Mexico, California and Arizona/Chapter 13
XIII.
TO OLD TEXCOCO.
I.
MY next journey was by lake across Texcoco to the old capital of that name. I had hoped to take El Nezhualcoyotl, which lay in the mud by the Garita of San Lazaro, when I went to make preliminary inquiries. There would have been a certain fitness in approaching the ancient capital in a boat named after the sovereign who made it illustrious; but it was not its day for sailing.
The Nezhualcoyotl was clipper-built, as it were, a long, rusty, gondola-like scow, devoted exclusively to passenger traffic. We took instead a freight-boat of much larger and heavier build, La Ninfa Encantadora, or "the Enchanting Nymph." She would have been called the Mary Ann or Betsy Jane elsewhere, but such is the difference in the tropical imagination.
A cabin sheltered the passengers and some budgets of goods which were done up in the inevitable petates, rush mats, and included two bags of silver. There were a couple of young women going to pasear—take a little vacation-at Texcoco. "It will be triste, of course," they said, "like everything out of Mexico; still, we are going to try it for a while." They offered a part of their lunch, as travelling companions were continually doing wherever I went, and the skipper offered pulque. Two older women, in blue rebosas, sat like statues, hold-
ing their parcels and an Indian baby in their laps, from end of the long journey to the other.
The canal of San Lazaro on this side extends about a league to the lake. It is very much less attractive than that of Chalco. Its terminus in the city is the point of a most animated and Venetian-like market scene, but one earns his pleasure in dealing with this canal at the expense of many a bad odor. Six men put a sort of harness on themselves and dragged us along, plodding on the tow-path, as Russian peasants drag their boats in some of their rivers. A man on horseback with a tow-rope also assisted, on the other side.
The water, shoal in the beginning, shoaled more as we went on, till we were aground on flats in the edge of the lake. The city sewage was aground with us. Still, the situation was relieved by the striking prospect. The teocalli-like Peñol, where there are warm baths, was close at hand. Sky and water were of an identical blue; the shallow expanse reflected the circuit of dark and purplish foot-hills and great snow-peaks beyond as perfectly as if it had been as deep as they were high.
Our crew walked for an hour in the mud, pushing against long poles projected from the sides, before we could be said to be fairly afloat. Then they came aboard and poled the rest of the way. They walked up
an inclined plane, carrying the poles over their heads, and came down, pushing, with them supported against their
shoulders, in a bold and striking motion. It was eight o'clock when we set out, and four when we reached the mouth of the short branch canal which makes up to Texcoco. The distance must be about thirty miles. A cross arose out of the lake half way over, and our polemen
stopped at it and shouted three times, with startling effect, "Alabo al gran poder de Dios! Ave Maria pu-
rissima!"—"Hail to the almighty power of God! Hail, Mary the purest!"
Unexpectant of anything of the sort, I hurried out from the cabin, taking it to be some defiance at enemies, or disturbance among ourselves. We met other packets like our own, loaded with people. A considerable part of the cargoes was the fine large red earthen jars and dishes we saw at Mexico, which are made at Texcoco. The piled-up bales and pottery, the strange figures, and the flashing poles of one of these craft, coming on, make it a highly original and spirited subject.
Then we fell in with one of the curiosities of the lake—disbelieved in by some—swarms of the mosca, a little water-fly, so thickly settled on the water that we took them for flats and reefs. They resemble mosquitoes, but neither sting nor even alight on the boat. They are taken in fine nets and carried to Mexico, as food for the birds; and they have eggs, which are sold in the market and made into tortillas, which are said to be very palatable.
The shores are encrusted with native alkali, which has its share in the production of the disagreeable odors. Peasants gather the crude product and load it upon donkeys, to carry to a salt and soda works, and a manufactory of glass, situated at Texcoco.
Was it in this same branch canal that Cortez launched his brigantines for the destruction of the naval power of the Aztecs? There is water in but a part of it now; and traces of substantial locks are found, where grass is growing and cows feeding.
