Part 3 (1/2)

As to the interior decoration of the churches, the richer ones are crowded with incongruous ornaments to a wonderful degree. Gold, silver, costly marbles, jewels, stucco, paint, tinsel, and frippery are all mixed up together in the wildest manner. We found the inside of the churches to be generally the worst part of them. The Cathedral, for instance, is really a very grand building when seen from a little distance, with its two high towers and its cupola behind. I was greatly edified by finding it described in the last book of Mexican travels I have read, as built in the purest Doric style.

The Mineria, or School of Mines, is a fine building, something after the manner of Somerset House on a small scale. As for the famous Plaza Mayor, the great square, it is a very great square indeed, large enough to review an army in, and large enough to damage by its size the effect of the cathedral, and to dwarf the other buildings that surround it into mere insignificance. However, one thing is certain, that we have not come all this way to see Spanish architecture and great squares, but must look for something more characteristic.

I have said we arrived in Mexico on the eve of Palm Sunday, and next morning we proceeded to consult with one of our newly-made acquaintances as to our prospects for the ensuing Holy Week. This gentleman, a man who took a practical view of things, mentioned a circ.u.mstance which led him to expect that the affair would go off with eclat. The Mexicans, both the nearly white Mestizos and the Indians of pure race, delight in pulque. The brown people are grave and silent in their sober state, but pulque stirs up their sluggish blood, and they get into a condition of positive enjoyment. But very soon after this comes a state of furious intoxication, and a general scuffle is a common termination to a drinking-bout. Fortunately, the Indians are not a bloodthirsty people; and, though every man carries a knife or machete, or--if he can get nothing better--a bit of hoop-iron tempered, sharpened, and fixed into a handle, yet nothing more serious than cuffs and scratches generally ensues. Even if severe wounds are given, the Indian has many chances in his favor, for his organization is somewhat different from that of white men, and he recovers easily from wounds that would kill any European outright.

The lower orders of the half-breed population are also given to pulque-drinking, but with far more serious consequences. Unlike the pure Indians, they are a hot-blooded and excitable race, and drunkenness with them is utter madness while it lasts. Knives are drawn at the very beginning of a squabble, and scarcely an evening pa.s.ses without one or two bodies of men killed in these drunken melees being carried to the Police Cuartel in the great square. On Sundays and holidays the number increases; but on this Palm Sunday there were fourteen, not killed in one great battle, but brought in by ones and twos, from different parts of the city. It was this little piece of statistics that induced our friend to conclude that the citizens of Mexico had made up their minds to enjoy themselves thoroughly, and that Holy Week would be a grand affair. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the Semana Santa have only this to distinguish them from ordinary days, that the churches are crowded with men and women waiting their turn at the confessional; and that in the afternoons the old promenade of Las Vigas, down in the Indian quarter by the ca.n.a.l of Chalco, is patronized by fas.h.i.+onable Mexico, which, except on some four or five special days, frequents the new Alameda. The sight of these confessionals, so constantly filled, prompts one to ask--why just before Easter? Just after would be more appropriate; for as we find the Glasgow people much worse on Sundays than on week-days, so the Mexican population, not very virtuous at the best of times, are specially and particularly wicked when the great Church-festivals come round. The name of Shrove Tuesday survives in our Calendar, to remind us of the time when we also used to go to be shriven before Easter.

On Thursday at noon ma.s.s is over, the bells cease to ring, the organs in the churches are silent, and all carriages disappear from the streets, except the dusty Diligence which, like French law, ”est athee,” and cares nothing for fasts or festivals. Now we come to understand the wonderful wooden machine like a water-wheel, which was put up yesterday on one tower of the Cathedral. We had asked people in the great square, just below, what it was, but could get no answer except that it was _la Matraca_, the rattle, for to-morrow. And now we found that, the church bells being incapacitated, this rattle does duty instead, striking the hours, and occasionally going off into furious fits of clattering, without apparent reason, for ten minutes at a time, till the two men who worked it, who were either convicts or soldiers in fatigue-dress, were tired out. It was not this one rattle only that was disturbing the public peace that day and the next. Everybody was walking about with a rattle, and working it like mad, and all over the city there was a noise like the sound of the back-scratchers at Greenwich Fair, or of an American forest when the woodp.e.c.k.e.rs are busy.

These little rattles stand for Judas's bones, and all good Catholics express in this odd way their desire to break them. They do the same thing in Italy, but it is not so prominent a part of the celebration as in Mexico, where old and young, rich and poor, all do their part in it.

