Various - "Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891"

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The Reformed Presbytery - "Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive"

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Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

E >> Edward Burnett Tylor >> Anahuac




It is a pity that these alluvial deposits, which give such good
evidence as to the order in which different peoples or different states
of society succeeded one another on the earth, should be so valueless
as a means of calculating the time of their duration; but one can
easily see that they must always be so, by considering how the
thickness of the deposits is altered by such accidents as the formation
of a mud-bank, or the opening of a new channel,--things that must be
continually occurring in districts where this very accumulation is
going on. The only place where any calculation can be based upon its
thickness is on the banks of the Nile, where its accumulations round
the ancient monuments may perhaps give a criterion as to the time which
has elapsed since man ceased to clear away the deposits of the
river.[13]

As an instance of the tendency of alluvial deposits to entomb such
monuments of former ages, I must mention the temple of Segeste, which
stands on a gentle slope among the hills of northern Sicily. I had
heard talk of the graceful proportions of this Doric temple, built by
the Greek colonists; and great was my surprise, on first coming in
sight of it, to see a pediment supported by two rows of short squat
columns, without bases, and rising directly from the ground. A nearer
inspection showed the cause of this extraordinary distortion. The whole
slope had risen full six feet during the 2500 years, or so, that have
elapsed since its desertion; and the temple now stands in a large
oblong pit, which has lately been excavated. As we left the spot, and
turned to see it again a few yards off, the beautiful symmetry of the
whole had disappeared again.

To return to Tezcuco. Some three or four miles from the town stands the
hill of Tezcotzinco, where Nezahualcoyotl had his pleasure-gardens; and
to this hill we made an excursion early one morning, with Mr. Bowring
for our guide. We did not go first to Tezcotzinco itself, but to
another hill which is connected with it by an aqueduct of immense size,
along which we walked. The mountains in this part are of porphyry, and
the channel of the aqueduct was made principally of blocks of the same
material, on which the smooth stucco that had once covered the whole,
inside and out, still remained very perfect. The channel was carried,
not on arches, but on a solid embankment, a hundred and fifty or two
hundred feet high, and wide enough for a carriage-road.

The hill itself was overgrown with brushwood, aloes, and prickly pears,
but numerous roads and flights of steps cut in the rock were
distinguishable. Not far below the top of the hill, a terrace runs
completely round it, whence the monarch could survey a great part of
his little kingdom. On the summit itself I saw sculptured blocks of
stone; and on the side of the hill are two little circular baths, cut
in the solid rock. The lower of the two has a flight of steps down to
it; the seat for the bather, and the stone pipe which brought the
water, arc still quite perfect.

His majesty used to spend his afternoons here on the shady side of the
hill, apparently sitting up to his middle in water, like a frog, if one
may judge by the height of the little seat in the bath. If, as some
writers say, these were only tanks with streams of running water, and
not baths at all, why the steps cut in their sides, which are just
large enough and high enough for a man to sit in? No water has come
there for centuries now; and the morning-sun nearly broiled us, till we
got into a sort of cave, excavated in the hill, it is said, with an
idea of finding treasure. It seems there was once a Mexican calendar
cut in the rock at this spot; and some white people who were interested
in such matters, used to come to see it, and poke curiously about in
search of other antiquities. Naturally enough, the Indians thought that
they expected to find treasure; and with a view of getting the first
chance themselves, they cut down the calendar, and made this large
excavation behind it.

Here we sat in the shade, breakfasting, and hearing Mr. Bowring's
stories of the art of medicine as practised in the northern states of
Mexico, where decoction of shirt is considered an invaluable specific
when administered internally; and the recognised remedy for lumbago is
to rub the patient with the drawers of a man named John. No doubt the
latter treatment answers very well!

[Illustration: OLD MEXICAN BRIDGE NEAR TEZCUCO.]

