CHAPTER XIV.
First Sight of the Valley of Mexico.—A Venice in a mountain Valley.—An Emperor waiting his Murderers.—Cortéz mowing down unarmed Indians.—A new kind of Piety.—Capture of an Emperor.—Torturing an Emperor to Death.—The Children paying the Penalty of their Fathers' Crimes.—The Aztecs and other Indians.—The Difference is in the Historians.—The Superstitions of the Indians.—The Valley of Mexico.—An American Survey of the Valley.—A topographical View.—The Ponds Chalco, Xochimulco, and Tezcuco were never Lakes.
My first view of the Valley of Mexico was from the point where the Acapulco road passes the Cross of the "Marquis of the Valley." I had read with eagerness the History of the Conquest, and of the adventures of the nobleConquistador. Not a shadow of a doubt had then crossed my mind in regard to the truth of all that had been so elegantly written. Beautiful composition had supplied the place of evidence, and that practice of writing romances of history which the Spaniards had inherited from the Moors had completely captivated me, as it had thousands of others. The aspect of the valley was all that my fancy had painted it. The sun was in the right quarter to produce the greatest possible effect. The unnumbered pools of surface-water that abound in the valley appeared at that distance like so many lakelets supplied by crystal fountains, as each one reflected the bright sun from its mirror-like surface; these all were inclosed in the richest setting of nature's green.
It was such a scene as would justify the extravagant language which Spaniards have employed in describing it. While I recalled its traditional history, I was tempted to exclaim as a native would have done, and to give credence to the fables of which this valley has been the scene. Here, as the story ran, amid floating gardens of rarest flowers and richest fruits, lay, in olden time, another Venice—a Venice in an inland mountain valley—a Venice upon whose Rialto never walked a Shylock with his money-bags; for in this market-place the most delicious fruits the world produces, the loveliest flowers, rich stuffs resplendent with Tyrian dyes, and princely mantles of feather-work, were bought with pretty shells, and such money as the sea produces. It was a Venice with its street of waters and its central basin, where jostled the gondolas of the Aztec nobles and the light canoes of birch bark among the vessels of commerce which came laden with slaves and other merchandise from the surrounding villages—a basin that disappeared the same day that the Indian empire fell.
GUATEMOZIN.
This basin was the last vestige of Aztec dominion; and when there no longer was any safe shelter upon the land, Guatemozin retired to his canoe and took shelter here, and calmly waited till his time should come to be murdered. He could not flee. He could not capitulate, for he was an emperor. As he sat here waiting for death, what must have been his reflections! What thoughts did not the very boat he occupied call up! How often had it carried him out upon the lake to the floating gardens and volcanic islands, where he had witnessed so many times the gorgeous reflections of an evening sun upon the snow-capped Popocatapetl, in whose bowels "the god of fire" had his dwelling! And then the lake itself, how much it had perplexed his thoughts, that in one part its waters should be fresh, with islands teeming with the richest vegetation, and in another part salt and bitter, with utter barrenness resting upon its shores! How he used to meet his brother of Tezcuco in the after part of the day, to exchange congratulations and talk over affairs of interest to both the royal families! Now all these pleasures were terminated forever. His brother of Tezcuco was in the ranks of his enemies, seeking his destruction.
Thus sat the emperor, surrounded by a numerous fleet of canoes, whose occupants were without hope of escape or strength to fight; but, with Indian stoicism, all sat waiting their inevitable doom from freebooters whom they had disappointed of their prey. As the emperor and his nobles sat here witnessing the destruction of their pumice-stone palaces and mud-built huts, and the filling up of their canals, they consoled themselves with the reflection that their gold and their wealth were all at the bottom of these canals, and that the Spaniards, in their hot haste to enjoy the spoils of the city, were unwittingly burying forever the prize for which they were contending. Such were the thoughts of these Aztecs as they sat in their canoes, longing for death to relieve them from agony of suspense, enduring all the torments of the extremest thirst, which they vainly sought to quench by draughts of the brackish water of the lake. They had not long to wait; for, by the express commands of Cortéz, his followers were mowing down unresisting citizens, because the emperor, over whom they had no control, would not surrender himself.
Who can stand for the first time upon the mountain rim that incloses this valley, and not have his thoughts carried back to some such scene as this? The recollection is not easily eradicated that the remnant of a once powerful tribe of Indians, partially emerged from barbarism, here received their death, in cold blood, at the hands of a party of white murderers. The good Archbishop Loranzana commends the piety of Cortéz in never neglecting to attend mass before going out to his daily work of slaughter. It was a pious act, no doubt, that on the last morning of the siege he stopped and listened to a mass—that pantomime which set forth the death of the Redeemer of the world—preparatory to consummating the butchery of Indians incapable of resistance.
Garci Holguin, the master of a brigantine, or rather flat-boat, bolder than the rest, drove through the fleet of canoes that occupied the basin, until he encountered in the centre a canoe containing the person of the emperor, whom he made prisoner and brought to Cortéz, whereupon the slaughter ceased.