II.
I spent nearly a week at Texcoco assimilating the quiet interior life of the country. I dined at the Restaurante
CREW OF "LA NINFA ENCANTADORA."
it mitad y mitad: half of agua miel newly from the maguey field, and half the stronger beverage of longer standing. I made the acquaintance of the Jefe Politico, a polite, youngish man, said to be a terror to evil-doers. He had made the roads safe. He had a way of shooting at brief notice, and transporting to Yucatan, or if he contented himself with a mere fine it was a sounding one. The pulquerias must be closed at six o'clock, and other shops at nine. One day the Deputy returned from his seat in Congress, and was given a characteristic reception. A troop of twenty or so of his constituents mounted on horseback, and preceded the omnibus in which he was drawn, from the railway station back into the town, at the top of their speed, shouting and firing pistols. Crackers and pistols were fired also from the omnibus.
I made the acquaintance also of the local druggist, an intelligent person, who had a collection of antiquities. He was of the pure Indian race, and professed himself proud of being an Indian, and proud of being a Texcocan. He had lately brought out a very strong distillation of pulque, a kind of patent medicine, and asked my advice about introducing it in the United States. He evidently thought we were made of money, for I am sure we never should have been willing to pay so much a bottle.
The place has now about six thousand people. Its churches are immense. It has a long, shabby plaza, with a market arcade on one side, and an Alameda, also in poor condition. The Jefe Politico might extend his protection next to a few internal improvements. Hamlets
cluster near together in a fertile area round about. I noted one day two peons soberly carrying on their shoulders,
among the magueys, what appeared to be a dead body. It proved to be instead the saint of the village church, which they were quaintly conveying, as a loan, to
one of the others, to assist in a festival of the morrow.
In the hamlet of Santa Cruz the population are potters. Each has a little round tower of a furnace attached to his house, works on his own account, and sets out the large, ruddy jars on his roof to dry. He could acquire a competence if persevering, but the moment he has a dollar ahead he stops work till it is spent. In other houses persons were seen at looms weaving blue cotton stuffs for apparel.
Numbers of ancient carven stones occur, let into the church walls and pavement, and set up in the Alameda. Remains of teocallis are also numerous, as they might well be in a place once the seat of the Augustinian age of Aztec culture. They are treated with no respect at all. They are worn down into mere knolls, and planted with crops. From the site of one now levelled a proprietor was said to have taken out a treasure. What with its age, the destruction of haciendas in the wars, and the practice of the Indians, still prevailing, of burying their money in the ground, there ought to be treasure-trove in Mexico, if anywhere. Certain it is that my host at the tienda, Señor Macedonia, had in his till some beautiful old Spanish coins, which he displayed to the gossips who came in the evening to sip beverages and play dominos.
Among the gossips thus sociably tomando copas (taking cups) at the tienda there was one, a certain "Don Santiago," who told me that he was pulling down, in his garden, the largest pyramid of the place, to sell the material for building purposes. This was of real interest.
Going thither, his pyramid was found to be indeed of imposing size. It was laid up in regular courses of sun-dried brick, and there were vestiges of a facing and
superposed pavements of cement, as at San Juan Teotihuacan. There was present in the place with me an archaeologist—a newspaper archaeologist, I should call him. He termed himself an "expedition;" he had an omnivorous taste for unearthing things, without knowledge of the language, or apparent acquaintance with any previous researches or theories; and his discoveries were intended principally to redound to the fame of a journal which
had sent him out. Between us we brought to light a section of a great bass-relief which now occupies a place in the National Museum at Mexico. It was probably seven feet in its longest dimension and five in the other, and
must have been a quarter or so of the whole work. It contained a calendar circle, no doubt establishing the date, and part of the figure of a warrior in elaborate regalia, possibly that of old Nezhualcoyotl himself. The archaeologist, whom perhaps I unfairly disparage for the
auspices under which he appeared, set to work with a will, and soon had half a dozen natives taking the surface off the rest of the soil in the vicinity, for the remaining fragments, but without success. It was the fierce practice of the Spaniards to break the religious
emblems of the conquered pagans, to prevent them, as far as possible, from returning to their idolatrous practices, and most likely they rolled down one fragment of the great stone one way, arid another another, to separate them as widely as possible; so that they will be found on different sides of the pyramid. All day long it was "Don Santiago!" here, and "Don Santiago!" there, as the excavators plied their labors; while I spent some part of it, shaded by an impromptu awning of mats, noting
down in a drawing the peculiarities of the "find" we made. I do not profess myself an archaeologist, except from the picturesque point of view. It is my
private surmise that a great deal of good investigation is lavished upon these matters which had much better be
THE "FIND."
