Anahuac Part 15

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

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

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

The pyramid is built of rows of bricks baked in the sun, and cemented together with mortar in which had been stuck quant.i.ties of small stones, fragments of pottery, and bits of obsidian knives and weapons.

Between rows of bricks are alternate layers of clay. It was built in four terraces, of which traces are still to be distinguished; and is about 200 feet high. Upon the platform at the top stand some trees and a church. The sides front the four cardinal points, and the base line is of immense length, over thirteen hundred feet, so that the ascent is very gradual.

When we reached Cholula we sent the two men to enquire in the neighbourhood for antiquities, of which numbers are to be found in every ploughed field round. At the top of the pyramid we held a market, and got some curious things, all of small size however. Among them was a mould for making little jackal-heads in the clay, ready for baking; the little earthen heads which are found in such quant.i.ties in the country being evidently made by wholesale in moulds of this kind, not modelled separately. We got also several terra-cotta stamps, used in old times for stamping coloured patterns upon the native cloth, and perhaps also for ornamenting vases and other articles of earthenware.

Cholula used to be a famous place for making pottery, and its red-and-black ware was famous at the time of the Conquest, but the trade now seems to have left it. We were struck by observing that, though there was plenty of coloured pottery to be found in the neighbourhood of the pyramid, the pyramid itself had only fragments of uncoloured ware imbedded in its structure; which seems to prove that it was built before the art of colouring pottery was invented.

They have cut a road through one corner of the pyramid, and this cutting exposed a chamber within. Humboldt describes this chamber as roofed with blocks, each overlapping the one before, till they can be made to meet by a block of ordinary size. This is the false arch so common in Egypt and Peru, and in the ruined cities of Central America.

Every child who builds houses with a box of bricks discovers it for himself. The bridge at Tezcuco, already described, is much more remarkable in its structure. Whether our inspection was careless, or whether the chamber has fallen in since Humboldt's time, I cannot say, but we missed this peculiar roof.

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

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

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

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

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

I am inclined to consider Quetzalcoatl a real personage, and not a mythical one. He is said to have been a white, bearded man, to have come from the East, to have reigned in Tollan, and to have been driven out from thence by the votaries of human sacrifices, which he opposed.

He took refuge in Cholollan, now called Cholula (which means the "place of the fugitive"), and taught the inhabitants to work in metals, to observe various fasts and festivals, to use the Toltec calendar of days and years, and to perform penance to appease the G.o.ds.

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

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

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

The Scandinavian antiquarians make the "white-man's land"

_(Hvitramannaland)_ extend down as far as Florida, on the very Gulf of Mexico. It is curious to notice the coincidence between the remark of Bernal Diaz, that the Mexicans called their priests _papa_ (more properly _papahua_), and that in the old Norse Chronicle, which tells of the first colonization of Iceland by the Northmen, and relates that they found living there "Christian men whom the Northmen call _Papa_."

These latter are shown by the context to have been Irish priests. The Aztec root _teo (teo-tl, G.o.d)_ comes nearer to the Greek and Latin, but is not unlike the Irish _dia_, and the Norse _ty-r_. The Aztec root _col_ (charcoal) is exactly the Norse _kol_ (our word _coat_), but not so near to the Irish _gual_. It is desirable to notice such coincidences, even when they are too slight to ground an argument upon.

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

Children were sprinkled with water when their names were given to them.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI.

PUEBLA. NOPALUCaN. ORIZABA. POTRERO.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF THE VOLCANO ORIZABA.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Since we left the country things have got even worse. Formerly, all that the foreign merchants had to suffer were the incidental miseries of a state of civil war. Now, the revolutionary leaders put them in prison; and, if threats are not sufficient, they get forced loans out of them, much as King John did out of his Jews.

Even in times of peace, foreign goods must be dear in Mexico. In a country where they have to be carried nearly three hundred miles on mules' backs, and where credit is so long that the merchant can never hope to see his money again in less than two years, he cannot be expected to sell very cheaply. But the continual revolutions and the insecurity of property make things far worse, and one almost wonders how foreign trade can go on at all.

One of our friends in Mexico had three or four hundred mules coming up the country laden with American cotton for his mill, just when Haro's revolution began. He got off much better than most people, however; for, greatly to the disgust of the legitimate authorities, he went down into the enemy's camp, and gave the revolutionary chief a dollar a bale to let them go.

As may be supposed, commercial transactions have often very curious features here. Strange things happen in the eastern states; but people there say that they are nothing to the doings on the Pacific coast, where the merchants get up a revolution when their s.h.i.+ps appear in the offing, and turn out the Custom-house officers, who do not enter upon their functions again until the rich cargos have started for the interior.

