Our Neighbor-Mexico/Book III Chapter II
II.
QUERETARO.
Into the Town.—Maximilian's Retreat.—Capture and Execution.—Hill of Bells.—Factories and Gardens.—Hot-weather Bath.—A Home.—Alameda.—Sunday, sacred and secular.—A very Christian name.—Crowded Market, and empty Churches.—Chatting in Church.—Priestly Procession.—Among the Churches.—Hideous Images.—Handsome Gardens.
As I came rattling down the steep place into this fair city with the setting of the sun, I could only think of another sun that set here, and whose sad brilliance shot a lurid flame across the orb of the world. Here Maximilian met his fate.
This was the last landscape he ever saw; such a sunset on these same hills the last he ever looked upon. It brought a shadow over the picture, a shadow not of time, but of man. These are the fields and hills which
"Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality."
Maximilian and Montezuma, three hundred and fifty years apart in their history, are blended in a historic unity. They had much in common. Men of refined rather than of strong nature, loving art rather than arts, put in command of a turbulent people at a crisis in its history, with an instinct of honor rather than of government, they each fell into hands more powerful than themselves, and perished with regret, and yet with dire military necessity.
Maximilian retreated to Queretaro, after the French left the country, a step of exceeding unwisdom; for Mexico the city is Mexico the State, and the possession of that is nine points in the possession of all the country. He fled to this city probably because it was a clerical town, and one of his most ardent supporters, while the political capital might prove treacherous.
The Republicans surrounded it. Batteries were planted on the hill down which the diligence plunges; on a headland next to it, across a broad and deep cañon; and the third on Sierra de los Campanas, or Hill of the Bells, a knob of not much height, rising out of the meadows to the north-west of the town. He was in the Church of the Cross, with huge gardens attached, surrounded by a high wall, making a fortress of especial strength. One of his generals betrayed that fortress of a church, and he was captured. Tried by court-martial, he is condemned for publishing a cruel edict, two years before, which outlawed all Republicans, and caused the murder of many. He is ordered to be shot, with two associates, Miramon, ex-President of the republic, and Tomas Majia, a general. They are marched out to the Hill of the Bells, and in front of its fort, high up the hill-side, the three men fall by the bullets of the government. With them fell the Church Power in Mexico. It was her last battle. For twenty years she had plotted, and raised rebellions, and introduced a foreign prince and a foreign army. Miramon was her Mexican leader, Pius IX. her European.
A favorite picture on the parkor walls of devout Romanists here is Maximilian and Carlotta visiting the pope. He sits on a daïs, holding converse with them about Mexico. They were blessed by him, and urged on their dim and perilous way. He was the real centre of the imperial movement; Napoleon was only his military director. All of it was Romanism, and Romanism only.
When America finished her war, Mr. Seward put sixty thousand men on the Mexican frontier, and sent a polite note to the French minister suggesting that the French troops be recalled from this continent. Napoleon saw that his stay in Mexico was at an end, and gracefully withdrew his troops. Maximilian should have gone with him. But he fancied he could win alone. He trusted the Church party. They were weak and weaker every day. Juarez, inspired by the United States, moved on him and drove him hither, captured, condemned, shot him.
Church of the Cross.Hill of bells
QUERETARO
The hill where he was killed is only a mile from the town. It is about a hundred feet high—a Bunker Hill in size, height, and history; for here Mexico achieved, in her way, her independence. He was placed a little below the summit, facing the east, looking toward Miramar and his mother's house. A sketch, made at the time, gives the sad scene. The three men stand apart from each other, and guards of soldiers are on either side. Easy and graceful in their attitudes, calm of feature, they await the shot that sends them to another world; let us hope a world where there is no war, nor wickedness, nor woe.
The spot where he fell is marked by a heap of stones, cast up without order by living hands. Many of these stones are marked with a cross. Some of them have three crosses on them, some five—the most sacred sign—emblematic of the five wounds of Christ.
This is the tribute of his party and Church, and could not have been done in many cities of the country. It shows how badly the cross is blasphemed, and justifies our Puritan fathers for abolishing its use altogether. It came to signify spiritual tyranny and superstition, and was rightly rejected. So these rude scratches are evidence of hostility to republican and tolerant ideas, of bitterest hostility to true Christianity. It may yet burst forth, not in crosses alone, but in crucifixion also.
