Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

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In books of travels in Mexico up to the beginning of the present
century, one of the staple articles of wondering description was the
gorgeous trappings of the horses, and the spurs, bits, and stirrups of
gold and silver. The costumes have not changed much, but the taste for
such costly ornaments has abated; and it is now hardly respectable to
have more than a few pounds worth of bullion on one's saddle or around
one's hat, or to wear a hundred or so of buttons of solid gold down the
sides of one's leather trousers, with a very questionable cotton
calzoncillo underneath.

The horses' bits are made with a ring, which pinches the under-lip when
the bridle is tightened, and causes great pain when it is pulled at all
hard. At first sight it seems cruel to use such bits, but the system
works very well; and the horses, knowing the power their rider has over
them, rarely misbehave themselves. One rides along with the loop at the
end of the twisted horse-hair bridle hanging loose on one finger, so
that the horse's mouth is much less pulled about than with the bridles
we are accustomed to in England. When it is necessary to guide the
horse, the least pressure is enough; but, as a general rule, the little
fellow can find his way as well as his rider can. We used continually
to let our reins drop on our horses' necks, and jog on careless of pits
and stumbling-blocks. I have even seen my companion take out his
pocket-book, and improve the occasion by making notes and sketches as
he went.

[Illustration: SPANISH-MEXICAN BIT, WITH ITS RING AND CHAINS. LENGTH 9
INCHES, WIDTH 5-1/2 INCHES.]

The distance from Mexico to Vera Cruz is about two hundred and fifty
miles, and what the roads are I have in some measure described. Rafael
Beraza, the courier of the English Mission at Mexico, used to ride this
with despatches regularly once a month in forty hours, and occasionally
in thirty-five. He changed horses about every ten or fifteen miles; and
now and then, when, overcome by sleep, he would let the boy who
accompanied him to the next stage ride first, his own horse following,
and the rider comfortably dozing as he went along.

As for our own equipment, Mr. Christy adopted the attributes of the
eastern traveller when he came into the country, the great umbrella,
the veil, and the felt hat with a white handkerchief over it. As for
me, my wardrobe was scanty; so, when my travelling coat wore out at the
elbows and my trousers were sat through--like the little bear's chair
in the story, I replaced the garments with a jacket of chamois leather,
and a pair of loose trousers made of the same, after the manner of the
country. Then came a grey felt hat, as stiff as a boiler-plate, and of
more than quakerish lowness of crown and broadness of brim, but
secularized by a silver serpent for a hatband; also, a red silk sash,
which--fastening round the waist--held up my trousers, and interfered
with my digestion; lastly, a woollen serape to sleep under, and to wear
in the mornings and evenings. This is the genuine ranchero costume, and
it did me good service. Indeed, ever since my Mexican journey I have
considered that George Fox decidedly showed his good sense by dressing
himself in a suit of leather; much more so than the people who laughed
at him for it.

In the country, all Mexicans--high and low--wear this national dress;
and in this they are distinguished from the Indians, who keep to the
cotton shirts and drawers, and the straw hats of their ancestors. In
the towns, it is only the lower classes who dress in the ranchero
costume, for "nous autres" wear European garments and follow the last
Paris fashion, with these exceptions--that for riding, people wear
jackets and calzoneras of the national cut, though made of cloth, and
that the Mexican hat is often worn even by people who adopt no other
parts of the costume. There never were such hats as these for
awkwardness. The flat sharp brims of passers-by are always threatening
to cut your head off in the streets. You cannot get into a carriage
with your hat on, nor sit there when you are in. But for walking and
riding under a fierce sun, they are perhaps better than anything else
that can be used.

The Mexican blanket--the serape--is a national institution; It is wider
than a Scotch plaid, and nearly as long, with a slit in the middle; and
it is woven in the same gaudy Oriental patterns which are to be seen on
the prayer-carpets of Turkey and Palestine to this day. It is worn as a
cloak, with the end flung over the left shoulder, like the Spanish
_capa_, and muffling up half the face when its owner is chilly or does
not wish to be recognized. When a heavy rain comes down, and he is on
horseback, he puts his head through the slit in the middle, and becomes
a moving tent. At night he rolls himself up in it, and sleeps on a mat
or a board, or on the stones in the open air.

