Ill ,i_liiiii-Mi[«_iHi »_-_- lit'* 1,200 International (Prisbie and Huntington) 1,400 Pacific Coast (Prisbie) 3,000 Total 12, 300 To these may be added the Sinaloa and Durango, from the city of Culiacan to the port of Altata, in Sinaloa; the Tehuantepec railway, and Captain Eads's ship railway across the same isthmus, to take the place of a ship canah The privilege to build an American railway across Te huantepec, it may be remembered, was secured (at the same time with the lower belt of Arizona) by the Gads den treaty of 1853, supplementary to that of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The road was supposed to be needed for the consolidation of relations with our then newly acquired territory of California. The Pacific railroad filled its place, however, and the project, taken up and dropped from time to time, has since had but a lingering existence. Captain Eads proposes to transport bodily ships of THE FERRO-CARRILES. 75 76 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. 4000 tons, 190 miles, by land. He will have twelve lines of rails, and four locomotives at once ; and, to avoid jarring in transit, changes of direction will be made by a series of turn-tables instead of curves. The scheme is a startling one, and meets with no little opposition. It is still only on paper; but its proposer, who has abun dantly vindicated his sagacity in constructing the jetties of the Mississippi and the great St. Louis bridge, remains firm in his conviction that he will be able to sail ships across the isthmus on dry land. III. The several enterprises are succinctly divided into two classes — those on the ground, and those on paper. It is not necessarily a disparagement to the last that they are still in such a condition, for many of them are of very recent origin. The original Mexican Southern road is to run south from Mexico, by Puebla and Oaxaca (capital of the pop ulous state of the same name) and the frontier of Gua temala, with branches to the ports of Anton Lizardo, on the Gulf of Mexico, and Tehuantepec, on the Pacific. It is to connect also with the Tehuantepec railway. It relies, as a principal resource, upon the transport of the valuable productions of a rich tropical country, as cotton, sugar, coffee, rice, and the like. Oaxaca is an important small city of 28,000 people, birthplace of General Por- firio Diaz, the Mexican power behind the throne, and un doubtedly the weightiest person in the country. The route will be a rugged one to build. Much of the area is high and salubrious. The Oaxacan Indians are a sturdy race, who have followed their leader, Diaz, and others in many a hard-fought campaign. THE FERRO-CARRILES. 77 This company, however, has lately effected a consoli dation with the Mexican Oriental, and both will hence forth be known under the name of the Mexican Southern. The Mexican Oriental sets out from Laredo, on the Texas frontier, and proceeds to the capital by way of Victoria, the capital of the state of Tamaulipas. It claims to have a bee-line, and to be 200 miles shorter than any other. Its mission is to occupy the district be tween the coast and the Mexican National. It throws out a branch from Victoria to San Luis Potosi ; and has a coast-line connecting Tuxpan, Nautla, and Vera Cruz. It is fed by some 12,000 miles of road under control of Jay Gould in the United States. The International is chartered to run from Eagle Pass, in Texas, to the city of Mexico, occupying a field left vacant between the Mexican Central and National ; and is allowed to have also a cross-line to a point between Matamoras and Tampico, east, and between Mazatlan and Zihuataneso, west. The theory of each, it will be seen, is to have an interoceanic line as well as a main line north and south. The Pacific Coast road covers the right to a vast stretch, beginning at a point below Fort Yuma, Arizona, and connecting the whole series of Pacific ports down to Guatemala. The Topolobampo has also a long extension southward, to touch at some of the same points. The Topolobampo route (Texas, Topolobampo, and Pacific) crosses the northern border states. It professes to be a shorter transcontinental route to Australia and Asia than any other that can be laid down on the map. It claims to have at Topolobampo, just within the Gulf of California, the ancient Sea of Cortez, one of the few fine harbors of the Pacific coast. These harbors are spaced at wide intervals apart. 78 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. That -of the Columbia River of Oregon is the highest up. Then, 600 miles south, comes San Francisco; 441 miles below this is San Diego ; 650 miles farther on, in a direct line, or 936, doubling Cape St, Lucas, is Topo lobampo ; and 740 miles south of this again is Acapulco. Between them all there is nothing worthy the name of harbor. Topolobampo city, within the confines of the state of Sinaloa, exists only on paper as yet, but nothing is more impressive in its elegant regularity and finish than a pa per city. It claims to be 800 miles nearer New York than San Francisco by railroad travel, and that a person "'coming from Liverpool to Sydney, Australia, would save 600 miles in laying out a course from Fernandina, Flor ida, by New Orleans and Topolobampo, which is indi cated as a route of the future. If some of these rep resentations be correct, no doubt it will be. We live in times of a ruthless commercial greed which is stopped by no sentimental considerations of vested rights and convenience. We have but to see a short, through line, with possible economies, to build it with all possible despatch. The road in question is to start from Piedras Negras, on the frontier of Texas, and make for Topolobampo, across the states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora, with branches to Presidio del Norte, also on the Texas frontier, and to Alamos, in Sonora, and the port of Maz- atlan, down the coast. These routes pass near, and would greatly facilitate operations in some of the large silver-mining districts, of late entered with success by American capital and immigration. The reports of its surveys chronicle an engaging prospect in various other ways. It passes from belts of tropical products to those of white pine, oak, and cedar, and others fitted for cereals, THE FERRO-CARRILES. 79 grass, and cotton, with a rich iron mountain, and deposits of copper as well as silver. The maxim is laid down that a railroad pays, in local traffic, in proportion as one section of its line supplies what another lacks. If the situation be as represented, Topolobampo seems provided with most of the essential conditions of success. 80 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. VII. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. The Sonora road is already built, and in operation as I write. It is a stretch of three hundred miles, from the Arizona frontier, to the port of Guaymas, near the centre of the shore line of the Gulf of California. Its United States connection is by a branch of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, from Benson, through Calabasas, to the border at Nogales ; and another is proposed, from the Southern Pacific at Tucson. The management of this enterprise, as well as of the Great Mexican Central, is practically that of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. Its course is across the state of Sonora. It abolishes the old system of ox-train transportation and the dusty stage- line from Tucson. It will be found fault with, among others, by the savage Apaches, whose refuge Northern Mexico has so long been. Their depredations, with their territory penetrated by railroads, must soon come to an end once for all. The other Indians of the state — Yaquis, Mayos, and Opatas — are docile, and a principal reliance for cheap labor. The road taps mines, and, by means of a branch, what is even more important for Mexico, the valuable Santa Clara coal-fields. It' has the little city of Hermosillo, with its plantations, irrigated by aqueducts, in its course ; and its port of Gnaymas is commodious and sheltered. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 81 II. I have purposely reserved to the last — the better, per haps, to present them to view — the two great trunk lines of principal importance, the Mexican Central and the Mexican National. These two represent the bulk of the entire movement as it is at present. Neither had many miles in actual operation during my stay ; but the works, railway stations, city offices, and army of employes of both, were constantly in sight at the capital, and were the principal evidences by which the manner of the rail way invasion of Mexico could be judged. Energy of movement, ingenuity in planning, and an almost limitless expenditure, all indicated here conscien tious work, and not simply railroad building on paper. The Central begins at El Paso, the terminus of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, as well as a station on the Southern Pacific, at the frontier of New Mexico. It extends to the capital, a distance of thirteen hundred miles, tapping on the way a long series of the leading cities of the republic, most of these as well capitals of states, It has also a great interoceanic cross-line, which is to pass from the port of Tampico, on the Gulf of Mex ico, through the cities of San Luis Potosi, Lagos (the junction with the main line), and Guadalajara, to San Bias, on the Pacific. It is expected that the main line will be completed about July, 1884. The first reached in the chain of leading cities is Chi huahua, with about eighteen thousand inhabitants. The line is already running to this point, and is completed in all three hundred and thirty-one miles southward from Paso del Norte. The visitor by rail may already have in Chihuahua a glimpse of a place presenting most of the 4* 82 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. typical Mexican features. It has Aztec remains, and a large cathedral, built out of a percentage of the proceeds of a silver-mine in bonanza. It is the scene where the patriot Hidalgo, who first raised the standard of insurrec tion against Spanish rule, was shot, having been treacher ously betrayed by his friends. This story is, unhappily, of but too frequent repetition in Mexican annals. Durango, three hundred miles farther, has twenty- eight thousand people. It has been spoken of as the Ul tima Thule of civilized Mexico, the barren plains to the north — which are, indeed, very common in all these up permost states — not having been considered worthy to be included with the country below. There are places where water is not to be had for two and three days at a time, but must be carried by the traveller. The inhabi tants have had to depend considerably upon themselves for defence, as is seen in the occasional fort-like hacien das, with walls turreted and pierced for musketry. Zacatecas, moving onward now into a country of rec ognized civilization, has 62,000 people ; San Luis Potosi, 45,000 ; Aguas Calientes, 35,000 ; Lagos, 25,000 ; Leon, 100,000; handsome Guanajuato, capital of the state which is the richest of the whole interior, 63,000; Ce- laya, 30,000 ; Silao, 38,000 ; Irapuato, 21,000 ; Salamanca, 20,000 ; and luxurious Guadalajara, 94,000. The mining of the precious metals is a leading indus try over all the area thus described, which abounds also in the agricultural products of a gentle and temperate climate. The railroad is now running northward from the city of Mexico to Lagos, and is completed for three hundred and thirty-four miles from this lower end. Lastly in the chain of cities may be mentioned Quere- taro, which has a population of 48,000. It is the site of flourishing cotton-mills, an aqueduct which is compared THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 83 with the works of the Romans, and it saw the final re sistance and execution of Maximilian. Mexico itself has 250,000 inhabitants. I have summed up here nearly a million of people ; and it would seem that a railroad along the line of which are scattered such communities as these, grown to their present dimensions without even tolerable means of approach, need not lack for support. True, large numbers of the people are Indians and very poor; but I point to the example of Don Benito Juarez, the liberator of his country from the French, an Indian of the purest blood, and to numerous others acces sible on every hand, to show that there is nothing inher ent in the race itself to debar it from the highest devel opment with increase of opportunities. And if any sup pose that they do not like to travel, let him simply in spect the excursion trains where third-class cars are sup plied to them in sufficient numbers. III. I made the trip over the section of the Central to the small city of Tula. Its principal feature is the passage through the great Spanish drainage cut, along one side of which it has been allowed to terrace its track. This cut — the Tajo of Nochistongo, before mentioned, designed for keeping the lakes from inundating the valley — was be gun under the viceroys as far back as 1607, and continued for a couple of hundred years. Such mammoth earth- cutting — a ditch twelve miles long, a couple of hundred feet deep, and three hundred and sixty wide — was never seen elsewhere in the world ; and it is said to have cost the lives of seventy thousand peons, or Indian laborers, in the course of construction. Why this should have been, and how they died — whether by slipping in and 84 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. being buried, or under the exactions of cruel task-masters, and whether those who passed away simply of old age (for which it will be seen there was ample time) are in cluded — does not appear. I went partly by construction train, dining in their car with a group of jolly young engineers, and partly on horseback over the terre-plaine (the graded road-bed), which makes an excellent surface for riding. The peons, swarming on the work, in white cotton shirts and drawers, have reddish skins, bristly black hair, and a sudden, wild- eyed way of addressing you. They have an analogy to the Chinese type. They got at this time two and a half reals (thirty-one cents) a day. They are very suspicious, and have absolutely no idea of trust, or waiting over the appointed time. Dangerous strikes have resulted from some slight putting off of the pay-day, which usually takes place once a week. In other respects they are very tractable. There were said to be thirty thousand of them at work on railroads at this date. The rate of wages, so favor able to the contractors at first, has been gradually rising under the active demand in the mean time, and I have heard, since my return, of a strike on one of the northern roads for as high as $1 a day. They buy gay clothes for Sunday, and pulque, and save nothing. Many will not even work steadily. Two such form a partnership to take a single place, and one works half the week and the other the rest. There' were some who walked all Sat urday night to spend Sunday at Queretaro, and returned Monday morning. On the haciendas they are generally in debt, and as th«y cannot leave when in debt, they are so far attached to the land, like serfs. Each _ran_r has a ' DO Gabo (or head), who is simply an enterprising one of themselves, and gets an allowance of two cents extra for THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. S5 THE GREAT SPANISH DRAINAGE COT. each man he controls. The Cabo is a great man among the railway laborers, and out of cabos arise the Benito Juarezes, and hopes in definite for the evolu tion of the race. I spent the night at Tula. It was the capital of the Toltecs before the day of the Aztecs. I climbed the Hill of the Treasure, to inspect some ruins over which archae ologists have made a stir. There are no sculptures nor carved stones, nothing but some opened cellars and heavy walls, with patches of a red plaster, as at Pompeii, ad hering to them. But we stayed our horses, and looked 86 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. down, from a thicket of organ-cactus and nopal, upon a lovely sunset over the valley of Tula. It is a little pocket of fertility in the hills, and it does not seem at all wonderful that the Toltecs stopped there in their migrations southward. My moso pointed out a ruin in the thick woods, which he declared was Toltec, knowing that to be what I was in search of. It was picturesque enough, its walls having been split by an irrepressible vegetable growth ; but it had the same style of battlements (a kind of Spanish horn of dominion) as the fortress-like church in the town, dating from 1553, and was much more modern. I went into this cool old church — vast enough for a cathedral — next day, when the temperature was warm without. It was entirely vacant. Fatigued with my journeying, I sat on a comfortable old wooden bench, and dozed till awakened sharply by the striking of a little cuckoo-clock. I seem to have dreamed that the numerous quaint figures of saints, in dresses made of actual stuffs, had somehow an every-day existence there, in addition to their sacred character, and that they were taking notice of the intruder, and offering audible com ments. This is one of the ways, I suppose, in which very good miracles have been wrought before now. For the rest, the place consisted of a plaza, with two or three pulque-shops ; a shop of general traps, with the ambitious title of " Los Leones ;" a botica (or drug-shop), kept by one Perfecto Espinoza; a Hotel de las Diligen- cias; and a little jail, at one corner of the plaza, where a couple of soldiers walked up and down, and the pris oners peeped out through a large wooden, grated door. And there was a good restaurant, kept by a little Frenchman, who moved on with it from time to time to the head of the line. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 87 IV. The Mexican National, or "Palmer-Sullivan," road is due to the same enterprise which established the success ful Denver and Rio Grande system in Colorado and New Mexico. It is, like that, a narrow gauge, instead of a standard gauge, line, and a connection is to be ultimately established between the twTo. In some respects it may claim to be the pioneer in the modern movement, since its agent in Mexico, James Sullivan, had obtained a charter and begun to raise money in 1872, but was stop ped in his project by the panic of the following year. The National takes a much shorter line to the capital than the Central, say eight hundred miles, as against thirteen hundred. Its initial point is Laredo, on the Texas frontier. It is running already into Monterey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, and built below Saltillo. Of the charms of the little city of Monterey, which has medicinal springs beside it, travellers begin to speak in the warmest terms. It touches San Luis Potosi and Ce- laya as well as the Central, and has along or near its course other cities, well peopled, though less known to fame, as Matehuala, the population of which is 25,000. Its eastern port is Corpus Christi, Texas, though it will have a branch also to Matamoros. Its westward ex tension (only less important than the main line) winds round about, through the cities of Toluca, Maravatio, Morelia, Guadalajara, and Colima, down to the port of Manzanillo. Four of these are capitals, and all are populous, and have wide, well-paved streets and handsome buildings, public and private. Toluca, at a great height, 8825 feet, above the sea, is often afflicted by a rather frigid tern- 88 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. perature ; Colima is distinctly in the tropics ; but Mo- relia affords the happy medium, and its whole state of Michoacan has charms upon which the appreciative never have done expatiating. Humboldt speaks of the lake found at Patzcuaro as one of the loveliest on the globe. Madame Calderon de la Barca, in her journey here, could hardly refrain from regretting the lavishing by Nature of what seemed (so few were there then to enjoy it) almost a wasted beauty. "We are startled," she says, " by the conviction that this enchanting variety of hill and plain, wood and water, is for the most part unseen by human eye and untrod by human footstep." The route winds, too, on its way to Guadalajara, around the great lake of Chapala. Truly, it seems they are to be happy travellers, those of the immediate future, to whom the simple device of the railway is to open up so much of the wildness and loveliness of nature, com bined with the quaintness of an old Spanish civilization. We are apt to forget, in our preconceived impressions, what an important part Old Spain played in the country during three hundred years, what treasures she spent there. She had made a beginning of some of these solid, regular cities, which surprise one like enchantment on emerging upon them from forests and wastes, a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Very little, in fact, has been added to what the Spanish domination left. The modern movement, since 1821, is to be credited with very little in the way of new build ings. Such compliments as are paid in the course of these descriptions to the architecture belong chiefly to that re maining from a much earlier date. The reputation of the republic is still to be made in all such matters when it shall have outgrown the ample legacies bequeathed it, and have need of farther accommodations peculiarly its own. THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 89 In all, the National has completed four hundred and sixty miles. It is said of late to have been sold to an English company. We need not forego our American pride in its early achievements, even if this be so. Per haps such a transfer might be of benefit, in allaying the dread of an overweening American influence. It was not done even to Toluca in my time. It has to face its most arduous engineering difficulties at the very beginning, and fortunately goes far more smoothly after ward. No less than seventeen bridges, of solid construc tion, had to be thrown across the little stream of the Rio Hondo in two or three miles of its course. A pay-train on horseback started out from the central office every Saturday, to convoy the silver coin for the wages of the army of hands employed on the first section of twenty miles. "Ride with us!" its members often hospitably urged, and I more than once accepted the invitation. It is an all-day adventure, and a fatiguing one. Be hold us at early morning clattering out of the court-yard to ride up into the fastnesses of the mountains, a curious cavalcade. The treasure is packed upon the backs of a dozen mules, which are placed in the centre. A troop of Burales (the efficient force organized by Porfirio Diaz for the better protection of the rural districts) takes the van. A numerous retinue of armed mozos of the com pany, with ourselves, bring up the rear. The young engineers, paymasters, and contractors, well mounted, with long boots and revolvers, present a handsome, half- military aspect. We have presently lost sight of the city, and are upon 9Q OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. high rolling barrens, where the surface is volcanic and rent into an infinity of seams, and the only vegetation is that of nopal, or prickly-pear, as large as apple-trees with us* Here and there a cluster of white tents is seen at a distance, and cotton-clad peons delvipg in gulch or on mountain - side are like some strange species of white insects. .The whole expedition wears a most un^-nineteenth- century air. We might be some band of marauders re turned from an ancient foray. The Ruraleg have some thing in their cut— -the buff leather jackets, crossed by ample sword-belts, and wide, gray felt hats — of the troop ers of Cromwell. Each has a rifle in his holster at the saddle-bow, and a gray-and-scarlet blanket strapped be hind him. Nothing could be more spirited, in color, than these costumes, dismounted beside a ,cactus-tree, or thrown out against the blue of distant mountains. On the harness of some of the mules are embroidered in red and blue their names, or that of some hacienda, as " Santa Lucia," to which they have belonged. It is understood that an individual with a crimson handkerchief around the back of his head, under his sil ver-bordered sombrero, is the titular cacique of San Bar- tolito by descent from ancient chiefs. He precedes us, being , employed by the company to look out for plots and ambuscades. When we have passed what he con siders, the dangerous points — these are generally in the neighborhood of elevations, whence an intending bandit could spy the road for a distance in both directions, and where are ravines on either side for concealment and escape — he rejoins the troop, and converses upon the piopriety of his receiving more salary for his arduous duties. No molestation has ever yet been offered these caravans, and there is hardly likely to be. From a con- ( THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 91 ill li|f^ ,_jBi.i».«M"«ff*»" -?*-»* . 92 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. siderable experience in remote parts of Mexico I am satisfied that, however prudent ample precautions may be in exceptional cases like this, the ordinary traveller runs little if any more danger of robbery than at home. At the pay-stations we breast our way through crowds of the peons so thick that the horses can hardly be pre vented from trampling upon them, always with their narrow foreheads, bristling hair, staring, wild eyes, and large, undecided mouths. Their money is jingled out to them through a pay-window into their shabby sombreros. Venders of small commodities and pulque wait for them, and profit by the new supply of funds. At these stations the engineers lead a kind of barrack life. The interior contains some beds, a dining-table, and a safe ; outside is a storehouse of picks, shovels, and bar rows. Whether here, in their construction-car, or tents, they extend the stranger a cheery hospitality. They are hearty, robust fellows — " not here for their health," as their saying is. Many of them have seen service in war and in other climes, and their company is both amusing and instructive. VI. The right of way usually given in all the concessions is for a width of two hundred and thirty feet. Material and supplies for the road, and connected telegraph line, are exempted from duty generally for the period of twenty years. Neither the concession, property, nor shares can be alienated to any foreign government, nor can a foreign government be admitted as a shareholder. The fear of foreign domination crops out everywhere iu Mexican legislation ; and perhaps the weakness of the nation, and the sad experience of its seizure by Napoleon on the pretext of debt, are sufficient excuse for such THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 93 nervousness. At any rate, all companies organized un der its charters agree to be strictly Mexican, and to renounce all rights and exemptions as foreigners. There is no great vacant public domain, as with us, and the Gov ernment has not aided the new enterprises with land grants. . Up to a recent period, however, it has attached to each concession a cash subsidy of $10,000 to $15,000 a mile. Both the Central and Na tional are thus subsidized. In order that the burden may not fall too heavily upon an exchequer always weak, the payments are made to depend upon the pledge of six per cent, in the one case, and four in the other, of re ceipts at the custom-houses. Certificates for the several 'NOT HERE FOR THEIR HEALTH." 