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Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

E >> Edward Burnett Tylor >> Anahuac




We used sometimes to see a village or a house three or four miles off,
and count upon reaching it in half an hour. But a few steps further on
there would be a barranca, invisible till we came close to it, perhaps
not more than a few hundred feet wide, so that it was easy to talk to
people on the other bank. But the bottom of the chasm might be five
hundred or a thousand feet below us; and the only way to cross was to
ride along the bank, often for miles, until we reached a place where it
had been possible to make a steep bridle-path zigzagging down to the
stream below, and up again on the other side. It is only here and there
that even such paths can be made, for the walls of rock are generally
too steep even for any vegetation, except grass and climbing plants in
the crevices. Our half-hour's ride, as we supposed it would be, would
often extend to two or three hours, for on these slopes two or three
barrancas--large and small---have sometimes to be crossed within as
many miles.

If our journey had been even slower and more difficult, we should not
have regretted it; the country through which we were riding was so
beautiful. There were but few inhabitants, and the landscape was much
as nature had left it. The great volcano of Orizaba came into view now
and then with its snowy cone,[23] mountain-streams came rushing along
the ravines, and the forests of oaks were covered with innumerable
species of orchids and creepers, breaking down the branches with their
weight. Many kinds were already in flower, and their great blossoms of
white, purple, blue, and yellow, stood out against the dark green of
the oak-leaves. Wherever a mountain-stream ran down some shady little
valley, there were tree-ferns thirty feet high, with the new fronds
forming a tuft at the top of the old scarred trunk. Round the Indian
cottages were cactuses with splendid crimson flowers, daturas with
brilliant white blossoms, palm- and fruit-trees of fifty kinds. We
stopped at one of the cottages, and bought an armadillo that had just
been caught in the woods close by, while routing among his favourite
ants' nests. He was put into a palm-leaf basket, which held him all but
the tip of his long taper tail, which, like the rest of his body, was
covered with rings of armour fitting beautifully into one another. One
of our men carried him thus in his arms to Jalapa.

The Mexicans call an armadillo "_ayotochtli_," that is,
"tortoise-rabbit," a name which will be appreciated by any one who
knows the appearance of the little animal.

The villages and towns we passed were dismal places enough, and the
population scanty; but that this had not always been the case was
evident from the numerous remains of ancient Indian mound-forts or
temples which we passed on our road, indicating the existence of large
towns at some former period. There is a drawing in Lord Kingsborough's
work of a _teocalli_ or pyramid at San Andres Chalchicomula, which we
seem to have missed on account of the darkness having come on before we
reached the town. We were several times deceived that evening by the
fireflies, which we took for lights moving about in some village just
ahead of us; and we became so incredulous at last that we would not
believe we had reached our journey's end until we could made out the
dim outlines of the houses. At the inn at San Andres we found that we
could have no rooms, as all the little windowless dens were occupied by
people from the country who had come in for a _fiesta_. There were
indeed a good many men loafing about the courtyard, but scarcely any
women, and we could hardly understand a fandango happening without
them. They thought otherwise, however; and presently, hearing the
tinkling of a guitar, we went out and saw two great fellows in broad
hats, jackets, and serapes, solemnly dancing opposite to one another;
while more men looked on, smoking cigarettes, and an old fellow with a
face like a baboon was squatting in one corner and producing the music
we had heard. To do them justice, I must say that we found, on further
enquiry, they had not come from their respective ranchos merely to make
fools of themselves in this way, but that there was to be some
horsefair in the neighbourhood next day, and they were going there.

Our not being able to get any supper but eggs and bread, and having to
sleep on the supper-table afterwards, confirmed us in the theory we
were beginning to adopt, that nature and mankind vary in an inverse
ratio; and we were off at daybreak, delighted to get into the forest
again. We rode over hill and dale for four or five hours, and then
along the edge of a barranca for the rest of the day. This was one of
the grandest chasms we had ever seen, even in Mexico. It was four or
five miles wide, and two or three thousand feet deep, and its floor was
a mass of tropical verdure, with here and there an Indian rancho and a
patch of cultivated ground on the bank of the rapid river, whose sound
we heard when we approached the edge of the barranca. There were more
orchids and epidendrites than ever in the forest. In some places they
had killed every third tree, by forming so and close a covering over
its branches as to destroy its life; they were flourishing unimpaired
on the rotting branches of trees which they had brought down to the
ground years before. The rainy season had not yet set in in this part
of the country; and, though we could hear the rushing of the torrent
below, we looked in vain for water in the forest, until our man Martin
showed us the _bromelias_ in the forks of the branches, in the inside
of whose hollow leaves nature has laid up a supply of water for the
thirsty traveller.