Convenient as it is, the serape is as much tabooed among the
"respectable" classes in the cities as the rest of the national
costume. I recollect going one evening after dark to the house of our
friends in the Calle Seminario with my serape on, and nearly having to
fight it out with the great dog Nelson, who was taking charge of his
master's room. Nelson knew me perfectly well, and had sat that very
morning at the hotel-gate for half an hour, holding my horse, while a
crowd of leperos stood round, admiring his size and the gravity of his
demeanour as he sat on the pavement, with the bridle in his mouth. But
that a man in a serape should come into his master's room at dusk was a
thing he could not tolerate, till the master himself came in, and
satisfied his mind on the subject.

As I said, the equipment of ourselves and our three horses took us into
a variety of strange places, for we bought the things we wanted piece
by piece, when we saw anything that suited us. Among other places we
went to the Baratillo, which is the Rag-Fair and Petticoat Lane of
Mexico, and moreover the emporium for whips, bridles, bits, old spurs,
old iron, and odds and ends generally. The little shops are arranged in
long lines, after the manner of the eastern bazaar; and the
shopkeepers, when they are not smoking cigarettes outside, are sitting
in their little dens, within arms-length of all the wares they have to
sell. Here we found what we had come for, and much more too, in the way
of wonderful old spurs, combs, boxes, and ornaments; so that we came
several times more before we left the country, and never without
carrying away some curious old relic.

Mexico, as everybody knows, is decidedly a thievish place. The shops
are all shut at dark, after the _Oracion_, for fear of thieves. Ladies
used to wear immense tortoise-shell combs at the back of their heads,
where the mantilla is fastened on; but, when it became a regular trade
for thieves to ride on horseback through the streets, and pull out the
combs as they went, the fashion had to be given up. These curiously
carved and ornamented combs are still preserved as curiosities, and we
bought several of them.

While we were in Mexico, they knocked a man down in the great square at
noon-day, robbed him, and left him there for dead. The square is so
large, and the sun was so hot, that the police--whose head-quarters are
under the arches in that very square--could not possibly walk across to
see what was going on!--_moral_, if you will have the distinction of
having the largest square in the world, you must take the consequences.

Of course, where thieving is so general, the market for stolen goods
must be a place of considerable trade, and this Baratillo is one of the
principal depots for such wares. One may realize here the story of the
citizen, in the old book, who had his wig stolen at the beginning of
his walk through London, and found it hanging up for sale a little
further on. Here the deserter comes to sell his uniform and his
ricketty old flintlock. Small blame to him. I would do the same myself
if I were in his place, and were compelled to serve under one rascally
political adventurer against another rascally political adventurer--to
say nothing of being treated like a dog, half-starved, and not paid at
all, except by a sort of half license to plunder. "Those poor soldiers!
we can't pay them, you know, and they must live somehow."

I have abused the Mexicans for being thieves, and not without reason,
though, as regards ourselves personally, we never lost anything except
a great brand-new waterproof coat which my companion had brought with
him, promising to himself that under its shelter he should bid defiance
to the daily rain-storms of the wet season. As we dismounted from the
Diligence in Mexico, in the courtyard of the hotel, some one relieved
him of it. We did not know of the Baratillo in those days, or would
have gone to look for it there. At the time of our visit it was too
late, for if it ever had been there, the Mexicans understand too well
the value of an English "ulli," as they call them, to let it hang long
for sale. "Ulli" is not a borrowed word, but the genuine Aztec name for
India-rubber, which was used to make playing-balls with, long before
the time of Columbus.

I mentioned the water-bottles as part of our equipment. They are
gourds, which are throttled with bandages while young, so as to make
them grow into the shape of bottles with necks. Then they are hung up
to dry; and the inside being cleaned out through a small hole near the
stalk, they are ready for use, holding two or three pints of water. A
couple of inches of a corn-cob (the inside of a ear of Indian corn)
makes a capital cork; and the bottle is hung by a loop of string to the
pummel of the saddle, where it swings about without fear of breaking.
One may see gourds, prepared in just the same way, in Italy, hanging up
under the eaves of the little farm-houses, among the festoons of red
and yellow ears of Indian corn; and indeed the gourd-bottle is a
regular institution of Southern Europe.

