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But the churches! Is it possible that they can belong to these wretched
filthy little cottages. As black Sam, our driver, a runaway Texan
slave, suggested, it looked as though the villagers might pull down
their houses and locate themselves and their families in their
churches. We thought of Mr. Ruskin, who has somewhere expressed an
earnest desire that all the money and energy that England has wasted in
making railroads, had been spent in building churches; and we wished he
had been here to see his principles carried out.

I have travelled on rough roads in my time, but on such a road as this
never. My companion refused for a time to award the premium of badness
to our thoroughfare; but, just while we were discussing the question
and recounting our experience of bone-smashing highways, we reached a
pass where the road consisted of a series of steps, nearly a foot in
depth, down which steps we went at a swinging trot, holding on for our
lives, in terror lest the next jerk should fairly wrench our arms out
of their sockets, while we could plainly hear the inside passengers
howling for mercy, as they were shot up against the roof which knocked
them back into their seats. Aching all over, we reached level ground
again, and Mr. Christy withdrew his claims, and agreed that no road
anywhere else could possibly be so bad as a Mexican road; a decision
which later experiences only served to confirm.

Our start, every time we changed horses, was a sight to see. Nine
half-broken horses and mules, in a furious state of excitement, were
harnessed to our unwieldy machine; the helpers let go, and off they
went, kicking, plunging, rearing, biting, and screaming, into ruts and
watercourses that were like the trenches they make for gas-pipes in
London streets, with our wheels on one side on a stone wall, and in a
pit on the other, and Black Sam leaning back with his feet on the
board, waiting with perfect tranquillity until the animals had got rid
of their superfluous energy and he could hold them in. We were always
just going to have some frightful accident, and always just missed it.
The last stage before we reached Otumba, a small dusky urchin ran
across the road just before us. How Black Sam contrived to pull up I
cannot tell, though, indeed, his arms were about the size of an
ordinary man's thighs; but he did, and they got the child out from the
horses' feet quite unhurt.

It was at the inn where we stopped to breakfast that we made our first
acquaintance with the great Mexican institutions--tortillas and pulque.
The pulque was being brewed on a large scale in an adjoining building.
The vats were made of cow-skins (with the hair inside), supported by a
frame of sticks; and in them was pulque in every stage, beginning with
the sweet aguamiel--honeywater--the fresh juice of the aloe, and then
the same in different degrees of fermentation till we come to the
_madre pulque_, the mother pulque, a little of which is used like
yeast, to start the fermentation, and which has a combined odour of
gas-works and drains. Pulque, as you drink it, looks like milk and
water, and has a mild smell and taste of rotten eggs. Tortillas are
like oat-cakes, but made of Indian corn meal, not crisp, but soft and
leathery. We thought both dreadfully nasty for a day or two; then we
could just endure them; then we came to like them; and before we left
the country we wondered how we should do without them.




CHAPTER III.



CITY OF MEXICO.



[Illustration: VIEW OF PART OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.]

Some thirty years ago, Don Agustin Yturbide, the first and last Emperor
of Mexico, found that he wanted a palace wherein to house his
newly-fledged dignity; and began to build one accordingly, in the high
street of Mexico, close to the great convent of San Francisco. It could
not have been nearly finished when its founder was shot: and it became
the _Hotel d'Yturbide_. We are now settled in it, in very comfortable
quarters. There is a restaurant down below, where the son of the late
Yturbide dines daily, and everybody points him out to us, and moralises
over him.

Mr. Christy's drawer-roll of letters of introduction has produced an
immediate crop of pleasant acquaintances, whose hospitality is
boundless. We are not idle, far from it; and a long day's work is
generally followed by a social dinner, and an evening spent in noting
down the results of our investigations.

Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_ has been more read in England than most
historical works; and the Mexico of Montezuma has a well-defined idea
attached to it. The amphitheatre of dark hills surrounding the level
plain, the two snowy mountain-peaks, the five lakes covering nearly
half the valley, the city rising out of the midst of the waters, miles
from the shore, with which it was connected by its four causeways, the
straight streets of low flat-roofed houses, the numbers of canals
crowded with canoes of Indians going to and from the market, the
floating gardens moved from place to place, on which vegetables and
flowers were cultivated, the great pyramid up which the Spanish army
saw their captured companions led in solemn procession, and sacrificed
on the top--all these are details in the mental picture.

