WHERE once stood the Palace of Montezuma, now stands the national Palace. It occupies the entire eastern side of the Plaza Mayor, with a frontage of 675 feet, and was built in 1692. It is open to the public all day long.
On the ground floor of the plaza front are the barracks. On the second are the President’s chambers and those occupied by the Spanish Viceroys and the Austrian usurper, Maximilian.
At the extreme front is the Ambassadors’ Hall, so long that the President at one end in his chair of state seems but a pigmy, and so narrow that three persons with outstretched hands can touch either wall. The idea of spacious halls seems never to have entered the Mexican’s head. Huge buildings they have, but they are only a succession of rooms whose dimensions depend upon the usual length of building timbers, which is never over twenty feet. It seems easy to connect the joists on supporting pillars and enlarge the room, but, “We have always done this way.” So the Ambassadors’ Hall has a probable length of 300 feet, and an actual width of about twenty.
At the Southern end is a raised dais where thePresident presides; at the other, under a canopy are two magnificent state chairs. One was the property of Cortez, and has his name on the back in pure gold, and the date 1531. It is in excellent repair, since its construction was entirely of metal covered with brocade, and one might doubt its antiquity were not the ear marks of old Spain everywhere visible in all its workmanship, even in its coat-of-arms. The other is covered entirely with pure gold and is the chair of state of the President, and must be worth $20,000 if appearances comport with the actual value of gold. Just opposite this chair is a painting fifteen by thirty feet, depicting the great battle of Puebla when President Diaz first won his spurs in defeating the French army. An old grizzled veteran who fought in the battle will point out the notables in the picture, not omitting his own which stands to the left of the President.
On the same wall hang the pictures of George Washington and the leaders of Mexican Independence, Iturbide, Hidalgo and Morelos. There is no room closed to the visitor, so we visit the President’s barber shop, reception room, library and the Hydrographic office where maps and charts are being made. All these rooms are furnished differently, and are as elegant and comfortable as even a president could wish. Nearby is the treasurer’s office, and how my feet clogged when I tried to go by! I just want to change money all the time; I know of no better way to get rich than to change money. Hand over one of Uncle Samuel’s ten-dollar bills, and get eighteen dollars and sixty cents back, is just doubling your money as fast as you canstow it away. It beats the lottery business all to pieces. So when I passed by the treasurer’s office I wanted to change money, but I was loaded down at that moment and could not. When you step into a restaurant and give a U.S. dollar for your dinner and get your dinner and another dollar in change, you want to eat some more.
In the courtyard is a curious plant that has a flower exactly in imitation of the human hand with all its fingers. It is thecheirostemon plaxanifoliumor hand tree. Only three specimens exist in Mexico. As all the public buildings are under one roof, we soon find ourselves at the Post Office with its seven days wonders. No one goes to the window and inflicts upon the unoffending young lady that much abused old legend, “Is there a letter here for me?” O no, that is not the style. When the mail arrives, the letters are arranged alphabetically and numbered consecutively, then the list is typewritten and posted on the bulletin board, where he who runs may read. Beginning with No. 1 on the first day of the month, the numbers run to the end of the month and start over. The foreign list is published separate from the native. If you find your name on the bulletin you pass to the window and call for date and number only, and a book inside has a duplicate list. The letter is handed you, and you sign your name opposite the number of the letter, giving street, number and hotel. At the same time a policeman stands at your elbow, scrutinizing all persons and their handwriting, and qualifying himself to find you again if necessary in case of forgery. To an American the system may seemcumbersome, but he must remember that he is in a country where letters to the United States cost five cents, and I have seen domestic letters from one state to the other cost ten cents, as much as many people earn, so there is not much letter writing.
Then it has its advantage. Every time a clerk is called to the window, she knows there is a letter needed, and it saves the endless “yes, no, yes, no” all day long, and the sorting of hundreds of letters to look for the name of a person who is not expecting a letter at all, “but just thought I would ask you.” The system is infinitely better than that in Texas towns with a Mexican population. No Mexican signs his name without a flourish which obscures the name entirely sometimes, and besides, the Mexican names have a way of spelling themselves different from the pronunciation.
The Texas post-mistress lumps all Mexican mail in one box, and when a Mexican shows his head at the window she hands him all the Spanish literature on hand, and he takes what he wishes. If he is dishonest, he can purloin any mail he sees fit. The Mexican officials are very kind, and always try to keep a clerk who knows English. Of course she is always out when you need her most, but that does not detract from their good intentions; but the Spanish language is so easy a person can learn a hundred words a day, and if he knows Latin he has nearly half the language to start with.
Next door to the Post Office is the National Museum, the most wonderful repository in America, where ancient Mayan, Aztec and Toltec relics lie side by side with the civilization of today. Here are gods without number and idols by the thousand.
Strangest among these symbols is the ever-present serpent, that subtile being that has left its stamp in the mythology of the old world. Wherever native religions have had their sway, this symbol is certain to appear. It appears in Egypt, Greece, Assyria and among the superstitions of the Celts, Hindoos and Chinese, and here upon these ancient idols he is carved upon porphyry and granite in natural size and heroic dimensions, but always in coil, with the rattlesnake fangs and tail conspicuous.
Here is also the Aztec sacrificial stone of basalt, nine feet in diameter and three feet thick, within whose bloody arms, from Spanish authority, twenty-thousand victims were annually offered up. All of the Spanish under Cortez would have been killed upon that awful retreat of Noche Triste, were it not for the zeal of the Mexicans to capture them alive to offer as sacrifice rather than kill them in battle. The central figure of all this interesting collection is the calendar stone upon whose mysterious records the scholars of Europe and America have labored with only partial success. The stone is circular, is hewn from a solid piece of porphyry, and weighs fifty tons. How it ever reached this island is a mystery, when the people had no beasts of burden; how it was carved is a mystery as the people did not know iron. The greatest wonder is the inscription which accurately records the length of the solar, lunar and siderial year, calculated eclipses, and is a more perfect calendar than any European country possesses.