The view from this Hill of the Bells is uncommonly fine. The valley lies about you, full of verdure. Never did any valley look lovelier. Hundreds of acres of wheat and barley and lucern, greenest of the green, seem in a race for superiority in color, while the trees are not behind in beauty. Flowers of richest hue glow in the gardens, and the city stands forth, with its glittering towers and domes, a spectacle long to be remembered. It would be hard to find the equal in beauty of this combination of high, bold cliffs, ranges of hills, velvet meadows, and stately churches.
The river makes the town. But for that, this valley would be as dry and yellow as that of Mexico. As it is, one can not see within the circuit of the spurs of the hills a barren spot. If but George L. Brown were only here to put this scene on his burning canvas, how many would haste to see the picture, if not the reality. I know not where is a richer bouquet. Other valleys are grander; this is complete. As if to keep the memory green of the great conflict crowned on this spot, some ancient nopals just below the crest still show the holes in their leaves made by the bullets of the besiegers. It is a monument that will not soon die, for nothing seems to live more leisurely than the cactus, and it well adorns the lustrous picture with its rude and strong appropriateness.
The whole scene is placid and lovely as a sleeping babe. How different when blood and fire and vapor of smoke filled all the hollow!
"Death rode upon the sulphury siroc,
Red battle stamped his foot, and nations felt the shock."
This inland town and this tiny hill made sorrow and trembling in the Tuileries and Schönbrunn. Consternation awoke in all courts as the stern decree was executed that announced to all the world that European monarchs must "hands off" to all American nationalities, and ere long to all American soil.
The city, like all in Mexico and everywhere else, has much that will not bear close examination. Its edges are not sweet, any more than those of London or New York. It has but few choice streets, and fewer choice houses. The most are depressingly degrading. Poverty has wrought its perfect work, and the last cent is both often and rarely seen by the pauperized people. Beggars abound, and thrust their offensive winnings into your unwilling ears. The plaza is a pretty garden of tropical delights, more bountiful than that of Mexico, for the land lies lower and warmer.
Other products abound. Under the portal of this plaza, among the shops, I saw a lad generously searching the long, thick, grizzled back hair of his mother as faithfully and as successfully as such mothers in other lands search such sons. It was a good evidence of filial affection.
A factory here deserves notice. It is two miles from the city, in a deep, hot cañon, and is big enough to attract attention, even in England or New England. On its looms it employs fifteen hundred hands. Mr. Sawyer, a New Hampshire cotton-spinner, superintends several rooms. He took me over the whole of it. I know little of cotton-spinning, though I have been taken through many mills. I saw this had the familiar whirr and fuzz of such mills. Rooms as long as those of Lowell were driving their looms. The main building is but three stories high, and most of them only two. The cloth manufactured is of poor quality, not worth over six cents in the States. Here it sells for eighteen and three-quarter cents: a real and a medio.
A COTTON FACTORY, QUERETARO.
The most striking peculiarity about these mills is the garden in front of them. This garden is full of orange-trees laden with the ripe fruit, with peach-trees in blossom, figs, pomegranates, trees bearing crimson flowers called the "noche buena," or the Christmas flower, as it is much used for that holiday. Roses, geraniums, fuchsias, and many unknown to the cold North are blooming in this factory yard.
More striking is the old mill in this vivid contrast. It stands back from the street, near the water-course. It is inclosed on three sides with a high iron fence, light, graceful, and tipped with gilded points and balls. Inside is a spacious garden, with walks and founts and foliage and flowers. Several gardeners daily care for the nourishment and pruning of these thirsty and wanton luxuries. Benches are scattered around. Thickets of green and natural houses are daintily grown together. Every thing is after the best type of a lordly pleasure-garden, and yet it fronts a factory where whirring spindles and looms are its constant music. Flutes and soft recorders would seem more fitting.
