Anahuac Part 17

I suppose the reason of this is to be found in the habits and const.i.tution of the tribes who colonized the country, and preferred to settle in a climate resembling that of their native land, without troubling themselves about the extra labour it would cost them to obtain their food. The European invaders have acted precisely in the same way; and the distribution of the white and partly white inhabitants of the country follows the same rule as that of the Indians.

So far the matter is intelligible, on the principle that the const.i.tution and habits of the races which have successively taken up their residence in the country have been strong enough to prevail over the rule which regulates the supply of men by the abundance of food; but this does not explain the fact of an actual diminution of the inhabitants of the lower temperate districts. They were not mere migratory tribes, staying for a few years before moving forward. They had been settled in the country long enough to be perfectly acclimatized; and yet, under circ.u.mstances apparently so favourable to their increase, they have been diminishing for centuries, and are perhaps even doing so now.

The only intelligible solution I can find for this problem is that given by Sartorius, whose work on Mexico is well known in Germany, and has been translated and published in England. This author's remarks on the condition of the Indians are very valuable; and, as he was for years a planter in this very district, he may be taken as an excellent authority on the subject. He considers the evil to lie princ.i.p.ally in the diet and habits of the people. The children are not weaned till very late, and then are allowed to feed all day without restriction on boiled maize, or beans, or whatever other vegetable diet may be eaten by the family. The climate does not dispose them to take much exercise; so that this unwholesome cramming with vegetable food has nothing to counteract its evil effects, and the poor little children get miserably pot-bellied and scrofulous,--an observation of which we can confirm the truth. A great proportion of the children die young, and those that grow up have their const.i.tutions impaired. Then they live in close communities, and marry "in-and-in," so that the effect of unhealthy living becomes strengthened into hereditary disease; and habitual intemperance does its work upon their const.i.tutions, though the quant.i.ties of raw spirits they consume appear to produce scarcely any immediate effect. Among a race in this bodily condition, the ordinary epidemics of the country--cholera, small-pox, and dysentery--make fearful havoc. Whole villages have often been depopulated in a few days by these diseases; and a deadly fever which used to appear from time to time among the Indians, until the last century, sometimes carried off ten thousand and twenty thousand at once. It seemed to me worth while to make some remarks about this question, with a view of showing that the theory as to the relation between food and population, though partly true, is not wholly so; and that in the region of which we have been speaking it can be clearly shown to fail.

After spending a long morning with the Indians and their _cura_, we took quite an affectionate leave of them. Their last words were an apology for making us pay threepence apiece for the pineapples which we loaded our horses with. In the season, they said, twelve for sixpence is the price, but the fruit was scarce and dear as yet.

Our companion, besides being engaged in the Orizaba cotton-mill, was one of the owners of the sugar-hacienda of the Potrero, below Cordova, and we all rode down there together from the Indian village, and spent the evening in walking about the plantation, and inspecting the new machinery and mills. It was a pleasant sight to see the people coming to the well with their earthen jars, after their work was done, in an unceasing procession, laughing and chattering. They were partly Indian, but with a considerable admixture of negro blood, for many black slaves were brought into the country in old times by the Spanish planters.

Now, of course, they and their descendants are free, and the hotter parts of Mexico are the paradise of runaway slaves from Louisiana and Texas; for, so far from their race being despised, the Indian women seek them as husbands, liking their liveliness and good humour better than the quieter ways of their own countrymen. Even Europeans settled in Mexico sometimes take wives of negro blood.

I have never noticed in any country so large a number of mixed races, whose parentage is indicated by their features and complexion. In Europe, the parent races are too nearly alike for the children of such mixed marriages to be strikingly different from either parent. In America and the West Indies we are familiar with the various mixtures of white and negro, mulatto, quadroon, &c.; but in Mexico we have three races, Spanish, pure Mexican, and Negro, which, with their combinations, make a list of twenty-five varieties of the human race, distinguishable from one another, and with regular names, which Mayer gives in his work on Mexico, such as _mulatto, mestizo, zambo, chino_, and so forth. Here all the brown Mexican Indians are taken as one race, and the Red Indians of the frontier-states are not included at all. If we come to dividing out the various tribes which have been or still are existing in the country, we can count over a hundred and fifty, with from fifty to a hundred distinct languages among them.

Out of this immense variety of tribes, we can make one great cla.s.sification. The men of one race are brown in complexion, and have been for ages cultivators of the land. It is among them only that the Mexican civilization sprang up, and they still remain in the country, having acquiesced in the authority of the Europeans, and to a great extent mingled with them by marriage. This cla.s.s includes the Aztecs, Acolhuans, Chichemecs, Zapotecs, &c., the old Toltecs, the present Indians of Central America, and, if we may consider them to be the same race, the nations who huilt the now ruined cities of Palenque, Copan, Uxmal, and so forth. The other race is that of the Red Indians who inhabit the prairie-states of North Mexico, such as the Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos. They are hunters, as they always were, and they will never preserve their existence by adopting agriculture as their regular means of subsistence, and settling in peace among the white men. As it has been with their countrymen further north, so it will be with them; a few years more, and the Americans will settle Chihuahua and Sonora, and we shall only know these tribes by specimens of their flint arrow-heads and their pipes in collections of curiosities, and their skulls in ethnological cabinets.

