Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

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Our whole ride to Tisapan was enlivened by a series of Don Juan's
exploits. He raced after bulls, got hold of their tails, and coleared
them over into the dust. He lazo'd everything in the road, from
milestones and trunks of trees upwards; and I shall never forget our
meeting with a great mule which was trotting along the road without a
burden,--just as he passed us, our companion slipped the noose round
his hind leg, and the beast went down as if he had been shot, the
muleteers pulling up on purpose to have a good open-mouthed laugh at
the incident.

We seemed to be in rather a sporting line that day, for, after our
return from Tisapan, Don Juan and I went to see a cockfight. In Mexico,
as in Cuba and all Spanish America, this is the favourite sport of the
people. In Cuba, the principal shopkeeper in every village keeps the
cockpit--the "_plaza de gallos_." The people from the whole district
round about come in on Sunday to the village, with a triple object;
_first_, to hear mass; _secondly_, to buy their supplies for the
ensuing week; and _thirdly_, to spend the afternoon in cockfighting, at
which amusement it is easy to win or lose two or three hundred pounds
in an afternoon. The custom that the cockpit brings to the shop more
than repays the proprietor for the expense and trouble of keeping it.
In Cuba, the spurs of the cock are artificially pointed by paring with
a penknife, but the Mexican way of arming them is even more abominable.

[Illustration: STEEL COCK-SPURS (8 inches long), WITH SHEATH AND
PADDING.]

Each bird has a sharp steel knife three or four inches long, just like
a little scythe-blade, fastened over the natural spur before the fight
commences. A leather sheath covers the weapon while the cocks are being
put into the ring, and held with their beaks almost touching till they
are furious. Then they are drawn back to opposite sides of the ring,
the sheaths are taken off, and they fly at one another, giving
desperate cuts with the steel blades.

The cockpit was a small round wooden shed, with the ring in the middle,
and circular benches round it, rising one above another. The place was
full of people, mostly Mexicans of the lower orders, smoking, betting,
and talking sporting-slang. The betting was surprising, when one
compared its amount with the appearance of the spectators, among whom
there was hardly a decent coat to be seen. Every now and then, a dirty
scoundrel in a shabby leather jacket would walk round the ring with a
handful of gold, offering the odds--ten to five, ten to seven, ten to
nine, or whatever they might be, in gold ounces, which coins are worth
above three pounds apiece.

Cockfighting is such a passion here that we thought it as well to see
it for once. Santa Ana, now he has retired from politics, spends his
time at Carthagena pretty much entirely in this his favourite sport,
which forms one of the great items among the pleasures and excitements
of a Mexican life. We saw a couple of mains fought, in which the
victorious birds were dreadfully mangled, while the vanquished were
literally cut to pieces; as much money changed hands as we should have
thought sufficient to buy up the whole of the people present, cockpit
and all. Then, being both agreed that it was a disgusting sight, we
went away.

Before we left Mexico we were taken by our man Antonio to a cutler's
shop, where the principal trade seemed to be the making of these
_cuchillos_ to arm the cocks with. We bought a couple of pairs of them,
and had them carefully fitted up. The old cutler was quite delighted,
and remarked that foreigners must acknowledge that there were some
things which were done better in Mexico than anywhere else. I fear we
left him under the pleasing impression that we were taking home the
blades to introduce as models in our own benighted country.

The Mexican is a great gambler. Bad fortune he bears with the greatest
equanimity. You never hear of his committing suicide after being ruined
at play; he just goes away, and sets to work to earn enough for a fresh
stake. The government have tried to put down gambling in the State of
Mexico, but not with much success. For three days in the year, however,
at the festival of San Agustin de las Cuevas, public gambling-tables
are tolerated, though soldiers and officials are strictly forbidden to
play, an injunction which they carefully set at nought. Oddly enough,
the government, while doing all it could to keep its own functionaries
away from the _monte_ table, did not scruple to send a military escort
to convoy the bankers with their bags of gold from Mexico to San
Agustin. On one of the three days, Mr. Christy and I went there. There
was a great crowd, this time mostly a well-dressed one, and the cockpit
was on a large scale. But of course the great attraction was the
_monte_, which was being played everywhere, the stakes in some places
being coppers, in others silver, while more aristocratic establishments
would allow no stake under a gold ounce. Dead silence prevailed in
these places, and the players seemed to pride themselves upon not
showing the slightest change in their countenances, whether they won or
lost. The game itself is very simple, and has some points of
resemblance to that of lansquenet, known in Europe. The first two cards
in the pack, say a four and a king, are laid down, face up, on the
table, and the gamblers put down their money against one or the other.
Then the _croupier_ deals the cards out slowly and solemnly one after
another, calling out their names as they fall, until he comes--say to a
king; when those who have betted on the king have their stakes doubled,
and the others lose theirs. The banker has a great advantage to
compensate him for his expense and risk. If the first card which is
thrown out be one of the two numbers on the table, the banker withholds
a quarter of the stake he would otherwise have lost, paying only a
stake and three-quarters, instead of two stakes. Now, as there are
forty cards in a Spanish pack, two of which have been already thrown
out, the chances for a throw favourable to the banker are about one in
six, so that he may reckon on an average profit of about two per cent,
on all the money staked.

