Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

E >> Edward Burnett Tylor >> Anahuac

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As we toiled slowly up the snow, we took off our veils from time to
time, to look more clearly about us. The glare of the sun upon the snow
was dazzling, and its intense whiteness contrasted wonderfully with the
cloudless dark indigo-blue of the sky. Between twelve and one we
reached the edge of the crater, 17,884 feet above the sea. The ridge
upon which we stood was only a few feet wide, and covered with snow;
but it seemed that there was still heat enough to keep the crater
itself clear, for none lay on the bottom, or in clefts on the steep
sides.

The crater was oval, full a mile in its longest diameter, and perhaps
700 to 800 feet in depth; and its almost perpendicular walls of
basaltic lava are covered with red and yellow patches of sublimed
sulphur. We climbed a little way down into it to get protection from
the wind, but to descend further unassisted was not possible, so we sat
there, with our legs dangling down into the abyss. Part of the
_malacate_, or winder, used by the Indians in descending, was still
there; but it was not complete, and even if it had been, so many months
had elapsed since it was last used that we should not have cared to try
it. It consisted of a rope of hide, descending into the bottom of the
crater in a slanting direction; and the sulphur-collectors were lowered
and drawn up it by a windlass, in a basket to which another rope was
attached. A few years back, the volcano used to send up showers of
ashes, and even large stones; but now it has sunk to the condition of a
mere _solfatara_, sending out, from two crevices in the floor, great
volumes of sulphurous acid and steam, with a loud roaring noise. The
sulphur-working merely consisted in looking for places where the
pumice-stone was fully impregnated with sulphur, and breaking out
pieces, which were hauled up in the basket. The chief risk which the
labourers ran was from the terrific snow-storms, which come on suddenly
and without the slightest notice. Men at work collecting sulphur have
once or twice been caught by such storms in parts of the crater at a
distance from the rope, and buried in the snow.

The appearance of the "White Woman," but little lower than the point
where we stood, was very grand, but all other objects looked small. The
two great plains of Mexico and Puebla, with their lakes and towns, were
laid out like a map; and the ranges of mountains which hem them in made
them look like Roman encampments surrounded by earthworks. Even now
that the lakes have shrunk to a fraction of their former size, we could
see the fitness of the name given in old times to the Valley of Mexico,
_Anahuac_, that is, "By the Water-side." The peaks of Orizaba and
Perote were conspicuous to the east; to the north lay the
silver-mountains of Pachuca; and to the south-west a darker shade of
green indicated the forests and plantations of the _tierra caliente_,
below Cuernavaca.

It was a novel sensation to be at an altitude where the barometer
stands at 15-1/2 inches, so that the pressure on our lungs was hardly
more than one-half what we are accustomed to in England; but we did not
experience much inconvenience from it. The last thousand feet or so had
been very hard work, and we were obliged to stop every few steps, but
on the comparatively level edge of the crater we felt no difficulty in
moving about.

_Popocatepetl_ means "Smoking Mountain." The Indians naturally enough
considered it to be the abode of evil spirits, and told Cortes and his
companions that they could never reach the top. One of the Spaniards,
Diego Ordaz, tried to climb to the summit, and got as far as the snow;
whereupon he returned, and got permission to put a burning mountain in
his coat of arms, in commemoration of the exploit! If, as he declared,
a high wind was blowing, and showers of ashes falling, his turning back
was excusable, though his bragging was not. He seems to have afterwards
told Bernal Diaz that he got to the top, which we know, by Cortes'
letters to Spain, was not true. A few years later, Francesco Montano
went up, and was lowered into the crater to get sulphur. When Humboldt
relates the story, in his _New Spain_, he seems incredulous about this;
but since the _Essai Politique_ was written the same thing has been
regularly done by the Indians, as the merest matter of business, until
the crater has been fairly worked out.

We took our last look at Mexico from the ridge of the crater, and,
descending twenty feet at a stride, soon reached the bottom of the
cone. As far as we could see, the substance of the hill seemed to be of
basaltic lava, which was mostly covered with the _lapilli_ which I have
spoken of before as ashes and volcanic sand. Even before we reached the
pine-forest there was evidence of the action of water, which had
covered the slope of the mountain with beds of thick compact tufa,
composed of these lapilli mixed with fragments of lava. The
water-courses had cut deep channels through these beds, and down into
the rock below; so that the streams from the melted snow rushed down
between walls of lava, in which traces of columnar structure were
observable.