Much of this has changed since the Spaniards first saw it. Cortes tried
all ordinary means to overcome the desperate obstinacy with which the
Aztecs defended their capital. The Spaniards conquered wherever they
went; but, as they moved forward, the Mexicans closed in again behind,
and from every house-top showers of darts, arrows, and stones were
poured down upon them. Cortes resolved upon the utter demolition of the
city. He was grieved to destroy it, he said, for it was the most
beautiful thing in the whole world; but there was no alternative. He
moved slowly towards the great teocalli, his fifty thousand Tlascalan
allies following him, throwing down every house, and filling the canals
with the ruins. When the conquest was finished, but one district of the
city was left standing, and in it were crowded a quarter of the
population, miserable famished wretches, who had surrendered when their
king was taken. All that was left besides was a patch of swampy ground
strewed with fragments of walls, a few pyramids too large for present
destruction, and such great heaps of dead bodies that it was impossible
to get from place to place without walking over them.

Cortes had resolved that a new city should be built, but it was not so
easy to decide where it was to be. The Aztecs, it seemed, had not
originally established themselves on the spot where Mexico was built.
When they came down from the north country, and across the hills into
the valley of Mexico, they were but an insignificant tribe, and as yet
mere savages. They settled down in one place after another, and were
always driven out by the persecutions of the neighbouring tribes. At
last they took possession of a little group of swampy islands in the
lake of Tezcuco; and then at last, safe from their enemies, they
increased and multiplied, and became a great and powerful nation.

The first beginnings of Mexico, a cluster of huts built on wooden
piles, must have borne some likeness to those curious settlements of
early tribes in the shallow part of the lakes of Switzerland and the
British Isles, of which numerous remains are still to be found. As the
nation increased in numbers, Tenochtitlan, as the inhabitants called
their city (they called themselves _Tenochques_), came to be a great
city of houses built on piles, with canals running through the straight
streets, along which the natives poled their flat-bottomed canoes. The
name which the Spaniards gave to the city, the "Venice of the New
World," was appropriate, not only to its situation in the midst of the
water, with canals for thoroughfares, but also to the history of the
causes which led to its being built in such a situation.

The habit of building houses upon piles, which was first forced upon
the people by the position they had chosen, was afterwards followed as
a matter of taste, just as it is in Holland. Even after the Aztecs
became masters of the surrounding country, they built towns round the
lake, partly on the shore, and partly on piles in the water. The
Spanish chroniclers mention Iztapalapan, and many other towns, as built
in this way. Like the Swiss tribes, the early inhabitants of Mexico
depended much upon their fishing, for which their position gave them
great facilities.

If you look at the arms of the Mexican Republic, on a passport or a
silver dollar, you will see a representation of a rock surrounded by
water. On the rock grows a cactus, and on the cactus sits an eagle with
a serpent in his beak. The story is that the wandering tribe preserved
a tradition of an oracle which said that when they should find an
eagle, holding a serpent, and perched on a cactus growing out of a
rock, then they should cease their wanderings. On an island in the lake
of Tezcuco, they found eagle, serpent, cactus, and rock, as described,
and they settled there in due course. What fragment of truth is hidden
in this myth it is hard to say. Tenochtitlan means "The Stone-cactus
place;" and the Aztec picture-writings express its name by a hieroglyph
of a prickly pear growing on a rock. Putting this history out of the
question, the Aztecs had excellent reasons for choosing this peculiar
site for their city; but these reasons were not equally valid in the
case of the new invaders. For them the surrounding salt-water was not
needed as a protection, and was merely a nuisance. Every year, when the
lake rose, the place was flooded, with enormous damage to the property
of the inhabitants; and sometimes an inundation of greater depth than
usual threatened as complete a destruction as Cortes and the Tlascalans
had made. At the best of times, the site was a salt-swamp, an ugly
place to build upon. And, lastly, all the fresh water must be brought
from the hills by aqueducts, which an enemy would cut off without
difficulty, as the Spaniards themselves had done during the siege. Now
Cortes was certainly not ignorant of all this, and he knew of many
places on the rising ground close by, where he could found his new city
under more favourable circumstances. He deliberated four or five months
on the matter, and at last decided in favour of the old site, giving as
his reason that "the city of Tenochtitlan had become celebrated, its
position was wonderful, and in all times it had been considered as the
capital and mistress of all these provinces."