There is an old Mexican bridge near Tezcuco which seems to be the
original _Puente de las Bergantinas_, the bridge where Cortes had the
brigantines launched on the lake of Tezcuco. This bridge has a span of
about twenty feet, and is curious as showing how nearly the Mexicans
had arrived at the idea of the arch. It is made in the form of a roof
resting on two buttresses, and composed of slabs of stone with the
edges upwards, with mortar in the interstices; the slabs being
sufficiently irregular in shape to admit of their holding together,
like the stones of a real arch. One may now and then see in Europe the
roofs of small stone hovels made in the same way; but twenty feet is an
immense span for such a construction. I have seen such buildings in
North Italy, in places where the limestone is so stratified as to
furnish rough slabs, three or four inches thick, with very little
labour in quarrying them out. In Kerry there are ancient houses and
churches roofed in the same way. What makes the Tezcuco bridge more
curious is that it is set askew, which must have made its construction
more difficult.

The brigantines which the Spaniards made, and transported over the
mountains in such a wonderful manner, fully answered their purpose, for
without them Mexico could hardly have been taken. After the Conquest
they were kept for years, for the good service they had done; but
vessels of such size do not seem to have been used upon the lake since
then; and I believe the only sailing craft at present is Mr. Bowring's
boat, which the Indians look at askance, and decidedly decline to
imitate. It is true that, somewhere near the city, there is moored a
little steamer, looking quite civilized at a distance. It never goes
anywhere, however; and I have a sort of impression of having heard that
when it was first made they got up the steam once, but the conduct of
the machinery under these circumstances was so extraordinary and
frantic that no one has ventured to repeat the experiment.

Before we left Tezcuco, we went in a boat to explore Mr. Bowring's
salt-works, which are rather like the salines of the South of France.
Patches of the lake are walled off, and the water allowed to evaporate,
which it does very rapidly under a hot sun, and with only three-fourths
of the pressure of air upon it that we have at the sea-level. The
lake-water thus concentrated is run into smaller tanks. It contains
carbonate and sesquicarbonate of soda, and common salt. The addition of
lime converts the sesquicarbonate of soda into simple carbonate, and
this is separated from the salt by taking advantage of their different
points of crystallization. The salt is partly consumed, and partly used
in the extraction of silver from the ore, and the soda is bought by the
soap-makers.

Humboldt's remarks on the small consumption of salt in Mexico are
curious. The average amount used with food is only a small fraction of
the European average. While the Tlascalans were at war with the Aztecs,
they had to do without salt for many years, as it was not produced in
their district. Humboldt thinks that the chile which the Indians
consume in such quantities acts as a substitute. It is to be remembered
that the soil is impregnated with both salt and natron in many of these
upland districts, and the inhabitants may have eaten earth containing
these ingredients, as they do for the same purpose in several places in
the Old World.

We disembarked after sailing to the end of these great evaporating
pans, and found horses waiting to take us to the Bosque del Contador.
This is a grand square, looking towards the cardinal points, and
composed of ahuehuetes, grand old deciduous cypresses, many of them
forty feet round, and older than the discovery of America. My
companion, not content with buying collections at secondhand, wished to
have some excavations made on his own account, and very judiciously
fixed on this spot, where, though there were no buildings standing, the
appearance of the ground and the mounds in the neighbourhood, together
with the historical notoriety of the place, made it probable that
something would be found to repay a diligent search. This expectation
was fully realized, and some fine idols of hard stone were found, with
an infinitude of pottery and small objects.

When I look through my notes about Tezcuco, I do not find much more to
mention, except that a favourite dish here consists of flies' eggs
fried. These eggs are deposited at the edge of the lake, and the
Indians fish them out and sell them in the market-place. So large is
the quantity of these eggs, that at a spot where a little stream
deposits carbonate of lime, a peculiar kind of travertine is forming
which consists of masses of them imbedded in tho calcareous deposit.

