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Miracles. The rival Virgins. Sacred lottery-ticket. Literature in Mexico. The clergy and their system of Education in Mexico. The Holy Office. Indian Notions of Christianity.



CHAPTER VI.

To Tezcuco. Indian Canoes. Sewer-canal. Water-snakes. Salt-lakes. A storm on the lake. Glass-works. Casa Grande. Quarries. Stone Hammers. Use of Bronze in stone-cutting in Mexico and Egypt. Prickly Pears. Temple-pyramids of Teotihuacan. Sacrifice of Spaniards. Old Mexico. Market of Antiquities. Police. Bull-dogs. Accumulation of Alluvium. Tezcotzinco. Ancient baths and bridge. Salt and salt-pans. Fried flies'-eggs. Water-pipes. Irrigation. Agriculture in Mexico. History repeats itself.



CHAPTER VII.

Horses and their training. Saddles and bits. The Courier. Leather clothes. The Serape. The Rag-fair of Mexico, Thieves. Gourd water-bottles. Ploughing. Travelling by Diligence. Indian carriers. Mules. Breakfast. Bragadoccio. Robbers. Escort. Cuernavaca. Tropical Vegetation. Sugar-cane. Temisco. Sugar-hacienda. Indian labourers. The evensong. The Raya. Strength of the Indians. Xochicalco. Ruins of the Pyramid. Sculptures. Common ornaments. The people of Mexico and Central America. Their civilization. Pear-shaped heads. Miacatlan.



CHAPTER VIII.

Cocoyotla. Indian labourers. Political Condition of the Indians. Indian Village and huts. Cotton-spinning. The Indian Alcalde. Great Cave of Cacahuamilpan. Optical phenomenon. Monk on horseback. Religion of the Indians. Idols. Baptism by wholesale. Village amusements. Dancing. Chalma. The meson and the convent. Church-dances. The miller's daughter. Young friar. The Hill of Drums. Sacred cypress-tree. Oculan. Change of climate. Grain-districts of Mexico. The Desierto. Tenancingo. Toluca. Lerma. Robbers.



CHAPTER IX.

Museum. Fate of Antiquities. War-God. Sacrificial Stone. Mexican words naturalized in Europe, &c. Chamber of Horrors. Aztec Art. Wooden Drums. Aztec Picture-writings. The "Man-flaying" Mr. Uhde's Collection. Mr. Christy's Collection. Bones of Giants. Cortes' Armour. Mexican Calendar-stone. Aztec Astronomy. Mongol Calendar. Peculiarities of Aztec Civilization. The Prison at Mexico. No "Criminal class." Prison-discipline. The Garotte. Mexican law-courts. Statistics. The Compadrazgo. Leperos and Lepers. Lazoing the bull. Cockfighting. Gambling. Monte. The fortunate Miners.



CHAPTER X.

A travelling companion. Mexicans who live by their wits. Jackal-masks, &c. Mexican words used in the United States. Miraflores. Cotton-factory. Sacred Mount and Cypress-tree. Rainy Season. Ascent of Popocatepetl. The Crater. View of Anahuac. Descent from Popocatepetl. Plain of Puebla. Snow-blindness. Hospitable Shopkeeper. Morality of Smuggling. Pyramid and Antiquities of Cholula. Hybrid Legends of Mexico. Genuine Legends. Old-world analogies among the Aztecs.



CHAPTER XI.

Puebla. The Pasadizos. Revolutions in Mexico. Festival of Corpus Christi. Mexican clergy. Their incomes and morals. Scourging. Religion of the People. Anomalous constitution of the Republic. The horse-bath. Debt-slaves or peons. Great fortunes in Mexico. Amozoque. Spurs. Nopalucan. Orizaba. Robbers. Locusts. Indian village. Inroads of Civilization. Lawsuits. Native Aristocracy. The vapour-bath. Scanty population. Its explanation. Unhealthy habits. Epidemics. Intemperance. Pineapples. Potrero. Negros. Mixed races. "Painted men."



CHAPTER XII.

Barrancas. Indian trotting. Flowers. Armadillo. Fire-flies. Singular Fandango. Epiphytes. The Junta. Indian Life. Decorative Art. Horses. Jalapa. Anglo-Mexicans. Insect-life. Monte. Fate of Antonio. Scorpion. White Negress. Cattle. Artificial lighting. Vera Cruz. Further Journey. St. Thomas's. Voyage to England. Future destinies of Mexico.



APPENDIX.

I. The Manufacture of Obsidian Knives. II. On the Solar Eclipses recorded in the Le Tellier MS. III. Table of Aztec roots. IV. Glossary. V. Ancient Mexican mosaic work (in Mr. Christy's Collection). VI. Dasent's Essay on the Ethnographical value of Popular Tales and Legends.



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:

PLATES:

Cascade of Regla. From a photograph by J. Bell, Esq. (To face title-page.)

Porter and Baker in Mexico.

Indians bringing Country Produce to Market.

Indians in a Rancho, making and baking Tortillas.

Map to illustrate Messrs. Tylor and Christy's journeys and excursions In Mexico.



WOODCUTS:

(The cuts of smaller objects of antiquity, and articles at present in use, have been drawn from specimens in the Collection of Henry Christy, Esq.)

Indian Tlachiquero, collecting juice of the Agave for Pulque.

View of Part of the Valley of Mexico.

Water-carrier and Mexican Woman at the Fountain.

Group of Mexican Ecclesiastics.

Stone Spear-heads, and Obsidian Knives and Arrow-heads, from Mexico.

Fluted Prism of Obsidian, and Knife-flakes.

Mexican Arrow-heads of Obsidian.

Aztec Stone-knife, with wooden handle, inlaid with mosaic work.

Aztec Head in Terra-cotta.

The Rebozo and the Serape.

Aztec Bridge near Tezcuco.

Spanish-Mexican Saddle and appendages.

Spanish-Mexican Bit, with ring and chain.

Sculptured Panel, from Xochicalco. (After Nebel).

Small Aztec Head in Terra-cotta.

Ixtacalco Church.

Spanish-Mexican Spurs.

Goddess of War. (After Nebel).

Three Views of a Sacrificial Collar or Clamp, carved out of hard stone.

Two Views of a Mask, carved out of hard stone.

Ancient Bronze Bells.

Spanish-Mexican Cock-spurs.

Leather Sandals.

Mexican Costumes. (After Nebel).

View of Orizaba.

Indians of the Plateau. (After Nebel).



CHAPTER I.



THE ISLE OF PINES.

In the spring of 1856, I met with Mr. Christy accidentally in an omnibus at Havana. He had been in Cuba for some months, leading an adventurous life, visiting sugar-plantations, copper-mines, and coffee-estates, descending into caves, and botanizing in tropical jungles, cruising for a fortnight in an open boat among the coral-reefs, hunting turtles and manatis, and visiting all sorts of people from whom information was to be had, from foreign consuls and Lazarist missionaries down to retired slave-dealers and assassins.

As for myself, I had been travelling for the best part of a year in the United States, and had but a short time since left the live-oak forests and sugar-plantations of Louisiana. We agreed to go to Mexico together; and the present notes are principally compiled from our memorandum-books, and from letters written home on our journey.

Before we left Cuba, however, we made one last excursion across the island, and to the Isla de Pinos—the Isle of Pines—off the southern coast. A volante took us to the railway-station. The volante is the vehicle which the Cubans specially affect; it is like a Hansom cab, but the wheels are much taller, six and a half feet high, and the black driver sits postillion-wise upon the horse. Our man had a laced jacket, black leather leggings, and a pair of silver spurs fastened upon his bare feet, which seemed at a little distance to have well polished boots on, they were so black and shiny.