From this stone we learn that the Aztecs divided the year into 365 days; these were divided into 18 months of 20 days each, and, like the ancient Egyptians, they had 5 complementary days to make out 365. But the year is composed of six hours more than 365 days, and in America we add the six hours every four years and make leap-year. The Aztecs waited 52 years, and then interposed 13 days, or rather 12½, which brought the length of their tropical year to within the smallest fraction of the figures of our most skillful astronomers. Like the Persians and Egyptians, a cycle of 52 years was represented by a serpent, so prominent in mythology.
This interpolation of 25 days in every 104 years showed a nicer adjustment of civil to solar time than that presented by any European calendar, since more than five centuries must elapse before the loss of an entire day. Their astrological year was divided into months of 13 days each, and there were 13 years in their indications which contained each 365 periods of 18 days each. It is also curious that their number of lunar months of 13 days each were contained in a cycle of 52 years with the interpolation of 13 days (12½) should correspond exactly with the Great Sothic period of the Egyptians, viz: 1461. By means of this calendar, the priests kept their own records, regulated the festivals and sacrifices, and made all their astronomical calculations. They had the means of setting the hours with precision; the periods of the solstices and equinoxes and the transit of the sun across the zenith of Mexico. This stone was dug up in the great square in 1790 where it had lain buried since the Conquest in 1520, butits high scientific deductions are out of all proportion to the advance of the Aztec in other branches of learning, since the stone is more exact today than any European calendar in existence, therefore it must have been made by another race. The characters are in the Toltec language, but there are many points of it which the Toltecs copied from the Mayas of Yucatan, and the Mayas seem to have copied from the Egyptians, of which we shall speak in another chapter.
There are other relies more ancient than the Calendar Stone, and others more recent. There is the ideographic picture-writing, through which we learn the history of the race previous to the Conquest. Here is Montezuma’s shield, the armor worn by Cortez in the Conquest, his battle-flag, the statue of the war god Huitzilopochtle, Tula monoliths, the Goddess of Water, Palenque cross, Chacmol, and the finest carriage in the world, built by Maximilian for his Mexican capital. The body is painted red, the wheels are gilded, and the interior is lined with white silk brocade, heavily trimmed with silver and gold thread.
In Ethnology and Zoology the exhibits would require days to see. The museum is open every day but Saturday, and is thronged ever. The Indians never tire gazing on the scenes which recall the times when they were masters. In the midst of the quadrangle is a beautiful garden of rare plants and tall palms.
Soldiers guard the entrance and police welcome you and ask for your camera and umbrellas, and as your party starts, a uniformed lad will fall in at your heel, attach himself to yourshadow and never leave you till you descend the steps to the exit. He does not seek your companionship necessarily for publication, “but as an evidence of good faith.” He is not intrusive nor garrulous; his duty is simply to be ever present. With tens of thousands of valuable relics in easy reach, probably they are acting wisely upon past experience.
The next door leads to San Carlos, the National Art Gallery. Here are the famous paintings of “Padre Los Casas,” “The Deluge,” and Murillo’s “San Juan de Dios” and “The Lost Sheep.” In the fourth and fifth salons are the works of native Mexicans, and their love to old Spain is shown by their paintings; whole sides of the salons are given to the cruel tale of the Conquest and the Inquisition: Spanish Cavaliers, holding up the cross in one hand and the drawn sword in the other, and cutting down the ignorant natives who would not confess the Virgin; the death of Montezuma, surrounded by heaps of gold so gluttonously hoarded by the Spaniards; the fate of his brother, Guatemotzin, the last of the Aztec chieftains, whose feet are held in the fire by his Christian torturers, to disclose his hidden treasures, and the haughty chieftain still kept his heroic mien without a murmur.
One of his generals who was similarly tortured appealed to him. Turning a look of scorn upon him Guatemotzin replied: “And say, am I on a bed of roses?” There is a weird fascination about the paintings that makes you feel that the paintings have just stepped from the pages of Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. It is the Chamber of Horrors where the Spanish Inquisition isdepicted by men who knew. Overhead are scores of medallions of famous men of Mexican birth, and beneath each a famous picture. Leaving this salon we come to a well lighted hall with several hundred easels and folding stools. This is the instruction room, and is filled with students and models and casts and charts, where lessons are given to all who apply without regard to creed or race or color. The Color Line has no place in Mexico. Beneath the salon are halls filled with statuary, where clay modeling and sculpture is taught, and as you leave with weary limb you are convinced that it is in truth a National Academy.
Then there is the Mineria, the School of Engineering and Mines, on San Andres and Betlemita streets. It cost a million and a half of dollars, and was the work of the sculptor and architect, Tolsa. It contains rich collections of geological and minerological specimens, and a meteorological observatory, also a fossil of the Pleiocene horse of three toes. The mint on Apartado Street struck its first coin in 1535, and since then the coins of republics, empires and dictatorships have run from it in a constant stream of gold and silver to the enormous sum of $2,200,000,000.
Then there is the National Library and the Preparatory School on San Ildefonso Street, with a thousand students and fine equipment and botanical garden. Public instruction is free and gratuitous in every respect, without regard to race or religion.