The flies[14] which produce these eggs are called by the Mexicans
"_axayacatl_" or "water-face." There was a celebrated Aztec king who
was called Axayacatl; and his name is indicated in the picture-writings
by a drawing of a man's face covered with water. The eggs themselves
are sold in cakes in the market, pounded and cooked, and also in lumps
_au naturel_, forming a substance like the roe of a fish. This is known
by the characteristic name of "_ahuauhtli_", that is "water-wheat."[15]

The last thing we did at Tezcuco, was to witness the laying down of a
new line of water-pipes for the saltworks. This I mention because of
the pipes, which were exactly those introduced into Spain by the Moors
and brought here by tho Spaniards. These pipes are of glazed
earthenware, taper at one end, and each fitting into the large end of
the next. The cement is a mixture of lime, fat, and hair, which gets
hard and firm when cold, but can be loosened by a very slight
application of heat. A thousand years has made no alteration in the way
of making these pipes. Here, however, the ground is so level that one
great characteristic of Moorish waterworks is not to be seen. I mean
the water-columns which are such a feature in the country round
Palermo, and in other places where the system of irrigation introduced
by the Moorish invaders is still kept up. These are square pillars
twenty or thirty feet high, with a cistern at the top of each, into
which the water from the higher level flowed, and from which other
pipes carried it on; the sole object of the whole apparatus being to
break the column of water, and reduce the pressure to the thirty or
forty feet which the pipes of earthenware would bear.

This subject of irrigation is very interesting with reference to the
future of Mexico. We visited two or three country-houses in the
plateaux, where the gardens are regularly watered by artificial
channels, and the result is a vegetation of wonderful exuberance and
beauty, converting these spots into oases in the desert. On the lower
levels of the tierra templada where the sugar-cane is cultivated, a
costly system of water-supply has been established in the haciendas
with the best results. Even in the plains of Mexico and Puebla, the
grain-fields are irrigated to some small degree. But notwithstanding
this progress in the right direction, the face of the country shows the
most miserable waste of one of the chief elements of the wealth and
prosperity of the country, the water.

In this respect, Spain and the high lands of Mexico may be compared
together. There is no scarcity of rain in either country, and yet both
are dry and parched, while the number and size of their torrent-beds
show with what violence the mountain-streams descend into lakes or
rivers, rather agents of destruction than of benefit to the land.
Strangely enough, both countries have been in possession of races who
understood that water was the very life-blood of the land, and worked
hard to build systems of arteries to distribute it over the surface. In
both countries, the warlike Spaniards overcame these races, and
irrigating works already constructed were allowed to fall to ruin.

When the Moriscos were expelled from their native provinces of
Andalusia and Granada, their places were but slowly filled up with
other settlers, so that a great part of their aqueducts and
watercourses fell into decay within a few years. These new colonists,
moreover, came from the Northern provinces, where the Moorish system of
culture was little understood; and, incredible as it may seem, though
they must have had ocular evidence of the advantages of artificial
irrigation, they even neglected to keep in repair the water-channels on
their own ground. Now the traveller, riding through Southern Spain, may
see in desolate barren valleys remains of the Moorish works which
centimes ago brought fertility to grain-fields and orchards, and made
the country the garden of Europe.

There was another nation who seem to have far surpassed both Moors and
Aztecs in the magnitude of their engineering-works for this purpose.
The Peruvians cut through mountains, filled up valleys, and carried
whole rivers away in artificial channels to irrigate their thirsty
soil. The historians' accounts of these water-works as they were, and
even travellers' descriptions of the ruins that still remain, fill us
with astonishment. It seems almost like some strange fatality that this
nation too should have been conquered by the same race, the ruin of its
great national works following immediately upon the Conquest.

Spain is rising again after long centuries of degradation, and is
developing energies and resources which seem likely to raise it high
among European nations, and the Spaniards are beginning to hold their
own again among the peoples of Europe. But they have had to pay dearly
for the errors of their ancestors in the great days of Charles the
Fifth.

The ancient Mexicans were not, it is true, to be compared with the
Spanish Arabs or the Peruvians in their knowledge of agriculture and
the art of irrigation; but both history and the remains still to be
found in the country prove that in the more densely populated parts of
the plains they had made considerable progress. The ruined aqueduct of
Tetzcotzinco which I have just mentioned was a grand work, serving to
supply the great gardens of Nezahualcoyotl, which covered a large space
of ground and excited the admiration of the Conquerors, who soon
destroyed them, it is said, in order that they might not remain to
remind the conquered inhabitants of their days of heathendom.

Such works as these seem, however, not to have extended over
whole provinces as they did in Spain. In the thinly peopled
mountain-districts, the Indians broke up their little patches of ground
with a hoe, and watered them from earthen jars, as indeed they do to
this day.