As soon as we found out what it all meant, we bought matracas for ourselves, and joined the rest of the world in their noisy occupation.

The breaking of his bones is but a preliminary measure. In the square a fair is being held, in the booths of which the great articles of trade now are Judas's bones, of many patterns, at all prices, and Judas himself in pasteboard, who is to be carried about and insulted till Sat.u.r.day morning, and then, hanging up by a string, is to burst asunder by means of a packet of powder and a slow match in his inside, and finally to perish in a bonfire.

The first sight of these pasteboard Judases convinced us of one thing, that we had unexpectedly come upon the old custom, of which our processions and burning of Guy Fawkes in England are merely an adaptation. After giving up the old custom as a Popish rite, what a blight idea to revive it in this new shape, and to give the boys something to carry about, bang, blow up, and make a final bonfire of, and all in the Protestant interest! There was another thing to be noticed about the Judases. The makers had evidently tried to vary them as much as they could; and, by that very means, had shown how impossible it was to them to strike out anything new. There were two types; one was the Neapolitan _Polichinello_, whom we have naturalised as _Punch_; and the other the G.o.d _Pan_, with his horns, and hoofs, and tail, whom the whole Christian world has recognised as the devil, for these many ages. Well, some took one type and some the other; and a few tried to combine the two, of course spoiling both. But, beyond this, their power of invention could not go. They were always trying to conceal the old idea, and could do no more than to distort it. We could see through their flimsy pretensions to originality much as a schoolmaster recognises the extracts from the encyclopaedia in his boys' essays.

As with this Judas trade, so it is with other more important arts and sciences in this country. The old types descend, almost unchanged, from generation to generation. Everything that is really Mexican is either Aztec or Spanish. Among the Spanish types we may separate the Moorish.

Our knowledge of Mexico is not sufficient to enable us to a.n.a.lyse the Aztec civilization, so we must be content with these three cla.s.ses. I will not go further into the question here, for occasions will continually occur to show how--for three centuries at least--the inhabitants of Mexico, both white and brown, have taken their ideas at second-hand, always copying but never developing anything.

All this time my companion and I have been walking about the streets; in evening-dress, as the etiquette of the place demands, on these three days, from the ”better cla.s.ses.” The Mexican ladies may be advantageously studied just now in their church-going black silk dress and mantilla, one of the most graceful costumes in the world. It is not often that one has the chance of seeing them out of doors, except hurrying to and from Ma.s.s in the morning, or in carriages on the Alameda; but on these festival days one meets them by hundreds. They do not contrast favorably with the ladies of Cadiz and Seville. The mixture of Aztec blood seems to have detracted from the beauty of the Spanish race; the dryness of the atmosphere spoils their complexions; and the monstrous quant.i.ty of capsic.u.ms that are consumed at every meal cannot possibly leave the Mexican digestion in its proper state.

We dined that day with Don Jose de A., who, though Spanish-American by birth, was English by education and feeling, and had known my companion's family well. Our dinner was half English, half Mexican; and the favourite dishes of the country were there, to aid in our initiation into Mexican manners and customs. The cooks at the inns, mindful of our foreign origin, had dealt out the red pepper with a sparing hand; but to-day the dish of ”mole” was the genuine article, and the first mouthful set as coughing and gasping for breath, while the tears streamed down our faces, and Don Pepe and Don Pancho gravely continued their dinner, a.s.suring us that we should get quite to like it in time. _Pepe_ and _Pancho_, by the way, are short for Jose and Francisco. Dinner over, it was time to visit the churches, to which people crowd by thousands, this evening and to-morrow, to see the monuments, as they are called. Pancho departed, being on duty as escort to his sisters; and we having, by Pepe's advice, left our watches and valuables in his room, and put our handkerchiefs in our breast-pockets, started with him. Mr. Christy, always on the look-out for a new seed or plant, had taken possession of the seeds of two _mameis_, which are fleshy fruits--as big as cocoa-nuts--each containing a hard smooth seed as large as a hen's egg. These not being of great value, he put one in each tail-pocket of his coat. When we got out, we found the streets full of people, hurrying from one church to another, anxious to get as many as possible visited in the evening. We went first to the monastery of San Francisco, close to our hotel, the largest, and perhaps the richest convent in the country. Entering through a great gate, we find ourselves in a large courtyard, full of people, who are visiting--one after another--the four churches which the establishment contains, going in at one door and out at the other. At the door of the largest church, stands a tall monk, soliciting customers for the rosaries of olive-wood, crosses, and medals from Jerusalem, which are displayed on a stall close by--shouting in a stentorian voice, every two or three minutes, ”He who gives alms to Holy Church, shall receive plenary indulgence, and deliver one soul from purgatory.” We bought some, but there did not seem to be many other purchasers. Indeed, we found, when we had been longer in the country, that a few pence would buy all sorts of church indulgences, from the permission to eat meat on fast-days up to plenary absolution in the hour of death; and the trade, once so flouris.h.i.+ng here, is almost used up. The churches were hung with black, and lighted up; and in each was a ”monument,” a kind of bower of green branches decorated with flowers, mirror's, and gold and silver church-plate, and supposed to stand for the Garden of Gethsemane.

