Exceedingly picturesque are the fine cities which form Mexico's chief centres of civilisation along the Great Plateau—Chihuahua, Durango, Guadalajara, Puebla, and many others. They have that quaint, old-world air ever characteristic of Spanish-America, unspoilt by the elements of manufacturing communities. Their shadyplazasare centres of recreation and social life, always in evidence, distinctive of Spanish-American civilisation, where music is a part of the government of the people; a feature far more prominent than in Britain or the United States. The cathedrals, the quaint architecture of the streets, the barred windows, and thepicturesque dress of the working class, form an atmosphere of distinctive life and colour. Let us halt a moment in theplaza. The band is discoursing soft music, varied by some stirring martial air; the Mexican moon has risen, and now that the sunset colours pale, vies with the lamps of the well-lit promenade to illumine a happy but simple scene. Its rays shine through the feathery boughs of the palms, and glisten on the broad, elegant leaves of theplátanos—which grow even in the upland valleys—whilst the scent of orange-blossoms falls softly through the balmy air, as in ceaseless promenade fair maidens and chatting youths, with coquetry and stolen glance, pass round the square untiringly. White dresses and black eyes and raven tresses—the olive-complexioned beauties of the Mexican uplands take their fill of passing joy. The moment is sweet, peaceful, even romantic; let us dally a moment, nor chafe our cold northern blood for more energetic scenes. Do we ask bright glances? Here are such. Shall we refuse to be their recipient? And moonlight, palms, and music, and evening breeze, and convent tolling bell, and happy crowd—no, it is not a scene from some dream of opera, but a phase of every-day life in Mexico.
In many respects it is an atmosphere of charm and interest which the traveller encounters in Mexican life, especially if he has recently arrived from among the prosaic surroundings of Mexico's great northern neighbour, the United States. Indeed, the transition from the busy Anglo-Saxon world which hurries and bustles in strenuous life northward from the Rio Grande, to that pastoral and primitive land of Spanish-America is as marked as that between Britain and the Orient. Yet it is only divided by a shallow stream—the Rio Grande. As the traveller crosses this boundary he leaves behind him the twentieth century, and goes back in time some hundreds of years—a change, it maybe saiden passant, which is not without benefit, and attractive in some respect. The brusque and selfish American atmosphere is left behind, the patience and courtesy of Mexico isfelt. The aggressive struggle for life gives place to the recollection that to acquire wealth is not necessarily the only business of all men and all nations; for the patientpeonlives in happiness without it. You may scorn him, but he is one of Nature's object-lessons.
Singularly un-American—that is if United States and Canadian manners and customs shall be considered typical of America—are the customs of the Mexican. The influence and romance of the long years of Spanish domination and character have been crystallised upon the Mexican soil. The mien and character of the race created here in New Spain is marked for all time as a distinctive type, which may possess more for the future than the votary of Anglo-Saxon civilisation and strenuous commercialism may yet suspect. Whatever critical comparison may be applied to these people, the foreigner will acknowledge the pleasing trait of courtesy they invariably show. The elegance and grace of Spanish manners, wafted across the Atlantic in the days of ocean chivalry, were budded to the gentle courtesy of the native; and the brusque Anglo-Saxon is almost ashamed of his seeming or intended brusqueness before the graceful salutation of the poorestpeon. Hat in hand, and with courteous or devout wish for your welfare on his lips, the poor Mexican seems almost a reproach to the harbinger of an outside world which seemingly grows more hard and commercial as time goes on.
The picturesque and the simple are, of course, bought at the expense, too often, of hygiene and comfort, and Mexico does not escape this present law. Yet it is remarkable how soon the Briton or the American in Mexico adapts himself to his surroundings, and grows to regard them with affection. It is true that the government of the country is practically a military despotism, yet the foreigner is respected, and none interfere with him. On the contrary, he is often looked up to as a representative of a superior State, and if he be worthy he acquires some of the demeanour of race-noblesse oblige.
There are cities set on steep hill-sides, which we shallenter. Terrace after terrace climb the rocky ribs of arid hills. Houses, interspersed with gardens; communities backed by the soft outlines of distant ranges, seen adown the widening valley; and walls, houses, streets, people, landscape; all are of that distinctive colour and character of the Mexican upland, over-arched by the cloudless azure of its sky. Clustered upon these same steep mineral-bearing hills—and, indeed, they are theraison d'êtreof the town at all in that spot—are the great mining places, ancient and modern, which form so important a feature of the life of the country on the Great Plateau.
Fabulous wealth of silver has been dug from these everlasting hills. Grim and abandoned mine-mouths, far away like black dots upon the slopes, and strange honeycombed galleries and caverns far beneath the outcropping of the lodes, have vomited rich silver ore for centuries: and the clang of miners' steel and the dropping candle are now, as ever, the accompaniment of labour of these hardypeones. The very church, perhaps, is redolent of mining, and was raised by some pious delver in the bowels of the hill whereon it stands—a thank-offering for some great luck ofopen sesamewhich his saints afforded him.
