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Anahuac written by Edward Burnett Tylor

E >> Edward Burnett Tylor >> Anahuac




All this time my companion and I have been walking about the streets;
in evening-dress, as the etiquette of the place demands, on these three
days, from the "better classes." The Mexican ladies may be
advantageously studied just now in their church-going black silk dress
and mantilla, one of the most graceful costumes in the world. It is not
often that one has the chance of seeing them out of doors, except
hurrying to and from Mass in the morning, or in carriages on the
Alameda; but on these festival days one meets them by hundreds. They do
not contrast favorably with the ladies of Cadiz and Seville. The
mixture of Aztec blood seems to have detracted from the beauty of the
Spanish race; the dryness of the atmosphere spoils their complexions;
and the monstrous quantity of capsicums that are consumed at every meal
cannot possibly leave the Mexican digestion in its proper state.

We dined that day with Don Jose de A., who, though Spanish-American by
birth, was English by education and feeling, and had known my
companion's family well. Our dinner was half English, half Mexican; and
the favourite dishes of the country were there, to aid in our
initiation into Mexican manners and customs. The cooks at the inns,
mindful of our foreign origin, had dealt out the red pepper with a
sparing hand; but to-day the dish of "mole" was the genuine article,
and the first mouthful set as coughing and gasping for breath, while
the tears streamed down our faces, and Don Pepe and Don Pancho gravely
continued their dinner, assuring us that we should get quite to like it
in time. _Pepe_ and _Pancho_, by the way, are short for Jose and
Francisco. Dinner over, it was time to visit the churches, to which
people crowd by thousands, this evening and to-morrow, to see the
monuments, as they are called. Pancho departed, being on duty as escort
to his sisters; and we having, by Pepe's advice, left our watches and
valuables in his room, and put our handkerchiefs in our breast-pockets,
started with him. Mr. Christy, always on the look-out for a new seed or
plant, had taken possession of the seeds of two _mameis_, which are
fleshy fruits--as big as cocoa-nuts--each containing a hard smooth seed
as large as a hen's egg. These not being of great value, he put one in
each tail-pocket of his coat. When we got out, we found the streets
full of people, hurrying from one church to another, anxious to get as
many as possible visited in the evening. We went first to the monastery
of San Francisco, close to our hotel, the largest, and perhaps the
richest convent in the country. Entering through a great gate, we find
ourselves in a large courtyard, full of people, who are visiting--one
after another--the four churches which the establishment contains,
going in at one door and out at the other. At the door of the largest
church, stands a tall monk, soliciting customers for the rosaries of
olive-wood, crosses, and medals from Jerusalem, which are displayed on
a stall close by--shouting in a stentorian voice, every two or three
minutes, "He who gives alms to Holy Church, shall receive plenary
indulgence, and deliver one soul from purgatory." We bought some, but
there did not seem to be many other purchasers. Indeed, we found, when
we had been longer in the country, that a few pence would buy all sorts
of church indulgences, from the permission to eat meat on fast-days up
to plenary absolution in the hour of death; and the trade, once so
flourishing here, is almost used up. The churches were hung with black,
and lighted up; and in each was a "monument," a kind of bower of green
branches decorated with flowers, mirror's, and gold and silver
church-plate, and supposed to stand for the Garden of Gethsemane.
Inside was reclining a wax figure of our Saviour, gaudily dressed in
silk and velvet; and there were also representations of the Last
Supper, with wax-work figures as large as life. To visit and criticise
these "monuments" was the object of the sort of pilgrimage people were
making from church to church, and they seemed thoroughly to enjoy it.
It was not a superfluous precaution that we had taken, in leaving our
valuables in a place of safety, for, on our exit from the first church,
we found that Pepe had lost his handkerchief and a cigar-case, which he
had stowed away in an inner pocket, and Mr. Christy had been relieved
of one of his mamei seeds by some "lepero" who probably took it for a
snuff-box. His feelings must have been like those of the English
pickpocket in Paris, when he robbed the Frenchman of the article he had
pocketed with so much care, and found it was a lump of sugar. And so
relieved of further care for our worldly goods, we went through with
the work of seeing monuments, till we were tired and disgusted with the
whole affair, and at last went home to bed.