Inside was reclining a wax figure of our Saviour, gaudily dressed in silk and velvet; and there were also representations of the Last Supper, with wax-work figures as large as life. To visit and criticise these ”monuments” was the object of the sort of pilgrimage people were making from church to church, and they seemed thoroughly to enjoy it.

It was not a superfluous precaution that we had taken, in leaving our valuables in a place of safety, for, on our exit from the first church, we found that Pepe had lost his handkerchief and a cigar-case, which he had stowed away in an inner pocket, and Mr. Christy had been relieved of one of his mamei seeds by some ”lepero” who probably took it for a snuff-box. His feelings must have been like those of the English pickpocket in Paris, when he robbed the Frenchman of the article he had pocketed with so much care, and found it was a lump of sugar. And so relieved of further care for our worldly goods, we went through with the work of seeing monuments, till we were tired and disgusted with the whole affair, and at last went home to bed.

Next day, appropriate sermons in the churches, processions in the afternoon, in which wax figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary were carried by men got up in fancy dresses as soldiers and centurions, and so called penitents, walking covered with black shrouds and veils, with small round holes to look through, or in the yellow dress and extinguisher cap, both with flames and devils painted on them. These are exactly the costumes worn in old times, the first by the familiars of the Inquisition, and the second by the criminals it condemned; and the sight of them set us thinking of the processions they used to figure in, when the Holy Office was flouris.h.i.+ng at Santo Domingo, a little way down the street where we are standing.

In the evening the Crucifixion is represented in wax in the churches, and the visiting goes on as the night before; and the next morning is the Sabado de Gloria, the Sat.u.r.day which ends Lent. We go to the Jesuits' church in the morning to hear the last sermon. Since Thursday at noon, as the organs have been silenced, harps and violins have taken their places. The sermon is long and prosy, and we rejoice that it is the last. Then the service of the day goes on until they come to the ”Gloria in excelsis.” The organ peals out again, the black curtain--which has hidden the high altar--parts in the middle, and displays a perfect blaze of gold and jewels: all the bells in the city begin to ring: the carriages, which have been waiting ready harnessed in court yards, pour out into the streets: the lumbering hackney coaches go racing to the great square, striving to get the first fare for luck: the Judases, which have been hanging all the morning out of windows and across streets, are set light to as the first bell begins to ring, and fizzing and popping burst all to pieces, and then are thrown into a heap in the street, where a bonfire is made of them, and the children join hands and dance round it. So Holy Week ends.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PORTER AND THE BAKER IN MEXICO. (From Models made by Native Artists)]

The arrangement of the day in Mexico is this. Early in the morning your servant knocks at your door, and brings in a little cup of coffee or chocolate and a small roll, which _desayuno_--literally breakfast--you discuss while dressing. Going down into the courtyard, you find your horse waiting for you, and off you go for an hour or two's ride, and back to a dejeuner-a-la-fourchette somewhere between ten and one o'clock. Then you have seven or eight hours before dinner, so that a good deal of work may be got into a day so divided. Things are managed very differently in country places, but this is the fas.h.i.+on in the capital among the higher cla.s.s, that is, of course, the cla.s.s of people who put on dress-coats in the evening.

When we had been a day or two in Mexico, we took our first ride to Tacubaya and Chapultepec. Mexican saddles and bridles were a novelty to us, but when we come to describe our Mexican and his appurtenances it will be time enough to speak of them.

The barricades in the streets constructed during the last revolution of two or three weeks back had not yet been removed, but an opening at one side allowed men and horses to get past. Carriages had to go round, an easy matter in a city built as this is in squares like a chess-board.

