Part 13 (1/2)
Our reckoning only became more exact than this when we adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and the people marched about the streets in procession, crying ”Give us back our eleven days!” Perhaps this is not quite a fair way of putting the case, however, for the new style would have been adopted in our country long before, had it not been a Romish inst.i.tution. It was the deliberate opinion of the English, as of people in other Protestant countries, that it was much better to have the almanack a few days wrong than to adopt a Popish innovation. One often hears of the Papal Bull which settles the question of the earth's standing still. The history of the Gregorian calendar is not a bad set-off against it on the other side. At any rate, the new style was not introduced anywhere until sixty or seventy years after the discovery of Mexico, and five hundred years after the introduction of the Toltec calendar in Mexico.
The Mexican calendar-stone should be photographed on a large scale, and studied yet more carefully than it has been, for only a part of the divided circles which surround it have been explained. It should be photographed, because, to my certain knowledge, Mayer's drawing gives the year, above the figure of the sun which indicates the date of the calendar, quite wrongly; and yet, presuming on his own accuracy, he accuses another writer of leaving out the hieroglyph of the winter solstice. What is much more strange is, that Humboldt's drawing in the small edition of the _Vues des Cordilleres_ is wrong in both points.
The drawing in Nebel's great work is probably the best. As to the wax models which Mr. Christy and I bought in Mexico, in the innocence of our hearts, a nearer inspection showed that the artist, observing that the circle of days would divide more neatly into sixteen parts than into twenty, had arranged his divisions accordingly; apparently leaving out the four hieroglyphics which he considered the ugliest.
The details made out at present on the calendar are as follows:--the summer and winter solstices, the spring and autumn equinoxes, the two pa.s.sages of the Sun over the zenith of Mexico, and some dates which possibly belong to religious festivals. The dates of the two zenith-transits are especially interesting; for, as they vary with the lat.i.tude, they must have been made out by actual observation in Mexico itself, and not borrowed from some more civilised people in the distant countries through which the Mexicans migrated. This fact alone is sufficient to prove a considerable practical knowledge of astronomy.
Besides this, the Mexican cycle of fifty-two years seems to be indicated in the circle outside the signs of days, and also the days in the priestly year of 260 days; but to make these numbers, we must allow for the compartments supposed to be hidden by the projecting rays of the sun.
The arrangement of the Mexican cycle of fifty-two years is very curious. They had four signs of years, _tochtli, acatl, tecpatl_, and _calli_,--_rabbit, canes, flint_, and _house_; and against these signs they ranged numbers, from 1 to 13, so that a cycle exactly corresponds to a pack of cards, the four signs being the four suits, thirteen of each. Now, any one would suppose that in making such a reckoning, they would first take one suit, count _one, two, three_, &c. in it, up to 13, and then begin another suit. This is not the Mexican idea, however.
Their reckoning is 1 _tochtli_, 2 _acatl_, 3 _tecpatl_, &c., just as it may be made with the cards thus: ace of hearts, two of diamonds, 3 of spades, 4 of clubs, 5 of hearts, 6 of diamonds, and so on through the pack. The correspondence between the cycle of 52 years, divided among 4 signs, and our year of 52 weeks, divided among 4 seasons, is also curious, though as entirely accidental as the resemblance to the pack of cards, for the Mexican week (if we may call it so) consisted of 5 days instead of 7, which to a great extent nullifies the comparison.
The reckoning of days is still more c.u.mbrous. It consists of the days of the week written in succession from 1 to 13, underneath these the 20 signs of days, and underneath these again another series of 9 signs; so that each day was distinguished by a combination of a number and two signs, which combination could not belong to any other day.
The date of the year at the top of the calendar is 13 _acatl_ (13 canes), which stands for 1479, 1427, 1375, 1323, and so on, subtracting 52 years each time. Now, why was this year chosen? It was not the beginning of a cycle, but the 26th year; and so, in ascertaining the meaning of the dates on the calendar, allowance has to be made for six days which have been gained by the leap-years only being adjusted at the end of the cycle; but this certainly offers no advantage whatever; and if an arbitrary date had been chosen to start the calendar with, of course it would have been the first year of a cycle. The year may have been chosen in commemoration of the foundation of Mexico or Tenocht.i.tlan, which historians give as somewhere about 1324 or 1325.
The sign 13 _acatl_ would stand for 1323. It is more likely that the date merely refers to the year in which the calendar was put up. As such a ma.s.sive and elaborate piece of sculpture could only belong to the most flouris.h.i.+ng period of the Aztec empire, the year indicated would be 1279, nine years before the building of the great pyramid close by.
