encumbered the streets, the effeminate natives instinctively shrunk
back, conscious of their own imbecility; the Spanish Americans were
overawed by their presence; and even Sidney convicts thought it most
profitable to turn their thoughts to honest labor.

The miner had his vices too as well as his virtues. If you will follow
him as he opens right and left a crowd that surrounds a table heaped
with lumps of gold and silver coin, you will see how carelessly he
throws down a piece of metal, looking sharply into the eye of the
cunning dealer of the monté cards. If he detects a false move, he cocks
his weapon, and draws the gold back into his bag and strides away.

Such were the men who knew no fear, and dreaded no labor or fatigue,
and who have made California in five short years a state more powerful
than the Republic of Mexico.

In an interior town I was called to practice as an attorney. My first
client was the driver of an ox-team, who was suing for extra services
in addition to his regular wages of five hundred dollars a month and
board (Doe _vs._ Pickett). My office was a space of four feet by six,
partitioned off by two cotton sheets, in the corner of a canvas store.
The ground was for a while the floor; yet I paid in advance the monthly
rent of two ounces of gold, and never had occasion to regret the
outlay. The heavy winter rains at length compelled my landlord to lay a
floor of rough boards, which cost him seven hundred dollars for a
thousand feet.

Before the establishment of the state government, there was a judiciary
created by an autocratical edict of General Riley; and a pamphlet,
extracted and translated from the Mexican Constitutional laws of 1836,
constituted the _Corpus Juris Civilis_ of the Territory of California.
The remainder of the law was made up of the judge's ideas of equity,
and of the law he had read before leaving home. Inartificial and rude
as was this system, still it was wonderfully efficient; and it was well
for the people of California that it was so, for an unparalleled
immigration had brought with it an unparalleled amount of litigation.

With the daily occurring causes of litigation, crowds assembled at the
school-house on the Plaza, where from morning to night sat a judge
dispensing off-hand justice. In front of him sat three or four clerks
conducting the business. The crowds of lawyers, litigants, and
witnesses that surrounded the court were not idle spectators, but
represented the ordinary accumulation of business for the day, which
was to be disposed of before the adjournment of the court. Speedy
justice was more desirable than exact justice, where labor was valued
at a gold ounce a day; and none were more desirous of speed than the
lawyers, whose prospects of compensation depended much upon the
promptitude with which judgment was rendered.

The moving spirit of the whole scene, Judge A----, watched from behind
the desk all that was said or done, seldom withdrawing his attention
unless to administer an oath for the consideration of one dollar, or to
sign an order for the consideration of two dollars. Sometimes he would
change his position; but, whether warming his uncovered feet at the
fire-place, or drawing on his boots, or replenishing his stock of
tobacco, there was the same unalterable attention on his part. As soon
as he comprehended a case, his authoritative voice was heard, closing
the discussion, and dictating to a clerk the exact number of dollars
and cents for which he should enter up a judgment. And then another,
and another case was called up, and submitted to this summary process,
until about nine o'clock at night, when the day's work terminated. All
orders asked for by a responsible attorney were granted _ex parte_, the
judge remarking that if the order was not a proper one, the other party
would soon appear, and then he could ascertain the real merits of the
case. The grand feature of this court was the facility with which an
injunction could be obtained, and the rapidity with which it could be
set aside.

CALIFORNIAN COURTS.

Crime was almost unknown until we got a state government and a code of
laws, which, with misplaced philanthropy, had made the legal practice
so easy upon criminals that a conviction was next to impossible. Then
it was that crime stalked abroad in the face of day, and Sidney
convicts plied their trade in San Francisco after it had become a city.
Shops were entered and robbed in business hours; and by night, men were
murdered in the streets; and thefts escaped punishment. Then it was
that men, caught in the commission of crime, were hanged in the open
streets, and combinations were formed for self-defense. But when a new
Legislature gave efficiency to the laws, the community yielded a
willing obedience to the magistrate. From an early day there had been
"miners' courts," which, with their alcaldes, had conciliated
differences. But when magistrates were elected, these courts
disappeared. This was a change from bad to worse, for no condition is
so deplorable as that of a people whose magistracy are powerless.

Such is a fair picture of California in its worst estate, when the
worst and the best of all nations were there congregated, and kept in
subjection by the law-abiding spirit of an Anglo-Saxon immigration--a
state of society in the first year of its existence, yet infinitely
superior to that existing in the city of Mexico a hundred years after
the discovery of the mines of Haxal and Pachuca. But we may complete
the contrast by adding the more deplorable part of the picture which
Friar Thomas Gage has drawn.

"It seems," says he, "that religion teaches that all wickedness is
allowable, so that the churches and clergy flourish. Nay, while the
purse is open to lasciviousness, if it be likewise open to enrich the
temple walls and roofs, this is better than any holy water, or water to
wash away the filth of the other. Rome is held to be the head of
superstition; and what stately churches, chapels, and cloisters are in
it! What fastings, what processions, what appearances of devotion! And,
on the other side, what liberty, what profaneness, what whoredoms, nay,
what sins of Sodom are committed in it, insomuch that it could be the
saying of a friar to myself, while I was in it, that he verily thought
there was no one city in the world wherein were more Atheists than in
Rome. I might show this much in Madrid, Seville, Valladolid, and other
famous cities in Spain and in Italy; in Milan, Genoa, and Naples;
relating many instances of scandals committed in those places, and yet
the temples are mightily enriched by those who have thought their alms
a sufficient warrant to free them from hell and purgatory. But I must
return to Mexico, which furnishes a thousand witnesses of this
truth--sin and wickedness abounding in it--and yet no such people in
the world toward the Church and clergy. In their lifetime they strive
to excel one another in their gifts to the cloisters of nuns and
friars, some erecting altars to their best-devoted saints, worth many
thousand ducats, others presenting crowns of gold to the pictures of
Mary, others lamps, others golden chains, others building cloisters at
their own charge, others repairing them, others, at their death,
leaving to them two or three thousand ducats for an annual stipend.

MEXICO TWO CENTURIES AGO.

"Among these great benefactors to the churches of that city, I should
wrong my history if I should forget one that lived in my time, called
Alonzo Cuellar, who was reported to have a closet in his house laid
with bars of gold instead of brick; though indeed it was not so, but
only reported for his abundant riches and store of bars of gold, which
he had in one chest, standing in a closet distant from another, where
he had a chest full of wedges of silver. This man alone built a nunnery
for Franciscan nuns, which stood him in above 30,000 ducats, and left
unto it, for the maintenance of the nuns, 2000 ducats yearly, with
obligation of some masses to be said in the church every year for his
soul after his decease. And yet this man's life was so scandalous, that
commonly, in the night, with two servants, he would go round the city
visiting such scandalous persons, whose attire before hath been
described, carrying his beads in his hands, and at every house letting
fall a bead, and tying a false knot, that when he came home in the
morning, toward break of the day, he might number by his beads the
uncivil stations he had walked and visited that night.

"Great alms and liberality toward religious houses in that city
commonly are coupled with great and scandalous wickedness. They wallow
in the bed of riches and wealth, and make their alms the coverlet to
cover their loose and lascivious lives. From hence are the churches so
fairly built and adorned. There are not above fifty churches and
chapels, cloisters and nunneries, and parish churches in the city; but
those that are there are the fairest that ever my eyes beheld, the
roofs and beams being, in many of them, all daubed with gold, and many
altars with sundry marble pillars, and others with Brazil-wood stays
standing one above another, with tabernacles for several saints, richly
wrought with golden colors, so that twenty thousand ducats is a common
price of many of them. These cause admiration in the common sort of
people, and admiration brings on daily adoration in them to those
glorious spectacles and images of saints; so Satan shows Christ all the
glory of the kingdoms to entice him to admiration, and then he said,
'_All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship
me_' (Matthew, iv. 8, 9). The devil will give all the world to be
adored.

"Besides these beautiful buildings, the inward riches belonging to the
altars are infinite in price and value, such as copes, canopies,
hangings, altar-cloths, candlesticks, jewels belonging to the saints,
and crowns of gold and silver, and tabernacles of gold and crystal to
carry about their sacrament [the Saviour of the world in the form of a
wafer] in procession, all of which would mount to the worth of a
reasonable mine of silver, and would be a rich prey for any nation that
could make better use of wealth and riches. I will not speak much of
the lives of the friars and nuns of this city, but only that they there
enjoy more liberty than in Europe--where they have too much--and that
surely the scandals committed by them do cry up to Heaven for
vengeance, judgment, destruction.

"It is ordinary for the friars to visit their devoted nuns, and to
spend whole days with them, hearing their music, feeding on their
sweetmeats; and for this purpose they have many chambers, which they
call _loquatories_, to talk in, with wooden bars between the nuns and
them; and in these chambers are tables for the friars to dine at, and
while they dine the nuns recreate them with their voices. Gentlemen and
citizens give their daughters to be brought up in these nunneries,
where they are taught to make all sorts of conserves and preserves, all
sorts of music, which is so exquisite in that city that I dare be bold
to say that the people are drawn to churches more for the delight of
the music than for any delight in the service of God. More, they teach
these young children to act like players; and, to entice the people to
the churches, they make these children act short dialogues in their
choirs, richly attiring them with men and women's apparel, especially
upon Midsummer's day and the eight days before their Christmas, which
is so gallantly performed that many factious strifes and single combats
have been, and some were in my time, for defending which of these
nunneries most excelled in music and in the training up of children."

Such is a picture drawn by a candid writer of one of the most devout
Catholic cities in the world, where licentiousness and papacy went hand
in hand until they reached that extreme point of corruption, that, as
in the case of Sodom, God overthrew the city by a judgment from heaven;
not by fire and brimstone, but by a water-spout, which, in the space of
the five years that it lay upon the town three feet deep, loosened the
foundations of all buildings and impoverished the inhabitants. And when
at length the earth opened and swallowed up these waters, the city had
to be rebuilt. The misery and distress that this flood inflicted upon
the lower orders of the inhabitants was great in the extreme.

It was on Sunday morning that the cause of the moral superiority of the
American miners over those of Mexico was visible. Then the noise and
bustle about my residence was hushed. The most immoral seemed to be
overawed by a sense of respect for the religious opinions of others;
and when the sound of a ship-bell, hung on the limb of a tree, was
heard, all except the baser sort repaired to the shade of an oak, so
large and venerable that it might have shielded the whole household of
Abraham while engaged in family worship. A portable seraphine gave
forth a familiar tune, in which all joined in singing with a zest which
is only realized by those whom it carries back in recollection to
distant home. Then the voice of the preacher was heard invoking the
blessing of God upon the assembled worshipers, and his pardon of their
offenses; and then followed his exhortation to seek from God the pardon
of their many sins; and as he, with heartfelt earnestness, "reasoned of
righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come," many a
stern-visaged miner trembled for his condition, and went away a better
and a more honest man--ten thousand times more improved than if he had
presented a crown of gold to the Virgin Mary.

We are now prepared to enter the valley of Mexico, and examine the
objects that there present themselves.

      [26] _Collección de Léyes_, p. 180.

      [27] "The whole Pacific coast produces pearls, but the most
      extensive pearl-fisheries, at the present time, are in the Gulf
      of California, where, among an inexhaustible supply of little
      pearls, there are produced some of the very finest quality. The
      pearls of the Countess de Regla, those of the Marquesa de
      Gudalupe, and Madame Velasco, are from these fisheries, and are
      remarkable for their great size and value. The great pearl
      presented to General Victoria, while he was President, was from
      the same locality." (WARD, vol. ii. p. 293.)

      "The pearls of this gulf are considered of excellent water, but
      their rather irregular figure somewhat reduces their value. The
      manner of obtaining pearls is not without interest. The vessels
      employed in the fisheries are from fifteen to thirty tons burden.
      They are usually fitted out by private individuals. The armador
      or owner commands them. Crews are shipped to work them, and from
      forty to fifty Indians, called Busos, to dive for the oyster. A
      stock of provisions and spirits, a small sum of money to advance
      the people during the cruise, a limited supply of calaboose
      furniture, a sufficient number of hammocks to sleep in, and a
      quantity of ballast, constitute nearly all the cargo outward
      bound.

      "Thus arranged, they sail into the Gulf; and, having arrived at
      the oyster banks, cast anchor and commence business. The divers
      are first called to duty. They plunge to the bottom in four or
      five fathom water, dig up with sharpened sticks as many oysters
      as they are able, rise to the surface, and deposit them in sacks
      hung to receive them at the vessel's side. And thus they continue
      to do till the sacks are filled, or the hours allotted to this
      part of the labor are ended.

      "When the diving of the day is done, all come on board and place
      themselves in a circle around the armador, who divides what they
      have obtained in the following manner: two oysters for himself,
      the same number for the Busos, or divers, and one for the
      government. This division having been concluded, they next
      proceed, without moving from their places, to open the oysters
      which have fallen to the lot of the armador. During this
      operation, that dignitary has to watch the Busos with the
      greatest scrutiny, to prevent them from swallowing the pearls
      with the oysters, a trick which they perform with so much
      dexterity as to almost defy detection, and by means of which they
      often manage to secrete the most valuable pearls.