How would our factories be improved with a slight approach to this beauty! Perhaps they prefer to give their hands more than thirty-one cents a day, and to work them less than fifteen hours, than to adorn the grounds so richly. That is what these workmen and work-women get and do. For two reals and a medio they work from six in the morning to nine and a half at night; some from five to that late hour, with a recess of one hour and a half. All the workmen pay a real a week for the doctor, whether they want him or not, and take one-third of their pay out of the company's store; so their fifteen reals, or one dollar and seventy-five cents a week, becomes fourteen, and ten of these, or one dollar and a quarter, is all their cash in hand for ninety hours' steady work, at half-past nine on Saturday night. No wonder the huts they occupy, my lord, the owner of the mills, would not put his favorite dog into. He even keeps a judge, before whom he requires all their grievances to be brought, and over the door of his office is printed "The only Judge." This signified that none should seek relief at any other court except at his peril. The owner of these mills is successful and unsuccessful, making and losing many a fortune. He is a young man who inherited the establishment, and who has the odd fancy of going daily to town in a red stage-coach with four horses, which he drives, preferring this startling mode to riding horseback or in an ordinary vehicle. I saw him thus flaunt out. His mills do not pay, despite the elegance of the gardens, the poorness and price of the goods, and the cheapness of the labor. He is constantly and overwhelmingly in debt. So the Yankee mill-owner may conclude it is wiser to make his mills less romantic and his profits more sure. If he also will work his people less and pay them more, his lack of taste may be condoned. Still, if to all excellences he adds these factory gardens of Queretaro, he will find his mill the more attractive, and make of duty a delight.
The valley runs up into the hills, filled with groves of fragrance, fig, orange, cactus, agua (a vegetable butter-apple, used as sauce for the tortillas), zapotes, and other nameless fruits. At its head a bath attracts many visitors, placed among groves of incense. The very air is burdened with spicy odors.
The aqueduct that stalks so majestically across the short campagna has its fountain-head near these baths. It runs along the mountain-sides for three miles, and then marches across the valley to the town. It makes a superb feature in the landscape; and is the only real Roman relic, save what the church affords, on the continent. It is ante-Roman, older than the Cæsars, old as Rameses and Solomon.
The alameda here is the pleasantest I have seen in all the country. It is a little one side of the town, and has a country look such as Boston Common used to have, and Druid Hill now has. It is about fifty acres square, has a drive around it, and long, straight diagonals going from a central circle to the corners. High, grand, green ash-trees make its chief shade. Grass, well sprinkled with dandelions, lies open to the free play of children, and wanderings of their elders. The familiar tree and flower made the spot more Northernish and home-like than any of its fellows. It was a delicious spot to sit and muse, and grow mellow with homesick longings. London parks, the only country fields in the heart of a great city, are not more homely and homeful. One forgets his strange surroundings, hostile even though they be, in this"Society where none intrudes,"
for beggar, nor priest, nor lordling frequent the spot. There is no wealth to come, and the others go not where wealth is not. When you come to Queretaro, be sure to take a long lounge through its alameda.
The Sunday begins, like all other days here, religiously and secularly. The trumpets of the garrison ring out the first reveille, and the bells of the churches ring out almost immediately their oration, or call to prayer. By five the tintinnabulations play on the tympanum, like a Fourth of July at home, and "sleep no more" is a decree that has to be obeyed. It was a pleasanter sound, certainly, than the music of pleasure bands and factory bells, and I almost forgot myself for a moment, and fancied I was going to have a goodly service on this sacred day. This impression was deepened by an incident which occurred while I was taking my desayuno, or first breakfast, which consists of only a cup of coffee and a small roll. I ask the waiter what his name is. "Trinidad, señor," he replies, respectfully. Shocked at the answer, I repeat it. "Trinidad?" "Si, señor." "La Santissima Trinidad?" "La Santissima Trinidad, señor." So I was talking with the Most Holy Trinity in the form of a poor Aztec boy. I never supposed their baptismal names had reached that pitch of profanity. "Jesus" is as common as John at home; more so: but "La Santissima Trinidad!"
I asked this wonderfully named youth if he went to church. "Yes." "Every day?" "Every eighth day." "What day?" "Sunday." "At what hour?" "Between five and six." So that bell-ringing had taken him to church. I asked him if he could read. "Yes." "Have you a Bible?" "No." "Would you like one?" "Yes." All I had was a Spanish Testament, and that went to La Santissima Trinidad at the risk of disclosing my business, and bringing the kidnapers about my ears. How strange to call a child by the most holy name of God Himself. The priest that baptized such a babe needs himself to be renewed in the spirit of his mind, and the Church that admits it certainly should be reformed.