One little incident, which happened---I think--at Vera Cruz, rather amused us. When the Government is hard-up, a favourite way of raising ready money is to sell--of course at a very low price--orders upon the Custom-house, to pa.s.s certain quant.i.ties of goods, duty-free. Such a transaction as this was concluded between the Minister of Finance and a merchant's house who gave hard dollars in exchange for an order to pa.s.s so many hundred bales of cotton, free of duty. When the s.h.i.+p arrived at port, however, the Yankee captain brought in his manifest with a broad grin upon his face. The inspectors went down to the s.h.i.+p, and stood aghast. There were the bales of cotton, but such bales! They had to be shoved and coaxed to get them up through the hatchways at all. The Customhouse officials protested in vain. The order was for so many bales of cotton, and these overgrown monsters were bales of cotton, and the merchants sent them up to Mexico in triumph.

To us, Puebla was not an interesting city. It was built by the Spaniards, and called _Puebla de los Angeles_, because angels a.s.sisted in building the cathedral, which does no great credit to their good taste. Its costly ornaments of gold, silver, jewels, and variegated marbles, are most extraordinary. One does not know which to wonder at most, the value and beauty of the materials, or the unmitigated ugliness of the designs.

We saw the festival of Corpus Christi while we were in Puebla; but were to a certain extent disappointed in the display of plate and jewelled vestments for the clergy, whose attempt to overthrow Comonfort's government had only resulted in themselves being heavily fined, and who were in consequence keeping their wealth in the background, and making as little display as possible. The most interesting part of the ceremonial to us was to see the processions of Indians from the surrounding villages, walking crowned with flowers, and carrying Madonnas in bowers of green branches and blossoms.

At the head of each procession walked an Indian beating a drum, _tap, tap, tap_, without a vestige of time. The other processions with stoles and canopies, and the officials of the city in dress-coats and yellow kid gloves, were paltry affairs enough.

Neither during this ceremonial, nor at Easter in the Capital were any miracles exhibited, like the performances of the Madonna at Palermo, which the coachmen of the city carry about at Easter, weeping real tears into a cambric pocket-handkerchief; nor is anything done in the country like the lighting of the Greek fire, or the melting of the blood of St. Januarius.

Puebla pretty much belongs to the clergy, who are paramount there. A population of some sixty thousand has seventy-two churches, some of them very large. It is the focus of the church-party, whose steady powerful resistance to reform is one of the causes of the unhappy political state of the country. As is usual in cathedral-towns, the morality of the people is rather lower than elsewhere. I have said already that the revenues of the Mexican Church are very large. Tejada estimates the income at twenty millions of dollars yearly, more than the whole revenue of the State; but this calculation far exceeds that given by any other authority. He remarks that the Church has always tried as much as possible to conceal its riches, and probably he makes a very large allowance for this. At any rate, I think we may reasonably estimate the annual income of the Church at $10,000,000, or 2,000,000, two-thirds of the income of the State.

There is nothing extraordinary in the Church having become very rich by the acc.u.mulations of three centuries in a Spanish colony, where the manners and customs remained in the 18th century to a great extent as they were in the 16th, and the practice of giving and leaving great properties to the Church was in full vigour--long after it had declined in Europe. It is considered that half the city of Mexico belongs to the Church. This seems an extraordinary statement; but, if we remember that in Philip the Second's time half the freehold property of Spain belonged to the Church, we shall cease to wonder at this. The extraordinary feature of the case is that, counting both secular and regular clergy, there are only 4600 ecclesiastics in the country. The number has been steadily decreasing for years. In 1826 it was 6,000; in 1844 it had fallen to 5,200, in 1856 to 4,600, giving, on the lowest reckoning, an average of over 200 a year for each priest and monk. A great part of this income is probably left to acc.u.mulate; but, when we remember that the pay of the country curas is very small, often not more than 30 to 50, there must be fine incomes left for the church-dignitaries and the monks. Now any one would suppose that a profession with such prizes to give away would become more and more crowded. Why it is not so I cannot tell. It is true that the lives of the ecclesiastics are anything but respectable, and that the profession is in such bad odour that many fathers of families, though good Catholics, will not let a priest enter their houses; but we do not generally find Mexicans deterred by a little bad reputation from occupations where much money and influence are to be had for very little work.

The ill conduct of the Mexican clergy, especially of the monks, is matter of common notoriety, and every writer on Mexico mentions it, from the time of Father Gage--the English friar--who travelled with a number of Spanish monks through Mexico in 1625, and described the clergy and the people as he saw them. He was disgusted with their ways, and, going back to England, turned Protestant, and died Vicar of Deal.