      "The government portion is next opened with the same precautions,
      and taken into possession by the armador. And, last of all, the
      Busos open theirs, and sell them to the armador in liquidation of
      debts incurred for their outfits, or of moneys advanced during
      the voyage. They usually reserve a few to sell to dealers on
      shore, who always accompany these expeditions with spirituous
      liquors, chocolate, sugar, cigars, and other articles of which
      Indian divers are especially fond. Since the Mexicans obtained
      their independence, another mode of division has been adopted.
      Every time the Busos come up, the largest oyster which he has
      obtained is taken by the armador, and laid aside for the use of
      the Virgin Mary. The rest are thrown in a pile; and, when the
      day's diving is ended, eight oysters are laid out for the
      armador, eight for the Busos, and two for the government.

      "In the year 1831, one vessel with seventy Busos, another with
      fifty, and two with thirty each, and two boats with ten each,
      from the coast of Sonora, engaged in this fishery. The one
      brought in forty ounces of pearls, valued at $6500; another,
      twenty-one ounces, valued at $3000; another, twelve ounces,
      valued at $2000, and the two boats a proportionate quantity.
      There were, in the same season, ten or twelve other vessels, from
      other parts, employed in the same trade, which, if equally
      successful, swelled the value of pearls taken in that year to the
      sum of more than forty thousand dollars."--FARNHAM'S _Scenes in
      the Pacific_, p. 307.

CHAPTER XIV.

First Sight of the Valley of Mexico.--A Venice in a mountain
Valley.--An Emperor waiting his Murderers.--Cortéz mowing down
unarmed Indians.--A new kind of Piety.--Capture of an
Emperor.--Torturing an Emperor to Death.--The Children paying
the Penalty of their Fathers' Crimes.--The Aztecs and other
Indians.--The Difference is in the Historians.--The Superstitions
of the Indians.--The Valley of Mexico.--An American Survey of the
Valley.--A topographical View.--The Ponds Chalco, Xochimulco, and
Tezcuco were never Lakes.

My first view of the Valley of Mexico was from the point where the
Acapulco road passes the Cross of the "Marquis of the Valley." I had
read with eagerness the History of the Conquest, and of the adventures
of the noble _Conquistador_. Not a shadow of a doubt had then crossed
my mind in regard to the truth of all that had been so elegantly
written. Beautiful composition had supplied the place of evidence, and
that practice of writing romances of history which the Spaniards had
inherited from the Moors had completely captivated me, as it had
thousands of others. The aspect of the valley was all that my fancy had
painted it. The sun was in the right quarter to produce the greatest
possible effect. The unnumbered pools of surface-water that abound in
the valley appeared at that distance like so many lakelets supplied by
crystal fountains, as each one reflected the bright sun from its
mirror-like surface; these all were inclosed in the richest setting of
nature's green.

It was such a scene as would justify the extravagant language which
Spaniards have employed in describing it. While I recalled its
traditional history, I was tempted to exclaim as a native would have
done, and to give credence to the fables of which this valley has been
the scene. Here, as the story ran, amid floating gardens of rarest
flowers and richest fruits, lay, in olden time, another Venice--a
Venice in an inland mountain valley--a Venice upon whose Rialto never
walked a Shylock with his money-bags; for in this market-place the most
delicious fruits the world produces, the loveliest flowers, rich stuffs
resplendent with Tyrian dyes, and princely mantles of feather-work,
were bought with pretty shells, and such money as the sea produces. It
was a Venice with its street of waters and its central basin, where
jostled the gondolas of the Aztec nobles and the light canoes of birch
bark among the vessels of commerce which came laden with slaves and
other merchandise from the surrounding villages--a basin that
disappeared the same day that the Indian empire fell.

GUATEMOZIN.

This basin was the last vestige of Aztec dominion; and when there no
longer was any safe shelter upon the land, Guatemozin retired to his
canoe and took shelter here, and calmly waited till his time should
come to be murdered. He could not flee. He could not capitulate, for he
was an emperor. As he sat here waiting for death, what must have been
his reflections! What thoughts did not the very boat he occupied call
up! How often had it carried him out upon the lake to the floating
gardens and volcanic islands, where he had witnessed so many times the
gorgeous reflections of an evening sun upon the snow-capped
Popocatapetl, in whose bowels "the god of fire" had his dwelling! And
then the lake itself, how much it had perplexed his thoughts, that in
one part its waters should be fresh, with islands teeming with the
richest vegetation, and in another part salt and bitter, with utter
barrenness resting upon its shores! How he used to meet his brother of
Tezcuco in the after part of the day, to exchange congratulations and
talk over affairs of interest to both the royal families! Now all these
pleasures were terminated forever. His brother of Tezcuco was in the
ranks of his enemies, seeking his destruction.

Thus sat the emperor, surrounded by a numerous fleet of canoes, whose
occupants were without hope of escape or strength to fight; but, with
Indian stoicism, all sat waiting their inevitable doom from freebooters
whom they had disappointed of their prey. As the emperor and his nobles
sat here witnessing the destruction of their pumice-stone palaces and
mud-built huts, and the filling up of their canals, they consoled
themselves with the reflection that their gold and their wealth were
all at the bottom of these canals, and that the Spaniards, in their hot
haste to enjoy the spoils of the city, were unwittingly burying forever
the prize for which they were contending. Such were the thoughts of
these Aztecs as they sat in their canoes, longing for death to relieve
them from agony of suspense, enduring all the torments of the extremest
thirst, which they vainly sought to quench by draughts of the brackish
water of the lake. They had not long to wait; for, by the express
commands of Cortéz, his followers were mowing down unresisting
citizens, because the emperor, over whom they had no control, would not
surrender himself.

Who can stand for the first time upon the mountain rim that incloses
this valley, and not have his thoughts carried back to some such scene
as this? The recollection is not easily eradicated that the remnant of
a once powerful tribe of Indians, partially emerged from barbarism,
here received their death, in cold blood, at the hands of a party of
white murderers. The good Archbishop Loranzana commends the piety of
Cortéz in never neglecting to attend mass before going out to his daily
work of slaughter. It was a pious act, no doubt, that on the last
morning of the siege he stopped and listened to a mass--that pantomime
which set forth the death of the Redeemer of the world--preparatory to
consummating the butchery of Indians incapable of resistance.

Garci Holguin, the master of a brigantine, or rather flat-boat, bolder
than the rest, drove through the fleet of canoes that occupied the
basin, until he encountered in the centre a canoe containing the person
of the emperor, whom he made prisoner and brought to Cortéz, whereupon
the slaughter ceased.

Neither the horrid sight which the city presented, nor the fallen
fortunes of a brave enemy, could move the soul of Cortéz. A brigand
knows no remorse and feels no pity. Gold had been the object of his
pious mission, and when he found not gold enough to satisfy the
cravings of his gang, he soaked the fallen emperor's feet in oil, and
then burned them at a slow fire, to extort from him a confession of the
place of concealment of his supposed treasure; and when, in after
years, he was tired of the burden of such a prisoner, he wantonly
hanged him up by the heels to die in a distant forest.

In this very city where Cortéz tortured Guatemozin was a son of Cortéz,
who inherited the spoils of his father's atrocities, put to the torture
by one of the Vice-kings, while the children's children of the
Conquistadors paid for the wealth they inherited in the terrible
penalties inflicted upon them by the buccaneers, that ravaged their
coasts for two hundred years. Have not the sins of the fathers been
visited upon the children?

The Aztecs, their empire, and their city, have long since disappeared;
their crimes, and the despotism which they exercised over the tribes
they had conquered, are all forgotten in the terrible catastrophe that
extinguished their national existence. Three hundred years of servitude
in the indiscriminate mass of Indian serfs has blotted out every
feeling of nationality. A few vagabonds among them still claim royal
descent, and, by virtue of their blood or their imposture, pretend to
exercise, in obscure villages, an undefined jurisdiction over Indians
as oppressed as themselves. But the characteristics of the North
American Indians are still visible; they still exhibit the
contradictory traits of Indian character--cruelty and kindness, shyness
and self-possession; enduring the greatest trials without a murmur, and
suffering oppression without complaint; delighting as much as their
northern brethren in tawdry exhibitions, in traditions of the
marvelous, they seem to carry hidden in their inmost soul an idea that
the time will come when they may take vengeance of the despoilers of
their race. They have the Indian's love of adventure and want of
courage. They delight rather in a successful stratagem than in open
hostility, and deem no act of treachery dishonorable by which they can
gain an advantage. Still, they have less romance in their composition
than the unenslaved northern Indians, into whose souls the iron of
despotism has never entered.

THE AZTECS AND THEIR HISTORIANS.

The great difference between what is recorded of the North American
Indian and the Aztec is owing less to any difference in themselves than
to the character of the historians who have written of them. The
northern writers were not carried away by the romance of Indian life;
they were matter-of-fact men, and they drew only matter-of-fact
pictures. Spanish historians, and all early Spanish writers upon New
Spain, except the two brigands, Cortéz and Diaz, were priests. With
them, truth was not an essential part of history. By the law of all
countries, the Conquistadors had outlawed themselves by levying
unlicensed war; but as they bore a painting of the Virgin Mary on one
of their standards and the cross on the other, it would be impiety to
place their conduct in its true light. Las Casas was an exception, and
endured persecution for speaking the truth. "He had powerful enemies,"
was all that his apologist dare say, "because he spake the truth." And
if we add to this the sevenfold censorship already described, my reader
will agree with me that it is absurd to place confidence in records
over which the Inquisition exercised a surveillance.

The fabled Aztec empire has almost passed from the traditions of the
Mexican Indians. The name of only one of their chiefs, Montezuma,
remains among them, and this name is affixed to almost every thing that
has an ancient look and is in a dilapidated condition. In my wanderings
among them, I never rejected their proffers of rude hospitality, and I
have listened with pleasure to their wild traditions. I soon found
that, like other Indians, they draw from a supernatural "dream-world"
the fortitude that enables them to bear without a murmur their hard lot
in the present. They readily embraced the superstitions of the
Spaniards, and rendered to the virgin of Guadalupe the adoration they
had formerly bestowed upon their own gods. Their conversion may be
summed up in the words of Humboldt: "Dogma has not succeeded to dogma,
but ceremony to ceremony. The natives know nothing of religion but the
external forms of worship. Fond of whatever is connected with a
prescribed order of ceremonies, they find in the Christian religion
particular enjoyment. The festivals of the Church, the fire-works with
which they are accompanied, the processions mingled with whimsical
disguises, are a most fertile source of amusement to the lower Indians."

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.

There has been a great deal of poetry and very little plain prose
written about the valley of Mexico. At an early morning hour I stood
upon the heights of Rio Frio; at another morning, as already said, at
the Cross of the Marquis; again, upon the highest peak of the Tepeyaca,
behind Guadalupe, I saw a tropical morning sun disengage itself from
the snowy mountains. From these three favored spots I have looked upon
the valley, where dry land and pools of water seemed equally to compose
the magnificent panorama. Immense mirrors of every conceivable shape
and form were reflecting back the rays of the sun, while the green
shores in which they were set enhanced the effect. The white walls, and
domes, and spires of the distant city heightened the effect of a
picture that can only be fully appreciated by those who have looked
downward through the pure atmosphere of such a lofty position; but when
I came down to the common level, the charm was broken. Instead of
lakelets and crystal springs, I found only pools of surface-water which
the rains had left; and the canals were but the ditches from which, on
either side, the dirt had been taken to build the causeway through the
marsh, and were now covered with a coat of green. These lakes have no
outlet, and as evaporation only takes up pure water, all the animal,
vegetable, and mineral matter that is carried in is left to stagnate
and putrefy in the ponds and ditches.

A practical "man of the times," with more common sense than poetry in
his composition, must grieve as he looks at the great advantages here
possessed for drainage and irrigation which are unimproved. There is
not a spot in the whole valley that is not capable of the most perfect
drainage,[28] while basins have been formed by nature in the highest
points, from which irrigation could be supplied to the whole valley;
but decay and neglect--fitting types of the social condition of the
people--every where exhibit themselves. Water stands in all the narrow
canals or ditches that occupy the middle of the streets, for the want
simply of a sewer to draw it down to the level of the Tezcuco. Once a
year the flags are taken off from the covered ditches, and the mud is
dipped out, while a bundle of hay, tied to the tail of a dirt-cart, is
daily dragged through the open ones.

I have spoken only of the lower division of this valley--the valley in
which the city stands. If we consider the two partly separated valleys
as one, the whole will constitute an oval basin 75 miles long from
north to south, with an average width from east to west of 20 miles.
Two thirds of the southern valley is a marsh, and might well be called
the "Montezuma Marsh," it so strikingly resembles the marsh of that
name in the State of New York, though the whole body of ponds and
marshes of this valley contains much less water than its northern
namesake. The stage-road from Vera Cruz crosses this marsh for fourteen
miles, and has a great number of small stone bridges, beneath which the
water runs with considerable current toward the north, on account of
the difference of level between the southern fresh-water ponds and the
lower salt-water ponds, as in the days of Cortéz. There are occasional
dry spots, and now and then there is open water; but the greater
portion is filled with marsh grass, and furnishes good feeding for the
droves of cattle that daily frequent it for that purpose. The ancient
village of Mexicalzingo, or "Little Mexico," the traditional home of
the Aztecs before they built Mexico, is situated on one of the dry
spots, slightly elevated above the level of the fresh water; and on
another dry spot or island, six miles distant, stands the famous city
of Mexico itself, resting on piles driven into a foundation of soft
earth. The canal of Chalco commences at the northerly extremity of the
Xochimulco, and, passing by Mexicalzingo and the floating gardens,
continues along the eastern front of the city, and empties itself into
the salt (_tequisquite_) pond of Tezcuco, having received as a
tributary the canal of Tacubaya, which passes along the southern
boundary of the city.

