Anahuac Part 13

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 flourishing 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 worship 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 relationship 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, punishing 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.

Things ought not to be so in England, but we need hardly wonder at their being still worse in Mexico in this respect as in all others.

There have been twenty changes of government in ten years, and sometimes extreme severity has been the rule, which may change at a day's notice into the extreme of mildness. In Santa Ana's time the utmost rigour of the law prevailed. Our friends in the Calle Seminario, as they came back from their morning's ride in the Paseo, had to pa.s.s through the great square; and used to see there, day after day, pairs of garotted malefactors sitting bolt upright in the high wooden chairs they had just been executed in, with a frightful calm look on their dead faces.

For the last year or so all this had ceased, and there had scarcely been an execution. It seems that one princ.i.p.al reason of this lenity is that the government is too weak to support its judges; and that the ministers of justice are actually intimidated by threats mysteriously conveyed to witnesses and authorities, that, if such or such a criminal is executed, his friends have sworn to avenge his death, and are on the look-out, every man with his knife ready. To political offences the same mercy is extended. In the early times of the war of independence, and for years afterwards, when one leader caught an officer on the other side, he had him tried by a drum-head court-martial, and shot.

Since then it has come to be better understood that civil war is waged for the benefit of individuals who wish for their turn of power and their pull at the public purse; and the successful leader spares his opponent, not caring to establish a precedent which might prove so very inconvenient to himself.

We were taken to see the garotte by the President, who took it out of its little mahogany case, into which it was fitted like any other surgical instrument. We noticed that it was rusty, and indeed it had not been used for many months. It is not worth while to describe it.

Mexican law well administered is bad enough, not essentially unjust, but hampered with endless quibbles and technicalities, quite justifying the Spanish proverb, "_Mas vale una mala composicion que un buen pleito_,"--a bad compromise is better than a good lawsuit. As things stand now, the law of any case is the least item in the account, there are so many ways of working upon judges and witnesses. Bribery first and foremost; and--if that fails--personal intimidation, political influence, private friendship, and the _compadrazgo_. Naturally, if you have a lawsuit or are tried for a crime, you should lay a good foundation. This is done by working upon the _Juez de primera instancia_, who corresponds in some degree to the _Juge d'instruction_ in France. This functionary is wretchedly paid, so that a small sum is acceptable to him; and, moreover, the records of the case, as tried by him, form the basis of all future litigation, so that it is very bad economy not to get him into proper order. If you do not, it will cost you three times as much afterwards. If your suit is with a soldier or a priest, the ordinary tribunals will not help you. These two cla.s.ses--the most influential in the community--have their _fuero_, their special jurisdiction; and woe to the unfortunate civilian who attacks them in their own courts!

Don Miguel Lerdo do Tejada, whose sense of humour occasionally peeps out from among his statistics, remarks gravely that "the clergy has its special legislation, which consists of the Sacred Volumes, the decision of General and Provincial Councils, the Pontifical Decretals, and doctrines of the Holy Fathers." Of what sort of justice is dealt out in that court, one may form some faint idea.

One of our friends in Mexico had a house which was too large for him, and in a moment of weakness he let part of it to a priest. Two years afterwards, when we made his acquaintance, he was hard at work trying, not to get his rent, he had given up that idea long before, but to get the priest out. I believe that, eventually, he gave him something handsome to take his departure.

I have often quoted Don Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, and shall do so again.

His statistics of the country for 1856 are given in a broad sheet, and seem to be generally reliable. The annual balance-sheet of the country he sums up in three lines--

Annual Expenditure . . . . . . 25,000,000 dollars.

Annual Revenue . . . . . . . . 15,000,000 dollars.

---------- Annual Deficit . . . . . . . . 10,000,000 dollars.

The President of the Ayuntamiento was a pleasant person to know, among the dishonest, intriguing Mexican officials. He received but little pay in return for a great deal of hard work; but he liked to be in office for the opportunities it afforded him of improving the condition of the poor of the city. It was a sight to see the prisoners crowd round him as he entered the court. They all knew him, and it was quite evident they all considered him as a friend. In what little can be done for the ignorant and dest.i.tute under the unfavourable circ.u.mstances of the country, Don Miguel has had a large share; but until an orderly government, that is, a foreign one, succeeds to the present anarchy, not very much can be done.

