Part 9 (1/2)
The distance from Mexico to Vera Cruz is about two hundred and fifty miles, and what the roads are I have in some measure described. Rafael Beraza, the courier of the English Mission at Mexico, used to ride this with despatches regularly once a month in forty hours, and occasionally in thirty-five. He changed horses about every ten or fifteen miles; and now and then, when, overcome by sleep, he would let the boy who accompanied him to the next stage ride first, his own horse following, and the rider comfortably dozing as he went along.
As for our own equipment, Mr. Christy adopted the attributes of the eastern traveller when he came into the country, the great umbrella, the veil, and the felt hat with a white handkerchief over it. As for me, my wardrobe was scanty; so, when my travelling coat wore out at the elbows and my trousers were sat through--like the little bear's chair in the story, I replaced the garments with a jacket of chamois leather, and a pair of loose trousers made of the same, after the manner of the country. Then came a grey felt hat, as stiff as a boiler-plate, and of more than quakerish lowness of crown and broadness of brim, but secularized by a silver serpent for a hatband; also, a red silk sash, which--fastening round the waist--held up my trousers, and interfered with my digestion; lastly, a woollen serape to sleep under, and to wear in the mornings and evenings. This is the genuine ranchero costume, and it did me good service. Indeed, ever since my Mexican journey I have considered that George Fox decidedly showed his good sense by dressing himself in a suit of leather; much more so than the people who laughed at him for it.
In the country, all Mexicans--high and low--wear this national dress; and in this they are distinguished from the Indians, who keep to the cotton s.h.i.+rts and drawers, and the straw hats of their ancestors. In the towns, it is only the lower cla.s.ses who dress in the ranchero costume, for ”nous autres” wear European garments and follow the last Paris fas.h.i.+on, with these exceptions--that for riding, people wear jackets and calzoneras of the national cut, though made of cloth, and that the Mexican hat is often worn even by people who adopt no other parts of the costume. There never were such hats as these for awkwardness. The flat sharp brims of pa.s.sers-by are always threatening to cut your head off in the streets. You cannot get into a carriage with your hat on, nor sit there when you are in. But for walking and riding under a fierce sun, they are perhaps better than anything else that can be used.
The Mexican blanket--the serape--is a national inst.i.tution; It is wider than a Scotch plaid, and nearly as long, with a slit in the middle; and it is woven in the same gaudy Oriental patterns which are to be seen on the prayer-carpets of Turkey and Palestine to this day. It is worn as a cloak, with the end flung over the left shoulder, like the Spanish _capa_, and m.u.f.fling up half the face when its owner is chilly or does not wish to be recognized. When a heavy rain comes down, and he is on horseback, he puts his head through the slit in the middle, and becomes a moving tent. At night he rolls himself up in it, and sleeps on a mat or a board, or on the stones in the open air.
Convenient as it is, the serape is as much tabooed among the ”respectable” cla.s.ses in the cities as the rest of the national costume. I recollect going one evening after dark to the house of our friends in the Calle Seminario with my serape on, and nearly having to fight it out with the great dog Nelson, who was taking charge of his master's room. Nelson knew me perfectly well, and had sat that very morning at the hotel-gate for half an hour, holding my horse, while a crowd of leperos stood round, admiring his size and the gravity of his demeanour as he sat on the pavement, with the bridle in his mouth. But that a man in a serape should come into his master's room at dusk was a thing he could not tolerate, till the master himself came in, and satisfied his mind on the subject.
As I said, the equipment of ourselves and our three horses took us into a variety of strange places, for we bought the things we wanted piece by piece, when we saw anything that suited us. Among other places we went to the Baratillo, which is the Rag-Fair and Petticoat Lane of Mexico, and moreover the emporium for whips, bridles, bits, old spurs, old iron, and odds and ends generally. The little shops are arranged in long lines, after the manner of the eastern bazaar; and the shopkeepers, when they are not smoking cigarettes outside, are sitting in their little dens, within arms-length of all the wares they have to sell. Here we found what we had come for, and much more too, in the way of wonderful old spurs, combs, boxes, and ornaments; so that we came several times more before we left the country, and never without carrying away some curious old relic.
Mexico, as everybody knows, is decidedly a thievish place. The shops are all shut at dark, after the _Oracion_, for fear of thieves. Ladies used to wear immense tortoise-sh.e.l.l combs at the back of their heads, where the mantilla is fastened on; but, when it became a regular trade for thieves to ride on horseback through the streets, and pull out the combs as they went, the fas.h.i.+on had to be given up. These curiously carved and ornamented combs are still preserved as curiosities, and we bought several of them.