94 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. amounts as they become due are issued to the companies, which must wait for collection till there are funds to meet them. The latest plan, affecting most of the great schemes still chiefly on paper, gives no subsidy with the charter, but gives, instead, certain privileges to atone for its ab sence. A less strict accountability to Government, with a much higher tariff of charges, is permitted. It has been questioned by some whether under these conditions a charter without the subsidy is not better than with it. It is to be borne in mind, however, so far as the matter of the higher rates is concerned, that between compet ing points the company which can afford to run at the cheapest rates gets the business. If but a tithe of the railroads now covering the map like a net-work be built, there need be no fear of the lack of a lively competition. The stocks and bonds of railroads are not bought on the word of a desultory traveller mainly in search of the picturesque — though I will admit, too, that they are often bought upon less. I am not afraid, therefore, to express a certain enthusiasm about the ferro-carriles of Mexico, which are in everybody's mouth. It is the railways which have made the modern world elsewhere what it is, and why should they fail of the usual effect here ? They may be overdone, and there may be panics and shrinkages, such as have occurred elsewhere, though this is not extremely probable, owing to the reasons for wari ness which lie very much on the surface. The conditions to be conformed to must not be sought in a parallel situ ation of things in the United States, but rather in such countries, perhaps, as Russia and India, with a large peasant population to be developed, instead of a new population to be created. We have built railroads in advance of settlement, and depended upon immigration THE RAILWAYS AT WORK. 95 to fill up in their wake. Mexico has but an infinitesimal immigration, and presents no great inducements to it at present. It must depend upon the local carrying trade and natural development of the industries and commerce of the country. It has a population per square mile but little less than that of the United States. These are of a natural intelligence, and capable of the stimulus of ambition when opportunities are opened. They are to be encouraged to be no longer satisfied with a bare sub sistence for themselves, but to produce from their fertile lands a surplus^ for which a market is now opened. They are to trade upon it and become amassers of wealth. No les3 than 10,000 miles of railways are spread over what were once the old Mexican provinces of Califor nia, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and Texas. Railways have brought these out of the nothingness in which they recently lay so vast and desolate. What must they not inevitably do at last for Old Mexico itself, so fully peopled, and scattered with centres of trade and of the arts of civilized life ? 96 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. VIII. THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. I. . It is perhaps thought that the work of improvement is to be effected entirely from without, the Mexican himself remaining passive, and allowing everything to be done for him. The view is supported by the extent to which the business of the country is already in the hands of for eigners. The bankers and manufacturers are English. The Germans control hardware and "fancy goods." French and Italians keep the hotels and restaurants ; Spaniards the small groceries and pawn-shops, and deal in the products of the country. These latter have a re pute for somewhat Jewish style of thrift. They are enterprising as administrators of haciendas, and often marry the proprietors' daughters, and possess themselves on their own account of the properties to which they were sent as agents. Whether it be due to such rivalry or not, it is to be noted that there are few Jews in Mexico. Finally, the Americans build the railroads. The Mexican proper is a retail trader, an employe, or, if rich, draws his revenues from haciendas, which in pany cases he never sees, and where his money is made 'for him. These are on an enormous scale. The chief part of the land is comprised in great estates, on which the peasants live in a semi-serfdom. Small farms are scarcely known. For his fine hacienda in the state of THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. 97 Oaxaca ex-President Diaz is said to have paid over a million of dollars ; on another the appliances alone cost a million. The revenues of Mexican proprietors have been heretofore devoted to the purchase of more real estate, or loaned out at interest; at any rate, "salted down" in some such way as to be of little avail in setting the wheels of industry in motion. Before adopting, however, the conventional view that this state of things is due to inferiority of race or ener vating climate, considerations on the other side are to be looked at. In the first place is the revolutionary condi tion of the country, which until a recent date subjected the citizen who ventured to place his property beyond his immediate recall to a thousand embarrassments from one or another of the contending parties. Such immuni ties and advantages as there were, were enjoyed by for eigners alone, under the protection of their diplomatic representatives. Again, there have been peculiar inequalities of fortune, coming down from the old Spanish monarchical times. There has been at one extreme of society a class too ab ject, and at the other, one in too leisurely circumstances, to greatly aspire to farther improvement, and the middle class has been of slow formation. The difficulties in the way of travel and communication with foreign parts for the middle class, from the bosom of which financial success chiefly springs, have been of a repressive sort. The climate, of the central table-land at least, must not be considered enervating. One must lay his ideas of climate, as depending upon latitude, aside, and compre hend that here it is a matter of elevation above the sea. Individual Mexicans are to be met with who, under the stimulus of the new feeling of security, have embarked their capital, put plenty of irons in the fire, and appear to 5 98 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. handle them with skill. The street railways of the capi tal, an extensive and excellent system, are under native management exclusively. It is as successful in mining. It was only when the great Real del Monte Company at Pachuca, formerly English, passed into Mexican hands that its mines became profitable. I should be strongly of the opinion that the backward ness of the Mexican is not the result of a native incapac ity or lack of appetite for gain, but chiefly of the physical conformation of the country. The mule-path is traced like a vast hieroglyphic over the face of it, and in this is read the secret — lack of transportation. But the zealous advocate of race and "Northern en ergy " objects : " How long is it since we had no railroads ourselves? And yet did we not reach a very pretty de gree of civilization without them ?" But Mexico not only had no railways, but not even rivers nor ports. It was waterways which made the pros perity of nations before the day of steam. It is hardly credible, the completeness of the deprivations to which this interesting country has been so long subjected. The wonder is, to any experienced in the diligence travel, and the dreary slowness of the journeys, at a foot-pace, by beasts of burden, not that so little, but so very much, has been done. On the trail to the coast at Acapulco, for instance — in popular phrase a mere camino de pdjaros (road for birds) — have grown up some charming towns, like Iguala, the scene of the Emperor Iturbide's famous Plan, which, it seems to me, the Anglo-Saxon race would hardly ever have originated under such circumstances. , Commerce and trade in such a land naturally have their peculiar aspects. There is, in the first place, the compli cated tariff, already referred to. Americans should not let a new-born enthusiasm for a promising market hurry THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. 99 MODERN SHOP-FRONTS AT MEXICO. them into consignments without a thorough understand ing of the premises. As to engaging in undertakings in the country itself, one who had done so held that the new-comer should make his residence there for six months or a year, and first acquaint himself with the people, their customs, and language. > "Better make it two years, on the whole," he said, reflectively, " and then he will go home again and let it alone altogether." Without sharing this saturnine view, the importance of some preliminary acquaintance cannot be too strongly insisted upon. The great inertia of customs and ways of looking at things so different from our own is appre ciated more and more as time goes on. 100 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. The most promising openings at present would seem to be, for capital, to work up into manufactures the raw material with which the country abounds. These oppor tunities will increase with the growth of transportation. Labor is cheap. The peons have little inventive but suf ficient imitative talent, and make excellent mill-hands. They work for twenty-five and thirty-seven cents a day, and have no trades-unions nor strikes. There is little opening as yet for persons of small means. The govern ment has taken but its first rudimentary steps toward the encouragement of immigration, and the path is beset with difficulties. A commercial treaty is now in the hands of the Senate of the United States. It will be adopted in some form before long, and may result in the improvement of local business opportunities, as it must in the volume of trade, between the two countries. What we want is such a re duction of duties as to put us on the same footing at least as England (in favor of which there is a certain discrimi nation), so that our goods and machinery can be sold in the country on reasonable terms. It is predicted that a trade which is now about $30,000,000 per annum (includ ing both exports aud imports) can be made $100,000,000. The Mexicans, on their side, desire admission for their sugar and hemp. The treaty has met with its chief op position thus far from our Southern sugar -planters. Their fear of competition is hardly reasonable at pres ent. Our own product seems more likely to go to Mex ico at first. It is a matter of note that sugar has been selling at eighteen cents a pound of late at old Monterey, in the country which professes to raise it.* The total * Detailed figures of our trade with Mexico, and other useful mat ters, will be found in the "Border States of Mexico," by Leonidas Hamilton. Chicago, 1882. THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. 101 value of the exports from Mexico for the past fiscal year has been $29,000,000. Of these $14,000,000 came to us, and $10,000,000 went to England. Our own exports to Mexico for 1881 were somewhat over $11,000,000. II. At present Mexico is perhaps the most difficult coun try in which to do business in the civilized world. A customer four or five hundred miles off, even on the best roads, is five or six days' journey distant. In preparing for it it is not long since he was accustomed to first make his will. The merchant has friendly as well as commer cial relations with his customer. He is more or less his banker at the same time, not for the resulting profit, but because it is expected of him. If he does not offer such accommodation some other house will. Credits are long, and it is not expected that interest will be charged even on quite liberal overlaps of time. Paj'ment is made in the bulky silver currency of the country ; and this is sent in large sums by guarded con voys, the conductas, which converge upon the capital four times a year — in January, April, August, and November. There were but two banks issuing bills at this time, and these to but a small amount, and receivable only at short distances from the capital. One of these was a private corporation, the other the National Monte de Piedad, or pawn-shop. The visitor becomes early acquainted with the Mexican "dollar of the fathers," to his sorrow. Sixteen of them weigh a solid pound. It is obviously impossible to carry even a moderate quantity of this money concealed, or to carry it at all with comfort. The unavoidable exhibition of it, held in laps, chinking in valises, standing in bags, 102 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. and poured out in prodigious streams at the banks and commercial houses, is one of the features of life. Guadalajara, the supply from which unites with that from Zacatecas at Queretaro, is the northernmost point from which money is despatched by conducta to Mexico. A portion of that even from here is despatched to San Francisco, by the port of San Bias, just as a part of that from Za catecas goes to Tam- pico through San Luis Potosi. The country north of San Luis to the east ships its funds to Matamoras ; those of Durango are di vided between Mata moras and Mazatian ; while Puebla, Oaxaca, and the rest of the south find their nat ural outlet at Vera Cruz. The importance of the great conducta in these times is dimin ished by the growing safety of the transport of money by private hands. Its days are numbered with the progress of the railways, nearing so rapidly the central cluster of cities in which it has its origin. Even now it no longer came wholly to town, but took the Central train at the first feasible point, at Huehuetoca, the Spanish cut for the drainage of the valley. Its place as a spectacle is filled by the pay conductas of the railroads. THE "PORTALES" AT MEXICO. THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. 103 A revision of these accounts is needed almost from moment to moment as I write, to keep pace with the rapid changes in affairs. A National Bank and banks of foreign incorporators have been established in the mean time, with authority to issue large amounts of but inefficiently se cured paper. The Mexican National Bank may now issue bills to the amount of $60,000,000, upon a capital of $20,000,000. They are legal tender from individuals to the government, but not from the government to individ uals, nor between individuals. One of the arguments in favor of this bank, our minister was assured, was that it would counteract in some sort the influence of the United States : the usual patriotic leaven cropping up, it will be seen ; though how it should accomplish the purpose in view it is by no means easy to understand. A flood of depreciated paper is driving the solid coin out of circula tion ; so that, while the traveller may be now able to carry his money comfortably about him, there may be much worse in store for the Mexicans themselves than the handling of bags of unwieldy dollars. It is not pleasant to see also that the government shows some unusual pecuniary embarrassment. Its expenditures for the last fiscal year exceeded its revenues by ten per cent., and a loan is talked of. Should a spirit of recklessness enter into the management of the finances, in all this whirl of novelties, complicated by the issues of paper, a crisis might be precipitated, which would, of course, have to be counted among the retarding influences on the rail ways. III. Shops and shopping iu Mexico follow much more Eu ropean than American traditions. A fanciful title over the door of the shop takes the place of the name of a firm 104 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. or single proprietor. You have no Smith & Brown, but, instead — on the sign of a dry-goods store, for instance — " The Surprise," or " The Spring-time," or " The Explo sion." A jeweller's is apt to be called " The Pearl," or " The Emerald ;" a shoe-store, " The Foot of Venus," or " The Azure Boot." The windows are tastefully draped, after the way of shop- windows. Within stand a large force of clerks, touching shoulder to shoulder. They seem democratic in their manners, even by an American standard. They shake hands over the counter with a patron with whom they have enjoyed a slight previous acquaintance ; ask a mother of a family, perhaps, after the health of "Miss Lolita" and "Miss Soledad," her daughters, who may have accompanied her thither. One of them, they hear, is going to be married. Perhaps this is accounted for by the presence among the minor clerks of some of con siderable social position — some of the class you meet with afterward at the select entertainments of the Minister of Guatemala, for instance. But a limited choice of occu pations has been open to the youth of Mexico, and those who cared to work have had to take such places as they could. They apply now with great eagerness for the positions of every sort offering under the new enter prises. It was not etiquette of late for ladies of the upper class to do shopping in public, except from their carriages, the goods being brought out to them at the curb-stone. Now they may enter shops. A considerable part of the buy ing, as of furniture and other household goods, is still done by the men of the family. Nor was it etiquette for ladies to be seen walking in the streets, even with a maid, except to and from mass in the morning. The change in both respects is ascribed to the horse- THE QUESTION OF MONEY, AND SHOPPING. 105 cars. The point of ceremony, it appears, was founded somewhat upon the difficulty of getting about. Americanism now appears in the streets with increas ing frequency, in the signs of dealers in arms, sewing- machines, and other of our useful inventions. Our in surance companies, too, are a novel idea, to which the Mexicans seem to take with much readiness. The prin cipal shopping hours are from four to six o'clock of the afternoon. From one till three, or even four, little is done. Even the horse-cars do not run in the middle of the day. There is a general stoppage of affairs for din ner. It is but a short time since that enterprising per son, the commercial traveller, was unknown in the coun try, but now he begins to flourish here as elsewhere. The profits of favorably situated houses, in the absence of keen competition, have been very large, and methods of doing business correspondingly loose. The Mexican merchant does not go into a fine calculation of the pro portionate value of each item of a foreign invoice, but "lumps" the profit he thinks he ought to receive on the whole. Some articles, in consequence, can be bought at less than their real value, while others, in compensation, are exorbitantly advanced. It is the smaller trade, and that most removed from metropolitan influences, which is the gayest and most entertaining as a spectacle. How many picturesque mar ket scenes does not one linger in ! Each community has its own market-day, not to interfere with others. The flags of the plaza and market-houses, which are commodi ous and well built, are hidden under fruits, grains, cocoa sacks and mats, striped blankets and rebosos, sprawling brown limbs, embroidered bodices and kirtles, as if spread with a thick, richly colored rug. A grade above the open market is the Parian, a bazaar of small shops, in which 5* 106 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. goods, sales-people, and customers alike might all be put upon canvas only with the most vivid of hues. I give some ex- amples of the street architecture of the more im portant shops. The approach to many is under the welcome portales, shady in sunshine and dry in the wet. Not a few of the shops have been old Spanish palaces before be ing adapted to their present use. I transferred to my sketch-book a bit from the lead ing merceria (dry- goods store) of the important minor city of Puebla which I thought particularly inter esting. It was called, after the prevailing fash ion, "The City of Mexico." The entire front — upon which still remained the carved escutcheon, showing that ' D it had been the residence of a family of rank — was faced up between carvings, in a gay pattern in tiles, the figures glazed, the rest an unglazed ground of red. 'MERCERIA ' AT PUEBLA. SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 107 IX. SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. I. The persons who once lived in these old Spanish pal aces, and descendants of the titles of nobility existing be fore the Independanee, are still much esteemed in a certain small circle in the country. There are pointed out to you those who should by right be marquises and counts, and the titles are occasionally given them. The Mexican no bles, from the time of Cortes down, lived in magnificent style in their day. The Count of Regla, who has left his trace after him in many directions, must have enjoyed almost the state of royalty. A single hacienda of his in Michoacan was thirty leagues in length by seventeen in breadth, and, sloping down from the temperate plateau to the tropic, comprised in its extent the products of al most every clime. He fitted out two ships of the largest size, building them of mahogany and cedar, and pre sented them to the King of Spain. Inviting his majesty to visit the country, he assured him that his horse should tread on nothing but ingots of silver from the coast to the capital. A remnant of the old noblesse rallied around Maximil ian when he came to assume the Emperor's crown. With this, and what remains of Maximilian's court, and some few other families of a peculiarly exclusive turn, a circle is constituted somewhat corresponding to the Parisian 108 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Faubourg St. Germain. They are sometimes stigmatized as. " Mochos," literally hypocrites. They are rich, pass much of their time abroad, protest against the sequestra tion of the Church property, and exhibit a refined horror at the vandalism of these later times. " The government," they tell you, " is in the hands of the populacho, the rabble ; the gente honrada, respectable society, has nothing to do with it." In a novel which I have by a Mexican writer, Cuellar, a secretary of legation at Washington, the scene is laid in this faction or clique. " Chona," or Incarnacion, the heroine, or leading feminine character, "Jiad been brought up from childhood more to abhor than admire. The con versations in the family continually turned upon the utter antipathy which the men aud things of Mexico inspired." " They had for visitors Church notables and those of the wealthy who still retained the parchments of their ancestry. If they made any new acquaintance it was some Spaniard lately come into relations with them through the business of their estates." The fashionable men in the story have been educated at Paris, and become elegantly blase there as well. In contrast to these is shown one Sanchez, a vulgar, pushing fellow, upheaved from the depths by the revolutions. • He has the " gift of gab," which he has utilized to make himself a figure in politics ; has enriched himself with the spoils of the Church establishment, and secured a good place under government. He more than hints, however, when he is found to have finally lost it, that he is ready to engage in upsetting "Don Benito" — it is now under the regime of President Juarez that the scene is laid — or in any other convulsion that may promise to again mend his fortunes. SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 109 II. I do not quite know which side the writer himself is on, in this satirical work ; it is so bitter all around. It is certainly interesting as showing two such boldly distinct types, one of them at least picturesque, evolved out of the peculiar conflicts of the country. Let us hope that there are few of the dangerous Sanchez pattern in the present juncture of affairs. The Mochos cannot now be numerous nor dangerous, with the wholesale victory of middle or lower class republicanism around them. They have taken little part, voluntarily, in the successive revo lutions since their own overthrow, leaving them rather to be fought out by professional soldiers of fortune. They temporize a little; attend, perhaps, the wedding of some rich railway contractor's daughter, in order, as they say, not to draw upon themselves a direct enmity ; but they do not open their own houses in return ; they do not "entertain." Don Sebastian Lerdo, spoken of as the most scholarly President the country ever had, is conceded to have been to a considerable extent " in society." He was expelled by Porfirio Diaz, and is now in retirement at New York. The political class since that time has either not been well received in the circle spoken of, or, perhaps too busy with other affairs, has not greatly cared for it. Such being the case, there are few reunions, and these of an informal character. Nor do the officials give enter tainments themselves. Social gayeties, as we understand them, can hardly be said to exist in Mexico. It is only. under the neutral roofs of the foreign ministers that they take place with some satisfaction. I had the good fortune to be at the capital during the visit of General Grant, and 110 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES: to see a social movement which, by the general testimony, was quite phenomenal. There was, among the rest, a fashionable wedding, attended by the President and his cabinet. A "reception" and banquet were given in the evening on the occasion of the signing of a civil contract between the parties. The religious ceremony took place at church next day. The interior courts of the house were wreathed with flowers, and lent themselves palatial- ly to the festivity; as they always do. The banquet was spread along the bases of the columns of the arcade.' The young Mexican women are still kept apart from the other sex, and made love to chiefly on their balconies in the good old-fashioned, romantic style. Their man ners when met with in public, however, are not so un usual as might be expected. They seem neither more nor less diffident than elsewhere. They are allowed to take part at balls in a slow waltz called the dama — so slow as hardly to be a dance at all — which is chiefly an opportunity for conversation. The high-contracting parties to the marriage above- mentioned were by no means young, and in general the ex ceeding precocity of development and early age of enter ing into the marriage relation supposed to be characteristic of the tropics were not apparent. It was said that merce nary considerations were not frequent, and claim was laid to a good deal of simplicity and honest affection in the settlement of these matters ; though how the parties get at each other, under the restrictive system, sufficiently to enter upon a simple and honest affection, is one of those things that remain a mystery. It is said that the young woman who remains single is not stigmatized for it in the common way as "old maid." They say very charmingly instead : " She is difficult. She is hard to suit." In the country the match-making is often taken charge SOCIAL LIFE. AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. Ill 112 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. of by the village priest, who brings the parties together finally at dinner. As a general remark, the manners of the lower class of the country are much better than ours, and those of the upper are not as good — not as often based upon real kindliness of heart and genuine desire to be of service. The Mexican promises a hundred things which he has no intention, often no ability, of performing. The Ameri can is not without his faults — the more's the pity — but in a general way he aims to do as he agrees. He will often make against the Mexican the reproach of a certain slipperiness — a lack of appreciation of the importance of adhering to his word. III. Each considerable group of foreign residents, as the French, Germans, and Spaniards, has its handsome casino, or club-house, which is a standing resource for the diver sion of members. A French traveller as far back as 1838 complains of the unsociable conduct of the Mexicans. If something of the kind be still observed, therefore, it is not new. " They abound," he says, " in a superfluity of fine phrases, and it is in this easy way that they discharge themselves of their obligations." All who know European life, however, are aware that the theatre and the cafe, with people of the Latin race, largely take the place of the social visiting and entertain ing at home prevailing among Anglo-Saxons. Our next- door neighbors, after all, may only have followed, making a little more severe, the traditions of Old Spain. Ladies do not often appear at the cafes, but they are often at their boxes at the theatres, to which they subscribe by the season ; and they would go more frequently yet, SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 113 "% '//' MEXICAN COURTSHIP. 