Just beyond the Cathedral is a National Pawnshop, Monte de Piedad, “Mountain of Mercy.” It was founded more than a hundredyears ago by Count Regla, the owner of the famous silver-mine of Real de Monte, who gave three hundred thousand dollars for the purpose, so that the poor and needy could get money on their belongings at reasonable interest. Any article deposited is valued by two disinterested parties, and three-fourths of its value is promptly advanced. If the party ceases to pay interest on the loan, the article is kept six months longer, and then exposed for sale. If not sold in the next six months, it is sold at public auction, and all that is realized from the sale above the original pawn, is placed to the borrower’s credit. If this money is not called for in a specified time, it reverts to the bank of the institution. This is a government institution, and has entirely broken up the small pawn-shops that charge unreasonable interest. The rate of interest is never raised, and it lends a million dollars a year, and has fifty thousand customers. One dollar is the smallest sum loaned, and ten thousand the largest, and the loans are about three hundred daily. About one-third of the articles pawned are never redeemed, and tourists can find some wonderful bargains here. The Diamond snuff-box presented Santa Anna when he was Dictator is here. $25,000 will buy the little trifle.
In all the wars and revolutions this old city has seen, all parties have respected this grand institution, with one exception: When Gonzales was president in 1884, he ran so short of money, that to keep the National credit, he levied upon its treasury. An English syndicate with a capital of $25,000,000 has recently bought theinstitution for one million, and will still carry on the banking business.
Chapultepec, “The hill of the Grass-hopper,” is the president’s White House and the West Point of Mexico. It is three miles from the city, and is situated upon a perpendicular rock, two hundred feet high, and was a veritable Gibraltar in war times when cannon were unknown. This castle was the pride and ambition of Carlotta, the wife of Maximilian, and she spent half a million dollars on the interior furnishings. The interior is remodeled on the Pompeiian style. The castle is reached by a winding road around the hill, and also by a secret cavern through the hill. On the rock in front are the engraved pictures of Montezuma I. and his successor. In the rear is the immense park ofahuehueteor cypress trees, next in size to the redwoods of California. One of these venerable monarchs is fifty feet in circumference and one hundred and seventy feet high, under which was Montezuma’s favorite seat. This park measures two miles in length, and reaches to Molino del Rey, “The King’s Mill,” which figured in the war with the United States. It is now the National Arsenal.
The Military Academy is at Chapultepec, and the whole hill is a military camp. From the citadel a view can be had of the whole valley of Mexico, forty miles long and thirty wide. To the left of the road leading up to the castle is a cave, closed with an iron gate. This is said to have been the treasure house of both Montezuma and Cortez. A stairway leads up through the hill to the castle. A large collection of animals are in the park and a beautiful flower garden.From here leads an aqueduct that supplies the city with water, just as it did before the Conquest. Here was made the last stand against the American army under General Pillow, and U. S. Grant was one of the first to mount the hill, and the flower of the cadet army was slain here, and they were only boys. The occasion has been remembered by the government, and at the foot of the hill stands a large monument with the names of all the boys who fell. On one side is this inscription:
“DEDICATED TO THE STUDENTSWHO FELLIN DEFENDING THEIR COUNTRY AGAINSTTHE AMERICAN INVASION.”
THE City of Mexico with its 350,000 inhabitants is a disappointment to the foreigner. The business portion looks just like an American city. All the Mexican cities are paved with cobble stones, with the street lowest in the center, which is the gutter. Here the streets are broad, cross at right angles, high in the middle with gutters next the sidewalk, and are paved with asphalt. The houses are four story, and the shops have glass show windows, very unusual in Mexico. The reason is, this is not a Mexican city. It was built by foreigners and is now run by foreigners.
On July 14, when the French celebrated the Fall of the Bastile, four-fifths of the business houses were draped in the tri-color of France. With twenty-five foreign consuls, six vice consuls, and fourteen foreign ministers, each with its attaches and dependencies, it is no wonder the city’s local ear-mark is lost in this assembly of foreigners; and, were it not for the languages of Spanish and French which fall so musically on the ear, the scene would not be very different from a street in Chicago, if we eliminate the vehicles. It is due the foreign element that the city has the finest boulevard in America.
LA PASEO DE LA REFORMA.
The Latin American races are very fond of carriage-driving, and one of the first signs of wealth is the laying out of the promenade where the “four hundred” may drive at the fashionable hour. Before the present Paseo was built, the fashionable drives were Paseo de La Viga and Paseo de Bucareli. Every afternoon, then as now, were to be seen two long rows of carriages with crowds of gentlemen on horse-back and multitudes of foot passengers.
The Paseo de Bucareli, or Paseo Nuevo, is in the southwestern part of the city. It was opened Nov. 4, 1778, by Don Antonio Maria de Bucareli, the viceroy. It has the same starting point as La Reforma, the circular plazuela in which stands the statue of Charles IV. and extends half a mile almost due south to the Garita de Belem. In the glorieta near the city gate, is what was once a handsome fountain, surmounted by a statue of Victory, erected in 1829 in honor of Guerrero, and which was originally gilded. For promenading, the Paseo is now practically deserted, but is becoming a fashionable residence section.
The glories of Paseo de La Viga have indeed departed. The once famous and fashionable drive is almost deserted, save during Lent when an old custom prescribes that fashion shall air itself there. It traverses the bank of La Viga canal for many miles, past thechinampasor floating gardens, through a double avenue of shade trees, where continual processions of Indians are seen from the Lake country, paddling to market with canoes laden to the guards with vegetables, fruits and flowers.
But Fashion is a tyrannical mistress, and she decrees that Paseo de La Reforma be the only place to see and be seen. It leads from the statue of Charles IV. to the gate of Chapultepec, two miles and a half. It is laid with smooth asphalt, and has a uniform width of two hundred feet.
It has double avenues of shade trees on each side, with broad foot ways on the side, lined with seats for the weary. At certain intervals, the street widens into glorietas, or circles, four hundred feet in diameter. The street passes on each side of these glorietas and leaves them as green islands with beautiful flowers and statuary. There are six of these glorietas and more are to be added.
All along the curbing of the Paseo, are statues of men famous in Mexican history, and are contributed by different states. At the entrance to the Paseo is the equestrian statue of Charles IV. of colossal size.
Thirty tons of metal were used in the casting, and it is the largest single casting in the world. Humboldt says it has but one superior, that of Marcus Aurelius.