The railway which took us from Havana to Batabano had some striking peculiarities. For a part of the way the track passed between two walls of tropical jungle. The Indian fig trees sent down from every branch suckers, like smooth strings, which rooted themselves in the ground to draw up more water. Acacias and mimosas, the seiba and the mahagua, with other hard-wood trees innumerable, crowded close to one another; while epiphytes perched on every branch, and creepers bound the whole forest into a compact mass of vegetation, through which no bird could fly. We could catch the strings of convolvulus with our walking-sticks, as the train passed through the jungle. Sometimes we came upon a swamp, where clusters of bamboos were growing, crowned with tufts of pointed leaves; or had a glimpse for a moment of a group of royal palms upon the rising ground.

We passed sugar-plantations with their wide cane-fields, the sugar-houses with tall chimneys, and the balconied house of the administrador, keeping a sharp look out over the village of negro-cabins, arranged in double lines.

In the houses near the stations where we stopped, cigar-making seemed to be the universal occupation. Men, women, and children were sitting round tables hard at work. It made us laugh to see the black men rolling up cigars upon the hollow of their thighs, which nature has fashioned into a curve exactly suited to this process.

At Batabano the steamer was waiting at the pier, and our passports and ourselves were carefully examined by the captain, for Cuba is the paradise of passport offices, and one cannot stir without a visa. For once everybody was en regle, and we had no such scene as my companion had witnessed a few days before.

If you are a married man resident in Cuba, you cannot get a passport to go to the next town without your wife's permission in writing. Now it so happened that a respectable brazier, who lived at Santiago de Cuba, wanted to go to Trinidad. His wife would not consent; so he either got her signature by stratagem, or, what is more likely, gave somebody something to get him a passport under false pretences.

At any rate he was safe on board the steamer, when a middle-aged female, well dressed, but evidently arrayed in haste, and with a face crimson with hard running, came panting down to the steamer, and rushed on board. Seizing upon the captain, she pointed out her husband, who had taken refuge behind the other passengers at a respectful distance; she declared that she had never consented to his going away, and demanded that his body should be instantly delivered up to her. The husband was appealed to, but preferred staying where he was. The captain produced the passport, perfectly en regle, and the lady made a rush at the document, which was torn in half in the scuffle. All other means failing, she made a sudden dash at her husband, probably intending to carry him off by main force. He ran for his life, and there was a steeplechase round the deck, among benches, bales, and coils of rope; while the passengers and the crew cheered first one and then the other, till they could not speak for laughing. The husband was all but caught once; but a benevolent passenger kicked a camp-stool in the lady's way, and he got a fresh start, which he utilized by climbing up the ladder to the paddle-box. His wife tried to follow him, but the shouts of laughter which the black men raised at seeing her performances were too much for her, and she came down again. Here the captain interposed, and put her ashore, where she stood like black-eyed Susan till the vessel was far from the wharf, not waving her lily hand, however, but shaking her clenched fist in the direction of the fugitive.

To return to our voyage to the Isle of Pines.—All the afternoon the steamer threaded her way cautiously among the coral-reefs which rose almost to the surface. Sometimes there seemed scarcely room to pass between them, and by night navigation would have been impossible. We were just in the place where Columbus and his companions arrived on their expedition along the Cuban coast, to find out what countries lay beyond. They sailed by day, and lay to at night, till their patience was worn out. Another day or two of sailing would have brought them to where the coast trends northwards; but they turned back, and Columbus died in the belief that Cuba was the eastern extremity of the continent of Asia.

The Spaniards call these reefs "cayos," and we have altered the name to "keys," such as Key West in Florida, and Ambergris Key off Belize.

It was after sunset, and the phosphorescent animals were making the sea glitter like molten metal, when we reached the Isle of Pines, and steamed slowly up the river, among the mangroves that fringe the banks, to the village of Nueva Gerona, the port of the island. It consisted of two rows of houses thatched with palm-leaves, and surrounded by wide verandahs; and between them a street of unmitigated mud.

As we walked through the place in the dusk, we could dimly discern the inhabitants sitting in their thatched verandahs, in the thinnest of white dresses, gossipping, smoking, and love-making, tinkling guitars, and singing seguidillas. It was quite a Spanish American scene out of a romance. There was no romance about the mosquitos, however. The air was alive with them. When I was new to Cuba, I used to go to bed in the European fashion; and as the beds were all six inches too short, my feet used to find their way out in the night, and the mosquitos came down and sat upon them. Experience taught us that it was better to lie down half-dressed, so that only our faces and hands were exposed to their attacks.

The Isle of Pines used to be the favourite resort of the pirates of the Spanish main; indeed there were no other inhabitants. The creeks and rivers being lined with the densest vegetation, a few yards up the winding course of such a creek, they were lost in the forest, and a cruiser might pass within a few yards of their lurking-place, and see no traces of them. Captain Kyd often came here, and stories of his buried treasures are still told among the inhabitants. Now the island serves a double purpose; it is a place of resort for the Cubans, who come to rusticate and bathe, and it serves as a settlement for those free black inhabitants of Florida who chose to leave that country when it was given up to the United States. One of these Floridanos accompanied us as our guide next day to the Banos de Santa Fe.

When we left the village we passed near the mangrove trees, which were growing not only near the water but in it, and like to spread their roots among the thick black slime which accumulates so fast in this country of rapid vegetable growth, and as rapid decomposition. In Cuba, the mangoe is the abomination of the planters, for they supply the runaway slaves with food, upon which they have been known to subsist for months, whilst the mangroves give them shelter. A little further inland we found the guava, a thick-spreading tree, with smooth green leaves. From its fruit is made guava-jelly, but as yet it was not ripe enough to eat.

In the middle of the island we came upon marble-quarries. They are hardly worked now; but when they were first established, a number of emancipados were employed there. What emancipados are, it is worth while to explain. They are Africans taken from captured slavers, and are set to work under government inspection for a limited number of years, on a footing something like that of the apprentices in Jamaica, in the interregnum between slavery and emancipation. In Cuba it is remarked that the mortality among the emancipados is frightful. They seldom outlive their years of probation. The explanation of this piece of statistics is curious. The fact is that every now and then, when an old man dies, they bury him as one of the emancipados, whose register is sent in to the Government as dead; while the negro himself goes to work as a slave in some out-of-the-way plantation where no tales are told.

We left the marble-quarries, and rode for miles over a wide savannah. The soil was loose and sandy and full of flakes of mica, and in the watercourses were fragments of granite, brought down from the hills. Here flourished palm trees and palmettos, acacias, mimosas, and cactuses, while the mangoe and the guava tree preferred the damper patches nearer to the coast. The hills were covered with the pine-trees from which the island has its name; and on the rising ground at their base we saw the strange spectacle of palms and fir trees growing side by side.

Where we came upon a stream, the change in the vegetation was astonishing. It was a sudden transition from an English, plantation of fir trees into the jungle of the tropics, full of Indian figs, palms, lancewood, and great mahagua[1] trees, all knotted together by endless creepers and parasites; while the parrots kept up a continual chattering and screaming in the tree-tops. The moment we left the narrow strip of tropical forest that lined the stream we were in the pine wood. Here the first two or three feet of the trunks of the pine trees were scorched and blackened by the flames of the tall dry savannah-grass, which grows close round them, and catches fire several times every year. Through the pine forest the conflagration spreads unobstructed, as in an American prairie; but it only runs along the edge of the dense river-vegetation, which it cannot penetrate.

The Banos de Santa Fe are situated in a cleared space among the fir trees. The baths themselves are nothing but a cavity in the rock, into which a stream, at a temperature of about 80 deg., continually flows. A partition in the middle divides the ladies from the gentlemen, but allows them to continue their conversation while they sit and splash in their respective compartments.

The houses are even more quaint than the bathing-establishment. The whole settlement consists of a square field surrounded by little houses, each with its roof of palm leaves and indispensable verandah. Here the Cubans come to stay for months, bathing, smoking cigarettes, flirting, gossiping, playing cards, and strumming guitars; and they seemed to be all agreed on one point, that it was a delightful existence. We left them to their tranquil enjoyments, and rode back to Nueva Gerona.