Next day, appropriate sermons in the churches, processions in the
afternoon, in which wax figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary were
carried by men got up in fancy dresses as soldiers and centurions, and
so called penitents, walking covered with black shrouds and veils, with
small round holes to look through, or in the yellow dress and
extinguisher cap, both with flames and devils painted on them. These
are exactly the costumes worn in old times, the first by the familiars
of the Inquisition, and the second by the criminals it condemned; and
the sight of them set us thinking of the processions they used to
figure in, when the Holy Office was flourishing at Santo Domingo, a
little way down the street where we are standing.

In the evening the Crucifixion is represented in wax in the churches,
and the visiting goes on as the night before; and the next morning is
the Sabado de Gloria, the Saturday which ends Lent. We go to the
Jesuits' church in the morning to hear the last sermon. Since Thursday
at noon, as the organs have been silenced, harps and violins have taken
their places. The sermon is long and prosy, and we rejoice that it is
the last. Then the service of the day goes on until they come to the
"Gloria in excelsis." The organ peals out again, the black
curtain--which has hidden the high altar--parts in the middle, and
displays a perfect blaze of gold and jewels: all the bells in the city
begin to ring: the carriages, which have been waiting ready harnessed
in court yards, pour out into the streets: the lumbering hackney
coaches go racing to the great square, striving to get the first fare
for luck: the Judases, which have been hanging all the morning out of
windows and across streets, are set light to as the first bell begins
to ring, and fizzing and popping burst all to pieces, and then are
thrown into a heap in the street, where a bonfire is made of them, and
the children join hands and dance round it. So Holy Week ends.

[Illustration: THE PORTER AND THE BAKER IN MEXICO. (From Models made by
Native Artists)]

The arrangement of the day in Mexico is this. Early in the morning your
servant knocks at your door, and brings in a little cup of coffee or
chocolate and a small roll, which _desayuno_--literally breakfast--you
discuss while dressing. Going down into the courtyard, you find your
horse waiting for you, and off you go for an hour or two's ride, and
back to a dejeuner-a-la-fourchette somewhere between ten and one
o'clock. Then you have seven or eight hours before dinner, so that a
good deal of work may be got into a day so divided. Things are managed
very differently in country places, but this is the fashion in the
capital among the higher class, that is, of course, the class of people
who put on dress-coats in the evening.

When we had been a day or two in Mexico, we took our first ride to
Tacubaya and Chapultepec. Mexican saddles and bridles were a novelty to
us, but when we come to describe our Mexican and his appurtenances it
will be time enough to speak of them.

The barricades in the streets constructed during the last revolution of
two or three weeks back had not yet been removed, but an opening at one
side allowed men and horses to get past. Carriages had to go round, an
easy matter in a city built as this is in squares like a chess-board.
The barricades mount two guns each, and as the streets are quite
straight they can sweep them in both directions, to the whole length of
their range. As in Turin, you can look backward and forward along the
straight streets from every part of the city, and see mountains at each
end. The suburbs of the city are quite as repulsive as our first
glimpse of them led us to expect; and, as far as one could judge by the
appearance of the half-caste inhabitants, it is not good to go there
alone after dark. Here is the end of the aqueduct of Chapultepec, the
Salto del Agua; and--crowded round it--a thoroughly characteristic
group of women and water-carriers, filling their great earthen jars
with water, which they carry about from house to house. The women are
simply and cheaply dressed, and though not generally pretty, are very
graceful in their movements. Their dress consists of a white cotton
under-dress, a coloured cotton skirt, generally blue, brown, or grey,
with some small pattern upon it, but never brilliant in colour, and a
rebozo, which is a small sober-coloured cotton shawl, long and narrow.
This rebozo passes over the back of the head, where it is somehow fixed
to a back hair-comb, and the two ends hang down over the shoulders in
front; or, more often, one end is thrown over the opposite shoulder, so
that the young lady's face is set in it, like a picture in a frame. Add
to this a springy step, the peculiarly unconstrained movement in
walking which comes of living in the open air and wearing a loose
dress, a pleasant pale face, small features, bright eyes, small hands
and feet, little slippers and no stockings, and you have as good a
picture of a Mexican half-caste girl as I can give. A book of Mexican
engravings, however, will give a much better idea of her. Then we went
past the great prison, the Acordada, and out at the gate (we had
purposely gone out of our way to see more of the city), and so into the
great promenade, the Pased or Alameda. The latter is the Spanish name
for this necessary appendage to every town. It comes from _alamo_,
which means a poplar. Imagine a long wide level road, a mile or so
long, generally so chosen as to have a fine view, with footpaths on
each side, lines of poplar trees, a fountain at each end and a statue
in the middle, and this description will stand pretty nearly for almost
every promenade of the kind I have seen in Spain or Spanish America.