The barricades mount two guns each, and as the streets are quite straight they can sweep them in both directions, to the whole length of their range. As in Turin, you can look backward and forward along the straight streets from every part of the city, and see mountains at each end. The suburbs of the city are quite as repulsive as our first glimpse of them led us to expect; and, as far as one could judge by the appearance of the half-caste inhabitants, it is not good to go there alone after dark. Here is the end of the aqueduct of Chapultepec, the Salto del Agua; and--crowded round it--a thoroughly characteristic group of women and water-carriers, filling their great earthen jars with water, which they carry about from house to house. The women are simply and cheaply dressed, and though not generally pretty, are very graceful in their movements. Their dress consists of a white cotton under-dress, a coloured cotton skirt, generally blue, brown, or grey, with some small pattern upon it, but never brilliant in colour, and a rebozo, which is a small sober-coloured cotton shawl, long and narrow.

This rebozo pa.s.ses over the back of the head, where it is somehow fixed to a back hair-comb, and the two ends hang down over the shoulders in front; or, more often, one end is thrown over the opposite shoulder, so that the young lady's face is set in it, like a picture in a frame. Add to this a springy step, the peculiarly unconstrained movement in walking which comes of living in the open air and wearing a loose dress, a pleasant pale face, small features, bright eyes, small hands and feet, little slippers and no stockings, and you have as good a picture of a Mexican half-caste girl as I can give. A book of Mexican engravings, however, will give a much better idea of her. Then we went past the great prison, the Acordada, and out at the gate (we had purposely gone out of our way to see more of the city), and so into the great promenade, the Pased or Alameda. The latter is the Spanish name for this necessary appendage to every town. It comes from _alamo_, which means a poplar. Imagine a long wide level road, a mile or so long, generally so chosen as to have a fine view, with footpaths on each side, lines of poplar trees, a fountain at each end and a statue in the middle, and this description will stand pretty nearly for almost every promenade of the kind I have seen in Spain or Spanish America.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WATER-CARRIER AND A MEXICAN WOMAN, AT THE FOUNTAIN.]

Tacubaya is a pleasant place on the ride of the first hills that begin to rise towards the mountain-wall of the valley. Here rich Mexicans have country-houses in large gardens, which are interesting from the immense variety of plants which grow there, though badly kept up, and systematically stripped by the gardeners of the fruit as it gets ripe--for their own benefit, of course. From Tacubaya we go to Chapultepec (Gra.s.shopper Mountain), which is a volcanic hill of porphyry rising from the plain. On the top is the palace on which the viceroy Galvez expended great sums of money some seventy years ago, making it into a building which would serve either as a palace or as a fortress in cases of emergency. Though the Americans charged up the hill and carried it easily in '47, it would be a very strong place in proper hands. It is a military school now. On the hill is the famous grove of cypresses--ahuehuetes[5]--as they are called, grand trees with their branches hung with fringes of the long grey Spanish moss--barba Espanola--Spanish beard. I do not know what painters think of the effect of this moss, trailing in long festoons from the branches of the trees, but to me it is beautiful; and I shall never forget where I first saw it, on a bayou of the Mississippi, winding through the depths of a great forest in the swamps of Louisiana.[6] In this grove of Chapultepec, there were sculptured on the side of the hill, in the solid porphyry, likenesses of the two Montezumas, colossal in size. For some reason or other, I forget now what, one of the last Spanish viceroys thought it desirable to destroy them, and tried to blow them up with gunpowder. He only partially succeeded, for the two great bas-reliefs were still very distinguishable as we rode past, though noseless and considerably knocked about.

We went home to breakfast with our friends, and looked at the t.i.tle-deeds of their house in crabbed Spanish of the sixteenth century, and the great Chinese treasure-chest, still used as the strong-box of the firm, with an immense lock, and a key like the key of Dover castle.

Fine old Chinese jars, and other curiosities, are often to be found in Mexico; and they date from the time when the great galleon from Manila, which was called ”el nao”--the s.h.i.+p--to distinguish it from all other s.h.i.+ps, came once a year to Acapulco.

After breakfast, business hours begin; so we took ourselves off to visit the ca.n.a.l of Chalco, and the famous floating gardens--as they are called. On our way we had a chance of studying the conveyances our ancestors used to ride in, and availed ourselves of it. In books on Spanish America, written at the beginning of this century, there are wonderful descriptions of the gilt coaches, with six or eight mules, in which the great folks used to drive in state on the promenades. They are exactly the carriages that it was the height of a lady's ambition to ride in, in the days of Sir Charles Grandison, and Mr. Tom Jones.