Next morning we borrowed a gun from the engineer of the steamboat, and I bought some powder and shot at a shop where they kept two young alligators under the counter for the children to play with. The creeks and lagoons of the island are full of them, and the negroes told us that in a certain lake not far off there lived no less a personage than "the crocodile king"—"el rey de los crocodilos;" but we had no time to pay his majesty a visit. Two of the Floridan negroes rowed us up the river. Even at some distance from the mouth, sting-rays and jelly-fish were floating about. As we rowed upwards, the banks were overhung with the densest vegetation. There were mahogany trees with their curious lop-sided leaves, the copal-plant with its green egg-like fruit, from which copal oozes when it is cut, like opium from a poppy-head, palms with clusters of oily nuts, palmettos, and guavas. When a palm-tree on the river-bank would not grow freely for the crowding of other trees, it would strike out in a slanting direction till it reached the clear space above the river, and then shoot straight upwards with its crown of leaves.

We shot a hawk and a woodpecker, and took them home; but, not many minutes after we had laid them on the tiled floor of our room, we became aware that we were invaded. The ants were upon us. They were coming by thousands in a regular line of march up our window-sill and down again inside, straight towards the birds. When we looked out of the window, there was a black stripe lying across the court-yard on the flags, a whole army of them coming. We saw it was impossible to get the skins of the birds, so threw them out of the window, and the advanced guard faced about and followed them.

On the sand in front of the village the Castor-oil plant flourished, the Palma Christi; its little nuts were ripe, and tasted so innocent that, undeterred by the example of the boy in the Swiss Family Robinson, I ate several, and was handsomely punished for it. In the evening I recounted my ill-advised experiment to the white-jacketed loungers in the verandah of the inn, and was assured that I must have eaten an odd number! The second nut, they told me with much gravity, counteracts the first, the fourth neutralizes the third, and so on ad infinitum.

We made two clerical acquaintances in the Isle of Pines. One was the Cura of New Gerona, and his parentage was the only thing remarkable about him. He was not merely the son of a priest, but his grandfather was a priest also.

The other was a middle-aged ecclesiastic, with a pleasant face and an unfailing supply of good-humoured fun. Everybody seemed to get acquainted with him directly, and to become quite confidential after the first half-hour; and a drove of young men followed him about everywhere. His reverence kept up the ball of conversation continually, and showed considerable skill in amusing his auditors and drawing them out in their turn. It is true the jokes which passed seemed to us mild, but they appeared to suit the public exactly; and indeed, the Padre was quite capable of providing better ones when there was a market for them.

We found that though a Spaniard by birth, he had been brought up at the Lazarist College in Paris, which we know as the training-school of the French missionaries in China; and we soon made friends with him, as everyone else did. A day or two afterwards we went to see him in Havana, and found him hard at his work, which was the superintendence of several of the charitable institutions of the city—the Foundling Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum, and others. His life was one of incessant labour, and indeed people said he was killing himself with over-work, but he seemed always in the same state of chronic hilarity; and when he took us to see the hospitals, the children and patients received him with demonstrations of great delight.

I should not have said so much of our friend the Padre, were it not that I think there is a moral to be got out of him. I believe he may be taken as a type, not indeed of Roman Catholic missionaries in general, but of a certain class among them, who are of considerable importance in the missionary world, though there are not many of them. Taking the Padre as a sample of his class, as I think we may—judging from the accounts of them we meet with in books, it is curious to notice, how the point in which their system is strongest is just that in which the Protestant system is weakest, that is, in social training and deportment. What a number of men go to India with the best intentions, and set to work at once, flinging their doctrines at the natives before they have learnt in the least to understand what the said natives' minds are like, or how they work,—dropping at once upon their pet prejudices, mortally offending them as a preliminary step towards arguing with them; and in short, stroking the cat of society backwards in the most conscientious manner. By the time they have accomplished this satisfactory result, a man like our Cuban Padre, though he may have argued but little and preached even less, would have a hundred natives bound to him by strong personal attachment, and ready to accept anything from him in the way of teaching.

We paid a regular round of visits to the Floridan settlers, and were delighted with their pleasant simple ways. It is not much more than thirty years since they left Florida, and many of the children born since have learnt to speak English. The patches of cultivated land round their cottages produce, with but little labour, enough vegetables for their subsistence, and to sell, procuring clothing and such luxuries as they care for. They seemed to live happily among themselves, and to govern their little colony after the manner of the Patriarchs.

Whether any social condition can be better for the black inhabitants of the West Indies, than that of these settlers, I very much doubt. They are not a hard-working people, it is true; but hard work in the climate of the tropics is unnatural, and can only be brought about by unnatural means. That they are not sunk in utter laziness one can see by their neat cottages and trim gardens. Their state does not correspond with the idea of prosperity of the political economist, who would have them work hard to produce sugar, rum, and tobacco, that they might earn money to spend in crockery and Manchester goods; but it is suited to the race and to the climate. If we measure prosperity by the enjoyment of life, their condition is an enviable one.

I think no unprejudiced observer can visit the West Indies without seeing the absurdity of expecting the free blacks to work like slaves, as though any inducement but the strongest necessity would ever bring it about. There are only two causes which can possibly make the blacks industrious, in our sense of the word,—slavery, or a population so crowded as to make labour necessary to supply their wants.

In one house in the Floridan colony we found a menage which was surprising to me, after my experience of the United States. The father of the family was a white man, a Spaniard, and his wife a black woman. They received us with the greatest hospitality, and we sat in the porch for a long time, talking to the family. One or two of the mulatto daughters were very handsome; and there were some visitors, young white men from the neighbouring village, who were apparently come to pay their devoirs to the young ladies. Such marriages are not uncommon in Cuba; and the climate of the island is not unfavourable for the mixed negro and European race, while to the pure whites it is deadly. The Creoles of the country are a poor degenerate race, and die out in the fourth generation. It is only by intermarriage with Europeans, and continual supplies of emigrants from Europe, that the white population is kept up.

On the morning of our departure we climbed a high lull of limestone, covered in places with patches of a limestone-breccia, cemented with sandstone, and filling the cavities in the rock. All over the hill we found doubly refracting Iceland-spar in quantities. Euphorbias, in Europe mere shrubs, were here smooth-limbed trees, with large flowers. From the top of the hill, the character of the savannahs was well displayed. Every water-course could be traced by its narrow line of deep green forest, contrasting with the scantier vegetation of the rest of the plain.

As we steamed out of the river, rows of brilliant red flamingos were standing in the shallow water, fishing, and here and there a pelican with his ungainly beak. Our Chinese crew were having their meal of rice when we walked forward, and the national chopsticks were hard at work. We talked to several of them. They could all speak a little Spanish, and were very intelligent.

The history of these Chinese emigrants is a curious one. Agents in China persuade them to come out, and they sign a contract to work for eight years, receiving from three to five dollars a month, with their food and clothing. The sum seems a fortune to them; but, when they come to Cuba, they find to their cost that the value of money must be estimated by what it will buy. They find that the value of a black labourer is thirty dollars a month, and they have practically sold themselves for slaves; for there is no one to prevent the masters who have bought the contract for their work from treating them in all respects as slaves. The value of such a contract—that is, of the Chinaman himself, was from L30 to L40 when we were in the island. Fortunately for them, they cannot bear the severe plantation-work. Some die after a few days of such labour and exposure, and many more kill themselves; and the utter indifference with which they commit suicide, as soon as life seems not worth having, contributes to moderate the exactions of their masters. A friend of ours in Cuba had a Chinese servant who was impertinent one day, and his master turned him out of the room, dismissing him with a kick. The other servants woke their master early next morning, with the intelligence that the Chinese had killed himself in the night, to expiate the insult he had received.

Of African slaves brought into the island, the yearly number is about 15,000. All the details of the trade are matter of general notoriety, even to the exact sum paid to each official as hush-money. It costs a hundred dollars for each negro, they say, of which a gold ounce (about L3 16s.) is the share of the Captain-general. To this must be added the cost of the slave in Africa, and the expense of the voyage; but when the slave is once fairly on a plantation he is worth eight hundred dollars; so it may be understood how profitable the trade still is, if only one slaver out of three gets through.