But we will not linger here; Guanajuato and Zacatecas and Pachuca shall be our theme in another chapter, and the tale of toil and silver which they tell. For the moment the way lies down the Great Plateau, among its intersecting ranges of hills, through the fertile valleys, which alternate with the appalling sun-beat deserts.
The conditions of travel in this great land of Mexico—it is nearly two thousand miles in length—are, perhaps, less arduous than in Spanish-American countries generally. Mexico has lent itself well to the building of railways in a longitudinal direction, upon the line of least resistance from north-west to south-east, paralleling its general Andine structure. Several great trunk lines thus connect the capital City of Mexico and the southern part of the republic with the civilisation of the UnitedStates, over this relatively easy route. Yet the earliest railway of Mexico, that from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, traverses the country in the most difficult direction, transversely, rising from tide-water and the Atlantic littoral, and ascending the steep escarpments of the Eastern Sierra Madre to fall down into the lake-valley of Mexico, bringing outside civilisation to that isolated interior world. But Mexico's singular topographical position did not secure her from invasion. Three times the city on the lakes has fallen to foreign invaders—the Spaniards of the Conquest, the French of Napoleon, and the Americans of the United States. Indeed, the flat and arid tableland stretching away for such interminable distances to the north was formerly a more potent natural defence than the Cordilleran heights which front on the Atlantic seas; and the axiom of Lerdo is well brought to mind in considering the geographical environment: "Between weakness and strength—the desert!"
But away from the railways, and the roads wherediligenciasply their lumbering and dusty course, the saddle is the only, and indeed the most characteristic, mode of travel; and thearrieroand his string of pack-mules is the common carrier, and the mountain road or dusty desert trail the means of communication from place to place. Along these the horseman follows, day after day, his hard but interesting road, for to the lover of Nature and incident the saddle ever brings matter of interest unattainable by other means of locomotion. The glorious morning air, the unfolding panorama of landscape—even the desert and the far-off mountain spur which he must round ere evening falls, are sources, of exhilaration and interest. The simple people and their quaint dwellings, where in acute struggle for life with Nature they wrest a living from rocks and thorns—are these not subjects, even, worthy of some passing philosophical thought? Not a hilltop in the vicinity of any human habitations—be they but the wretchedjacalesor wattle-huts of the poorest peasants—but issurmounted by a cross: not a spring or well but is adorned with flowers in honour of that patron saint whose name it bears; and not a field or hamlet or mine but has some religious nomenclature or attribute. For the Mexicans are a race into which the religion of the Conquistadores penetrated indelibly, whose hold upon them time scarcely unlooses. The creeds of the priests, moreover, are interwoven with the remains of Aztec theistic influence, and the superstitions of both systems hold the ignorant peasantry of Mexico in enduring thrall. Much of beauty and pathetic quaintness there is in this strong religious sentiment, which no thinking observer will deride; much of retrograde ignorance, which he will lament to see.
The Great Plateau tapers away towards the south, terminating in the Valley of Mexico, bounded by the snowy Cordillera of Anahuac. Within this range are two great volcanic uplifts, two beautiful mountain peaks, crowned with perpetual snow—the culminating orographical features of the Sierras, and the highest points in Mexico. The loftiest of these is Popocatepetl, "the smoking mountain," and its companion is Ixtaccihuatl, the "sleeping woman," both of poetical Indian nomenclature. These beautiful solitary uplifts rise far above the canyons and forests at their bases: penetrate the clouds which sometimes wreath them, terminating in a porcelain-gleaming summit of perpetual snow. The mid-day sun flashes upon them, rendering them visible from afar, and its declining rays paint them with that carmine glow known to the Andine and Alpine traveller, which arrests his vision as evening falls. So fell, indeed, the morning rays of the orb of day upon the burnished golden breastplates of the image set on the sacred pyramid of Teotihuacan: the sun-god, Tonatiuah, as in the shadowy Toltec days he faced the flashing east.
Prehistoric fact and fable press hard upon us as we approach the famous Valley of Mexico and its fine capital. This is the region where that singular "stone age" flourished, of pyramid-building and stone-shapingpeoples. Here both geology and history have written their pages, as if Nature and Fate had conspired together to mark epochs of time and space in ancient temple, dead revolution, and slumbering volcano. And now below us lies the City of Mexico. From the wooded uplands and hill-summits—redolent of pine and exhilarating with the tonic air—which form the rim of the valley, the panorama of the capital and its environs lies open to the view. Plains crossed by white streaks of far-off roads, intersecting the chequered fields of greenalfalfaand yellow maize;haciendasand villages embowered in luxuriant foliage; the gleam of domes and towers, softened in the glamour of distance and bathed by a reposeful atmosphere and mediæval tints—such is Mexico, this fair city of the West.