The invaders were old hands at slave-driving, and so hard did they
drive the conquered Mexicans, that in four years there had arisen a
fine Spanish city, with massive stone houses of several storeys, having
the indispensable inner courts, flat roofs, and grated windows,--every
man's house literally his castle, when once the great iron
entrance-gates were closed. The Indians had, of course, been converted
en masse, and churches were being built in all directions. The great
pyramid where Huitzilopochtli, the God of war, was worshipped, had been
razed to the ground, and its great sculptured blocks of basalt were
sunk in the earth as a foundation for a cathedral. The old lines of the
streets, running toward the four points of the compass, were kept to;
and to this it is that the present Mexico is indebted for much of its
beauty. Most of the smaller canals were filled up, and the
thoroughfares widened for carriages, things of course unknown to the
Mexicans, who had no beasts of burden. In the suburbs the natives
settled themselves after their own fashion, baking adobes, large mud
bricks, in the sun, and building with them one-storey houses with flat
roofs, much as they do at the present day. And thus a new Mexico,
nearly the same as that we are now exploring, came to be planted in the
midst of the waters. Three centimes have elapsed since; the city has
grown larger, churches, convents, and public buildings have increased,
but the architectural character of the place has scarcely altered. It
is the situation that has changed. The lake of Tezcuco is four miles
off, though the causeways which once connected the city with the dry
land still exist, and have even been enlarged. They look like
railway-embankments crossing the low ground, and serve as dykes when
there is a flood, a casualty which still often happens.

This change is interesting to the student of physical geography; and
Humboldt's account of the causes which have brought it about is full
and explicit. When Mexico had been built a few years, the frightful
inundations which threatened its very existence at length awoke the
Spaniards to a sense of the mistake that had been made in placing
themselves but a few feet above the lowest level of the valley, in such
a way that, from whatever point the flood might come, they were sure to
get the benefit of it. The Spanish authorities at home, with their
usual sagacity, sent over peremptory orders that the city should be
abandoned, and a new capital built at Tacubaya--a proposal something
like intimating to the inhabitants of Naples that their position, at
the foot of Mount Vesuvius, was most dangerous, and that they must
leave it and settle somewhere else. In those days the valley was a
complete basin, with no outlet--at least not one worth mentioning; and
the heavy tropical rains and the melted snow from the mountains, poured
vast quantities of water into it. Had the valley been at the level of
the sea, it would simply have become a great lake, surrounded by hills;
but at three thousand feet higher, the atmosphere is rarefied, and
evaporation goes on with such rapidity as to keep the accumulation of
water in check. So the affair had adjusted itself in this wise, that
the land and the five lakes should divide the valley about equally
between them. It became necessary to alter this state of things, and a
passage was cut at a place where the hills were but little above the
level of the highest lake. The history of this passage, the famous
"Desague de Huehuetoca," is instructive enough, but it has been written
so threadbare that I cannot touch it. Suffice it to say, that by this
means a constant outlet was made for the lake of Zumpango, the highest
of the five, and for the Rio de Guatitlan, a stream which formerly ran
into it.

So much for one cause of the change in the present appearance of the
city. Then the Spaniards were great cutters down of forests. They
rather liked to make their new country bear a resemblance to the arid
plains of Castile, where, when you arrive in Madrid, people ask you
whether you noticed _the tree_ on the road; and moreover, as they
wanted wood, they cut it, without troubling themselves to plant for the
benefit of future generations. Now, when the trees were cut down, the
small plants which grew in their shade died too, and left the bare
earth to serve as a kind of natural evaporating apparatus. And, between
these two causes, it has come to pass that the extent of the lakes has
been so much reduced, and that Mexico stands on the dry land--if,
indeed, that may be called dry land, where you cannot dig a foot
without coming to water.