I mentioned the word "_compadrazgo_" a little way back. The thing itself is curious, and quite novel to an Englishman of the present day.

The G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers of a child become, by their partic.i.p.ation in the ceremony, relations to one another and to the priest who baptizes the child, and call one another ever afterwards _compadre_ and _comadre_. Just such a relationship was once expressed by the word "gossip," "G.o.d-sib," that is "akin in G.o.d." Gossip has quite degenerated from its old meaning, and even "sib," though good English in Chaucer's time, is now only to be found in provincial dialects; but in German "sipp" still means "kin."

In Mexico this connexion obliges the compadres and comadres to hospitality and honesty and all sorts of good offices towards one another; and it is wonderful how conscientiously this obligation is kept to, even by people who have no conscience at all for the rest of the world. A man who will cheat his own father or his own son will keep faith with his _compadre_. To such an extent does this influence become mixed up with all sorts of affairs, and so important is it, that it is necessary to count it among the things that tend to alter the course of justice in the country.

The French have the words _compere_ and _commere_; and it is curious to observe that the name of _compere_ is given to the confederate of the juggler, who stands among the crowd, and slyly helps in the performance of the trick.

We went one day to the Hospital of San Lazaro. I have mentioned the word "_lepero_" as applied to the poor and idle cla.s.s of half-caste Mexicans. It is only a term of reproach, exactly corresponding to the "_lazzarone_" of Naples, who resembles the Mexican lepers in his social condition, and whose name implies the same thing; for, of course, Saint Lazarus is the patron saint of lepers and foul beggars. There are some few real lepers in Mexico, who are obliged by law to be shut up in this hospital. We rather expected to see something like what one reads of the treatment of lepers which prevailed in Europe until a few years ago--shutting them up in dismal dens cut off from communication with other human beings. We were agreeably disappointed. They were confined, it is true, but in a s.p.a.cious building, with court-yard and garden; their nurses and attendants appeared to be very kind to them; and it seems that many charitable people come to visit the inmates, and bring them cigars and other small luxuries, to relieve the monotony of their dismal lives. Some had their faces horribly distorted by the falling of the corners of the eyes and mouth, and the disappearance of the cartilage of the nose; and a few, in whom the disease had terminated in a sort of gangrene, were frightful objects, with their features scarcely distinguishable; but in the majority of cases the leprosy had caused a gradual disappearance of the ends of the fingers and toes, and even of the whole hands and feet. The limbs thus mutilated looked as though the parts which were wanting had been amputated, and the wound had quite healed over, but it is caused by a gradual absorption without wound and without pain. As every one knows, leprosy of these kinds was held until quite lately to be dangerously contagious; but, fortunately for the poor creatures themselves, this is quite clearly proved to be false, and the lepers are only shut up that they may have no children, for the affection appears to be hereditary.

It was early one morning, when we were going out to breakfast at Tisapan, that Don Juan recounted to us his experience of garrotted malefactors sitting dead in their chairs in the great square across which we were riding. "It was really almost enough to spoil a fellow's breakfast," he added pathetically. Though an Englishman, and only arrived in the country a few years before, Don Juan was as clever with the lazo as most Mexicans, and could _colear_ a bull in great style.

Indeed, we had started early that morning in order to have time enough to look at the bulls in the _potreros_--the great gra.s.s-meadows--that lie for miles outside the city, and which are made immensely fertile by flooding from time to time. Wherever we saw a bull in the distance, Don Juan and his grand little horse _Pancho_ plunged over a bank and through a gap, and we after him. No one ever leaps anything in this country, indeed the form of the saddle puts it out of the question. One or two bulls looked up as we entered the enclosure, and bolted into other fields, pushing in among the thorns of the aloes which formed close hedges of fixed bayonets round the meadows. At last Don Juan cut off the retreat of an old bull, and galloping after him like mad, flung the running loop of the lazo over his horns, at the same time winding the other end round the pummel of his saddle. The bull was still standing on all four legs, pulling with all its might against Pancho.