The City of Mexico, like most centres of human habitation in whatever part of the world, is most beautiful when seen from afar, and in conjunction with Nature's environment. But the old Aztec city, the dark, romantic seat of the viceroys, the theatre of revolutionary struggle, and the modern centre of this important Mexican civilisation, is a really handsome and attractive city. Indeed, the capitals of many Spanish-American republics, and their civilisation and socialrégime, are often in the nature of a revelation to the traveller from Europe or the United States, who has generally pictured a far more primitive State. With its handsome institutions and public buildings, and extensive boulevards and parks, and characteristic social, literary, and commercial life, the City of Mexico may be described as Americo-Parisian, and it is rapidly becoming a centre of attraction for United States tourists, who, avid of historical and foreign colour, descend thither in Pullman-car loads from the north. The city lies some three miles from the shore of Lake Texcoco, which, with that of Chalco and others, forms a group of salt- and fresh-water lagoons in the strange Valley of Mexico. At the time of the Conquest the city stood upon an island, connected with the mainland by the remarkable stone causeways upon which the strugglesbetween the Spaniards and the Aztecs took place, during the siege of the city at the time of the Conquest. But these lakes, after the manner of other bodies of water, generally, in the high elevations of the American Cordilleras—Titicaca, in Peru, to wit—are gradually perishing by evaporation, their waters diminishing century by century. The Valley of Mexico, however, of recent years has received an artificial hydrographic outlet in the famous drainage canal and tunnel, which conducts the overflow into a tributary of the Panuco river, and so to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Valley of Mexico is surrounded by volcanic hills, forming a more recent formation of the Andine folds, of which the Sierra Madres compose the Mexican Cordilleras. We have now to cross this, for our faces are set towards the Pacific Ocean. We ascend and pass the Western Sierra Madre, thedivortia aquarumof the Pacific watershed, leaving the intra-montane plateau of Anahuac and themesa centralbehind us. Again the climate changes as the downward journey is begun, and again thetierra calienteis approached. The culminating peaks—the beautiful Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl—sink now below the eastern horizon, but as we journey to the west Colima's smoking cone will rise before the view. The descent from the highlands to the west coast is even more rapid than to the east, and the temperate climate of the valleys, and the bitter cold of the early morning on the uplands, soon give place to tropical conditions. Extensive forests of oak and pine, clothing the sides of the canyons andbarrancasof the high Sierra Madre, are succeeded by the profuse vegetation of the torrid zone. Down in the soft regions of the west, where tropical agriculture yields its plentiful and easily-won harvests, are romantic oldhaciendasand villages hidden away in the folds of the landscape, such as are a delight to the traveller and the lover of the picturesque. The "happy valley" of Cuernavaca is reached by railway from the capital, but beyond this the road to the seaboard is still that ancient trail which Cortes used, whichdescends to Acapulco, for the railway builders have not yet completed their works to the Pacific waters.
Away from the main route of travel lie sequestered old sugar estates, and villages of romantic and picturesque charm, yet untouched by speculator or capitalist. Antique piles of stone buildings are there, redolent of that peculiar poetry of the pastoral life of Mexico in the tropics. The old Spaniards built well; their solid masonry defies the centuries; and their most prosaic structures were invested with an architectural charm which the rapid money-seeker of to-day cares little for, in his corrugated iron and temporary materialism. Near to the arches, columns, and turrets of the oldhaciendasthe garden lies, replete with strange fruits and flowers. The gleam of oranges and limes comes from the tangled groves; grapes and pomegranates vie with each other in unattended profusion. The iguana sports among the old stone walls of the great garden, and humming-birds and butterflies hover in the subtle atmosphere. The tropic sunset throws a peaceful glamour and serenity over all. The cocoanut palms, with feathery grace above and slender column upward rearing, stir not against their ethereal setting as we watch, and the passing water in the old aqueduct scarce breaks the tropic silence, or if, perchance, it whisper, murmurs of centuries past, a low refrain.
But we shall journey away from the haunts of man again, and penetrate the deep darkbarrancasand little-known mountain-fastnesses of the western slope of the State of Guerrero. Here are great uninhabited and unexplored stretches of country, rugged and wild, replete with matters of interest, whether for hunter, sportsman, or archæologist. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a region offering so varied a nature of resource and interest in any part of the world, except possibly in the still less accessible wilds of the Amazonian slopes of the Peruvian Andes. The botanist will find on this Pacific side of Mexico an unstudiedflora, and the ethnologist and the antiquarian a number of native races, speaking strange separate languages; and theruins of thousands of the habitations of prehistoric man. The climate in these rugged regions ranges from the heat of the fierce tropical sun to the bitter cold of the mountain summits. Abundantbosquesor forests of oak cover the higher regions, and the wild and broken nature of the country renders it difficult to traverse, and calls for the adventurous spirit of the pioneer and explorer, without which the traveller will but meet with discomfort and danger.
Yet the true traveller finds pleasure in these matters. The impressive grandeur of the mountain landscape, the endless forests, the profound ravines do but serve to divert his mind from the peril and discomfort of the trail. Here he may revel in Nature's untamed handiwork of mountain, forest, and flood, as day after day he journeys onward in the saddle towards the Pacific Ocean. Here are the imposingbarrancasof Jalisco which he traverses, and marks how they are buried in the profuse vegetation which presses up to the very border of the lava of smoking Ceboruco. Thence the myrtle forests of Tepic are penetrated. On the tropic lakes thousands of log-like alligators lie, gloomily awaiting their prey. From the verge, which rich forests fringe, and where brilliant water-weeds encircle the shoals, dainty pink and white herons rise, and below the blue surface gleams the sheen of myriad fish. Far to the southwards the fitful volcanic flames of Colima light up the landscape at night. A day's journey more across the coastal plains, and our reconnaissance is finished. The long-drawn surf beats upon the shore of the vast western ocean, for we have crossed the continent; and the sun's glowing disc dips to the blood-red waves—sunset in the Pacific.