The island itself with its creeks and mangrove-trees is most favourable for their landing, if they can once make the shore; and the Spanish cruisers will not catch them if they can help it. If a British cruiser captures them, the negroes are made emancipados in the way I have already explained.

Hardly any country in the world is so thoroughly in a false position as England in her endeavours to keep down the Cuban slave-trade, with the nominal concurrence of the Spanish government, and the real vigorous opposition of every Spaniard on the island, from the Captain-General downwards. Even the most superficial observer who lands for an hour or two in Havana, while his steamer is taking in coals, can have evidence of the slave-trade brought before his eyes in the tattooed faces of native Africans, young and middle-aged, in the streets and markets; just as he can guess, from the scored backs of the negroes, what sort of discipline is kept up among them.

We slept on board the steamboat off the pier of Batabano, and the railway took us back to Havana next morning.



CHAPTER II.



HAVANA TO VERA CRUZ—VERA CRUZ TO MEXICO.

On the 8th of March, we went on board the "Mejico" steamer, American-built, and retaining her American engineers, but in other respects converted into a Spanish vessel, and now lying in the harbour of Havana bound for Vera Cruz, touching at Sisal in Yucatan. At eight o'clock we weighed anchor, and were piloted through the narrow passage which leads out of the harbour past the castle of El Morro and the fort of Cabanas, the view of whose ramparts and batteries caused quite a flourish of trumpets among our Spanish fellow-passengers, who firmly believe in their impregnability.

Among our fellow-passengers were a company of fifth-rate comedians, going to Merida by way of Sisal. There was nothing interesting to us about them. Theatrical people and green-room slang vary but little over the whole civilized world. There were two or three Spanish and French tradesmen going back to Mexico. They talked of nothing but the dangers of the road, and not without reason as it proved, for they were all robbed before they got home. Several of the rest were gamblers or political adventurers, or both, for the same person very often unites the two professions out here. Spain and the Spanish American Republics produce great numbers of these people, just as Missouri breeds border-ruffians and sympathizers. But the ruffian is a good fellow in comparison with these well-dressed, polite scoundrels, who could have given Fielding a hint or two he would have been glad of for the characters of Mr. Jonathan Wild and his friend the Count.

On the morning of the third day of our voyage we reached Sisal, and as soon as the captain would let us we went ashore, in a canoe that was like a flat wooden box. This said captain was a Catalan, and a surly fellow, and did not take the trouble to disguise the utter contempt he felt for our inquisitive ways, which he seemed quite to take pleasure in thwarting. It was the only place we were to see in Yucatan, a country whose name is associated with ideas of tropical fruits, where you must cut your forest-path with a machete, and of vast ruins of deserted temples and cities, covered up with a mass of dense vegetation. But here there was nothing of this kind. Sisal is a miserable little town, standing on the shore, with a great salt-marsh behind it. It has a sort of little jetty, which constitutes its claim to the title of port; and two or three small merchant-vessels were lying there, taking in cargoes of logwood (the staple product of the district), mahogany, hides, and deerskins. The sight of these latter surprised us; but we found on enquiry that numbers of deer as well as horned cattle inhabit the thinly-peopled districts round the shores of the Mexican Gulf, and flourish in spite of the burning climate, except when a year of drought comes, which kills them off by thousands.

One possible article of export we examined as closely as opportunity would allow, namely, the Indian inhabitants. There they are, in every respect the right article for trade:—brown-skinned, incapable of defending themselves, strong, healthy, and industrious; and the creeks and mangrove-swamps of Cuba only three days' sail off. The plantations and mines that want one hundred thousand men to bring them into full work, and swallow aborigines, Chinese, and negroes indifferently—anything that has a dark skin, and can be made to work—would take these Yucatecos in any quantity, and pay well for them. And once on a sugar-estate or down a mine, when their sham registers are regularly made out, and the Governor has had his ounce of gold apiece for passing them, and his subordinates their respective rights, who shall get them out again, or even find them?

This idea struck us as we sat looking at the Indians hard at work, loading and unloading; and finding an intelligent Spaniard, we fell to talking with him. Indians had been carried off to Cuba, he said, but very few, none since 1854, when two Englishmen came to the coast with a schooner on pretence of trading, and succeeded in getting clear off with a cargo of seventy-two natives on board. But being caught in a heavy gale of wind, they put in for safety—of all places in the world—into the British part of Belize. There some one found out what their cargo consisted of, the vessel was seized, the Indians sent back, and the two adventurers condemned to hard labour, one for four years, the other for two and a half. In a place where the fatigue and exposure of drill and mounting guard is death to a European soldier, this was most likely a way of inflicting capital punishment, slow, but pretty sure.[2]

When the Spaniards came to these countries, as soon as they had leisure to ask themselves what could be the origin of the people they found there, the answer came at once, "the lost tribes of Israel," of course. And as we looked at these grave taciturn men, with their brown complexions, bright eyes, and strikingly aquiline noses, it did not seem strange that this belief should have been generally held, considering the state of knowledge on such matters in those days. We English found the ten tribes in the Red men of the north; Jews have written books in Hebrew for their own people, to make known to them that the rest of their race had been found in the mountains of Chili, retaining unmistakable traces of their origin and conversing fluently in Hebrew; and but lately they turned up, collected together and converted to Christianity, on the shores of the Caspian. The last two theories have their supporters at the present day. Crude as most of these ideas are, one feels a good deal of interest in the first inquiry that set men thinking seriously about the origin of races, and laid the foundation of the science of ethnology.

Our return on board was a long affair, for there was a stiff breeze, almost in our teeth; and our unwieldy craft was obliged to make tack after tack before we could reach the steamer. Great Portuguese men-of-war were floating about, waiting for prey; and we passed through patches of stringy gulf-weed, trailing out into long ropes. The water was hot, the thermometer standing at 84 deg. when we dipped it over the side.

On the morning of the 12th, when we went on deck, there was a grand sight displayed before us. No shore visible, but a heavy bank of clouds on the horizon; and, high above them, towering up into the sky, the snowy summit of Orizaba, a hundred and fifty miles off.

Before noon, we are entering the harbour of Vera Cruz. The little island and fort of San Juan de Ulua just opposite the wharfs, the island of Sacrificios a little farther to the left. A level line of city-wall along the water's edge; and, visible above it, the flat roofs of the houses, and the towers and cupolas of many churches. All grey stone, only relieved by the colored Spanish tiles on the church-roofs, and a flag or two in the harbour. Not a scrap of vegetation to be seen, and the rays of a tropical sun pouring down upon us.

Established in the Casa de Diligencias, we deliberated as to our journey to Mexico. The diligences to the capital, having been stopped for some months on account of the disturbed state of the country, had just begun to run again, avoiding Puebla, which was being besieged. We were anxious to be off at once; but Mr. Christy sagaciously remarking that the robbers would know of the arrival of the steamer, and would probably take the first diligence that came afterwards, we booked our places for the day after.

We were very kindly received by the English merchants to whom my companion had letters, and we set ourselves to learn what was the real state of things in Mexico.

On an average, the Presidency of the Republic of Mexico had changed hands once every eight months for the last ten years; and Don Ignacio Comonfort had stepped into the office in the previous December, on the nomination of his predecessor the mulatto general Alvarez, who had retired to the southern provinces with his army.

President Comonfort, with empty coffers, and scarcely any real political power, had felt it necessary to make some great effort to get popularity for himself and his government. He had therefore adopted the policy of attacking the fueros, the extraordinary privileges of the two classes of priests and soldiers, which had become part of the constitution under the first viceroys, and which not even the war of independence, and the adoption of republican forms, ever did away with. Neither class is amenable to the civil tribunals for debt or for any offences.[3] The clergy have immense revenues, and much spiritual influence among the lower classes; and as soon as they discovered the disposition of the new President, they took one Don Antonio Haro y Tamirez, set him up as a counter-President, and installed him at Puebla, the second city of the Republic, where priests swarm, and priestly influence is unbounded. At the same time, they tried a pronunciamiento in the capital; but the President got the better of them after a slight struggle, and marched all his regular soldiers on Puebla. At the moment of our arrival in the country, the siege of this city was going on quite briskly, ten thousand men being engaged, commanded by forty-three general officers.