As for the players, they sat round the table, carefully noticing the
course of the games, and regulating their play accordingly, as they do
at Baden-Baden and Hombourg. I suppose that now and then these
scientific calculators must be told that their whole theory of chances
is the most baseless delusion, but they certainly do not believe it;
and at any rate this curious pseudo-science of winning by skill at
games of pure chance will last our time, if not longer.

On some tables there were as much as three or four thousand gold
ounces. This struck us the more because we had often tried to get gold
coin for our own use, instead of the silver dollars, the general
currency of the country, of which twenty pounds' worth to carry home on
a hot day was enough to break one's heart. We often tried to get gold,
but the answer was always that what little there was in the country was
in the hands of the gamblers, whose operations could not be worked on a
large scale without it.

The prevalence of mining, as a means of getting wealth, has contributed
greatly to make the love of gambling an important part of the national
character. Silver-mining in the old times was a most hazardous
speculation, and people engaged in it used to make and lose great
fortunes a dozen times in their lives. The miners worked not on fixed
wages, but for a share of the produce, and so every man became a
gambler on his own account. To a great extent the same evils prevail
now, but two things have tended to lessen them. Poor ores are now
worked profitably which used to be neglected by the miners; and, as
these ores occur in almost inexhaustible masses, their mining is a much
less speculative affair than the old system of mining for rich veins.
Moreover, the men are, in some of the largest mines, paid by the day,
so that their life has become more regular. In many places, however,
the work is still done on shares by the miners, who pass their lives in
alternations of excessive riches and all kinds of extravagance,
succeeded by times of extreme poverty.

An acquaintance of ours was telling us one day about the lives of these
men. One week, a party of three miners had come upon a very rich bit of
ore, and went away from the _raya_, each man with a handkerchief full
of dollars. This was on Saturday evening. On Monday morning our
informant went out for a ride, and on the road he met three dirty
haggard-looking men, dressed in some old rags; one of the three came
forward, taking off the sort of apology for a hat which he had on, and
said, "Good morning, Senor Doctor, would you mind doing us the favour
of lending us half a dollar to get something to eat?" They were the
three successful miners; and when, a few days afterwards, the man who
had asked for the money came back to return it, the Doctor inquired
what had happened.

It seemed that the three, as soon as they had received their money on
Saturday, got a lift to the nearest town, and there rigged themselves
out with new clothes, silver buttons, five-pound serapes, and a horse
for each, with magnificent silver mountings to the saddle and spurs.
Here they have dinner, and lots of pulque, and swagger about outside
the door, smoking cigarettes. There, quite by chance, an acquaintance
meets them, and admires the horses, but would like to see their paces
tried a little outside the town. So they pace and gallop along for half
a mile or so; when, also quite accidentally, they find two men sitting
outside a rancho, playing at cards. The two men--strangely enough--are
old acquaintances of the curious friend, and they produce a bowl of
cool pulque from within, which our miners find quite refreshing after
the ride. Thereupon they sit down to have a little game at _monte_,
then more pulque, then more cards; and when they awake the next
morning, they find themselves possessed of a suit of old rags, with no
money in the pockets. They had dim recollections of losing--first
money, then horses, and lastly clothes, the night before; but--as they
were informed by the old woman, who was the only occupant of the place
besides themselves--their friends had been obliged to go away on urgent
business, and could not be so impolite as to disturb them. So they
walked back to the mines, ragged and hungry, and borrowed the doctor's
half-dollar.