spent upon the present; but here was a case in which the sentiment of the picturesque was amply gratified. There was a genuine pleasure in being one of the first to salute this interesting fragment of antiquity after its long sleep, to tenderly brush the dirt from it and trace its enigmatic lines.
III.
There is a decided resemblance, to this day, in looks and habits, between the Mexican peon and the Chinaman. Writers on the subject have generally represented
America as originally peopled from Asia, the Asiatic having crossed over, perhaps, at Behring's Straits, and made their way south. One Mexican writer stoutly maintains that Mexico was the cradle of the race, and the migration was in the opposite sense. This accords at any rate, with Buckle's general theory, that the thickly settled portions of the earth were at first those where climate and a natural food-supply made the maintenance
of life easy. In these places, too, civilization began. The warm and fertile area of Central America, therefore, would have teemed with humanity before the vast
North was peopled. There may have been sculptured cities, one upon another, long before even Uxmal and Palenque, the origin of which was lost in obscurity to
the Aztecs.
However this may be, the Aztecs themselves, whether descendants of a race expatriated from the South and become rugged in the North, or having crossed over from Asia, came down from the colder regions, like the Goths and Vandals upon Italy. The tradition on this point is clear. One day two leading personages, Huitziton and Tecpultzin, in their far-off northern regions, wherever they were, heard a small bird singing in the branches ti-hui! ti-hui!—let us go! They listened intently and took counsel together. "This is really very singular," we may suppose Huitziton saying, while Tecpultzin sagely laid a finger beside his nose and listened again. One would like a historic picture by some competent humorist of these two simple worthies deciding the fate of their nation. Ti-hui! ti-hui! piped the little songster inexorably, and that there seemed nothing for it but that the Aztec people should move southward, which they proceeded to do.
They overwhelmed the civilized Toltec capital at Tula in their progress. They had a farther oracle saying that they were to stop when they should arrive where an eagle was sitting on a nopal plant; and this they found at Mexico, on the very spot which now is the plaza of San Domingo. The whole district became filled in time with small kings and princes tributary to the Montezumas. The most refined and peaceable type of them all arose at Texcoco.
In the Cerro of Texcocingo, some ten or twelve miles back of the town, remain extensive vestiges of an architectural magnificence which show that the accounts of the historians are not made of whole cloth. We had a trooper appointed us, as an escort and guide, by the Jefe Politico, and rode out to visit them. Ascending the hill, of perhaps two thousand feet in height, overgrown with "hardy nopal and maguey, you come to excellent flights of steps cut in the solid rock, giving access to aqueducts, bathing tanks, cisterns, and caverns, heavily sculptured within and without, which are remains of temples and palaces.
Our trooper had little ambition in these matters, and after showing us a part declared that there was no more, and went comfortably to sleep. It was only by climbing alone to the top that I found the principal display. Here the philosophic Nezhualcoyotl, in his retirement, hung in the air, above the wide prospect of his capital, the lake, and his rival of Mexico. And here, in the deserted mountain, with a guide who had gone fast asleep below, his ghost might be half expected to be met with wandering in the still sunshine, but unfortunately it was not. He wrote poems of a pensive cast. He reflected even in his time as to whether life is worth living, and his general theme was the vanity of all things mortal.