114 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. no doubt, were the pieces as a rule better worth their consideration. There are three large, well-built theatres, the Nacional, Principal, and Arbeu, and minor ones for the working-class. The entertainments esteemed of chief importance are those of the French opera companies which come over from Havana, on their rounds. A native Spanish opera- bouffe and ballet, called zarsuela, is much given at other times. For the rest, the theatrical pieces presented are the works, in prose and verse, of the Spanish dramatists current at home, or occasionally of some native dramatist, announced with an extra flourish which his production does not usually justify. They are all announced with a sufficient flourish, so far as that is concerned. There is always going on some especially Gran Funcion, as, for example : " The grand Drama of Customs, Entirely New, in three acts and verse, by the distinguished poet, D. Leo- poldo Cano, author of the precious comedy, ' La Mariposa,' entitled 'La Opinion Publica.' " This sublime work of the distinguished poet, D. Leo- poldo Cano," the bill goes on to say, " was received at Madrid with an astounding acclaim. The Spanish Press has lavished upon it a thousand eulogies. * * * In choos ing it for the second subscription night, we feel that the public will know how to value it as it truly merits, and to value at the same time the skill of the Company in their most finished studies and essays." I do not recollect any of this as very novel, or likely to be of interest if translated, apart from some portions de pending upon such a difference of manners and customs as to be hardly intelligible to an American audience. My acquaintance with the theatre began with a piece at the Nacional, called " The First Patient." There was a young SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 115 doctor on the stage, and an acquaintance of his had fallen in love with his wife, and put a note in her work-basket by way of telling her so. The note was conveyed to the husband, who, instead of shooting the imprudent writer, took occasion presently to assume a look of horror, and pretend that the latter had gone blind. Before the Lo thario could protest, a bandage was clapped over his eyes, medicaments given to make him believe in his own mis fortune, and he was put under a course of onerous treat ment. After a series of absurd situations he was finally re leased, persuaded by degrees that he was cured. The patient raised the bandage. " Veo ! veo /" — " I see !" — he exclaimed, in wild delight. " Very well, then — see that !" said the husband, thrust ing the offending letter under his nose. This was amusing enough, but I was quite as much amused all the time with the studious efforts of a com panion who had come with me — the French engineer sent out to examine mines, before mentioned — who proposed to turn the theatre into a school of languages. He grasped at every word a semblance of which he seemed to catch, and dived for verifications of it into his gram mar and dictionary. He resented in his ambition any interpretation of passages which he did not himself orig inate, and constructed such a theory of the play as its author would by no means have recognized. When the denouement came, in the bold "Veo!" he seized upon it with avidity. " ' Veo,' c'est bien trouve ga — ' veo,' " he said, reflect ively, digesting it at his leisure. "Je vais le retenir ce *veof vous-alles voir." And so he did, and proceeded to use it vigorously in the restaurants and the like on the following day. 116 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. IV. Though so much more be still proposed, there are cer tainly some reasons for self-complacency in the country even from the American point of view. Education is found to be provided for in a manner that awakens admi ration and surprise. The primary schools are least looked after, but the pupils who pass through these with a dispo sition to go farther have an array of advantages open to them at the capital superior to anything of a parallel sort in the United States. The Government maintains na tional schools respectively of engineering, law, medicine, agriculture, mechanic arts, and trades (for both sexes), a conservatory of music, an academy of fine arts, and a library, provided with an edifice that New York well might envy. It maintains a museum, institutions for blind, deaf and dumb, and insane, for orphans, and young criminals, and a long list besides of the usual charities of enlightened communities. The schools are open without money and without price to all, and there are even funds to provide board, lodging, and pocket-money for students from a distance, who are selected on certain easy condi tions. The students in agriculture pass some months of the year at the haciendas to observe different crops and cli mates. The graduates of the- School of Arts and Meas ures go out into the world prepared to make their living as carpenters, masons, photographers, electro-platers, and at numerous other trades. Before an opinion is passed upon Mexican civilization the accommodations and neat uniforms of the pupils of the' blind institute should be seen ; the noble building erected in the last century for the School of Mines ; the beautifully clean, wide corridors, SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 117 sunny class-rooms, embroidery -rooms, dormitories, and drawing-rooms of the Viscaynas, the national college for girls; and the arcades and charming central garden of the National Preparatory School (in the professions) for young men. There was a fountain spouting among tropical plants in the garden of the Preparatory School the day I went there, and by the fountain was a young panther, or lion, of the country, as they call it, confined in a cage. The students, young fellows, who did not differ so greatly from Yale and Harvard undergraduates in aspect, except for the dusky Indian complexions among them, came now and then and stirred up the lion a little, making him play with a ball in his cage. They seemed to prepare their recitations walking around the garden or sitting in the ample corridors. The principal text -books are studied in French or English, in which languages they are apt to be written, and the recitations are conducted in the same languages ; so that, what is so rare with us, graduates emerge from these schools very tolerable linguists without ever having been out of their own country. All these institutions are housed for the most part in the vast ancient convent edifices, which furnish ample quarters to whatever is in need of them — to barracks, hospitals, post-offices, prisons, railway stations, iron foun- deries, and cotton-mills. Each state of the republic, again, has its free college. Judging from that of the state of Hidalgo, however, which I saw at Pachuca — its internal arrangements in a very filthy condition — all do not follow very closely the example of the capital. In the department of jails, unhappily, there is a defi ciency. As at present arranged, they can present but 118 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. moderate terrors to evil-doers. The really fine peniten tiary at Guadalaxara is the only one in which modern ideas of penal discipline are followed. There is no death penalty for political offences — under which head the worst bandits would often seek to shield themselves — but the number of offenders is kept down by semi-official lynchings, shooting on capture, into which nobody ever inquires, and transportation to Yucatan. One cannot but look with uneasiness on the slighttiess of the means of restraint here and there employed. The bolts and bars are often only lattices of wood instead of iron. At the city prison of Belen some two thousand persons are con fined. It seemed to me that a large part- of them must be much more comfortable than at their own squalid homes. They made a strange spectacle, indeed, looked down upon in their large courts. Of all ages, and for sentences of all durations, they eat, sleep, and work at various light occupations together. No attempt is made to prevent their communicating or staring about. They have good air, light, and food, and are allowed a part of their own earnings. They take a siesta at noon, play checkers, gos sip, and even bathe luxuriously in a central tank. The liberality toward education spoken of is the more creditable since the Mexican treasury is not flourishing, aud a yearly deficit is more common than a surplus. These expenses appear to be regarded as essential, what ever else may suffer. It is the more creditable, too, since the heads of the government do not indulge themselves in expensive surroundings. The American legislator is not himself without his marble colonnades and his furni ture of black walnut upholstered in Russia leather; but President and Cabinet ministers here walk upon thread bare carpets in the National Palace. The chamber of the Senate is a modest little hall ; and the Deputies sit in SOCIAL LIFE, AND SOME NOTABLE INSTITUTIONS. 119 shabby quarters in another part of town, which were once simply a place of amusement, the Theatre Iturbide. The museum, chiefly of Aztec antiquities, to which one turns with interest, is not of the extent or informing character that may have been expected, and is under by no means brilliant management. Its greatest attraction is the arrangement of some of the larger fragments, par ticularly the great sacrificial stone from the ancient tem ple of the war-god, in the court-yard. There is a setting of shrubbery and vines about them, and the sunlight striking in among these upon the gray old remains, pro duces some charming effects. 120 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. X. THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. I. The school of fine arts, on the other hand, the Acade my of San Carlos — which was to celebrate with a special exhibition the one hundredth anniversary of its founda tion — produces, both in its collections and the ability of its directing professors, a most satisfactory and agreeable impression. You enter galleries which carry you back again to the Louvre and Uffizi. They used a great deal of bitumen, the old painters here. In its darkening it has left now and then only isolated lights upon a face or bits of drapery to glimmer out of a midnight gloom. It is an artificial taste, no doubt, to like it, and " caviare to the general;" but like it one does, atits most artificial, after a long absence from anything of the kind. The walls recall such galleries as that of Bologna in the liberal scale of the works displayed. With such models before them, there is no reason why students should fall into a niggling and petty style. As a matter of fact, they do not. They seem to excel in a bold, large composition and the rendering of grandiose ideas. This, rather than color, is their strong point. If our New York schools of art are able to equal the portfolio of drawings I saw as the result of a fortnightly exercise, they are cer tainly not in the habit of doing so. Nor were they at all equalled by those of the prize competition of the students LAS CASAS PROTECTING THE AZTECS. By Felix Parra. THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 121 of the British Royal Academy which I saw in the first year of the presidency of Sir Frederick Leighton. This devotion to large academical ideas — the fortunes of Ores tes, Regulus, and Belisarius — it is true, is a source of weakness rather than strength from the money point of view. The market of the time demands a domestic, genre, realistic, and not a grandiose art. The market for art of any kind in Mexico is extremely small. There are no government commissions farther than an occasional portrait or two-, and enlightened patrons hardly exist. There are no pictures of consequence in the best Mexi can houses. The predictions at Havana were not veri fied. The abundance of native talent receives little en couragement. Many a bright genius is forced to paint his inventions on the walls of pulque shops, and finally to quit the profession for lack of support. The subjects are, for the most part, severely religious, in consonance with the taste of the wealthy convents, the patrons of art for whom they were originally painted. The series is in a declining order of merit chronologi cally. The earliest Mexican masters are the best. They came from Europe, contemporaries of Murillo, Ribera, the Caracci, trained in the splendid Renaissance period at its acme, and they left here works which do it no discredit. Mexico was a hundred years old already, and it was high time that art should arise when Baltazar Echave began, somewhat after the year 1600. There is a romantic tra dition that it was his wife who first taught him to paint. The genius of this early school is very decorative, and marked at once by refinement of sentiment, breadth, and vigor. It delights in rich stuffs and patterns, in the glitter of plate and weapons. It fills up all portions of the canvas symmetrically, and colors with a subdued richness. I recall a St. Ildefonso, by Luis Juarez, as 6 \ 122 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. an exquisite work. The saint, in a rich red mantle, by a praying-desk and chair, both draped in the same color, is receiving from angels the paraphernalia of a bishop. The mantle of the nearest angel is in burnt sienna, and these warm red hues, relieved by cool whites, are repeated throughout. There is a group of six angel heads com posed in an ellipse, and, in the air, a Virgin, with that bevy of fluttering angels about that take the place of clouds in landscape. The minor heads, painted chiefly from the same model, are full of sweetness and intelli gence. Arteaga has a noble St. Thomas ; Jose Juarez, a quaint couple of child martyrs, Saints Justo and Pastor, who trudge along hand-in-hand like a pair of burgomaster's children (the scenes of their martyrdom shown in the background), while angels rain down upon them single pinks, roses, and forget-me-nots, carefully painted. A younger Baltazar Echave, and Juan and Nicolas Rodri guez, are of almost equal force. A seconcl period begins with Ibarra and Cabrera — the latter very much the better — at the end of the same cen tury. They are without the same distinction. Their figures have a bourgeois air. They aim to be pictorial instead of decorative. The crude red and blue garments with which we are monotonously familiar in religious art come in with them ; and the draperies, in smooth, large folds, are apparently made up out of their heads. The foreign gallery boasts many excellent works of the school of Murillo, and an original each of Murillo, Ri- bera, Carreno, Leonardo da Vinci, Teniers the elder, and Ingres, with also probable Vandycks and Rembrandts. A collection has also been formed of works of merit, contributed to the regular biennial exhibitions, and pur chased by the Academy to illustrate modern Mexican THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 125 art. The religious tradition still prevails to a large extent, though the subjects are now taken from the Scriptures instead of the Bollandists. They are Hagar and' Ishmael, the good Samaritan, the Hebrews by the waters of Baby lon, and Noah receiving the olive-branch, and the like. There is in this contemporary work the general fault of an over-delicacy and smoothness of painting, and a lack of realism, while the design is excellent. These voyagers in the ark have not experienced the woes of a deluge, and the shepherds have the complexion of Lady Vere de Vere. Rebull, who studied at Rome under Overbeck, repeats here the dove -colors, violets, and lemon -yellows of the modern decorations of the Vatican done under that school. The works of the latest period, under the able direc tion of Senor Salome Pina, a pupil of Gleyre, are much more virile, and the subjects more secular. We have now Bacchus and Ariadne ; the death of Atala ; the slay ing of the sons of Niobe; an arch and dainty Cupid poi soning a flower, by Ocaranza ; a charming fisher-boy, by Gutierrez. Some of the artists, have had the advantage of study also abroad. The strongest of them all, Felix Parra, now enjoying a grand prize of Rome, produced the masterpiece, a great canvas representing the friar Las Casas protecting the Aztecs (from slaughter by the Spaniards) — a work in sentiment, drawing, and color worthy to hang in any exhibition in the world — before he had seen any other country than his own. Velasco has set a powerful lead in landscape. He is especially a master of great distance. His favorite theme is the curious, sienna-colored Valley of Mexico, which he paints to the life. There are some .scattered works of the early school, besides, in the houses of a few dilettanti at the capital 126 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. and Puebla ; and some few in the cathedrals of the same places, though scarcely to be seen, from their disadvan tageous positions. Good pictures need not be looked for in the churches. No doubt they were once numerous, but they have been sacked from the country by invaders and others, and found a profitable market abroad. II. In sculpture there is talent corresponding to that in painting. The stately system of burial, in the panteons, lends itself to sculpture and furnishes opportunities which with us are relegated to the commonplace tombstone- makers. The panteon is a solid city of the dead, walled in, paved, and with courts and arcades like a city of the living. The monument of greatest note is that, by Man uel Islas, at the Pantheon of San Fernando, to Benito Juarez, " the second Washington " of his country, old Padre Hidalgo having been the first. His effigy in marble, so realistic and corpse-like that it seems to have been modelled from an actual cast in plaster, lies upon a mausoleum, with a figure of Fame bending over it. The realism of the principal figure is almost repulsive, but it is redeemed by the grace of the angel, and no body can deny to this large work great vigor and dignity. The bodies are not buried, but sealed up in mausolea, or in niches in a wall, which present somewhat the aspect of a Roman columbarium. Some of the monuments are of the lovely Mexican onyx, with letters in gilt. I noted one bearing only the initials M. M. They were alluring to the curiosity, and on inquiring I found that it was that of Mirainon, general-in-chief of Maximilian, who fell by the executioners' bullets, with his master, and General Mejia, at Queretero. THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 127 There were no flowers on this one to-day, but the tombs of the patriots were elaborately decked, for it was the great festival of the Cinco de Mayo. I walked out and stood in the round -point by the colossal bronze statue of Charles IV. The Paseo de la Reforma and the causeways glittered with bayonets ; the cadets were coming down from the Military School back of Chapultepec, and the garrison from the Citadel, to join in the procession. The troops were reviewed in front of the National Palace — as troops in smaller numbers seem always being reviewed there. They are mainly of Indian blood, and small in stature. The cavalry especially had a rusty look in their outfit, and did not compare with the dashing Rurales. The officers, on the other hand, are trimly uniformed and quite French in aspect. There were patriotic speeches in the Zocalo ; the main thorough fare was strung with lanterns ; and our Iturbide hotel was very picturesque, with its three tiers of balconies draped in the national colors — green, white, and red. From time to time, as the procession moved, cannon were fired in the Plaza, and the bells of the cathedral turned over and over, like the wheels of machinery. I never saw a better-conducted crowd. There was no fight ing, no inconvenient elbowing, no drunkenness. In the evening the lanterns were lighted, and the great square was filled with venders of fruits and knickknacks, around little bonfires of sticks, where they would bivouac for the night. Later, red lights were kindled in the towers of the cathedral, and every detail within stood out upon a lurid ground as if they were burning. One could imag ine the camped venders in the square to be the ancient Aztecs resting upon their arms, in order to attack Cortez in his quarters on the morrow. 128 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. III. Scarcely the same improvement is to be got from Mex ican literature as from Mexican art, but it is not without its interest, both in itself and as an aid to knowledge of the people. Journals are very numerous. They are started upon slight provocation, and as easily disappear. They attain, as a rule, but a circulation of a few hundred copies. It is thought that the Monitor Republicano, by far the most important, may circulate from six to eight thousand. The problem of existence for many of them would be diffi-r cult without government aid. Subventions aregiven^ without public objection, so far as I have observed, to the greater part of those managed with ability. The system of subventions to the press was begun by our old friend of school history, Santa Anna, and has been con tinued ever since by governments which could not afford to have anything more than the truth told about them, at any rate. It is an encouraging sign, however, that the Monitor is not a snbventioned organ, yet speaks its mind temperately and without apparent malice. There is no efficacious law of libel, since extreme vio lence of language is often indulged in by the periodicals in their controversies with each other and outsiders. The duel, which still survives, is somewhat of a corrective upon this. The newspaper is about such a one in appear ance as at Paris, and includes a daily section of a serial story. A Sunday edition is published, with literary selec tions, and particularly poems, in large supply; . Actual literature as such is poorly paid. The reading public is small. A thousand copies is a good edition even for a popular book. The chief literary lights are found, THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 129 as a rule, not of the shy, scholastic order, but possessed of talent for oratory and bustling affairs. They take posts in Congress, and are appointed as cabinet ministers. General Riva Palacio, Juan Mateos, Prieto, Paz, Altami- rano, Justo Sierra, Peza, are deputies ; Payno, a senator ; Cuellar, who wrote under the pseudonym of " Facundo," a secretary of legation. These are the native writers whose works are more frequently in the hands of the public than any others. " Prieto, who is chiefly a poet, however, has written a book of his travels in the United States, in which some amusing things will be discovered. He finds that with us " the totality [lo colectivo~] is grand and admirable, but the individual egoistic and vulgar." He saw Booth's Theatre, which is all of white marble (el Teatro de Both, todo de marmol bianco) ; and, besides our hotels, the es tablishment which we call a "Boarding" (el Boarding). The Hudson and East rivers, he says, are two arms of the sea, which freeze in winter, and even the irrimense quan tity of ice collected from these does not suffice for the demands of the summer. - The poetical talent, of which we had a premonition in Cuba, is that which principally abounds. There is plen tiful skill in versifying, with here and there a strain of something very much higher, in the volumes of the numerous authors* Prieto, above-mentioned, is found principally a poet of "occasions." He writes for the unveiling of statues, to steam, electricity, and the like. Juan Mateos strikes a fierce patriotic note. Altamirano, a fiery Indian orator, who models himself in Congress rather after Mirabeau, chooses as his themes for poetry bees,' oranges, poppies, morn, the pleasures of rural life. They are excellent subjects in themselves, but it is an artificial, and not a real, existence he describes He 6* 130 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. would like to be Horatian, summons nymphs to disport with him in the shade, and abounds in florid terms, with out thought. Carpio is inspired more or less by Biblical subjects, as Pharaoh and Belshazzar. In De Castro, Zaragoza, Gus- tave Baz, and Cuenca are found charming conceits, of pensive cast, and bits of description of a limpid purity. Jewellers in words they may be called at their best, affil iated to the Venetian school. The argument of Zaragoza's " Armonias" (Harmonies) is briefly as follows : " When the flowers are dead, and spring is over, the swallows take their flight ; and when again the flowers of spring adorn the mead, they, too, return, bringing blessings on their wings. " But when the illusions depart and leave behind them only the thorns of the passions, in vain we invoke and wait for them to return. The illusions, the swallows of the heart, return, alas ! never." So Gustave Baz, brooding in the sere winter over some heavy sorrow, reflects upon the return of spring. But the very contrast, of its joyousness, the fresh rippling of the brooks and melody of the birds, will but render his sadness the heavier. " Then most keenly," he laments, " wilr break forth my grief. Then weightiest will the air be laden with my sighs." The gem of the Lyra Mexicana is undoubtedly a cer tain fugitive sonnet, " A Rosario," by an unfortunate young man, Acuna, who ended by taking his own life. The poem expresses the charming ideals in love and the bitterness of its disappointment, in a youth of fine and sensitive nature. It has a poignancy and realism which have, perhaps, never been surpassed. He returned from a long journey, as the story is told, and found his be trothed the wife of another, The shock proving unen- THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 131 durable, he committed suicide, leaving to the faithless one the poem, a part of which may be thus rendered : " Well, then, I have to say that I love you still, that I worship you with all my being. I comprehend that your kisses are never to be mine, that into your dear eyes I am never to look. . ; . Sometimes I try to sink you into ob livion, to execrate you. . . . But alas, how vain it is ! my soul will not forget you. What will you, then, that I should do, oh, part of my life ? What will you that I should do with such a heart ? . . . Oh, figure to yourself how beautiful might have been our existence together ! . . . But now that to the entrancing dream succeeds the black gulf that has opened between us — farewell ! love of my loves, light of my darkness, perfume of all flowers that bloomed for me! my poet's lyre, my youth, fare well!" IV. If one try to select the most obvious trait in the na tive fiction it is undoubtedly patriotism. This patriotism is rampant in the press, and in the forms of official life. The authorities are Citizen President, Citizen General, and the like, as in the first French Republic, and they conclude their official documents with the formula: " Liberty In The Constitution." The usurpation of Maximilian served to bind the country into a certain unity and awake this feeling to its utmost. Two romancers, General Riva Palacio, and Juan Ma teos, have made use of the events of the French invasion in a curious class of bulky novels, to call them so, which have scored a popular success. " The Hill of Las Campanas," and " The Sun of May," of Mateos, are re spectively more or less authentic accounts of the final defeat and execution of Maximilian, and the defence of 132 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Puebla, slightly disguised. In "Calvary and Tabor," Riva Palaeio treats of the career of the Army of the Centre in the same warsJ Numbers of the characters therefore are persons actually living, to be met with every day, which 'gives to this fiction a singular effect. ¦ Thusj in " El Sol de Mayo," Manuel Payno, Altamira- no, and Riva- Pal acio himself are mentioned and their manners described in the debate on the financial measure which brought on the Intervention. Lerdo, long since an exile, resident in New York, was at that time " el pro- feta inspwada de nuestra1 nacionalidad" (the inspired prophet of our nationality), I pick out from the same book this paragraphic men tion of our own civil war: "And Edmundo Lee shone like a star in the victories of Springfield and Bull Run." Perhaps the friends of General Robert E. Lee would have some difficulty in recognizing him under such a description. These novels are printed with each sentence as a sepa rate paragraph; for (easier reading. They first began to rival somewhat the popular Fernandez y Gonzalez, by some called "the Spanish Dumas," whose works are printed in the journals, together with translations of those of Gaboriau and Dickens. Another flimsy series, in covers of green, white, and red, called "Episodios Na- eionales" aim to sugar-coat a didactic exhibition of the events of the War of -•¦ Independance. One individual after another tells a long, dreary narrative about what happened ; these fall in ¦ with somebody else who tells more, and so it goes. These stories are read chiefly by the middle and lower classes* the upper class, as in most provincial states of so ciety, preferring books from abroad. Their favorable reception may be accounted for in part by the lack of THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE. 133 regular histories and of newspaper intelligence, so that the populace may to some extent be getting their infor mation for the first time. Riva Palacio has written also, with Manuel Payno, a large work appropriately called El Libro JRojo (The Red Book). It gives an account (and graphic illustrations) of the heroes and other notables in Mexican history who have come to violent ends. This is a fate that has over taken aspirants to distinction quite regularly, and the plates from the book, hung up at the book-stalls in the Portales, are a ghastly chamber of horrors. The three fighting curates of the early insurrection, Hidalgo, More los, and Matamoras begin the series; and Maximilian, Mejia, and Miramon, standing with bandaged eyes at the Hill of las Campanas, for the present conclude it. - > Several minor writers have feebly essayed the Aztec material for fiction. Riva Palacio has availed himself also of the picturesque life under the Spanish viceroys. Of him it is to be said that, though of the sensational school, and careless in plan, he has, not unfrequently, passages of genuine force, and unhackneyed incidents that enchain the attention. 