[Illustration: WATER-CARRIER AND A MEXICAN WOMAN, AT THE FOUNTAIN.]

Tacubaya is a pleasant place on the ride of the first hills that begin
to rise towards the mountain-wall of the valley. Here rich Mexicans
have country-houses in large gardens, which are interesting from the
immense variety of plants which grow there, though badly kept up, and
systematically stripped by the gardeners of the fruit as it gets
ripe--for their own benefit, of course. From Tacubaya we go to
Chapultepec (Grasshopper Mountain), which is a volcanic hill of
porphyry rising from the plain. On the top is the palace on which the
viceroy Galvez expended great sums of money some seventy years ago,
making it into a building which would serve either as a palace or as a
fortress in cases of emergency. Though the Americans charged up the
hill and carried it easily in '47, it would be a very strong place in
proper hands. It is a military school now. On the hill is the famous
grove of cypresses--ahuehuetes[5]--as they are called, grand trees with
their branches hung with fringes of the long grey Spanish moss--barba
Espanola--Spanish beard. I do not know what painters think of the
effect of this moss, trailing in long festoons from the branches of the
trees, but to me it is beautiful; and I shall never forget where I
first saw it, on a bayou of the Mississippi, winding through the depths
of a great forest in the swamps of Louisiana.[6] In this grove of
Chapultepec, there were sculptured on the side of the hill, in the
solid porphyry, likenesses of the two Montezumas, colossal in size. For
some reason or other, I forget now what, one of the last Spanish
viceroys thought it desirable to destroy them, and tried to blow them
up with gunpowder. He only partially succeeded, for the two great
bas-reliefs were still very distinguishable as we rode past, though
noseless and considerably knocked about.

We went home to breakfast with our friends, and looked at the
title-deeds of their house in crabbed Spanish of the sixteenth century,
and the great Chinese treasure-chest, still used as the strong-box of
the firm, with an immense lock, and a key like the key of Dover castle.
Fine old Chinese jars, and other curiosities, are often to be found in
Mexico; and they date from the time when the great galleon from Manila,
which was called "el nao"--the ship--to distinguish it from all other
ships, came once a year to Acapulco.

After breakfast, business hours begin; so we took ourselves off to
visit the canal of Chalco, and the famous floating gardens--as they are
called. On our way we had a chance of studying the conveyances our
ancestors used to ride in, and availed ourselves of it. In books on
Spanish America, written at the beginning of this century, there are
wonderful descriptions of the gilt coaches, with six or eight mules, in
which the great folks used to drive in state on the promenades. They
are exactly the carriages that it was the height of a lady's ambition
to ride in, in the days of Sir Charles Grandison, and Mr. Tom Jones.
Here, in Mexico, they were still to be found, after they had
disappeared from the rest of the habitable globe; and even now, though
the private carriages are all of a more modern type, there are still
left a few of these amazing vehicles, now degraded to the cab-stand;
and we got into one that was embellished with sculptured Cupids--their
faces as much mutilated as the two Montezumas--and with the remains of
the painting and gilding, which once covered the whole affair, just
visible in corners, like the colouring of the ceilings of the Alhambra.
We had to climb up three high steps, and haul ourselves into the body
of the coach, which hung on strong leather straps; springs belong to a
later period. By the time we had got to the Paseo de las Vigas we were
glad enough to get out, wondering at the sacrifice of comfort to
dignity those highly respectable grandees must have made, and not
surprised at the fate of some inquisitive travellers who have done as
we did, and have been obliged to stop by the qualms of sea-sickness. At
the bridge we chartered a canoe to Santa Anita. This Santa Anita is a
little Indian village on the canal of Chalco, and to-day there is to be
a festival there. For this, however, we shall be too early, as we have
to be back in time to see Mexico turn out for a promenade on the Paseo
de las Vigas, and then to go out to dinner. So we must just take the
opportunity of looking at the Indian population as they go up and down
the canal in canoes, and see their gardens and their houses. However,
as the Indian notion of a festival consists in going to mass in the
morning, and getting drunk and fighting in the afternoon, we are
perhaps as well out of it. We took our passage to Santa Anita and back
in a canoe--a mere flat-bottomed box with sloping sides, made of boards
put together with wooden pegs. There was a mat at the stern for us to
squat upon, and an awning over our heads. An old Indian and his son
were the crew; and they had long poles, which they set against the
banks or the bottom of the shallow canal, and so pushed us along.
Besides these two, an old woman with two little girls got in, as we
were starting--without asking our leave, by the way--and sat down at
the other end of the canoe. Of course, the old woman began to busy
herself with the two little girls, in the usual occupation of old women
here, during their idle moments; and though she left off at our earnest
request, she evidently thought us very crotchety people for objecting.