"Where is Chalchintmet, the Chicameca?" he asks.
"Mitl, the venerator of the gods; Tolpiltzin, last of the Toltecs; and the beautiful Xinlitzal—where are they?"
These no doubt once famous personages can be the better spared now, on account of their unpronounceable names, but to the writer they represented something very tangible and solid.
"Very brief is the realm of flowers," he continues, "and brief is human life. . . . Our careers are like the streams, which but run on to excavate their own graves the more surely. . . . Let us look, then, to the immortal life. . . . The stars that now so puzzle us are but the lamps that light the palaces of the heavens."
Such, if he be properly presented by Spanish adapters, were the sentiments of this early monarch. Truly the latent capacities even of the natural man are not so far below the surface; and it may be that no agency will be found so potent to awaken them with a rush as the modern facility in railway transportation.
IV.
On the return we visited a country residence, combined with large mills for making paper and grinding grain. It was called the Molino de Flores, and belonged to the wealthy Cervantes family of Mexico. One of this Cervantes family was the subject, in 1872, of a celebrated
exploit by the plagiarios, or kidnappers. He was seized while coming out of the theatre at night, a cloak was
thrown over his head, and he was bundled into a cab, He was buried a long time under the floor of a house, just enough food being given him to sustain life. The plagiarios did not secure the large ransom they demanded, after all, but were finally apprehended, and shot—three
of them—against the wall of the house, the Callejon Zacate, No. 8, where they had detained their victim.
The Molino de Flores was not only charming in itself, but may serve as a text for mentioning the very different sentiment thrown around anything in the shape of a manufactory from that prevailing with us. Mills, residence, granaries, and chapel, terraced up into a steep hill-side from a little entrance court, are constructed upon the same motif, and form a single establishment. It is set in a striking little gorge. The water-power, after turning the mills, is utilized for lovely gardens, in which there are a hundred fantastic jets and surprises. There is an out-of-door bathing tank, for instance, at the end of a secluded walk, screened by shrubbery. The disrobing seat is managed in a small cave in the cliff, and the shower, on pulling a ring, falls from the summit, forty feet above. It is a place that might have served for such an adventure as that of Susannah and the Elders.
In the novel of "Maria," one of the most charming of stories, with which I first made acquaintance in Mexico, though its scene is laid among similar customs in South America, the heroine is represented as preparing the bath for the hero in such a tank by scattering fresh roses into it with her own fair hands.
A rustic bridge, on which La Somnambula might have walked, is thrown across the cataract to a quaintly frescoed, rock-cut mortuary chapel, where, among others, the
last titled ancestor of the house lies buried. He had ten distinct surnames—was Marques de Flores, a General of Brigade, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Captain in Iturbide's Guard, Cavalier of the Order of Guadalupe, Regidor, Governor, Notabile under Maximilian, and more; from which it will be seen that the pomp of the hidalgos well survived in Mexico.
The same caressing way of looking at industrial establishments here noticed is universal, and is, in part, no doubt, due to their rarity and a thorough appreciation of their usefulness. I recollect everywhere the sugar haciendas, "beneficiating" haciendas, or ore-reducing works, and cotton-mills treated in similar fashion.
One voyage across Lake Texcoco was quite sufficient of its kind, and I returned by diligencia to the junction point of the since completed railway, and thence by rail to the capital. The pulling-gear of our diligencia was a thing of shreds and patches. A boy ran beside the mules
all the way to mend the broken ropes and supplement, with whistling and flapping, the exertions of the driver. The houses in the villages are of unwhitewashed adobe, with palings of organ-cactus. It was like riding through a brick-yard. Fine irrigating canals, fed from the mountains, frequently crossed our course, indicating the substantial scale on which agricultural works are conducted. More than one monumental ruined hacienda, too, showed that they had formerly been on even a more elaborate scale than now.