A royal order issued Nov. 30, 1795, granted to the Viceroy Marquis de Branceforte to erect this statue in the Plaza Mayor. The commission was given to the sculptor Don Manuel Tosta, and the casting in bronze to Don Salvador de la Vega. The mold and furnaces were made ready in the garden of San Gregorio, and after two days spent in fusing the mass, the cast was made at 6 a.m. Aug. 4, 1802. The casting, remarkable alike for being in a single piece, and for being the first important piece of bronzeexecuted in America, came out of the mold complete and without defect. In 1803, it was erected in front of the cathedral where now is the bandstand of the Zocalo. Here it remained till 1822 when the Mexicans had achieved their independence, and the feeling against Spain was so bitter it was encased in a wooden globe and painted blue, but was finally placed for safety from the mob in the patio of the university, a comparatively out-of-the-way place. Here it remained in obscurity till 1852 when it was set up in the commanding position it now occupies. The height of horse and rider is fifteen feet nine inches. The king is dressed in classic style, wearing a laurel wreath and raising aloft a scepter.
On both sides of the Paseo at its entrance, are colossal figures on high granite pedestals said to represent Aztec warriors. The work must have been done by Spaniards, in ridicule, for a more hideous pair of warriors never went to battle.
The first glorieta contains Cordier’s Columbus, one of the most admirable and artistic modern statues to be found in the world. This was the work of the French sculptor, Cordier, and was erected at the cost of Don Antonio Escandon. The base is a platform of basalt, surrounded by an iron railing, above which are five lanterns. From the base arises a square mass of red marble with four basso-relievos; the arms of Columbus with garlands of laurel; the rebuilding the monastery of La Rabida; the discovery of San Salvador; a fragment of a letter from Columbus to his patron Raphadi Sauris; beneath which is the dedication by Señor Escandon.
Above the basso-relievos and surrounding the pedestal, are four life-size figures in bronze, of monks and missionaries, and crowning the whole upon the top of a pedestal of red marble is the figure of Columbus, drawing aside the veil which hides the new world.
In the next glorieta is Cuauhtemoc, a worthy companion of Columbus, and is the work of Don Francisco Jiminez. The statue of the great warrior king is magnificent, as he appears hurling defiance at his country’s enemies. The base contains some fine basso-relievos, one representing the torture of Cuauhtemoc (also spelled Guatemotzin) by the cruel Spaniards. The fretting around the structure is all after the old Aztec pattern, and the trophies of Indian arms and insignia are all intensely appropriate to the warrior who preferred death of his whole people to the surrender of his city to the Spaniards. Facing the Paseo is the following inscription: “A la memoria de Cuauhtemoc y de los Guerreras que Combatieron Heroicamente en Defensa de su Patria M. D. XXI.”
Mexico is indebted to Maximilian and his wife Carlotta for this Paseo. She had set her heart upon a “Paseo Imperaliz,” and Maximilian entered heartily into the scheme, but he did not live to complete it. His idea was to establish a court that should rival any in Europe, and he had already introduced titles of nobility.
He planned to create a handsome park of Chapultepec, with lakes and streams and drives, with deer and swans and all the other nice things. What was done he paid for out of his own civil lists, and he intended to pay for it all and present it to the city. The Mexican people could not brook a European Emperor, but they all loved “Poor Carlotta,” and as she planned the Paseo, every year they add some new improvement until it has now become the glory of the republic. Every addition is an evidence of good taste, and Carlotta’s park idea is already planned. From the last glorieta two roads branching to Tacubaya and Tlaxpana are being prepared, and the park grounds will then extend from Molino del Rey to the Exposition building, three miles.
One never tires of sitting on this boulevard and viewing the motley throng as it passes in review, driving, riding or promenading. Ladies in Parisian bonnets and Spanish mantillas; the dashing equestrian rigged in the paraphernalia of Mexican horsemanship, or breeched and booted after the manner of Rotten Row itself. Stately vehicles drawn by snow-white mules; four-in-hands tooled along in the most approved European style; youthful aristocrats astride Lilliputian ponies, followed by liveried servants; here and there mounted police with drawn sabres, giving an air of old world formality to the whole proceeding. In and out among them flash the bicycles ridden by men, women and children from all civilized countries; the kaleidoscope of the pedestrians, dressed in their peculiar garb with red and gray and blackrebosas, raven black hair exposed to view, and the Indians from the mountains in their severe simplicity. The procession passes up the right, with here and there a light American buggy, or a heavy-wheeled English mail phaeton with a real live dude at the front holding the reins, and a liveried flunkey facing behind and holding aflaring bouquet, and, after reaching Chapultepec, it comes back on the other side, leaving the center to the horsemen, and to the latter’s disgust, the bicycles.
And we must not forget the centaurs, the Mexican horsemen; rigged out in all the silver ornaments of bridle and saddle worth more than the spirited horse, and ten thousand people to admire them, they never appear to better advantage than when exhibiting on the Paseo. Spanish and Mexican ladies rarely ride, and when they do, they are so very exclusive they ride in closed carriages. At the glorietas are stationed military bands with from forty to eighty pieces in each, and the procession always exhibits to “slow music.”
Poor Maximilian, at heart a great man, but the dupe of Europe, planned this city as a king and died as a king. Could he return now, what might be his feelings to see his plans carried out? And poor Carlotta! the idol of Mexico, a victim of circumstances, has never forgotten that fatal day when Maximilian was shot at Queretaro and the flash of the rifles left her a queen without a throne and a wife without a husband. To this day she drags out a miserable existence at the Austrian capital, a maniac that has spent thirty years murmuring and jibbering his name. There is in America a miserable lack of respect to kings, be they never so good and kind and great, and Mexico was only true to the free air of the mountains when she refused Maximilian. Mountain-born men will always be free.