[Illustration: LEATHER SANDALS, WORN BY THE NATIVE INDIANS.]

CHAPTER X.

TEZCUCO. MIRAFLORES. POPOCATEPETL. CHOLULA.

[Illustration: WALKING AND RIDING COSTUMES IN MEXICO. _(After Nebel.)_]

The wet season was fast coming on when we left Mexico for the last
time. We had to pass through Vera Cruz, where the rain and the yellow
fever generally set in together; so that to stay longer would have been
too great a risk.

Our first stage was to Tezcuco, across the lake in a canoe, just as we
had been before. We noticed on our way to the canoes, a church,
apparently from one to two centuries old, with the following doggerel
inscription in huge letters over the portico, which shows that the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception is by no means a recent institution
in Mexico:

_Antes de entrar afirma con tu vida,
S. Maria fue sin pecado concebida:_

Which may be translated into verse of equal quality,

_Confess on thy life before coming in,
That blessed Saint Mary was conceived without sin._

Nothing particular happened on our journey, except that a well-dressed
Mexican turned up at the landing-place, wanting a passage, and as we
had taken a canoe for ourselves, we offered to let him come with us. He
was a well-bred young man, speaking one or two languages besides his
own; and he presently informed us that he was going on a visit to a
rich old lady at Tezcuco, whose name was Dona Maria Lopez, or something
of the kind. When we drove away from the other end of the lake, towards
Tezcuco, we took him as far as the road leading to the old lady's
house; when he rather astonished us by hinting that he should like to
go on with us to the Casa Grande, and could walk back. At the same
time, it struck us that the youth, though so well dressed, had no
luggage; and we began to understand the queer expression of the
coachman's face when he saw him get into the carriage with us. So we
stopped at the corner of the road, and the young gentleman had to get
out.

At the Casa Grande, our friends laughed at us immensely when we told
them of the incident, and offered us twenty to one that he would come
to ask for money within twenty-four hours. He came the same evening,
and brought a wonderful story about his passport not being _en regle_,
and that unless we could lend him ten dollars to bribe the police, he
should be in a dreadful scrape. We referred him to the master of the
house, who said something to him which caused him to depart
precipitately, and we never saw him again; but we heard afterwards that
he had been to the other foreigners in the neighbourhood with various
histories. We made more enquiries about him in the town, and it
appeared that his expedition to Tezcuco was improvised when he saw us
going down to the boat, and of course the visit to the rich old lady
was purely imaginary. Now this youth was not more than eighteen, and
looked and spoke like a gentleman. They say that the class he belonged
to is to be counted rather by thousands than by hundreds in Mexico.
They are the children of white Creoles, or nearly white mestizos; they
get a superficial education and the art of dressing, and with this
slender capital go out into the world to live by their wits, until they
get a government appointment or set up as political adventurers, and so
have a chance of helping themselves out of the public purse, which is
naturally easier and more profitable than mere sponging upon
individuals. One gets to understand the course of Mexican affairs much
better by knowing what sort of raw material the politicians are
recruited from.

We saw some good things in a small collection of antiquities, on this
second visit to Tezcuco. Among them was a nude female figure in
alabaster, four or five feet high, and--comparatively speaking--of high
artistic merit. Such figures are not common in Mexico, and they are
supposed to represent the Aztec Venus, who was called _Tlazolteocihua_,
"Goddess of Pleasure." A figure, laboriously cut in hard stone,
representing a man wearing a jackal's head as a mask, was supposed to
be a figurative representation of the celebrated king of Tezcuco,
_Nezahualcoyotl_, "hungry jackal," of whom Mexican history relates that
he walked about the streets of his capital in disguise, after the
manner of the Caliph in the Arabian Nights. The explanation is
plausible, but I think not correct. The _coyote_ or jackal was a sacred
animal among the Aztecs, as the Anubis-jackal was among the Egyptians.
Humboldt found in Mexico the tomb of a coyote, which had been carefully
interred with an earthen vase, and a number of the little cast-bronze
bells which I noticed in the last chapter. The Mexicans used actually
to make a kind of fetish--or charm--of a jackal's skin, prepared in a
peculiar way, and called by the same name, _nezahualcoyotl_, and very
likely they do so still. From this fetish the king's name was, no
doubt, borrowed; and it is not improbable that the whole story of the
king's walking in disguise may have grown up out of his name being the
same as that of the figure we saw, muffled up in a jackal's skin.