THE LAKES OF THE VALLEY.

The highest water of the valley of the city of Mexico is the pond of
Chalco, in the extreme southeast, being 4-8/12 feet above the level of
the Grand Plaza of the city, and 20 miles distant therefrom, and
11-2/12 feet above Tezcuco;[29] but its volume being small for the last
400 years, the slight impediments of long grass and a few Indian dikes
have prevented any injury to the city by a too rapid flow to the
northward. Xochimulco is the pond, or open space in the marsh, that
extends from the Chalco to near Mexicalzingo. Tezcuco is the lowest
water in the valley, being 6-1/2 feet below the Grand Plaza of the
city.[30] It receives the surplus of the waters that have not already
been evaporated in the other ponds. At this great elevation, 7500 feet,
evaporation does its work rapidly all over the valley, but it is in
Tezcuco that the residuum of the waters is deposited.

      [28] Report of M. L. Smith, Lieutenant of Topographical
      Engineers, United States Army.

      [29] Lieut. Smith's Report.

      [30] Ibid.

CHAPTER XV.

The two Valleys.--The Lake with a leaky Bottom.--The Water could not
have been higher.--Nor could the Lagunas or Ponds have been much
deeper.--The Brigantines only flat-bottomed Boats.--The Causeway
Canals fix the size of the Brigantines.--The Street Canals.--Stagnant
Water unfit for Canals.--The probable Dimensions of the City
Canals.--Difficulties of disproving a Fiction.--A Dike or Levee.--The
Canal of Huehuetoca.--The Map of Cortéz.--Wise Provision of
Providence.--The Fiction about the numerous Cities in and about the
Lake.

It may be well here to repeat that, strictly speaking, there are two
valleys of Mexico--the upper northern valley, and the valley of the
city of Mexico; the first extends in an oval form to the north of the
hills of Tepeyaca, some sixty miles, and communicates with the plains
of Otumba and Apam. In this valley are the two ponds, or _lagunas_, of
Zumpango and San Cristobal, the highest waters of Mexico; and in it
also is the half of the Tezcuco, which is the lowest laguna of the
valleys. It is a country of fine farming lands, and was probably
inhabited long before the time of the arrival of the Aztecs in the
lower valley, as I infer from its proximity to the extensive ruins of
Teotihuican, that have come down from a remote and highly-civilized
antiquity.

THE ANCIENT LAKES.

The valley of the city of Mexico, which lies to the south of these
hills, is also of an oval shape, but is not more than twenty miles in
extent. The surface-water with which it is saturated is in part fresh,
and in other parts _tequisquite_; that is, where the waters have a
current, they are fresh; but where they remain from year to year
discharging their volume only by evaporation, then they become infused
with the saline properties of the soil,[31] and all about them is marked
with barrenness. If the process of evaporation was less intense than it
is,[32] all vegetation would die from the extreme humidity of the soil;
as the gardener's phrase is, it would rot. Even in the city of Mexico
itself, a couple of feet of digging in its alluvial foundation brings
you to the water-level in the dry season, and seventy or eighty yards
of boring does not carry you beyond the perceptible influence of
_tequisquite_.[33] The effects of this law of evaporation puzzled the
Aztecs, who were, of course, ignorant of all philosophical principles,
and could only account for the disappearance of the immense mass of
water that fell in the valley in the wet season, upon the hypothesis
that the Tezcuco had a leaky bottom, or that there was a hole in the
lake--an idea that thousands in Mexico credit to the present day. This
was the origin of that absurd story which Cortéz repeats in his
letters, that this lake communicated with the sea, and had its daily
tides.

There could not have been a much greater volume of water in this marshy
valley in the time of Cortéz than at present, if the whole
accumulations of each year were to be carried off by evaporation alone
from so small a surface as is here presented for the sun to act upon.
But as the volume of water is the turning-point in the history or fable
of the conquest, I must adduce the proofs and arguments that are at
hand to establish this statement. The level of the water could not have
been higher, it is clear, for in that case neither Mexico,
Mexicalzingo, or Iztapalapan could have been inhabited.

Cortéz's account of deep waters has often been made plausible by adding
the hypothesis that the accumulating mud of centuries has filled up the
lakes, so that they now are only shallow ponds. But this by no means
removes the difficulty, for then, as now, the waters of the southern
laguna flowed into Tezcuco, conveying with them the infinitesimal
infusion of _tequisquite_ that had instilled itself into the Chalco.
Had the volume of Chalco and Xochimulco been increased several feet,
then the slight Indian barriers and the long grass would no longer have
been able to retard the progress of the water till evaporation had
diminished its quantity, but, precipitating itself in a mass into the
Tezcuco, it would have overwhelmed the town of Tezcuco and all other
villages upon the shores, and established an equilibrium of surface in
the two ponds.

All the lagunas, canals, and ditches that have been described are
navigated by small scows that draw but a few inches of water, which are
the medium of an extensive internal commerce. Through the lagunas and
canal of Chalco come from Cuatla all the supplies of the products of
the hot country for the city and surrounding region. This commerce
exceeds the whole foreign trade of the republic.[34] This kind of boat
was probably introduced by Cortéz, and in this convenient form his
thirteen brigantines were probably made; for, had his brigantines been
of a larger draught of water, they could not have navigated canals
intended only for Indian canoes. One of these vessels, when supplied
with a sail, a cannon, and a movable keel or side-board, would be a
formidable auxiliary in an assault upon the city at the present day.
And if one such scow was placed in the ditch on each side of the
southern causeway, as Cortéz alleges, it would enable an assailing
enemy to present just so much more front as the additional width of two
boats would give him.

THE CAUSEWAYS AND CANALS.

Writers have expressed their surprise at the existence of two navigable
canals to each causeway, one on either side, as an immense expenditure
of unnecessary labor. The explanation of this is found in the fact that
in the construction of a pathway (for Cortéz says that it was only 30
feet in width) through wet and marshy ground, a broad ditch is
ordinarily made on either side to obtain earth for the embankment, and
to keep the water-level permanently below the top of the pathway. So it
is, and so it must always have been at Mexico, in order to keep these
foot-paths in traveling condition. In the dry season, which is the
winter, these broad ditches are covered with floating islands of green
"scum;" but in the rainy season, which is the summer, they may be
navigated by the shallow Mexican scows. A pathway of earth thirty feet
in width could not endure the winds and waves of a navigable lake, or
the wear and "swash" of a canal twelve feet deep on either side; and
the fact that Cortéz navigated the ditches in the rainy season
establishes the insignificant size of his famous brigantines.

As the level of the surface of the land and the surface of the water at
Mexicalzingo, at Mexico, and at the village Tezcuco, does not
materially vary now from what it was in the time of Cortéz, if we can
take for data the foundations of the church built by the Conquistadors
at these several places, we shall have to look to another quarter for a
supply of water for the city canals, which were sufficiently capacious
for canoe navigation. This supply we readily obtain by allowing the
waters of the canals Tacubaya and Chalco to pass through the streets of
the city in ditches sufficiently large for canoes, instead of passing
along the south and east fronts outside. By this hypothesis we obtain a
current, a prerequisite to the very idea of a canal, particularly in
the streets of a city.

The _savans_ of Europe have shown their profound ignorance of the first
principles of canal navigation in taking it for granted that the canals
of Mexico were filled with stagnant water, that had "set back" from the
stagnant pond of Tezcuco; and that the level of the pond must at all
times have been so high as to fill the canals, thus keeping the city in
constant danger from any sudden rise in the laguna. But, aside from the
rules of canal construction, there is an important sanitary question
involved. The present ditches in the middle of the streets, though they
have a perceptible current, and a slight infusion of _tequisquite_,
are an intolerable nuisance, and have a deleterious effect upon the
public health. How much more so must they have been when, from the
uncleanly habits of the Indians, they were the common receptacle of all
kinds of filth, and were constantly stirred up to their very bottoms by
the setting-poles of the navigators? The system of canalling is a
system of slack-water navigation, but abhors stagnant water.

We come next to the question of the dimensions of these street canals.
We know that they were intended only for the navigation of Indian
canoes; that two of them, which intersected the causeway of the night
retreat, Cortéz crossed with his army, all of them climbing down into
the canal, wading across, and then climbing up on the other side while
loaded with their armor, and fighting all the time against a superior
force of the Aztecs; and that Alvarado actually leaped across one of
the openings, shows conclusively that the canals could not have more
than equaled in breadth the present canal of Chalco. On the hypothesis
that Cortéz used scows that drew no more water than the scows that at
present navigate the canals, his story becomes credible, so far, at
least, as the possibility of making the circuit of the city in large
boats in a season of rains.

TRUTH AGAINST FICTION.

It is an ungracious task to sift truth from fables. One man is
displeased at seeing held up as a fiction a narrative which he has been
accustomed to read with pleasure, and to take for truth, because it was
elegantly written; and he requires an accumulation of proofs and
arguments before he will abandon a belief which he has adopted without
evidence. Another man, who deals only in matters of fact, is easily
convinced, and is annoyed at an accumulation of proofs and arguments
where one is sufficient. The superstitious man can not, of course, be
convinced, for his belief does not rest upon evidence; and he is
indignant that an attempt should be made to detract from the glory
obtained by the Virgin Mary and the Church in this victory over the
infidels. Had I attempted to prove that the feather which is now
preserved with so much care in the Church of _San Juan de Lateran_ at
Rome did not fall from the wing of the angel Gabriel when he came to
announce to Mary her conception, and that the whole history of that
feather was a fable, notwithstanding it has received the attestations
of so many of the Holy Fathers, I should be cursed for my impiety no
more than I shall be for raising the question of the authenticity of
the histories of the Conquest. With all these difficulties before me, I
will venture to add one or two more reasons that have induced me to
doubt the existence of those famous brigantines, which required a depth
of twelve feet of water.

In support of the hypothesis that the street ditches, called canals,
were independent of the Tezcuco for their supply, we have still the
remains of an old Indian dike, which extended from near Iztapalapan,
along the east part of the city, to Guadalupe or Tepeyaca, which must
have been intended to shut off the Tezcuco when the water was high, and
when it receded they probably opened a weir at the northern extremity,
through which the waters of the city that had been discharged upon the
flats of San Lazaro found an outlet.

The waters of the valley are now distributed in the best possible
manner to favor evaporation; and yet so completely is this power taxed,
that when, in 1629, a water-spout, bursting over the small river
Guautitlan, had forced the waters of Zumpango over its barriers into
the San Cristobal, and that again into the Tezcuco, the city was
inundated to the depth of about three feet. Evaporation was unable to
remove or materially lessen this new volume of water in a period of
five years. This fully demonstrates that the average annual fall of
water is equal to the full capacity of evaporation. The valley of
Mexico is a very small one over which to dispose of the mass of water
that the mountain-torrents in summer and the tropical rains pour into
it, and with the small margin of six and a half feet for rising and
falling, the city must have been in constant jeopardy. Still the floods
have been much less frequent than would have been supposed, fully
demonstrating the great uniformity in the fall of water in the Mexican
season of rain. When a water-spout occurred in the Chalco in 1446, in
the time of the Aztec kings, there was a flood, which probably ran off
into the Tezcuco. Under the Spaniards the following floods are
enumerated: the first in 1553; the second in 1580; the third in 1604;
the fourth in 1607; the fifth in 1629.

After the flood of 1607, the tunnel of Huehuetoca was undertaken, and
constructed in eleven months, for the purpose of letting out of the
valley the waters of the River Guautitlan, so as to prevent it from
falling into Tezcuco or flooding the city. For those times it was a
great work, but we should say now that it was poorly engineered and
badly managed, and not worthy the notice it has received in books on
Mexico. Since that time, the great inundation of 1629 occurred while
the mouth of the tunnel was closed. After that time, the Spaniards,
instead of building inside of the tunnel an elliptical tube, actually,
by a hundred years of misapplied labor, turned the tunnel into an open
cut.

THE MAP OF CORTÉZ.

Cortéz furnished a map to illustrate his description. This map has the
same defect as his narrative; that is, it was untrue at the time he
made it. In order to bring Tezcuco about the city, he places the
village of that name due east of Mexico, although he well knew that it
was nearly north, as the two towns are distinctly in sight, although at
a distance of about six leagues. Now, if we carry the village of
Tezcuco and the shore of the lake with it to its correct position, we
shall have the Laguna of Tezcuco in about its present form and size.
The apology for his defeat at Iztapalapan, by the breaking open of the
dike and letting in the salt water, is, of course, inadequate, as the
dike could not have supported a head of water sufficient to drown his
men, nor could so great a head of salt water be obtained at that point.