Whenever anything disagreeable is happening in the country, Vera Cruz is sure to get its full share. A month before our arrival, one Salcedo, who was a prisoner in the castle of San Juan de Ulua, talked matters over with the garrison, and persuaded them to make a pronunciamento in favour of the insurgents. They then summoned the town to join their cause, which it declined doing for the present; and the castle opened fire upon it, knocking about some of the principal buildings, and doing a good deal of damage. A 30-pound shot went through the wall of our hotel, taking off the leg of an unfortunate waiter who was cleaning knives, and falling into the patio, or inner court. A daub of fresh plaster just outside our bedroom door indicated the spot; and the British Consul's office had a similar decoration. The Governor of the city could offer no active resistance, but he cut off the supplies from the island, and in three or four days Salcedo—finding himself out of ammunition, and short of water—surrendered in a neat speech, and the revolution ended.

We have but a short time to stay in Vera Cruz, so had better make our observations quickly; for when we come back again there will be a sun nearly in the zenith, and yellow fever—at the present moment hardly showing itself—will have come for the summer; under those circumstances, the unseasoned foreigner had better lie on his back in a cool room, with a cigar in his mouth, and read novels, than go about hunting for useful information.

There are streets of good Spanish houses in Vera Cruz, built of white coral-rock from the reefs near the shore, but they are mildewed and dismal-looking. Outside the walls is the Alameda; and close by is a line of houses, uninhabited, mouldy, and in ruins. We asked who built them. "Los Espanoles," they said.

Even now, when the "nortes" are blowing, and the city is comparatively healthy, Vera Cruz is a melancholy place, with a plague-stricken look about it; but it is from June to October that its name, "the city of the dead"—la ciudad de los muertos—is really deserved. In that season comes an accumulation of evils. The sun is at its height; there is no north wind to clear the air; and the heavy tropical rains—more than three times as much in quantity as falls in England in the whole year—come down in a short rainy season of four months. The water filters through the sand-hills, and forms great stagnant lagoons; a rank tropical vegetation springs up, and the air is soon filled with pestilential vapours. Add to this that the water is unwholesome; the city too is placed in a sand-bath which keeps up a regular temperature, by accumulating heat by day and giving it out into the air by night, so that night gives no relief from the stifling closeness of the day. No wonder that Mr. Bullock, the Mexican traveller, as he sat in his room here in the hot season, heard the church-bells tolling for the dead from morning to night without intermission; for weeks and weeks, one can hardly even look into the street without seeing a funeral.

We turned back through the city, and walked along watching the Zopilotes—great turkey-buzzards—with their bald heads and foul dingy-black plumage. They were sitting in compact rows on parapets of houses and churches, and seemed specially to affect the cross of the cathedral, where they perched, two on each arm, and some on the top. When some offal was thrown into the streets, they came down leisurely upon it, one after another; their appearance and deportment reminding us of the undertaker's men in England coming down from the hearse at the public-house door, when the funeral is over. In all tropical America these birds are the general scavengers, and there is a heavy fine for killing them.[4]

Scarcely any one is about in the streets this afternoon, except a gang or two of convicts dragging their heavy chains along, sweeping and mending the streets. This is a punishment much approved of by the Mexican authorities, as combining terror to evil-doers with advantage to the community. That it puts all criminals on a level, from murderers down to vagrants, does not seem to be considered as a matter of much consequence.

At the city-gate stands a sentry—the strangest thing I ever saw in the guise of a soldier—a brown Indian of the coast, dressed in some rags that were a uniform once, shoeless, filthy in the extreme, and armed with an amazing old flint-lock. He is bad enough to look at, in all conscience, and really worse than he looks, for—no doubt—he has been pressed into the service against his will, and hates white men and their ways with all his heart. Of course he will run away when he gets a chance; and, though he will be no great loss to the service, he will add his mite to the feeling of hatred that has been growing up for these so many years among the brown Indians against the whites and the half-cast Mexicans. But more of this hereafter.

One step outside the gate, and we are among the sand-hills that stretch for miles and miles round Vera Cruz. They are mere shifting sand-mounds; and, though some of them are fifty feet high, the fierce north wind moves them about bodily. The Texans know these winds well, and call them "northers." They come from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, right down the Continent of North America, over a level plain with hardly a hill to obstruct their course, the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies forming a sort of trough for them. When the "norte" blows fiercely you can hardly keep your feet in the streets of Vera Cruz, and vessels drag their anchors or break from their moorings in the ill-protected harbour, and are blown out to sea—lucky if they escape the ugly coral-reefs and sand-banks that fringe the coast. There are a few bushes growing outside the walls, and there we found the Nopal bush, the great prickly pear—the same that has established itself all round the shores of the Mediterranean—growing in crevices of rocks, and cracks in lava-beds, and barren places where nothing else will live. But what made us notice these Nopals was, that they were covered with what looked like little white cocoons, out of which, when they were pressed, came a drop of deep crimson fluid. This is the cochineal insect, but only the wild variety; the fine kind, which is used for dye, and conies from the province of Oajaca, miles off, is covered only with a mealy powder. There the Indians cultivate great plantations of Nopals, and spread the insects over them with immense care, even removing them, and carrying them up into the mountains in baskets when the rainy season begins in the plains, and bringing them back when it is over.

On Friday, the 14th of March, at three o'clock in the morning, we took our places in a strong American-built diligence, holding nine inside, and began our journey by being dragged along the railroad—which was commenced with great energy some time ago, and got fifteen miles on its way to the capital, at which point it has stopped ever since. When day broke we had left the railroad, and were jolting along through a parched sandy plain, thinly covered with acacias, nopals, and other kinds of cactus, bignonias, and the great tree-euphorbia, with which we had been so familiar in Cuba, with its smooth limbs and huge white flowers. At last we reached the first hill, and began gently to ascend. The change was wonderful. Once out of the plain, we are in the midst of a tropical forest. The trees are crowded close together, and the convolvulus binds their branches into an impassable jungle, while ferns and creepers weave themselves into a dense mass below; and here and there a glimpse up some deep ravine shows great tree-ferns, thirty feet high, standing close to the brink of a mountain-stream, and flourishing in the damp shade.

Indian Ranchos become more frequent as we ascend; and the inhabitants—squatting on the ground, or leaning against the door-posts—just condescend to glance at us as we pass, and then return to their meditations, and their cigarettes, if they happen to have any. These ranches are the merest huts of canes, thatched with palm-leaves; and close by each a little patch of ground is enclosed by a fence of prickly cactus, within which are growing plantains, with their large smooth leaves and heavy ropes of fruit, the great staple of the "tierra caliente."

Our road winds along valleys and through pass after pass; and now and then a long zig-zag brings us out of a valley, up to a higher level. The air grows cooler, we are rapidly changing our climate, and afternoon finds us in the region of the sugar-cane and the coffee-plant. We pass immense green cane-fields, protected from the visits of passing muleteers and peasants by a thick hedge of thorny coffee-bushes. The cane is but young yet; but the coffee-plant, with its brilliant white flowers, like little stars, is a beautiful feature in the landscape.

At sunset we are rattling through the streets of the little town of Cordova. There is such a thoroughly Spanish air about the place, that it might be a suburb of the real Cordova, were it not for the crowds of brown Indians in their scanty cotton dresses and great flat-brimmed hats, and the Mexican costumes of the whiter folks. Low whitewashed houses, with large windows to the street, protected by the heavy iron-gratings, like cages, that are so familiar to travellers in Southern Europe. Inside the grating are the ladies of the family, outside stand their male acquaintance, and energetic gossiping is going on. The smoky little lamp inside gives us a full view of the interior. Four whitewashed walls; a table; a few stiff-backed chairs; a virgin or saint resplendent in paint and tinsel; and, perhaps, two or three coloured engravings, red, blue, and yellow.