It is curious that the jackal, or the human figure in a jackal-mask,
should have been an object of superstitious veneration both in Mexico
and in Egypt. This, the extraordinary serpent-crown of Xochicalco, and
the pyramids, are the three most striking resemblances to be found
between the two countries; all probably accidental, but not the less
noteworthy on that account.

The collection contained a number of spherical beads in green jade,
highly polished, and some as large as pigeon's eggs. They were found in
an alabaster box, of such elaborate and beautiful workmanship that the
owner deemed it worthy to be presented as a sort of peace-offering to
the wife of President Santa Ana.

The word _coyotl_ in the name of the Tezcucan king is the present word
_coyote_--a jackal. Though unknown in English, it has passed, with
several Spanish words, into what we may call the American dialect of
our language. Prairie-hunters and Californians have introduced several
other words in this way, such as _ranch_, _gulch, corral_, &c.

The word _lariat_ one is constantly meeting with in books about
American prairies. A horse-rope, or a lazo, is called in Spanish
_reata_; and, by absorbing the article, _la reata_ is made into lariat,
just as such words as _alligator_, _alcove_, and _pyramid_ were formed.
The flexible leather riding-whip or _cuarta_ is apparently the _quirt_
that some American politicians use in arguing with their opponents.

Our last day at Tezcuco was spent in packing up antiquities to be sent
to England, the express orders of the Government against such
exportation to the contrary notwithstanding. Next morning we rode off
to Miraflores, passing on our way the curious stratum of alluvial soil
containing pottery, &c., which I have described already. Miraflores is
a cotton-factory, in the opening of a picturesque gorge just at the
edge of the plain of Mexico. The machinery is American, for the mill
dates from the time when it was considered expedient to prohibit the
exportation of cotton-mill machinery from England; and having begun
with American work, it naturally suits them to go on with it. It is
driven by a great Barker's mill, which works in a sort of well, having
an outlet into the valley, and roars as though it would tear the place
down. It is not common to see this kind of machine working on a large
scale; but here, with a great fall of water, it does very well.
Otherwise the place was like an ordinary cotton-factory, and one cannot
be surprised at people thinking that such establishments are a source
of prosperity to the country. They see a population hard at work and
getting good wages, masters making great profits, and no end of bales
going off to town; and do not consider that half the price of the cloth
is wasted, and that the protection-duty sets the people to work which
they cannot do to advantage, while it takes them away from occupations
which their country is fit for.

Next morning took us to Amecameca, a town in a little plain at the foot
of Popocatepetl, whose snow-covered top towers high up in the clouds,
like Mont Blanc over Sallanches. We had at one time cherished hopes of
getting to the top of this grand volcano, but had heard such frightful
reports of difficulties and dangers that we had concluded not to do
more than look at it from a distance, the more especially as there had
been a heavy fall of snow upon it a day or two before. We presented our
letter to the Spaniard who kept the great shop at Amecameca, and asked
him, casually, about the mountain. He assured us that the surface of
the snow would be frozen over, and that instead of being a disadvantage
the fall of snow was in our favour, for it was easier to climb over
frozen snow than up a loose heap of volcanic ashes. So we sent for the
guide, a big man, who used to manage the sulphur-workings in the crater
until that undertaking was given up. He set to work to get things ready
for the expedition, and we strolled out for a walk.

Close by the town is a "sacred mount," with little stations, and on one
day in the year numbers of pilgrims come to visit the place. Near the
top, the Indian lad who came with us showed us the mouth of a cavern,
which leads by subterranean passages under the sea to Rome--as caverns
not unfrequently do in Roman Catholic countries! What was more worth
noticing was that here there was a cypress-tree, covered with votive
offerings, like the great ahuchuete in the valley above Chalma; so that
it is likely that the place was sacred long before chapels and stations
were built upon it. Our guide told us that whenever a man touched the
tree, all feeling of weariness left him. How characteristic this
superstition is of a nation of carriers of burdens!