In this survey of the ponds of Mexico, I have drawn upon the experience
which has been acquired in the process of evaporation at the extensive
salt manufactories of Syracuse and the surrounding villages in Western
New York, and also the experience of our engineers Upon the Erie Canal,
and the engineers upon the dikes or levees at Sacramento, where the
nature of the soil resembles that of Mexico. And I may now conclude
this long survey of the canals and lagunas of Mexico, by saying that it
is a wise provision of Providence that all bodies of water that have no
outlet are found to contain a considerable infusion of salt, otherwise
their accumulations of decaying matter would be such that mankind could
not live in their vicinity. This valley is an illustration of that
truth. Tezcuco, surrounded by barrenness, is not deleterious to life,
while the fresh-water lagunas, though continually changing their
volume, render Mexico unhealthy in summer by the gases which they
exhale from decaying vegetation.

ANCIENT POPULATION OF THE VALLEY.

I have pretty thoroughly described this small valley, and have also
stated how large a portion of it is flooded with surface-water, and how
large a portion of this water is infused with salt. In the vicinity of
Tacubaya the land is remarkably fertile, and there is good tillable
land as the mountains are approached, especially about Chalco on the
southeast; but under Indian cultivation, the whole of this valley could
have produced sustenance for only an extremely limited population, if
the product of the floating gardens and the ducks caught upon the pond
should be added. It is totally inadequate to feed the population of
Mexico under the vice-kings, 400,000, or its present population of say
300,000; nor could the valley itself be made to sustain one third of
this. This valley, it must be recollected, is inclosed on all sides
except the north by mountains that exceed 10,000 feet in height, while
the commissariat capacity of barbaric tribes is not such as to provide
extensive supplies from a distance. Under such circumstances, we should
look for an extremely limited population. Yet the most surprising part
of the story of the conquest is the enormous population assigned to the
numerous large cities which they allege the valley contained. Diaz
says, "A series of large towns stretched themselves along the banks of
the lake, out of which [the lake] still larger ones rose magnificently
above the water." Cortéz says that Iztapalapan contained "10,000
families," which would give the town 50,000 inhabitants; "Amaqueruca,
20,000 inhabitants;" "Mexicalzingo, 3000 families," or 15,000
inhabitants; "Ayciaca more than 6000 families;" "Huchilohuchico, 5000
or 6000." The population of Chalco he does not give, nor the population
of the very numerous villages whose names he mentions. At the present
day there are a few mud huts in nearly every locality named, but not
enough in any one instance to merit the name of a village. And this, I
am inclined to believe, was the real condition of things in the time of
Cortéz. The city of Mexico alone would have exhausted the limited
resources of the valley. Old Thomas Gage was as much puzzled two
hundred years ago to account for this astonishing disappearance of the
numerous Indian cities of this valley as we are, and also for the
supposed filling up of the lakes, never appearing to suspect that the
story of Cortéz was a fiction.

      [31] There has been much speculation in regard to the origin of
      the saline properties of this water; but the Artesian borings
      going on while I was in Mexico, I think, sufficiently demonstrate
      that the earthy bottom of the valley, for hundreds of feet,
      contains an infusion of carbonate and muriate of soda.

      [32] The atmosphere of Mexico is so intensely dry, that the
      hygrometer of Deluc frequently descends to 15°.--HUMBOLDT'S
      _Essai Politique_, vol. ii. p. 110.

      [33] When the Artesian well, in process of construction near my
      residence, had reached a depth of seventy yards, the water that
      came up was slightly impregnated with this salt.

      [34] _Comércio de Mexico_, 1852.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Chinampas or Water Gardens.--Laws of Nature not set aside.--Mud
will not float.--The present Chinampas.--They never could have been
floating Gardens.--Relations of the Chinampas to the ancient State of
the Lake in the Valley.

All the world has heard of the floating gardens (_chinampas_) of
Mexico, but all the world has not seen them. I have not seen any
floating gardens, nor, on diligent inquiry, have I been able to find a
man, woman, or child that ever has seen them, nor do I believe that
such a thing as a floating garden ever existed at Mexico. Humboldt
admits that they do exist; says that he has seen floating earthy masses
of great size in the tropical rivers, and then describes the manner of
the construction of the chinampas, but in such a way as to satisfy the
careful reader that he does not intend to say that he saw them himself,
and evidently makes his statement upon hearsay; and takes it up as an
admitted fact, without having his mind called to the physical
impossibilities of floating a mass of earth that was of a greater
specific gravity than water.

FAITH AND TESTIMONY.

When the historians of the Conquest wrote their marvelous narratives of
alleged adventures and of the new empire, it was a question for the
Emperor and the Inquisition solely, whether their writings should pass
for history or be condemned as fabulous. With this question the people
had nothing to do but to believe as it suited those in authority. The
question being settled that the publication of the letters of Cortéz as
a verity would redound to the glory of the Church and the king, then it
was also settled that there should be no contradiction published; and
as these marvelous tales were spread abroad throughout Europe, with the
masses of silver from the newly-discovered mines, men were prepared to
believe almost any thing--even that rich vegetable mould, when
saturated with water, could float.

It not being lawful to promulgate the facts of the Conquest, the memory
of events that really transpired ultimately passed from the
recollections of men, so that the letters of Cortéz were taken for
truth, even in their most minute details; so that, in a subsequent
century, we find a vice-king employing an engineer to search for and
clean out the hole in the bottom of the Tezcuco! for, from the
vice-king down to the most insignificant official, all assumed that the
letters of Cortéz gave a correct picture of affairs at that time; and
all showed the greatest embarrassment in accounting for the magnitude
of the changes that are supposed to have occurred without a
sufficiently adequate cause. It is a common difficulty in all purely
Catholic countries, for there the rule of evidence is an unnatural one.
The people have been taught to believe from their infancy that the laws
of nature can be set aside upon every trifling occasion, at the
momentary caprice of any one of the multitude of saints "who are to
govern the world;" and on proof that any mortal has set aside the laws
of nature or wrought a miracle, he at once becomes a saint. With these
"dutiful children of the Church" there can be no fixed laws of
evidence; the only ground of belief is, and ever must be, Has the
statement been sanctioned by the highest authority? If so, it is true;
if not, it is to be doubted, however positive the proofs may be. A
difficulty that the traveler every where encounters is that he can
believe nothing that he hears, even on the most trifling subject,
without careful examination and weighing of testimony. As he can not
examine every thing himself, he is constantly liable to be imposed upon
by taking for granted that which is every where affirmed. Humboldt for
once, with all his caution, seems to have fallen into the common trap,
and credited, without examination, the story of the floating gardens.

THE CHINAMPAS.

The chinampas are formed on the fresh-water mud on each side of the
canal of Chalco, from the southeast corner of the city to a point near
the ancient village of Mexicalzingo, and for a part of the way they are
on both sides of that beautiful but now neglected _paséo_, Las Vegas;
there are also a small number near the causeway of Tacubaya, and in
other parts of the marsh; their number might be extended without limit
if it was not regulated by the demands of the vegetable market of
Mexico. Chinampas are formed by laying upon the soft mud a very thick
coating of reeds, or rather rushes, in the form and about the size of
one of our largest canal scows. Between two chinampas a space of about
half the width of one is left, and from this open space the mud is
dipped up and poured upon the bed of dry rushes, where it dries, and
forms a rich "muck" soil, which constitutes the garden. As the specific
gravity of this garden is much greater than that of the water, or of
the substratum of mud and water combined, it gradually sinks down into
its muddy foundation; and in a few years it has to be rebuilt by laying
upon the top of the garden a new coating of rushes and another covering
of mud. Thus they have been going on for centuries, one garden being
placed upon the top of another, and a third placed over all, so soon as
the second gives signs of being swallowed up in the all-devouring mud.

The gardeners navigate the open space between their islands with light
boats; and during the short hours of the morning, the market-boat
alongside each island is loaded with a cargo of vegetables, fruits, and
flowers, which are to be displayed in the great market of Santa Anna.
More pleasing than a drive on the _paséo_ is a boat-ride down the canal
of Chalco at eventide, when the proprietor of each of these little
estates is seen standing in the canal alongside, and throwing upon his
thirsty plants a plentiful supply of the tepid canal water, which, from
every leaf and flower, reflects back the rays of a setting sun, that
have penetrated the long shadows of the trees of Las Vegas. Some of the
chinampas have small huts upon them, where a gardener lives, who
watches over two or three of these little properties. Sometimes also
shrubs, and even trees, are planted along the edges, which yield both
fruits and flowers, and serve to keep the dry earth from falling into
the water. When looking at one of the largest and best cared for
chinampas, the beholder can hardly divest himself of the idea that it
is a floating island, and might well have been the residence of
Calypso.

This is the whole of the story of the chinampas, the most fertile and
beautiful little gardens upon the face of the earth. A correct picture
of them would be poetry enough, without the addition of falsehood; for
whether it is the rainy season or the dry season, it is always the same
to them. They know no exclusive seed-time, and have no especial season
for harvest; but blossoms and ripe fruits grow side by side, and
flowers flourish at all seasons. As market gardens they are unrivaled,
and to them Mexico is indebted for its abundant supplies.

The evidence that Humboldt[35] produces in favor of floating gardens,
viz., that he saw floating islands of some 30 feet in length in the
midst of the current of rivers, amounts to little in this case; for
every one that has traveled extensively in tropical lowlands has seen
vegetation spring up upon floating masses of brush-wood. Where earth
torn from the river bank is so bound together by living roots as to
form a raft, it will always float for a little while upon the current,
provided that its specific gravity does not materially exceed that of
the water; and those grasses that flourish best in water will spring up
and grow upon these islands. Peat, too, in bogs, will float and form
islands, for the simple reason that it is of less specific gravity than
water; and vegetation will also spring up on these peat islands. But
all this furnishes no evidence that the invariable law of nature, which
carries to the bottom the heaviest body, has been suspended at Mexico.
Had the floating gardens been built in large boats made water-tight,
they might have floated. But, unfortunately, the Indians had not the
means for constructing such boats. Even timber-rafts would have become
saturated in time, and sunk, as rafts of logs do if kept too long in
the "mill-pond," waiting to be sawed into lumber.

There is another law of nature, which must not be lost sight of, which
is at war with the idea of a garden floating on a bed of rushes; and
that is capillary attraction, which would raise particles of water, one
by one, among the fibres of the rushes until the frail raft on which
the earth rested was saturated; and still pressing upward, the busy
drops would penetrate the superincumbent earth, moistening and adding
to the specific gravity of the garden by filling the porous earth until
it became too heavy to float, if it ever had floated.

Nearly three hundred years had passed away before men ventured to
question the truth of the statement that the gardens along the canal of
Chalco ever floated, and then it seemed like temerity to raise the
question, even if it were only a popular fallacy. It has therefore been
treated by all modern writers as a well-established matter, and one of
not sufficient importance to justify its minute investigation. With me
the question was a far different one. I had, after careful inquiry and
observation, come to the conclusion that the marshes of the valley of
Mexico were, in the time of Cortéz, substantially in the condition in
which we find them at the present day; that the filling up they had
undergone in that time was counterbalanced by the relief they had
gained by the canal of Huehuetoca. The chinampas constitute an
important link in the chain of proofs to establish this fact. If I have
succeeded in showing that these gardens of the Aztecs, instead of
floating upon the water, rested upon the muddy bottom, it follows as a
matter of course that the depth of the water in the laguna could not,
in the day of the Aztecs, have been materially greater than it now is.

      [35] _Essai Politique_, vol. ii. p. 61.

CHAPTER XVII.

The gambling Festival of San Augustine.--Suppressed by Government.--The
Losses of the Saint by the Suppression of Gambling.--How Travelers live
in the Interior.--A Visit to the Palace.

GAMBLING AT TLALPAN.

I have already said that my first entry into the valley of Mexico was
from the south, through the suburban city of Tlalpan, where in good old
times was held the great gambling festival of San Augustine. The
advancing morality of our day has put an extinguisher on this noted
festival, which was one of the most noted days in the Mexican calendar.
Crowds flocked to it to gamble, to dance, and to adore the most holy
Saint Augustine. To a looker-on it was hard to say whether it was the
devil or the saint whom the people had come to worship. The chief
business of high-born dames seemed to be to make a display of their
taste in dress, and to set off the whole contents of their wardrobe;
for five times in each day was their entire wardrobe changed, and so
often did they appear in a new set of jewels. To this festival came
also noblemen and highway robbers, to gamble and to rob each other, and
to be robbed by the women at the _monté_ table. In honor of the saint,
the city was crowded with monks, and thieves, and Magdalens, and the
dignitaries of the Church and state. The rich and the poor came
together to enjoy the saturnalia in honor of the most blessed Saint
Augustine. Gambling was here duly sanctified by the participation of
the priests, who were here, as they are every where in Mexico, the most
expert gamblers at the tables. While this festival continued, money
changed hands more rapidly than in California in her worst days. Five
dances a day were the pastime; but at the monté table was the solid
sport. This was the great attraction that had called all the crowd
together. It was an exciting scene to see the ounces piled up as men
got excited in the game. What is there left of woman's virtue, when
the highest ladies of the court stake their ounces at a public
gaming-table, and poorer ones eagerly throw down their last piece of
silver? Woman's rights have not yet reached that point with us that she
may gamble and get drunk without losing caste; and God grant they never
may.