We sent Antonio on with the horses to Cuernavaca, and started by the
Diligence early one morning, accompanied by one of our English friends,
whom I will call--as every-one else did--Don Guillermo. It is the
regular thing here, as in Spain, to call everybody by his or her
Christian name. You may have known Don Antonio or Don Felipe for weeks
before you happen to hear their surnames.

The road ran at first over the plain, among great water-meadows, with
herds of cattle pasturing, and fields of wheat and maize. Ploughing was
going on, after the primitive fashion of the country, with two oxen
yoked to each plough. The yoke is fastened to the horns of the oxen,
and to the centre of the yoke a pole is attached. At the other end of
this pole is the plough itself, which consists of a wooden stake with
an iron point and a handle. The driver holds the handle in one hand and
his goad in the other (a long reed with an iron point), and so they
toil along, making a long scratch as they go. A man follows the plough,
and drops in single grains of Indian corn, about three feet apart. The
furrows are three feet from one another, so that each stalk occupies
some nine square feet of ground. When the plants are growing up they
dig between them, and heap up round each stalk a little mound of earth.

We passed many little houses consisting of one square room, built of
mud-bricks, with mud-mortar stuck full of little stones; without
windows, but generally possessing the luxury of a chimney, with a
couple of bricks forming an arch over it to keep out the rain. Glimpses
of men smoking cigarettes at the doors, half-naked brown children
rolling in the dirt, and women on their knees inside, hard at work
grinding the corn for those eternal tortillas.

At San Juan de Dios Mr. Christy climbed to the top of the Diligence,
behind the conductor, who sat with a large black leather bag full of
stones on the footboard before him. Whenever one of the nine mules
showed a disposition to shirk his work, a heavy stone came flying at
him, always hitting him in a tender place, for long practice had made
the conductor almost as good a shot as the goat-herds in the mountains,
who are said to be able to hit their goats on whichever horn they
please, and so to steer them straight when they seem inclined to stray.
But our conductor simply threw the stones, whereas the goat-herd uses
the aloe-fibre honda, or sling, that one sees hanging by dozens in the
Mexican shops.

We pass near Churubusco, and along the line by which the American army
reached Mexico. The field of lava which they crossed is close at our
right hand; and just on the other side of it lie Tisapan and our friend
Don Alejandro's cotton-factory. On our left are the freshwater-lakes of
Xochimilco and Chalco, which had risen several feet, and flooded the
valley in their neighbourhood. Between us and the great mountain-chain
that forms the rim of the valley, lies a group of extinct volcanos,
from one of which descends the great lava-field.

Passing in full view of these picturesque craters, now mostly covered
with trees and brushwood, we begin to ascend, and are soon among the
porphyritic range that forms a wall between us and the land of
sugar-canes and palms. Along the road towards Mexico came long files of
Indians, dressed in the national white cotton shirts and short drawers
and sandals, made like Montezuma's, though not with plates of gold on
the soles, such as that monarch's sandals had. Some of these Indians
are bringing on their backs wood and charcoal from the pine-forest
higher up among the mountains, and some have fastened to their backs
light crates full of live fowls or vegetables; others are carrying up
tropical fruits from the tierra caliente below, zapotes and mameis,
nisperos and granaditas, tamarinds and fresh sugar-canes. These people
are walking with their loads thirty or forty miles to market: but their
race have been used as beasts of burden for ages, and they don't mind
it.

Bright blue and red birds, and larger and more brilliant butterflies
than are seen in Europe, show that, though we are among fields of wheat
and maize, we are in the tropics after all. As the road rises we get
views of the broad valley, with its lakes and green meadows, and the
great white haciendas with their clumps of willows, their
church-towers, and the clusters of adobe huts surrounding them--like
the peasants' cottages in feudal Europe, crowding up to the baron's
castle.

Our mules begin to flag as we toil up the steep ascent; but the
conductor rattles the stones in his black bag, and as the ominous sound
reaches their ears, they start off again with renewed vigour. We pass
San Mateo, a village of charcoal-burners, where a large and splendid
stone church, with its tall dark cypresses, stands among the huts of
reeds and pine-shingles that form the village.