134 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. XI. SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, AND THE MEXICAN "WARWICK." I. It would seem that history in Mexico might be a some what confusing study ; and so, in fact, it is. There have been fifty-four Presidents, one regency, and one Emperor, in fifty-six years, and a violent change of government with nearly every one. Picking up the little volume by Manuel Payno, used in the schools, and opening it at random, I find — " Question. — What events followed ? "Answer. — Truly imagination is lost, and memory con founds itself, among so many plans and pronunciamien- tos; but we will follow the thread as best we can." The period referred to is that of the revolt o£ Texas, which proceeded to constitute itself " The Lone Star Re public." Looking a little farther with interest to see how this is accounted for, we find : " The settlers were North Americans, a portion, as we have said, colonized by Stephen Austin. They set up the pretext that they were .not permitted to sell their lands, and, later, that the Federal Constitution had been violated; and they rose against the Government. The latter felt it necessary to put down the rebellion, and took measures to assail that remote and sterile State." These dispositions, as we know, ended in the defeat and capture of Santa Anna at San Jacinto. There is always a SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 135 fascination in being behind the scenes, and I confess that this little opportunity of finding out what was thought of itself by a country which has jarred so much with our own was one of the attractions of being in Mexico. The American war is accounted for as a wicked attempt to. sustain and annex the revolted province of Texas ; and equally good solutions are found for the various other invasions by foreign powers. What ! is there no absolute right ? Are all combatants alike striking for their altars and their fires, and resisting wanton aggression ? Will not these Mexicans even yet admit, though beaten, and though it has passed into his tory, that they terrorized our frontier, and oppressed an industrious and enterprising province? Why, then, per haps both sides were wrong; and let us aspire for the day when all such quarrels may be settled by an interna tional arbitration. II. The young Mexican learns first about his Aztec ances try, the mild semi -civilized aborigines, who built cities and temples, and were ruled by luxurious Montezuma and scholarly Nezhualcoyotl. The latter, at Texcoco, was a maker of verses and stoical maxims like another Marcus Aurelius. Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1519. Then followed a government of nearly three hundred years by sixty-four Spanish viceroys. A rebellion, of eleven years' duration, marked by many of the features of a servile uprising, drove out the Spaniards in 1821. Grasping and incon siderate in their colonial management as their way has always been, the Spaniards had probably only themselves to thank for it. Iturbide, who commanded the revolt at the end, made 136 - , OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. himself briefly Emperor. His generals, notably the' irre pressible Santa Anna, who first here comes into view, rose against him, and proclaimed a Federal Republic. Santa Anna, when the opportunity offered, made himself Dictator^ and changed the Federal Republic to a central ized republic, and the states to departments. Santa Anna had numberless ups and downs, having obtained possession of the supreme power no less than six times, with intervals of overthrow and banishment. ! The Federal Republic was reconstituted in timej with twenty-seven states, one territory' and a federal district, pretty much on the model of our own, and it still re tains this form, as it is likely to. There is no doubt about the democratic tendency of the people, but perhaps at is something in the impulsive blood of the Latin race which has prevented the leaders from conceiving a repub lic on the Anglo-Saxon plan. They have been inspired almost without exception by a craving for the sweets of power. Their rampant patriotism has been like the re ligion of those persons who would die for a cause, but will not live in accordance with the least of its dictates.' There seems to have been no conception until lately of that larger patriotism which educates the people in their du- tiesyand constitutes a state of society where the rights of all are guaranteed and people go about their avocations without interference. Would you recall, by-the-way, what became of Santa Anna ? He, who had so indignantly shaken off the yoke of Iturbide, wrote a missive of congratulation, while liv- ing'in banishment in the West Indies^ to Maximilian, and endeavored to take service under him. His aid was re jected, whereupon he turned to Juarez, only to be re- SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 137 pulsed again. In a rage at both sides, he fitted out an expedition on his own account, landed in the country, and was well-nigh being shot, after the model, and almost on the same ground, as that Iturbide whom he had pro nounced against forty-two years before. The court-mar tial, however, spared his life, "in consideration of the ancient services done to his country in Texas, at Tam- pico, and Vera Cruz," and sent him again, superannuated and poor (for he had squandered an ample fortune in this attempt), to finish his days in banishment. I cannot forbear going a little farther into the ques tions and answers of the little history. Of the gallant generals who fought so well for the Independence, Vic toria was the first President. Bravo pronounced against himj and was exiled to South. America. Guerrero, de feated as a candidate for the succession by Pedraza, took up arms and seized it by force. He repelled, while in office, a new attempt by the Spaniards, to recover the country, " Question. — I suppose that with this triumph the gov ernment of Guerrero was firmly established ? "Answer. — This was to! have .been hoped, but that happened which always happens in Mexico — just the contrary." Bustamente, in fact, pronounced against Guerrero; and when the latter would have returned to the capital from an expedition designed to put down the revolt, he found it closed against him, and in favor of Bustamente also. ., " Q. — What end had this revolution ? "A. — The most terrible that can be imagined.. The Government at Mexico, feeling that it could not over come Guerrero . . . bought over, for $70,000, a , Genor ese named Picaluga, who commanded a vessel anchored in the harbor of Acapulco. Picaluga invited Guerrero 138 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. to dine on board, and this manifestation of hospitality was accepted in good faith. When they had dined the Genoese signified to Guerrero that he was a prisoner, and set sail with him to the port of Huatulco and delivered him into the hands of his enemies. This great and good man, valiant and worthy of the respect and grati tude of the nation . . . was shot in the pueblo of Cui- lapa, on the 15th of February, 1831." It was not till 1848, for the first time, that the Presidency was transferred without violence, and under the law. The incumbent was General Herrera, and he was succeeded peaceably by General Arista. These two administrations "will forever place themselves before historians, both Mexican and foreign," says the history "as models of honor, economy, and order." But Arista was deposed in two years, and in the next three months there were four Presidents, the last of them Santa Anna, on one of his periodic returns. Thus the turmoil of revolutions has continued down to recent times. A certain Don Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada directed a letter to the authorities in 1840, pro posing, as a measure of relief, that a monarchical gov ernment should be established in Mexico ; and the idea, in the distracting state of things we have seen, cannot be considered wholly without reason. It caused great scan dal nevertheless, but Gutierrez Estrada stuck to it tena ciously, and, by a very singular coincidence, he was one of those who, twenty-four years after, went to Miramar to present the imperial crown to the Archduke Max imilian. If I cite a number of such events from the past it is not for the purpose of being disagreeable or arguing that the same state of things is to last. It is partly because they are amusing, and partly to obtain a more SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 139 encouraging point of view for the present. It will be seen that the later administrations, though not without their faults, are a vast improvement upon their predeces sors, and do not constitute a declining ratio. GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ, EX-PRESIDENT OF MEXICO. General Porfirio Diaz occupied unmolested a full term, from 1876 to 1880, and handed over the place to General Manuel Gonzales, who holds it at present in the same security. Diaz began the current career of improvement by his liberal chartering of railroads, and Gonzales fol lows in his track. Both must be considered to have made a most exemplary and promising use of their powers. - But, since we have arrived at " Don Porfi rio," let us see how he entered upon office in the be ginning. 140 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. IV. Since he is, by general admission, the power behind the throne, the Mexican " Warwick," the President who has been, is, and is to be, let us inquire a little also who he was. "His influence in the country," says the Monitor, "is decisive, incontestable. Something more than Ben- itez in the past, he is not only the great commoner, but the one man of the present." Porfirio Diaz was born in Oaxaca, in 1830. His family destined him for the law, but he took to soldiering in stead. Beginning as a private, he entered the city of Mexico as general-in-chief of the forces which wrested it from the French. Once in these wars, when a prisoner at Puebla, he let himself down by a rope from a tower and made his escape. His career is studded with romantic in cidents, but the career of what Mexican leader is not? The Latin race admires the military type, and "Don Porfirio," or more familiarly " Porfirio," as the people de light to call him, bethought him to turn his prestige in the field to account. He offered himself for the Presidency against Juarez, on the platform of no re-election, iu 1871. Lerdo de Tejada, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was also in the field as a third candidate. By the Mexican system one elector is supposed to be chosen for each dis trict of five hundred inhabitants. In actual practice the bulk of the inhabitants hardly know when the election takes place, and the electors represent scarcely more than themselves in the 12,361 votes of the electoral college thus constituted. Juarez received 5837, Diaz 3555, Lerdo 2874, and 95 are recorded as " scattering." " $.— Relate to me what happened thereafter. "A. — General Porfirio Diaz issued, from his hacienda of La Noria, a manifesto, hence called the Plan of La SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 141 Noria, repudiating the existing powers, and proposing to retain military command until the establishment of a new order of things." A bloody war of more than a year followed, in which the Porfiristas were utterly routed. Diaz, amnestied, pre sented himself at the capital, and was affably received by Lerdo, who assured him, on the part of the Govern ment, that he might live tranquil without fear of perse cution or harm. "Nothing," breaks forth our historian, in enthusiasm about these times, " gives a better idea of the constancy and elevation of the Mexican character, a heritage from its Spanish ancestry, than what passes in our wars, both civil and foreign. It appears that defeats but serve as stimulus and fresh aliment to the fray." Upon what possible theory these ambitious chiefs have always made their partisans so ready to be slaughtered for them, is a speculation which I shall not go into. Porfirio now remained quiet till 1876, when he issued the Plan of Tuxtepec, and rose against Lerdo, who had succeeded Juarez. He captured Matamoros by a bold stroke of strategy ; was himself captured on shipboard ; and es caped from the Lerdists by leaping into the sea, through the connivance of an American purser, whom he after ward made consul at St. Nazaire. After a series of such like adventures his persistence won the day, and Lerdo took to flight. " Don Sebastian " Lerdo is 6poken of as probably the most scholarly and accomplished President the republic ever had. He had been a school - master, however, and tried to govern the country in the peda gogue spirit to which he had been used. He lost favor, too, by his lack of military talent, and fled when his fort unes were by no means desperate. The country people were strongly on his side at first, but this singular thing happened — that, finding him unable to protect them 142 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. against the roving bands of revolutionists favoring Diaz, they joined them in disgust, and went on with them to the capital. It is upon such original guarantees that the authority which Porfirio has devoted to the extension of law and order and the benefits of civilization reposes. V. The subject of these remarks is a person neither talk ative nor taciturn. He is of commanding height, a swarthy, half- Indian complexion, a figure stalwart but not heavy, and of a military yet somewhat nonchalant bearing, all of which may form a part of his attraction. He knows how to utilize the arts of peace as well as war. Perhaps he believes a little in the motto, " Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws ;" for the ballad-singers at Santa Anita, on the Viga Canal, whither the populace swarm on Sundays to indulge in dancing, pulque, tamales, and flowers from the floating gardens, have many a long-drawn refrain to the praises of Don Porfirio Di-i-i-az. It is hardly fair, perhaps, to sug gest that these are subsidized, since they may rest upon pure admiration of his merits, after all. The Mexican law prohibits re-election, except after an interval of four years, and Porfirio Diaz was too ardent a one-termer to be able to overstep this prohibition with any consistency. He has placed his friend and fellow- soldier Gonzales in office as his locum tenens. He will assume it himself for the next term, dating from 1884. After that — so the plan is supposed to be arranged — he will give it to General Trevino, his companion in arms and strong auxiliary in his pronunciamientos. Trevino has married the daughter of an American general, Ord, SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 143 and it may be supposed that American interests will not suffer in his hands. Porfirio is romantic even in his Machiavellianism. The only source from which he might have had any thing to fear was perhaps a lingering Lerdist sentiment. GENERAL MANUEL GONZALES, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO. It represents, or represented, a conservative element, of better social position than the rude democratic force in power. He set to work to conciliate this Lerdist senti ment. He has been able to take of late the effectual means of marrying into the very midst of it, having chosen for his third wife the daughter of Senator Ro mero Rubio. Romero Rubio was the right-hand man of Lerdo, and his companion in exile. He is now president of the Senate, and the official who is empowered by law to call and control a new election, in case of a vacancy in 144 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES, the Presidency of the nation. Gonzales suffers from an old wound, received at Puebla, and it has been thought by some that Diaz might need to be called to the chair even before the appointed limit of time. Nor could he have had any personal repugnance to overcome in this match. His usual good-fortune attends him. The young lady is under twenty, acconiplished, and of a high-bred air. She will be recollected by Amer icans as among the prettiest of the belles who took part in the round of festivities given in honor of General Grant at his last visit.' This, too, will4_e pleasing to the people. Don Porfirio means that the people shall be pleased. When General Grant, on his first visit to the country in his tour around the world, was the curiosity and hero of the hour, Porfirio was his inseparable at tendant and courteous host. A certain resemblance was traced between them. Both had been illustrious gener als, both presidents. When Grant returned a second time, and was now leSs popular, on account of his inter est in the railway concessions, and a jealousy which had meantime arisen of American aggression, Don Porfirio was unfortunately obliged to be far distant, distributing charity to sufferers on the northern confines of the re public. The work of conciliation has long been going on. Old functionaries have been reinstated in place1; veteran army officers have been approached and offered new commands. One of these latter told me that1 President Gonzales had sent for him, after having kept au espionage on 'his con duct for some time, and asked him, in a bluff way, "Why do you continue to talk against the Govern ment, and pass your time in idleness — you who Were once so good a soldier?" "Sir," he replied, "you know my sentiments, and the SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 145 cause for which I fought. I cannot deny that I hold them still. I take the consequences. I have pawned my valuables and clothing for food. If I rust in idleness it is because I have no occupation to turn to." "I admire your manliness," the President replied. "Here is your appointment to the command of a regi ment. Your cause is dead, as you know, and cannot be revived. I ask of you no political services. I ask of you only to be as before — a soldier." It is needless to say that after this there was at least one Lerdist the less. I do not wish to be understood as finding fault with this policy of astute conciliation ; far from it. The ham- mer-and-tongs method has been so long in vogue that it is a delightful relief. The chicanery of matrimonial al liances, and assumption of frank and soldierly manners, will be welcomed by all the foreign capital in the coun try as a great improvement upon throat-cutting. From vast estates in Oaxaca, which with a commend able • economy he has amassed meantime, the Mexican Warwick, controls the destinies of his country with an ease like moving one's little finger. He pleases himself in the interim to be governor, and commander of the forces, of this fighting state. In the absence of any efficient electoral system the country is under his abso lute dictatorship; while, with the ostensible division of powers, there is no way of tracing the responsibility to its source. Not that there is the least danger of anybody's trying to do so. There are apparent Brutuses in both Houses of Congress, orators and poets who have turned off many a diatribe and many an ode to freedom on the best classic and French republican models, but they have nothing to say against this Caesar. They are not very free agents, 7 146 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. to tell the truth. They are really sent by the governors of the respective states, and these governors have been manipulated in advance. Porfirio can undoubtedly make threats as well as promises; and an unlucky representa^ tive, if content to forego a better place, may even lose the one he has. He cannot depend upon adequate sup port,' either, should he have a notion to resist. The " boys " are much given to " going back " on one another in Mexican history. I shall be found fault with by some persons, as likely as not, for undue severity. He is a beneficent Caesar, after all, compared with former times; he has brought back something like a Golden Age ; he oppresses nobody, at least, not the foreigners, and gives a stimulus to every worthy enterprise. So be it ; and probably there is no more genial gov ernment than a Csesarism of the beneficent sort, fairly established. But it is too full of dangers. Porfirio is doing nothing to educate the nation. " In effect," one of his own papers says to him, "it is not alone with rail ways that a nation so disorganized as ours can reconsti tute itself; not alone the locomotive and the telegraph that can make us happy. There should emanate from the regions of power something like an impulse of obedi ence to the law and observance of the institutions upon which the social and political well-being of the country rests." It is not probable that there will soon again be serious disturbances. " All the grabbers have got places," say some critics of a cynical turn, " and there will be no more revolutions." A better saying, however, is current: "A bad government is preferable to a good revolution." There is a weariness of fighting. The country seems to savor the little-known luxury of peace with a positive SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, ETC. 147 gusto. The railways diminish the chance of trouble by for the first time furnishing ample employment to the idle, who formerly occupied themselves in plunder and were ready to follow the banners of insurgent chiefs. They will be a potent military engine iu enabling the Government to mass its forces at points of danger. The fear, too, -may be present of interference by foreign gov ernments, should the enterprises of their citizens be threatened with serious damage by new upheavals. Still, there are great administrative abuses. The civil service is notoriously corrupt. Opportunities for galling oppression are open to the governments, both federal and state, and, most ominous of trouble, redress by the ballot is not possible. The anomaly is presented of a republic in which there is no census nor registration of voters, no scrutiny of the ballot-box except by the party in power. There is hardly a ray of interest in the polit ical machine by the people themselves. The number of votes cast at elections is pitifully small, as we have seen. It is not considered worth while to vote. The lower classes read no informing journals, have no public speak ers. No organized opposition exists. Such opposition as there is is purely personal. All contests for office are personal, and not a matter of principles. The Govern ment — that of the centre influencing the states, and these- in turn the communities — sustains and counts in what candidates it pleases. There are no data for objection, since nobody can point to the real number of voters in a given place, nor their names. When this is understood it seems to account for almost all that has happened. There is absolutely no remedy for oppressive domination but in rebellion. With the best of dispositions, the most entire patience, what has happened in the past may happen again. 148 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES If there be any statesmanship in Mexico, may we not hope to see some champion arise to remedy this, instruct the masses in their rights, enumerate and register them, and insure them the first essential of a free government — au accurate and unfettered suffrage? CUATITLAN— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 119 XII. CUATITLAN, AND AROUND LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. The saying is current that " Outside of Mexico all is Cuatitlan." It shows that the capital entertains a true Parisian es teem for itself, and a corresponding contempt for the rest of the country. Cuatitlan is a little village twenty-five miles to the northward, reached by a narrow-gauge rail road, built by Mexicans, but purchased by the Mexican Central. It was at Cuatitlan that I saw my first bull fight. It is one of the two places in the vicinity where the capital thus amuses itself, the sport being prohibited in town. In some states, as Zacatecas, it is abolished en tirely. There were five bulls killed that day, and three horses, but no men — unfortunately, the novice in these cowardly and disagreeable representations is inclined to think. Each bull came in ignorant of the fate of his predeces sor, and ran at the streamers with a playful air. You felt like scratching his back and calling him "good old fel low," instead of waiting to see presently his pained aston ishment and torture, his glazing eye and staggering step, and death like that of an actor in melodrama. The horses were wretched hacks, allowed to be gored purposely as a part of the spectacle. They were driven around the ring 150 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. ENVIRONS OF MEXICO. CUATITLAN— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 151 afterward till they dropped, and their life-blood poured with an audible noise, like the spatter of a rivulet. Upon which the boisterous youth of Mexico, of the lower class, cried "Bello!" " Bellissimo /" in frenzied delight. The gray old walls of the parish church, immense, and of excellent design (as they all are), rise above the amphi theatre. Within are figures of saints grotesquely adorned, or realistically horrible, in the usual style. The devout Indians are not archaeologists, and have no idea of paying honor other than as they understand it. I have it on authority that when left to themselves they have been known to equip the Saviour of the World in a twenty- dollar hat, chaparreras (a kind of riding breeches), spurs, sabre, and revolver, sparing no expense to make him a cavalier of the first fashion. The houses of the town, built of concrete or adobe, sometimes plastered and tinted, are of one story. There are some small portals for the use of out-of-door merchants, a few pulquerias, and thread-needle shops, and a meson, or inn, "of the Divine Providence," wrhere enormous- wheeled wagons are corralled in line, and muleteers sleep upon their packs, as in the times of Don Quixote. This is Cuatitlan, this the Mexican village, which can be dreary enough to one who does not look at it with the fresh interest of a new-comer. You cannot take as much comfort in the lower class of people as you would like, on account of their habits. There is no^denying that in the neighborhood of Mexico at least they are very dirty. They do not clean up even for their festivals. I saw them dancing at a public ball at the Theatre Hidalgo, which, among other amusements, the municipality pro vided for them free, on the national festival of the 5th of May. There were charcoal dealers and such persons, with their women, and they had not taken the pains to 152 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. remove a single smudge of their working-day condi tion. Cuatitlan was the birth-pjace of the simple peon Juan Diego, who in 1531 saw the miraculous apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He was passing the barren hill where her elaborate pilgrimage church now stands, and she gave him roses which had flowered where no flower had ever been seen before. A banner with the image of this miraculous Virgin was carried all through the wars of the Independence. Guadalupe is still one of the spots to be visited, and you buy such sacred knick-knacks there as at Lourdes or Einsiedlen, but the church is stripped of its treasures now, and the surroundings have a shabby aspect. II. At San Angel, Tlalpam, and other similar points in the vicinity of the capital, there was formerly an extensive villa life. It has curiously decayed, even while the secur ity of living in such a way has increased. There are no fierce heats, however, to drive people to the country. It is always comfortable in town. No watering-places nor summer resorts in our sense of the word exist. Reople who go to their haciendas visit them more to look after their business interests than in need or love of country life. Bills are up in the grated windows of the long, low, one-storied villas at San Angel, and the fruits fall untasted in the orange and myrtle gardens. The vil lagers endeavor to atone for this neglect of them by feasts of flowers, and little fairs, which last a week at a time. On these occasions, among other attractions, existing ordinances against gambling are set aside, and their small plazas are filled with games of hazard. The Viga Canal, as far as Santa Anita, is a livelier and co o os 3 o 4 SUNDAY DIVERSIONS AT SANTA ANITA. 