It is a consolation to be able to add that the late government of the
State of Mexico had sufficient firmness to suppress this abominable
festival of the Church, much to the pecuniary disadvantage of the saint
and his priesthood. Indeed, there is now no public gambling, not even
in the city of Mexico, except the lottery of the Academy of Fine Arts,
and the lottery which is monthly drawn to promote the adoration of our
Lady of Guadalupe. This last is one of the most corrupting of all
lotteries. Tickets for as small a price as a Spanish shilling are
hawked about the street, and by the exhibition of a splendid scheme the
poor Indians are tempted to venture their last _real_ in the hopes of
winning a rich prize, through the kind interposition of the Virgin, to
whom they are taught to pray for that purpose. It is true that a mass
is performed for the benefit of all losers, but this mass has never had
the power of restoring to the poor Indian his lost shilling.

Let us now go from this place, where gambling used annually to have its
festival, or, rather, harvest of victims, into the cathedral church of
San Augustine, to whom the lucky gamblers were accustomed to dedicate a
part of their winnings, that thus they might sanctify their unrighteous
calling by bringing robbery to the saint for an offering. Poor saint!
how much he and his priests have suffered by this wanton interference
of the civil government in Church affairs--this prohibition of
monté-playing in honor of the festival of San Augustine! There was much
in this church to admire, and much of that gold displayed which
gamblers are accustomed to lavish upon their idols. It seemed like
another worship and another religion from that which I had been
accustomed to witness in the humble chapels of the Pintos, in whose
country I had so long been wandering.

Again I was in the saddle, and soon upon that noted causeway by which
Cortéz entered the city of Mexico. It has lost none of its attractions
in the course of centuries, but has been kept in fine repair as a
carriage-road, while the venerable trees that line it on either side
look as old as the time of the Conquistadors. This noble carriage-way,
through the marshy ground of the valley of Mexico, is an enlargement of
the old causeway of the Indians, or, rather, it has been built over and
around it, that having been less than thirty feet in width. I soon
arrived at Churubusco, the scene of one of the bloody battles of the
American campaign in this valley. There was little here to look at, and
I hurried on and entered the south gate of the city, and soon arrived
at the _Hôtel de Paris_, to which I had been directed. My poor old
mustang here ended a twelve days' journey, over mountains and plains of
_pedregal_, without a shoe to his hoofs.

A party of Californians, who had been stopping here for some weeks, had
left the day before, and I was ushered into French society, in which to
form my first impressions of Mexico. Still, there was an exquisite
pleasure in once more getting clean, and eating food cooked after a
civilized manner. Not that I had in any wise become tired of drinking
porridge, extracted from corn, called _atola_, or dissatisfied with
eating bits of fowl, which the maid of honor to General Garay so
ingeniously served up with her fingers, after having it well flavored
with Cayenne or Chili pepper! He that does not love Chili must keep out
of Spanish America. And he will prove a poor traveler who can not sit
down with a good appetite to a supper of small black beans (_frijoles_),
and a dozen Indian cakes (_tortillas_), as thin and as tough as a
drum-head, which serve the double purpose of spoon and plate.

ABODE IN MEXICO.

My room was on the roof, and when my inner and outer man was fully in
order, I used to walk till a late hour of the day upon the paved
house-top, now leaning against the parapet and looking up to the
snow-covered mountains, whose shadowy forms could be made out even by
moonlight, and upon the shadowy towers and domes of the city. Thus
pleasant days and weeks flew on. Sometimes I rode about the valley,
carefully searching after the relics of times past, and at other times
surveying the curiosities of the city. Once this order was broken in
upon, in order to accompany that noble-hearted man and excellent
embassador, Governor Letcher, to the palace, where I had an interview
with Arista, then the President of Mexico, who strikingly resembled our
own President of that day, Millard Fillmore.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Visit to Contreras and San Angel.--The End of a brave Soldier.--A
Place of Skulls.--A New England Dinner.--An Adventure with
Robbers--doubtful.--Reasons for revisiting Mexico.--The Battle at
the Mountain of Crosses.--A peculiar Variety of the Cactus.--Three
Men gibbeted for robbing a Bishop.---A Court upon Horseback.--The
retreat of Cortéz to Otumba.--A venerable Cypress Grove.--Unexpectedly
comfortable Quarters.--An English Dinner at Tezcuco.--Pleasures
unknown to the Kings of Tezcuco.--Relics of Tezcuco.--The Appearance
of the Virgin Mary at Tezcuco.--The Causeways of Mexico.

A RIDE TO SAN ANGEL.

The ride to San Angel has this advantage over all others out of Mexico,
that the road is nearly all the way upon dry land, thus presenting a
pleasant contrast to the gloominess of all the others, except the
Tacuba road. There is less of stagnant water, and little appearance of
_tequisquite_. It is lined with fields of corn and maguey. Contreras is
upon this road--the point where Santa Anna's line of defenses was first
broken, and broken in the same way as at Cerro Gordo, and by the same
officer, the late General Riley. It was the defect of all Mexican
military operations, that they were not sufficiently on the look-out
for night attacks. In the night Riley had been allowed to get behind
the position of his adversary at Cerro Gordo; and here again he got
behind and above him, by crawling up a ravine in a foggy night, from
which point he charged Valencia in reverse. That successful charge of
the brave old soldier raised him to the brevet rank of Major General,
and sealed the fate of the city.

What sort of a victory has it proved to the hero of this battle? He had
spent the best portion of his life in the Indian territory, arranging
difficulties, appeasing strifes, overawing the turbulent, and
restraining the lawlessness of white intruders. And now he had become
an old man, with the rank only of Major, as he had no kind friend at
court. But the Mexican war opened to him the prospect of winning a
"sash" or of being brought home in a coffin. The sash was won, but the
coffin was near at hand; for, while he was gaining his laurels, he
contracted a cancer, which in a short time after his return from a
distant command, consigned him to the home prepared for all living.
Forty long years had he followed the profession of arms, and endured
its hardships without a murmur; yet, when he laid down his sword to
die, he had nothing to leave to his children but the commissions
Congress had awarded him on his California revenues. War is a hard
trade for the bravest of the brave, and with very few prizes except to
political favorites, who with high-sounding titles, but without
military experience, ride by the side of some brave subaltern, gather
his laurels, and enjoy the fruits of his experience.

A slight breastwork and a heap of bones and skulls mark the site of
this gallant exploit of General Riley. And we fancied that we could
select the American skulls from the common mass, as they clearly
belonged to two distinct races of men; one set of skulls being thin and
firm, while the other was thick and porous. We rode on, and soon came
to San Angel, where were many pleasant places for suburban residences,
and an immense convent garden celebrated for its fruits. But now all
was parched and dry, for it was midwinter, which is here the middle of
the dry season, and it was not yet the time for the new foliage to
appear upon the trees, for that does not take place till February.

The occasion of our ride was an invitation to dine with an American
family at the paper-mill of Mr. M'Intosh, the English banker. This was
the greatest treat that I had yet met with in Mexico. Though I have had
the honor of dining in more distinguished places, both in Mexico and in
the United States, I never attended a dinner-party that I enjoyed so
much. It was a thrifty family, and a charming old-fashioned New England
housewife had prepared the dinner. Perhaps this is saying enough to
enable the reader to fill out the picture, for he will be sure to guess
that pumpkin-pies were not forgotten; for what would a down-east
thanksgiving dinner be without this national dish? The dinner was a
charm in itself, while the attendant circumstances gave it a double
relish. To complete the pleasure of the visit, we made our way into
"the Yankee's" kitchen, and there had the pleasure of seeing a
cooking-stove, and cooking-furniture of tin, copper, and iron,
displayed after the most approved fashion. Verily this universal Yankee
nation preserves its distinctive characteristics every where!

AN ADVENTURE.

On our way home we must needs have an adventure. But whether the party
that overtook us on the road were really robbers, or only
pleasure-seekers hurrying to escape from the rain, I have my doubts to
the present day. But my ministerial companion, who was more experienced
in such matters, having been kept here a long time by our government to
look after the unburied American dead, insisted that it was a genuine
case of attempted robbery. All I can say in the premises is, that eight
California robbers would not have run off in that style without first
ascertaining whether that old revolver had any powder in it or not.
When we squared up for a fight, they might have known that it was
because my old mustang would not move; and they could have had all our
availables for the asking; but it was saving time in them to run when
they heard us call out in that hated "Yankee language," and they did
scamper off most expeditiously.

We got back to the city, without a wetting and without a chance of
getting frightened, where the faithful old mustang and I parted company
forever. Ten Mexican dollars was the market value of horse, saddle, and
bridle--less than the cost of his city eating, which he had enjoyed
with a gusto; and we took diverse ways at parting. The faithful old
fellow went to the silver mines, and I returned to the United States,
after an absence of three years and more, in which I had been through
perils by land and perils by water, but not sufficient to satisfy my
taste for adventure.

Up to this time I was a firm believer in the story of Cortéz. But when
I had retired from active duties, I began to think of writing a book. I
did what no other foreign writer on Mexico has yet done--I made a
journey to the country _at my own charges_. I was not in the employment
of any company or any government; I was under no obligation to praise
any man who did not deserve it, and not disposed to speak unnecessary
evil of any, whether they deserved it or not. My advantages above most
writers upon Mexico were these: my independent position, and my
intimate knowledge of the character of the North American Indians,
acquired before I had gained any preconceived notions from the writings
of others. My father, who had lived among the Iroquois, or Six Nations,
in the family of Joseph Brandt, and went through the usual forms of
adoption in place of some Indian who had died, gave me my first lessons
on Indian character; and a taste so early acquired I followed up in
after life. My ancestors for several generations dwelt near the Indian
agency at Cherry Valley, on "Wilson's Patent," and in a neighboring
village was I born, but removed early in life to a part of the country
that had belonged to the Senecas, where I enjoyed a good opportunity of
studying Indian character.

It was the feast-day of the kings, _los Reyes_, when after my return to
Mexico, I was again in the saddle, riding out from Mexico toward the
village of Tezcuco. I had to take a by-way to avoid the Guadalupe road,
which was blocked up in consequence of the holiday. In doing so, I had
to leap a ditch or canal, in which both I and my horse came near
closing our pilgrimage in a quagmire; but in time we were again upon
the road. It is a dreary place about the hill of Tepeyaca, or
Guadalupe, and if the Virgin had not smiled upon the barren hill and
made roses grow out of it, it would be as uninviting as one of the
hills of the valley of Sodom. This hill is now called the "Mountain of
Crosses," for upon it, in 1810, the first insurgent, Hidalgo, the
priest of Dolores, won a battle against the royal troops, which should
have been followed up by an entry into Mexico; but Providence ordered
it otherwise, and the forest of crosses that once covered it proclaimed
a bloody slaughter without any results.

The shores of Tezcuco approach the hill in the wet season, leaving but
a narrow margin for the road, but in the dry season this margin is
greatly enlarged. I have already explained the composition of
_tequisquite_, and the manner of its production; here it was lying in
courses, or spots, as it had been left by the receding and drying up of
the water during the present dry season. Little piles of it had been
gathered up here and there to be taken to town for use, probably by the
bakers or soap-boilers, who are said to pay fourteen shillings an
_aroba_ for it. Besides a little stunted grass, there was here no sign
of vegetable life except a peculiar species of the cactus family, which
resembled a mammoth beet without leaves, but bearing upon its top an
array of vegetable knives that surrounded a most exquisite scarlet
flower.

FATE OF ROBBERS.

There was another sight by the road side more in keeping with the
gloomy thoughts which this desert plain excites: it was the dead bodies
of three men, who had been condemned by a military commission for
robbing a bishop. They were shot, and their bodies were placed on three
gibbets as a warning to others. The bishop said he would have pardoned
the robbery, but when they went to that extreme limit of depravity of
searching within his shirt of sackcloth for concealed doubloons, it was
more than a bishop could endure. The worthy ecclesiastic had renounced
the world and all its vanities, and had put on the badges of poverty
and self-mortification for $50,000 a year, and he wore the disguises
that ought to have shielded him from the suspicion of being rich!

These military commissions are no new invention in Mexico, for that
famous Count de Galvez, the Vice-king who built the castle of
Chapultepec and deposed the Archbishop of Mexico, had a traveling
military court, with chaplain and all spiritual aids, to accompany the
dragoons that scoured the road in search of robbers. When a fellow was
caught, court, chaplains, and dragoons made rapid work in dismissing
him to his long resting-place, and saying a cheap mass for the repose
of his soul, and then again they were ready for another enterprise. In
this way the roads were made safe in the times of that Viceroy.