Neither the horrid sight which the city presented, nor the fallen fortunes of a brave enemy, could move the soul of Cortéz. A brigand knows no remorse and feels no pity. Gold had been the object of his pious mission, and when he found not gold enough to satisfy the cravings of his gang, he soaked the fallen emperor's feet in oil, and then burned them at a slow fire, to extort from him a confession of the place of concealment of his supposed treasure; and when, in after years, he was tired of the burden of such a prisoner, he wantonly hanged him up by the heels to die in a distant forest.
In this very city where Cortéz tortured Guatemozin was a son of Cortéz, who inherited the spoils of his father's atrocities, put to the torture by one of the Vice-kings, while the children's children of the Conquistadors paid for the wealth they inherited in the terrible penalties inflicted upon them by the buccaneers, that ravaged their coasts for two hundred years. Have not the sins of the fathers been visited upon the children?
The Aztecs, their empire, and their city, have long since disappeared; their crimes, and the despotism which they exercised over the tribes they had conquered, are all forgotten in the terrible catastrophe that extinguished their national existence. Three hundred years of servitude in the indiscriminate mass of Indian serfs has blotted out every feeling of nationality. A few vagabonds among them still claim royal descent, and, by virtue of their blood or their imposture, pretend to exercise, in obscure villages, an undefined jurisdiction over Indians as oppressed as themselves. But the characteristics of the North American Indians are still visible; they still exhibit the contradictory traits of Indian character—cruelty and kindness, shyness and self-possession; enduring the greatest trials without a murmur, and suffering oppression without complaint; delighting as much as their northern brethren in tawdry exhibitions, in traditions of the marvelous, they seem to carry hidden in their inmost soul an idea that the time will come when they may take vengeance of the despoilers of their race. They have the Indian's love of adventure and want of courage. They delight rather in a successful stratagem than in open hostility, and deem no act of treachery dishonorable by which they can gain an advantage. Still, they have less romance in their composition than the unenslaved northern Indians, into whose souls the iron of despotism has never entered.
THE AZTECS AND THEIR HISTORIANS.
The great difference between what is recorded of the North American Indian and the Aztec is owing less to any difference in themselves than to the character of the historians who have written of them. The northern writers were not carried away by the romance of Indian life; they were matter-of-fact men, and they drew only matter-of-fact pictures. Spanish historians, and all early Spanish writers upon New Spain, except the two brigands, Cortéz and Diaz, were priests. With them, truth was not an essential part of history. By the law of all countries, the Conquistadors had outlawed themselves by levying unlicensed war; but as they bore a painting of the Virgin Mary on one of their standards and the cross on the other, it would be impiety to place their conduct in its true light. Las Casas was an exception, and endured persecution for speaking the truth. "He had powerful enemies," was all that his apologist dare say, "because he spake the truth." And if we add to this the sevenfold censorship already described, my reader will agree with me that it is absurd to place confidence in records over which the Inquisition exercised a surveillance.
The fabled Aztec empire has almost passed from the traditions of the Mexican Indians. The name of only one of their chiefs, Montezuma, remains among them, and this name is affixed to almost every thing that has an ancient look and is in a dilapidated condition. In my wanderings among them, I never rejected their proffers of rude hospitality, and I have listened with pleasure to their wild traditions. I soon found that, like other Indians, they draw from a supernatural "dream-world" the fortitude that enables them to bear without a murmur their hard lot in the present. They readily embraced the superstitions of the Spaniards, and rendered to the virgin of Guadalupe the adoration they had formerly bestowed upon their own gods. Their conversion may be summed up in the words of Humboldt: "Dogma has not succeeded to dogma, but ceremony to ceremony. The natives know nothing of religion but the external forms of worship. Fond of whatever is connected with a prescribed order of ceremonies, they find in the Christian religion particular enjoyment. The festivals of the Church, the fire-works with which they are accompanied, the processions mingled with whimsical disguises, are a most fertile source of amusement to the lower Indians."
THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.
There has been a great deal of poetry and very little plain prose written about the valley of Mexico. At an early morning hour I stood upon the heights of Rio Frio; at another morning, as already said, at the Cross of the Marquis; again, upon the highest peak of the Tepeyaca, behind Guadalupe, I saw a tropical morning sun disengage itself from the snowy mountains. From these three favored spots I have looked upon the valley, where dry land and pools of water seemed equally to compose the magnificent panorama. Immense mirrors of every conceivable shape and form were reflecting back the rays of the sun, while the green shores in which they were set enhanced the effect. The white walls, and domes, and spires of the distant city heightened the effect of a picture that can only be fully appreciated by those who have looked downward through the pure atmosphere of such a lofty position; but when I came down to the common level, the charm was broken. Instead of lakelets and crystal springs, I found only pools of surface-water which the rains had left; and the canals were but the ditches from which, on either side, the dirt had been taken to build the causeway through the marsh, and were now covered with a coat of green. These lakes have no outlet, and as evaporation only takes up pure water, all the animal, vegetable, and mineral matter that is carried in is left to stagnate and putrefy in the ponds and ditches.