[Illustration: INDIANS BRINGING CHARCOAL, &C. TO MEXICO.]

Trains of mules are continually passing with their heavy loads of wood
and charcoal, bales of goods and barrels of aguardiente de cana, which
is rum made from the sugar-cane, but not coloured like that which comes
to England. The men are continually rushing backwards and forwards
among their beasts, which are not content with kicking and biting, and
banging against one another, but are always trying to lie down in the
road; and one of the principal duties of the arriero is constantly to
keep an eye on all his beasts at once, and, when he sees one preparing
to lie down, to be beforehand with him, and drive him on by a furious
shower of blows, kicks, and curses. Certainly, the Mexican mules are
the finest and strongest in the world; and, though they are just as
obstinate here as elsewhere, they are worth two or three times as much
as horses.

Our road lies through a forest of pines and oaks, which reaches to the
summit of the pass, where stands a wretched little village, La Guarda.
There we had a thoroughly Mexican breakfast, with pulque in tall
tumblers, and endless successions of tortillas, coming in hot and hot
from the kitchen, where we could see brown women with bare arms, and
black hair plaited in long tails, kneeling by the charcoal fire, and
industriously patting out fresh supplies, and baking them rapidly on a
hot plate. The _piece de resistance_ was a stew, bright red with
tomatas, and hot as fire with chile; and then came the _frijoles_--the
black beans--without which no Mexican, high or low, considers a meal
complete. The walls of the room were decorated with highly coloured
engravings, one of which represented an engagement between a Spanish
and an English fleet, in which the English ships are being boarded by
the victorious Spaniards, or are being blown up in the background.
Where the engagement was I cannot recollect. People in Mexico, to whom
I mentioned this remarkable historical event, assured me that there are
still to be seen pictures of the destruction of the English fleet by
the French and Spaniards in the Bay of Trafalgar!

Mexico was always, until the establishment of the republic, profoundly
ignorant of European affairs. In the old times, when the intercourse
with the mother-country was by the great ship, "el nao," which came
once a year, the government at home could have just such news
circulated through the country as seemed proper and convenient to them.
We see in our own times how despotic governments can mystify their
subjects, and distort contemporary history into what shape they please.
But in Spanish America the system was worked to a greater extent than
in any other country I have heard of; and the undercurrent of popular
talk, which spreads in France and Russia things and opinions not to be
found in the newspapers, had in Mexico but little influence. Scarcely
any Mexican travelled, scarcely any foreigner visited the country, and
the Spaniards who came to hold offices and make fortunes were all in
the interest of the old country; so the Mexicans went on, until the
beginning of this century, believing that Spain still occupied the same
position among the nations of Europe that it had held in the days of
Charles the Fifth.

While my companion was outside the Diligence, Don Guillermo and I were
left to the conversation of an Italian fellow-passenger. One finds such
characters in books, but never before or since have I seen the reality.
He might have been the original of the great Braggadoccio. His
conversation was like a chapter out of the autobiography of his
countryman Alfieri.

He had accompanied the Italian nobleman who was killed in an affray
with the Mexican robbers, some years ago, and on that occasion his
defence had been most heroic. He himself had shot several of the
robbers; till at last, his friend being killed, the rest of the party
yielded to the overwhelming numbers of the brigands, and he ran off to
fetch assistance!

Whenever he was riding along a Mexican road, and any suspicious-looking
person asked him for a light, his habit was to hand him his cigar stuck
in the muzzle of a pistol; "and they always take the hint," he said,
"and see that it won't do to interfere with us." Alone, he had been
attacked by three armed men, but with a pistol in each hand he had
compelled them to retreat. But this was not all; our champion was
victorious in love as well as in arms. Like the great Alfieri, to whom
I have compared him, in every country where he travelled, the most
beautiful and distinguished ladies hardly waited for him to ask before
they cast themselves at his feet. Refusing the rich jewels that he
offered them, they declared that they loved him for himself alone.

Weeks after, we were talking to our friend Mr. Del Pozzo, the Italian
apothecary in the Calle Plateros, and happened to ask him if he were
acquainted with his heroic countryman. Whereupon the apothecary went
off into fits of unextinguishable laughter, and told us how our friend
really had been in the skirmish he described, and had nobly run away
almost before a shot was fired, leaving his friends to fight it out. An
hour or two after, he was found shaking with terror in a ditch.