154 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. more unique resort. Santa Anita is the St. Cloud or Bougival of Mexico. Thither go, especially on Sundays, lively persons to disport themselves on the water and pass a day of the picnic order, taking lunch with them, or depending on such cheap viands as the place offers. The wide yellow canal is more Venetian than French at first. A mouldering red villa or two on its banks; with private water-gates, might belong to the Brenta. Af terward lines of willows and poplars are reflected iu the water, and then it is French again. Flat-boats coming on, piled up with bales of hay and wood, echo each other peacefully from distance to dis tance. Swift, small chalupas (dug-outs) follow, managed by the Indian master in poses for a sculptor, while his wife — or it is as often an Indian woman alone — is en sconced among flowers and vegetables, with which it overflows. This is the region of the chinampas, the gardens from which the markets of Mexico are most liberally supplied. They are formed hy the division of what was once a marsh, by narrow branch canals, into small oblong patches. The patches are so small that the owner passes around the borders in his canoe, and keeps all portions moist with water, which he throws out upon them with a calabash. By this care, and the rich charac ter of the redeemed soil, luxuriant crops are produced. The houses of the village are generally of bamboo, and without windows, sufficient light penetrating through the interstices. The first business of the participants in the Sunday festivities here is to provide themselves with large, thick wreaths of lovely poppies and blue and white corn flowers, which are sold for the merest trifle. They wear these upon their heads, in their caperings, with a highly classic effect. A general frizzling sound is heard, where eatables, of which peppers form a large ingredient, are CUATITLAN— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 155 prepared on little charcoal furnaces without and primi tive fire-places within. " Come in !" the busy venders cry ; " come in, senors, seiioras, and senoritas, and be seated ! Aqui los nifios ! Here is the place for the chil dren ! Here is the place where they are appreciated, and by no means considered a nuisance!" "Tamales calientitos ! dear little tamales, very nice and hot!" they cry. In the same caressing way a cab man in want of a job will call you patroncito, "dear little patron," though you may be as large as a grenadier. They decorate their little stands with turnips and rad ishes cut into ingenious shapes of flowers, and with a profusion of little birds in wax, and the Mexican Goddess of Liberty astride of an eagle. A swarm of flat-boat men cluster at the edge of the canal, bidding for your patron age. Dancing is going on in almost every court-yard ; the ballad-singers strike up lazy refrains ; and iu the Car- eel, in a dirty little plaza, by a fountain, a single prisoner monotonously rattles his wooden grating, and glares out at the gayety like a madman. No self-respecting Ameri can prisoner could be induced to stay in a place so easy to escape from. But there is no accounting for tastes. III. But are there no real chinampas, no gardens that actu ally float, according to the tradition ? Was all that, then, a myth ? Not at all. The soil hereabouts is solidified now, an chored down, as it were ; but it has in its time floated, and in that condition borne crops. Farther on whole expanses are found only kept in position by stakes, with four feet of water below, and yet strong enough to sus tain grazing cattle. An expedition was organized, in 156 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. which I was privileged to set off, under the hospitable guidance of the Director of the Drainage of the Valley, to witness these marvels in person. We had a large row-boat, rowed by five oarsmen ; and in our party was an amiable English traveller, who has written a book about Mexico,* and described, among others, this very expedition. We started about seven o'clock in the morning from the garita of La Viga, an old Spanish water-gate, at which toll is taken from the market boats. The current was against us. The canal of La Viga, a stretch of about six teen miles, is the outlet of Lake Xochimilco into Texcoco. Chalco and Xochimilco are practically the same lake, be ing separated only by a narrow causeway of ancient date, which is open at the centre and spanned by a little bridge. There are numerous hamlets along the way, built like Santa Anita, and each with a few venerable palm-trees in its plaza. The Jefe Politico of one embraced our Director of the Desagiie and kissed his hand. At another a solid little bridge had lately been thrown across the canal, and we heard of a banquet that had been given on the occa sion. The orator of the day had delivered a resounding address on human progress, and declared that he was proud to be a resident of a village which could accom plish such a feat. We lunched at a fort -like hacienda at Ixtapalapa, the point where the canal issues from the lake, and there found horses awaiting to take us to the top of the Hill of the Star. Upon this eminence, accord ing to Prescott, were rekindled the extinguished fires and the beautiful captive sacrificed at the end of each of the cycles of fifty years, when the Aztecs thought the existence of the world was to be terminated. * Brockleliurst's "Mexico To-day." John Murray: London, 1883. CUATITLAN— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 157 We found nothing on the summit but a few heavy foundation stones, possibly remains of a sacrificial altar. Our horses had to be walked actively about, to prevent their taking serious cold from the rapid evaporation. It is chiefly memories that are found on such places. I plucked there, however, to send in a letter, a dark-red common flower, and pleased myself with the fancy that it might have drawn its sanguinary hue from the ground so steeped in slaughter. Though at the entrance of the lake, no shining expanse of water was visible. The greater part of the surface, in fact, is covered with a singular growth of entwined roots and debris, supporting a verdant meadow. Pas sage through it is effected by canals and shifting natural channels, which change with the wind. Two of our men after a time got out and towed the boat. The ostensible terra firma sank under their weight like the undulations of " benders" in thin ice. Now and then one floundered and went in waist-deep, whereat the others laughed. The margins are kept in place along the permanent channels by pinning them down with long stakes. We fell in with wandering strips of growing verdure, called cintas (ribbons), and larger ones, bandoleros (ban dits), drifting about at their own sweet will. Our host told us, though this he wrould not guarantee as of his own experience, that in the earlier times a garden of flowers and vegetables was now and then wrecked along-shore after a gale of wind, as if it had been a bark. Contra bandists, robbers who occasionally beset the market-boats, and political refugees have sometimes found this a favor able place of refuge, and escaped pursuit by diving under the illusive area and coming up elsewhere. We dined alfresco at Mas Arriba, a place named quite 158 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. in the American style, literally Farther On. The margins were full of yellow water-lilies, and the clear spaces re flected distant mountains. Evening drew on, and then night. The frogs and crickets waked up their lonesome refrain, and fire -flies twinkled brightly in the morass. A few drops of rain fell, which increased in time to a shower. IV. We reached the long causeway between the two lakes late at night, in pitch darkness and torrents of rain, and screened ourselves a while under the little bridge, which barely accommodated the boat. Here was Tlahuac, an an cient island town or village, at the centre of the cause way. Waiting was useless. We landed in the rain, bought candles at a wretched tienda kept by Indians as solemn as statues, and set out in search of a lodging. A mozo preceded us, like a great fire-bug, sheltering a burning candle under a straw mat as best he could, to aid us in keeping out of the deeper puddles. We were recommended to the Padre, as the only per son capable of entertaining visitors of our distinction, and found him in an ancient Dominican convent looming up in the darkness. He received us with many apologies, gave us a good supper, manifested an interest in the late gossip of Mexico, and put ns to sleep on the church car pets on the floor of a vast, bare room, provided with a few old religious pictures and bits of furniture. Any temporary discomforts of this night of adventure were amply atoned for by the beautiful bright morning of the next day. We found Tlahuac a kind of Venetian island, a Torcello, as it were, on which- some population of New Zealanders might have put up their thatched huts. The church rising in the centre had one of the usual shin- CUATITLAN— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 159 ing tiled domes, and was preceded by a court and arched gateway. Its outer walls were covered with a large pat tern of quatre-foils in red and yellow. I do not recol lect just such a- design again till I came later to the old Spanish mission of San Juan Capistrano, in Southern California. The island has sunk, or rather the lake has risen, in course of time, and the bases of the columns in the church are some four feet below the level of the ground. Near by was the village school, and, as we got under way, we heard the shrill little voices of the children re citing their spelling in concert. All the shock -headed adult residents, in their garments of white cotton, looked as stupid as possible ; but it is not always safe to judge by appearances. From here the view of the two great snow-clad vol canoes is uninterrupted and glorious. We were told to feel with the oars at one place in the canal the pave ments of a submerged Aztec city. Cortez mentions such a one in his letters. In 1855 the rumor of a new Pom peii spread abroad, based upon the finding of a few sub merged Aztec huts in Lake Chalco, but no remains of any real importance have ever come to light. V. On this day, in Lake Chalco, we took our mid-day meal at the base of Xico, a little island volcano now extinct. It is of solid granite, without so much as a blade of grass externally, and the ascent is smooth and difficult. The boatmen sometimes see "Will-o'-the-wisps" on its sum mit, which, they say, are kindled by the witches. We climbed it, notwithstanding, and found a gently sloping crater, filled with maize -fields, which could easily have been approached from the other side. 160 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. The water began to be charmingly clear, and the bot tom was full of a red weed like coral. We gathered ferns, lilies, the fragrant little white flower of St. John — for de San Juan, sold in large bunches in the market — and other flowers, yellow, purple, and vivid scarlet, of un known names. The clouds still hung threateningly about, and gave us now and then a slight sprinkle of rain. But as we drew near to Chalco and the end of our two days' voyage they cleared away. The prospect from this point is the subject for a land scape painting of the grand order. The town of Chalco, with an ancient and noble church edifice, supplies the element of human interest. In front is the blue water in spaces, with their reflection, and a wealth of marsh plants, arrow and lance heads, ferns, and flowers. In the distance are the great snow-clad mountains, upon which ¦wreathing mists throw changing lights and shadows. Ixtacihuatl, the White Woman, though the lesser, I con tinually find the more picturesque of the two, in its sharp and rugged outline. Popocatepetl, in the more perfect symmetry of its cone, is a little monotonous, like Orizaba. We came, by a short branch canal, to the station of La Compania, on the Morelos railway, and took the train back to town. We were just in time to hear of a dis turbance near by by General Tiburcio Montiel, and his arrest by the Government forces. It was said that he had headed a communistic uprising of Indians for the recovery of their lands. He declared through the press afterward that he had but gathered a posse to aid him in the execution of some legal process. Quaint risings of a communistic sort, however, have not been uncommon. Demagogues have more than once told the simple-minded peons that the lands of the country were theirs — had been CUATITLAN— LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO. 161 wrested from their ancestors by the Spanish conquerors — and it was high time to get them back. An ingenious hacendado, waited upon by such a delegation, admitted their view, but met it with another. " Yes," said he, " the Spaniards took your lands, it is true ; but before that you Aztecs took them from the Toltecs. Find me first, therefore, some Toltecs; I will yield my title only to them." 162 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. XIII. TO OLD TEXCOCO. Mr next journey was by lake across Texcoco to the old capital of that name. I had hoped to take El Nez- hualcoyotl, which lay in the mud by the Garita of San Lazaro, when I went to make preliminary inquiries. There would have been a certain fitness in approaching the ancient capital in a boat named after the sovereign who made it illustrious; but it was not its day for sailing. The JYezhualcoyotl was clipper-built, as it were, a long, rusty, gondola-like scow, devoted exclusively to passenger traffic. We took instead a freight-boat of much larger and heavier build, La Ninfa Encantadora, or " the En chanting Nymph." She would have been called the Mary Ann or Betsy Jane elsewhere, but such is the difference in the tropical imagination. A cabin sheltered the passengers and some budgets of goods which were done up in the inevitable petates, rush mats, and included two bags of silver. There were a couple of young women going to pasear — take a little vacation — at Texcoco. "It will be triste, of course," they said, " like everything out of Mexico ; still, we are going to try it for a while." They offered a part of their lunch, as travelling companions were continually doing wherever I went, and the skipper offered us pulque. Two older women, in blue rebosas, sat like statues, hold- TO OLD TEXCOCO. 163 ing their parcels and an Indian baby in their laps, from one end of the long journey to the other. The canal of San Lazaro on this side extends about a league to the lake. It is very much less attractive than that of Chalco. Its terminus in the city is the point of a most animated and Venetian-like market scene, but one earns his pleasure in dealing with this canal at the expense of many a bad odor. Six men put a sort of har ness on themselves and dragged ns along, plodding on the tow-path, as Russian peasants drag their boats in some of their rivers. A man on horseback with a tow- rope also assisted, on the other side. The water, shoal in the beginning, shoaled more as we went on, till we were aground on flats in the edge of the lake. The city sewage was aground with us. Still, the situation was relieved by the striking prospect. The teo- calli-like Penol, where there are warm baths, was close at hand. Sky and water were of an identical blue ; the shallow expanse reflected the circuit of dark and purplish foot-hills and great snow-peaks beyond as perfectly as if it had been as deep as they were high. Our crew walked for an hour in the mud, pushing against long poles projected from the sides, before we could be said to be fairly afloat. Then they came aboard and poled the rest of the way. They walked up an inclined plane, carrying the poles over their heads, and came down, pushing, with them supported against their shoulders, in a bold and striking motion. It was eight o'clock when we set out, and four when we reached the mouth of the short branch canal which makes up to Tex coco. The distance must be about thirty miles. A cross arose out of the lake half way over, and our polemen stopped at it and shouted three times, with startling ef fect, "Alabo al gran poder de, Dios! Ave Maria pu- 164 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. rissima!" — "Hail to the almighty power of God ! Hail, Mary the purest !" Unexpectant of anything of the sort, I hurried out from the cabin, taking it to be some defiance at enemies, or disturbance among ourselves. We met other packets like our own, loaded with people. A considerable part of the cargoes was the fine large red earthen jars and dishes we saw at Mexico, which are made at Texcoco. The piled-up bales and pottery, the strange figures, and the flashing poles of one of these craft, coming on, make it a highly original and spirited subject. Then we fell in with one of the curiosities of the lake — disbelieved in by some — swarms of the mosca, a little water-fly, so thickly settled on the water that we took them for flats and reefs. They resemble mosquitoes, but neither sting nor even alight on the boat. They are taken in fine nets and carried to Mexico, as food for the birds ; and they have eggs, which are sold in the market and made into tortillas, which are said to be very pal atable. The shores are encrusted with native alkali, which has its share in the production of the disagreeable odors. Peasants gather the crude product and load it upon don keys, to carry to a salt and soda works, and a manufactory of glass, situated at Texcoco. Was it in this same branch canal that Cortez launched his brigantines for the destruction of the naval power of the Aztecs? There is water in but a part of it now; and traces of substantial locks are found, where grass is grow ing and cows feeding. II. I spent nearly a week at Texcoco assimilating the quiet interior life of the country. I dined at the Restaurante TO OLD TEXCOCO. 165 166 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Universo, both cheaply and better as a rule than at Mex ico, and found a chamber with the keeper of the princi pal tienda, there being no inn. I even became some thing of an expert in pulque. The true connoisseur takes it mitad y mitad: half of agua miel newly from the maguey field, and half the stronger beverage of longer standing. I made the acquaintance of the Jefe Politico, a polite, youngish man, said to be a terror to evil-doers. He had made the roads safe. He had a way of shooting at brief notice, and transporting to Yucatan, or if he con tented himself with a mere fine it was a sounding one. The pulquerias must be closed at six o'clock, and other shops at nine. One day the Deputy returned from his seat in Congress, and was given a characteristic reception. A troop of twenty or so of his constituents mounted on horseback, and preceded the omnibus in which he was drawn, from the railway station back into the town, at the top of their speed, shouting and firing pistols. Crack ers and pistols were fired also from the omnibus. I made the acquaintance also of the local druggist, an intelligent person, who had a collection of antiquities. He was of the pure Indian race, and professed himself proud of being an Indian, and proud of being a Texco- can. He had lately brought out a very strong distillation of pulque, a kind of patent medicine, and asked my ad vice about introducing it in the United States. He evi dently thought we were made of money, for I am sure we never should have been willing to pay so much a bottle. The place has now about six thousand people. Its churches are immense. It has a long, shabby plaza, with a market arcade on one side, and an Alameda, also in poor condition. The Jefe Politico might extend his pro tection next to a few internal improvements. Hamlets TO OLD TEXCOCO. 167 cluster near together in a fertile _area round about. I noted one day two peons soberly carrying on their shoul ders, among the magueys, what appeared to be a dead body. It proved to be instead the saint of the village church, which they were quaintly conveying, as a loan, to one of the others, to assist in a festival of the morrow. In the hamlet of Santa Cruz the population are pot ters. Each has a little round tower of a furnace attached to his house, works on his own account, and sets out the large, ruddy jars on his roof to dry. He could ac quire a competence if persevering, but the moment he has a dollar ahead he stops work till it is spent. In other houses persons were seen at looms weaving blue cotton stuffs for apparel. Numbers of ancient carven stones occur, let into the church walls and pavement, and set up in the Alameda. Remains of teocallis are also numerous, as they might well be in a place once the seat of the Augustinian age of Aztec culture. They are treated with no respect at all. They are worn down into mere knolls, and planted with crops. From the site of one now levelled a proprietor was said to have taken out a treasure. What with its age, the destruction of haciendas in the wars, and the practice of the Indians, still prevailing, of burying their money in the ground, there ought to be treasure-trove in Mexico, if anywhere. Certain it is that my host at the tienda, Senor Macedonia, had in his till some beautiful old Spanish coins, which he displayed to the gossips who came in the evening to sip beverages and play dominos. Among the gossips thus sociably tomando copas (taking cups) at the tienda there was one, a certain " Don San tiago," who told me that he was pulling down, in his garden, the largest pyramid of the place, to sell the ma terial for building purposes. This was of real interest. 168 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Going thither, his pyramid was found to be indeed of imposing size. It was laid up in regular courses of sun-dried brick, and there were vestiges of a facing and superposed pavements of cement, as at San Juan Teoti- huacan. There was present in the place with me an archaeologist — a newspaper archaeologist, I should call him. He termed himself an " expedition ;" he had an omnivor ous taste for unearthing things, without knowledge of the language, or apparent acquaintance with any previous re searches or, theories; and his discoveries were intended principally to redound to the fame of a journal which had sent him out. Between us we brought to light a sec tion of a great bass-relief which now occupies a place in the National Museum at Mexico. It was probably seven feet in its longest dimension and five in the other, and must have been a quarter or so of the whole work. It contained a calendar circle, no doubt establishing the date, and part of the figure of a warrior in elaborate re galia, possibly that of old jNezhualcoyotl himself. The archaeologist, whom perhaps I unfairly disparage for the auspices under which he appeared, set to work with a will, and soon had half a dozen natives taking the sur- face off the rest of the soil in the vicinity, for the re maining fragments, but without success. It was the fierce practice of the Spaniards to break the religious emblems of the conquered pagans, to prevent them, as far as possible, from returning to their idolatrous prac tices, and most likely they rolled down one fragment of the great stone one way, and another another, to separate them as widely as possible ; so that they will be found on different sides of the pyramid. All day long it was "Don Santiago!" here, and "Don Santiago!" there, as the excavators plied their labors; while I spent some part of it, shaded by an impromptu awning of mats, noting TO OLD TEXCOCO. 169 down in a drawing the peculiarities of the "find" we had made. I do not profess myself an archaeologist, except from the picturesque point of view. It is my private surmise that a great deal of good investigation is lavished upon these matters which had much better be THE "FIND." spent upon the present; but here was a case in which the sentiment of the picturesque was amply gratified. There was a genuine pleasure in being one of the first to salute this interesting fragment of antiquity after its long sleep, to tenderly brush the dirt from it and trace its enigmatic lines. III. There is a decided resemblance, to this day, in looks and habits, between the Mexican peon and the China man. Writers on the subject have generally represented 8 170 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. America as originally peopled from Asia, the Asiatics having crossed over, perhaps, at Behring's Straits, and made their way south. One Mexican writer stoutly maintains that Mexico was the cradle of the race, and the migration was in the opposite sense. This accords, at any rate, with Buckle's general theory, that the thickly settled portions of the earth were at first those where climate and a natural food-supply made the maintenance of life easy. In these places, too, civilization began. The warm and fertile area of Central America, there fore, would have teemed with humanity before the waste North was peopled. There may have been sculptured cities, one upon another, long before even Uxmal and Palenque, the origin of which was lost in obscurity to the Aztecs. However this may be, the Aztecs themselves, whether descendants of a race expatriated from the South and become rugged in the North, or having crossed over from Asia, came down from the colder regions, like the Goths and Vandals upon Italy. The tradition on this point is clear. One day two leading personages, Huitziton and Tecpultzin, in their far-off northern regions, wherever they were, heard a small bird singing in the branches ti-hui! ti-hui! — let ns go! The}' listened intently and took counsel together. " This is really very singular," we may suppose Huitziton saying, while Tecpultzin sage ly laid a finger beside his nose and listened again. One would like a historic picture by some competent humorist of these two simple worthies deciding the fate of their nation. Ti-hui ! ti-hui ! piped the little songster inex orably, and that there seemed nothing for it but that the Aztec people should move southward, which they pro ceeded to do. They overwhelmed the civilized Toltec capital at Tula TO OLD TEXCOCO. 