Lake Texcoco—Valley of Anahuac—Seat of the Aztec civilisation—Snow-capped peaks—Pyramids of Teotihuacan—Toltecs—The first Aztecs—The eagle, cactus, and serpent—Aztec oracle and wanderings—Tenochtitlan—Prehistoric American civilisations—Maya, Incas—Quito and Peru—The dawn of history—The Toltec empire—Rise,régime, fall—Quetzalcoatl—Otomies—Chichemecas—Nezahualcoyotl—Astlan—The seven tribes and their wanderings—Mexican war-god—The Teocallis—Human sacrifices—Prehistoric City of Mexico—The Causeways—Aztec arts, kings, and civilisation—Montezuma—Guatemoc—Impressions of the Spaniards—The golden age of Texcoco—Vandalism of Spanish archbishop—The poet-king and his religion—Temple to the Unknown God—Aztecs and Incas compared—The Tlascalans—The Otomies—Cholula—Mexican tribes—Aztec buildings—Prehistoric art—Origin of American prehistoric civilisation—Biblical analogies—Supposed Asiatic and Egyptian origins—Aboriginal theory.
Like the misty cloud-streaks of the early dawn, the beginning of the story of the strange empire of prehistoric Mexico unfolds from fable and fact as we look back upon it. We are to imagine ourselves upon the shores of Lake Texcoco, in the high valley-plateau of Anahuac, "the land amid the waters." It is the year 1300, or a little later, of the Christian era. The borders of the lake are marshy and sedgy, the surrounding plain is bare and open, and there is no vestige of man and his habitation. Far away, east, west, and north, faint mountain ranges rise, shimmering to the view in the sun's rays through the clear upland air, whilst to the south two beautiful gleamingsnow-capped peaks are seen,[3]and over all is the deep blue vault of the tropic highland sky.
3 Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl.
We have said that there are no vestiges of man or his structures to be seen, yet upon gazing penetratingly towards the north-east there might be observed the tops of two high ruined pyramids,[4]the vestiges of the civilisation of the shadowy Toltecs. But we are not for the moment concerned with these ruined structures, for, as we watch, a band of dusky warriors, strangely clad, comes over the plain. They come like men on some set purpose, glancing about them, at the shores of the lake, at the horizon, expectantly, yet with a certain vague wistfulness as of deferred hope. Suddenly their leader halts and utters an ejaculation; and with one hand shading the sun's rays from his eyes he points with outstretched arm towards the water's edge. His companions gaze intently in the direction indicated, and then run forward with joyous shouts and gesticulations. What is it that has aroused their emotions? Near the lake-shore a rock arises, overgrown with a thornynopal, or prickly-pear cactus, and perched upon this is an eagle with a serpent in its beak.
4 Teotihuacan: pyramids of the sun and moon.
Who are these men and whence have they come? They are the first Aztecs, and they have come "from the north"; and for centuries they have been wandering from place to place, seeking a promised land which their deity had offered them, a land where they should found a city and an empire. The hoped-for oracle is before them, the promised symbol which they had been bidden to seek, by which they should know the destined spot—an eagle perched upon anopalwith a serpent in its beak: and their wanderings are at an end. Here they pitched their camp, and here as time went on the wonderful city of Tenochtitlan arose, the centre of the strange Aztec civilisation. Thus, fable records, was first established the site of Mexico City;prehistoric, despotic, barbaric, first; mediæval, dark, romantic, later; handsome and interesting to-day.
But whence came these men? That, indeed, who shall say? Whence came the strange civilisation of the American races—Maya, Toltec, Aztec, Inca? To Mexico and Yucatan and Guatemala, to Quito and Peru, whence came the peoples who built stone temples, pyramids, halls, tombs, inscribed hieroglyphics, and wrought cunning arts, such as by their ruins, relics, and traditions arouse our admiration even to-day. History does not say, yet what glimmerings of history and legend there are serve to take us farther back in time, although scarcely to a fixed starting-point, for the thread of the tale of wanderings and developments of these people of Mexico—a thread which seems traceable among the ruined structures of Anahuac.
The first glimmerings of this history-legend refer to an unknown country "in the north." About the middle of the third century of the Christian era there proceeded thence the people known as the Mayas, who traversed Mexico and arrived in Yucatan; and they are the reputed originators of the singular and beautiful temples encountered there, and the teachers of the stone-shaping art whose results arouse the admiration of the archæologist and traveller of to-day, in that part of Mexico. The descendants of the Mayas are among the most intelligent of the native tribes inhabiting the Republic, doubtless due to the influence of the polity and work of their ancestors. Time went on. About the middle of the sixth centuryA.D.another people came "out of the north"—the famous Toltecs, and in their southward migration they founded successive cities, ultimately remaining at Tollan, or Tula, and to them are attributed the remarkable pyramids of Teotihuacan, Cholula, and other structures. Tula is some fifty miles to the north of the modern city of Mexico, and it formed the centre of the powerful empire and civilisation of this cultured people. Eleven monarchs reigned, but the Toltec Empire was overthrown; the people dispersed,and they mysteriously disappeared at the beginning of the twelfth centuryA.D., after some 450 years of existence. None of these dates, however, can be looked upon as really belonging to the realm of exact history.