The snow we had travelled over was sometimes dry and powdery, and
sometimes hard and compact. There were no glaciers, and no glacier-ice,
properly so called. It never rains at this elevation; and, though
evaporation goes on rapidly with half the pressure taken off the air,
and a great increase in the intensity of the sun's rays, the snow
either passes directly into vapour, or carries the water off
instantaneously, as it is formed. Only so much water seems to be
produced and re-frozen as suffices to make the snow hard, and in some
favourable places near the rocks to form lumps of ice, and some of
those great icicles which the Spaniards brought down from the mountain
on their first expedition, so greatly astonishing their companions.

When we reached the rancho we thought of passing another night there;
but the Indians who had gone down to the valley for corn had not
returned, and everything was eaten up except beans, which are all very
well as accessories to dinner, but our English digestions could not
stand living upon them; so we started at once for San Nicolas de los
Ranchos. Our ride was down a deep ravine, by the side of a
mountain-torrent coming down from the snows of Popocatepetl; and, when
we stopped now and then to look behind us, we had one of the grandest
views which I have ever witnessed. The elements of the picture were
simple enough. A deep gorge at our feet, with a fierce torrent rushing
down it, dark pine-trees all round us, and above us--on either side--a
snow-covered mountain towering up into the sky. We were just in the
track of the Spanish invaders, who crossed most likely by this very
road between the two volcanos; and they record the amazement which they
felt that in the tropics snow should be unmelted upon the mountains.

A few hours riding down the steep descent, and we were in the flat
plain of Puebla. There were our two mountains behind us, but now they
looked as we had so often seen them before from a distance. The power
of realizing their size was gone, and with it most of their grandeur
and beauty. Nothing was left us but a vivid recollection of the
wonderful scenes that were before us a few hours ago, impressions not
likely to be ever effaced from our minds, where the picture of the
great snowy cone seen in the bright moonlight, and the descent between
the mountains, remain indelibly impressed as the types of all that is
most grand and impressive in the scenery of lofty mountains.

We slept at San Nicolas de los Ranches, "St. Nicholas of the huts,"
where the shopkeeper, to whom we had a letter, insisted upon turning
out of his own room for us, and treated us like princes. The reason of
our often being provided with letters to the shopkeepers in small
places, was, that they are the only people who have houses fit for
entertaining travellers. Many of them are very rich, and in the United
States they would call themselves merchants. Next morning our Indian
carrier, who had ascended the mountain without a veil, was brought in
by our guide, a pitiful object. All the skin of his face was peeling
off, and his eyes were frightfully inflamed, so that he was all but
blind, and had to be led about. Fortunately, this blindness only lasts
for a time, and no doubt he got well in a few days.

We rode through the plain to Cholula. Our number was now four; for,
besides Antonio, we had engaged another servant a few days before. We
wanted some one who knew this district well; and when a friend of ours
mentioned that there was a young man to be had who had a good horse and
was a smuggler by profession, we engaged him directly, and he proved a
great acquisition. Of course, from the nature of his trade, he knew
every bypath between Mexico and the tobacco-districts towards which we
were going; he was always ready with an expedient whenever there was a
difficulty, he was never tired and never out of temper. As for the
morality of his peculiar profession, it probably does harm to the
honesty of the people; but, considering it as a question of abstract
justice, we must remember that almost the whole of the taxes which the
Mexicans are compelled to pay to the general government are utterly
wasted upon paying officials who do nothing but intrigue, and keeping
up armies which--far from being a protection to life and property--are
a permanent and most destructive nuisance. The contract between
government and subject ought to be a two-sided one; and when the
government so entirely misuses the taxes paid by the people, I am quite
inclined to sympathize with the subjects who will not pay them if they
can help it.

We scarcely entered the town of Cholula, which is a poor place now,
though it was a great city at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The
Spanish city of Puebla, only a few miles off, quite ruined it.