Galloping after him, so as to slacken the end of the lazo, we contrived to transfer it from Don Juan's saddle to mine. Now my own horse happened to be a little lame, and I was riding a poor little black beast whose bones really seemed to rattle in his skin. Our acquaintances in the Paseo had been quite facetious about him, recommending us to be careful and not to smoke up against him, for fear we should blow him over, and otherwise whetting their wit upon him. He acquitted himself very creditably, however, and when the bull began to pull against him, he leant over on the other side, as if he had been galloping round a circus; and the bull could not move him an inch. It was quite evident that it was not his first experiment. In the mean time Don Juan had dropped the noose of my lazo just before the bull's nose, and presently that animal incautiously put his foot into it, when Don Juan whipped it up round his leg and went off at full gallop. My little black horse knew perfectly well what had happened, though his head was exactly in the opposite direction; and he tugged with all his might, and leant over more than ever. The two lazos tightened with a tw.a.n.g, as though they had been guitar-strings; and in a moment the unfortunate bull was rolling with all his legs in the air, in the midst of a whirlwind of dust. Having thus humiliated him we let him go, and off he went at full speed. All this time the proprietor of the field was tranquilly standing on a bank, looking on. Far from raging at us for treating his property in this free and easy manner, he returned our salutation when we rode up to him, and, addressing our sporting countryman, said, "Well done, old fellow, come another day and try again."

Our whole ride to Tisapan was enlivened by a series of Don Juan's exploits. He raced after bulls, got hold of their tails, and coleared them over into the dust. He lazo'd everything in the road, from milestones and trunks of trees upwards; and I shall never forget our meeting with a great mule which was trotting along the road without a burden,--just as he pa.s.sed us, our companion slipped the noose round his hind leg, and the beast went down as if he had been shot, the muleteers pulling up on purpose to have a good open-mouthed laugh at the incident.

We seemed to be in rather a sporting line that day, for, after our return from Tisapan, Don Juan and I went to see a c.o.c.kfight. In Mexico, as in Cuba and all Spanish America, this is the favourite sport of the people. In Cuba, the princ.i.p.al shopkeeper in every village keeps the c.o.c.kpit--the "_plaza de gallos_." The people from the whole district round about come in on Sunday to the village, with a triple object; _first_, to hear ma.s.s; _secondly_, to buy their supplies for the ensuing week; and _thirdly_, to spend the afternoon in c.o.c.kfighting, at which amus.e.m.e.nt it is easy to win or lose two or three hundred pounds in an afternoon. The custom that the c.o.c.kpit brings to the shop more than repays the proprietor for the expense and trouble of keeping it.

In Cuba, the spurs of the c.o.c.k are artificially pointed by paring with a penknife, but the Mexican way of arming them is even more abominable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STEEL c.o.c.k-SPURS (8 inches long), WITH SHEATH AND PADDING.]

Each bird has a sharp steel knife three or four inches long, just like a little scythe-blade, fastened over the natural spur before the fight commences. A leather sheath covers the weapon while the c.o.c.ks are being put into the ring, and held with their beaks almost touching till they are furious. Then they are drawn back to opposite sides of the ring, the sheaths are taken off, and they fly at one another, giving desperate cuts with the steel blades.

The c.o.c.kpit was a small round wooden shed, with the ring in the middle, and circular benches round it, rising one above another. The place was full of people, mostly Mexicans of the lower orders, smoking, betting, and talking sporting-slang. The betting was surprising, when one compared its amount with the appearance of the spectators, among whom there was hardly a decent coat to be seen. Every now and then, a dirty scoundrel in a shabby leather jacket would walk round the ring with a handful of gold, offering the odds--ten to five, ten to seven, ten to nine, or whatever they might be, in gold ounces, which coins are worth above three pounds apiece.