Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive/The City of Mexico
CHAPTER III
THE CITY OF MEXICO
The country about Queretaro dimples into a nest of sunny valleys, rounded and curved into great beauty, unlike the long plains to which we have grown accustomed; and the fields of wheat have the same delicious Irish green which we saw on entering the country, but which had given way for some time to harsher tints.
At Tula we receive our first introduction to that ancient Mexico which was so strongly impressed upon our minds before being brought face to face with the modern country. To those who have felt the witchery of Prescott's story of its conquest, it is the old world with its shadowy and poetic peoples, its vanished tribes of Toltec and Aztec, its vague, mystical rites, combined of flowers and sacrifice, of tenderness and cruelty, that appeals most strongly to sentiment before entering. But the reality of the present soon asserts its sway; and, except to those most deeply imbued with the passion of the antiquary, it is the new, strange land, and the exquisite novelty of color and interest in which it is set, that command and hold attention afterward. Even here, with the remains of the old gods standing in the sunshine of the small plaza, and the relics of old barbarism in the dust of the Toltec pyramid beyond, one feels more as if he had stumbled upon a new discovery than on the evidence of an old fact. We gathered broken fragments of obsidian razor-blades and flint arrow-heads which had probably known, hundreds of years ago, the baptism of human blood; we saw, in the pavement of the venerable church, stones covered with hieroglyphics belonging to the idolatrous worship of the past. But across the sacrificial hill, flowers were springing, and birds singing in the bright air; on the carved floor before the altar a group of little children offered loving prayer to the Christian's God, and in the evidences of a simpler and purer faith, the gloom of those ancient mysteries was pushed into the background.
It was here on a hill by the railroad that we first saw the process of pulque-making going on in a small plantation of maguey, and tried for the first time the national beverage. If any one has ever tasted or smelled the old-fashioned yeast, which was one of the rising powers of the world before Fleischman's compressed tablets wiped it out, they will have a very good example of this delectable drink. It no doubt has virtues, but they are well hidden; and if, as they claim, one can become intoxicated by prolonged drinking, it is the sourest, thinnest, saddest means of reaching exhilaration that the mind of man ever conceived. Its introduction into any country as a popular stimulant would be better than a Maine liquor-law. It is one of the articles for which that ugly English word "nasty" was intended. And here, too, for the second time, we were introduced to the well-bred society of convicts. They were sweeping the streets with the inevitable small hand-broom, and returned our salute with the same smiling grace as their brothers at Zacatecas. I am not sure but that the Mexicans have come nearer than we to a solution of one problem, if they can punish a man satisfactorily for a breach of law or gospel, and at the same time allow him to retain his self-respect.For, after all, what should be the test of the amount of coercion or control which law has a right to exert over individual liberty? Does it desire the moral death of the sinner, or that he be converted and live? Should the main purpose of punishment be retaliation against a criminal, or reformation?