Tradition also has it that the Toltecs were dispersed by reason of a great famine due to drought, followed by pestilence, only a few people surviving. Banished from the scene of their civilisation by these disasters, the few remaining inhabitants made their way to Yucatan and Central America; and their names and traditions seem to be stamped there. Beyond this little is known of the Toltecs. Possibly some of them found their way still further south to Ecuador and Peru, and influenced the Inca civilisations of the South American continent. To the Toltecs is ascribed the most refined civilisation of prehistoric America, a culture which was indeed the source of the far inferior one of the Aztecs, which we shall presently observe. The Toltecs wrought cleverly in gold and silver, and in cotton fabrics; whilst the remarkable character of their buildings and structures is shown by the ruins of these to-day, as at Cholula and Teotihuacan. The art of picture-writing is attributed to them; and the famous Calendar stone of Mexico has also been ascribed to these people. From amid the shadowy history of the Toltecs the traditions of the deity which so largely influenced prehistoric Mexican religion arose: the mystic Quetzalcoatl, the "god of the air," "the feathered serpent." This strange personage was impressed upon the people's mind as a white man of a foreign race, with noble features, long beard, and flowing garments; and he taught them a sane religion, in which virtue and austerity were dominant, and the sacrifice of human beings and animals forbidden. This singular personage, runs the fable, disappeared after twenty years' sojourn among them, in the direction of the rising sun, having promised to return. When the Spaniards came out of the East their coming was hailed as the return of Quetzalcoatl, and the reverence and superstition surrounding these supposed "children of the sun"protected the Spaniards and permitted their advance into the country, and indeed, was at length conducive to the downfall of Montezuma and the Aztec Empire.
So pass the cultured, shadowy Toltecs from our vision. They had been preceded in their southward migration by the Otomies, in the seventh centuryA.D., an exceedingly numerous and primitive people who almost annihilated the Spaniards during the Conquest, and whose descendants to-day occupy a vast region, and still largely speak their own language, rather than Spanish. The Toltecs were succeeded by yet another tribe "from the north," the Chichemecas, who came down and occupied their civilisation of Tula. These people, warlike and inferior in culture to the Toltecs, allied themselves with the neighbouring Nahua tribes, and an empire came into being, with its capital at Texcoco, on the shore of the great lake. The famous Nezahualcoyotl, the poet-king of this empire, who ascended the throne of Texcoco in 1431, was one of the most remarkable figures of prehistoric Anahuac, and his genius and fortunes recall the history of Alfred of England, to the student's mind. He built a splendid palace at Texcotzinco, and ruins of its walls and aqueducts remain to this day. His life is sketched in these pages subsequently, and something of the beauty of his philosophy set forth.
And thus history has brought us again to the Aztecs, the founders of Tenochtitlan by the lake-shore, on the spot indicated by their oracle. They had come "from the north," one of seven tribes or families, all of which spoke the Nahuatl or Mexican tongue. This unknown country, called Astlan, or "the land of the herons," was the home of these seven tribes—the Mexicas, or Aztecs, the Tlascalans, Xochimilcas, Tepanecas, Colhuas, Chalcas and Tlahincas—and has been varyingly assigned a locality in California, and in Sinaloa. Why the Aztecs left their northern home is not known, even in legend, but they were instigated to their wanderings, tradition says, by their fabled war-god, Huitzilopochtli, or Mexitl, from whom came the name "Mexica" or "Azteca," bywhich these people called themselves. From the beginning of the tenth to the beginning of the thirteenth centuryA.D.this tribe journeyed and sojourned on its southward way, from valley to valley, from lake to lake, from Chapala to Patzcuaro, and thence to Tula, the old Toltec capital. Once more dispersed, they wandered on, and, guided by their oracle, reached their final resting-place at Tenochtitlan. This name, by which they designated their capital, was derived either from that of Tenoch, their venerated high priest, or from the Aztec words meaning "stone-serpent," in reference to the emblem they had followed.
The first work of the people was to raise a great temple to their god—the bloodthirsty Huitzilopochtli—who had led them on. It was begun at once, and around it grew the habitations of the people, the huts made of reeds and mud calledxacali, such as indeed to-day form the habitations of a large part of Mexican people under the name ofjacales.[5]This great Teocalli, or "house of god," at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, was a structure pyramidal in form, built of earth and pebbles and faced with cut stone, square at base, its sides—300 to 400 feet long—facing the cardinal points of the heavens. Flights of steps on the outside, winding round the truncated pyramid, gave access to the summit. Here in the sanctuary was the colossal image of the Aztec war-god—the abominable conception of a barbaric people—and the stone of sacrifice upon which the sacrificial captives were laid. Upon its convex surface the unhappy wretches were successively bound, their breasts cut open with obsidian knives, and the still beating hearts, torn forth by the hand of the priest, were flung smoking before the deity!
