Work Projects Administration - "Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives"

George Borrow - "The Pocket George Borrow"

Edmund Burke - "The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12)"

Laurent Olivier David - "Le Heros de Chateauguay"

Clenched fists and AK-47s
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IF THE devil has the best tunes, radicals make the best posters. In Lebanon the propaganda posters of Hizbullah and its allies are a heady mix of bright colour, simple logos and distinctively Arab calligraphy and portraits. The government commissioned

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Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

E >> Edward Burnett Tylor >> Anahuac




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.