A practical "man of the times," with more common sense than poetry in his composition, must grieve as he looks at the great advantages here possessed for drainage and irrigation which are unimproved. There is not a spot in the whole valley that is not capable of the most perfect drainage,[28]while basins have been formed by nature in the highest points, from which irrigation could be supplied to the whole valley; but decay and neglect—fitting types of the social condition of the people—every where exhibit themselves. Water stands in all the narrow canals or ditches that occupy the middle of the streets, for the want simply of a sewer to draw it down to the level of the Tezcuco. Once a year the flags are taken off from the covered ditches, and the mud is dipped out, while a bundle of hay, tied to the tail of a dirt-cart, is daily dragged through the open ones.
I have spoken only of the lower division of this valley—the valley in which the city stands. If we consider the two partly separated valleys as one, the whole will constitute an oval basin 75 miles long from north to south, with an average width from east to west of 20 miles. Two thirds of the southern valley is a marsh, and might well be called the "Montezuma Marsh," it so strikingly resembles the marsh of that name in the State of New York, though the whole body of ponds and marshes of this valley contains much less water than its northern namesake. The stage-road from Vera Cruz crosses this marsh for fourteen miles, and has a great number of small stone bridges, beneath which the water runs with considerable current toward the north, on account of the difference of level between the southern fresh-water ponds and the lower salt-water ponds, as in the days of Cortéz. There are occasional dry spots, and now and then there is open water; but the greater portion is filled with marsh grass, and furnishes good feeding for the droves of cattle that daily frequent it for that purpose. The ancient village of Mexicalzingo, or "Little Mexico," the traditional home of the Aztecs before they built Mexico, is situated on one of the dry spots, slightly elevated above the level of the fresh water; and on another dry spot or island, six miles distant, stands the famous city of Mexico itself, resting on piles driven into a foundation of soft earth. The canal of Chalco commences at the northerly extremity of the Xochimulco, and, passing by Mexicalzingo and the floating gardens, continues along the eastern front of the city, and empties itself into the salt (tequisquite) pond of Tezcuco, having received as a tributary the canal of Tacubaya, which passes along the southern boundary of the city.
THE LAKES OF THE VALLEY.
The highest water of the valley of the city of Mexico is the pond of Chalco, in the extreme southeast, being 4-8/12 feet above the level of the Grand Plaza of the city, and 20 miles distant therefrom, and 11-2/12 feet above Tezcuco;[29]but its volume being small for the last 400 years, the slight impediments of long grass and a few Indian dikes have prevented any injury to the city by a too rapid flow to the northward. Xochimulco is the pond, or open space in the marsh, that extends from the Chalco to near Mexicalzingo. Tezcuco is the lowest water in the valley, being 6½ feet below the Grand Plaza of the city.[30]It receives the surplus of the waters that have not already been evaporated in the other ponds. At this great elevation, 7500 feet, evaporation does its work rapidly all over the valley, but it is in Tezcuco that the residuum of the waters is deposited.
CHAPTER XV.
The two Valleys.—The Lake with a leaky Bottom.—The Water could not have been higher.—Nor could the Lagunas or Ponds have been much deeper.—The Brigantines only flat-bottomed Boats.—The Causeway Canals fix the size of the Brigantines.—The Street Canals.—Stagnant Water unfit for Canals.—The probable Dimensions of the City Canals.—Difficulties of disproving a Fiction.—A Dike or Levee.—The Canal of Huehuetoca.—The Map of Cortéz.—Wise Provision of Providence.—The Fiction about the numerous Cities in and about the Lake.
It may be well here to repeat that, strictly speaking, there are two valleys of Mexico—the upper northern valley, and the valley of the city of Mexico; the first extends in an oval form to the north of the hills of Tepeyaca, some sixty miles, and communicates with the plains of Otumba and Apam. In this valley are the two ponds, orlagunas, of Zumpango and San Cristobal, the highest waters of Mexico; and in it also is the half of the Tezcuco, which is the lowest laguna of the valleys. It is a country of fine farming lands, and was probably inhabited long before the time of the arrival of the Aztecs in the lower valley, as I infer from its proximity to the extensive ruins of Teotihuican, that have come down from a remote and highly-civilized antiquity.
THE ANCIENT LAKES.
The valley of the city of Mexico, which lies to the south of these hills, is also of an oval shape, but is not more than twenty miles in extent. The surface-water with which it is saturated is in part fresh, and in other partstequisquite; that is, where the waters have a current, they are fresh; but where they remain from year to year discharging their volume only by evaporation, then they become infused with the saline properties of the soil,[31]and all about them is marked with barrenness. If the process of evaporation was less intense than it is,[32]all vegetation would die from the extreme humidity of the soil; as the gardener's phrase is, it would rot. Even in the city of Mexico itself, a couple of feet of digging in its alluvial foundation brings you to the water-level in the dry season, and seventy or eighty yards of boring does not carry you beyond the perceptible influence oftequisquite.[33]The effects of this law of evaporation puzzled the Aztecs, who were, of course, ignorant of all philosophical principles, and could only account for the disappearance of the immense mass of water that fell in the valley in the wet season, upon the hypothesis that the Tezcuco had a leaky bottom, or that there was a hole in the lake—an idea that thousands in Mexico credit to the present day. This was the origin of that absurd story which Cortéz repeats in his letters, that this lake communicated with the sea, and had its daily tides.