Had I known the real distance to Tezcuco, I ought to have abandoned the
journey on account of the lameness of my horse. But either the Virgin
Mary, or, more probably, the extreme purity of the atmosphere on these
elevated plains, had deprived me of the power of measuring distance by
the eye. This is excessively annoying to a traveler. He sees the object
he is attempting to approach at an apparently moderate distance, plain
in sight, and as he rides along, hour after hour, there it stands, just
where it seemed to be when he first got sight of it. I finally reached
my destination in good time for a dinner, and for as good a night's
"entertainment for man and beast" as could be found in all the Republic
of Mexico.

When I turned the head of the lake, I was close upon the track which
Cortéz and his retreating band followed into the plains of Otumba. Poor
wretches! what a time they must have had of it in this disconsolate
retreat--wounded, jaded, like tigers bereft of their prey! They mourned
for their companions slain, but most of all for the booty they had lost.

    "They grieved for those that went down in the cutter,
    And also for the biscuits and the butter:"

and hobbled on, as best they could, while the natives pursued them with
hootings and volleys of inefficient weapons. Passing this point and
turning to the north-east, they entered the plains of Otumba, where
they encountered the whole undisciplined rabble of the Aztecs, and
scattered them like chaff before the wind.

A NIGHT AT TEZCUCO.

Soon after I had passed the head of the lake and turned southward, I
entered a cultivated country between tilled grounds and little mud
villages along the road. These were the representatives of the
magnificent cities enumerated by Cortéz. That fine grove of cypresses
which had been a landmark all day was now close at hand, and I could
form some idea of its great antiquity. But the day was passing away,
and it was still uncertain whether I could find safe quarters for the
night, where my horse, and the silver plates on my bridle, and the
silver mountings of my saddle would be safe. I never own such fancy
trifles, but they were on the horse given me at the stable.

A good dinner and a clean bed I did not expect to find, nor could I
have found them a year earlier. But the new and enterprising company of
Escandon and Co., who now have the possession of the Real del Monte
silver mines, of which I shall speak hereafter, had just completed the
"Grand House" (_Casa Grande_) in connection with the salt manufacture,
which they carry on here solely for the use of that single mine. It was
a neat, one-story residence of dried mud (_adobe_), and worthy the
occupancy of the proudest king of Tezcuco. Though the flagging of the
interior court was not all completed, yet the managing partner had
taken possession, and it was fitted up according to the most approved
style of an Anglo-Saxon residence. As horse and rider passed into the
outer court, there stood ready a groom to lead the former into the
inner court, where were the stables for the horses, and I entered the
house to enjoy the unlooked-for pleasures of English hospitality in
this out-of-the-way Indian village.

The resident partner was an Englishman. His connection with the Real
del Monte Company extended only to the manufacture of salt. But even
this was an extensive affair, and had already absorbed an investment of
$100,000, in order to provide the salt used in only one branch of the
process of refining silver at that mine. The gentleman was now absent,
but his excellent English wife and her brother knew full well how to
discharge the duties of host even to an unknown stranger. The dinner
was of the best, and there was no lack of appetite after a hard day's
ride on a trotting horse. So we all had the prime elements of
enjoyment. Entertainment for man and beast is among the highest
luxuries to be found by the wayside. It was an equal luxury to my hosts
in their isolated residence to receive a visit from one whose only
recommendation was that the English language was his native tongue, so
that when we retired from the dining-room we had become old
acquaintances.

REMAINS OF TEZCUCO.

The King of Tezcuco never knew what it was, on a raw winter's evening,
to sit before a bright wood fire, in a fire-place, with feet on fender
and tongs in hand, listening to an animated conversation so mixed up of
two languages that it was hard to tell which predominated. Not all the
stateliness to be found in Mexican palaces, where, in a lordly
tapestried halls, men and women sit and shiver over a protracted
dinner, can yield pleasures like those grouped around an English
fireside. The evening was not half long enough to say all that was to
be discussed. As we sat and chatted, and drank our tea with a gusto we
had never known before, we forgot altogether that we were indulging in
plebeian enjoyments upon the spot where a king's palace had probably
stood. Instead of such plebeian things as a wood floor and Brussels
carpet, his half-clad majesty had here squatted upon a mat, and dealt
out justice or injustice, according to his caprice, to trembling crowds
of dirty Indians, whose royal rags and feathers made them princely.
Dignity and majesty are truly parts of Indian character, but a good
dinner and a clean bed are luxuries that an Indian, even though he were
an emperor, never knew.

My business here was to search for relics, and as soon as daylight
appeared I was astir. But no relics could be found except some stone
images so rudely cut as to be a burlesque upon Indian stone-cutting.
There was a sacrificial stone and a calendar stone built into the steps
of the church of San Francisco, which were so badly done that the use
to which they had been applied could just be made out. Here, too, was a
rude stone wall, that had been built over the grave of Don Fernando,
the first Christian king of Tezcuco, who had been converted to
Christianity by Cortéz. There is also here one of those little chapels
which Cortéz built, which indicate extremely limited means in the
builder.

At the distance of a bow-shot from this is the site of the "slip"
(canal) which Cortéz says he caused to be dug, twelve feet wide and
twelve feet deep, in order to float his brigantines. Near by, the
Indians were digging a new canal for the little steam-boat which now
plies on the laguna. When they reached a point less than three feet
from the surface, they were stopped by the water. How could Cortéz,
under greater disadvantages, dig to the depth of twelve feet, without
even iron shovels?

I returned to the _hacienda_ and inquired if there were no other
relics. The proprietor assured me that he had been unable to find any
except the Indian mounds which he showed me, and some stone cellar
steps that he had found in digging. And this is all that now remains of
the great and magnificent city of Tezcuco, which had entered into
alliance with Cortéz, and which, for more than a hundred years after
the Conquest, was under the especial care of a Superintendent sent from
Spain, as an Indian Reservation.

There are here eight Franciscan monks and a convent; seven of these
monks I was assured were living at home with their families and
children, but the eighth, who happened to be a cripple, lived in the
convent. A major in the guard was pointed out to me, who, having
committed a murder, took sanctuary in the church, where he remained
several days, when--and we have his own word for it--the Virgin Mary
appeared to him and freely forgave him. On this news getting abroad,
there was great rejoicing in Tezcuco that the Virgin had at last
visited them. From being stigmatized as a murderer, the object of this
visit was almost adored as a saint, and became one of the principal men
of the village, and was created a major in the new corps.

After I had surveyed the salt-works and the glassworks, I turned my
horse's head toward Mexico by the road along the eastern shore, so that
I made the complete circuit of Lake Tezcuco.

Thus far my visit to the royal city of Tezcuco had been perfectly
successful, except in the attempts made to convince the young
Englishman that I was not a dead-shot with the rifle; and I started
home with a slight shade upon my veracity for denying my ability to
pierce the centre of the bull's-eye. But otherwise it was a
disagreeable parting to all of us. As I returned by the east side of
the lake, the splendid high farming-lands that extend from the shore to
the foot of the mountain were strikingly in contrast with the flatness
and barrenness of the plain on the water-side, which is so slightly
elevated above the level of the salt water that a few inches of rise in
the laguna spreads out an immense sheet of saline water, and yet there
is not a solitary evaporating vat where there is an unlimited demand
for the evaporated article at fourteen shillings the _aroba_.

Cortéz speaks of the fine fields of corn on the east side of the lake.
But they could not have been finer in his day than they are at present,
though they furnished him with the supplies that supported his army. I
reached the head of Tezcuco at noontide, where the heavy water of the
salt lake was driving up toward the fresh water, as described by
Cortéz, but it was under the pressure of a strong north wind.

THE AZTEC CAUSEWAYS.

Now that I am on the new causeway, broad and spacious like all the
others, it may be well to conclude the discussion of the physical
condition of this valley by determining the size of the old Aztec
causeways.

An island embosomed in a marsh has always formed a favorite retreat for
an Indian tribe, whether among the everglades of Florida, or the
wild-rice swamps of north-western Canada. Such a retreat is still more
desirable when, in addition to the security it affords from an enemy,
it is likewise a resort for wild ducks, as was and is the case with the
laguna of the Mexican valley. Hence, probably, the Aztecs selected this
place as the site of their village; and to reach it, it was necessary
to make one or more footpaths across the marsh. As the Aztecs had no
beasts of burden, this must have been a task of no little magnitude. To
have made it thirty feet wide would not only have been a work of
immense difficulty, but would have destroyed the defensive character of
their position. Still, we can, upon this occasion, afford to be a
little liberal with the statements of Cortéz, as we have had to cut his
hundreds of thousands of warriors down to a few thousand of
miserably-armed Indians, and reduce his magnificent cities to small
Indian villages. In order to make the island of Mexico at all
inhabitable, we have had to reduce his lakes from navigable basins of
twelve feet or more in depth to mere evaporating ponds. His floating
islands have been transformed into garden-beds built upon the mud; and
his canals have sunk to mere ditches. Now I propose to be liberal to
the old Conquistador in the matter of his famous causeways, and will
therefore admit that they might have been twelve feet in width--as
broad as the tow-path of the Erie Canal.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Street of Tacuba.--The Spaniards and the Indian Women.--The
Retreat of Cortéz.--The Aqueducts of Mexico.--The English and
American Burying-grounds.--The Protestant President.--The rival
Virgins.--An Image out of Favor.--The Aztecs and the Spaniards.

As I rode along the street to the gate and causeway of Tacuba, over
which Cortéz retreated on the "sorrowful night" (_triste noche_),
I naturally fell into reflections upon the righteous retribution that
overtook a portion of the Spanish robbers on that night, and upon the
mysterious ways of Providence in allowing Cortéz and a remnant to
escape being burned alive by the Indians after the infamous lives
which, by their own admissions, they had been leading in the city. The
Indians had made a feeble resistance when Alvarado murdered their
chiefs, and had cringed into submission when Cortéz returned. But now
their wrongs had reached that point where even Aztecs could endure no
more. Their cup of iniquity seemed full, when Cortéz, who had left a
wife in Cuba, sent to the little village of Tacuba, called by Diaz
Tlacupa, to fetch thence some "women of his _household_, among whom was
the daughter of Montezuma [he had already one daughter of Montezuma in
his power] whom he had given in charge of the King of Tlacupa, her
relative, when he marched against Narvaez."[36] The women being
rescued, Cortéz afterward sent Ordaz, with four hundred men, which
brought on hostilities that ended in this night retreat.

THE HOUSEHOLD OF CORTÉZ.

Cortéz was worse than the Mormon governor of Utah, who is said to have
thirty-six wives in his household. But they are, at least, voluntary
inmates of his harem, while the "household" of Cortéz had been taken by
violence. It is one of the prominent traits of Indian character that,
while they are inhuman to their female captives, they guard with the
utmost jealousy the virtue of their wives. Even among the debased
Indians of California, female infidelity is punished with death; and I
have seen the whole population of an Indian village on the Upper
Sacramento thrown into the utmost confusion--the women howling, and the
men brandishing their weapons--because a base Indian had sold his wife
to a still baser white man. "Such a thing was never," they said, "done
in the tribe before." And here we have Cortéz, in contempt of even
Indian notions of virtue, sending to bring to his harem, by violence,
another daughter of Montezuma.

As Bernal Diaz goes more into detail than Cortéz, he now and then drops
an expression that furnishes a clew to many an enigma otherwise
unexplainable. In speaking of the avarice of the officers, he lets fall
the following confession of his own infamy:

"This was a good hint to us in future, so that afterward, when we had
captured any beautiful Indian females, we concealed them, and gave out
that they had escaped. As soon as it was come to the marking day, or,
if any one of us stood in favor with Cortéz, he got them secretly
marked [viz., branded with a red-hot iron] during the night-time, and
paid a fifth of their value to him. In a short time we possessed a
great number of such slaves."[37]

Never was there a band of Anglo-Saxon outlaws, cut-throats, pirates, or
buccaneers that reached that point of human depravity that they could
brand, as cattle are branded, with a red-hot iron, swarms of women
taken by violence, in order that they might not make any mistakes in
recognizing their numberless wives! None but Spanish heroes of a "holy
war" ever exhibited such a picture of total depravity.

When the Aztecs were thus roused to action by the brutal lust of
Cortéz, they assailed him with phrensy rather than with courage, until
his quarters in the city became untenable, and then this night retreat
was undertaken, in which all the gold, if there really was any, and all
other treasures, and two sons and one daughter of Montezuma, were lost
in the confused rush of such a multitude over this foot-path. The
Indian story is that Cortéz slew the children of Montezuma when he
found himself unable to carry them off. Perhaps he did, but the
probability is that they perished by chance, or, rather, it seems to
have been by chance that Cortéz or any of his gang escaped and came
safe to Tacuba.

We must now give up history to talk of things by the road-side.

The "hard water" from the springs on the south side of Chapultepec is
carried over stone arches upon the causeway of Tacubaya to the gate of
Belin. But at Santa Fé, several leagues distant from the city, is a
stream of soft water, which is brought to the powder-mill (_Molina
del Rey_), where it turns a wheel. Thence the aqueduct, passing by
the north side of Chapultepec, is carried along the highway to the
causeway of San Cosmo. It passes the gate of San Cosmo, enters the
city, and terminates in the street of Tacuba. By these two gates, and
by the side of these two parallel aqueducts, the American army entered
the city of Mexico.