5Xandjare often interchangeable in Spanish.
Upon the marshy borders of this lake, set in the beautiful and fertile valley of Anahuac, the city rose to elegance and splendour. Thejacalesgave place to buildings of brick and stone, founded in many cases upon piles, and between them were streets and canals,giving access to the city from the lake. Centre of all was the great Teocalli.
The position of the city was peculiar. It was founded upon an island, and was subject to inundations from the salt waters of the lake; for the Valley of Mexico had at that time no outlet for its streams. It formed a hydrographic entity; and in this connection it reminds the traveller of the birthplace of that other strange, prehistoric American civilisation, three thousand miles away to the south-east—Lake Titicaca and the cradle of the Incas. To protect the city from these inundations embankments were made, and other works which attest the engineering capabilities of the people. Four great causeways gave access to the marshy island upon which the capital was situated—structures of stones and mortar, the longest being some four or five miles in length. To-day one of these forms part of a modern street, and the waters of the lake have retired more than two miles from the city.
The habitations of the principal people were built of stone, and the interior of polished marbles and rare woods. Painting and sculpture embellished these interiors and exteriors, although these were generally crude and barbaric in their execution and representation. Around the city and upon the shores of the lakes, numerous villages arose, surrounded by luxurious gardens and orchards, and the singularchinampas, or floating gardens, were made, with their wealth of flowers, such as the early Mexicans both loved and demanded for sacrificial ceremonies.
Naturally, all this development took time. Yet the rise of this civilisation must be considered rapid—probably it was largely inherited in principle. The first Aztec government was the theocratic and militaryrégimeestablished in the fourteenth century under Tenoch, a military priest and leader who died in 1343. Less than two hundred years afterwards the city of Tenochtitlan was in the zenith of power and culture at the moment when it fell before the Spaniards. Ten kings followed Tenoch, the first being Itzcoatl, who may be consideredthe real founder of the empire. He was followed by the first Montezuma, who greatly extended its sway, dying in 1469. Then came Axayacatl, who is considered to be the constructor of the famous Mexican Calendar stone. Tizoc, his successor, hoped to win the favour of the war-god by the reconstruction of the great Teocalli, whose service was inaugurated by the infamous Ahuizotl in 1487 and at whose dedication an appalling number of human sacrifices were made. Then at the beginning of 1500 the throne was ascended by Montezuma the Second, who further extended the beauty and power of the Aztec capital, but who, vacillating and weighed down by the fear of destiny, lived but to witness the beginning of the fall of Mexico before the Spaniards in 1519. The brave Guatemoc, the last of his line, strove vainly to uphold the dynasty against the invaders.
There is no doubt that the Aztecs created a remarkable centre of semi-barbaric civilisation, and the descriptions given by the Spanish historians—whether those who accompanied Cortes, as Bernal Diaz, or those who drew their colouring from these accounts—are such as to arouse the interest and enthusiasm even of the reader of to-day. In this connection, of course, it is to be recollected that Cortes and his followers were not all men of education or trained knowledge of the great cities of the civilised world, and there is no doubt that they lacked somewhat the faculty of comparison, and over-estimated what they beheld. Let us translate from Clavijero, a Spanish historian and Jesuit who wrote later, and who describes the scene which the Spaniards beheld from the summit of the great Teocalli as "many beautiful buildings, gleaming, whitened, and burnished; the tall minarets of the temples scattered over the various quarters of the city; the canals; verdant plantations and gardens—all forming a beautiful whole which the Spaniards never ceased to admire, especially observing it from the summits of the great temples which dominated not only the city immediately below, but its environs and the large towns beyond. No less marvellous were theroyal palaces and the infinite variety of plants and animals kept there; but nothing caused them greater admiration than the great market plaza." "Not a Spaniard of them," according to Bernal Diaz, the soldier-historian of the Conquest, who was there and saw it all, although he wrote about it long afterwards, "but held it in high praise, and some of them who had journeyed among European cities swore they had never seen so vast a concourse of merchants and merchandise."
Returning to our history, it is not to be supposed that this powerful Aztec nation, with their fine capital of Tenochtitlan, were the only people inhabiting the land of Anahuac at that time. Several other peoples held sway there. On the eastern side of Lake Texcoco, a few leagues away, lived the Texcocans, already mentioned; one of the tribes who also had come "from the north" in early days and who had settled there. They also had developed or inherited a civilisation akin to that of the Toltecs, far more refined and important than that of their neighbours and kindred, the Aztecs. It was about the end of the twelfth century when the Texcocans established themselves, building a splendid capital and developing an extensive empire. But misfortune fell upon them as the centuries went on. Soon after the beginning of the fifteenth century they were attacked and overwhelmed by the Tepanecas, another of the seven kindred tribes: their city reduced and their monarch assassinated. But there arose a picturesque figure, the saviour of his country—Prince Nezahualcoyotl, son of the dead king. The prince passed years in disguise, as a fugitive, but at length was permitted to return to the capital, where he led a life of study. But his talents aroused the jealousy of the Tepanec usurper, who saw a danger of the people acclaiming him as their rightful lord and throwing off the yoke of the strangers. Nezahualcoyotl again became a fugitive, having escaped with his life by a stratagem, disappearing through a cloud of incense into a secret passage. But as the years went on the Texcocans, goaded to revolt by grievous taxation, arose: and seizingthe moment, the outlawed prince put himself at the head of his people and regained his rightful position, largely with the assistance of the neighbouring Mexicans of Tenochtitlan.