The Spaniards improved the agriculture of the country by introducing
European grain, and fruit-trees, and by bringing the old Roman plough,
which is used to this day in Mexico as in Spain, where two thousand
years have not superseded its use or even altered it. Against these
improvements we must set a heavy account of injury done to the country
as regards its cultivation. The Conquest cost the lives of several
hundred thousand of the labouring class; and numbers more were taken
away from the cultivation of the land to work as slaves for the
conquerors in building houses and churches, and in the silver-mines.
When the inhabitants were taken away, the ground went out of
cultivation, and much of it has relapsed into desert. Even before the
Conquest, Mexico had been suffering for many years from incessant wars,
in which not only thousands perished on the field of battle, but the
prisoners sacrificed annually were to be counted by thousands more,
while famine carried off the women and children whose husbands and
fathers had perished. But the slaughter and famine of the first years
of the Spanish Conquest far exceeded anything that the country had
suffered before.

At the time of the Conquest of Mexico the Spaniards let the native
irrigating-works fall into decay; and they took still more active
measures to deprive the land of its necessary water, by their
indiscriminate destruction of the forests on the hills that surround
the plains. When the trees were cut down, the undergrowth soon
perished, and the soil which had served to check the descending waters
in their course was soon swept away. During the four rainy months, each
heavy shower sends down a flood along the torrent-bed which flows into
a river, and so into the ocean, or, as in the Mexican valley, into a
salt lake, where it only serves to injure the surrounding land. In both
cases it runs away in utter waste.

In later years the Spanish owners of the soil had the necessity of the
system impressed upon them by force of circumstances; and large sums
were spent upon the construction of irrigating channels, even in the
outlying states of the North.

In the American territory recently acquired from Mexico history has
repeated itself in a most curious way. We learn from Froebel, the
German traveller, that the new American settlers did not take kindly to
the system of irrigation which they found at work in the country. They
were not used to it, and it interfered with their ideas of liberty by
placing restrictions upon their doing what they pleased on their own
land. So they actually allowed many of the water-canals to fall into
ruins. Of course they soon began to find out their mistake, and are
probably investing heavily in water-supply by this time. We ought not
to be too severe upon the Spaniards of the sixteenth century for an
economical mistake which we find the Americans falling into under
similar circumstances in the nineteenth.




CHAPTER VII.



CUERNAVACA. TEMISCO. XOCHICALCO.



[Illustration: SPANISH-MEXICAN SADDLE AND ITS APPURTENANCES.]

Much too soon, as we thought, the day came when we had arranged to
leave Tezcuco and return to Mexico, to prepare for a journey into the
tierra caliente. On the evening of our return to the capital there was
a little earthquake, but neither of us noticed it; and thus we lost our
one chance, and returned to England without having made acquaintance
with that peculiar sensation.

The purchase of horses and saddles and other equipments for our
journey, gave us an opportunity of poking about into out-of-the-way
corners of the city, and seeing some new phases of Mexican life; and
certainly we made the most of the chance. We made acquaintance with
horse-dealers, who brought us horses to try in the courtyard of the
great house of our friends the English merchants in the Calle
Seminario, and there showed off their paces, walking, pacing, and
galloping. To trot is considered a disgusting vice in a Mexican horse;
and the universal substitute for it here is the _paso_, a queer
shuffling run, first, the two legs on one side together, and then the
other two. You jolt gently up and down without rising in the stirrups;
and when once you are used to it the paso is not disagreeable, and it
is well suited to long mountain-journeys. Horses in the United States
are often trained to this gait, and are known as "pacing" horses.
Another peculiarity in the training of Mexican horses is, that many of
them are taught to "rayar," that is, to put their fore-feet out after
the manner of mules going down a pass; and slide a short distance along
the ground, so as to stop suddenly in the midst of a rapid gallop. To
practise the horses in this feat, the jockey draws a lino ("_raya_") on
the ground, and teaches them to stop exactly as they reach it, and
whirl round in the opposite direction. This performance is often to be
seen on the paseo, and other places, where smart young gentlemen like
to show off themselves and their horses; but it is only a fancy trick,
and they acknowledge that it spoils the animal's fore-legs.