In the afternoon we started--ourselves, our guide, and an Indian to
carry cloaks, &c. up the mountain. We soon left the cultivated region,
and entered upon the pine-forest, which we never left during our
afternoon journey. One of the first showers of the rainy season came
down upon us as we rode through the forest. It only lasted half an
hour, but it was a deluge. In a shower of the same kind at Tezcuco, a
day or two before, rain to the amount of 1-1/10 inches fell in the
hour. By dusk we reached the highest habitation in North America, the
place where the sulphur used to be sublimed from the pumice brought
down from the crater. This place was shut up, for the undertaking has
been abandoned; but in a _rancho_ close by we found some Indian women
and children, and there we took up our quarters. The _rancho_ was a
circular hut, built and thatched with reeds, though in the midst of a
pine-forest; and presently a smart shower began, which came in upon us
as though the roof had been a sieve.

The Indian women were kneeling all the evening round the wood-fire in
the centre of the hut, baking _tortillas_ and boiling beans and coffee
in earthen pots. The wood was green, and the place was full of
suffocating smoke, except within eighteen inches of the ground, where
lay a stratum of purer air. We were obliged to lie down at once, upon
mats and serapes, for we could not exist in the smoke; and as often as
we raised ourselves into a sitting posture, we had to dive down again,
half suffocated. The line of demarcation was so accurately drawn that
it was like the Grotto del Cane, only reversed.

After a primitive supper in earthen bowls, we lay round the fire,
listening to the talk of our men and the Indian women. It was mostly
about adventures with wolves, and about the sulphur-workings, now
discontinued. The weather had cleared, and as we lay we could see the
stars shining in through the roof. About three in the morning I awoke,
feeling bruised all over, as was natural after sleeping on a mat on the
ground. Moreover, the fire had gone out, and it was horribly cold, as
well it might be at 13,000 feet above the sea. I shook some one up to
make up the fire, and went out into the open air. It was nearly full
moon; but the moonlight was very different from what we can see in
England, even on the clearest nights. On the plateau of Mexico, the
rarity and dryness of the air are such that distant objects are seen
far more distinctly than at the level of the sea, and the European
traveller's measurements of distance by the eye are always too small.
The sunlight and moonlight, for the same reason, are more intense than
at lower levels. Here, at about the same elevation as the top of the
Jungfrau, the effect was far more striking, and I shall never forget
the brilliant flood of light that illuminated that grand scene. Far
down below I could see the plain, with houses and fields dimly visible.
At the bottom of the slope began the dark pine-forest, which enveloped
the mountains up to the level at which I stood, and there broke into an
uneven line, with straggling patches running up a few hundred feet
higher in sheltered crevices. Above the forest came a region of bare
volcanic sand, and then began the snow. The highest peak no longer
looked steep and pointed as from below, but seemed to rise from the
darker line of sand in a gentle swelling curve up into the sky. There
did not seem to be a speck or a wrinkle on this smooth snowy dome, the
brilliant whiteness of which contrasted so wonderfully with the dark
pine-forest below.

About seven in the morning we started on horseback, rode up across the
sandy district, and entered upon the snow. After we left the pines,
small bushes and tufts of coarse Alpine grass succeeded. Where rocks of
basaltic lava stood out from the heaps of crumbling ashes, after the
grass had ceased, lichens--the occupants of the highest zone--were
still to be seen. Before we reached the snow, we were in the midst of
utter desolation, where no sign of life was visible. From this point we
sent back the horses, and started for the ascent of the cone. On our
yesterday's ride we had cut young pine-trees in the forest, for
alpenstocks; and we tied silk handkerchiefs completely over our faces,
to keep off the glare of the sun. Our guide did the same; but the
Indian, who had been many times before up to the crater to get sulphur,
had brought no protection for his face. We marched in a line, the guide
first, sounding the depth of the snow with his pole, and keeping as
nearly as he could along ridges just covered with snow, where we did
not sink far. It was from the lower part of the snow that we began to
understand the magnificent proportions of Iztaccihuatl--the "White
Woman," the twin mountain which is connected with Popocatepetl by an
immense col, which stretches across below the snow-line. This mountain
is not conical like Popocatepetl, but its shoulders are broader, and
break into grand peaks, like some of the _Dents_ of Switzerland, and it
has no crater.[22] Indeed, the two mountains, joined together like
Siamese twins, look as though they had been set up, side by side, to
illustrate the two contending theories of the formation of volcanos.
Von Buch and Humboldt might have made Iztaccihuatl on the "upheaval
theory," by a force pushing up from below, without breaking through the
crust to form a crater; while Poulett Scrope was building Popocatepetl
on the "accumulation theory," by throwing up lava and volcanic ashes
out of an open vent, until he had formed a conical heap some five
thousand feet high, with a great crater at the top.

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