While we were in Mexico, they knocked a man down in the great square at noon-day, robbed him, and left him there for dead. The square is so large, and the sun was so hot, that the police--whose head-quarters are under the arches in that very square--could not possibly walk across to see what was going on!--_moral_, if you will have the distinction of having the largest square in the world, you must take the consequences.
Of course, where thieving is so general, the market for stolen goods must be a place of considerable trade, and this Baratillo is one of the princ.i.p.al depots for such wares. One may realize here the story of the citizen, in the old book, who had his wig stolen at the beginning of his walk through London, and found it hanging up for sale a little further on. Here the deserter comes to sell his uniform and his ricketty old flintlock. Small blame to him. I would do the same myself if I were in his place, and were compelled to serve under one rascally political adventurer against another rascally political adventurer--to say nothing of being treated like a dog, half-starved, and not paid at all, except by a sort of half license to plunder. ”Those poor soldiers!
we can't pay them, you know, and they must live somehow.”
I have abused the Mexicans for being thieves, and not without reason, though, as regards ourselves personally, we never lost anything except a great brand-new waterproof coat which my companion had brought with him, promising to himself that under its shelter he should bid defiance to the daily rain-storms of the wet season. As we dismounted from the Diligence in Mexico, in the courtyard of the hotel, some one relieved him of it. We did not know of the Baratillo in those days, or would have gone to look for it there. At the time of our visit it was too late, for if it ever had been there, the Mexicans understand too well the value of an English ”ulli,” as they call them, to let it hang long for sale. ”Ulli” is not a borrowed word, but the genuine Aztec name for India-rubber, which was used to make playing-b.a.l.l.s with, long before the time of Columbus.
I mentioned the water-bottles as part of our equipment. They are gourds, which are throttled with bandages while young, so as to make them grow into the shape of bottles with necks. Then they are hung up to dry; and the inside being cleaned out through a small hole near the stalk, they are ready for use, holding two or three pints of water. A couple of inches of a corn-cob (the inside of a ear of Indian corn) makes a capital cork; and the bottle is hung by a loop of string to the pummel of the saddle, where it swings about without fear of breaking.
One may see gourds, prepared in just the same way, in Italy, hanging up under the eaves of the little farm-houses, among the festoons of red and yellow ears of Indian corn; and indeed the gourd-bottle is a regular inst.i.tution of Southern Europe.
We sent Antonio on with the horses to Cuernavaca, and started by the Diligence early one morning, accompanied by one of our English friends, whom I will call--as every-one else did--Don Guillermo. It is the regular thing here, as in Spain, to call everybody by his or her Christian name. You may have known Don Antonio or Don Felipe for weeks before you happen to hear their surnames.
The road ran at first over the plain, among great water-meadows, with herds of cattle pasturing, and fields of wheat and maize. Ploughing was going on, after the primitive fas.h.i.+on of the country, with two oxen yoked to each plough. The yoke is fastened to the horns of the oxen, and to the centre of the yoke a pole is attached. At the other end of this pole is the plough itself, which consists of a wooden stake with an iron point and a handle. The driver holds the handle in one hand and his goad in the other (a long reed with an iron point), and so they toil along, making a long scratch as they go. A man follows the plough, and drops in single grains of Indian corn, about three feet apart. The furrows are three feet from one another, so that each stalk occupies some nine square feet of ground. When the plants are growing up they dig between them, and heap up round each stalk a little mound of earth.
We pa.s.sed many little houses consisting of one square room, built of mud-bricks, with mud-mortar stuck full of little stones; without windows, but generally possessing the luxury of a chimney, with a couple of bricks forming an arch over it to keep out the rain. Glimpses of men smoking cigarettes at the doors, half-naked brown children rolling in the dirt, and women on their knees inside, hard at work grinding the corn for those eternal tortillas.
At San Juan de Dios Mr. Christy climbed to the top of the Diligence, behind the conductor, who sat with a large black leather bag full of stones on the footboard before him. Whenever one of the nine mules showed a disposition to s.h.i.+rk his work, a heavy stone came flying at him, always. .h.i.tting him in a tender place, for long practice had made the conductor almost as good a shot as the goat-herds in the mountains, who are said to be able to hit their goats on whichever horn they please, and so to steer them straight when they seem inclined to stray.