There could not have been a much greater volume of water in this marshy valley in the time of Cortéz than at present, if the whole accumulations of each year were to be carried off by evaporation alone from so small a surface as is here presented for the sun to act upon. But as the volume of water is the turning-point in the history or fable of the conquest, I must adduce the proofs and arguments that are at hand to establish this statement. The level of the water could not have been higher, it is clear, for in that case neither Mexico, Mexicalzingo, or Iztapalapan could have been inhabited.
Cortéz's account of deep waters has often been made plausible by adding the hypothesis that the accumulating mud of centuries has filled up the lakes, so that they now are only shallow ponds. But this by no means removes the difficulty, for then, as now, the waters of the southern laguna flowed into Tezcuco, conveying with them the infinitesimal infusion oftequisquitethat had instilled itself into the Chalco. Had the volume of Chalco and Xochimulco been increased several feet, then the slight Indian barriers and the long grass would no longer have been able to retard the progress of the water till evaporation had diminished its quantity, but, precipitating itself in a mass into the Tezcuco, it would have overwhelmed the town of Tezcuco and all other villages upon the shores, and established an equilibrium of surface in the two ponds.
All the lagunas, canals, and ditches that have been described are navigated by small scows that draw but a few inches of water, which are the medium of an extensive internal commerce. Through the lagunas and canal of Chalco come from Cuatla all the supplies of the products of the hot country for the city and surrounding region. This commerce exceeds the whole foreign trade of the republic.[34]This kind of boat was probably introduced by Cortéz, and in this convenient form his thirteen brigantines were probably made; for, had his brigantines been of a larger draught of water, they could not have navigated canals intended only for Indian canoes. One of these vessels, when supplied with a sail, a cannon, and a movable keel or side-board, would be a formidable auxiliary in an assault upon the city at the present day. And if one such scow was placed in the ditch on each side of the southern causeway, as Cortéz alleges, it would enable an assailing enemy to present just so much more front as the additional width of two boats would give him.
THE CAUSEWAYS AND CANALS.
Writers have expressed their surprise at the existence of two navigable canals to each causeway, one on either side, as an immense expenditure of unnecessary labor. The explanation of this is found in the fact that in the construction of a pathway (for Cortéz says that it was only 30 feet in width) through wet and marshy ground, a broad ditch is ordinarily made on either side to obtain earth for the embankment, and to keep the water-level permanently below the top of the pathway. So it is, and so it must always have been at Mexico, in order to keep these foot-paths in traveling condition. In the dry season, which is the winter, these broad ditches are covered with floating islands of green "scum;" but in the rainy season, which is the summer, they may be navigated by the shallow Mexican scows. A pathway of earth thirty feet in width could not endure the winds and waves of a navigable lake, or the wear and "swash" of a canal twelve feet deep on either side; and the fact that Cortéz navigated the ditches in the rainy season establishes the insignificant size of his famous brigantines.
As the level of the surface of the land and the surface of the water at Mexicalzingo, at Mexico, and at the village Tezcuco, does not materially vary now from what it was in the time of Cortéz, if we can take for data the foundations of the church built by the Conquistadors at these several places, we shall have to look to another quarter for a supply of water for the city canals, which were sufficiently capacious for canoe navigation. This supply we readily obtain by allowing the waters of the canals Tacubaya and Chalco to pass through the streets of the city in ditches sufficiently large for canoes, instead of passing along the south and east fronts outside. By this hypothesis we obtain a current, a prerequisite to the very idea of a canal, particularly in the streets of a city.
Thesavansof Europe have shown their profound ignorance of the first principles of canal navigation in taking it for granted that the canals of Mexico were filled with stagnant water, that had "set back" from the stagnant pond of Tezcuco; and that the level of the pond must at all times have been so high as to fill the canals, thus keeping the city in constant danger from any sudden rise in the laguna. But, aside from the rules of canal construction, there is an important sanitary question involved. The present ditches in the middle of the streets, though they have a perceptible current, and a slight infusion oftequisquite, are an intolerable nuisance, and have a deleterious effect upon the public health. How much more so must they have been when, from the uncleanly habits of the Indians, they were the common receptacle of all kinds of filth, and were constantly stirred up to their very bottoms by the setting-poles of the navigators? The system of canalling is a system of slack-water navigation, but abhors stagnant water.
We come next to the question of the dimensions of these street canals. We know that they were intended only for the navigation of Indian canoes; that two of them, which intersected the causeway of the night retreat, Cortéz crossed with his army, all of them climbing down into the canal, wading across, and then climbing up on the other side while loaded with their armor, and fighting all the time against a superior force of the Aztecs; and that Alvarado actually leaped across one of the openings, shows conclusively that the canals could not have more than equaled in breadth the present canal of Chalco. On the hypothesis that Cortéz used scows that drew no more water than the scows that at present navigate the canals, his story becomes credible, so far, at least, as the possibility of making the circuit of the city in large boats in a season of rains.