Drawing near any one of the great American cities, the traveller meets little to impress him with his approach to a centre of wealth and power until he reaches the immediate suburbs; or, if the entrance be lengthened, it is more like that of a back way than a front portal. It is the tattered fringe of the imperial mantle, the spots of blemish and dirt which gather in the wear and tear of mighty interests, that first meet the eye, strained to catch a glimpse of the beauty beyond. A utilitarian age and a business people have neither time nor money to waste on fine settings for the jewelled centres of their wealth and power. Prosperity is the touchstone of beauty; having that, they care for no other. The Midas touch which transmutes every thing it reaches into gold cannot spare such simple things as hedgerows and lanes, which add only treasures to the soul, and none to the pocket.Fortunately for the sentimental traveller, — as he who looks through the world for pleasure instead of profit may well be called, — this fair southern country has not yet been aroused to such sense of its importance as to require the sacrifice of its luxurious, unconscious loveliness upon the altar of interest. Twenty years hence, no doubt, there will be smoky piles of manufactories and workshops, teeming hives of tenement-houses, noise and confusion of traffic and travail, outside the City of Mexico; and it will be a goodly sight to see, since all these are but outward signs of inward thrift. But the glory of Ichabod will have departed. Now the approach to the capital begins thirty miles away. Beautiful and changeful still, in valley and plain and climbing mountain-tops, the consciousness of a new influence begins to force itself upon the senses. The country roads become broad avenues, winding between rows of massive cottonwoods through flourishing fields. The boundless tract of level land begins to show signs of more careful cultivation; water flashes everywhere in the sunlight; velvety green meadows take the place of parched and dust-covered plains. Hedges of century plants and numberless green shrubs divide the different crops in the long panorama of vale and hillside; great plantations of maguey extend into the far distance and even up to the undulations of the foothills, and everywhere fertility spreads the promise of abundance. Bridges and aqueducts, rivulets and ditches, open flume and covered sluiceway, distribute the bounteous, life-giving power all over the land, which teems with rich harvests in return. Soon across the clear air, beside a mass of soft white cloud, — themselves two snowy clouds lifted into the blue of heaven, — the summits of Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl rise in their sublime beauty. Unlike the great peaks of Colorado and New Mexico, which spring almost invariably from a barren and forbidding country, torn and devastated by the same force which caused the primal upheaving, and bearing still its sombre impress, these beautiful forms, wonderful in color and majesty, tower above a world as beautiful as themselves. The exquisite valley takes now a thousand shapes of loveliness. Tropical vegetation shows itself sufficiently to make the landscape rich and bounteous; the quaint, unusual architecture of town and village rising in the midst of strange woods; the softly tinted outlines of mosque and tower; the dark-skinned, white-robed people thronging the roads, — all go to enhance a scene which even without those wondrous heights would be one of fascination, but which with them surpasses the power of words. When at length the stately spires and domes of the great city, glowing with varied color, and its rich Oriental mingling of white walls and arches, are set in the foreground, surrounded by trees and gardens and fountains, the picture can be compared to nothing else. The world holds few scenes to equal it, and none to surpass.
The streets of Mexico are, in a measure, unlike those of any other city we have so far visited. Straight, wide, and lined with handsome houses two or three stories high, almost invariably built of stone, and lighted by large windows opening upon small stone balconies, it loses something of the Eastern character which their narrow lanes of blank adobe walls give to the lesser towns; but it gains a corresponding richness. These little balconies, ornamented often by carvings and always by balustrades of wrought iron, brightened by gilding and color, and shaded by linen awnings, make a feature in themselves. Here on Sunday and fête day, as well as toward evening, the youth of the city gathers, in the full dress of private life; and the stolen glances, which form the only intercourse allowed between the sexes, flash back and forward between youth and maiden. Even deprived of the opportunity for interchange of vows, for hand-clasping, and tender greeting, it is self-evident that a young Mejicana, true to the traditions of her Castilian forebears, can make as much havoc with her languishing dark eyes, and the softly fluttering fan which supplements them, as any other girl arrayed in the full rational outfit of courtship. This is true, of course, only when she, as she always should be, but less frequently is, happens to be beautiful. The pretty girls are exquisite: the slender oval of the face, the rich olive of the cheek, the long, sweeping dark lashes over superb eyes glowing at once with passion and tenderness, the low forehead with its rippling mass of dusky hair, the slender neck, the lithe form, the springing step, and the dainty foot, make them like a poet's dream of darkly brilliant loveliness, not to be measured by any type with which we have been heretofore familiar. But Nature is never over-lavish, and the number of these splendid creatures is as few as their perfections are many. Remembering the streets at home after the Friday-afternoon rehearsal, filled with the fragile, flowerlike bloom of winsome but delicate girlhood, its brave eyes looking the world full in the face with that mixture of innocence and boldness which is the hybrid blossom of modern civilization, these shy but rich specimens, as rare as they are wonderful, look few indeed. Their perfection is offset by an equally pronounced ugliness on the part of the many; and young womanhood changes into faded middle age even sooner than with us, — which is saying a great deal. Nevertheless, the graceful lace mantilla, which is yet almost universally worn in the street, but which unfortunately is beginning to give way among the better classes to the ugly stiffness of the French hat and bonnet, gives to many a plain face such a soft and effective background that one brings back from a walk only a piquant and pleasing impression. If the Mexican women knew what they were about, they would cling to this becoming head-dress as they do to their faith ; the sex has no right to set aside such a charming accessory.
