Part 15 (1/2)
We rode through the plain to Cholula. Our number was now four; for, besides Antonio, we had engaged another servant a few days before. We wanted some one who knew this district well; and when a friend of ours mentioned that there was a young man to be had who had a good horse and was a smuggler by profession, we engaged him directly, and he proved a great acquisition. Of course, from the nature of his trade, he knew every bypath between Mexico and the tobacco-districts towards which we were going; he was always ready with an expedient whenever there was a difficulty, he was never tired and never out of temper. As for the morality of his peculiar profession, it probably does harm to the honesty of the people; but, considering it as a question of abstract justice, we must remember that almost the whole of the taxes which the Mexicans are compelled to pay to the general government are utterly wasted upon paying officials who do nothing but intrigue, and keeping up armies which--far from being a protection to life and property--are a permanent and most destructive nuisance. The contract between government and subject ought to be a two-sided one; and when the government so entirely misuses the taxes paid by the people, I am quite inclined to sympathize with the subjects who will not pay them if they can help it.
We scarcely entered the town of Cholula, which is a poor place now, though it was a great city at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The Spanish city of Puebla, only a few miles off, quite ruined it.
We went straight to the great pyramid, which lies close to the town, and which had been rising before us like a hill during the last miles of our journey. This extraordinary structure is perhaps the oldest ruin in Mexico, and certainly the largest. A close examination of its structure in places where the outline is still to some extent preserved, and a comparison of it with better preserved structures of the same kind, make it quite clear that it was a terraced _teocalli_, resembling the drawing called the ”Pyramid of Cholula,” in Humboldt's _Vues des Cordilleres_. But let no one imagine that the well-defined and symmetrical structure represented in that drawing is in the least like what we saw, and from which Humboldt made the rough sketch, which he and his artist afterwards ”idealized” for his great work. At the present day, the appearance of the structure is that of a shapeless tree-grown hill; and until the traveller comes quite close to it he may be excused for not believing that it is an artificial mound at all.
The pyramid is built of rows of bricks baked in the sun, and cemented together with mortar in which had been stuck quant.i.ties of small stones, fragments of pottery, and bits of obsidian knives and weapons.
Between rows of bricks are alternate layers of clay. It was built in four terraces, of which traces are still to be distinguished; and is about 200 feet high. Upon the platform at the top stand some trees and a church. The sides front the four cardinal points, and the base line is of immense length, over thirteen hundred feet, so that the ascent is very gradual.
When we reached Cholula we sent the two men to enquire in the neighbourhood for antiquities, of which numbers are to be found in every ploughed field round. At the top of the pyramid we held a market, and got some curious things, all of small size however. Among them was a mould for making little jackal-heads in the clay, ready for baking; the little earthen heads which are found in such quant.i.ties in the country being evidently made by wholesale in moulds of this kind, not modelled separately. We got also several terra-cotta stamps, used in old times for stamping coloured patterns upon the native cloth, and perhaps also for ornamenting vases and other articles of earthenware.
Cholula used to be a famous place for making pottery, and its red-and-black ware was famous at the time of the Conquest, but the trade now seems to have left it. We were struck by observing that, though there was plenty of coloured pottery to be found in the neighbourhood of the pyramid, the pyramid itself had only fragments of uncoloured ware imbedded in its structure; which seems to prove that it was built before the art of colouring pottery was invented.
They have cut a road through one corner of the pyramid, and this cutting exposed a chamber within. Humboldt describes this chamber as roofed with blocks, each overlapping the one before, till they can be made to meet by a block of ordinary size. This is the false arch so common in Egypt and Peru, and in the ruined cities of Central America.
Every child who builds houses with a box of bricks discovers it for himself. The bridge at Tezcuco, already described, is much more remarkable in its structure. Whether our inspection was careless, or whether the chamber has fallen in since Humboldt's time, I cannot say, but we missed this peculiar roof.
There are several legends about the Pyramid of Cholula. That recorded by Humboldt on the authority of a certain Dominican friar, Pedro de los Rios, I mention--not because of its intrinsic value, which is very slight, but because it will enable us to see the way in which legends grew up under the hands of the early missionaries, who were delighted to find fragments of Scripture-history among the traditions of the Ancient Mexicans, and who seem to have taken down from the lips of their converts, as native traditions, the very Bible-stories that they had been teaching them, mixed however with other details, of which it is hard to say whether they were imagined on purpose to fill up gaps in the story, or whether they were really of native traditional origin.
Pedro de los Rios' story tells us that the land of Anahuac was inhabited by giants; that there was a great deluge, which devastated the earth; that all the inhabitants were turned into fishes, except seven who took refuge in a cave (apparently with their wives). Years after the waters had subsided, and the earth had been re-peopled by these seven men, their leader began to build a vast pyramid, whose top should reach to heaven. He built it of bricks baked in the sun, which were brought from a great distance, pa.s.sing them from hand to hand by a file of men. The G.o.ds were enraged at the presumption of these men, and they sent down fire from heaven upon the pyramid, which caused its building to be discontinued. It is stated that at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the inhabitants of Cholula preserved with great veneration a large aerolite, which they said was the thunderbolt that fell upon the top of the pyramid when the fire struck it.