171 in their progress. They had a farther oracle saying that they were to stop when they should arrive where an eagle was sitting on a nopal plant ; and this they found at Mexico, on the very spot which now is the plaza of San Domingo. The whole district became filled in time with small kings and princes tributary to the Monte- zumas. The most refined and peaceable type of them all arose at Texcoco. In the Cerro of Texcocingo, some ten or twelve miles back of the town, remain extensive vestiges of an archi tectural magnificence which show that the accounts of the historians are not made of whole cloth. We had a trooper appointed us, as an escort and guide, by the Jefe Politico, and rode out to visit them. Ascending the hill, of perhaps two thousand feet in height, overgrown with hardy nopal and maguey, you come to excellent flights of steps cut in the solid rock, giving access to aqueducts, bathing tanks, cisterns, and caverns, heavily sculptured within and without, which are remains of temples and palaces. Our trooper had little ambition in these matters, and after showing us a part declared that there was no more, and went comfortably to sleep. It was only by climbing alone to the top that I found the principal display. Here the philosophic Nezhualcoyotl, in his retirement, hung in the air, above the wide prospect of -his capital, the lake, and his rival of Mexico. And here, in the deserted moun tain, with a guide who had gone fast asleep below, his ghost might be half expected to be met with wandering in the still sunshine, but unfortunately it was not. He wrote poems of a pensive cast. He reflected even in his time as to whether life is worth Jiving, and his general theme was the vanity of all things mortal. "Where is Chalchintmet, the Chicameca?" he asks. 172 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. " Mitl, the venerator of the gods ; Tolpiltzin, last of the Toltecs; and the beautiful Xinlitzal — where are they ?" These no doubt once famous personages can be the better spared now, on account of their unpronounceable names, but to the writer they represented something very tangible and solid. " Very brief is the realm of flowers," he continues, "and brief is human life. . . . Our careers are like the streams, which but run on to excavate their own graves the more surely. . . . Let us look, then, to the immor tal life. . . . The stars that now so puzzle us are but the lamps that light the palaces of the heavens." Such, if he be properly presented by Spanish adapters, were the sentiments of this early monarch. Truly the latent capacities even of the natural man are not so far below the surface ; and it may be that no agency will be found so potent to awaken them with a rush as the modern facility in railway transportation. IV. On the return we visited a country residence, combined with large mills for making paper and grinding grain. It was called the Molino de Flores, and belonged to the wealthy Cervantes family of Mexico. One of this Cer vantes family was the subject, in 1872, of a celebrated exploit by the plagiarios, or kidnappers. He was seized while coming out of the theatre at night, a cloak was thrown over his head, and he was bundled into a cab. He was buried a long time under the floor of a house, just enough food being given him to sustain life. The plagi arios did not secure the large ransom they demanded, after all, but were finally apprehended, and shot— three TO OLD TEXCOCO. 173 of them — against the wall of the house, the Callejon Za- cate, No. 8, where they had detained their victim. The Molino de Flores was not only charming in itself, but may serve as a text for mentioning the very different sentiment thrown around anything in the shape of a man ufactory from that prevailing with us. Mills, residence, granaries, and chapel, terraced up into a steep hill -side from a little entrance court, are constructed upon the same motif, and form a single establishment. It is set in a striking little gorge. The water-power, after turning the mills, is utilized for lovely gardens, in which there are a hundred fantastic jets and surprises. There is an out-of-door bathing tank, for instance, at the end of a se cluded walk, screened by shrubbery. The disrobing seat is managed in a small cave in the cliff, and the shower, on pulling a ring, falls from the summit, forty feet above. It is a place that might have served for such an adven ture as that of Susannah and the Elders. In the novel of "Maria," one of the most charming of stories, with which I first made acquaintance in Mexico, though its scene is laid among similar customs in South America, the heroine is represented as preparing the bath for the hero in such a tank by scattering fresh roses into it with her own fair hands. A rustic bridge, on which La Sonnambula might have walked, is thrown across the cataract to a quaintly fres coed, rock-cut mortuary chapel, where, among others, the last titled ancestor of the house lies buried. He had ten distinct surnames — was Marques de Flores, a General of Brigade, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Cap tain in Itur hide's Guard, Cavalier of the Order of Gua dalupe, Regidor, Governor, Notahile under Maximilian, and more ; from which it will be seen that the pomp of the hidalgos well survived in Mexico. 174 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. The same caressing way of looking at industrial estab lishments here noticed is universal, and is, in part, no doubt, due to their rarity and a thorough appreciation of their usefulness. I recollect everywhere the sugar haci endas, " beneficiating" haciendas, or ore-reducing works, and cotton-mills treated in similar fashion. One voyage across Lake Texcoco was quite sufficient of its kind, and I returned by diligencia to the junction point of the since completed railway, and thence by rail to the capital. The pulling-gear of our diligencia was a thing of shreds and patches. A boy ran beside the mules all the way to mend the broken ropes and supplement, with whistling and flapping, the exertions of the driver. The houses in the villages are of unwhitewashed adobe, with palings of organ-cactus. It was like riding through a brick-yard. Fine irrigating canals, fed from the moun tains, frequently crossed our course, indicating the sub stantial scale on which agricultural works are conducted. More than one monumental ruined hacienda, too, showed that they had formerly been on even a more elaborate scale than now. POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 175 XIV. POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. I do not know whether I advise everybody to climb Popocatepetl. There it is always on the horizon, the highest mountain in North America, and one of the few highest in the world — a standing inducement to the ad venturous. Few accept it, however, though among those who have done so are said to be ladies. I should some what doubt this, but, even if so, there seem to be some features of this ascent which make it uncertain whether the effort "pays" quite as well as Alpine mountaineering. At any rate, if one will go, let him have all the par ticulars and the necessary outfit in advance, at the capital itself. Little aid or comfort will be found elsewhere on his way. The proper preliminary for ascending Popo catepetl is to find some one who has been there and knows all about it, and to bear in mind besides the few following points, for his informant will be sure to have forgotten them. The feet are to be kept dry and warm, for there are hours of climbing in wet snow. This is, perhaps, best accomplished by superposed pairs of stout woollen stock ings. The guides usually recommend strips of coarse cotton cloth, to be bound around in Italian contadino fashion ; but this is a delusion and a snare, and they mean it to be so. They consider, very justly, that if the 176 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. traveller can be made so uncomfortable as to quit the ascent before it is half accdmplished they shall collect the price agreed upon and be saved a great part of their trouble. There should be shoes provided with some arrange ment of spikes in the soles, against the painful slipping backward. There should be a supply of food and warm covering for camping-out, since absolutely nothing is to be had, and the temperature is very cold at the shelter of Tlamaca, where probably two nights will have to be passed. I accomplished the ascent with two companions. We had in the beginning such assurances of special assistance that it seemed about to be robbed of all its terrors. The volcano is regularly owned, and worked as a sulphur mine, by General Sanchez Ochoa, Governor of the Mili tary School. We were put in charge of one of his super intendents, who was to see that we had every conven ience, and that the malacdte, or windlass, was put in order for us to descend into the crater. I surmise that this particular superintendent did not greatly care to en counter the needed hardships on his own account, for certain it is that in the sequel we were left short of many elementary necessities, and there was no malacate for the descent, nor any reference to it. Yon arrive at Amecameca, forty miles from Mexico, by train. Everybody should go there. It is one of the loveliest of places, and has inns for the accommodation of visitors. Amecameca will one day be frequented from many climes, if I am not much mistaken. It has features like Interlaken. Cool airs are wafted down to it from the mountains, and its site resembles an Alpine vale. There are points of view in the vicinity whence a sharp minor peak separates itself from the main snow mass of POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 177 Popocatepetl, like the Silberhorn from the Jungfrau, at Interlaken. The streets are clean, and the houses almost all neatly lime-washed in white or colors. The market place is a scene for an opera — a long arcade, full of bright figures ; behind this is a group of churches and court yards ; behind these the vast snow mountains, as at Chal co, but nearer. A little hill at the left, across a strip of maize-fields, is called the Sacro Monte, and has a sacred chapel of some kind. I climbed thither while the negoti ations for horses and guides were in their first tedious stage, and found a quaint Christ in the chapel, and a most engaging view from its terrace. II. We set off with a captain, or chief guide, who called himself Domingo Tenario, and a peon guide, Marcellino Cardoba, who had worked three years at sulphur-mining in the volcano. He also acted as. muleteer. We had four horses and a mule — the whole for eight dollars a day. Domingo Tenario would also ascend the mountain for a dollar more. We were to be gone three days, the greater part of which the expedition consumes. The first part of the way wound among softly undulat ing slopes, yellow with barley, out of which projected here and there an ancient pyramid, planted with a crop also. By the roadside grew charming white thistles, tall blue lupines, and columbines. We crossed arroyos, brooks, and barrancas, gorges. The aspect changed to that of an Alpine pasture. There were bunch grass, ten der flowering mosses, and cattle feeding. An eccentric dog, who was attached, it seemed, to one of the horses, and had the ambition to ascend the mountain also, instead of saving his strength for it, here ran up and down and 8* . 178 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. bit at the heels of the herds in the most wasteful man ner. It seems a small detail of an enterprise of pith and moment to mention, but " Perro," as we called him, for want of acquaintance with his name, if he had one, con trived a score of sage and amusing devices to attract an attention to himself beyond his deserts. The horses were frescoed on the flanks with a kind of Eastlake dec oration made up of the brands of successive owners. The English landed proprietor in our small party occu pied himself with collecting specimens, and soon had a kind of geological and botanical pudding in his satchel. The American engineer took observations with his ba rometer a% i thermometer. Crosses are set up at intervals along the way. These indicate places where a death by violence has occurred, but not always a death by the hand of man. Did the custom prevail of setting up a cross in New York, for instance, wherever a violent death had occurred, wo too should have a liberal share of these emblems. We entered the deep, solemn pine-woods ; the night came on, and a sharp cold seemed to penetrate to the marrow. Buildings appeared in the gloom, with red flames dancing merrily through the windows. Aha! the rancho of Tlamaca, with hospitable fires made up, no doubt, expressly for our reception ! What a disappointment ! The buildings proved to be but some shelters of rough boards, with plentiful inter stices, and not a whole pane of glass. The cabin devoted to the uses of the superintendent contained but a single cot. The dancing flames were those from the process of smelting the crude sulphur, which is done in brick fur naces in the principal structure. Two Indian boys stirred the fires, and coughed in a distressing way all night long. We threw ourselves down to sleep among the sulphur- POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 179 sacks. One was choked by the fumes, if near the fur naces, and penetrated by the draughts through crevice and broken window-pane, if remote. Tlamaca is itself 12,500 feet above the sea, and its thermometer ranges about 40° Fahrenheit. Without other covering than a light rubber overcoat — for I had not been instructed to bring other — it was impossible to sleep. I went out and paced the yard, sentry fashion, at three o'clock in the morning, as the only resource for keeping the blood in circulation. It was moonlight, and I had the partial com pensation of studying the volcano, bathed in a lovely silver radiance. Mountains are rather given to making their poorest possible figure. Here we are, at this point, already 12,500 feet above the sea, and this is to be subtracted from the total. Shall we ever meet with a good, honest mountain rising its whole 19,673 feet at once, without these shuffling evasions ? I fear not. They are only to be found in the designs of tyro pictorial art. I say 19,673 feet, because so much General Ochoa in sists that Popocatepetl is, by a late measurement with the barometer of Gay-Lussac. He even estimates 1700 feet more for the upper rim of the crater, which has never been scaled. I do not know that this has ever passed into any official form, but I had it from his own lips. The latest Mexican atlas makes it but 5400 metres, or 17,884 feet, which coincides with the measurement of Humboldt. I much prefer to rally to General Ochoa, for my part, and to believe that I have climbed a moun tain of 21,373 feet, instead of one of a mere 17,884. The barometer of our own expedition, unfortunately, stopped at 17,000 feet, the limit for which it was set — a limit which barometers are not often called upon to surpass. 180 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. III. We left the Rancho, at six in the morning, on horse back, and rode three hours toilsomely over rocks of basalt, and black sand. The poor animals suffered pain fully, but we needed all our own strength for the later work, and could not spare them. They were left at a point called Las Cruces, where a cross tops a ledge of black, jaggedly- projecting volcanic rock. The lines of composition in this part of the ascent were noble and magnificent, the contrasts startling. Across the vast, black undulations, on which our shadows fell purple- black, appeared and disappeared in turn the rich red cas tellated Pico del Fraile, and the dazzling white breadths of the greater mountain engaging our efforts. Backward from Las Cruces lay a dizzy view of the world below. Across was the height of Ixtacihuatl, the White Woman, keeping us company in our ascent. The valley of Mexico could be seen in one direction, the val ley of Puebla, and even the peak of Orizaba, 150 miles away, in the other. Against the mysterious vastness stood the figures of our men and horses on the ledge of volcanic rock, as if in trackless space. It was here that "Perro" charged down the slope after crows, which tantalized him and drifted lazily out of his reach, and so wasted his forces that he w^as obliged to abandon the expedition. Las Cruces was 14,150 feet up. The climb now began on foot, in a soft black sand. One of the leading difficulties of the climb is said to arise from, the exceeding thinness of the air, which makes breathing difficult. I cannot say that I discriminated be tween this and the shortness of breath due to the natural fatigue. POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 181 Isolated pinnacles of snow stood up like monuments in the black sand, as precursors of the permanent snow line. The cool snow-line was a luxury for the first few moments. We sat down and lunched by it, and from there took our last views backward. Cumulus clouds presently filled up the valley with a symmetrical arrange ment like pavement. Such bits as appeared through fur tive openings recalled the charming lines of Holmes's, in which a spirit, " homesick in heaven," looks back on the earth it has left : " To catch perchance some flashing glimpse of green, Or breathe some wild-wood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl." Up to this point — a little higher, let us say — the effort is rewarded. A view of " the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof " has been had which could not be got elsewhere. But above this it has little more reward than that of being able to boast of it to your friends. A few steps in the snow, and imperfectly protected feet were sodden, numb with cold, and not to be dried again till the final descent. There was a painful slipping and falling in the snow, and blood - marks were left by ungloved hands. The grade is excessive, the top invisible. Who can estimate when he shall attain it? The prospect con sists of jagged snow-pinnacles without cessation, an end less staircase of them reaching up into the sky. Some times, in the sun, all the pinnacles glitter; again, thick fogs, like a gray smoke, gather round. There is no more casting yourself down now in warm scorias and sand. If you sit you are chilled. Yet rest you must continually. Every step is a calculation and an achievement. You calculate that you will allow yourself a rest after ten, after twenty more. The snow is not dangerous; there 182 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. are no crevasses to fall into, as in the Alps; it is only monotonous and fatiguing. I seem to have gone on for an hour after farther endurance was intolerable. The guides encourage you — when they find that you really mean to go up — with the adjuration, "Poco d poco" (lit tle by little) ; so that we paraphrased our mountain as " Poco-a-poco-catepetl." Finally, with sighs and groans of labored effort, instead of the lightness with which one might be expected to sa lute a point of so extreme high heaven, we staggered over the edge of the crater at about two o'clock in the after noon. I had doubted at one time whether the English landed proprietor would be able to reach it. He had grown purple in the face. Perhaps I had even hoped that he might need a friendl}7 arm to assist him down again on the instant; but he said, with the true British tenacity, " Oh, bless you, I am going to the top, yon know." And so he did. IV. It was a supreme moment. One seemed very near to eternity. It seemed easy to topple through the ice mina rets guarding the brink, and down into the terrific chasm. There is no comfort at the top when reached. It is frigidly cold. None of the expected heat comes up from the interior. An elemental war rages around, and it is no place for human beings. There is a kind of fearful exaltation. A slope of black sand descends some fifty feet to an inner edge, broken by rocks of porphyry and flint, which the imagination tortures into fantastic shapes. Hence a sheer precipice drops two thousand feet, a vast ellipse in plan. There was snow in the bottom of the crater. Jets of steam spouted from ten sulfataras, or POPOCATEPETL ASCENDED. 1S3 sources, from which the native sulphur is extracted. The hands who work there are said to live in the shelter of caves, and remain for a month at a time without exit. They are lowered down by windlass, on a primitive con trivance they call a cdballo de minas — horse of the mines. The sulphur is hoisted in bags and slid down a long groove in the snow to the neighborhood of the rancho. It takes the palm in purity over all sulphurs in the world. A company has been formed, it is said, for the purpose of working the deposits more effectually and utilizing the steam-power in the bottom for improved hoisting machinery. The men were on strike at the time, as it happened, and the windlass was not in place, and was not adjusted. If it had been, and we had descended, we might have found the warmth for which we were well-nigh perish ing. Snow began to drive from the heavy cloud-banks. When it snows the crater within is darkened, roarings are said to be heard, and strange -colored globules and flames play above the sulfataras. "What if there should be an eruption?" suggested the alarmist of the party, as we began to beat our retreat from the untenable position. "There has not been an eruption for at least seven thousand years," said the scientific member, with con tempt. " A certain kind of lignite in the bottom, re quiring that length of time to form, establishes it." "So much the more reason, then," said the alarmist: " it is high time there was another." With that we slipped and floundered down the snow- mountain with the same celerity with which Vesuvius is descended. We crossed again the black volcanic fields, mounted our horses, and spent once more the night at Tlamaca, having learned by experience how to make it 184 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. slightly more comfortable than the other. The next day we rode back to Amecameca. When Senor Llandesio, Professor of the Fine Arts at Mexico, made this ascent, as he did in 1866, he says that he found two attempts necessary before he succeeded. I have the pamphlet in which he describes it. " The guide and peon whispered together continually," he says, " which made me think they were going to play us some trick." Sure enough, they did. After a good way up they represented that it was perilous, impossible, to go farther. He descended, and had taken his seat in the diligencia to return to Mexico, when he met another party, with more honest guides, and, turning back with them, this time succeeded. He describes a young man so fatigued on the mountain that he desired, with tears in his eyes, to be left to die. Another succumbed owing to the singu lar cause, that he had fancied that ardent spirits would have no effect in the peculiarly attenuated atmosphere, and had emptied nearly a whole bottle of brandy. Senor Llandesio was told by the Indians that they be lieved in a genius of the mountain, whom they called Cnantelpostle. He was a queer little man, who dwelt about the Pico del Fraile, helped the workmen at their labors when in a good humor, and embarrassed them as much as possible when in a bad. They said, also, that presents were offered by some to propitiate the volcano, for the purpose of obtaining rain, and the like. These were buried in the sand, and the places marked by a flat stone. This practice may account for some of the discov eries of Charnay, who unearthed about the foot of the mountain much interesting pottery. A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 185 XV. A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, AT CUAUTLA-MORELOS. When I saw Amecameca again it was to pass it on board a gala train going down to celebrate the completion of the Morelos railway to Cuautla, in Tierra Caliente. The Morelos railway is a native Mexican work. It was built under the auspices of Delfin Sanchez, a son-in-law of Pres ident Juarez, was rushed forward with great expedition, in order to secure valuable premiums, added to the regu lar subsidy by Government, and there was much defective work in its construction. It is laid to the narrow gauge, and projected ultimately to reach Acapulco, but this lat ter need hardly be looked for in any predi cable time. At present it reaches about seventy-five miles — to Cuautla- Morelos, capital of the state of Morelos. All official and distinguished Mexico was aboard that day — the President, the justices of the Supreme Court, generals, senators, litterateurs, and, greatest of all, Porfi rio Diaz. " Porfirio " wore a felt hat with a tall top, and his manner with his friends was easy and unpretentious. Had the accident of a week later happened that day in stead, the Republic of Mexico would have needed to be reconstructed from the bottom upward. A locomotive exploradora, a look-out engine, went on ahead of us to see that all was safe. Every little place had its music and firing of crackers, and the local detach- 186 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. ¦*-'V*~'^.± .--.l^_ \ .-;__ ' .^-r.i *- '"Si- _.- IN TIERRA CALIENTE. A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 187 ment of Rurales reined up at the station. At Ameca meca there were as many as fifty of the latter, with drawn swords, all on white horses, which the firing made plunge with great spirit. At Ozumba was a battalion of mounted riflemen, under command of a handsome young officer in an eye-glass, who might have come fresh from the mili tary school of Saint Cyr. The Indian populations, who could never have seen the locomotive before, maintained nevertheless, as their way is, a certain stoicism. There were no wild manifestations of surprise, no shouts ; they even fired off their crackers with a serious air. The line is a congeries of curves without end, to over come the three-quarters of a mile grade perpendicular from Amecameca to Cuautla. Cuautla has seven thou sand people. For the ten years, up to this time, there had not been even diligence communication with it, and the railway was an event indeed. The enterprise was car ried through chiefly by the exertions of a Senor Mendoza Cortina, who has great sugar estates in the neighborhood. The streets were decorated with triumphal arches, and borders of tall banana-plants. They were shabby, and the place more squalid than is the rule in the temperate climates above. The Indians had an apathetic look. Few young and interesting faces were seen among them, but an extraordinary number of hags. I found in use some very pretty pottery, which I was told was made at Cuernavaca, forty miles away. Simple bits of stone and shell were impasted in the common earthenware with an effect like that of old Roman mosaic. There was a dis tinctly Indian Christ in the parish church. In the plaza in front stands a great tree, somehow connected with a noche triste of the patriot Morelos. Like Cortez at Mexico, he was forced to retreat one night in 1812, after a gallant resistance of sixty-two days to a siege by the Spaniards. 