The Story of Mexico/Chapter 23
XXIII.
HUMBOLDT.
In the time of Iturrigaray, very near the close of the viceregal period, a little while before Napoleon invaded Spain, Alexander von Humboldt visited Mexico. He was a close observer of men and customs, as well as of the natural phenomena belonging to his scientific explorations. His account of the country gives a good idea of the state of society in Mexico at the time he was there, and records the progress it had reached under Spanish rule, in the hands of the viceroys. The revolutions, then so soon about to begin, destroyed much of this civilization; from the ruin brought by many a battle and riot, the country is yet but slowly recovering. We may study the description of Humboldt as we might an old daguerreotype, somewhat faded, but preserving forms and images in reality passed away.
Humboldt and his friend, Bonpland, a botanist, left Europe in the early summer of 1799, armed with all sorts of scientific instruments, with letters and passports to admit them everywhere, for an extended journey of scientific exploration in America. After nearly three years in South America, they left it for Mexico, arriving by water at Acapulco at the beginning of 1803. Acapulco is on the Pacific Coast in the state of Guerrero. Humboldt had letters from the court of Spain, which gave him every facility then accessible for travelling in Mexico.
TEMPLE OF XOCHICALCO.
They passed through Cuernavaca, stopping to see the monument of Xochicalco in its vicinity. Humboldt notes the heads of crocodiles spouting water carved among the ornaments of this temple, with the comment that it was strange to find such figures employed on a plain four thousand feet above the sea and away from the haunts of these creatures, instead of the plants and animals belonging to the neighborhood.
Without delay Humboldt and his companion reached the capital, where they were delighted with all they saw. The Academy of Fine Arts was then in a flourishing condition. Government had assigned it a spacious building, and it had a collection of casts, finer, Humboldt says, than was at that time to be found in Germany.
A small school of engraving was opened in the Mint, as early as 1779, by royal order. General interest in this school became so great as to lead the Viceroy Mayorga to project an academy of the three fine arts, painting, sculpture, and architecture. In 1783, under the rule of the good Galvez, royal approval was granted, and license was given for the existing institution under the name of: "Academia de las Nobles Artes de San Carlos de la Nueva España."
The academy was formally opened with suitable ceremony in 1785, removed a few years later to the building it still occupies. Charles III. himself sent the collection of casts admired by Humboldt. For twenty years it flourished in the hands of competent artists sent from the mother country. Then the end of that protection, and the turbulent days of civil war, disturbed its even tenor.
Humboldt says that every night in its spacious halls, well illumined by Argand lamps, hundreds of young men were assembled, some sketching from plaster-casts or from life, others copying designs of furniture, candelabra, and bronze ornaments; admission was free to all; class, colors, and races were mingled together; the Indian beside the white boy, the son of the poorest mechanic beside that of the richest lord. In 1839 all this was changed. Madame Calderon described the casts as mutilated, the engravings injured, and the building in disorder and abandoned. In this state it remained until the return to power of Juarez, since when, with an annual allowance of $35,000, the institution is doing fairly well. The name is changed to the "National School of Fine Arts"; prizes are given for good work; all teaching is free.
The equestrian statue of Charles IV. was completed just at the time of Humboldt's visit. He was present when it was cast, and saw it on its way to the plaza.
The Cathedral was then new, and its massive towers, with the fine plaza in front of it, excited the admiration of the enthusiastic traveller. A few years only before his visit, the great idol, Teoyamiqui, had been discovered, in the time of the eccentric Viceroy Revillagigedo; he would have placed it in the University, but the professors there were unwilling to have it seen by Mexican youths, and they buried it again in one of the corridors of the Colegio. They were persuaded to dig it up in order that Humboldt should see and make a sketch of it.
The Aztec calendar, the stone of sacrifice, and the manuscripts in hieroglyph much interested the great man, but more the natural attractions of the city. One of his favorite haunts was Chapultepec, then in good order, as it was left by the Viceroy Galvez, who first made a pleasure-house there, where Humboldt delighted in the broad view of plain and volcano. He loved to go, as every one does now, to the marketplace, to see the stalls of the Indians all hung with verdure. No matter what they sell—fruit, roots, pulque—their booths are ornamented with flowers. He describes the hedge a yard high of fresh herbs and delicate leaves built around the fruit-stalls, and the garlands of flowers, which divided the alleys of the market, spread upon the ground with little nose-gays stuck at intervals, making a sort of carpet of flowers. The fruit, in small cages of wood, was ornamented on top with flowers. He describes the pretty sight, at sunrise, of the Indians coming along the Viga Canal in boats loaded with fruits and flowers, from Istacalco and Chalco; and gives an account of the chinampas, or floating gardens, on the marshy banks of these lakes. This invention is attributed to the early Aztecs, who cultivated the ground on loose tracts of earth, bound together by roots which were either driven about by the winds or moored to the shore. Similar ones, he says, are to be met with in all the zones. In our day the chinampas do not float, but have the appearance of low, wet gardens, intersected by many channels of water; they are, however, pretty patches of gay flowers cultivated, with vegetables, for the city market, and a trip to Santa Anita, over the still waters of the Viga, must not be omitted from the excursions around Mexico; the scene is charming in itself, and haunted moreover by the long succession of gentle Indians, who for centuries have heaped their boats with flowers, and floated over the dark water chanting low songs.