TRUTH AGAINST FICTION.
It is an ungracious task to sift truth from fables. One man is displeased at seeing held up as a fiction a narrative which he has been accustomed to read with pleasure, and to take for truth, because it was elegantly written; and he requires an accumulation of proofs and arguments before he will abandon a belief which he has adopted without evidence. Another man, who deals only in matters of fact, is easily convinced, and is annoyed at an accumulation of proofs and arguments where one is sufficient. The superstitious man can not, of course, be convinced, for his belief does not rest upon evidence; and he is indignant that an attempt should be made to detract from the glory obtained by the Virgin Mary and the Church in this victory over the infidels. Had I attempted to prove that the feather which is now preserved with so much care in the Church ofSan Juan de Lateranat Rome did not fall from the wing of the angel Gabriel when he came to announce to Mary her conception, and that the whole history of that feather was a fable, notwithstanding it has received the attestations of so many of the Holy Fathers, I should be cursed for my impiety no more than I shall be for raising the question of the authenticity of the histories of the Conquest. With all these difficulties before me, I will venture to add one or two more reasons that have induced me to doubt the existence of those famous brigantines, which required a depth of twelve feet of water.
In support of the hypothesis that the street ditches, called canals, were independent of the Tezcuco for their supply, we have still the remains of an old Indian dike, which extended from near Iztapalapan, along the east part of the city, to Guadalupe or Tepeyaca, which must have been intended to shut off the Tezcuco when the water was high, and when it receded they probably opened a weir at the northern extremity, through which the waters of the city that had been discharged upon the flats of San Lazaro found an outlet.
The waters of the valley are now distributed in the best possible manner to favor evaporation; and yet so completely is this power taxed, that when, in 1629, a water-spout, bursting over the small river Guautitlan, had forced the waters of Zumpango over its barriers into the San Cristobal, and that again into the Tezcuco, the city was inundated to the depth of about three feet. Evaporation was unable to remove or materially lessen this new volume of water in a period of five years. This fully demonstrates that the average annual fall of water is equal to the full capacity of evaporation. The valley of Mexico is a very small one over which to dispose of the mass of water that the mountain-torrents in summer and the tropical rains pour into it, and with the small margin of six and a half feet for rising and falling, the city must have been in constant jeopardy. Still the floods have been much less frequent than would have been supposed, fully demonstrating the great uniformity in the fall of water in the Mexican season of rain. When a water-spout occurred in the Chalco in 1446, in the time of the Aztec kings, there was a flood, which probably ran off into the Tezcuco. Under the Spaniards the following floods are enumerated: the first in 1553; the second in 1580; the third in 1604; the fourth in 1607; the fifth in 1629.
After the flood of 1607, the tunnel of Huehuetoca was undertaken, and constructed in eleven months, for the purpose of letting out of the valley the waters of the River Guautitlan, so as to prevent it from falling into Tezcuco or flooding the city. For those times it was a great work, but we should say now that it was poorly engineered and badly managed, and not worthy the notice it has received in books on Mexico. Since that time, the great inundation of 1629 occurred while the mouth of the tunnel was closed. After that time, the Spaniards, instead of building inside of the tunnel an elliptical tube, actually, by a hundred years of misapplied labor, turned the tunnel into an open cut.
THE MAP OF CORTÉZ.
Cortéz furnished a map to illustrate his description. This map has the same defect as his narrative; that is, it was untrue at the time he made it. In order to bring Tezcuco about the city, he places the village of that name due east of Mexico, although he well knew that it was nearly north, as the two towns are distinctly in sight, although at a distance of about six leagues. Now, if we carry the village of Tezcuco and the shore of the lake with it to its correct position, we shall have the Laguna of Tezcuco in about its present form and size. The apology for his defeat at Iztapalapan, by the breaking open of the dike and letting in the salt water, is, of course, inadequate, as the dike could not have supported a head of water sufficient to drown his men, nor could so great a head of salt water be obtained at that point.
In this survey of the ponds of Mexico, I have drawn upon the experience which has been acquired in the process of evaporation at the extensive salt manufactories of Syracuse and the surrounding villages in Western New York, and also the experience of our engineers Upon the Erie Canal, and the engineers upon the dikes or levees at Sacramento, where the nature of the soil resembles that of Mexico. And I may now conclude this long survey of the canals and lagunas of Mexico, by saying that it is a wise provision of Providence that all bodies of water that have no outlet are found to contain a considerable infusion of salt, otherwise their accumulations of decaying matter would be such that mankind could not live in their vicinity. This valley is an illustration of that truth. Tezcuco, surrounded by barrenness, is not deleterious to life, while the fresh-water lagunas, though continually changing their volume, render Mexico unhealthy in summer by the gases which they exhale from decaying vegetation.
ANCIENT POPULATION OF THE VALLEY.