188 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. II. The extremely civilized company pouring down to this shabby little place had a grand banquet in an old con vent now adapted to the uses of a railway station, and plentiful speech-making afterward. There were a num ber of merry young journalists of the party, and they comported themselves as merry young journalists are apt to. They rapped on the table and called " otro !" " otro !" — another ! — with pretended enthusiasm, even after the dullest speeches. It seemed typical of some thing curiously illogical in the Mexican mind that in fes toons about the banqueting hall were set impartially the names of the presidents and other great men of the past, from Iturbide down to Manuel Gonzales. Iturbide ad joined Bravo and Guerrero, by whom he was shot as a usurper and enemy of the public peace ; and Lerdo Por firio Diaz, .by whom he was ousted as traitor and tyrant. In the same way these personages, alternately one anoth er's Caesars and Brutuses, are honored impartially in the series of portraits in the long gallery of the National Palace. There was naturally prominent here the portrait of the Padre Morelos, with the usual handkerchief around his head, and bold air of bandit chief. It is curious that priests should have taken such a share in the early in surrection. They recall those warrior ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages, who used to put on quite as often the secu lar as the spiritual armor. Probabby the oppressions of the Spaniards were often too intolerable even for ecclesi astical endurance. Morelos, strangely enough, when the revolt broke out, was curate under Hidalgo at Valladolid, in Michoacan, and followed him to the field. He came, A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 139 in his turn, to be generalissimo of the Mexican forces, and to have the name of Valladolid changed to Morelia in his honor. He had undoubtedly the military gift. His defence of Cuautla is considered one of the most glorious deeds of Mexican history. It was the third in the trio of priests, Matamoros, his intimate and lieuten ant, who broke the siege with a hundred horse and aided his retreat when it finally became necessary. Matamoros in due course was taken and shot, at Valla dolid, by no other than Iturbide, the future liberator. Iturbide, then in the Spanish forces, "had signalized himself," to quote our history again, "by his repeated victories over the insurgents, and the excessive cruelty of which he made use on frequent occasions." He routed Matamoros at Puruapan, took him prisoner, and put him to death, as has been said. To repay this, Morelos butch ered two hundred Spanish prisoners in cold blood. So the strife of incarnate cruelty went on. Morelos himself was made prisoner by an act of treachery, and shot, after the customary fate of Mexican leaders, at San Cristobal Ecatapec, at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st of December, 1815. Iturbide's account, in his minutes, of the insurgent chiefs whom he was so active in exterminating is very far from flattering. And here they are all apotheosized together. Verily it seems as if some high court of in quiry and review should be constituted for apportioning out a little the relative merits and defects of the past. The Mexican national anthem, a stirring and martial air, in vokes among other things the sacred memory of Iturbide. But if Iturbide really deserved to be shot on setting foot on shore after his banishment, it seems much as if Amer icans should invoke the sacred name of Benedict Arnold. Arnold, too, rendered excellent services to his country. 190 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. Nobody was a braver or better soldier than he before he attempted to betray it to the British. Well, I suppose the Mexicans understand it, but I don't. Are they content with such a mixed ideal of good ? Can a person have been such a patriot at one time that no subsequent crimes can weigh against him ? One very simple lesson from it all would seem to be a less impa tience with the ruling powers, on the one hand, and much less haste with powder and shot, on the other. III. I stayed a couple of days at Cuautla, to visit the sugar haciendas. The sugar product is large, and the district one of the most convenient sources of supply for central Mexico. A week afterward the newly inaugurated road was the scene of an accident unequalled, I think, in the annals of railway horrors. Five hundred lives were lost, in a little barranca, an insecure bridge over which had been washed out by the rain. A regiment in garrison at Cuautla was ordered to Mexico, and started in a train of open " flat " cars, there not having been passenger cars suf ficient for the purpose. On other flat cars was a freight of barrels of aguardiente. The start was made in the af ternoon. There was delay on the track. The shower came on, the night fell, and the men, pelted by the storm, without protection, broke open the aguardiente, and drank their fill. Some say that the engineer reported the road unsafe, but was forced by an exasperated officer to go on with a pistol at his head. They came to the broken bridge, and the train went through. The soldiers who were not mangled and incapacitated outright — drunk, and crazed with excitement — stabbed and shot one another. The barrels of aguardiente burst and took fire ; the car- A BANQUET, AND A TRAGEDY, ETC. 191 tridges in the belts exploded ; the swollen torrent claimed its own ; and the fury of a tropical storm, in a night as black as Erebus, beat down upon the writhing mass of horror. It was at this price that the extra subventions for speedy completion of the work were earned. A white washing report was made afterward, I believe, but the Government caused the road to be put in order before it was again opened ; and the case may serve as a needed lesson to all railway builders in Mexico. 192 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. XVI. SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. I. The impressions of the first journey upward from the coast are too vague to satisfy, yet it is better to push on to the capital and not take off the edge of the novelty by dallying on the way. The intervening places are returned to afterward. How different the feeling now ! The things that had seemed so formidable are harmless enough. You take now with gusto the pulque, handed up at Apam. You understand the motley figures, the interiors, the flavors of the strange fruits and cakes, the proper expressions to use, and prices to pay. The helpless feeling of standing in need of continual directions is got rid of, and travel has become a matter of confidence and pleasure. Our Mexicans of the lower class are not over- quick in the matter of directions, to tell the truth. I recollect, as an example, asking a small shop-keeper, one day, the way to a neighboring street. "There it is," he said; "but" (insisting, in a flustered way, on being puzzled by my accent, though he had com prehended what I meant) "no hablamos Americano aqui" — " We don't speak American here." I found a lodging at a tienda at San Juan Teotihuacan, the ancient city of the dead. The owner had before en tertained Americans. He had a dog to which he had SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 193 given, in pleasant recollection of one of them, as he said, the remarkable name of " Lovis," which afterward proved to be "Lewis." Adjoining was a barracks of Rurales, whose bugles sounded a cheerful reveille in the morning. The central plaza is perhaps three miles from the station. On the way you cross a handsome stone bridge built by Maximilian. The river San Juan had vanished from under it and left a mere gulch, as is the way with most of the streams in the dry season. The inhabitants have their houses, gardens, and all, often above the cement floors left by the extinct race, and the edges of these floors crop out beside the road, worn down through them. Nobody has framed a satis factory theory of the place, but it is supposed to have been a great pantheon, or burial-place, for the dead of importance. Maximilian encouraged excavations, and a great Egyptian - looking head, unearthed in his time, is seen. Charnay dug there later, and so did my friend of the newspaper expedition. Probably a commission ought to be issued by the Government for tunnelling, without impairing their form, the two pyramids, to ascertain if there be not something of importance within. It is at present both conservative and apathetic in such matters. The larger pyramid, that of the Sun, has an excellent zig zag plane approaching its summit. A long road, called the " Street of the Dead," strewn on both sides with heaps of weather-worn stones, indicating constructions, extends from it to that of the Moon. Both are now grown with scrubby nopals and pepper-trees. A couple of children ran out from a cottage at the foot of the Pyramid of the Sun, to sell " caritas," the little antiquities, the day I approached to climb it. From the top you see other villages, as San Francisco, Santa Maria Cuatlau, San Martin. The inhabitants of San Francisco 9 194 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. have erected a cross here, where an idol, with a bur nished shield, once stood to catch the first rays of the rising sun, and come in procession each year, on the 3d of May, to conduct a religions ceremonial and drape it with flowers. The white summit of Popocatepetl barely shows itself above the intervening range of the Rio Frio. The officiators at the pagan altar may have hailed it spar kling afar, like another sacrificial fire. The country round about is garden -like, abounding in maize and maguey, sheep and cattle. I observed some large straw- ricks, fashioned by leisurely employes, in the prevailing taste for adornment, into the form of houses, with a figure of a saint chopped out in bass-relief. It was a calm, lovely Sunday. A fresh breeze played, though the sun was warm ; cumulus clouds piled themselves up magnificent ly; and the tinkle of the church-bells came up from the surrounding villages. The clouds — "luminous Andes of the air," as a poet has aptly called them — are of especial impressiveness, I think, above this great plain. I noted them again with great pleasure at Huamantla, in the state of Tlaxcala. It is a shabby place of unpainted adobe, out of which rise the fine domes and belfries of a dozen churches, as if they were enclosed in a brick-yard. Thither Santa Anna retired for his last futile resistance, after the Americans under Scott had taken the capital; and there, according to the school history, " the terrible Amerian guerilla, Walker, was killed in personal combat by an intrepid Mexican of ficer, Enlalio Villasenor." Near by is Malinche, a-inoun- tain dubbed with a nickname given by the Aztecs to Cortez, which is a feature of all this part of the country. It is not of great height, but of peculiar, volcanic shape. It is a long slope, made up of knobs and jags, reaching to a central point as sharp as an arrow-head. Peons are SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 195 ploughing, with oxen and the primitive wooden plough, in fertile ground around its base, and its dark mass is thrown out boldly against dazzling banks of cloud. II. At Orizaba you are down in the tropics again, but not tropics of too oppressive a kind. A young friend from Mexico was making a visit there in a family to which I was admitted, and I was glad to see something of the place in a domestic way. It has, say, fifteen thousand inhabitants. The Alameda, with its two fountains, stone seats, orange-trees, and other shrubberies, is very charm ing; so is the little Zocalo, by the Cathedral. There grows in the gardens here the splendid tulipan, a shrub in size like the oleander, the large flowers of which glow from a distance like scarlet lanterns. Tall bananas bend over the neatly whitened houses. My Hotel de Diligen- cias was white and attractive. Next to it a torrent tum bled down a wild little gorge, amid a growth of bananas, and, passing under a bridge, turned flouring and paper mills. I had this under my eyes from my window; and I had also an expanse of red-tiled roofs, gray belfries and domes, and the bold hill of El Borrego beyond. The city is enclosed by a rim of hills. It was now the season when the rains were growing frequent ; and a humid atmos phere, and wet clouds, dragging low and occasionally dropping their contents, kept the vegetation of a fresh, vivid green. At the hotel table d'hdte a couple of young men of very Indian physiognomy — lawyers, I should judge, by profession — talked pantheism and such-like subjects in the tone of Victor Hugo's students. A lady whose hus band was a general officer told me that she had been in 196 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. THE HILL OF EL B0RRE60, AT ORIZABA. the United States — at New Orleans — accounting thus for a little knowledge of English. That meant that she had shared her husband's exile there. One comes to under stand and smile at it after a while. "Tamo el rumbo d la costa, y salio de la Republica, embarcandose para Or leans" — "He took the road to the coast and sallied from the Republic, embarking himself for New Orleans" — has passed almost into a formula in the accounts of public men, New Orleans having always been a notable place of temporary refuge and plotting for their return. SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 197 There was a gay party, of station, who had come down to pasear /& little, in a private car, and were taking back with them a great supply of the flowers and fruits of the tropics. Shall I reluctantly admit that they all ate with their knives, and with the sharp edge foremost? Our waiter gave us, smilingly, soup without a spoon, this and that other dish without a fork, and hastened off for long absences; or he would apathetically say, "No hay"— "There is none" — of a dish, but would bring it if it were insisted on with decision. A fellow-guest informed me at dessert that he had been in New York, and that the American fruits and dulces — sweets — were all alike and insipid. This shows that there is a natural equilibrium in things, for it is precisely the complaint that visitors from the North first make of those of the tropics. My acquaintances in the place were the family of the Licenciado — let us say — Herrera y Arroyo. The names of both masculine and feminine progenitors are thus usually linked together by the "y" — and. They told me that there was very little formal entertaining done. They occupied themselves with embroidery, studying English, and domestic matters. Their house was roomy, but had little furniture. The rocking-chair can never again be called a peculiarly Yankee feature by anybody who has seen it in the lower latitudes. The typical Mex ican parlor, or living-room, has, like the one here, a mat spread down in the centre, on a brick floor, and two cane rocking-chairs on one side and two on the other, in which the inmates spend much of their time. We had a kind of picnic one day to the Barrio Nuevo, a very pretty coffee-and-milk-like cascade of the Rio Ori zaba. Boys ran out from thatched cottages in the edge of town to pick flowers and offer them to the seEoritas, expecting to be rewarded, of course, with a little consid- 198 'OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PRO VINCES. eration. There is another cascade, even prettier — the Rincon Grande. f~ The next day we went to the sugar ingenio of Jalapilla. A fine wide avenue of trees stretched up to it. The lo custs were singing in them. The grass and trees were exquisitely green. The snow-peak of Orizaba, hidden at the town itself, here rises above intervening hills. There were arcades, and monumental gateways, and a massive aqueduct on arches, which brings the water from a fine torrent. In the sunless green archways of the old aque duct the senoritas found with rapture specimens of rare and delicate ferns growing. Ox-wains brought the cane to the mills. We watched it through the processes of crush ing in the machinery, and tasted the pleasant sap when first expressed, and later at some of the stages of boiling down. Aguardiente is also made on a large scale. The peasants along the road sell you a draught of it in its unfermented state, with tamales. The residence attached is a large, two-story white house, with a high iron gate between white posts. It was loaned to Maximilian as a country retreat by the conservative owners at one time. At present it is shabby and unfurnished, but a single room being occupied by the proprietor, who has the rough-and-ready tastes of a ranchero, and little taste for display. III. At one of the theatres at this time was playing, by a Zarazuela, or "variety" company, "La Torre de Neslo 6 Margarita de Borgogna ;" at the other, by a juvenile company, " La Fille de Madame Angot." Whoever would thoroughly enjoy Mexico must have the taste for old architecture. There is no end to it, and it is often the only resource. It is of that fantastic ro- SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 199 coco into which the Renaissance fell, in the luxury and florid invention of its later stages; but even where least defensible, from the point of view of logic and fitness, it is redeemed now by its mouldering, its time-stains, and superposed layers of half- obliterated colors. Little can be said, except in this way, for the carvings and various detail, but the masses are invariably of a grand and noble simplicity. The material is generally rubble-stone and cement, and cannot be very expensive. The principal lines of the style are horizontal. The dome, semi-circular in shape, plays a great part in it. I have counted not less than eight, like those of St. Mark's, at Venice, on a single church. The dome is built, if I mistake not, of rubble and cement also, on a centring of regular masonry, perhaps even of wood. It is a reminiscence of the Moors. These edifices were put up three hundred years ago, by builders in the flush of the Byzantine influence, which radiated from Granada, then lately' conquered. I know of no school in which the niggling, petty, and expensive character of our own efforts in this line could be bet ter corrected. Vamos ! Will not some of our leisurely young architects with a taste for the picturesque travel here, with their sketch-books, and bring us back plans and suggestions from this impressive work, for use among ourselves? Some of the old churches take an added interest from their present fate. It would have been monotonous to have them all alike in full ceremonial, and now they are pathetic. I used to linger to hear the buglers practise in the cloistered church of Carmen, used as a barracks. It is stripped of everything, the pavement broken, the walls full of bullet-holes, and painted with the names of detach ments, as 18° de Infanteria, 7° Gompana de Grenaderos, which have occupied it. In the smoke-stains, the damp, 200 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. to which patches of gilding still adhere, and the vestiges of scaling fresco, dim, mysterious visions are made out. The bare chancel dais, still surviving, gives to the inte rior the aspect of some noble throne-room. In our own country such a monument would be inestimably prized, and would become a pilgrimage-place from far and near; but here it is simply one of a great number. In the little public plaza outside a few convicts were repairing the paths. A pair of them would bring some dirt, about an ordinary wheelbarrow full, on a stretcher, dump it in a leisurely way, and go back for more, all with plentiful deliberation. They might have been laborers, engaged by the city aldermen, on a New York boulevard. A couple of soldiers with muskets lounged on the stone benches to guard them as they worked. The punishment of the prisoners could hardly have been in what they did, but principally in the exposure — unless, indeed, they were taken from a different part of the country. I wondered if their friends came here sometimes and watched them; and what a pain it must have been for the sensitive to work thus, hedged round by an invulnerable restraint and infamy, in sight of the homes where they had lived and all the ordinary avocations of life in which they had engaged. An important cotton-factory at Orizaba has a fine ar chitectural gateway, and a statue of the founder, Manuel Escandon (1807 to 1862), in the court, after the practice heretofore adverted to. Paper is also made here. A se ries of fines is prescribed, in printed rules, for the hands coming late in the morning and falling into other misde meanors. The sum of these makes up a fund for chari table use among themselves. A savings-bank department is also conducted for the benefit of the operatives. To encourage savings an extra liberal interest is paid when SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 201 the amonnt on deposit has reached fifty dollars. To avoid in part the interruption of the frequent church holidays, a dispensation had been obtained from the ec clesiastical authorities, allowing work to go on, on most of them, as usual. IV From Orizaba the next stage was to Cordoba. Cor doba is in the full tropics, and there I first made acquaint ance with the coffee culture, the leading industry of the place. The plant is less striking in aspect than I had expected. It is a bush, with small, dark, glossy leaves, its stem never over six or seven inches in diameter, even at an age of fifty years. It is twelve feet high at most, but usually topped and kept lower for greater conven ience in harvesting the product. It bears a little axillary white flower, fragrant like jasmine, and the green berries at the same time. A coffee plantation has not the breadth of the platanaras, the fields of towering bananas ; but it needs shade, and large oaks are left distributed through it which accomplish this purpose. If left to the sun wholly it yields large crops at first, then dies. The cof fee plant should bear after the fourth or fifth year, and yield a half-pound yearly for fifty or sixty years. It should have cost, up to the time of beginning to bear, about twenty-five cents. This is supposing a high culti vation. By the more shiftless method commonly found in use here it costs but half as much, but, on the other hand, yields no more than three ounces on an average. Some few Americans, and other foreigners, have estab lished themselves at Cordoba, and lead a dreamy existence in the shade. At one time it was the scene of an exten sive coffee-planting by ex-Confederate generals, but these attempts were not successful. I was fortunate enough 9* 202 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. to be conducted about by an old gentleman, of German birth, who had lived here forty years. He had the tastes of a naturalist and farmer, and the existence pleased him. He took in his hand a machete from the wall, and we set forth for a walk, with much improving discourse by the way, in the fields and plantations. The machete, a long half cleaver, half sword, opens you a path through a thick et, cuts you a coffee or an orange stick, lops an orchid from its high perch on the rugged tree-bark, or brings down a tall banana, and splits open its covering to serve as a protection to a budget of botanical specimens. Some small grandchildren of the house begged to accompany ns. They had hardy, out-of-door habits, and ran by our sides with merry clamor, finding a hundred things to interest them along the way. My genial guide had planted coffee himself. Much money has been lost at it, it seems, and it cannot be very profitable except under economical processes and an improved market. When transportation becomes cheap er we shall have introduced into the United States from Mexico also many choice fruits, notably the fine Ma nilla mango, not now known. The fruits of the country grow on you with experience. To my taste the juicy mango, which at its best combines something of the mel on, pine-apple, peach, and pear, is the most delicious of them all. Other fruits are the chirimoya, guava, mame, granadita (or pomegranate), zapote, chazapote, tuna, agua- cate, and many more, the distinctive peculiarities of which I could not describe in a week. The best soil for the coffee is that of virgin slopes, ca pable of being well manured. It should be manured once in two years. The planting takes place in the rainy season, and the principal harvest is in November and December. Women and children cut off the berries, SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 203 which are then dried five or six weeks, and barked ; or are barked earlier by a machine. The chief labor con sists in destroying the weeds, which must be done from two to six times a year. The plants are set in squares, at a distance of about seven feet apart. The trees rec ommended for shade are the fresno, or ash, cedro (cedar), the huisache, aguacate, maxcatle, cajiniquil, and tepehuaje, the characteristics of which I could hardly explain, more than those of the fruits, except that they are generally dark and glossy-leaved, and many of them as large as our elms. There is a theory, too, in favor of shading by ba nanas, and plantations are found where the two grow together. But a native proprietor with whom I talked objects to this. " The platano is a selfish and grasping plant," he says, indignantly. "It draws twice and thrice its propor tionate amount of nourishment from the soil. Is it not beaten down, too, in every storm ? And the ravaging hedgehog comes in search of it, and, while he is about it, destroys the coffee as well. No, indeed, no combina tion of platano and coffee for me !" The poor platano ! However, it can stand abuse. How quickly it grows! Its great leaves, more or less tattered by friction, flap and rustle above your head like banners and sails as you walk about in the tropical plantation. It is called the " bread of the tropics." An acre of land will produce enough of it to support fifty people, whereas an acre in wheat will support only two. If the tropics had had a good deal harder time in getting their bread, by-the-way, they would not have been in so down-trodden and slipshod a condition. I will not say that we had the better coffee at our hotel for being in its own country. It is the old story of " shoe maker's children " again, I suppose. On the contrary, I 204 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. recollect it as especially poor. The hotel — possibly it has improved by this time — was wretchedly kept and served. They gave us half a dozen kinds of meat in succession, without ever a vegetable, in such a luxuriance of them. The waiters were sunk in apathy, the management even more so. They seem often to say to you, with an ill- concealed aversion, at a Mexican hotel, "If yon will stay, if you will insist on bringing your traps in, we will do what we can for you, but we are not at all anxious for it." Pack-mules were kept in the court, and under a clois ter at one side women and girls were stripping tobacco. Your room, at a provincial hotel, opens upon a gallery in which mocking-birds are hung in wooden cages — always one at least. It is the practice of the Mexican mocking bird to sleep continuously throughout the day, so as to be in health and spirits for the exercise of the night. He begins at midnight, and continues his dulcet ingenuity of torture till daybreak. Naturalists have had much to say of the mocking-bird, comparing him to a whole forest full of songsters, and the like. It may be unwise to set up in opposition to so much praise, but there are times when a planing-mill in the vicinity, or a whole foundery full of trip-hammers, would be a blessing and relief in com parison. Should the mocking-bird have injudiciously impaired his strength during the day, so as to allow of a brief respite, the interval is filled in by the shrill, quavering whistles of the street watchmen, who blow to each other every quarter of an hour during the night, to show that they are awake and vigilant. You leave Cordoba at 4.30 in the morning; that is, if you go by the up-train. I was awakened an hour too soon at my hotel, which, having to call me, wanted it over as soon as possible. I had leisure while waiting to collect SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 205 the views of one of these watchmen. He showed me the Remington rifle with which he was armed. He said that he went on dutj' at 7 p.m. and finished at 5.30 a.m., and received three and a half reals — forty-two cents — a day, which he did not think enough. There are no cabs at Cordoba. It is a tram-car, making a total of two trips a day, that takes you, bag and baggage, two dark miles or so to the station. But I did not leave before first visiting the Indian village of Amatlan. I do not insist that erudition of incalculable value has been brought to light in these travels, but they were a succession of excursions into