We went straight to the great pyramid, which lies close to the town,
and which had been rising before us like a hill during the last miles
of our journey. This extraordinary structure is perhaps the oldest ruin
in Mexico, and certainly the largest. A close examination of its
structure in places where the outline is still to some extent
preserved, and a comparison of it with better preserved structures of
the same kind, make it quite clear that it was a terraced _teocalli_,
resembling the drawing called the "Pyramid of Cholula," in Humboldt's
_Vues des Cordilleres_. But let no one imagine that the well-defined
and symmetrical structure represented in that drawing is in the least
like what we saw, and from which Humboldt made the rough sketch, which
he and his artist afterwards "idealized" for his great work. At the
present day, the appearance of the structure is that of a shapeless
tree-grown hill; and until the traveller comes quite close to it he may
be excused for not believing that it is an artificial mound at all.

The pyramid is built of rows of bricks baked in the sun, and cemented
together with mortar in which had been stuck quantities of small
stones, fragments of pottery, and bits of obsidian knives and weapons.
Between rows of bricks are alternate layers of clay. It was built in
four terraces, of which traces are still to be distinguished; and is
about 200 feet high. Upon the platform at the top stand some trees and
a church. The sides front the four cardinal points, and the base line
is of immense length, over thirteen hundred feet, so that the ascent is
very gradual.

When we reached Cholula we sent the two men to enquire in the
neighbourhood for antiquities, of which numbers are to be found in
every ploughed field round. At the top of the pyramid we held a market,
and got some curious things, all of small size however. Among them was
a mould for making little jackal-heads in the clay, ready for baking;
the little earthen heads which are found in such quantities in the
country being evidently made by wholesale in moulds of this kind, not
modelled separately. We got also several terra-cotta stamps, used in
old times for stamping coloured patterns upon the native cloth, and
perhaps also for ornamenting vases and other articles of earthenware.
Cholula used to be a famous place for making pottery, and its
red-and-black ware was famous at the time of the Conquest, but the
trade now seems to have left it. We were struck by observing that,
though there was plenty of coloured pottery to be found in the
neighbourhood of the pyramid, the pyramid itself had only fragments of
uncoloured ware imbedded in its structure; which seems to prove that it
was built before the art of colouring pottery was invented.

They have cut a road through one corner of the pyramid, and this
cutting exposed a chamber within. Humboldt describes this chamber as
roofed with blocks, each overlapping the one before, till they can be
made to meet by a block of ordinary size. This is the false arch so
common in Egypt and Peru, and in the ruined cities of Central America.
Every child who builds houses with a box of bricks discovers it for
himself. The bridge at Tezcuco, already described, is much more
remarkable in its structure. Whether our inspection was careless, or
whether the chamber has fallen in since Humboldt's time, I cannot say,
but we missed this peculiar roof.

There are several legends about the Pyramid of Cholula. That recorded
by Humboldt on the authority of a certain Dominican friar, Pedro de los
Rios, I mention--not because of its intrinsic value, which is very
slight, but because it will enable us to see the way in which legends
grew up under the hands of the early missionaries, who were delighted
to find fragments of Scripture-history among the traditions of the
Ancient Mexicans, and who seem to have taken down from the lips of
their converts, as native traditions, the very Bible-stories that they
had been teaching them, mixed however with other details, of which it
is hard to say whether they were imagined on purpose to fill up gaps in
the story, or whether they were really of native traditional origin.

Pedro de los Rios' story tells us that the land of Anahuac was
inhabited by giants; that there was a great deluge, which devastated
the earth; that all the inhabitants were turned into fishes, except
seven who took refuge in a cave (apparently with their wives). Years
after the waters had subsided, and the earth had been re-peopled by
these seven men, their leader began to build a vast pyramid, whose top
should reach to heaven. He built it of bricks baked in the sun, which
were brought from a great distance, passing them from hand to hand by a
file of men. The gods were enraged at the presumption of these men, and
they sent down fire from heaven upon the pyramid, which caused its
building to be discontinued. It is stated that at the time of the
Spanish Conquest, the inhabitants of Cholula preserved with great
veneration a large aerolite, which they said was the thunderbolt that
fell upon the top of the pyramid when the fire struck it.

The history of the confusion of tongues seems also to have existed in
the country, not long after the Conquest, having very probably been
learnt from the missionaries; but it does not seem to have been
connected with the Tower-of-Babel legend of Cholula. Something like it
at least appears in the Gemelli table of Mexican migrations, reproduced
in Humboldt, where a bird in a tree is sending down a number of tongues
to a crowd of men standing below.