We loaded our horses with the bulbs of such orchids as were still in
the dry state, and would travel safely to Europe. Sometimes we climbed
into the trees for promising specimens, but oftener contented ourselves
with tearing them from the branches as we rode below. When saddle-bags
and pockets were full, we were for a time at fault, for there seemed no
place for new treasures, when suddenly I remembered a pair of old
trousers. We tied up the ends of the legs, which we filled with
orchids; and the garment travelled to Jalapa sitting in its natural
position across my saddle, to the amazement of such Mexican society as
we met. The contents of the two pendant legs are now producing splendid
flowers in several English hothouses.

By evening we reached the _Junta_, a place where the great ravine was
joined by a smaller one, and a long slanting descent brought us to the
edge of the river. There was a ferry here, consisting of a raft of logs
which the Indian ferryman hauled across along a stout rope. The horses
were attached to the raft by their halters, and so swam across. On the
point of land between the two rivers the Indians had their huts, and
there we spent the night. We chose the fattest _guajalote_ of the
turkey-pen, and in ten minutes he was simmering in the great earthen
pot over the fire, having been cut into many pieces for convenience of
cooking, and the women were busy grinding Indian corn to be patted out
into tortillas. While supper was getting ready, and Mr. Christy's day's
collection of plants was being pressed (the country we had been passing
through is so rich that the new specimens gathered that day filled
several quires of paper), we had a good deal of talk with the brown
people, who could all speak a little Spanish. Some years before, the
two old people had settled there, and set up the ferry. Besides this,
they made nets and caught much fish in the river, and cultivated the
little piece of ground which formed the point of the promontory. While
their descendants went no further than grandchildren the colony had
done very well; but now great-grandchildren had begun to arrive, and
they would soon have to divide, and form a settlement up in the woods
across the river, or upon some patch of ground at the bottom of one of
the barrancas.

We were interested in studying the home-life of these people, so
different from what we are accustomed to among our peasants of Northern
Europe, whose hard continuous labour is quite unknown here. For the
men, an occasional pull at the _balsas_ (the rafts of the ferry), a
little fishing, and now and then--when they are in the humour for it--
a little digging in the garden-ground with a wooden spade, or dibbling
with a pointed stick. The women have a harder life of it, with the
eternal grinding and cooking, cotton-spinning, mat-weaving, and tending
of the crowds of babies. Still it is an easy lazy life, without much
trouble for to-day or care for to-morrow. When the simple occupations
of the day are finished, the time does not seem to hang heavy upon
their hands. The men lie about, "thinking of nothing at all;" and the
women--old and young--gossip by the hour, in obedience to that
beneficent law of nature which provides that their talk shall increase
inversely in proportion to what they have to talk about. We find this
law attaining to its most complete fulfilment when they shut themselves
up in nunneries, to escape as much as possible from all sources of
worldly interest, and gossip there more industriously than anywhere
else, as we are informed on very good authority.

Like all the other Mexican Indians whose houses we visited, the people
here showed but little taste in adorning their dwellings, their dresses
and their household implements. Beyond a few calabashes scraped smooth
and ornamented with coloured devices, and the blue patterns on the
women's cotton skirts, there was scarcely anything to be seen in the
way of ornament. How great was the skill of the Mexicans in ornamental
work at the time of the Conquest, we can tell from the carved work in
wood and stone preserved in museums, the graceful designs on the
pottery, the tapestry, and the beautiful feather-work; but this taste
has almost disappeared in the country. Just in the same way, contact
with Europeans has almost destroyed the little decorative arts among
most barbarous people, as, for example, the Red Indians and the natives
of the Pacific Islands; and what little skill in these things is left
among them is employed less for themselves than in making curious
trifles for the white people, and even in these we find that European
patterns have mixed with the old designs, or totally superseded them.