The objects of interest by the road-side, after I had passed the city
gate, were, first, the French Academy, which is well worthy of a visit
for its pretty grounds, if nothing more. When we had got farther on,
the land rose a little above the water-level of the swamp. Here a
branch-road and the aqueduct turned off to Chapultepec, and in the
angle thus formed by the two roads is the English burying-ground or
cemetery. In this resting-place of the dead there is not a spot that
can not be irrigated at all seasons of the year, while the art of man
has been busy in improving the advantages that nature has so lavishly
bestowed.

Just before my first arrival in Mexico, public attention had been
particularly directed to this quiet spot, from its having been chosen
as the place for depositing the ashes of the last President of Mexico,
at whose burial no holy water had been wasted and no candles had been
burned, and for the repose of whose soul no masses had ever been said,
or other religious rites performed, and yet he slept as quietly as
those who had gone to their burial with the pomp and circumstance of a
state funeral. No priest had shrived his soul, his lips had not been
touched with the anointing oil, nor was incense burned at his funeral;
yet he died in peace, declaring in his last hours that he had made his
confession to God, and trusted in him for the pardon of his sins, and
refused all the proffered aid of priests in facilitating his journey to
heaven. Thus died, and here was privately buried, the first and last
Protestant President of Mexico, the only really good man that ever
occupied that exalted station, and probably the only native Mexican who
ever had the moral courage to denounce the religion of his fathers upon
his dying bed.

THE AMERICAN CEMETERY.

Adjoining the English cemetery on the south side is the American
burying-ground, which has been established since the war, where have
been collected the remains of 750 Americans, that died or were killed
at Mexico, and a neat monument has been erected over them. Here
Americans that die henceforth in that city can be buried. An
appropriation of $500 a year would make this more attractive than the
English cemetery, but the place has been wholly neglected by Congress
since that worthy man, the Rev. G. G. Goss, completed his labors. There
is a pleasure in observing the natural affinities which, in foreign
countries, draw close together these two branches of the Anglo-Saxon
family. A common language and a common religion overmaster political
differences, and the English and American dead are laid side by side to
rest until the judgment. At the south of the American cemetery is a
vacant lot, which the King of Prussia should purchase, so that the
Germans may no longer be dependent on Americans for a burying-place,
and that the three great Protestant powers of the world may here, as
they every where should, be drawn close together.

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO THE AMERICANS.]

Tacuba is a very small village, and is not in any wise noted except for
an immense cypress-tree, that must have been a wonder even in the time
of Cortéz. Tacuba has the historical notoriety of being the place where
hostilities first broke out between the Aztecs and the Spaniards, and
the spot where the night retreat of the latter terminated. Here the
land is quite fertile, and a little way from the village are several
water-mills, where the grain raised in this part of the valley is
ground into flour.

THE VIRGIN OF REMEDIES.

A little way beyond Tacuba is the hill and temple of the Virgin of
Remedies. It was upon this hill, within the inclosure of an Indian
mound, that the retreating party of Cortéz made their first bivouac,
and built fires and dressed their wounds. Hence they gave to the hill
the name of _Remedios_, and the church afterward erected was dedicated
to our Lady of Remedies. Diaz tells us that it became very celebrated
in his time. The story about Cortéz finding a broken-nosed image in the
knapsack of one of his soldiers is not mentioned either by himself or
Bernal Diaz, and must therefore be an afterthought, to give
plausibility to a subsequent imposition. From this point Cortéz and his
party, without their women or treasures, trudged along to the foot of
the hills to Tepeac, or Guadalupe, and thence around the foot of
Tezcuco to the plains of Otumba.

The story is, that while Cortéz and his men were resting here, a
soldier took from his knapsack an image, with nose broken and an eye
wanting, which Cortéz made the patron saint of the expedition, and held
it up to their adoration, and that this little incident so encouraged
the men that they started off with renewed vigor. The whole of this
story is probably a very silly modern invention. The bulk of the forces
of Cortéz was most probably composed of that class of reprobates that
to this day can be found about almost any of the West India sea-ports,
ready for any enterprise, however hazardous. They have no religion;
they are not even superstitious, but yield a nominal acquiescence to
the forms of the Catholic religion. Cortéz speaks often of his efforts
to effect the conversion of the Indians, but it is in such a business
sort of way as to lead to the impression, that it was all done to make
an impression at home, but was really a matter that he did not care
much about. The famous image, according to the current story,
disappeared soon after the Conquest, but was found about 150 years
afterward in a maguey plant, and was as much dilapidated as if it had
been exposed to the weather for the whole of that century and a half.

Such, in substance, is the tradition of the Virgin of Remedies, who for
a century divided with the Virgin of Guadalupe the adoration of the
people in the most amicable manner. But when the insurrection of 1810
broke out, these two virgins parted company. "_Viva_ the Virgin of
Guadalupe!" became the war-cry of the unsuccessful rebels, while
"_Viva_ the Lady of Remedies!" was shouted back by the conquering
forces of the king. The Lady of Guadalupe became suspected of
insurrectionary propensities, while all honors were lavished upon the
Lady of Remedies by those who wished to make protestations of their
loyalty. Pearls, money, and jewels were bestowed upon her by the
nobility and the Spanish merchants; and as one insurrectionary leader
after another was totally defeated, the conquering generals returned to
lay their trophies at the feet of the Lady of Remedies, to whose
interposition the victory was ascribed. They carried her in triumphant
procession through the streets of Mexico, singing a _laudamus_. Then it
was that the Lady of Remedies was at the zenith of her glory. Her
person was refulgent with a blaze of jewels, and her temple was like
that of Diana of Ephesus, and all about the hill on which it stood bore
marks of the greatest prosperity.

RISE AND FALL OF THE VIRGIN.

Her healing powers were then unrivaled, and the list of cures which she
is claimed to have effected surpasses that of all the patent medicines
of our day. She was an infallible healer, alike of the diseases of the
mind and of the body. A glimpse of her broken nose and battered face
instantaneously cured men of democracy and unbelief. Heretics stood
confounded in her presence, while the halt, the lame, and the leprous
hung up their crutches, their bandages, and their filthy rags, as
trophies of her healing power, among the flags and other trophies of
her victories over the rebels. Nothing was beyond her skill; from
mending a leaky boat to securing a prize in the lottery; from giving
eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, mending a broken or a paralyzed
limb, or a broken heart, to putting the baby to sleep. Her votaries
esteemed her omnipotent, and carried her in procession in times of
drought, as the goddess of rain; and when pestilence raged in the city,
she was borne through the infected streets. Such was she in the times
of her glory.

Now all is changed. She is still a goddess, but her glory is eclipsed.
She, like many a virgin in social life, neglected to make her market
while all knees were bowing to her, and now, in the sear and yellow
leaf, she is a virgin still. Her temple is dilapidated, her garlands
are faded, her gilding is tarnished, the buildings about her Court are
falling to decay, while the bleak hill which her temple crowns looks
tenfold more uninviting than if it never had been occupied. When I
entered this neglected temple of a neglected image, an old,
superannuated priest was saying mass, and three or four old crones were
kneeling before her altar. Such are the effects that followed the
revolution of Iguala. Not only was her hated rival of Guadalupe
elevated from her long obscurity to be the national saint, but the
animosity against this dilapidated image of Remedies was carried to
that extreme of cruelty that, when the Spaniards were expelled from
Mexico, the passports of the "Lady of Remedios" were made out, and she
was ordered to leave the country. Poor thing!

The porter's eye glistened at the now unwonted sight of a silver
dollar, and he soon had me through the most secret recesses of the
sanctuary. The only things I saw worthy of admiration were some
pictures, made from down or the feathers of the humming-bird, by which
a richness of color was imparted to the pictures that could not be
obtained from paints.

At last we came to the back of the great altar, and the curtain of
damask silk being drawn up by a little string, we saw sitting in a
metallic maguey plant a bright new Paris doll, dressed in the gaudy
odds and ends of silk that make such a thing an attractive Christmas
present for the nursery. Paste supplied the place of jewels, and a
constellation of false pearls were at the back of her shoulders. The
man kept his gravity, and did reverence to the poor doll, while I
burned with indignation at being imposed upon by a counterfeit
"universal remedy for all diseases." I had often read in the
apothecaries' advertisements cautions against counterfeits, and rewards
for their detection, and I always noticed, from these printed
evidences, that the counterfeits were exactly in proportion to the
worthlessness of the genuine article, and that medicine which was
utterly valueless itself suffered most from the abundance of
counterfeits. So it was with the Lady of Remedios; after she had fallen
below the dignity of a humbug, and no man was found so poor as to do
her reverence, she was spirited away to the Cathedral of the city of
Mexico, in order to save her three jeweled petticoats from being
stolen, and a child's doll, covered with paste jewels, now personified
the great patron saint of the vice-kingdom of New Spain.

AZTEC AND ROMISH IMAGES.

I again mounted my horse, angry at being cheated. Though the day was a
most lovely one, I rode home in fit humor to contrast the system of
paganism which Cortéz introduced with the more poetical system which
preceded it, and to compare these cast-off child's dolls with the
allegorical images of the Aztecs. My landlord had two boxes of such
images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city
canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth.
He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled a serpent; his
right hand rested upon the head of another serpent. This, according to
the laws of interpreting allegories, we should understand to signify
that the god had been renowned for his wisdom; that with the wisdom of
the serpent he had executed judgment; and that his meditations were the
profundity of wisdom. And yet this allegorical worship, defective as it
may have been, was forcibly superseded by the adoration of a child's
doll--one that had very possibly been worn out and thrown from a
nursery, and perhaps picked up by some passing monk, was made the
goddess of New Spain, and clothed with three petticoats, one adorned
with pearls, one with rubies, and one with diamonds, at an estimated
cost of $3,000,000. Which was the least objectionable superstition?

We have been taught to look upon the worship of the Aztecs as
monstrous; but the witnesses against them were themselves monsters, who
were seeking for a pretense to excuse their own brutality in reducing
the Indians to the most debasing slavery, while they appropriated to
their own use the best looking of the squaws, and kept such swarms of
supernumerary wives that each Spaniard had to brand them with a red-hot
iron in order to know his own family. The fathers of the present
mixed-breed population of Mexico tell us that the Aztecs offered human
sacrifices, and feasted upon human flesh. They hope, by dwelling upon
the enormities of the Indians, to excuse their own still more
detestable crimes. For three centuries their stories were
uncontradicted, and they have been received as historical verities. But
the character of the witnesses warrants us in receiving their
statements with some incredulity.

      [36] _Bernal Diaz_, vol. i. p. 338.

      [37] _Bernal Diaz_, vol. i. p. 31, 32.

CHAPTER XX.

The Paséo at Evening.--Ride to Chapultepec.--The old Cypresses
of Chapultepec.--The Capture of Chapultepec.--Molina del
Rey.--Tacubaya.--Don Manuel Escandon.--The Tobacco Monopoly.--The
Palace of Escandon.--The "Desierto."--Hermits.--Monks in the Conflict
with Satan.--Our Lady of Carmel.

My residence was near the _Paséo Nuevo_, and at evening, while the sun
had yet an hour of his daily task to finish, I habitually sauntered
forth for a walk up and down the Paséo, to look at the crowd of
coaches, with tops thrown back, so that the bare-headed ladies, in full
dress for dinner, might enjoy the evening air, acquire an appetite, and
salute their friends by presenting the backs of their hands, while they
twirled their fingers at them with a hearty smile. Gentlemen on
richly-caparisoned horses dashed along between the rows of advancing
and returning carriages, stopping now and then by the side of a
well-known carriage to exchange salutations, or, by an exhibition of a
well-timed embarrassment, proclaim the favored object of their
evening's ride. Crowds of foot-passengers sauntered along the
road-side, looking at the rich display made by the aristocracy and
nobility of the republic. At the entrance of the Paséo, in front of the
amphitheatre, where on Sundays bulls are tortured to death as a popular
amusement, is the equestrian bronze statue of Carlos IV., the work of
Tolsa, who, as artist and architect, has won for himself undying renown
at Mexico. The garden of Tolsa, the College of Mines, and the bronze
horse, testify to the greatness of his genius. Half way down the Paséo
is a fountain, around which two semicircles of coaches place themselves
for a little time, to look on the passing current of carriages and
horsemen. They soon disappear as the sun shows symptoms of descending
behind the mountains. On Sundays the scene is more animated, and then
the President, with his body-guard of lancers, and attendants in
scarlet livery, is seen to dash into the Paséo, ride down and return
through the Alameda, among whose trees and fountains the Sabbath crowds
most do congregate.

One morning when all was quiet in this place of display, I rode down
the street of San Francisco, and turned up the Paséo between the prison
of the Acordado and the bronze horse. There was nothing to disturb the
monotony that now reigned but cabs or omnibuses on their way to or
returning from Tacubaya. Passing through the open gate of Belin, I rode
along at the side of the aqueduct to the rock of Chapultepec.

CYPRESSES OF CHAPULTEPEC.