A few hours in the dark, and we reach Orizaba. We have changed our climate for the last time to-day, and have reached that district where tobacco flourishes at an altitude of 4,000 feet above the sea. But of this we see nothing, for we are off again long before daylight; and by the time that external objects can be made out we find ourselves in a new region. A valley floored with rich alluvial soil from the hills that rise steeply on both sides, their tops shrouded in clouds. Signs of wonderful fertility in the fields of maize and barley along the roadside. The air warm, but full of mist, which has already penetrated our clothes and made them feel damp and sticky. "Splendid country, this, Senores," said an old Mexican, when he had twisted himself round on his seat to get a good stare at us. "It seems so," said I, "judging by the look of the fields, but it is very unpleasantly damp just now." "Just now," said the old gentleman, echoing my words, "it is always damp here. You see that drizzling mist; that is the chipi-chipi. Never heard of the chipi-chipi! Why it is the riches and blessing of the country. Sometimes we never see the sun here for weeks at a time, and it rains a little every day nearly; but look at the fields, we get three crops a year from them where you have but one on the fields just above. And it is healthy, too; look at those fellows at work there. When we get up to the Llanos you will see the difference."

The valley grew narrower as we drove on; and at last, when it seemed to end in a great ravine, we began to climb the steep hill by a zig-zag road. Soon the air grows clearer again, the sunshine appears and gets brighter and brighter, we have left the mist behind, and are among ranges of grand steep hills, covered with the peculiar vegetation of the plateau,—Cactus, Opuntia, and the Agave Americana. In the trough of the valley lies a regular opaque layer of white clouds, hiding the fields and cottages from our view. We have already passed the zone of perpetual moisture, whose incessant clouds and showers are caused by the stratum of hot air—charged with water evaporated from the gulf—striking upon the mountains, and there depositing part of the aqueous vapour it contains.

You may see the same thing happening in almost every mountainous district; but seldom on so grand a scale as here, or with so little disturbance from other agents. Yesterday was passed in the "tierra caliente," the hot country; our journey of to-day and to-morrow is through the "tierra templada" and the "tierra fria," the temperate and the cold country. Here a change of a few hundred feet in altitude above the sea, brings with it a change of climate as great as many degrees of latitude will cause, and in one day's travel it is possible to descend from the region of eternal snow to the utmost heat of the tropics. Our ascent is more gradual; but, though we are three days on the road, we have sometimes scarcely time to notice the different zones of vegetation we pass through, before we change again.

To make the account of the journey from the coast to Mexico somewhat clearer, a few words must be said about the formation of the country, as shown in a profile-map or section. The interior of Mexico consists of a mass of volcanic rocks, thrust up to a great height above the sea-level. The plateau of Mexico is 8,000 feet high, and that of Puebla 9,000 feet. This central mass consists principally of a greyish trachytic porphyry, in some places rich in veins of silver-ore. The tops of the hills are often crowned with basaltic columns, and a soft porous amygdaloid abounds on the outskirts of the Mexican valley. Besides this, traces of more recent volcanic action abound, in the shape of numerous extinct craters in the high plateaus, and immense "pedrigals" or fields of lava not yet old enough for their surface to have been disintegrated into soil. Though sedimentary rocks occur in Mexico, they are not the predominant feature of the country. Ridges of limestone hills lie on the slopes of the great volcanic mass toward the coast; and at a still lower level, just in the rise from the flat coast-region, there are strata of sandstone. On our road from Vera Cruz we came upon sandstone immediately after leaving the sandy plains; and a few miles further on we reached the limestone, very much as it is represented in Burkart's profile of the country from Tampico upwards towards San Luis Potosi. The mountain-plateaus, such as the plains of Mexico and Puebla, are hollows filled up and floored with horizontal strata of tertiary deposits, which again are covered by the constantly accumulating layers of alluvium.

Our heavy pull up the mountain-side has brought us into a new scene. Every one knows how the snow lies in the valleys of the Alps, forming a plain which slopes gradually downward towards the outlet Imagine such a valley ten miles across, with just such a sloping plain, not of snow but of earth. There has been no rain for months, and the surface of the ground is parched and cracked all over. There is hardly a tree to be seen except clumps of wood on the mountain-sides miles off,—no vegetation but tufts of coarse grass, among which herds of disconsolate-looking cattle are roaming; the vaqueros, (herdsmen) are cantering about after them on their lean horses, with their lazos hanging in coils on their left arms, and now and then calling to order some refractory beast who tries to get away from the herd, by sending the loop over his horns or letting it fall before him as he runs, and hitching it up with a jerk round his hind legs as he steps within it. But the poor creatures are too thirsty and dispirited just now to give any sport, and the first touch of the cord is enough to bring them back to their allegiance.

From the decomposed porphyry of the mountains carbonate of soda comes down in solution to the valleys. Much of this is converted into natron by the organic matter in the soil, and forms a white crust on the earth. More of the carbonate of soda, mixed in various proportions with common salt, drains continually out in the streams, or filters into the ground and crystallizes there. This is why there is not a field to be seen, and the land is fit for nothing but pasture. But when the rains come on in a few months, say our friends in the diligence, this dismal waste will be a luxuriant prairie, and the cattle will be here by thousands, for most of them are dispersed now in the lower regions of the tierra templada where grass and water are to be had.

My companion and I climb upon the top of the diligence to spy out the land. The grand volcano of Orizaba had been hidden from us ever since that morning when we saw it from far out at sea, but now it rises on our left, its upper half covered with snow of dazzling whiteness,—a regular cone, for from this side the crater cannot be seen. It looks as though one could walk half a mile or so across the valley and then go straight up to the summit, but it is full thirty miles off. The air is heated as by a furnace, and as we jolt along the road the clouds of dust are suffocating. We go full gallop along such road as there is, banging into holes, and across the trenches left by last year's watercourses, until we begin to think that it must end in a general smash. We came to understand Mexican roads and Mexican drivers better, even before we got to the capital.

Before us and behind lay wide lakes, stretching from side to side of the valley; but the lake behind followed us as steadily as the one before us receded. It was only the mirage that tantalizes travellers in these scorched valleys, all the long eight months of the rainless season. It seemed beautiful at first, then monotonous; and long before the day was out we hated it with a most cordial and unaffected hatred.

Soon a new appearance attracted our attention. First, clouds of dust, which gradually took a well-defined shape, and formed themselves into immense pillars, rapidly spinning round upon themselves, and travelling slowly about the plain. At one place, where several smaller valleys opened upon us, these sand-pillars, some small, some large, were promenading about by dozens, looking much like the genie when the fisherman had just let him out of the bottle, and saw him with astonishment beginning to shape himself into a giant of monstrous size. Indeed I doubt not that the story-teller was thinking of such sand-pillars when he wrote that wonderful description. You may see them in the East by thousands. As they moved along, they sucked up small stones, dust, and leaves; and our driver declared that they had been known to take the roofs off houses, and carry flocks of sheep into the air; "but these that you see now," said he, "are no great matter." We estimated the size of the largest at about four hundred feet in height, and thirty in diameter; and this very pillar, walking by chance against a house, most decidedly got the worst of it, and had its lower limbs knocked all to pieces.

When the sun grows hot, the bare earth heats the air that lies upon it so much that an upward current rises from the whole face of the valley; and to supply its place the little valleys and ravines that open into it pour in each its stream of cooler air; and wherever two of these streams, flowing in different directions, strike one another, a little whirlwind ensues, and makes itself manifest as a sand-pillar. The coachman's "molino de viento," as he called it, may very well have happened, but it must have been a whirlwind on a large scale, caused by the meeting of great atmospheric currents, not by the little apparatus we saw at work.