During the Tertiary period the whole valley of Mexico was one great
lake. Whether the proportion of water to land had adjusted itself
before the country was inhabited, or whether during historical times
the lakes were still gradually diminishing by the excess of evaporation
over the quantity of water supplied by rain and snow, is an open
question. At any rate the two causes I have mentioned will account for
the changes which have taken place since the conquest.

Taking it as a whole, Mexico is a grand city, and, as Cortes truly
said, its situation is marvellous. But as for the buildings, I should
be sorry to inflict upon any one who may read these sketches, a
detailed description of any one of them. It is a thousand pities that,
just at the time when the Italians and Spaniards were most zealous in
church-building, so very questionable an architectural taste should
have been prevalent.

The churches and convents in Mexico belong to that kind of renaissance
style that began to flourish in southern Europe in the sixteenth
century, and has held its ground there ever since. High facades abound,
with pilasters crowned by elaborate Corinthian capitals, forming a
curious contrast with the mean little buildings crouched behind the
tall front. In the doors of the churches outside, and the chapels
within, one is constantly coming upon that peculiar construction which
consists of what would be an arch, resting on two pillars, were not the
keystone wanting. Columns with shafts elaborately sculptured, and
twisted marble pillars of the bed-post pattern, are to be seen by
hundreds, very expensive in material and workmanship, but unfortunately
very ugly; while the numbers of puffy cherubs, inside and out, remind
the Englishman of the monuments of St. Paul's.

As to the interior decoration of the churches, the richer ones are
crowded with incongruous ornaments to a wonderful degree. Gold, silver,
costly marbles, jewels, stucco, paint, tinsel, and frippery are all
mixed up together in the wildest manner. We found the inside of the
churches to be generally the worst part of them. The Cathedral, for
instance, is really a very grand building when seen from a little
distance, with its two high towers and its cupola behind. I was greatly
edified by finding it described in the last book of Mexican travels I
have read, as built in the purest Doric style.

The Mineria, or School of Mines, is a fine building, something after
the manner of Somerset House on a small scale. As for the famous Plaza
Mayor, the great square, it is a very great square indeed, large enough
to review an army in, and large enough to damage by its size the effect
of the cathedral, and to dwarf the other buildings that surround it
into mere insignificance. However, one thing is certain, that we have
not come all this way to see Spanish architecture and great squares,
but must look for something more characteristic.

I have said we arrived in Mexico on the eve of Palm Sunday, and next
morning we proceeded to consult with one of our newly-made
acquaintances as to our prospects for the ensuing Holy Week. This
gentleman, a man who took a practical view of things, mentioned a
circumstance which led him to expect that the affair would go off with
eclat. The Mexicans, both the nearly white Mestizos and the Indians of
pure race, delight in pulque. The brown people are grave and silent in
their sober state, but pulque stirs up their sluggish blood, and they
get into a condition of positive enjoyment. But very soon after this
comes a state of furious intoxication, and a general scuffle is a
common termination to a drinking-bout. Fortunately, the Indians are not
a bloodthirsty people; and, though every man carries a knife or
machete, or--if he can get nothing better--a bit of hoop-iron tempered,
sharpened, and fixed into a handle, yet nothing more serious than cuffs
and scratches generally ensues. Even if severe wounds are given, the
Indian has many chances in his favor, for his organization is somewhat
different from that of white men, and he recovers easily from wounds
that would kill any European outright.