The Indians lodged us in an empty cane-hut, where they spread mats upon
the ground, and we made pillows of our saddles. We were soon tired of
looking up at the stars through the chinks in the roof, and slept till
long after sunrise. Then the Indians rafted us across the second river;
and we rode on to Jalapa, having accomplished our horseback journey of
nearly three hundred miles with but one accident, the death of a horse,
the four-pound one. He had been rather overworked, but would most
likely have got through, had we not stopped the last night at the
Indian _ranchos_, where there was no forage but green maize leaves, a
food our beasts were not accustomed to. It seems our men gave him too
much of this, and then allowed him to drink excessively; and next
morning he grew weaker and weaker, and died not long after we reached
Jalapa. Our other two horses were rather thin, but otherwise in good
condition; and the horse-dealers, after no end of diplomacy on both
sides, knocked under to our threat of sending them back to Mexico in
charge of Antonio, and gave us within a pound or two of what they had
cost us. There, is a good deal of trading in horses done at Jalapa,
where travellers coming down from Mexico sell their beasts, which are
disposed of at great prices to other travellers coming up from the
coast. Between here and Vera Cruz, people prefer travelling in the
Diligence, or in some covered carriage, to exposing themselves to the
sun in the hot and pestilential region of the coast.

Jalapa is a pleasant city among the hills, in a country of forests,
green turf, and running streams. It is the very paradise of botanists;
and its products include a wonderful variety of trees and flowers, from
the apple- and pear-trees of England to the _mameis_ and _zapotes_ of
tropical America, and the brilliant orchids which are the ornament of
our hot-houses. The name of the town itself has a botanical celebrity,
for in the neighbouring forests grows the _Purga de Jalapa_, which we
have shortened into _jalap_.

A day's journey above it, lies the limit of eternal snow, upon the peak
of Orizaba; a day's journey below it is Vera Cruz, the city of the
yellow fever, surrounded by burning sands and poisonous exhalations, in
a district where, during the hot months now commencing, the thermometer
scarcely ever descends below 80 deg., day or night. Jalapa hardly knows
summer or winter, heat or cold. The upper current of hot air from the
Gulf of Mexico, highly charged with aqueous vapour, strikes the
mountains about this level, and forms the belt of clouds that we have
already crossed more than once during our journey. Jalapa is in this
cloudy zone, and the sky is seldom clear there. It is hardly hotter in
summer than in England, and not even hot enough for the mosquitoes,
which are not to be found here though they swarm in the plain below.
This warm damp climate changes but little in the course of the year.
There are no seasons, in our sense of the word, for spring lasts
through the year.

We walked out on the first afternoon of our arrival; and sat on stone
seats on a piece of green turf surrounded by trees, that reminded us
pleasantly of the village-greens of England. There we talked with the
children of an English acquaintance who had been settled for many years
in the town, and had married a Mexican lady. They were fine lads; but,
as very often happens in such cases, they could only speak the language
of the country. Nothing can show more clearly how thoroughly a
foreigner yields to the influences around him, when he settles in a
country and marries among its people. An Englishman's own character,
for instance, may remain to some extent; but his children are scarcely
English in language or in feeling, and in the next generation there is
nothing foreign about his descendants but the name.

When we reached our hotel it was about sunset, and the heavy dew had
wetted us through, as though we had been walking in the rain. This was
no exceptional occurrence. All the year round such dews fall morning
and evening, as well as almost daily showers of rain. The climate is
too warm for this dampness to injure health, as it would in our colder
regions. To us, who had just left the bracing air of the high plateaus,
it seemed close and relaxing; but the inhabitants are certainly strong
and healthy, and one can imagine the enjoyment which the white
inhabitants of Vera Cruz must feel, when they can get away from that
city of pestilence into the pure air of the mountains.