After much bargaining and chaffering we bought three horses for
ourselves and our man Antonio, giving eight, seven, and four pounds for
them. This does not seem much to give for good hackneys, as these were;
but they were not particularly cheap for Mexico. While we were at
Tezcuco, Mr. Christy used to ride one of Mr. Bowring's horses, a pretty
little chestnut, which carried him beautifully, and had cost just
eleven dollars, or forty-six shillings. It had been bought of the
horse-dealers who come down every year from the almost uninhabited
states of Chihuahua, Durango, and Cohahuila, on the American frontier,
where innumerable herds of horses, all but wild, roam over boundless
prairies, feeding on the tall coarse grass. Their keep costs so little,
that the breeders are not compelled, as in England, to break them in
and sell them at the earliest possible moment, and they let the young
colts roam untamed till they are five or six years old. Their great
strength and power of endurance in proportion to their size is in great
measure to be ascribed to this early indulgence.

It is very clear that when a horse is to be sold for somewhere between
two and six pounds, the breeder cannot afford to spend much time in
breaking him in. The rough-rider lazos him, puts on the bridle with its
severe bit, and springs upon his back in spite of kicking and plunging.
The horse gallops furiously off across country of his own accord, but
when his pace begins to flag, the great vaquero spurs come into
requisition, and in an hour or two he comes back to the corral dead
beat and conquered once for all. It is easy to teach him his paces
afterwards. The anquera--as it is called--is put on his haunches, to
cure him of trotting, and to teach him the paso instead. It is a
leather covering fringed with iron tags, which is put on behind the
saddle, and allows the horse to pace without annoying him; but the
least approach to a trot brings the pointed tags rattling upon his
haunches. We bought one of these anqueras at Puebla. It was very old,
and curiously ornamented with carved patterns. In the last century,
these anqueras were a regular part of Mexican horse-equipment; but now,
except in horse-breaking yards or old curiosity-shops, they are seldom
to be seen.

Almost all the Mexican horses descend from the Arab breed--the gentlest
and yet the most spirited in the world, which have not degenerated
since the Spaniards brought them over in the early days of the
Conquest, but retain unchanged their small graceful shape, their
swiftness, and their power of bearing fatigue. There seem really to be
no large horses bred in the country. Instead of jolting about in a
carriage drawn by eight or ten mules, with harness covered with silver
and gold--as rich Mexicans used to do, the proper thing now is to have
a pair of tall carriage-horses, like ours in England; and these are
brought at great expense from the United States, and by the side of the
graceful little Mexicans they look as big and as clumsy as elephants.

Our saddles were of the old Moorish pattern, of monstrous size and
weight, very comfortable for the rider, but, I fear, much less so for
the horse, whose back often gets sadly galled, in spite of the thick
padding and the two or three blankets that are put on underneath. These
saddles run into high peaks behind and before, so that you can hardly
fall out of them, even when you go to sleep in the saddle on a long
journey, as many people habitually do. In front, the saddle rises into
a pummel which is made of hard wood, and is something like a large
mushroom with its stalk. Round this the end of the lazo is wound, after
the noose has been thrown. All Mexican saddles are provided with these
heads in front, and have, moreover, several pairs of little thongs
attached to them on each side, which serve to tie on bags, whips,
water-gourds, and other odds and ends. Behind the seat of the saddle
are more straps, where cloaks and serapes are fastened; and in case of
need even a carpet-bag will travel there. We were in the habit of
returning from our expeditions with our horses so covered with the
plants and curiosities we had collected, that it became no easy matter
to get our legs safely over the horses' backs, into their proper places
among the clusters of miscellanea. Our acquaintances used to compare us
to the perambulating butchers' shops, which are a feature in Mexican
streets, and consist of a horse with a long saddle covered with hooks,
and on every hook a joint.

The flaps of our saddles, the great spatterdashes that protected our
feet from the mud, and the broad stirrup-straps were covered with
carved and embossed patterns; indeed almost all leather-work is
decorated in this way, and the saddle-makers delight in ornamenting
their wares with silver plates and bosses; so that it was not
surprising that our saddles and bridles should have cost, though
second-hand, nearly as much as the horses.