the actual heart of things. I was pleased when I could find something unmodified by the innovations of railway travel, and witness the familiar, every -day life of the people. Perhaps we never thoroughly understand any body until we learn his routine. A stimulus to what we usually neglect, and take as a matter of course, is aroused abroad. Law-making, education, buying and selling, eat ing and drinking, marriage, and the burial of the dead, all yield entertainment. The traveller who spreads before us only the outre and startling that he has seen may still leave ns very much in the dark about where he has been. In Mexico, however, almost everything is outre. To Amatlan and back is a comfortable day's excursion. We found saddle-horses for hire, and a young Indian as a guide, and set off. My companion on this excursion was a commercial traveller, a sprightly young American of Spanish origin. Commercial traveller in machetes and other cutlery : such was his profession. The machetes were of American make. I have one hanging in my room 206 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. at this writing which came from Water Street, in New York. This agent had taken his last order (having can vassed the little store-keepers in the plaza under my own view, as if they had been those of Kalamazoo, Aurora, or Freeport), and was awaiting the sailing of his steamer from Vera Cruz. Having nothing more to do, he entered into the examination of manners and customs for their own sake with a certain zest, though perhaps compre hending for the first time that such things could be worth anybody's notice. Amatlan is the richest Indian village in — well, one of the richest of Indian villages. Its plantations of pine-ap ples are the finest in the state of Vera Cruz, to which all this territory from Orizaba down belongs, Orizaba being its capital. The pines grow about sixteen inches in -height, and should last ten years. They are set in narrow lines, and the general aspect of the field from a little distance is that of large sedge-grass. You will buy three of them sometimes for a tlaco, one cent and a half. We met na tives driving donkey -loads of them to market. There were some fields of tobacco, of fine quality, iff flower. The Peak of Orizaba is magnificently seen from all this district. It is lovelier and bolder than at first upon famil iar acquaintance. Church, the painter, finds the prefer able point of view farther up the railroad, using the wild gorges of Fortiii as a foreground. The village proved to be composed chiefly of wooden and cane huts, shingled or thatched, and the population to be exclusively Indian. They do not wish any others to join them. They display everywhere the same clannish disposition. If persons of European origin who might come to remain could not be got rid of by churlishness, it is thought that severer means would be resorted to. The Indian race, as a rule, is patient and untiring in SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 207 certain minor directions. They make long, swift jour neys, for instance, acting as beasts of burden or messen gers, so that, seeing their performances, the words of Buf- fon come, forcibly to mind : " The civilized man know's not half his powers." But in the greater concerns of life, those requiring forethought for a permanent future, they are very improvident. Perhaps, however, those of Amat lan differ from others, or perhaps the general reputation may not be wholly deserved, for the Cordobans tell you that Amatlan is even richer than Cordoba. There are said to be a number of native residents worth from $50,000 to $80,000 each. They buy land, aud bury their surplus cash in the ground. It may well enough be that the lack of savings-banks, or any more secure place of deposit for money than the ground, has something to do with the improvidence complained of. The alcalde, the chief of them, was estimated as worth a million, though this I should very much doubt. He had no large ways of using his wealth, but was said to incline to ava rice and delight in simply piling it up. There was a project at one time to build a tram-road hence to Cor doba, the capital to be supplied in part by the Indians, but it fell through. Some of the well-to-do send their sons to good schools, and even to Mexico, to take the degree of licentiate. These favored scions, on their re turn, must put on the usual dress, and live in no way differently from the rest. The daughters, on the other hand, are never educated, but set, without exception, to rolling tortillas and the other domestic drudgery. VI. We dined at an open-air shanty posada, with dogs and pigs running freely about under our feet. Coffee, with- 20* OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. out milk, sugar, and pine-apples were all supplied by the fields about. Some few spectators were interested, but not very much, in a slight sketch I made of their build ings and costume. My commercial traveller, by way of arousing greater enthusiasm in this, represented that it was to be " put in a machine " afterward, and showed, by a dexterous chuckle and twist of the thumb, how it would then be so improved that yon would never know it. But even this stirred them only indifferently. We visited the alcalde in his quarters. He was bristly-haired, clad in cotton shirt and drawers, and bare legged, like the rest. Official business for the day was over, but he showed us the cell in which on occasion he locked up evil-doers. He was said to administer justice impartially to the rich and poor alike, and with a natural good-sense. But for occasional perversions of justice ef fected by a Spanish secretary he was obliged to employ, he himself being illiterate, it was thought that his court averaged well with the more pretentious tribunals of the country. We rode back by a different way, through a large, cool wood. It abounded in interesting orchids, and there was an undergrowth of coffee run wild, the glossy green of its leaves as shining as if just wet by rain. There was not that excessive tangle and luxuriance supposed to be characteristic of the tropics ; our own woods are quite as rampant. All that is found, you learn, in Tehuantepec, for instance, and Central America. There tree-growths seize upon a dwelling, crunch its bones, as it were, and bear up part of the walls into the air; and it is vegetable more than animal life that is feared. We forded three pretty brooks, and came to an upland where cows were pastur ing, and the steeples of Cordoba were again in sight. Our young guide lassoed a cow, led her to a shed where SAN JUAN, ORIZABA, AND CORDOBA REVISITED. 209 tobacco was drying, and offered us the refreshment of a draught of new milk. Being asked if this were quite regular and correct, he answered that the cows were there at pasturage in charge of his uncle. I trust that this was so. 210 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. XVII. PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. You turn off from the junction of Apizaco, on the Vera Crnz railway, to go to the large, fine city of Puebla. It is the capital of the state of the same name, and has a population of about seventy-seven thousand. Many pros perous fdbricas (factories) are seen along the fertile val ley of approach ; then the forts, attacked and defended on the great Cinco de Mayo, appear on the hills, looking down, like Mont Valerien and Charenton above Paris. Certainly everything out of Mexico is not Cuatitlan. Puebla is very clean, well paved, and well drained. The streets are not too wide, as many of them are at the capi tal. I thought our hotel, De Diligencias, which was very well kept, by a Frenchman, much better than the Itur bide. It had been a palace in its day, and had traces yet of armorial sculptures. Our rooms opened upon a wide upper colonnade, where the table was spread. It was full of flowers, which shut out whatever might have been disagreeable to the eye below. I am bound to admit that the remorseless mocking-bird sang all night among them. I have mentioned heretofore the tiled front of a shop, " La Ciudad de Mexico." A picturesque mosaic-work in tiles of earthenware and china upon a ground of blood- red stone abounds. Sometimes it is a diagonal pattern, covering a whole surface ; again only a broad wainscot or PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 211 frieze. Plaques, representing saints, which yon 'take at first for hand-bills, are let into walls. These tiles are made at Puebla, where there are as many as ten fdbricas of them, the best in the country. I visited one of these, found the manufacture cheap, and brought away some specimens. The workmanship is rude and hasty, but the effect artistic and adapted to its purpose. The most lib eral example of their use, and one of the most charming interiors I have ever seen, was that of what is now the Casa de Dementes, or lunatic asylum for men, of the state of Puebla. It was formerly a convent of the nuns of Santa Rosa, and was decorated after their taste. En trance, vestibule, stairs, central court, and cloisters, with fountain in the centre ; balustrade, benches, tanks and bath-tubs, kitchen furnace, and numberless little garden courts, are all encrusted with quaint ceramics. It is like walking about in some magnified piece of jewelry. The blue-and-yellow fountain in its court is as Moorish as anything in Morocco. There are forty-two patients in this institution, with an attendant appointed to each ten. The rich among them pay $16 a month, the rest nothing. Another one, San Roque, contains thirty-two women, also maintained by the state. The general hospital, of San Pedro, another large ex-convent, with a nice garden, was clean, cool, and well ordered ; and — curious feature to note — departments for allopath and homoeopath arranged impartially side by side. These governments take, officially, no sides with either, but give them both a showing. The Cathedral at Puebla is equal in magnificence to that at Mexico. There is the usual Zocalo, full of charm ing plants, before it. The large theatre, "De Guerrero," entered by a passage from the portales, had but a scant audience on the evening of our attendance, but was itself 212 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. worthy of inspection. It had four tiers of boxes and a pit ; the decoration was in white and gold, upon a ground of blue-and-white wall-paper, the whole of a chaste and elegant effect. The peasant costumes of women in each of the provinces vary in colors and material, though the same general shapes are preserved. At Cordoba, white and striped cotton stuffs were in order ; at Mexico, Egyptian-looking blue-and-black woollen goods. Those in all this part of the country I thought particularly pleasing ; and the great market and gay Parian, or ba zaar, where they are principally displayed, were not soon exhausted as a spectacle. The men are usually bare legged, and in white cotton. In the warm part of the day they carry their bright-colored serapes folded over one shoulder, aud when it is cooler put them on, by sim ply inserting their heads through the slit. Now comes by a woman in white, with a red cap and girdle ; now two girls of fourteen, all in white, hurrying swiftly along under heavy burdens. Here are women in embroidered jackets, others in chemises, with profuse bands of colored beads, or rebosos of rayed stuff, like the Algerian burnous. Skirts are of white blanket material, with borders of blue, or blue with white, or yellow. The principal garment is a mere skirt of uncut goods, wrapped around the hips aud kept in place by a bright girdle. Above this is whatever fantastic waist one pleases, or a garment with an opening for the head, after the fashion of the serape. To all this is added a profu sion of necklaces of large beads, amber, blue, and green, and large silver ear-rings, or others of glass, in the Mex ican national colors, green, white, and red. There is a universal carrying of burdens. The men accommodate theirs in a large wooden cage divided into compartments. The women tie over their backs budgets done up in a PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 213 rug of coarse maguey fibre. Often they carry a child or an earthen jar in it; or, when full, pile a large green or red water-jar on the top. Affording so abundant material for the artist, they were excessively suspicious of any attempt to turn it to account. There were traditions among them that bad luck would be encountered should they allow pictures to be taken. It was to take away something from them selves, and they would be left incomplete — probably to waste and die. Nor could their costumes be bought from them except with great difficulty. Much as still remains, there has been a great change, and disappearance, since the close of Maximilian's empire, of local peculiarities in dress. There has been a disappearance, too, with the ad vent of machinery and imported notions, of many pretty hand-made articles that formerly adorned the markets. Among these were carvings in charcoal, once of a pecul iar excellence. Of those that remain still of great in terest are life-like puppets, in wax and wood, of figures of the country, costumed after their several types. On the evening of May 19th, as we sat at dinner in the hotel corridor, down came the rain in the court. In a few moments a row of long gargoyles were spouting streams which were white against the blackness, and crossed one another like a set display. "Va! for the rainy season !" said the host. It usually begins by the 15th. "Voild! ten months past in which we have had scarcely a drop !" As almost any desired climate can be had by varying more or less the altitude, the rainy season is of variable date in different parts of the country. At Mexico it is very much later. I did not find it, either here or elsewhere, so incommoding as might be fancied. It rains principal ly at night, and the succeeding day is bright and clear. 214 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. In Mexico, as in California, the rainy season means that in which rain falls about as with us, while the dry sea son is that in which there is none at all. II. Have any forgotten the tragic advent, and preliminary agitations, of the entry of Cortez into the sacred city of Cholula? He assembled the caciques and notables in the great square, and, at a given signal, turned his arms upon them and slew them, to the number of three thou sand. He had discovered an artful plot among them for the destruction of his army, and it was his aim in this way to strike such a terror into the country that he should have done with such things once for all. The god wor shipped at Cholula was a far milder one than the bloody war god at Mexico — the peaceful Quetzalcoatl, God of the Air. He instructed the people in agriculture and the arts. His reign was a golden age. Cotton grew already tinted with gorgeous dyes, and a single ear of maize was as much as a man could carry. To his honor the largest of all the teocallis and temples was erected. He was repre sented with painted shield, jewelled sceptre, and plumes of fire. Could Cortez have waited till now (such are the changes of time) he might have gone into Cholula from Puebla, to the foot of this very pyramid, in a beautiful horse-car. A tram-way, ultimately to be extended, and operated by steam, reached to this point, a distance of six miles, and our conveyance was a horse-car with a glass front (New York built) which I have never seen equalled elsewhere. The driver of it was a Tennessee negro, who had married an Indian maid and settled, much respected, in the country. He had formerly been body-servant of a Mexican general, had travelled with him in the United PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 215 States and Europe, and picked up several languages. He called upon us afterward at our hotel, to politely inquire our impressions of his tram-way. The principal features of the trip were exquisite views of Popocatepetl and Ixtacihuatl across yellow grain-fields; a dilapidated convent turned to an iron foundery ; an old aqueduct crossing the plain ; a Spanish bridge, sculpt ured with armorial bearings, across the river Atoyac ; and a fine grist-mill ; and farther on a cotton-mill, turned by the water-power of the same river. There has been a controversy as to whether the great mound was natural or artificial in origin. I do not see how there can be doubt about it now, for where numerous deep cuts have been made in it, for roads or cultivation, the artificial structure of adobe bricks is plainly visible. Such a place as it is to lie upon at ease and dream and go back to the traditions of the past ! You may cast yourself down under large trees growing on the now ragged slopes, or by the pilgrimage chapel on the crest, where the God of the Air once reared his grotesque bulk. There is a sculpt ured cross, dated 1666, at the edge of the terrace, and rose-bushes grow out of the pavement. I know of no prospect of fertile hill and dale, scattered with quaint vil lages, in any country that surpasses it. An American was there that day with the purpose of buying a haci enda, if he could find one suitable, and I for one thought there were many plans much less sensible. Cholula had four hundred towers in its pagan times, and it may have had round about it almost as many spires when the Christian domination succeeded. Let me recite the names of a few of the villages seen from the top of the great pyramid, all with their churches, by twos and threes, or. more: San Juan; San Andres; Santiago; Chicotengo; La Santissima; La Soledad ; San Rafael; 216 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. San Pablo Mexicalcingo ; San Diego ; La Madalena ; Santa Marta ; Santa Maria; San Isidoro ; San Juan Cal- vario; San Juan Tlanutla; San Mateo; San Miguelito (Little Saint Michael); Jesus; San Sebastian. One of the old churches lying deserted in the fields might be purchased, no doubt, and utilized for the basis of a picturesque manor-house. Suppose we should take yonder one, for instance, down by the Haciendita de Cruce Vivo — the Little Hacienda of the Living Cross '. A cloud is just now passing over, marking the place with a dark patch. A brook is leaping white through the meadow, trees stretch back from the walls, and the rest lying in strong light is divided hy patches of an ex quisite cultivation with the regularity of market-gardens. We dined, at Cholula, at the clean Fonda de la Re forma, in a large, brick-floored room, invaded by flowers from a court-yard garden. No people can fashion such charming homes without excellent traits ; so much is pos itive beyond dispute. We were admitted, I think, to 'the residence portion of the house, the owner of which was a doctor, and we examined, while waiting for our repast, a lot of his antiquated medical books, some dating from 1700. The plaza is as large as at Mexico, but grass-grown — for the place is of but modest pretensions now — and lonely, except on market-day, when the scene is as gay and the costumes even prettier than at Puebla itself. In the cen tre is a Zocalo ; at one side a vast array of battlemented churches. That of the Capilla Real, consisting of three in one, is now decayed and abandoned. On the other is a fine colonnade devoted to the Ayuntamiento, or town council, with the jail. What a pity it is that we have so scant accounts left us of the life of Mexico when all this feudal magnificence was in full blast ! PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 217 PRISONERS WEAVING SASHES AT CHOLULA, 218 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. I cannot say just why I visited so many prisons. Per haps because they were always under the eye, adjoining the public offices, and the prisoners were a cheerful lot, who did what they could to attract attention. At Cho lula we found them weaving, on a primitive kind of hand-loom, bright sashes of red and blue, which are sold in part for their own benefit. Their accommodations compared favorably with the barracks along-side. When we asked questions about them they stopped work and listened attentively. The guards, I fancy, thought we were trying to identify some persons who had robbed us ¦ — not conceiving of such a visit for the pure pleasure of it. III. When I inquired the way to Tlaxcala there was such an ignorance on the subject at my hotel, at Puebla, that it almost seemed as if I was the first person who could ever have been there. A luxurious Englishman abandoned me at this part of the expedition, claiming that nobody knew whether there were conveyances from the junction, whether there were even inns. It seemed to him a case of sitting on a Tlaxcalan door-step and perishing of hun ger, or being washed away by the torrents of the rainy season. I found, however, that there was a choice of two trains a day, and went on alone. What then ? I suppose Cortez did rather more than that. Tlaxcala was the most undaunted and terrible of all his enemies. He made his way to it after insuperable obstacles, and it was only by the alliance of the warlike Tlaxcalans, when he had finally won them over to his cause, that he effected the conquest of Mexico. The recollection had involuntarily given me rather dark and depressing ideas of Tlaxcala, as a place of PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 219 gloomy forests and gorges suited for martial resistance. Who that has not seen it, I wonder, has the proper con ception of Tlaxcala? IV. It is not gloomy; there are no forests; the country is open and rolling; and the name "Tlaxcala," it now ap pears, is fertility, the " Land of Bread." I left at 11 a.m., and arrived at the village of Santa Ana, on the railroad to Apizaco, in a couple of hours. After a time a convey ance was to be had, in the shape of a dilapidated hack drawn by three horses, in the lead, and two mules. This was run as a stage-line to Tlaxcala; and in an hour more, largely of floundering over ruts and following the beds of swollen brooks — for nobody ever thinks of mending a road in Mexico — we were there. We met, on the way, the carriage of the state Governor, an ancient coupe, improved by the addition of a boot, and drawn by two horses and two mules. I was deposited on the sidewalk at the upper side of a plaza, and scrutinized keenly when there by the shop-keepers of the surrounding arcades and loungers on comfortable stone benches. Tlaxcalan allies, in the shape of a small boy and a larger assistant, seized upon my satchel, and we set out for a personal inspection of such houses of entertainment as were to be heard of. The Posada of Genius was alto gether too wretched and shabby, as is apt to be the way with genius. The Meson of the — I have forgotten its name — was too full to offer accommodation, and had a morose landlord, who seemed to rejoice in the fact. I came at last to a house where simply chambers were to be let. It was highly commended by my smaller Tlaxca lan ally, a very rapid-talking small boy, with the air of one much in the habit of dodging missiles. 220 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. "It will be two reals" (twenty-five cents) "the night, as you see it," said the proprietor, waving a hand in an interior bare of furniture. " Ah ! two reals the night !" " But perhaps the gentleman would desire also a bed, a wash-stand, and a looking-glass ?" " Yes, let us say a bed, wash-stand, and looking-glass." " Then it will be four reals the night." The larger Tlaxcalan ally, who had had nothing to do, established a claim for services by offering praise of each successive article of furniture as it w*as brought in,, as, "Muy buena cama, senor!" "Muy bonito espejo!" — "A very fine bed, senor!" "A very charming mirror, senor!" — and the like. Now, all this is all exactly as it happened, and one should hardly be compelled to spoil a good story by add ing to it. Yet this appearance of amusing stupidity is dissipated, after all, by remembering the methods of travel in the country. Many, or most, journeys are made on horseback, and the guest is likely to want only a room where he can lock up his saddle and saddle-bags and sleep on his own blankets, or, if luxurious, on a light cot, carried with other baggage on a pack-mule. This is all the accommodation provided at the general run of the mesones. At the Fonda y Cafe de la Sociedad I supped, by the light of two candles, with a gentleman in long riding- boots, who had a paper-mill in the neighborhood. He told me that he had learned the business at Philadelphia. He was of a friendly disposition, and declared that I was to consider him henceforth my correspondent, so far as I might have need of one, on all matters, commercial and PUEBLA, CHOLULA, TLAXCALA. 221 otherwise, at Tlaxcala. And to that extent I may say I do so consider him to this day. My room had, first, a pair of glass doors, then a pair of heavy wooden ones, and opened on a damp little court, in which the rain was falling. There were no windows nor transom, positively no other opening than a couple of diminutive holes in the wooden door, like "The fiery eyes of Pauguk glaring at him through the darkness," as one awoke to them in the early morning. An other streak under the door figured as a sort of mouth. There was a clashing of swords in a corner of the shady and handsome Zocalo when I went out, and I fancied at first a duel, but it was only a couple of Rurales going through their sabre exercise under direction of an officer. The morning was bright and beautiful. Hucksters were putting up their stands in the arcades for the day's busi ness. A new market elsewhere, consisting of a series of light, open pavilions, was one of the best in arrangement I have ever seen. Tlaxcala recalls some such provincial Italian place as Este, seat of the famous historic house of that name. It has once been more important than now. The persons of principal consideration are the state employes. It is the capital of the smallest of the states, the Rhode Island or Delaware of the Mexican federation. I entered the quarters of the Legislature, and found there the Gov ernor, a small, fat, Indian -looking man, scarred with a deep cut on his cheek, conferring with a committee of his law-makers. There are eight of these in all, and they receive an annual stipend of $1000 each. In the legisla tive hall a space is railed off for the president and two secretaries. There is a little tribune at this rail, from which the speeches are made. The members face each 222 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES. other, in two rows, and comfortably smoke during their sessions, after the custom of the Congress at Mexico also. The rest is reserved for spectators. On the walls are four quaint old portraits of the earliest chiefs converted to Christianity, all with " Don " before their names. The secretary of the Ayuntamiento has in a glass case in his office some few idols, the early charter of the city and regulations of the province, and the tattered silken banner carried by Cortez in the conquest. This last, once a rich crimson, is faded to a shabby coffee-color, and the silver has vanished from its spear-head, showing copper beneath. Tossed into corners were two large heaps of old, vellum-bound books from the convents. This is a common enough sight in Mexico. Treasures are abun dant here which our own connoisseurs would delight to treat with the greatest respect. Apart from this there is no other museum nor especial display of antiquity. The town, kept nicely whitewashed, looks rather new. It con tains, however, the oldest church in Mexico. The chapel of San Francisco, part of a dismantled convent, now used as a barracks, bears the date of 1529, and with in it are the first baptismal font (the same in which the Tlaxca lan chiefs above-mentioned were baptized by Cortez) and the first Christian pulpit in America. The ceiling is of panelled cedar, picked out with gilded suns and the like. The approach is up an inclined plane, shaded with ash-trees. Through three large arches of an entrance gate-way, flanked by a tower, the town below appears as through a series of frames. A massive church in the jilifefe , -Ti:U!,.- 5.: ,-:-_•-. - |'i,' ''Iii ¦: ¦ " ife__ ^$fe^~T%' ^^H-S^i^ W* . ¦ .'i\ .y-Xr - - & .-¦R;^i"r«'S=ii||.i;!.;;