Our quarters were at the _Veracruzana_, where we occupied a great
whitewashed room. A large grated window opened into the garden, where
the armadillo was fastened to a tree by a long string, and had soon dug
a deep hole with his powerful fore-claws, as the manner of the creature
is. The necessity of supplying the "little man in armour" with insects
for his daily food gave us some idea of the amazing abundance and
variety of the insects of the district. We caught creeping things
innumerable in the garden, but narrowly escaped being stung by a small
scorpion; and therefore delegated the task to an old Indian, who walked
out into the fields with an earthen pot, and returned with it full of
insects in about half an hour. We reckoned that there were over fifty
species in the pot.

Many of the houses and Indian huts were adorned with collections of
insects pinned on the walls in patterns, among which figured scorpions
some three inches long; and the centre-ornament was usually a
tarantula, said to be one of the most poisonous creatures of the
tropics, a monstrous spider, whose dark grey body and legs are covered
with hairs. A fine specimen will have a body about as large as a small
hen's egg, and, with his legs in their natural position, will just
stand in a cheese-plate. The Boots of the hotel went out and caught a
fine scorpion for our amusement; he brought it into our room wrapped in
a piece of brown paper, and was on the point of letting it out on our
table for us to see it run. We protested against this, and had it put
into a tumbler and covered it up with a book.

The inner _patio_ of the hotel was surrounded with the usual arcade,
into which the rooms opened. Close to our door was a long table, with a
green cloth, where the Jalapenians were constantly playing _monte_,
from nine in the morning till late at night. All classes were
represented there, from the muleteer who came to lose his hard-earned
dollars, to the rich shopkeepers and planters of the town and
neighbourhood.

I went early one afternoon to the house of the principal agent for the
Vera Cruz carriers, to arrange for sending down our heavy packages to
the coast. There was no one at the office but a girl. I enquired for
the master--"_Esta jugando_,"--"He is playing," she said. I need not
have gone so far to look for him, for he was sitting just outside our
bedroom door, and indeed had been there all day. Before he condescended
to arrange our business, he waited to see the fate of the dollar he had
just put down, and which I was glad to see he lost.

Jalapa was not always the stagnant place it is now. Its pleasant houses
and gardens date from a period when it was a town of some importance.
In old times the only practicable road from Vera Cruz to Mexico passed
this way; and Jalapa was the entrepot where the merchants had their
warehouses, and from whence the trains of mules distributed the
European merchandise from the coast to the different markets of the
country. By this arrangement, the carrying from the coast was done by a
small number of muleteers, who were seasoned to the climate, while the
great mass of traders and carriers were not obliged to descend from the
healthy region. This was of the more importance, because, though the
pure Indians are not liable to the attacks of yellow fever, the disease
is as deadly to the other inhabitants of the high lands as to
Europeans; and even those of the _mestizos_ who have the least
admixture of white blood are subject to it. Of late years, this system
has been given up, and the carriers from the high lands go down to the
coast to fetch their loads, and every year they leave some of their
number in the church-yards of the City of the Dead; while many others,
though they recover from the fever, never regain their former health
and strength. The high-road to Mexico now goes by Orizaba, so that the
importance of Jalapa as a trading-place has almost ceased.

Our Mexican journey was now all but finished, and I left my companion
here, and took the Diligence to Vera Cruz, to meet the West India
Mail-packet. Mr. Christy followed a day or two later, and went to the
United States. We dismissed our two servants, Martin and Antonio.
Martin invested his wages in a package of tobacco, which he proposed to
carry home on his horse, travelling by night along unfrequented
mountain-paths, where custom-house officers seldom penetrate. We never
heard any more of him; but no doubt he got safe home, for he was
perfectly competent to take care of himself, and he probably made a
very good thing of his journey. It was quite with regret that we parted
from him, for he was a most sensible, useful fellow, with a continual
flow of high spirits, and no end of stories of his experiences in
smuggling, and hunting wild cattle in the _tierra caliente_, in which
two adventurous occupations most of his life had been passed. In his
dealings with us, he was honesty itself, notwithstanding his equivocal
profession.

We offered Antonio a cheque on Mexico for his wages, as he was going
back there, but he said he would rather have hard dollars. We paid his
fare to Mexico by the Diligence, and gave him his money, telling him at
the same time, that he was a fool for his pains. He started next
morning; and we heard, a month or two later, that the coach was stopped
the same afternoon in the plains of Perote, and Antonio was robbed not
only of his money but even of his jacket and serape, and reached Mexico
penniless and half-naked. He was always a silly fellow, and his last
exploit was worthy of him.