I think we need not hesitate in condemning the legend of Cholula, which
I have just related, as not genuine, or at least as partly of late
fabrication. But we fortunately possess another version of it, which
shows the legend to have developed itself farther than was quite
discreet. A MS. history, written by Duran in 1579, and quoted by the
Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, relates that people built the pyramid to
reach heaven, finding clay or mud _("terre glaise")_ and a very sticky
_bitumen ("bitume fort gluant")_, with which they began at once to
build, &c. This is evidently the slime or bitumen of the Book of
Genesis; but I believe I may safely assert that the Mexicans never used
bitumen for any such purpose, and that it is not found anywhere near
Cholula.

The Aztec historians ascribe the building of the Pyramid of Cholula to
the prophet Quetzalcoatl. The legends which relate to this celebrated
personage are to be found in writers on Mexican history, and, more
fully than elsewhere, in the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg's work.

I am inclined to consider Quetzalcoatl a real personage, and not a
mythical one. He is said to have been a white, bearded man, to have
come from the East, to have reigned in Tollan, and to have been driven
out from thence by the votaries of human sacrifices, which he opposed.
He took refuge in Cholollan, now called Cholula (which means the "place
of the fugitive"), and taught the inhabitants to work in metals, to
observe various fasts and festivals, to use the Toltec calendar of days
and years, and to perform penance to appease the gods.

A relic of the father of Quetzalcoatl is said to have been kept until
after the Spanish Conquest, when it was opened, and found to contain a
quantity of fair human hair. The prophet himself departed from Cholula,
and put to sea in a canoe, promising to return. So strong was the
belief in the tradition of these events among the Aztecs, that when the
Spaniards appeared on the coast, they were supposed to be of the race
of the prophet, and the strange conduct of Montezuma to Cortes is to be
ascribed to the influence of this belief.

There is a singular legend, mentioned by the Abbe Brasseur de
Bourbourg, of a white man, with a hooded robe and white beard, bearing
a cross in his hand, who lands at Tehuantepec (on the Pacific coast of
Mexico), and introduces among the Indians auricular confession,
penance, and vows of chastity.

The coming of white, bearded men from the East, centuries before the
Spanish invasion in the 16th century, and the introduction of new arts
and rites by them in Mexico, is as certain as most historical events of
which we have only legendary knowledge. As to who they were I cannot
offer an opinion. There are, however, one or two points connected with
the presence of the Irish and Northmen in America in the 9th and
following centuries--a period not very far from that ascribed to
Quetzalcoatl--which are worthy of notice.

The Scandinavian antiquarians make the "white-man's land"
_(Hvitramannaland)_ extend down as far as Florida, on the very Gulf of
Mexico. It is curious to notice the coincidence between the remark of
Bernal Diaz, that the Mexicans called their priests _papa_ (more
properly _papahua_), and that in the old Norse Chronicle, which tells
of the first colonization of Iceland by the Northmen, and relates that
they found living there "Christian men whom the Northmen call _Papa_."
These latter are shown by the context to have been Irish priests. The
Aztec root _teo (teo-tl, God)_ comes nearer to the Greek and Latin, but
is not unlike the Irish _dia_, and the Norse _ty-r_. The Aztec root
_col_ (charcoal) is exactly the Norse _kol_ (our word _coat_), but not
so near to the Irish _gual_. It is desirable to notice such
coincidences, even when they are too slight to ground an argument upon.

This seems to be the proper place to mention the many Christian
analogies to be found in the customs of the ancient Aztecs.

Children were sprinkled with water when their names were given to them.
This is certainly true, though the statement that they believed that
the process purified them from original sin is probably a monkish
fiction. Water was consecrated by the priests, and was supposed thus to
acquire magical qualities. In the coronation of kings, anointing was
part of the ceremony, as well as the use of holy water. The festival of
All Souls' Day reminds us of the Aztec feasts of the Dead in the autumn
of each year; and in Mexico the Indians still keep up some of their old
rites on that day. There was a singular rite observed by the Aztecs,
which they called the _teoqualo_, that is, "the eating of the god." A
figure of one of their gods was made in dough, and after certain
ceremonies they made a pretence of killing it, and divided it into
morsels, which were eaten by the votaries as a kind of sacred food.