It calls up singular reflections to look upon a living thing that has
existed for a thousand years, though it be only a tree. Though so many
centuries have rolled over the venerable cypresses of Chapultepec, yet
they still are sound and vigorous. The extensive springs of pure water
that issue from beneath this immense rock have kept them flourishing in
the midst of a _tequisquite_ valley. Long gray threads of Spanish moss
hang pendent from the extremity of their limbs and cover the lower
leaves. These trees are the only living links that unite modern and
ancient American civilization; for they were in being while that
mysterious race, the Toltecs, were still upon the table-lands of
Mexico--a race that has left behind, not only at Teotihuacan, but in
the hot country, the imperishable memorials of a civilization like that
of Egypt; and from them the Aztecs acquired an imperfect knowledge of a
few simple arts.[38]

These trees had long been standing, when a body of Aztecs, wandering
away from their tribe in search of game, fixed themselves upon the
islands of this marsh, first about the rock of Chapultepec, then at
Mexicalzingo and Iztapalapan, and finally at Mexico. These trees were
undisturbed by the Spaniards when Cortéz took the city, and the
Americans respected their great antiquity, so that during all the wars
and battles that have taken place around and above them, they have
passed unharmed.

Not only unnumbered generations, but whole races have appeared and
disappeared, while these trees have quietly flourished amid the strife
of the elements and the contentions of men, taking no heed of the
passing events of which they were spectators. The Toltecs, of whom we
must speak more fully hereafter, were the first of these races that
disappeared from the table-land--the victims of wars, and of that
plague of the Indian races, the _matlazhuatl_. As the Aztecs rose
into importance by their success in war and by the multitude of their
captives, Indian princes made the springs near Chapultepec their
favorite bathing-place, and spread their mats under these trees, and in
their shadow enjoyed their noontide slumbers. Then the pale-faces came,
and peopled the valley with a race of mixed blood, and vice-kings
occupied the place that had been the sacred retreat of the Aztec
chiefs.

These trees had added many rings to their already enlarged
circumference before the vice-kings disappeared, and an emperor sat in
the shade which had been their favorite retreat; and the Aztec eagle
floated again upon the standard that waved over Chapultepec; but it was
only the galvanized corpse of that brave bird, and the emperor was only
a victim prepared for the sacrifice. Since that time much bad gunpowder
has been burned over the heads of the trees, and the roots have been
shaken by the discharge of the cannon of the castle at every change of
rulers, as one ephemeral government succeeded another, but these
cypresses still remain unharmed, and may outlive many other dynasties.

CHAPULTEPEC AND MOLINA DEL REY.

The Americans captured Chapultepec by a _coup de main_. Having made
several breaches through the stone wall behind the cypresses, they
rushed through under those trees and up the side of the hill next to
them, not allowing themselves to be delayed by the turnings of the
road. The general in command, the late General Bravo, was a man of
tried courage, and not deficient in military sagacity. He sent most
urgent requests to Santa Anna for reinforcements, urging that General
Scott was too prudent a soldier to attack the city before carrying the
castle, and that the garrison was inadequate for its defense. But Santa
Anna was completely paralyzed, as Scott designed he should be, by the
large force, under General Smith, which was threatening the south front
of the city. When it was too late, Santa Anna discovered that this was
only a feint.

[Illustration: CHAPULTEPEC.]

The King's Mill (_Molina del Rey_) is an old powder-mill, standing
on elevated ground in the rear of Chapultepec. It has nothing about it
to give it notoriety except the slaughter of the American troops that
here took place from a masked battery, manned by a body of volunteers
from the work-shops of the city. The whole affair was a military
mistake. Its capture was not necessary to insure the capture of
Chapultepec, for, as soon as that fortress, which commanded the mill,
should be in our power, the mill would be untenable. But repeated
successes had made the American officers imprudent, so that without
first battering down its walls, the division of General Worth rushed
up, regardless of a flank fire of the castle, to carry this old
building by assault. After the sacrifice of about 700 lives, cannon
were brought out and the breach made, and then the difficulty was at an
end.

A mile or so by the road leading south and west from Chapultepec is
Tacubaya, where are the suburban residences of the Archbishop, the
President, and of divers city bankers; and where the English banker,
Mr. Jimmerson, has introduced English gardening, and, in a Mexican
climate, enjoys the pleasure of an English country residence.

DON MANUEL ESCANDON.

The most attractive establishment of Tacubaya is the new palace of Don
Manuel Escandon, a native-born, self-made Mexican millionaire; a man
whose capital has so enormously accumulated before he has even reached
middle life, that he was able to propose to discount a bill for
$7,000,000 as an ordinary business transaction, though ultimately
government divided the bid with another house. This most remarkable
instance of accumulation of wealth in modern times is deserving of a
passing notice, which I give on the authority of my landlord, who had a
personal knowledge of his history.

Don Manuel enjoyed, in addition to an intimate knowledge of his own
countrymen, the advantages of a foreign education, which had extended
to an examination of those arts and improvements that elevate Europeans
above the semi-barbarous people of Spanish America. The first
enterprise that brought him prominently forward was the establishment
of that vast and most perfect system of stage-coaches, of which I have
already spoken, on an original capital of $250,000. The wretched
condition of the roads, and the heavy losses that at first always
attend enterprises of that magnitude, disheartened his partners, who
were glad to sell out to him $150,000 of the capital stock at a
discount of 50 per cent. Afterward the late Zurutusa bought into the
scheme, and ultimately became the owner of all the property, having,
before his death, more than realized the highest anticipations of
himself or Escandon. A hundred thousand dollars, or thereabouts, were
the profits to Escandon by this establishment of a series of hotels and
stages quite across the continent. By the successful running of a
blockade of the coast, he realized nearly another hundred thousand
dollars. The numerous enterprises open to men of superior sagacity, who
fully understand the wants of a country in a state of chaos, and are
familiar with the improvements of other countries, were readily
embraced by him, until he found himself possessed of sufficient capital
to become the principal purchaser of the extensive silver mines of
_Real del Monte_, of which the salt-works of Tezcuco are but an outside
appendage.

The tobacco monopoly had yielded to the King of Spain an average return
of nearly a million annually. Under the Republic the consumption of the
weed had greatly increased, but, from the prevalence of disorder in
every branch of the administration, this important branch of the
revenue was almost entirely absorbed by the officials through whose
hands it passed, so that the sum realized by government in the most
unproductive year fell off to $25,000, but finally reached $45,000, the
amount at which it was farmed out by Escandon and Company. Since that
time the return to government has gone on increasing, until it was
advertised to be let the last year at the round sum of $1,200,000. How
much more the partners realized during the years that they held the
contract is, of course, known only to themselves.

The new house which Don Manuel has built at Tacubaya is decidedly the
finest palace in the republic. The position is well chosen, and the sum
of $300,000 has been laid out upon the house and grounds. It is a
combination of an Italian villa, with the comforts and conveniences of
English life. London, Paris, and New York have alike contributed to its
furniture. I was told that $50,000 was invested in pictures alone. When
I looked at the perfection to which the house, the grounds, and the
ornamental works had been carried, my only wonder was that $300,000
could have paid for such a combination of elegance and good taste. The
family, which consists only of Don Manuel and his widowed sisters, had
left on account of the cholera then prevailing in Tacubaya, but the
steward readily opened every door to my companion; and thus, without
intruding upon the privacy of a family, or even having the honor of
their acquaintance, I obtained access to one of the finest private
residences that I have ever yet seen, either in this country or any
other. In this house it was that the Gadsden treaty was proposed, at a
dinner-party at which Mr. Gadsden and Santa Anna were present.

THE DESIERTO.

There was nothing to detain me longer at Tacubaya; but a ride upon the
Tacubaya road is not well finished without being extended to the
_Desierto_, a place now as attractive in its ruins as it was in its
prosperity.

A description of what it once was I copy from old Thomas Gage: "But
more north [south] westward, three leagues from Mexico, is the
pleasantest place of all that are about Mexico, called the _Solidad_,
or _Desierto_, 'the Solitary Place' or 'Wilderness.' Were all
wildernesses like it, to live in a wilderness would be better than to
live in a city. This hath been a device of bare-footed Carmelites, to
make show of their apparent godliness, and who would be thought to live
like hermits, retired from the world, that they may draw the world unto
them. They have built them a stately cloister, which, being upon a hill
and among rocks, makes it to be most admired. About the cloister they
have fashioned out many holes and caves, in, under, and among the
rocks, like hermits' lodgings, with a room to lie in, and an oratory
to pray in, with pictures, and images, and rare devices for
self-mortification, as scourges of wire, rods of iron, haircloth
girdles with sharp wire points, to gird about their bare flesh, and
many such like toys, which hang about their oratories, to make people
admire their mortified and holy lives.

"All these hermits' holes and caves, which are some ten in all, are
within the bounds and compass of the cloister, and among orchards and
gardens, which are full of fruits and flowers, which may take two miles
in compass; and here among the rocks are many springs of water, which,
with the shade of the plantain and other trees, are most cool and
pleasant to the hermits. They have also the sweet smell of the rose and
the jessamine, which is a little flower, but the sweetest of all
others; and there is not any flower to be found that is rare and
exquisite in that country which is not in that wilderness, to delight
the senses of those mortified hermits.

"They are weekly changed from the cloister, and when their week is
ended others are sent, and they return into their cloisters; they carry
with them their bottles of wine, sweetmeats, and other provisions. As
for fruits, the trees do drop them into their mouths. It is wonderful
to see the strange devices of fountains of water which are about the
gardens; but much more strange and wonderful to see the resort thither
of coaches, and gallants, and ladies, and citizens from Mexico, to walk
and make merry in those desert pleasures, and to see those hypocrites,
whom they look upon as living saints, and so think nothing too good for
them to cherish them in their desert conflicts with Satan.

"None goes to them but carries some sweetmeats or some other dainty
dish to nourish and feed them withal, whose prayers they likewise
earnestly solicit, leaving them great alms of money for their masses;
and, above all, offering to a picture in their church, called our Lady
of Carmel, treasures of diamonds, pearls, golden chains, and crowns,
and gowns of cloth of gold and silver. Before this picture did hang, in
my time, twenty lamps of silver, the poorest of them being worth a
hundred pounds. Truly Satan hath given them what he offered unto Christ
in the desert.

"All the dainties and all the riches of America hath he given unto them
in that desert, because they daily fall down and worship him. In the
way to this place is another town, called Tacubaya, where is a rich
cloister of Franciscans, and also many gardens and orchards; but it is,
above all, much resorted to for the music in that church, wherein the
friars have made the Indians so skillful that they dare compare with
the Cathedral Church of Mexico."

      [38] "The Toltecs appeared first in the year 648, the Chicimecs
      in 1170, the Nahualtecs 1178, the Atolhues and Aztecs in 1196.
      The Toltecs introduced the cultivation of maize and cotton; they
      built cities, made roads, and constructed those great pyramids
      which are yet admired, and of which the faces are very accurately
      laid out. They knew the use of hieroglyphical paintings; they
      could work metals, and cut the hardest stones; and they had a
      solar year more perfect than that of the Greeks and Romans. The
      form of their government indicated that they were the descendants
      of a people who had experienced great vicissitudes in their
      social state. But where is the source of that cultivation? Where
      is the country from which the Toltecs and Mexicans
      issued?"--HUMBOLDT, _Essay Politique_, vol. i. p. 100.

CHAPTER XXI.

Walk to Guadalupe.--Our Embassador kneeling to the Host.--An
Embassador with, and one without Lace.--First sight of Santa
Anna.--Indian Dance in Church.--Juan Diego not Saint Thomas.--The
Miracle proved at Rome.--The Story of Juan Diego.--The holy Well of
Guadalupe.--The Temple of the Virgin.--Public Worship interdicted
by the Archbishop.--Refuses to revoke his Interdict.--He fled to
Guadalupe and took Sanctuary.--Refused to leave the Altar.--The
Arrest at the Altar.

"_Placuit pinturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur vel
adoratur, in parietibus pingatur_--Pictures ought not to be in the
churches, nor should any that are reverenced or adored be painted upon
the walls." So say the canons of the Council of Toledo.

I was one of a vast crowd that, on a Sunday of December, 1853, were
hurrying out of the city by the old gate and causeway of Tepeac to the
suburban village of Guadalupe Hidalgo, once Tepeac, but now consecrated
to the Virgin Mary, who, tradition says, appeared there in a bodily
form to an Indian _peon_. Juan Diego was the name of the Indian, and
1531 is the date assigned to the incident. I shall hereafter take
occasion to relate the story as given by the veracious Juan, and duly
attested by authority which ought to be competent to settle the
question, if any thing can do so. I hope that my readers will do their
best to believe it. If they honestly endeavor to do so, and do not
succeed, I trust they will not suffer on account of their lack of
faith.

The occasion that was drawing the multitude together was the
consecration of the bishop-elect of Michoican, which was to be
celebrated with great pomp at this most sacred shrine of the patron
goddess of the Republic. The State and the Church were duly represented
upon the platform by the President, the nuncio, and the archbishop.
Beneath the platform, and within the silver railing, were the official
representatives of foreign nations, who were easily distinguished by a
strip of gold or silver lace upon the collars and lapels of their
coats. To this uniformity of dress there was a single exception in the
person of the new American embassador, Mr. Gadsden, whose plain black
dress and clerical appearance would have conveyed the impression that