The Aztec in his palmy day offered humansacrifice. He daily made war upon his neighbors to secure the victims, and washing his hands in gore has been his profession for six hundred years; this is why bull-fighting with its fascination and danger and death is to him so dear.
Every Sunday afternoon and every feast-day is given up to this bloody pastime and everybody goes. The foreigner goes once, sometimes twice, but rarely three times, but he never forgets what he sees. Four dead bulls, three dead horses, from one to three maimed or dead men is the possible result of a Sunday’s sport. Each city has itsplaza de torusor bull-ring, just as we have theaters, and the bull-fighters go from town to town as our opera companies. The stars of the company are the swordsmen. The bull-ring is a circular amphitheater, after the manner of the Roman Coliseum, and will seat from four to twenty thousand. The government takes a strong hand in lotteries and bull-fights, and in the latter, receives twenty-one per cent. of the gate receipts. In the federal district, the secretary of the republic presides at the fight.
Four different haciendas are licensed by the government to breed bulls for fighting purposes, Durango and Cazadero being the most noted. Poncama Diaz, a nephew of the president, is called the star matador of the world, and owns the Bucarelli bull-ring in the city, which is capable of seating 20,000 people. The arena is a circle 200 feet in diameter, and open to the sky. Around this is an eight foot wall to protect the people, and at intervals along this wall are “escapes” for the fighterswhen the bulls decide there is not enough room in the ring. Receding from the ring are the tiers of seats arranged in the manner of a circus. Those on the shady side usually selling for a dollar, while the “bleachers” sell for 25 or 37 cents. Over these seats are the private boxes, and above all the gallery for theolla podrida.
An ordinary troupe consists of two matadores or swordsmen, four banderilleros or dart stickers, two or four picadores or lancers, and the lazadores who lasso and drag the dead animals from the ring. The program usually consists of the killing of four bulls in an hour, with sometimes an extra. The president of the function, (every thing here is a function) may reject any part of the performance or fine any member who commits a breach of ring etiquette. The performance is set for four o’clock and is always the same. The crowd waits, grows impatient, the band plays. The crowd grows more impatient, the band plays again—plays all the time. Finally the judge appears, (every function must have a mediator between the people and the event) and is seated in his decorated box, and the band plays again.
The judge makes a sign to the bugler who blows the opening of the gates, through which comes a snow-white horse bearing a rider dressed in green and gold, with knee pants and silver buckles, flowing cape, cocked hat and waving plume. This is the president of the company, and he begs the permission and approval of the fight. The judge assents and throws him the keys of the bull-ring, (what else is he there for?) and the rider retires. Again the bugler blows and the company enter in full force, and thecostume of each is worth a thousand dollars in gold. No two are dressed alike as to color. Silk jackets that reach the waist, knee pants and silk stockings and a cockade hat, all present the prismatic colors of the rainbow. Around each is a Spanish cloak, held around the waist with the left hand. As they make their bow to the audience, the cloak is let loose with the left hand and swings around gracefully pendant from the left shoulder.
Again the bugle blows, and through the open gate a fierce bull from the mountain is ushered in. As he passes the gate a man overhead thrusts a steel dart into his shoulder, and on the dart is a rosette and a silk ribbon bearing the name of the hacienda whence he came. Maddened by the wound and frightened by the noise and people, he seeks the cause, and sees two horsemen in the arena. The horse is blindfolded to prevent his shying, and has a piece of sole-leather covering his side for protection. The horseman has a lance and endeavors to thrust it into his shoulder to ward him off. The lance point is short and is not meant to do serious harm, but to wound and irritate the bull and make him furious for the final battle. Sometimes the lance fails to score, sometimes it holds in his tough hide and the handle breaks and the bull buries his horns in the horse’s belly, and hurls both horse and rider in the air.
The horse was intended for the sacrifice from the beginning, and this was a part of the program. When the bull has killed one or two horses, he is encouraged to fight, and that is just what the whole thing is for. A man with a red flag draws the bull’s attention to the otherside while the dead horse is dragged out, and sometimes a dead man. Again the bugle blows and the ring is cleared, and two banderilleros enter. With a red flag one gets the bull’s attention, and a banderillero runs to the center. In each hand he holds a banderilla, a sharp steel dart about a foot long, and ornamented with rosettes and streamers. When the bull charges, he must reach over his horns and plant both of his banderillas in a shoulder at the same time. Sometimes the spread of horns is four feet, and the banderillero must make the pass and escape in a flash. As the bull makes the charge in a frenzied run, you find yourself unconsciously rising from your seat in anticipation of the almost certain death of the man, and women who see it for the first time usually faint and are promptly carried out.
Should the man succeed in planting the banderillas, the crowd shower cigars and flowers and fans upon him and shoutbravo! bravo!Should the bull succeed in thrusting his horns through the man’s equatorial region and toss him in the air, the crowd shoutbravo torus!just the same and cheer and whistle. They paid their money to see blood and what does it matter if it be man or bull’s? At this point it is proper for the American ladies to faint and come to and hurry out, while the Mexicans laugh at people who leave before the fun begins. The idea of fainting for such a small thing! The dead man is carried out and the other banderillero takes his place, and as the bull charges he must plant his banderillas in the other shoulder. Sometimes the experts vary the program by sitting in a chair until the bull is within six feet of him, andthen rises and makes his thrust in time to escape, and the bull goes off writhing in pain and trying to shake the cruel darts from his shoulder.
Sometimes a detachable rosette is thrust between his eyes as he charges, and the stream of blood that follows betrays the steel point behind the beautiful rosette. Then men with red flags will tantalize him. They stand behind the flag, and as the bull charges the men step aside, holding the flag at arm’s length in the same place, and the bull passes under the flag into empty air, where the man was. Quick as a cat he detects the fraud and turns upon the man, who makes a two-forty sprint to one of the escapes, where the bull tries to batter down the planks to get to him. The bull is now mad enough to fight a circular saw, and again the bugle blows. The ring is cleared and now enters the matador. The judge hands him a red flag and a sword. He must now challenge the bull to single combat, and to the victor belong the congratulations, and the man knows full well that if he gets killed the crowd will cheer the bull just as heartily as they would if it were the other way.