The scene on the canal was a curious one. There were numbers of boats
going up and down; and the Indians, as soon as they caught sight of an
acquaintance, began to shout out a long string of complimentary
phrases, sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in Mexican: "How is your
worship this morning?" "I trust that I have the happiness of seeing
your worship in good health." "If there is anything I can have the
honour of doing for your worship, pray dispose of me," and so forth;
till they are out of hearing. All this is accompanied by a taking-off
of hats, and a series of low bows and complimentary grimaces. As far as
we could ascertain, it is all mere matter of ceremony. It may be an
exaggeration of the formal, complimentary talk of the Spaniards, but
its origin probably dates further back.

The Indians here no longer appeared the same dull, melancholy men whom
we had seen in the richer quarter of the town. There they were under a
strong feeling of constraint, for their language is not understood by
the whites and mestizos; and they, for their part, know but little
Spanish; and besides, there is very little sympathy between the two
classes. One thing will shew this clearly enough. By a distinct line of
demarcation, the Indians are separated from the rest of the population,
who are at least partly white. These latter call themselves "gente de
razon"--people of reason,--to distinguish themselves from the Indians,
who are people without reason. In common parlance the distinction is
made thus: the whites and mixed breed are "gente"--_people_,--the brown
men being merely "Indios"--Indians--and not people at all.

Here, in their own quarter, and among their own people, they seem
talkative enough. We can only tell what they are chattering about when
they happen to speak Spanish, either for our benefit, or to show off
their proficiency in that tongue. People who can speak the Aztec
language say that their way of forming compound words gives constant
occasion for puns and quibbles, and that the talk of the Indians is
full of such small jokes. In this respect they differ exceedingly from
the Spaniards, whose jests are generally about _things_, and seldom
about their _names_, as one sees by their almost always bearing
translation into other languages.

Most of the canoes were tastefully decorated with flowers, for the
Aztecs have not lost their old taste for ornamenting themselves, and
everything about them, with garlands and nosegays. The fruits and
vegetables they were carrying to market were very English in their
appearance. Mexico is supplied with all kinds of tropical fruits, which
come from a distance; but the district we are now in only produces
plants which might grow in our own country--barley, potatoes, cabbages,
parsnips, apples, pears, plums, peaches, and so forth, but scarcely
anything tropical in its character. One thing surprises us, that the
Indians, in a climate where the mornings and evenings are often very
chilly, should dress so scantily. The men have a general appearance of
having outgrown their clothes; for the sleeves of the kind of
cotton-shirt they wear only reach to their elbows, and their trousers,
of the same material, only fall to their knees. To these two garments
add a sort of blanket, thrown over the shoulders, a pair of sandals,
and a palm-leaf hat, and the man is dressed. His skin is brown, his
limbs muscular--especially his legs--his lips thick, his nose Jewish,
his hair coarse, black, and hanging straight down. The woman's dress is
as simple as the man's. She has on a kind of cotton sack, very short in
the sleeves, and very open at the shoulders, and some sort of a skirt
or petticoat besides. Sometimes she has a folded cotton cloth on her
head, like a Roman contadina; but, generally, nothing covers her thick
black hair, which hangs down behind in long twisted tails.