Mr. Christy sat up till daybreak to see me off, filling up his time by
writing letters and pressing plants. When I was gone, he lay down in
his bed, in rather a dreamy state of mind, looking up at the ceiling.
There was a large beam just above his head, and at one side of it a
hole, which struck him as being a suitable place for a scorpion to come
out of. This idea had come into his head from the sight of the specimen
in the tumbler on the table, who had with great difficulty been drowned
in _aguardiente_. Presently something moved in the hole, and the
spectator below instantly became wide awake. Then came out a claw and a
head, and finally the body and tail of a very fine scorpion, two inches
and a half long. It was rather an awkward moment, for it was not safe
to move suddenly, for fear of startling the creature, whose footing
seemed anything but secure; and if he fell, he would naturally sting
whatever he might come in contact with. However, he met with no
accident on his way, and getting into another hole, about a yard off,
he drew up his tail after him and disappeared. Mr. Christy slipped out
of his bed with a sense of considerable relief; and having ascertained
that there were no holes in the ceiling above the bed on the other side
of the room, he turned in there, and went comfortably to sleep.

My only companion in the Diligence was a German shopman from Vera Cruz,
who was sociable, but not of an instructive turn of conversation. When
we had descended for a few hours, the heat became intolerable. Scarcely
any habitation but a few Indian cane-huts by the way-side, with bananas
and palm-trees. We stopped, about three in the afternoon, at a _rancho_
in a small village, and did not start again until next morning, a
little before day-break. Negroes and people of negro descent began to
abound in this congenial climate. I remember especially the
waiting-maid at the _rancho_, who was a "white negress," as they are
called. Her hair and features showed her African origin; but her hair
was like white wool, and her face and hands were as colourless as those
of a dead body. This animated corpse was healthy enough, however; and
this peculiarity of the skin is, it seems, not very uncommon.

The coast-regions through which I was passing abound in horned cattle,
but they are mostly far away from the high-roads. In spite of the
intense heat of the climate they thrive as well as in the higher lands.
Some are tolerably tame, and are kept within bounds by the _vaqueros_;
but the greater proportion, numbering tens of thousands, roam wild
about the country. In comparison with these cattle of the _tierra
caliente_, the fiercest beasts of the plateaus are safe and quiet
creatures. The only way of bringing them into the _corral_ is by using
tame animals for decoys, just as wild elephants are caught.

Our man Martin, who had once been a _vaquero_ on the Vera Cruz coast,
used to look upon the bulls of the high lands with great contempt. If
you chase them they run away, he said. If you lazo a bull of the hot
country, you have to gallop off with all your might, with the _toro_
close at your heels; and, if the horse falls, it may cost his life or
his rider's.

We thus find the horned cattle flourishing at every elevation, from the
sea-level to the mountain-pastures ten thousand feet above it. Horses
and sheep show less adaptability to this variety of climates. The
horses and mules come mostly from the States of the North, at a level
of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet; that remarkable country of which
Humboldt's observation gives us the best idea, when he says that,
although there are no made roads, wheel-carriages can travel distances
of a thousand miles over gently-undulating prairies, without meeting
any obstruction on the way.

Numbers of sheep are reared in the mountains, principally for the sake
of the tallow, for the consumption of tallow-candles in the mines is
enormous. The owners scarcely care at all for the rest of the animal;
and popular scandal accuses the sheep-farmers of driving their flocks
straight into the melting-coppers, without going through the
preliminary ceremony of killing them. People told us that the tallow
made in the cold regions loses its consistency when brought down into
hotter climates, but we had no means of ascertaining the truth of this.

Artificial lighting by means of tallow was not known to the ancient
Mexicans, who could not indeed have procured tallow except from the fat
of deer and smaller animals.

Bernal Diaz tells how the Spanish invaders used to dress their wounds
with "Indian Ointment." He explains the nature of this preparation in
another place. The Spaniards could get no oil in the country, nor
anything else to make salve with, so they took some fat Indian who had
just been killed in battle, and simply boiled him down.