This utter insensibility to all distinctions as to sacred and divine things was strikingly shown at a dinner-table in Cuernervaca. A company of Americans and English, all Protestant in their training, had a leading Mexican of the section at meat with them. A water-melon was brought on. He cut off the end, and pouring a bottle of wine into it, said, "This is the blood of Christ. This" (feeling of the melon) "is the body; and the two, coming together, make a soul." He said this blandly, and as though he were getting off a good religious thought. Even the freethinking members of that party shrank from that unconscious profanity. So thoroughly are this people saturated with form and void of power, under the education of mere form, in which they have for so many generations been trained.
I went out, after my coffee, to church; for though I have little faith in Romanism, I feel that it is better to go to the house of God, strangely perverted though it be, than to idle the day away in outward non-observances. One can himself pray aright, if the others pray awry. The plaza before the cathedral was crowded with trades-people. Bazars had been formed by temporary shanties, and the streets adjoining were lined on both sidewalks; the stores were in full blast. Never a day more busy. The divine names given by the priests do not prevent the desecration of the divine day. It would be easy to stop all this. But the Sabbath, and the Bible, and the very titles of our God and Saviour are alike cast out and trodden underfoot. Is it any wonder God has cast them out? Over all this land nothing is writ so plain as the annihilation of ecclesiastical power and wealth. Every church they hold, not as their own, but as a loan of the government, while convents, immense in extent and costliness, are everywhere deserted and in ruins. This city is full of them, not yet driven through by the plowshare of the street commissioner; for there is not money enough to level them, and make them into highways. Yet they are all the more desolate from their utter emptiness and silent crumbling into dust. One of these plazas, and the most beautiful, was made from the garden of a convent belonging to the cathedral, and along one side of it, coming up to that church and covering not less than ten acres, is a heap of ruins, in the very heart of the city. You wander under lofty arches, and into courts without a window, door, or dweller—a ruin as complete as Melrose Abbey or the Coliseum. Such is it in many places in this yet intensely papal town. Let the true and living Church come and build up these waste places, and fill these empty courts with heavenly songs and teachings and testimonies.
"Hasten, Lord, the glorious day."
I entered the cathedral at about half-past eight. Mass had already commenced, though only a few were present. They kept coming in and dropping on their knees. There are only one or two benches, so the floor is the sitting-place. Two ladies, dressed in blue silk, with all the fashionable flounces and over-skirts and trails, floated by me, one kneeling at the foot of the altar, where she could sit also, when she desired; the other seating herself on the bench where I sat. They wore black lace veils, and no bonnets. I have never seen a bonnet in a church here. As others came in of their friends, there were nods and smiles of mutual recognition; and when some of them knelt at the side of those on the floor, conversation ensued, the service constantly going on. So I saw that kneeling in a papal church did not any more necessitate devotion than sitting in other churches.
After much singing by the boys, and other incidents of the mass, a procession is formed, and a silken canopy, wrought with gold, is borne by six Indians, who, I note, are never priests—only Gibeonites. I have not seen a full-blooded Indian in high Church orders. They rule in the State, but not in the Church. Yet I hear they are found in some parts of Mexico. Before this canopy marches one with a silver crucifix. Under it a very old man carries a silver star or sun, on which the crucifix stands, seemingly a very sacred affair. Hard-looking officials accompany this venerable bearer. They stop opposite my bench at an altar, and bow and kiss the silver sun, move on to the high altar, and place it in the centre. It is as powerless and useless as the opera operations of some more intelligent, if not more Christian congregations. It was nothing to the crowd that witnessed it, or the men that performed it.
A sermon was preached at this stage, which, as I could not understand, I did not dislike; nor did I dislike the manner and appearance of the preacher, who seemed earnest and devotional; and I especially liked the breaking off half way in his discourse and engaging in prayer, in which all the congregation joined. I should have liked it better had I not seen the same thing twice before, and therefore judged it formal, and not of the heart. Yet I do not condemn a good practice because of possible formality, and would not object to seeing a like invocation by preacher and people at the beginning, middle, and end of our sermons.