All the preliminaries of the fight were to aggravate the bull to his highest fighting power, then turn him over to the matador, the “star of the evening.” Rules as rigid as the Marquis of Queenbury prevail, and woe to the man who should violate a rule or take advantage of the bull! The judge would instantly order him from the ring and fine him. The ethics of the fight require that the man shall stand in the middle of the ring, wave the red flag as a challenge, andas the bull starts toward him put the flag behind him. As the bull charges, he must reach over his horns, thrust the sword through his shoulder, pierce the heart, and the point of the sword must appear between the bull’s fore legs, and it must all be done in a single stroke.
The hand and the eye must be as quick as lightning to do that when the bull is on the run. If the stroke is successful, the sword flashes a moment in the air and the next its hilt is resting against the shoulder blades, and the bull falls as if struck by lightning. Then the air is rent with shouts and dollars and fans and handkerchiefs, and with one foot upon the dead animal, the matador bows his appreciation. The bugle blows, the two lazadores gallop in, throw their lariats over the two hind legs of the bull, and without checking their gallop, drag him out and prepare for another. A bull is killed every fifteen minutes as regular as the clock.
Sometimes the sword misses the heart, and the bull walks off with a stream of blood and an ugly sword wound, and then the hisses and remarks that fall upon the matador sometimes drive him to suicide. I saw a matador driven to desperation by the hisses, and seizing another sword he made the stroke just behind the ear, severing the medulla oblongata, a more difficult stroke than the other, thereby redeeming himself. Sometimes a bull with wide stretch of horns will disconcert a matador and he will attempt to retreat at the last moment, but then it is as often death as escape.
One Sunday a company had unusually bad luck. Three horses and two men had alreadybeen killed, and only two bulls, and the troupe had no more matadors. One man was apologizing to the audience that the sport could not proceed as he had already lost two men, when the bull suddenly made a charge upon him and caught him between the shoulders. The “sport” closed for the day, and the people pronounced it a great success.
The next Sunday there was hardly standing room from the crowd that came back hoping for a similar show. I met the crowd returning, and asked how was the fight? Several shook their heads and looked dejected. “No bueno, nobody was killed and the whole thing was a fiasco.” If a bull refuses to fight after the lance has been thrust into him, the bugler at a sign from the judge blows him out. It must be a bloody, thoroughbred fight or none at all. It requires a long education to harden people to suffering and blood as these people practice daily. I saw two soldiers walk out of the barrack to fight a duel with pocket-knives, and a hundred people stood by and saw them kill each other and not a hand was raised to stay them. Themodo duelloamong the cow-boys is very effective. When two cow-boys have a difficulty that cannot be settled, their friends take them off and tie their left hands together and stick two bowie knives in the ground for their right hands, and leave them. The one that is left alive can cut himself loose and come back to camp. If neither comes back by the next day, the friends go over and bury them. There is also a woman bull-fighter in Mexico; her name is La Charita. Arizona Charley, an American cowboy has also endearedhimself to the Mexican heart by proving himself a first-class matador. Bull-fighting is as much a national sport as our base-ball. At one time it was interdicted in the federal district, and the people would go to Puebla every Sunday, seventy-five miles away, to see the “sport.” To the lovers of the sport it matters little whether the bull or horse or the man gets killed, or all three. What they want is their money’s worth.
The meat is sold to the butchers after the fight, and Monday morning when the waiter asks theAmericanohow is his steak, the answer generally comes, “It’s bully.”
ON the side-walk adjacent to the western entrance to the cathedral is an iron and glass Kiosk. This is Mexico’s flower market. Every morning in the year from daybreak until eight o’clock, the sidewalk and the adjoining street is one mass of fragrance and color. Every flower you know and as many as you do not know are spread in the greatest profusion possible, which fact suggests an inexhaustible supply-house somewhere. Here are roses, jassamines, pansies, violets, heliotropes, sweetpeas, gardenias, camelias, lilies, honeysuckles, forget-me-nots, verbenas, lark-spurs, poppies, morning-glories, tulips, geraniums, and orchids of untold variety and color. And there were purchasers. Priests from all the churches, milliners and café proprietors, dry-goods’ merchants, hotel keepers, the señora in her private carriage, señoritas with holy shrines and patron saints to honor, devotees whose special saint day is to be celebrated by a fiesta—everybody buys flowers, and they come by the ton as fast as other tons are sold. And they are arranged by master hands into cornucopias, crosses for the church altar, wreaths for the funeral car, decorations for the cemetery, and into any design the purchaser may indicate.
GROUP EL ABRA.
GROUP EL ABRA.
GROUP EL ABRA.
I ask where such a world of flowers can come from in such an unbroken stream. “From Las Chinampas,” the floating gardens. Floating Gardens! that sounded like the tales I had read, and here are people just from them! I anxiously ask where are they: “En Canal La Viga;” and so the search began. A street-car takes us to La Embarcadero where a hundred eager boatmen leave the wharf and come running to see us. I always thought I was popular, but here was an ovation I had not looked for. Then I learned something new. Each of my hundred friends had the best boat on La Viga, and each of my hundred friends was the best pilot from the canal to the lakes. Here was absolute perfection in ship building and nautical knowledge that would make Diogenes put up his lamp and say: “Eureka!” After each had extolled the virtues of his particular scow, or flatboat, or raft, whichever it approached nearest in appearance, we chose one.