The lower orders of the half-breed population are also given to
pulque-drinking, but with far more serious consequences. Unlike the
pure Indians, they are a hot-blooded and excitable race, and
drunkenness with them is utter madness while it lasts. Knives are drawn
at the very beginning of a squabble, and scarcely an evening passes
without one or two bodies of men killed in these drunken melees being
carried to the Police Cuartel in the great square. On Sundays and
holidays the number increases; but on this Palm Sunday there were
fourteen, not killed in one great battle, but brought in by ones and
twos, from different parts of the city. It was this little piece of
statistics that induced our friend to conclude that the citizens of
Mexico had made up their minds to enjoy themselves thoroughly, and that
Holy Week would be a grand affair. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of
the Semana Santa have only this to distinguish them from ordinary days,
that the churches are crowded with men and women waiting their turn at
the confessional; and that in the afternoons the old promenade of Las
Vigas, down in the Indian quarter by the canal of Chalco, is patronized
by fashionable Mexico, which, except on some four or five special days,
frequents the new Alameda. The sight of these confessionals, so
constantly filled, prompts one to ask--why just before Easter? Just
after would be more appropriate; for as we find the Glasgow people much
worse on Sundays than on week-days, so the Mexican population, not very
virtuous at the best of times, are specially and particularly wicked
when the great Church-festivals come round. The name of Shrove Tuesday
survives in our Calendar, to remind us of the time when we also used to
go to be shriven before Easter.

On Thursday at noon mass is over, the bells cease to ring, the organs
in the churches are silent, and all carriages disappear from the
streets, except the dusty Diligence which, like French law, "est
athee," and cares nothing for fasts or festivals. Now we come to
understand the wonderful wooden machine like a water-wheel, which was
put up yesterday on one tower of the Cathedral. We had asked people in
the great square, just below, what it was, but could get no answer
except that it was _la Matraca_, the rattle, for to-morrow. And now we
found that, the church bells being incapacitated, this rattle does duty
instead, striking the hours, and occasionally going off into furious
fits of clattering, without apparent reason, for ten minutes at a time,
till the two men who worked it, who were either convicts or soldiers in
fatigue-dress, were tired out. It was not this one rattle only that was
disturbing the public peace that day and the next. Everybody was
walking about with a rattle, and working it like mad, and all over the
city there was a noise like the sound of the back-scratchers at
Greenwich Fair, or of an American forest when the woodpeckers are busy.
These little rattles stand for Judas's bones, and all good Catholics
express in this odd way their desire to break them. They do the same
thing in Italy, but it is not so prominent a part of the celebration as
in Mexico, where old and young, rich and poor, all do their part in it.
As soon as we found out what it all meant, we bought matracas for
ourselves, and joined the rest of the world in their noisy occupation.
The breaking of his bones is but a preliminary measure. In the square a
fair is being held, in the booths of which the great articles of trade
now are Judas's bones, of many patterns, at all prices, and Judas
himself in pasteboard, who is to be carried about and insulted till
Saturday morning, and then, hanging up by a string, is to burst asunder
by means of a packet of powder and a slow match in his inside, and
finally to perish in a bonfire.

The first sight of these pasteboard Judases convinced us of one thing,
that we had unexpectedly come upon the old custom, of which our
processions and burning of Guy Fawkes in England are merely an
adaptation. After giving up the old custom as a Popish rite, what a
blight idea to revive it in this new shape, and to give the boys
something to carry about, bang, blow up, and make a final bonfire of,
and all in the Protestant interest! There was another thing to be
noticed about the Judases. The makers had evidently tried to vary them
as much as they could; and, by that very means, had shown how
impossible it was to them to strike out anything new. There were two
types; one was the Neapolitan _Polichinello_, whom we have naturalised
as _Punch_; and the other the God _Pan_, with his horns, and hoofs, and
tail, whom the whole Christian world has recognised as the devil, for
these many ages. Well, some took one type and some the other; and a few
tried to combine the two, of course spoiling both. But, beyond this,
their power of invention could not go. They were always trying to
conceal the old idea, and could do no more than to distort it. We could
see through their flimsy pretensions to originality much as a
schoolmaster recognises the extracts from the encyclopaedia in his
boys' essays.

As with this Judas trade, so it is with other more important arts and
sciences in this country. The old types descend, almost unchanged, from
generation to generation. Everything that is really Mexican is either
Aztec or Spanish. Among the Spanish types we may separate the Moorish.
Our knowledge of Mexico is not sufficient to enable us to analyse the
Aztec civilization, so we must be content with these three classes. I
will not go further into the question here, for occasions will
continually occur to show how--for three centuries at least--the
inhabitants of Mexico, both white and brown, have taken their ideas at
second-hand, always copying but never developing anything.