Baron Humboldt's celebrated argument to prove the Asiatic origin of the Mexicans is princ.i.p.ally founded upon the remarkable resemblance of this system of cycles in reckoning years to those found in use in different parts of Asia. For instance, we may take that described by Hue and Gabet as still existing in Tartary and Thibet, which consists of one set of signs, _wood, fire, earth_, &c., combined with a set of names of animals, _mouse, ox, tiger_, &c. The combination is made almost exactly in the same way as that in which the Aztecs combine their signs and numbers, as for instance, the year of the fire-pig, the iron-hare, &c.
If these were simple systems of counting years, or even if, although difficult, they had some advantages to offer, we might suppose that two different races in want of a system to count their years by, had devised them independently. But, in fact, both the Asiatic and the Mexican cycles are not only most intricate and troublesome to work, but by the constant liability to confound one cycle with another, they lead to endless mistakes. Hue says that the Mongols, to get over this difficulty, affix a special name to all the years of each king's reign, as for instance, ”the year Tao-Kouang of the fire-ram;” apparently not seeing that to give the special name and the number of the year of the reign, and call it the 44th year of Tao-Kouang, would answer the same purpose, with one-tenth of the trouble.
Not only are the Mexican and Asiatic systems alike in the singular principle they go upon, but there are resemblances in the signs used that seem too close for chance.[20] The other arguments which tend to prove that the Mexicans either came from the Old World or had in some way been brought into connexion with tribes from thence, are princ.i.p.ally founded on coincidences in customs and traditions. We must be careful to eliminate from them all such as we can imagine to have originated from the same outward causes at work in both hemispheres, and from the fact that man is fundamentally the same everywhere. To take an instance from Peru. We find the Incas there calling themselves ”Child of the Sun,” and marrying their own sisters, just as the Egyptian kings did. But this proves nothing whatever as to connexion between the two people. The wors.h.i.+p of the Sun, the giver of light and heat, may easily spring up among different people without any external teaching; and what more natural, among imperfectly civilized tribes, than that the monarch should claim relations.h.i.+p with the divinity? And the second custom was introduced that the royal race might be kept unmixed.
Thus, when we find the Aztecs burning incense before their G.o.ds, kings, and great men, and propitiating their deities with human sacrifices, we can conclude nothing from this. But we find them baptizing their children, anointing their kings, and sprinkling them with holy water, punis.h.i.+ng the crime of adultery by stoning the criminals to death, and practising several other Old World usages of which I have already spoken. We must give some weight to these coincidences.
Of some of the supposed Aztec Bible-traditions I have already spoken in no very high terms. There is another tradition, however, resting upon unimpeachable evidence, which relates the occurrence of a series of destructions and regenerations of the world, and recalls in the most striking manner the Indian cosmogony; and, when added to the argument from the similarity of the systems of astronomical notation of Mexico and Asia, goes far towards proving a more or less remote connection between the inhabitants of the two continents.
There is another side to the question, however, as has been stated already. How could the Mexicans have had these traditions and customs from the Old World, and not have got the knowledge of some of the commonest arts of life from the same source? As I have said, they do not seem to have known the proper way of putting the handle on to a stone-hammer; and, though they used bronze, they had not applied it to making such things as knives and spear-heads. They had no beasts of burden; and, though there were animals in the country which they probably might have domesticated and milked, they had no idea of anything of the kind. They had oil, and employed it for various purposes, but had no notion of using it or wax for burning. They lighted their houses with pine-torches; and in fact the Aztec name for a pine-torch--_ocotl_--was transferred to candles when they were introduced.
Though they were a commercial people, and had several subst.i.tutes for money--such as cacao-grains, quills of gold-dust, and pieces of tin of a particular shape, they had no knowledge of the art of weighing anything, but sold entirely by tale and measure. This statement, made by the best authorities, their language tends to confirm. After the Conquest they made the word _tlapexouia_ out of the Spanish ”peso,” and also gave the meaning of weighing to two other words which mean properly _to measure_ and _to divide equally_. Had they had a proper word of their own for the process, we should find it. The Mexicans scarcely ever adopted a Spanish word even for Spanish animals or implements, if they could possibly make their own language serve. They called a sheep an _ichcatl_, literally a ”_thread-thing_,” or ”_cotton_”: a gun a ”_fire-trumpet_:” and sulphur ”_fire-trumpet-earth_.” And yet, a people ignorant of some of the commonest arts had extraordinary knowledge of astronomy, and even knew the real cause of eclipses,[21] and represented them in their sacred dances.