The history of the confusion of tongues seems also to have existed in the country, not long after the Conquest, having very probably been learnt from the missionaries; but it does not seem to have been connected with the Tower-of-Babel legend of Cholula. Something like it at least appears in the Gemelli table of Mexican migrations, reproduced in Humboldt, where a bird in a tree is sending down a number of tongues to a crowd of men standing below.
I think we need not hesitate in condemning the legend of Cholula, which I have just related, as not genuine, or at least as partly of late fabrication. But we fortunately possess another version of it, which shows the legend to have developed itself farther than was quite discreet. A MS. history, written by Duran in 1579, and quoted by the Abbe Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg, relates that people built the pyramid to reach heaven, finding clay or mud _(”terre glaise”)_ and a very sticky _bitumen (”bitume fort gluant”)_, with which they began at once to build, &c. This is evidently the slime or bitumen of the Book of Genesis; but I believe I may safely a.s.sert that the Mexicans never used bitumen for any such purpose, and that it is not found anywhere near Cholula.
The Aztec historians ascribe the building of the Pyramid of Cholula to the prophet Quetzalcoatl. The legends which relate to this celebrated personage are to be found in writers on Mexican history, and, more fully than elsewhere, in the Abbe Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg's work.
I am inclined to consider Quetzalcoatl a real personage, and not a mythical one. He is said to have been a white, bearded man, to have come from the East, to have reigned in Tollan, and to have been driven out from thence by the votaries of human sacrifices, which he opposed.
He took refuge in Cholollan, now called Cholula (which means the ”place of the fugitive”), and taught the inhabitants to work in metals, to observe various fasts and festivals, to use the Toltec calendar of days and years, and to perform penance to appease the G.o.ds.
A relic of the father of Quetzalcoatl is said to have been kept until after the Spanish Conquest, when it was opened, and found to contain a quant.i.ty of fair human hair. The prophet himself departed from Cholula, and put to sea in a canoe, promising to return. So strong was the belief in the tradition of these events among the Aztecs, that when the Spaniards appeared on the coast, they were supposed to be of the race of the prophet, and the strange conduct of Montezuma to Cortes is to be ascribed to the influence of this belief.
There is a singular legend, mentioned by the Abbe Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg, of a white man, with a hooded robe and white beard, bearing a cross in his hand, who lands at Tehuantepec (on the Pacific coast of Mexico), and introduces among the Indians auricular confession, penance, and vows of chast.i.ty.
The coming of white, bearded men from the East, centuries before the Spanish invasion in the 16th century, and the introduction of new arts and rites by them in Mexico, is as certain as most historical events of which we have only legendary knowledge. As to who they were I cannot offer an opinion. There are, however, one or two points connected with the presence of the Irish and Northmen in America in the 9th and following centuries--a period not very far from that ascribed to Quetzalcoatl--which are worthy of notice.
The Scandinavian antiquarians make the ”white-man's land”
_(Hvitramannaland)_ extend down as far as Florida, on the very Gulf of Mexico. It is curious to notice the coincidence between the remark of Bernal Diaz, that the Mexicans called their priests _papa_ (more properly _papahua_), and that in the old Norse Chronicle, which tells of the first colonization of Iceland by the Northmen, and relates that they found living there ”Christian men whom the Northmen call _Papa_.”
These latter are shown by the context to have been Irish priests. The Aztec root _teo (teo-tl, G.o.d)_ comes nearer to the Greek and Latin, but is not unlike the Irish _dia_, and the Norse _ty-r_. The Aztec root _col_ (charcoal) is exactly the Norse _kol_ (our word _coat_), but not so near to the Irish _gual_. It is desirable to notice such coincidences, even when they are too slight to ground an argument upon.
This seems to be the proper place to mention the many Christian a.n.a.logies to be found in the customs of the ancient Aztecs.
Children were sprinkled with water when their names were given to them.
This is certainly true, though the statement that they believed that the process purified them from original sin is probably a monkish fiction. Water was consecrated by the priests, and was supposed thus to acquire magical qualities. In the coronation of kings, anointing was part of the ceremony, as well as the use of holy water. The festival of All Souls' Day reminds us of the Aztec feasts of the Dead in the autumn of each year; and in Mexico the Indians still keep up some of their old rites on that day. There was a singular rite observed by the Aztecs, which they called the _teoqualo_, that is, ”the eating of the G.o.d.” A figure of one of their G.o.ds was made in dough, and after certain ceremonies they made a pretence of killing it, and divided it into morsels, which were eaten by the votaries as a kind of sacred food.
We may add to the list the habitual use of incense in the ceremonies: the existence of monasteries and nunneries, in which the monks wore long hair, but the nuns had their hair cut off: and the use of the cross as a religious emblem in Mexico and Central America.