The large and well-paved avenues cross the city at right angles, overflowing with shops of every description, well stocked, and for the most part conducted by French and Germans. Native traders offer their wares under the portales and in the open market-places, which are to be found in every quarter. Nothing in the city is of greater interest to the stranger than these crowded and seemingly disordered piles of merchandise, attended by groups of swarthy merchants, men and women, who regard with the indifference of entire disinterestedness your attempts at barter, and show their contempt for ordinary business principles by charging a tlaco or two more at wholesale than at retail. You may take up every article in their stock, and pass the treasures about from hand to hand, without the least sign of apprehension or importunity on their part. The bright foreign air gives to even the smallest lane an interest and novelty. Every occupation has its distinctive mark in dress, which is like a class badge; and this, with the varying costumes of Indian, Spaniard, Mexican, Frenchman, and American filling the narrow pavements, gives constant variety to the swaying crowd. Anywhere along the curbstone, native men or women sit down to rest with basket or bundle; and some of the groups thus made are exceedingly picturesque. Each long vista, gay with color and life, is closed at last by some towering mountain height, which frowns or smiles as sun or shadow rests upon it. There are fewer burros, those pariahs among civilized beasts of burden, but more horses and elaborately equipped private carriages. A host of hacks, marked by small red, green, or white flags for convenience in hiring, are in the plazas and at street-corners; and a much larger proportion of people use them than in American cities. Small wonder, when a carriage for four people need cost but fifty cents an hour.
The Iturbide is a good specimen of the best Mexican hotels, — larger and finer than most, on account of its original use as the palace of the old emperor, but following the same general plan. Entered from the street by a large archway, the house rises around a fine courtyard, upon which each of the four stories opens in a succession of galleries, supported by arches and pillars of stone.Every room has a great hinged window opening to the floor, and entering directly on these airy, shaded balconies. Over the casements and corridors leading to the state apartments, elaborate carvings ornament the heavy stone trimmings; and projecting from the flat roof, with long gutter pipes of metal protruding from their grinning mouths, a row of grotesque gargoyles, of great size and striking artistic effect, surround the four sides. Other arches open in three directions on other courts, and broad stone stairways lead to the upper stories. The rooms, opening usually by one great balconied window on the street, as well as on the inner courts, were large, charmingly cool, well furnished, and scrupulously clean; the beds, which frightened us at first, being laid Mexican fashion on two-inch planks for springs, vindicated themselves by giving nights of restful sleep; and the chambermaids, who were all chamber men, were the most helpful, kindly, attentive, delightful set, without any exception, it was ever our happy lot to know. We had grown used to the usual American article, who answers the bell with the look of a martyr, and does your bidding with the air of a churl; who sourly fills the letter of his contract, and patronizingly accepts the timid douceur you offer as a sop to Cerberus. We were amazed by meeting a race of beings who anticipated needs, and suggested luxuries; who were interested in your night's sleep and your morning aspect; who were grieved over your ailments, and sympathized with your loneliness; who were always within call, and whose bright, dark eyes showed that they had a joy in the service they rendered. Open doors, and the careless disorder of forgetful travellers in leaving money and valuables about, offered no temptations to an integrity as incorruptible as their other virtues. Over and over again we were met by such evidence of this as would call for special mention in other places, but which here was an every-day occurrence. The lost art of honesty seems to have been found again in Mexico. And this was among the people against whom we had been warned as a race of born thieves, and specialists in the profession of robbery and trickery. We were a party of seventy-four; we had come, as most people do, with preconceived notions gathered from men and books; so that I am the more happy in being able to record this total difference between our experiences and expectations. It is a simple act of justice that it should be placed at least side by side with opposing statements. And the cameristes of the Iturbide — be their memory blessed— were the last straws that broke down our camel's hump of prejudice. In my special case, even the shock of finding my maid a man, and the man's name Jesus, could not shake my comfort and delight in him.