In old times, when Mexico was in the middle of a great lake, and the
inhabitants were not strong enough to hold land on the shores, they
were driven to strange shifts to get food. Among other expedients, they
took to making little floating islands, which consisted of rafts of
reeds and brushwood, on which they heaped mud from the shores of the
lakes. On the banks of the lake of Tezcuco the mud was, at first, too
full of salt and soda to be good for cultivation; but by pouring the
water of the lake upon it, and letting it soak through, they dissolved
out most of the salts, and the island was fit for cultivation, and bore
splendid crops of vegetables.[7] These islands were called _chinampas_,
and they were often large enough for the proprietor to build a hut in
the middle, and live in it with his family. In later times, when the
Mexicans came to be no longer afraid of their neighbours, the chinampas
were not of much use; and when the water was drained off, and the city
stood on dry land, one would have supposed that such a troublesome and
costly arrangement would have been abandoned. The Mexican, however, is
hard to move from the customs of his ancestors; and we have Humboldt's
word for it, that in his time there were some of these artificial
islands still in the lake of Chalco, which the owners towed about with
a rope, or pushed with a long pole. They are all gone now, at any rate,
though the name of _chinampa_ is still applied to the gardens along the
canal. These gardens very much resemble the floating islands in their
construction of mud, heaped on a foundation of reeds and branches; and
though they are not the real thing, and do not float, they are
interesting, as the present representatives of the famous Mexican
floating gardens. They are narrow strips of land, with a frontage of
four or five yards to the canal, and a depth of one hundred, or a
hundred and fifty yards. Between the strips are open ditches; and one
principal occupation of the proprietor seems to be bringing up mud from
the bottom of the ditch with a wooden shovel, and throwing it on the
garden, in places where it has sunk. The reason of the narrowness of
the strips is that he may be able to throw mud all over them from the
ditches on either side.

While we are busy observing all these matters, and questioning our
boatmen about them, we reach Santa Anita. Here there are swampy lanes
and more swampy gardens, a little village of Indian houses, three or
four pulque-shops, and a church. Outside the pulque-shops are
fresco-paintings, representing Aztec warriors carousing, and draining
great bowls of pulque. These were no specimens of Aztec art, however,
but seemed to be copied (by some white or half-caste sign-painter,
probably) from the French coloured engravings which represent the
events of the Conquest. These extraordinary works of art are to be seen
everywhere in this country, where, of all places in the world, one
would have thought that people would have noticed that the artist had
not the faintest idea of what an Aztec was like, but supposed that his
limbs and face and hair were like an European's. Here, with the real
Aztec standing underneath, the difference was striking enough. One
ought not to be too critical about these things, however, when one
remembers the pictures of shepherds and shepherdesses that adorn our
English farmhouses. We drank pulque at the sign of _The Cacique_, and
liked it, for we had now quite got over our aversion to its putrid
taste and smell. I wonder that our new faculty of pulque-drinking did
not make us able to relish the suspicious eggs that abound in Mexican
inns, but it had no such effect, unfortunately.

Our canoe took us back to the Promenade of Las Vigas, which is a long
drive, planted with rows of trees, and extends along the last mile or
two of the canal. Indeed, its name comes from the beam (Viga) which
swings across the canal at the place where the canoes pay toll. This
was the great promenade, once upon a time; but the new Alameda has
taken away all the promenaders to a more fashionable quarter, except on
certain festival days, three or four times in the year, when it is the
correct thing for society to make a display of itself--on horseback or
in carriages--in this neglected Indian quarter. We had happened upon
one of these festival days; so, as we crawled along the side-path,
tired and dusty, we had a good opportunity of seeing the Mexican beau
monde. The display of really good carriages was extraordinary; but it
must be recollected that many families here are content to live
miserably enough at home, if they can manage to appear in good style at
the theatre and on the promenade. This is one reason why so many of the
Mexicans who are so friendly with you out of doors, and in the cafes,
are so very shy of letting you see the inside of their houses. They
say, and very likely it is true, that among the richer classes, it is
customary to put a stipulation in the marriage-contracts, that the
husband shall keep a carriage and pair, and a box at the theatre, for
his wife's benefit. The horsemen turned out in great style, and the
foreigners were fully represented among them. It was noticeable that
while these latter generally adopted the high-peaked saddle, and the
jacket, and broad-brimmed felt hat of the country, and looked as though
the new arrangements quite suited them, the native dandies, on the
other hand, were prone to dressing in European fashion, and sitting
upon English saddles--in which they looked neither secure nor
comfortable.