Set the difficulties on one side of the question against those on the other, and they will nearly balance. We must wait for further evidence.
Our friend Don Jose Miguel Cervantes, the President of the Ayuntamiento, took us one day to see the great prison of Mexico, the Acordada. As to the prison itself, it is a great gloomy building, with its rooms and corridors arranged round two courtyards, one appropriated to the men, the other to the women. A few of the men were at work making shoes and baskets, but most were sitting and lying about in the sun, smoking cigarettes and talking together in knots, the young ones hard at work taking lessons in villainy from the older hands; just the old story.
Offenders of all orders, from drunkards and vagrants up to highway robbers and murderers, all were mixed indiscriminately together. But we should remember that in England twenty years ago it was usual for prisons to be such places as this; and even now, in spite of model prisons and severe discipline, the miserable results of our prison-system show, as plainly as can be, that when we have caught our criminal we do not in the least know how to reform him, now that our colonists have refused him the only chance he ever had.
It is bad enough to mix together these men under the most favourable circ.u.mstances for corrupting one another. Every man must come out worse than he went in; but this wrong is not so great as that which the untried prisoners suffer in being forced into the society of condemned criminals, while their trials drag on from session to session, through the endless technicalities and quibbles of Spanish law.
We made rather a curious observation in this prison. When one enters such a place in Europe, one expects to see in a moment, by the faces and demeanour of the occupants, that most of them belong to a special criminal cla.s.s, brought up to a life of crime which is their only possible career, belonging naturally to police-courts and prisons, herding together when out of prison in their own districts and their own streets, and carefully avoided by the rest of society. You may know a London thief when you see him; he carries his profession in his face and in the very curl of his hair. Now in this prison there was nothing of the kind to be seen. The inmates were brown Indians and half-bred Mexicans, appearing generally to belong to the poorest cla.s.s, but just like the average of the people in the streets outside. As my companion said, ”If these fellows are thieves and murderers, so are our servants, and so is every man in a serape we meet in the streets, for all we can tell to the contrary.” There was positively nothing at all peculiar about them.
If they had been all Indians we might have been easily deceived.
Nothing can be more true than Humboldt's observation that the Indian face differs so much from ours that it is only after years of experience that a European can learn to distinguish the varieties of feature by which character can be judged of. He mistakes peculiarities which belong to the race in general for personal characteristics; and the thickness of the skin serves still more to mask the expression of their faces. But the greater part of these men were Mexicans of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, and their faces are pretty much European.
The only explanation we could give of this ident.i.ty of character inside the prison and outside is not flattering to the Mexican people, but I really believe it to be true. We came to the conclusion that the prisoners did not belong to a cla.s.s apart, but that they were a tolerably fair specimen of the poorer population of the table-lands of Mexico. They had been more tempted than others, or they had been more unlucky, and that was why they were here.
There were perhaps a thousand prisoners in the place, two men to one woman. Their crimes were--one-third, drunken disturbance and vagrancy; another third, robberies of various kinds; a fourth, wounding and homicides, mostly arising out of quarrels; leaving a small residue for all other crimes.
Our idea was confirmed by many foreigners who had lived long in the country and had been brought into personal contact with the people.
Every Mexican, they said, has a thief and a murderer in him, which the slightest provocation will bring out. This of course is an exaggeration, but there is a great deal of truth in it. The crimes in the prison-calendar belong as characteristics to the population in general. Highway-robbery, cutting and wounding in drunken brawls, and deliberate a.s.sa.s.sination, are offences which prevail among the half-white Mexicans; while stealing is common to them and the pure Indian population. We noticed several instances of bigamy, a crime which Mexican law is very severe upon. As far as we could judge by the amount of punishment inflicted, it is a greater crime to marry two women than to kill two men. In one gallery are the cells for criminals condemned to death, but the occupants were allowed to mix freely with the rest of the prisoners, and they seemed comfortable enough.
Everybody knows how much in England the condition of a prisoner depends on the disposition of the governor in office and the system in vogue for the moment. The mere words of his sentence do not indicate at all what his fate will be. He comes in--under Sir John--to light labour, much schoolmaster and chaplain, and the expectation of a ticket-of-leave when a fraction of his time is expired. All at once Sir James supersedes Sir John, and with him comes in a regime of hard work, short rations, and the black hole. If he had been ”in” a month sooner, he would have been ”out” now with those more fortunate criminals, his late companions.