There seems to be hardly a village in the plain; and the only buildings we see for miles are the herdsmen's houses of stone, flat-roofed, dark inside, and uninviting in their appearance, and the great cattle-pens, the corrals, which seem absurdly too large for the herds that we have yet seen; but in two or three months there will be rain, the ground will be covered with rank grass, the corrals will be crowded with cattle every evening; the mirage will depart when real water comes, dust and sand-pillars will be no longer to be seen, and all the nine horses and mules of the diligence-team, floundering, splashing, and kicking, will hardly keep the heavy coach from settling down inextricably in the mire. And so on until October, and then the season of water, "la estacion de las aguas," will cease, and things will be again as they are now.

In the usual course of travel to the capital, the second night would have been passed at Puebla. This is the second city of the Republic, and numbers some 70,000 inhabitants. As it was then in revolt, and besieged by the President and his army, we made a detour to the north when about 20 miles from it, in order to sleep for a few hours at Huamantla, a place with a most evil reputation for thieves and vermin; and about ten at night we drove into the court-yard of a dismal-looking inn. Three or four dirty fellows stood round as we alighted, wrapped in their serapes—great woollen blankets, the universal wear of the Mexicans of the plateaus. One end of the serape was thrown across from shoulder to shoulder, and hid the lower part of their faces; and the broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero was slouched over their eyes; we particularly disliked the look of them as they stood watching us and our baggage going into the inn. A few minutes after, we returned to the court-yard to complete our observation of them, but they were all gone.

A party of Spaniards and Mexicans were at the other table in the sala when we marched in, and as soon as we had taken off the edge of our fierce hunger, we began to compare notes with them. "Had a pleasant journey from Mexico?" They all answered at once, delighted to find an audience to whom to tell their sorrows, as men always are under such circumstances. It appeared that they had reached Huamantla an hour or two before us, and to their surprise and delight no robbers had appeared. But between the outskirts of the town and the inn, the cords behind the diligence were cut, and every particle of luggage had disappeared. At the inn-gate they got out and discovered their loss. They set upon the Administrador of the diligence-company, who sympathized deeply with them, but had no more substantial comfort to offer. They declared the driver must have been an accomplice, and the driver was sent for, for them to wreak their fury upon. He appeared with his mouth full of beans, and told them, as soon as he could speak, that they ought to be very thankful they had come off so easily, and, looking at them with an expression of infinite disgust, returned to his supper; they followed his example, and seemed to have at last found consolation in hot dishes and Catalan wine. It was wonderful to hear of the fine things that were in the lost portmanteaus,—the rings, the gold watches, the rouleaux of dollars, the "papers of the utmost importance."

I am afraid the Spanish American has not always a very strict regard for truth.

These gentlemen had indeed got off easily, as the driver said; for the last diligence from Vera Cruz, with our steamboat acquaintances in it, had been stopped just outside this very town of Huamantla as they left it before daylight in the morning. The robbers were but three, but they had plundered the unfortunate travellers as effectually as thirty could have done. Now, all this was very pretty to hear as a tale, but not satisfactory to travellers who were going by the same road the next morning; and in the disagreeable barrack-room where our beds stood in long lines, we, the nine passengers of the "up" diligence, held a council, standing, like Mr. Macaulay's senators, and there decided on a most Christian line of conduct—that when the three bore down upon us, and the muzzle of the inevitable escopeta was poked in at our window, we would descend meekly, and at the command of "boca abajo," ("mouth downwards,") we would humiliate ourselves with our noses in the dirt, and be robbed quietly. Having thus decided beforehand, according to the etiquette of the road, whether we were to fight or submit, and being tired with a long day's journey, we all turned in, and were fast asleep in a moment.

It seemed that almost directly afterwards the dirtiest man possible came round, and shook us till we were conscious; and we washed in the customary saucers, by the light of a real, flaring, smoking, Spanish lamp with a beak, exactly what the Romans used in Pompeii, except that this is of brass, not bronze.

With our eyes still half-shut we crawled into the kitchen for our morning chocolate, and demanded our bill. Such a bill! One of us, a stout Spaniard, sent for the landlord and abused him in a set speech. The "patron" divested his countenance of every trace of expression, scratched his head through his greasy nightcap, and stood listening patiently. The stout man grew fiercer and fiercer, and wound up with a climax. "If we meet with the robbers," said he, rolling himself up in his great cloak, "we must tell them that we have passed through your worship's hands, and there is none left for them." The landlord bowed gravely, saw us into the diligence, and hoped we should have a fortunate journey, and meet with no novelty on the road. A "novelty" in Spanish countries means a misfortune.

We met with no "novelty," though, when we looked out of the window in the early dawn and spied three men with muskets, following us at a short distance, we thought our time had come, and watches and valuables were plunged into boots and under seats, and through slits into the padding of the diligence; but the three men came no nearer, and we supposed them to be an escort of soldiers. When it was light the difficulty was to recover the valuables—no easy matter, so securely had they been hidden.

We heard afterwards of a little peculiarity which distinguished the robbers of Huamantla. It seems that no less a personage than the parish priest was accustomed to lead his parishioners into action, like the Cornish parson in old times when a ship went ashore on the coast. What has become of his reverence since, I do not know. He is very likely still in his parish, carrying on his double profession, unless somebody has shot him. I wonder whether it is sacrilege to shoot a priest who is also a highwayman, as it used to be to kill a bishop on the field of battle.

We are at last on the high lands of Mexico, the districts which at least three different races have chosen to settle in, neglecting the fertile country below. A sharp turn in the road brings its fairly out into the plain; and then on our left are the two snowy mountains that lie at the edge of the valley of Mexico, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, famous in all Mexican books. Like Orizaba of yesterday, they seem to rise from the plain close to us; and from the valley between them there pours down upon us such a flood of icy wind, that, though windows are pulled up and great-coats buttoned round our throats, we shiver piteously, and our teeth fairly chatter till we get out of the river of cold air; and then comes hot sunshine and dust again.

Anxious to make sure that we have really got into the land of Aztec civilization, Mr. Christy gets down from the diligence, and hunting about for a few minutes by the road-side, returns in triumph with a broken arrowhead of obsidian. A deep channel cut by a water-course gives us our first idea of the depth of the soil; for these plateaus were once nothing but deep hollows among the mountains, which rain and melted snow, bringing down fragments of porphyry and basalt—partly in their original state and partly decomposed—have filled up and formed into plains. Signs of volcanic action are abundant. To say nothing of the two great mountains we have just left behind, there is a hill of red volcanic tufa just beyond us; and still further on, though this is anticipating, our road passes over the lava-field at the foot of the little volcano of Santa Barbara.

There is a population here at any rate, village after village; and between them are great plantations of maize and aloes; for this is the district where the best pulque in Mexico is made, the "llanos de Apam." It is the Agave Americana, the same aloe that is so common in southern Europe, where indeed it flowers, and that grows in our gardens and used to have the reputation of flowering once in a hundred years. I do not exaggerate when I say that we saw hundreds of thousands of them that day, planted in long regular lines. Among them were walking the Indian "tlachiqueros," each with his pigskin on his back, and his long calabash in his hand, milking such plants as were in season.



The fine buildings of the haciendas, and more especially the churches, contrast strongly with the generality of houses, all of one story, built of adobes (mud-bricks dried in the sun), with flat roofs of sand and lime resting on wooden rafters, and the naked ground for a floor, all dark, dirty, and comfortless. There are even many huts built entirely of the universal aloe. The stems of wild aloes which have been allowed to flower are stuck into the ground, side by side, and pieces of leaves tied on outside them with aloe-fibre. These cut leaves are set like tiles to form a roof, and pegged down with the thorns which grow at their extremities. Picturesque and cheap, though hardly comfortable, for we are in the "tierra fria" now, and the mornings and evenings in winter are often bitterly cold.

But the churches! Is it possible that they can belong to these wretched filthy little cottages. As black Sam, our driver, a runaway Texan slave, suggested, it looked as though the villagers might pull down their houses and locate themselves and their families in their churches. We thought of Mr. Ruskin, who has somewhere expressed an earnest desire that all the money and energy that England has wasted in making railroads, had been spent in building churches; and we wished he had been here to see his principles carried out.