So far, in this country, society seems to have builded with the ruins of its old institutions: the stones of broken monarchies have been used to raise the edifice of the new republic, which has, as yet, added little fresh material of its own. It is still, as its enemies sneeringly call it, the land of to-morrow; the attempt at progress is constantly nullified by the habit of procrastination; and the best-laid plans for improvement in business are frustrated through ignorance of the value of present action. Unhappily, those in authority lend themselves to this weakness, instead of combating it by precept and example. The methods of government are as uncertain as those of trade: it is no more likely that a law which has been placed on record will be enforced, than that your merchant will fill his contract within a specified time, — which, indeed, is a small accident, that happens occasionally in better regulated communities. But here uncertainty seems to be the one fixed principle: it is only the unforeseen that ever happens.
During one of the early days of our stay we drove out to an old Carmelite convent, deserted since the action of the Government, twenty or twenty-five years ago, which confiscated all church property to the State. It was the Feast of St. Joseph; and wayside shrines were bright with flowers, laid before the beloved feet of the Virgin by reverent hands. These little nooks, which bring a thought of heaven and heaven's rest into the midst of the busy streets and the hurry of every-day life, seem to me a gracious and beautiful thought. Why would not an occasional one be a good exchange for Coggswell fountains and similar ornaments in the world at home? The celebrated tree of the Noche Triste, under which Cortez passed that "Sad Night" so memorable in the History of the Conquest, was one of the landmarks, with the small church close by, which was among the earliest buildings erected by the Spaniards. Across the lovely, dusty country, the faint line of blue mountains rose through the unusual mist of a foggy day, with Popocatapetl like a restful shadow beyond. Farther yet, the white lady Ixtaccihuatl lay sleeping in her dreamland of clouds. Up and down the long, shaded alleys inside the convent walls, with water running through stone aqueducts, and springing through small fountains at the side; with roses, tangled and fragrant, making hedges under the trees, and a pair of tame goats gambolling through them, — we walked for hours through the ruins of a once splendid property. The fine old building, with its long corridors and frescoed walls, had been turned into a carelessly kept barn and granary; a couple of horses had their stalls under the painted ceiling of the refectory, and in the cloisters still remained the presses and vats used for making oil and wine. Outside, an Italian terraced walk of faint pink stone surrounded a small artificial lake, reflecting a long colonnade of light columns supporting an elevated promenade above. Great clustering bushes of pink roses bent above the water at each few feet; apples, peaches, quinces, and pears grew side by side with oranges, lemons, figs, and olives; and we wandered about for hours, filling ourselves with fancies faint and sweet as the perfume of faded flowers, and gathered armsful of bloom, until we looked like visitors at a country fair. And we could not help speculating upon the common-sense of a nation, which, having taken the very positive step of expelling religious communities in order to increase the revenues of the State by utilizing their properties, should leave these same properties go to ruin for twenty years, without any further effort to make them available. It is another one of the hieroglyphics of this untranslatable country.
There is no end to pleasant surprises. We wandered into a pleasant corner one day. It was a long, narrow garden, with oleander-bordered paths, and a row of rustic pavilions on one side, holding baths of clear water upon floors of shining marble, into which one descended by a couple of broad steps like those in a Pompeiian picture. The walls were covered with a network of fragrant growing plants; and outside, in the trellised arbors, birds were singing, as if harmony and beauty were the only laws of life. On the other side, an archway led to baths for horses, which were novel and pretty enough. Think of equine aristocrats, who have first a courtyard full of clean dust to roll in; a preliminary swimming-tank to flounder about in; careful attendants, with soap and brushes, to shampoo mane and tail, and to wash teeth and cars as if they were caring for babies; and a regal pond of clean water to finish their ablutions, from which they emerge shining, sleek, and beautiful as the winged steeds of Parnassus. Good horses, when they die, must go to Mexico.