But our conductor simply threw the stones, whereas the goat-herd uses the aloe-fibre honda, or sling, that one sees hanging by dozens in the Mexican shops.
We pa.s.s near Churubusco, and along the line by which the American army reached Mexico. The field of lava which they crossed is close at our right hand; and just on the other side of it lie Tisapan and our friend Don Alejandro's cotton-factory. On our left are the freshwater-lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco, which had risen several feet, and flooded the valley in their neighbourhood. Between us and the great mountain-chain that forms the rim of the valley, lies a group of extinct volcanos, from one of which descends the great lava-field.
Pa.s.sing in full view of these picturesque craters, now mostly covered with trees and brushwood, we begin to ascend, and are soon among the porphyritic range that forms a wall between us and the land of sugar-canes and palms. Along the road towards Mexico came long files of Indians, dressed in the national white cotton s.h.i.+rts and short drawers and sandals, made like Montezuma's, though not with plates of gold on the soles, such as that monarch's sandals had. Some of these Indians are bringing on their backs wood and charcoal from the pine-forest higher up among the mountains, and some have fastened to their backs light crates full of live fowls or vegetables; others are carrying up tropical fruits from the tierra caliente below, zapotes and mameis, nisperos and granaditas, tamarinds and fresh sugar-canes. These people are walking with their loads thirty or forty miles to market: but their race have been used as beasts of burden for ages, and they don't mind it.
Bright blue and red birds, and larger and more brilliant b.u.t.terflies than are seen in Europe, show that, though we are among fields of wheat and maize, we are in the tropics after all. As the road rises we get views of the broad valley, with its lakes and green meadows, and the great white haciendas with their clumps of willows, their church-towers, and the cl.u.s.ters of adobe huts surrounding them--like the peasants' cottages in feudal Europe, crowding up to the baron's castle.
Our mules begin to flag as we toil up the steep ascent; but the conductor rattles the stones in his black bag, and as the ominous sound reaches their ears, they start off again with renewed vigour. We pa.s.s San Mateo, a village of charcoal-burners, where a large and splendid stone church, with its tall dark cypresses, stands among the huts of reeds and pine-s.h.i.+ngles that form the village.
[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIANS BRINGING CHARCOAL, &C. TO MEXICO.]
Trains of mules are continually pa.s.sing with their heavy loads of wood and charcoal, bales of goods and barrels of aguardiente de cana, which is rum made from the sugar-cane, but not coloured like that which comes to England. The men are continually rus.h.i.+ng backwards and forwards among their beasts, which are not content with kicking and biting, and banging against one another, but are always trying to lie down in the road; and one of the princ.i.p.al duties of the arriero is constantly to keep an eye on all his beasts at once, and, when he sees one preparing to lie down, to be beforehand with him, and drive him on by a furious shower of blows, kicks, and curses. Certainly, the Mexican mules are the finest and strongest in the world; and, though they are just as obstinate here as elsewhere, they are worth two or three times as much as horses.
Our road lies through a forest of pines and oaks, which reaches to the summit of the pa.s.s, where stands a wretched little village, La Guarda.
There we had a thoroughly Mexican breakfast, with pulque in tall tumblers, and endless successions of tortillas, coming in hot and hot from the kitchen, where we could see brown women with bare arms, and black hair plaited in long tails, kneeling by the charcoal fire, and industriously patting out fresh supplies, and baking them rapidly on a hot plate. The _piece de resistance_ was a stew, bright red with tomatas, and hot as fire with chile; and then came the _frijoles_--the black beans--without which no Mexican, high or low, considers a meal complete. The walls of the room were decorated with highly coloured engravings, one of which represented an engagement between a Spanish and an English fleet, in which the English s.h.i.+ps are being boarded by the victorious Spaniards, or are being blown up in the background.
Where the engagement was I cannot recollect. People in Mexico, to whom I mentioned this remarkable historical event, a.s.sured me that there are still to be seen pictures of the destruction of the English fleet by the French and Spaniards in the Bay of Trafalgar!
Mexico was always, until the establishment of the republic, profoundly ignorant of European affairs. In the old times, when the intercourse with the mother-country was by the great s.h.i.+p, ”el nao,” which came once a year, the government at home could have just such news circulated through the country as seemed proper and convenient to them.
We see in our own times how despotic governments can mystify their subjects, and distort contemporary history into what shape they please.