If Canal La Viga was ever dug by man, history is silent about it. It was here when the conquerors came. It serves the same purpose as Niagara River, and brings the water of Lakes Chalco and Xochimilco down to Lake Texcoco. It has a uniform width and depth, and its banks are lined with stately avenues of trees the entire length. To the great middle-class and Indians, this is the great highway of commerce and resort for pleasure. Sundays and feast days it is a mass of moving color. In the dim past this city was the Venice of the New World, so boating is an inheritance. The boats are from ten to fifteen feet long; from four to eight wide and are generally poled along. There isan awning and comfortable seats where the passenger may enjoy the scenery protected from the sun. You make any arrangement you can as to price, and your boatman spits on his hands and pushes off, and if it is early in the morning you meet hundreds of crafts coming to market loaded down with fruits, grain and vegetables, pigs, lambs and chickens, and charcoal and baskets and everything else that the Lake country produces. The vegetables, by irrigation, surpass anything you have over met in that line; heads of lettuce larger than cabbage, and radishes as large as an ear of corn. A diminutive steam tug is met, trailing twelve or fifteen barges loaded with grain and cordwood from the upper lakes. Under a shade tree by the water, is a laundry after the fashion of the country, and a man and woman are washing clothes. The man’s part consists in sitting down and looking tired while the woman scrubs.
If it is Sunday the boats are laden with garlanded merry-makers with tinkling guitars and singing and dancing and having a “large time.” On the right is the once famous Paseo de La Viga, whose glory has long since departed to the Paseo de La Reforma. In spite of its neglect, La Viga is one of the most delightful drives in the city, especially in early morn, when canal traffic is at its best, and during Holy Week when the great middle-class take their holiday. Almost immediately after starting, we reach the old puebla of Jamaica, which, like the Paseo, has the look of having seen better times. On the opposite bank and by the Paseo, stands a melancholy bust of Guatemotzin, the last of the Aztec chieftains, whom the Mexicans delight tohonor—another testimonial of ancient aristocratic grandeur. The next point of interest is the old Garita de la Viga, the custom-house building, dating back to Spanish times.
Until a month prior to this writing, all boats paid custom duties on whatever merchandise they brought to the city. When the duties were paid the smaller boats were admitted through a small gate-way, which necessitated the lowering of the awnings, while the large ones had to discharge their cargoes.
On the up-stream side of the romantic old bridge is always a blockade of boats of every description, from mud scows to steamboats, waiting for a transfer. The first town beyond the Garita is the quaint little town of Santa Anita, the Coney Island of the Canal. It is essentially a Mexican town of thatched reed houses, nearly every one a restaurant for the sale of those unnamable dishes one meets with so often, which have a far-off smell, but fill a long-felt want. After hearing their names called, you are no wiser, but feel better. There are also liquid and semi-liquid refreshments to suit the taste, provided your sense of taste has been destroyed before coming here. The insidious and seductive pulque mixed with the firey tequila and mescal are all loaded with malicepræpens, and are better left to the lava-scarred throats that have met them before. All the fruit drinks are excellent, but the drink par excellence is the pina. It is made from grated pine-apple, sweetened with sugar and cooled with the snow just brought from Popocatapetl that morning.
When Horace sang of the wine of Brundusium cooled with the snows of Hymettus, he had notheard of the pina of Santa Anita backed up by Popocatapetl. Here are games, and all manner of games peculiar to the people, and flower-booths where the people buy flowers and garland each other, where even the humblest may wear a crown woven of fragrant flowers woven by the hand of Romeo or Juliet, only they call each other Ramon and Inez. Here is a fine old church with a beautiful tower and a diminutive plaza with restful seats and entrancing music.
Be sure to stop at the hacienda of Don Juan Corona. He was a retired bull-fighter, and in his old age became antiquarian, and his house is a vast museum of costly and rare antiquities. When he died he left a legacy to found a school for the poor, and if you have any pennies to bestow upon the señora who shows you around, they will be well spent.
We leave the merry-makers and proceed on our search forlas chinampas, after our boatman has mulcted us for coppers enough to tank up at a pulque joint. The thick ropy liquid has loosened his tongue in a marvelous manner, and the flood gates of his information bureau are raised, and for an hour he gives us chapters of unwritten history and legends of the country. That which I knew, he gave in Spanish, and that which neither of us knew he gave in Aztec, and he justified his claim of being the best informed guide on La Viga. Henceforth I call him Ananias. The two snow-clad volcanoes were close by on our left and I asked him which was Ixtaccihuatl and which Popocatepetl. “This is Esclaéwa and that is Popocaltepay,” he promptly answered. I said: “Man, your pronounciation is bent a little bit to starboard;everybody else says Popocatepetl.” “Of course they do,” he said, “which only proves that everybody else is wrong. I say it is Popocaltepay.” That scored one more for that designing pulque, and added to the title of Ananias, that of Geographer with a pedigree only three removes by blood from some people Baron Munchausen once knew.
The next town reached was Ixtacalco, where the people seem to have sobered down, and the burg showed less bent for pleasure and more for business. Here a fine old stone bridge crosses La Viga, and a discouraged old chapel with its portals wandering down to the water’s edge, where, in the good old days gone by, the boatman muttered anaveand deposited his offering to the saint in whose honor it was consecrated, in the hope that good luck might attend his market voyage. In front of the church, dedicated to Saint Matias, and which is a Franciscan foundation of more than three hundred years ago, is a little plaza with a fountain of running water. Along the lane from this plaza and marked by a palm-tree, is the ruin of what was once the chapel of Santiago, which is used as a dwelling.