Then followed what has been termed the golden age of Texcoco. Its art, poets, and historians became renowned throughout Anahuac, and its collected literature was the centre of historical lore. Indeed, this it was that was so perversely destroyed by the first Archbishop of Mexico, Zumarraga, after the Conquest—an irremediable loss. The prince or emperor was a philosopher and a poet, and he has left some remarkable examples of his philosophical prayers to the "Unknown God," in whom he believed, abhorring the human sacrifices of his neighbours the Aztecs. He has been termed the "Solomon of Anahuac," although the severe code of laws he instituted have earned him a harsher name in addition.
Under thisrégimeagriculture prospered exceedingly, and a large population cultivated all the available ground, just as under the Incas of Peru the Andine slopes were terraced and cultivated. Splendid buildings were erected, and a style of luxurious living inaugurated somewhat after the fashion of Oriental history, and the descriptions of the magnificence of the royal appurtenances fill pages of the historians' accounts. Most of this history was written by the famous Ixtlilxochitl, son of this great emperor, who occupied the throne at the time of the Conquest and became an ally of the Spaniards against the Aztec. It is upon the writings of this prince-historian that much of the material of the later writers of the history of Mexico and the Conquest is founded.
In the construction of his palaces and buildings Nezahualcoyotl employed vast bodies of natives, after the manner of an Egyptian potentate of old. Baths, hanging-gardens, groves of cedar, harems, villas, temples formed the beautiful and luxurious Texcotzinco, the prince's residence, as described by its historian. To-day the mounds anddébrisof sculptured stone which formed the place scarcely arrest the traveller's attention. In themidst of his luxury the emperor fell a prey to a passion for the betrothed of one of his subjects, a beautiful maiden. The unhappy individual who had thus become his monarch's rival—he was a veteran chief in the army—was needlessly sent on a military expedition, where he fell, and the hand of his promised bride was free for the monarch's taking. So was enacted upon these high regions of Anahuac a tragic episode, as of David and Uriah, to the blemish of an otherwise noble name and of a mind above the superstitions of his time.
"Truly, the gods which I adore; idols of stone and wood: speak not, nor feel, neither could they fashion the beauty of the heavens—the sun, the moon, and the stars ... nor yet the earth and the streams, the trees and the plants which beautify it. Some powerful, hidden, and unknown God must be the Creator of the universe, and he alone can console me in my affliction or still the bitter anguish of this heart."[6]So spake Nezahualcoyotl.
6 I have translated this from the Spanish of Ixtlilxochitl as quoted by Prescott.—C. R. E.
Urged probably by the feelings of the philosopher (whose ponderings on the infinite may occasion him more anguish perhaps than the ordinary vicissitudes of life), the monarch raised up a temple to the "Unknown God," in which neither images nor sacrifices were permitted.
After somewhat more than half a century of his reign, and at a time calculated as the beginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth century, this remarkable philosopher-king died, and was succeeded by his son Nezahualpilli, who in a measure followed in his father's footsteps. But he also passed away, his life having been overshadowed to some extent by the singular belief or prediction of the fall of his people in the coming of the white man from the East—a belief which influenced both the Texcocans and the Aztecs. His son Ixtlilxochitl, the historian above named, was in power at the time of the conquest by the Spaniards, but he hated the Aztecs with a bitter hatred in consequence of their influence upon his people, and the installing by the machinationsof Montezuma of an elder brother upon the throne, which had plunged the kingdom into civil war. This was in the second decade of the sixteenth century.
The Texcocans, in conjunction with yet another and smaller people living on the west side of the lake at Tlacopan, formed with the Aztecs a confederation or triple alliance of three republics, by which they agreed to stand together against all comers, and to divide all territory and results of conquest in agreed proportion. They carried on war and annexation around them for a considerable period, extending their sway far beyond the Valley of Mexico, or Anahuac, which formed their home, passing the Sierra Madre mountains to the east, until about the middle of the fifteenth century—under Montezuma—the land and tribes acknowledging their sway reached to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. To the south their arms and influence penetrated into what are now Guatemala and Nicaragua, whilst to the west they exercised sovereignty to the shores of the Pacific.
These conquered territories were not necessarily of easy subjugation. On the contrary, they were plentifully inhabited by races of warrior-peoples, many of them with strong and semi-civilised social and military organisations. The analogy between this confederation of the Aztecs and the extending area of their dominion and civilisation, and the Incas of the Titicaca plateau of Peru, surrounded on all sides by savage warlike tribes, presents itself to the observer in this as in other respects. Like the Incas, the Aztec emperors[7]returned from campaign after campaign loaded with trophies and embarrassed with strings of captives from the vanquished peoples who had dared oppose this powerful confederation. The rich tropical regions of both the eastern and western slopes of the tableland of Anahuac thus paid tribute to the Aztecs, as well as the boundless resources of the south.