After attending this service I visited the churches. Few of them are in a good condition. None have a fresh and animating air. All overflow with images. Never did a nation so give itself up to image-worship. Hundreds of little white images hang near the shrine or doors, probably to be sold for household gods. The Virgin Mary is dressed in every sort of garb and color, sometimes with crinoline, yards across. In the Church of Santo Domingo, in Puebla, her robes stand out with an enormous spread. Blue, purple, yellow, lace, gold and silver ornaments—every array is she set forth in. Once I admired the simplicity of her apparel. At the Church of San Felipe, over the top of the high altar, she stood in perfect white marble, or hard and shining plaster, hooded, almost, as to her face, holding in one hand a candlestick, and in the other a crucifix. It was too simple and severe for the tawdry taste displayed usually behind these glass fronts.
A crucifix below, on a side altar, made amends for that simplicity. Christ was on his hands and knees. His whole backbone seemed laid open by the lash, and blood was flowing from every rib and cord over his sides. It was horribly hideous and false, as were the two courtesanish-looking faces of fair, fat, forty, and finely-dressed women that were made into angels, and hovered dolorously, but not sympathetically, above him.
The Church of the Cross, where Maximilian lived, and which he fortified, and where he was captured, is one of the chief churches, with some ornament, but especially noticeable for a graceful tomb, a shrouded female with a long wand, leaning over a tablet, on which the name of the dead is graven.
Santa Clara, where my astonishingly-named mozo goes, is the most ornate structure. Such a profusion of gilding I have seen nowhere else. Five altars from floor to ceiling are covered with figures and carved work, all thick with gold, while the arches around and above the door-way are, if possible, even more overlaid. It is astonishing what an outlay of precious leaf has been made on these shrines. This church was crowded at vespers to the pavement without, where many sat, joining with the voices that took up the refrain from within. These were all the poorest of the poor. Rags and beggary and utter penury knelt on the floor or sat on the benches of this gilded chapel that cost more than any church, probably, in the United States. When shall we equal them by our equality?
The Church of the Virgin of Gaudalupe was almost equally adorned with gold, but had only a few worshipers. Its convent has become a hospital, and exquisite flowers fill its courts with beauty of odor and of sight. Its front is of the Moorish type, more so than any in the capital or Puebla, and its graceful minaret and very quaint buttresses, flying out from the wall like a scroll, are proofs of the influence Grenada had over Madrid.
The churches and priests are the chief characteristic of Queretaro. No wonder it is such a church-town. It is more completely filled with these structures than any city I have seen—than any, probably, in the land, except Guadilajara. Puebla has far less, proportionately to its inhabitants, and far inferior ones, excepting its cathedral, which here is cheap and poor. One I strolled into (I forget its name) had five altars, with ornaments carried to the roof, most elaborately and profusely carved and gilded. Statues, globes, hearts, and even the coils of the entrails, are perched on every possible spot, and covered thick with gilt. The door-way to the sacristy was remarkably adorned in this fashion. Only those of Santo Domingo chapel, in Puebla, were equally brilliant at the time of their execution. They make none such nowadays. Gold is too dear, and the Church too poor for this luxury. It looks faded also, and, like its service and power, is out of joint with the present.
Priests abound. I have not seen as many, in all my stay in Mexico, as in this single day. Some of these big convents are as yet unopened, and the day of their sovereignty has not yet closed. It will be perilous, perhaps, to establish the true worship here, though there are some who look and long for its appearing. I heard of one such, a Mexican workman of influence and position. I understand there are others who are ready to cast away their beggars' robes of idolatry and formalism and arise and come to Jesus. May many and all soon come!
We close our visitations, convinced that much prayer and faithful labor must be put up and put forth before this people will be weaned from their idols and their Sabbath-breakings, and brought to the feet of Christ. And that prayer is going up, and that labor is going forth, and Queretaro shall be a city holy unto the Lord, with sanctuaries filled with grateful, joyful, holy, intelligent, prosperous worshipers. No rags, no beggary, no Sabbath-breaking, no superstition.