In the midst of these inhabitants is the remnant of what was once a most gallant image of Santiago himself, now galloping to defend the faith on a headless horse, another relic of the romantic past, the work possibly of some cavalier of Spain, under the leadership of that prince of brave men, Hernan Cortez—for cruel as he was, we cannot withhold from him the meed he justly earned in bearding the lion in his den, though The New World Venice was buried in his blood-reeking canals. Who knows whose work it was,least of all the inhabitants of Ixtacalco, or the mutilated image itself, or if it knows, it discloses not its secret. We told Ananias to drive on, but that worthy assumed an electrocuted countenance that was wonderful to behold. The long distance had already paralyzed one side, and “He barely had strength enough to take him back to the city, and the Lake is fifteen kilometers. You will have to hire another boatman from here, and señor, by all the saints I could not pass that bridge, it is beyond my territory, and besides, señor, how much more will you give me to carry you to the next town?”
There! at last we see him in his true light, a pirate! Three well-earned titles in one day and it was not a very good day for titles either, and he had no appearance of aristocracy either. Certainly he did not belong to the Order of the Bath. “Here,” said I, “I will give you three cents to get drunk and drown yourself.” Off came his sombrero and down came a salaam almost to the prow of his boat. “Señor, I think I heard you say you wanted to see the chinampas.” “Chinampas! why of course, that is what I left the city to see, where are they?” “Well señor, we passed the floating garden a mile back at Santa Anita.” Caramba! Here was the title of knave to add to his already long list. With the hope of “holding me up” at the bridge for a raise in wages, he had silently passed the chinampas for fear I would stop.
My admiration began to grow for this Captain Kidd, and I was anxious to know how many cards he yet held up his sleeve, but it was expensive, so telling him to soak his head, I crossed the bridge and struck out upon the causeway, andfor miles and miles there was nothing but chinampas! They could have been seen from Ananias’ boat had it not been for the bank of the canal. This then was the mint where the flowers and vegetables were coined for the great city. Floating garden is now a misnomer. In years gone by they really floated on rafts, but as the French say “Nous avons change tout cela.” Since the lake was drained they are all stationary and are likely to remain so unless “Popocaltepay” resumes business again.
The Chinampas are a net-work of islands—Venice moved from the city to the lakes. The land-owner simply taps the canal with a ditch, leads it around three sides of a square and brings it into the canal again, making a rectangular island of any dimension he chooses. His neighbor beyond taps to his canal, and the system is extended for miles and miles just like the streets of a city, the business blocks answering for the islands. Through these canal streets dart thousands of boats that harvest the crops that grow here forever. Surrounded and saturated with water the chinampas are always moist and fertile and as there is no winter it is one perpetual seed time and harvest. The accumulated humus and vegetable matter make it unnecessary to even fertilize.
Broad streets cross these areas at intervals and among these islands and along the causeways the Indians live. No mosquito is ever billed for an evening’s entertainment, and the voice of the mud-turtle is not heard in the land. Malaria? perhaps, but what of that? A few dollars to the priest, a few masses for the soul in Purgatory, and the general average in theend is about the same. Your average Indian, like the Hindoo, is a fatalist, and “Kismet!” what is to be will be. There is something of beauty in these humble homes, and where flower-growing is a profession, it would be strange if their beauty had left no impression upon the lives and homes, and so all the people of La Viga decorate with flowers. The thatched house of reeds will be hidden under its wealth of vine and flower of thecopra del orowith its immense golden cups approaching in size a squash blossom. Within these huts are specimens of dark beauty and features and wealth of hair that many a fairer maiden might envy. Seated under her own vine and pomegranate tree, wrapped in thought and a scant petticoat, she weaves a mat of rushes or knits a hammock that will find its way to the home of some who read these lines.
Are they happy? “Where ignorance is bliss,” etc. They were born here, their parents before them were born here, this beautiful valley has all the charms to them that your home has for you. And is not Antonio here? and is he not the best gardener on La Viga, and are they not going to the little chapel next fiesta to be joined by the priest? Surely happiness in this world is measured by the contentment of our lot.
Not all the people of the Chinampas have boats. The great highway along the bank carries more passengers than the placid waters. An Indian woman with a hundred and thirty pounds on her head will trot her thirty miles to market and return next day. I say trot because no other word will do. All people of the burden-bearing class have a swing trot that they keepup all day. And the income! what glowing picture of opulence does the Indian not feel when he spends two days in the mountains burning charcoal, then loads himself and burro with his wealth, and trots his twenty miles to market? A dollar and a half for both loads would drive him speechless, but let us confine ourselves to actual facts, and grant him a whole dollar. He counts himself well paid, and the five days labor and forty mile journey count for nothing. He is not selling his time, but hiscarbonwhich he patiently peddles till sold, only keeping enough to feed his burro with. I suppose he feeds him with it, for I am sure I have never seen him carry along anything else that looked like feed. For dessert a few banana peels around the market place and broken pottery is about his only chance unless good luck blows some old straw hat his way; then he feasts. Time! What is time to the Indian? Has he not a whole year?
The next town on La Viga is Mexicalcingo, seven miles from the city. Before the Conquest it was of some importance, but now only a straggling village with dirty streets, which shelter possibly three hundred people. The ruins of the monastery and church of San Marco, built by the Franciscans, are here. The old causeway and military road, seven miles long, that once crossed the lake from Mexico to Ixtapalapan, crosses La Viga at this point. This was a dependency of the Aztec City. A very picturesque view of the high old bridge of Aztec time is had, and the bright green maize on one hand, and the old ecclesiastical building on the other, bowered in masses of dark green foliage, are very pleasing. Past the ancient oldbridge the scene changes but little except there are less signs of habitation, and finally the last town of La Viga is reached, Culhuacan. This is a picturesque old town, half of it built on the hill, and here are the ruins of a fine old church and monastery. Here La Viga begins to broaden out into a lake, and everywhere, both parallel with it and at right angles to it, are many branches of the canal, which in wet weather are small lakes themselves.
The journey might be continued out into Lake Xochimilco “The Field of Flowers,” and the quaint and beautiful town of the same name would be well worth the time; but we started out to see where all those beautiful flowers came from, andveni, vide, I returned.