Humboldt went to inspect the pyramids of the sun and moon at Teotihuacan, and afterwards gave a prolonged study to mines, visiting first Moran and Real del Monte, northeast of the capital, and afterwards Guanajuato. Long before the arrival of the Spaniards, the natives of Mexico were acquainted with the working of subterranean veins to find metal. Cortés says that gold, silver, copper, lead, and tin were all sold in the markets of Tenochtitlan. They either collected grains of native gold in small baskets of slender rushes, or melted the metal into bars, like those now used in trade, represented in Mexican paintings. Humboldt found the methods of mining not advanced from the sixteenth century, without any of the improvements known in his time. The hard work was performed by Indians, the beasts of burden of the mines. They carried out the metal in bags on their backs, going up and down thousands of steps, in long files of fifty or sixty, men of seventy years old, and children of ten or twelve.
The mine of Valenciana, in Humboldt's time the most celebrated of Guanajuato, and the richest then known in Mexico, was not much wrought until the end of the eighteenth century, although it had been somewhat worked by the early Indians and the first Spanish settlers. In 1760, a poor man named Obregon, a Spaniard, began to explore a new vein. As he was a worthy man, he found friends willing to advance small sums from time to time to carry on his work. For several years the cost was much greater than the produce, but the pit grew rich as it became deep, and at last yielded quantities of sulphuretted silver. When Obregon, or, as he came to be called, the Count of Valenciana, began to work the vein, goats were browsing over the hill-tops all about the ravine of San Xavier. Ten years after, on the same spot, the climbing streets of Guanajuato sheltered a large population; and at present it is a flourishing city, surrounded by a region all rich in minerals. The produce from the mine at Valenciana has fallen behind that of other later veins, and scarcely covers the outlay.
Humboldt went from Guanajuato to Valladolid, which had not yet changed its name in honor of the mule-driver, Morelos, who had, however, already begun to study in the Colegio of San Nicholas. Valladolid was a small city of eighteen thousand inhabitants. Humboldt says it contained nothing worthy of notice, but an aqueduct and a bishop's palace. He could not fail to admire the lofty picturesque arches of that aqueduct of warm yellow stone, whose long lines vanish in perspective, shaded by great ash trees. He does full justice to the beauty of Patzcuaro, which he declares would alone have repaid him for his voyage across the ocean. Humboldt spent some time there, and his memory of his visit is still preserved in the name of a lofty hill overlooking the lake, named Humboldt's mountain. The hospitable, courteous citizens of Patzcuaro still point out with pride his favorite points of view. They fully appreciate, as he did, the attractions of their lovely lakes. The volcano Jorullo, twenty leagues south of Patzcuaro, was first made known to men of science in Europe by Humboldt's account of it.
In the middle of the eighteenth century the site of this volcano was covered with peaceful fields of sugarcane, cotton, and indigo, watered by artificial means, belonging to the plantation of San Pedro de Jorullo. In June, 1759, for the first time, hollow noises from under the ground began to make themselves heard, and in September a tract of ground three or four square miles in extent humped up like a bubble. Thick vapors, smoke, and flames were seen to issue from this area, which rose and fell like the ocean. Large masses of rock and earth sprung up as if from a chasm, and the highest of these developed into a volcano, which burned steadily, throwing up lava and hot ashes for several months.
The Indians were greatly terrified by such a spectacle, as well they might be. Flames were seen at Patzcuaro, and even at Querétaro, many miles away. The roofs of houses were covered with ashes, and the rich plantations of San Pedro reduced to a barren plain. They believed that some missionary monks who were ill received at the plantation poured out horrid imprecations upon the fertile spot, and prophesied that it should be swallowed up by flames rising out of the earth. Whether these vindictive monks had anything to do with it or no, the hacienda of Jorullo was destroyed, all the trees thrown down and buried in sand and ashes from the volcano. The field and roads were covered with sand, crops destroyed, and flocks perished, unable to drink the infected water.
The eruptions grew gradually less and ceased during the following year, but the mountain, with its extinct crater, remains in the place of the once fertile hacienda.
Humboldt and his companion inspected also the great volcano, the pyramid of Cholula, and the picturesque town of Jalapa. They left Mexico by the port of Vera Cruz, and went to Havana, spending nearly a year in the United States.