7 Both these nations have been likened to the Romans in this respect.
But not all the nations of Anahuac fell under the dominion of the Aztecs. Far from it. The spirits ofthe people of Tlascala would rise from their graves and protest against such an assertion! Tlascala was a brave and warlike little republic of mountaineers—a kind of Switzerland—who inhabited the western slopes of the Eastern Sierra Madre and the eastern part of the plateau of Anahuac, under the shadow of the mighty Malinche, whose snow-crowned head arises on the eastern confines of the tableland. Tlascala, indeed, was a thorn in the side of Montezuma and the Aztecs. The latter had demanded that the little republic pay homage and tribute, and acknowledge the hegemony of the dominant nation, to which the Tlascalans made reply, "Neither our ancestors nor ourselves ever have or will pay tribute to any one. Invade us if you can. We beat you once and may do it again!" or words to that effect, as recorded by the historians. For in the past history of the Tlascalans—who were of the same original migratory family as the Aztecs—a great conflict had been recorded, in which they had vanquished their arrogant kindred.
Deadly strife and hatred followed this, but Tlascala withstood all attacks from without, and, moreover, was strengthened by an alliance with the Otomies, a warlike race inhabiting part of the greatmesaor central tableland north of Anahuac. These were the people who so grievously harassed the Spaniards after theNoche Tristeand against whom the heroic battle of Otumba was fought. Except to the east, whence approach was easy from the coast, the territory of Tlascala was surrounded by mountains, and this natural defence was continued by the building of an extraordinary wall or fortification at the pregnable point. Through this the Spaniards passed on their journey of invasion, and, indeed, its ruins remained until the seventeenth century. The name of the Tlascalans well deserves to be written on the pages of the history of primitive Mexico, for it was largely due to their alliance with the Spaniards that the conquest of Mexico by Cortes and his band was rendered possible.
In addition to these various and petty powers andindependent republics upon the tableland of Anahuac and its slopes, must be mentioned that of Cholula, a state to the south of Tenochtitlan, in what now is the State of Puebla. This region, which contains the remarkable mound or pyramid bearing its name—Cholula—the construction of which is ascribed to the Toltecs, was, with its people, dominated by and under tribute to the Aztecs. So was the nation of the Cempoallas, upon the Vera Cruz coast, who rendered assistance to the landingConquistadores; and, indeed, almost all the natives of that vast region acknowledged the sway and lived in awe of the empire of Montezuma.
It is seen that Mexico, in prehispanic times, was fairly well populated—comparatively speaking, of course. Indeed, at the present time there are ten times as many Indians in that part of North America which forms modern Mexico, as ever existed in the whole of the much vaster area which forms the United States. The inhabitants of Mexico were divided into two main classes—those living under a civilised or semi-civilised organisation, such as the Aztecs and others already enumerated, and those which may be looked upon as savages. These latter were exceedingly numerous, and at the present day something like 220 different tribal names have been enumerated. This serves to show the wide range of peoples who inhabited the land before the Conquest, principally as clans, orgentiles, as in South America also.
Having seen, thus, what were the anthropo-geographical conditions of primitive Mexico, we may cast a brief glance at the arts and institutions of these semi-civilised peoples. Their buildings—most indelible records of these civilisations—cover a considerable range of territory, as has been observed: yet the antiquities of less important nature cover one very much greater. The true stone edifices, the real mural remains, are, however confined to certain limits—between the 16th and 22nd parallel of north latitude—that is to say, the southern half of Mexico. Roughly, these buildingsmay be divided into three classes—adobe, or sun-dried earthen brick, unshaped stone and mortar, and cut and carved stone. In some cases a combination of these was used in the same structure. The best elements of construction do not seem to have been used. Domes and arches were not known to these builders, although they had a system of corbelling-out over openings, which, in the case of the Maya "arch," approximates thereto. They also used lintels of stone and wood, and these last were the weak points, and their decaying has sometimes brought down part of the façade. The work of the sculptor is crude, like that of the Incas of Peru, of which it reminds the traveller in some cases, but shows signs of evolving power and a sense of the beautiful, as has been averred by the most learned antiquarians who have studied it. It is held that there were several schools of architecture represented.
The various kinds of structures and relics found throughout the country include pyramids, temples, tombs, causeways, statues, fortifications, terraced hills, rock-sculpture, idols, painted caves, calendar stones, sacrificial stones, habitations, canals, pottery, mummies,cenotes, or wells, &c. The northernmost point where any monument in stone is encountered is at Quemada, in the State of Zacatecas, which seems to mark the limit of the stronger civilisation of Southern Mexico, in contrast to the less virile civilisation which seems to be indicated by the clay andadobestructures of the northern part of Mexico and of the adjoining territory embodied at the present day in Arizona, California, and New Mexico, beyond the Rio Grande.