To return to our road. The forest is on both sides of the Sierra; but
it is on the southern slope, over which we look down from the pass,
that the pines attain their fullest size and beauty; for here they are
as grand as in the Scandinavian forests, with all the beauty of the
pine-trees on the Italian hills. The pass, with its deep forest
skirting the road, has been a resort of robbers for many years; and the
driver pointed out to my companion a little grassy dell by the
road-side, from which forty men had rushed out and plundered the
Diligence just ten days before. With his mind just prepared, one may
imagine his feelings when he caught sight of some twenty wild-looking
fellows in all sorts of strange garments, with the bright sunshine
gleaming on the barrels of their muskets. A man was riding a little in
front of us, and as he approached the others they descended, and ranged
themselves by the side of the road. They were only the guard, after
all, and such a guard! Their thick matted black hair hung about over
their low foreheads and wild brown faces. Some had shoes, some had
none, and some had sandals. They had straw hats, glazed hats, no hats,
leather jackets and trousers, cotton shirts and drawers, or drawers
without any shirt at all; and--what looked worst of all--some had
ragged old uniforms on, like deserters from the army, and there are no
worse robbers than they. When the Diligence reached them, the guard
joined us; some galloping on before, some following behind, whooping
and yelling, brandishing their arms, and dashing in among the trees and
out into the road again. Every now and then my friend outside got a
glimpse down the muzzle of a musket, which did not add to his peace of
mind. At last we got through the dangerous pass, and then we made a
subscription for the guard, who departed making the forest ring again
with war-whoops, and firing off their muskets in our honour until we
were out of hearing.

The top of the pass is 12,000 feet above the sea, but the clouds seemed
as high as ever above us, and the swallows were flying far up in the
air. Three thousand feet lower we were in a warmer region, among oaks
and arbutus; and here, as in our higher latitudes, the climate is far
hotter than on the northern slope at the same height. Bananas are to be
found at an elevation of 9,000 feet, three times the height at which
they ceased on the eastern slope, as we came up from Vera Cruz. This
difference between the two slopes depends, in part, on the different
quantity of sunshine they receive, which is of some importance,
although we are within the tropics. But the sheltering of the southern
sides from the chilling winds from the north still further contributes
to give their vegetation a really tropical character.

We felt the heat becoming more and more intense as we descended, and
when we reached Cuernavaca we lay down in the beautiful garden of the
inn, among orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, listening to the pleasant
cool sound of running water, and looking down into the great barranca
with its perpendicular walls of rock, and the luxuriant vegetation of
the tierra caliente covering the banks of the stream that flowed far
below us. We could easily shout to the people on the other edge of the
ravine, but it would have taken hours of toiling down the steep paths
and up again before we could have reached them.

Here our horses were waiting for us; and an hour or two's ride brought
us to the great sugar-hacienda of Temisco, where we were to pass the
night, for towns and inns are few and far between in Mexico when one
leaves the more populous mountain-plateaus. So much the better, for my
companion had provided himself with letters of introduction, and we had
already seen something of hacienda life, and liked it.

As we approached Temisco, we saw upon the slopes, immense fields of
sugar-cane, now grown into a dense mass, five or six feet high, most
pleasant to look upon for the delicate green tint of the leaves that
belongs to no other plant. The colour of our English turf is beautiful,
and so are the tints of our English woods in spring, but our fields of
grain have a dull and dingy green compared to the sugar-cane and the
young Indian corn. In this beautiful valley we cannot charge the
inhabitants with entirely neglecting the irrigation of the land.
Indeed, the culture of the sugar-cane cannot be carried on without it,
and the cost of the watercourses on the large estates has been very
great. Unfortunately, even here agriculture is not flourishing. The
small number of the white inhabitants, and the distracted state of the
country make both life and property very insecure; and the brown people
are becoming less and less disposed to labour on the plantations.

It is true that most of these channels were made in old times; little
new is done now, and I could make a long list of estates that were once
busy and prosperous, giving employment to thousands of the Indian
inhabitants, and that are now over-grown with weeds and falling to
ruin.

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