I have pretty thoroughly described this small valley, and have also stated how large a portion of it is flooded with surface-water, and how large a portion of this water is infused with salt. In the vicinity of Tacubaya the land is remarkably fertile, and there is good tillable land as the mountains are approached, especially about Chalco on the southeast; but under Indian cultivation, the whole of this valley could have produced sustenance for only an extremely limited population, if the product of the floating gardens and the ducks caught upon the pond should be added. It is totally inadequate to feed the population of Mexico under the vice-kings, 400,000, or its present population of say 300,000; nor could the valley itself be made to sustain one third of this. This valley, it must be recollected, is inclosed on all sides except the north by mountains that exceed 10,000 feet in height, while the commissariat capacity of barbaric tribes is not such as to provide extensive supplies from a distance. Under such circumstances, we should look for an extremely limited population. Yet the most surprising part of the story of the conquest is the enormous population assigned to the numerous large cities which they allege the valley contained. Diaz says, "A series of large towns stretched themselves along the banks of the lake, out of which [the lake] still larger ones rose magnificently above the water." Cortéz says that Iztapalapan contained "10,000 families," which would give the town 50,000 inhabitants; "Amaqueruca, 20,000 inhabitants;" "Mexicalzingo, 3000 families," or 15,000 inhabitants; "Ayciaca more than 6000 families;" "Huchilohuchico, 5000 or 6000." The population of Chalco he does not give, nor the population of the very numerous villages whose names he mentions. At the present day there are a few mud huts in nearly every locality named, but not enough in any one instance to merit the name of a village. And this, I am inclined to believe, was the real condition of things in the time of Cortéz. The city of Mexico alone would have exhausted the limited resources of the valley. Old Thomas Gage was as much puzzled two hundred years ago to account for this astonishing disappearance of the numerous Indian cities of this valley as we are, and also for the supposed filling up of the lakes, never appearing to suspect that the story of Cortéz was a fiction.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Chinampas or Water Gardens.—Laws of Nature not set aside.—Mud will not float.—The present Chinampas.—They never could have been floating Gardens.—Relations of the Chinampas to the ancient State of the Lake in the Valley.
All the world has heard of the floating gardens (chinampas) of Mexico, but all the world has not seen them. I have not seen any floating gardens, nor, on diligent inquiry, have I been able to find a man, woman, or child that ever has seen them, nor do I believe that such a thing as a floating garden ever existed at Mexico. Humboldt admits that they do exist; says that he has seen floating earthy masses of great size in the tropical rivers, and then describes the manner of the construction of the chinampas, but in such a way as to satisfy the careful reader that he does not intend to say that he saw them himself, and evidently makes his statement upon hearsay; and takes it up as an admitted fact, without having his mind called to the physical impossibilities of floating a mass of earth that was of a greater specific gravity than water.
FAITH AND TESTIMONY.
When the historians of the Conquest wrote their marvelous narratives of alleged adventures and of the new empire, it was a question for the Emperor and the Inquisition solely, whether their writings should pass for history or be condemned as fabulous. With this question the people had nothing to do but to believe as it suited those in authority. The question being settled that the publication of the letters of Cortéz as a verity would redound to the glory of the Church and the king, then it was also settled that there should be no contradiction published; and as these marvelous tales were spread abroad throughout Europe, with the masses of silver from the newly-discovered mines, men were prepared to believe almost any thing—even that rich vegetable mould, when saturated with water, could float.
It not being lawful to promulgate the facts of the Conquest, the memory of events that really transpired ultimately passed from the recollections of men, so that the letters of Cortéz were taken for truth, even in their most minute details; so that, in a subsequent century, we find a vice-king employing an engineer to search for and clean out the hole in the bottom of the Tezcuco! for, from the vice-king down to the most insignificant official, all assumed that the letters of Cortéz gave a correct picture of affairs at that time; and all showed the greatest embarrassment in accounting for the magnitude of the changes that are supposed to have occurred without a sufficiently adequate cause. It is a common difficulty in all purely Catholic countries, for there the rule of evidence is an unnatural one. The people have been taught to believe from their infancy that the laws of nature can be set aside upon every trifling occasion, at the momentary caprice of any one of the multitude of saints "who are to govern the world;" and on proof that any mortal has set aside the laws of nature or wrought a miracle, he at once becomes a saint. With these "dutiful children of the Church" there can be no fixed laws of evidence; the only ground of belief is, and ever must be, Has the statement been sanctioned by the highest authority? If so, it is true; if not, it is to be doubted, however positive the proofs may be. A difficulty that the traveler every where encounters is that he can believe nothing that he hears, even on the most trifling subject, without careful examination and weighing of testimony. As he can not examine every thing himself, he is constantly liable to be imposed upon by taking for granted that which is every where affirmed. Humboldt for once, with all his caution, seems to have fallen into the common trap, and credited, without examination, the story of the floating gardens.
THE CHINAMPAS.