I have travelled on rough roads in my time, but on such a road as this never. My companion refused for a time to award the premium of badness to our thoroughfare; but, just while we were discussing the question and recounting our experience of bone-smashing highways, we reached a pass where the road consisted of a series of steps, nearly a foot in depth, down which steps we went at a swinging trot, holding on for our lives, in terror lest the next jerk should fairly wrench our arms out of their sockets, while we could plainly hear the inside passengers howling for mercy, as they were shot up against the roof which knocked them back into their seats. Aching all over, we reached level ground again, and Mr. Christy withdrew his claims, and agreed that no road anywhere else could possibly be so bad as a Mexican road; a decision which later experiences only served to confirm.

Our start, every time we changed horses, was a sight to see. Nine half-broken horses and mules, in a furious state of excitement, were harnessed to our unwieldy machine; the helpers let go, and off they went, kicking, plunging, rearing, biting, and screaming, into ruts and watercourses that were like the trenches they make for gas-pipes in London streets, with our wheels on one side on a stone wall, and in a pit on the other, and Black Sam leaning back with his feet on the board, waiting with perfect tranquillity until the animals had got rid of their superfluous energy and he could hold them in. We were always just going to have some frightful accident, and always just missed it. The last stage before we reached Otumba, a small dusky urchin ran across the road just before us. How Black Sam contrived to pull up I cannot tell, though, indeed, his arms were about the size of an ordinary man's thighs; but he did, and they got the child out from the horses' feet quite unhurt.

It was at the inn where we stopped to breakfast that we made our first acquaintance with the great Mexican institutions—tortillas and pulque. The pulque was being brewed on a large scale in an adjoining building. The vats were made of cow-skins (with the hair inside), supported by a frame of sticks; and in them was pulque in every stage, beginning with the sweet aguamiel—honeywater—the fresh juice of the aloe, and then the same in different degrees of fermentation till we come to the madre pulque, the mother pulque, a little of which is used like yeast, to start the fermentation, and which has a combined odour of gas-works and drains. Pulque, as you drink it, looks like milk and water, and has a mild smell and taste of rotten eggs. Tortillas are like oat-cakes, but made of Indian corn meal, not crisp, but soft and leathery. We thought both dreadfully nasty for a day or two; then we could just endure them; then we came to like them; and before we left the country we wondered how we should do without them.



CHAPTER III.



CITY OF MEXICO.



Some thirty years ago, Don Agustin Yturbide, the first and last Emperor of Mexico, found that he wanted a palace wherein to house his newly-fledged dignity; and began to build one accordingly, in the high street of Mexico, close to the great convent of San Francisco. It could not have been nearly finished when its founder was shot: and it became the Hotel d'Yturbide. We are now settled in it, in very comfortable quarters. There is a restaurant down below, where the son of the late Yturbide dines daily, and everybody points him out to us, and moralises over him.

Mr. Christy's drawer-roll of letters of introduction has produced an immediate crop of pleasant acquaintances, whose hospitality is boundless. We are not idle, far from it; and a long day's work is generally followed by a social dinner, and an evening spent in noting down the results of our investigations.

Prescott's Conquest of Mexico has been more read in England than most historical works; and the Mexico of Montezuma has a well-defined idea attached to it. The amphitheatre of dark hills surrounding the level plain, the two snowy mountain-peaks, the five lakes covering nearly half the valley, the city rising out of the midst of the waters, miles from the shore, with which it was connected by its four causeways, the straight streets of low flat-roofed houses, the numbers of canals crowded with canoes of Indians going to and from the market, the floating gardens moved from place to place, on which vegetables and flowers were cultivated, the great pyramid up which the Spanish army saw their captured companions led in solemn procession, and sacrificed on the top—all these are details in the mental picture.

Much of this has changed since the Spaniards first saw it. Cortes tried all ordinary means to overcome the desperate obstinacy with which the Aztecs defended their capital. The Spaniards conquered wherever they went; but, as they moved forward, the Mexicans closed in again behind, and from every house-top showers of darts, arrows, and stones were poured down upon them. Cortes resolved upon the utter demolition of the city. He was grieved to destroy it, he said, for it was the most beautiful thing in the whole world; but there was no alternative. He moved slowly towards the great teocalli, his fifty thousand Tlascalan allies following him, throwing down every house, and filling the canals with the ruins. When the conquest was finished, but one district of the city was left standing, and in it were crowded a quarter of the population, miserable famished wretches, who had surrendered when their king was taken. All that was left besides was a patch of swampy ground strewed with fragments of walls, a few pyramids too large for present destruction, and such great heaps of dead bodies that it was impossible to get from place to place without walking over them.

Cortes had resolved that a new city should be built, but it was not so easy to decide where it was to be. The Aztecs, it seemed, had not originally established themselves on the spot where Mexico was built. When they came down from the north country, and across the hills into the valley of Mexico, they were but an insignificant tribe, and as yet mere savages. They settled down in one place after another, and were always driven out by the persecutions of the neighbouring tribes. At last they took possession of a little group of swampy islands in the lake of Tezcuco; and then at last, safe from their enemies, they increased and multiplied, and became a great and powerful nation.

The first beginnings of Mexico, a cluster of huts built on wooden piles, must have borne some likeness to those curious settlements of early tribes in the shallow part of the lakes of Switzerland and the British Isles, of which numerous remains are still to be found. As the nation increased in numbers, Tenochtitlan, as the inhabitants called their city (they called themselves Tenochques), came to be a great city of houses built on piles, with canals running through the straight streets, along which the natives poled their flat-bottomed canoes. The name which the Spaniards gave to the city, the "Venice of the New World," was appropriate, not only to its situation in the midst of the water, with canals for thoroughfares, but also to the history of the causes which led to its being built in such a situation.

The habit of building houses upon piles, which was first forced upon the people by the position they had chosen, was afterwards followed as a matter of taste, just as it is in Holland. Even after the Aztecs became masters of the surrounding country, they built towns round the lake, partly on the shore, and partly on piles in the water. The Spanish chroniclers mention Iztapalapan, and many other towns, as built in this way. Like the Swiss tribes, the early inhabitants of Mexico depended much upon their fishing, for which their position gave them great facilities.

If you look at the arms of the Mexican Republic, on a passport or a silver dollar, you will see a representation of a rock surrounded by water. On the rock grows a cactus, and on the cactus sits an eagle with a serpent in his beak. The story is that the wandering tribe preserved a tradition of an oracle which said that when they should find an eagle, holding a serpent, and perched on a cactus growing out of a rock, then they should cease their wanderings. On an island in the lake of Tezcuco, they found eagle, serpent, cactus, and rock, as described, and they settled there in due course. What fragment of truth is hidden in this myth it is hard to say. Tenochtitlan means "The Stone-cactus place;" and the Aztec picture-writings express its name by a hieroglyph of a prickly pear growing on a rock. Putting this history out of the question, the Aztecs had excellent reasons for choosing this peculiar site for their city; but these reasons were not equally valid in the case of the new invaders. For them the surrounding salt-water was not needed as a protection, and was merely a nuisance. Every year, when the lake rose, the place was flooded, with enormous damage to the property of the inhabitants; and sometimes an inundation of greater depth than usual threatened as complete a destruction as Cortes and the Tlascalans had made. At the best of times, the site was a salt-swamp, an ugly place to build upon. And, lastly, all the fresh water must be brought from the hills by aqueducts, which an enemy would cut off without difficulty, as the Spaniards themselves had done during the siege. Now Cortes was certainly not ignorant of all this, and he knew of many places on the rising ground close by, where he could found his new city under more favourable circumstances. He deliberated four or five months on the matter, and at last decided in favour of the old site, giving as his reason that "the city of Tenochtitlan had become celebrated, its position was wonderful, and in all times it had been considered as the capital and mistress of all these provinces."