If the journey through the country, with its immense preponderance of poor dwellings and adobe huts, should have tended to make you believe that this is the native land of poverty, take a drive any evening, from five to seven, along the Paseo which Maximilian planned from the walls of the city to the Castle of Chapultepec. A boulevard three miles in length, and two hundred feet in width; with double avenues of fine trees shading wide stone sidewalks; with seven great circles, each three hundred feet in diameter, breaking its long, level straightness, — it makes a fit setting for the brilliant display it holds. The centre of each circle is to be filled with a monument or statue, surrounded by a garden with fountains and flowers, around which on each side the avenue sweeps superbly. But a land cannot have too many pastimes; and the favorite one here, of revolution, checks such minor matters as internal improvement and decoration, so that only three of these pretty pleasure-grounds have been finished in twenty years: the other four are as yet in outline. Through this magnificent driveway hundreds and hundreds of brilliant equipages pass and repass in the late afternoon, — the carriages full of brightly dressed ladies, the servants in splendid but showy livery, and the jeunesse dorée, more gilded than ever under this Oriental sun, dashing on their small, fiery steeds through the central space. The young girls wear flowers in their dark hair; the elders drape head and shoulders in the soft black lace of the mantilla, which adds a new grace to even a homely woman; the cavaliers are valiant in all the picturesque bravery that youth can dare or money purchase; and a gay whirlwind of nods and smiles, and that fascinating little Mexican greeting which is spoken with the fingers, blows away forever your idea of undiluted misery. For two hours, at least, each day, the world of fashion, of folly, and perhaps of pleasure, has its own way; and it is as giddy a way as wealth can make it. On Sundays and fête days a band adds very good music to the other attractions of the place, the reckless riders dash between the lines of carriages more madly than ever, the air is heavy with the perfume of flowers carried in every hand, and nothing more brilliant can be well imagined.
At the farther end of the Paseo, on the road to Tacubuya, rise the hill and palace of Chapultepec. The favorite pleasure-garden of Montezuma, this lovely spot owes its mixture of wildness and beauty as much to art as to nature. Rising abruptly on the side toward the city from the perfect level of the plain, it is surrounded by a forest of cypress, which is not surpassed for magnificence on this continent. The grand old trees, most of which must date back over twenty centuries, rise in sombre majesty above those of ordinary growth, interspersed among them, like a race of giants towering amid pygmies; and the dim aisles beneath their lower branches are made still more beautiful by the almost intangible softness of draperies of gray moss, festooned and swaying from limb to limb. Through this wood, shadowy as twilight even at midday, the carriage-road winds and mounts to the summit, whereon the castle and military academy are built. And standing on the terrace from which these arise, one looks for the first time across the Valley of Mexico.
In the natural order, there is nothing more wonderful than this scene for loveliness in the wide world,—nothing more calculated to intoxicate the soul with the simple glory of living, since earth still holds such beauty for eyes of man. How can one ever hope to bring before the sense that has not known it that fair green plain stretching from the marble terraces of Chapultepec forty miles away to the dim horizon? How paint that foreground of majestic cypress-trees, draped in shadowy moss, which adds an intangible softness to the dim forest aisles beneath; the long, bright fields of a valley fair as a dream of paradise, divided by hedges of shrubbery or walls of cactus, until the surface resembles an inwrought tapestry of emerald interwoven in myriad gradations of tint; the waving hedges, outlining country roads that fade in the azure distance; the magnificent avenues of stately trees, converging from every point toward the walls of the great city? The city itself, a mass of towers and spires and glowing, richly tinted domes; the scores of villages embowered in leafage, and nestling within shadow of the foothills; the sparkle of water on the distant lake; the grand stone arches of gray aqueducts crossing the country from the heights beyond; the wonderful encircling line of mountains, deep with amethystine shadow, that stand like guardians of the happy valley's peace; and farthest away, but most omnipresent of all, the eternal majesty of Popocatapetl and Iztaccihuatl, cleaving the blue and silent air, lifting their radiant white summits like luminous clouds up to the very gates of heaven, awful in sublimity, as if belonging to the supernatural world, yet tempered with the tenderness of earthly beauty,—who can paint the surpassing glory of this entrancing scene for eyes which have not been touched by itself with the anointing chrism of vision? If no more of beauty than this one view can give were added to one's inner consciousness, the journey to Mexico would be fully requited.