The chinampas are formed on the fresh-water mud on each side of the canal of Chalco, from the southeast corner of the city to a point near the ancient village of Mexicalzingo, and for a part of the way they are on both sides of that beautiful but now neglectedpaséo, Las Vegas; there are also a small number near the causeway of Tacubaya, and in other parts of the marsh; their number might be extended without limit if it was not regulated by the demands of the vegetable market of Mexico. Chinampas are formed by laying upon the soft mud a very thick coating of reeds, or rather rushes, in the form and about the size of one of our largest canal scows. Between two chinampas a space of about half the width of one is left, and from this open space the mud is dipped up and poured upon the bed of dry rushes, where it dries, and forms a rich "muck" soil, which constitutes the garden. As the specific gravity of this garden is much greater than that of the water, or of the substratum of mud and water combined, it gradually sinks down into its muddy foundation; and in a few years it has to be rebuilt by laying upon the top of the garden a new coating of rushes and another covering of mud. Thus they have been going on for centuries, one garden being placed upon the top of another, and a third placed over all, so soon as the second gives signs of being swallowed up in the all-devouring mud.
The gardeners navigate the open space between their islands with light boats; and during the short hours of the morning, the market-boat alongside each island is loaded with a cargo of vegetables, fruits, and flowers, which are to be displayed in the great market of Santa Anna. More pleasing than a drive on thepaséois a boat-ride down the canal of Chalco at eventide, when the proprietor of each of these little estates is seen standing in the canal alongside, and throwing upon his thirsty plants a plentiful supply of the tepid canal water, which, from every leaf and flower, reflects back the rays of a setting sun, that have penetrated the long shadows of the trees of Las Vegas. Some of the chinampas have small huts upon them, where a gardener lives, who watches over two or three of these little properties. Sometimes also shrubs, and even trees, are planted along the edges, which yield both fruits and flowers, and serve to keep the dry earth from falling into the water. When looking at one of the largest and best cared for chinampas, the beholder can hardly divest himself of the idea that it is a floating island, and might well have been the residence of Calypso.
This is the whole of the story of the chinampas, the most fertile and beautiful little gardens upon the face of the earth. A correct picture of them would be poetry enough, without the addition of falsehood; for whether it is the rainy season or the dry season, it is always the same to them. They know no exclusive seed-time, and have no especial season for harvest; but blossoms and ripe fruits grow side by side, and flowers flourish at all seasons. As market gardens they are unrivaled, and to them Mexico is indebted for its abundant supplies.
The evidence that Humboldt[35]produces in favor of floating gardens, viz., that he saw floating islands of some 30 feet in length in the midst of the current of rivers, amounts to little in this case; for every one that has traveled extensively in tropical lowlands has seen vegetation spring up upon floating masses of brush-wood. Where earth torn from the river bank is so bound together by living roots as to form a raft, it will always float for a little while upon the current, provided that its specific gravity does not materially exceed that of the water; and those grasses that flourish best in water will spring up and grow upon these islands. Peat, too, in bogs, will float and form islands, for the simple reason that it is of less specific gravity than water; and vegetation will also spring up on these peat islands. But all this furnishes no evidence that the invariable law of nature, which carries to the bottom the heaviest body, has been suspended at Mexico. Had the floating gardens been built in large boats made water-tight, they might have floated. But, unfortunately, the Indians had not the means for constructing such boats. Even timber-rafts would have become saturated in time, and sunk, as rafts of logs do if kept too long in the "mill-pond," waiting to be sawed into lumber.
There is another law of nature, which must not be lost sight of, which is at war with the idea of a garden floating on a bed of rushes; and that is capillary attraction, which would raise particles of water, one by one, among the fibres of the rushes until the frail raft on which the earth rested was saturated; and still pressing upward, the busy drops would penetrate the superincumbent earth, moistening and adding to the specific gravity of the garden by filling the porous earth until it became too heavy to float, if it ever had floated.
Nearly three hundred years had passed away before men ventured to question the truth of the statement that the gardens along the canal of Chalco ever floated, and then it seemed like temerity to raise the question, even if it were only a popular fallacy. It has therefore been treated by all modern writers as a well-established matter, and one of not sufficient importance to justify its minute investigation. With me the question was a far different one. I had, after careful inquiry and observation, come to the conclusion that the marshes of the valley of Mexico were, in the time of Cortéz, substantially in the condition in which we find them at the present day; that the filling up they had undergone in that time was counterbalanced by the relief they had gained by the canal of Huehuetoca. The chinampas constitute an important link in the chain of proofs to establish this fact. If I have succeeded in showing that these gardens of the Aztecs, instead of floating upon the water, rested upon the muddy bottom, it follows as a matter of course that the depth of the water in the laguna could not, in the day of the Aztecs, have been materially greater than it now is.
CHAPTER XVII.
The gambling Festival of San Augustine.—Suppressed by Government.—The Losses of the Saint by the Suppression of Gambling.—How Travelers live in the Interior.—A Visit to the Palace.
GAMBLING AT TLALPAN.