We may add to the list the habitual use of incense in the ceremonies:
the existence of monasteries and nunneries, in which the monks wore
long hair, but the nuns had their hair cut off: and the use of the
cross as a religious emblem in Mexico and Central America.

Less certain is the recorded use of knotted scourges in performing
penance, and the existence of a peculiar kind of auricular confession.

It is difficult to ascribe this mass of coincidences to mere chance,
and not to see in them traces of connexion, more or less remote, with
Christians. Perhaps these peculiar rites came, with the Mexican system
of astronomy, from Asia; or perhaps the white, bearded men from the
East may have brought them. It is true that such a supposition runs
quite counter to the argument founded on the ignorance of the Mexicans
of common arts known in Europe and Asia. We should have expected
Christian missionaries to have brought with them the knowledge of the
use of iron, and the alphabet. Perhaps our increasing knowledge of the
ancient Mexicans may some day allow us to adopt a theory which shall at
least have the merit of being consistent with itself; but at present
this seems impossible.

CHAPTER XI.

PUEBLA. NOPALUCAN. ORIZABA. POTRERO.

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE VOLCANO ORIZABA.]

We reached Puebla in the afternoon, and found it a fine Spanish city,
with straight streets of handsome stone houses, and paved with
flag-stones. We rather wondered at the _pasadizos_, a kind of arched
stone-pavement across the streets at short intervals, very much
impeding the progress of the carriages, which had to go up and down
them upon inclined planes. In the evening we saw the use of them
however, for a shower of rain came down which turned every street into
a furious river within five minutes after the first drop fell. For half
an hour the pasadizos did their duty, letting the water pass through
underneath, while passengers could get across the streets dryshod. At
last, the flood swept clear along, over bridges and all; but this only
lasted a few minutes, and then the way was practicable again. The
moveable iron bridges on wheels, which are to be seen standing in the
streets of Sicilian cities, ready to be wheeled across them for the
benefit of foot-passengers whenever the carriage-way is flooded, are on
the whole a better arrangement.

We should never have thought, from looking at Puebla, that it had just
been undergoing a siege; for, beyond a few patches of whitewash in the
great square, where the cannon-balls had knocked the houses about,
there were no traces of it.

We made many enquiries about the siege, and found nothing to invalidate
our former estimate of twenty-five killed,--one per cent of the number
stated in the government manifestos. Among the casualties we heard of
an Englishman who went out to see the fun, and was wounded in a
particularly ignominious manner as he was going back to his house.

Revolutions and sieges form curious episodes in the life of the foreign
merchants in the Republic. Their trade is flourishing, perhaps,--plenty
of buyers and good prices; and hundreds of mules are on the road,
bringing up their wares from the coast. All at once there is a
pronunciamiento. The street-walls are covered with proclamations. Half
the army takes one side, half the other; and crowds of volunteers and
self-made officers join them, in the hope of present pillage or future
emolument. Barricades appear in the streets; and at intervals there is
to be heard the roaring of cannon, and desultory firing of musketry
from the flat roofs, killing a peaceable citizen now and then, but
doing little execution on the enemy.

Trade comes to a dead stop. Our merchant gets his house well furnished
with provisions, shuts the outer shutters, locks up the great gates,
and retires into seclusion for a week or a fortnight, or a month or
two, as may be. At the time we were there he used to run no great risk,
for neither party was hostile to him; and if a stray cannon-ball did
hit his house, or the insurgents shot his cook going out on an
expedition in search of fresh beef, it was only by accident.

Having no business to do, the counting-house would probably take stock,
and balance the books; but when this is finished there is little to be
done but to practice pistol-shooting and hold tournaments in the
court-yard, and to teach the horses to rayar; while the head of the
house sits moodily smoking in his arm-chair, reckoning up how many of
his debtors would be ruined, and wondering whether the loaded mules
with his goods had got into shelter, or had been seized by one party or
the other.

At last the revolution is over. The new president is inaugurated with
pompous speeches. The newspapers announce that now the glorious reign
of justice, order, and prosperity has begun at last. If the millennium
had come, they could not make much more talk about it. Our unfortunate
friend, coming out of his den only to hear dismal news of runaway
debtors and confiscated bales, has to illuminate his house, and set to
getting his affairs into something like order again.

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