I have already said that my first entry into the valley of Mexico was from the south, through the suburban city of Tlalpan, where in good old times was held the great gambling festival of San Augustine. The advancing morality of our day has put an extinguisher on this noted festival, which was one of the most noted days in the Mexican calendar. Crowds flocked to it to gamble, to dance, and to adore the most holy Saint Augustine. To a looker-on it was hard to say whether it was the devil or the saint whom the people had come to worship. The chief business of high-born dames seemed to be to make a display of their taste in dress, and to set off the whole contents of their wardrobe; for five times in each day was their entire wardrobe changed, and so often did they appear in a new set of jewels. To this festival came also noblemen and highway robbers, to gamble and to rob each other, and to be robbed by the women at themontétable. In honor of the saint, the city was crowded with monks, and thieves, and Magdalens, and the dignitaries of the Church and state. The rich and the poor came together to enjoy the saturnalia in honor of the most blessed Saint Augustine. Gambling was here duly sanctified by the participation of the priests, who were here, as they are every where in Mexico, the most expert gamblers at the tables. While this festival continued, money changed hands more rapidly than in California in her worst days. Five dances a day were the pastime; but at the monté table was the solid sport. This was the great attraction that had called all the crowd together. It was an exciting scene to see the ounces piled up as men got excited in the game. What is there left of woman's virtue, when the highest ladies of the court stake their ounces at a public gaming-table, and poorer ones eagerly throw down their last piece of silver? Woman's rights have not yet reached that point with us that she may gamble and get drunk without losing caste; and God grant they never may.
It is a consolation to be able to add that the late government of the State of Mexico had sufficient firmness to suppress this abominable festival of the Church, much to the pecuniary disadvantage of the saint and his priesthood. Indeed, there is now no public gambling, not even in the city of Mexico, except the lottery of the Academy of Fine Arts, and the lottery which is monthly drawn to promote the adoration of our Lady of Guadalupe. This last is one of the most corrupting of all lotteries. Tickets for as small a price as a Spanish shilling are hawked about the street, and by the exhibition of a splendid scheme the poor Indians are tempted to venture their lastrealin the hopes of winning a rich prize, through the kind interposition of the Virgin, to whom they are taught to pray for that purpose. It is true that a mass is performed for the benefit of all losers, but this mass has never had the power of restoring to the poor Indian his lost shilling.
Let us now go from this place, where gambling used annually to have its festival, or, rather, harvest of victims, into the cathedral church of San Augustine, to whom the lucky gamblers were accustomed to dedicate a part of their winnings, that thus they might sanctify their unrighteous calling by bringing robbery to the saint for an offering. Poor saint! how much he and his priests have suffered by this wanton interference of the civil government in Church affairs—this prohibition of monté-playing in honor of the festival of San Augustine! There was much in this church to admire, and much of that gold displayed which gamblers are accustomed to lavish upon their idols. It seemed like another worship and another religion from that which I had been accustomed to witness in the humble chapels of the Pintos, in whose country I had so long been wandering.
Again I was in the saddle, and soon upon that noted causeway by which Cortéz entered the city of Mexico. It has lost none of its attractions in the course of centuries, but has been kept in fine repair as a carriage-road, while the venerable trees that line it on either side look as old as the time of the Conquistadors. This noble carriage-way, through the marshy ground of the valley of Mexico, is an enlargement of the old causeway of the Indians, or, rather, it has been built over and around it, that having been less than thirty feet in width. I soon arrived at Churubusco, the scene of one of the bloody battles of the American campaign in this valley. There was little here to look at, and I hurried on and entered the south gate of the city, and soon arrived at theHôtel de Paris, to which I had been directed. My poor old mustang here ended a twelve days' journey, over mountains and plains ofpedregal, without a shoe to his hoofs.
A party of Californians, who had been stopping here for some weeks, had left the day before, and I was ushered into French society, in which to form my first impressions of Mexico. Still, there was an exquisite pleasure in once more getting clean, and eating food cooked after a civilized manner. Not that I had in any wise become tired of drinking porridge, extracted from corn, calledatola, or dissatisfied with eating bits of fowl, which the maid of honor to General Garay so ingeniously served up with her fingers, after having it well flavored with Cayenne or Chili pepper! He that does not love Chili must keep out of Spanish America. And he will prove a poor traveler who can not sit down with a good appetite to a supper of small black beans (frijoles), and a dozen Indian cakes (tortillas), as thin and as tough as a drum-head, which serve the double purpose of spoon and plate.
ABODE IN MEXICO.
My room was on the roof, and when my inner and outer man was fully in order, I used to walk till a late hour of the day upon the paved house-top, now leaning against the parapet and looking up to the snow-covered mountains, whose shadowy forms could be made out even by moonlight, and upon the shadowy towers and domes of the city. Thus pleasant days and weeks flew on. Sometimes I rode about the valley, carefully searching after the relics of times past, and at other times surveying the curiosities of the city. Once this order was broken in upon, in order to accompany that noble-hearted man and excellent embassador, Governor Letcher, to the palace, where I had an interview with Arista, then the President of Mexico, who strikingly resembled our own President of that day, Millard Fillmore.