One of the strangest races (or varieties, I cannot say which) are the _Pintos_ of the low lands towards the Pacific coast. A short time before we were in the country General Alvarez had quartered a whole regiment of them in the capital; but when we were there they had returned with their commander into the tierra caliente towards Acapulco. They are called _"Pintos"_ or painted men, from their faces and bodies being marked with great daubs of deep blue, like our British ancestors; but here the decoration is natural and cannot be effaced.

They have the reputation of being a set of most ferocious savages; and, badly armed as they are with ricketty flint- or match-locks, and sabres of hoop-iron, they are the terror of the other Mexican soldiery, especially when the war has to be carried on in the hot pestilential coast-region, their native country.

CHAR XII.

CHALCHICOMULA. JALAPA. VERA CRUZ. CONCLUSION.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIANS OF THE PLATEAU. _(After Nebel.)_]

The mountain-slopes which descend from the Sierra Madre eastward toward the sea are furrowed by _barrancas_--deep ravines with perpendicular sides, and with streams flowing at the bottom. But here all these _barrancas_ run almost due east and west, so that our journey from Vera Cruz to Mexico was made, as far as I can recollect, without crossing one. Now, the case was quite different. We had to go from the Potrero to the city of Jalapa, about fifty miles on the map, nearly northward, and to get over these fifty miles cost us two days and a half of hard riding.

By the road it cannot be much less than eighty miles; but people used to tell us that, during the American war, an Indian went from Orizaba to Jalapa with despatches within the twenty-four hours, probably by mountain-paths which made it a little shorter. He came quite easily into Jalapa at the same shuffling trot which he had kept up almost without intermission for the whole distance. This is the Indian's regular pace when he is on a journey, and I believe that the Red Indians of the north have a similar gait.

We used sometimes to see a village or a house three or four miles off, and count upon reaching it in half an hour. But a few steps further on there would be a barranca, invisible till we came close to it, perhaps not more than a few hundred feet wide, so that it was easy to talk to people on the other bank. But the bottom of the chasm might be five hundred or a thousand feet below us; and the only way to cross was to ride along the bank, often for miles, until we reached a place where it had been possible to make a steep bridle-path zigzagging down to the stream below, and up again on the other side. It is only here and there that even such paths can be made, for the walls of rock are generally too steep even for any vegetation, except gra.s.s and climbing plants in the crevices. Our half-hour's ride, as we supposed it would be, would often extend to two or three hours, for on these slopes two or three barrancas--large and small---have sometimes to be crossed within as many miles.

If our journey had been even slower and more difficult, we should not have regretted it; the country through which we were riding was so beautiful. There were but few inhabitants, and the landscape was much as nature had left it. The great volcano of Orizaba came into view now and then with its snowy cone,[23] mountain-streams came rushing along the ravines, and the forests of oaks were covered with innumerable species of orchids and creepers, breaking down the branches with their weight. Many kinds were already in flower, and their great blossoms of white, purple, blue, and yellow, stood out against the dark green of the oak-leaves. Wherever a mountain-stream ran down some shady little valley, there were tree-ferns thirty feet high, with the new fronds forming a tuft at the top of the old scarred trunk. Round the Indian cottages were cactuses with splendid crimson flowers, daturas with brilliant white blossoms, palm- and fruit-trees of fifty kinds. We stopped at one of the cottages, and bought an armadillo that had just been caught in the woods close by, while routing among his favourite ants' nests. He was put into a palm-leaf basket, which held him all but the tip of his long taper tail, which, like the rest of his body, was covered with rings of armour fitting beautifully into one another. One of our men carried him thus in his arms to Jalapa.

The Mexicans call an armadillo "_ayotochtli_," that is, "tortoise-rabbit," a name which will be appreciated by any one who knows the appearance of the little animal.

The villages and towns we pa.s.sed were dismal places enough, and the population scanty; but that this had not always been the case was evident from the numerous remains of ancient Indian mound-forts or temples which we pa.s.sed on our road, indicating the existence of large towns at some former period. There is a drawing in Lord Kingsborough's work of a _teocalli_ or pyramid at San Andres Chalchicomula, which we seem to have missed on account of the darkness having come on before we reached the town. We were several times deceived that evening by the fireflies, which we took for lights moving about in some village just ahead of us; and we became so incredulous at last that we would not believe we had reached our journey's end until we could made out the dim outlines of the houses. At the inn at San Andres we found that we could have no rooms, as all the little windowless dens were occupied by people from the country who had come in for a _fiesta_. There were indeed a good many men loafing about the courtyard, but scarcely any women, and we could hardly understand a fandango happening without them. They thought otherwise, however; and presently, hearing the tinkling of a guitar, we went out and saw two great fellows in broad hats, jackets, and serapes, solemnly dancing opposite to one another; while more men looked on, smoking cigarettes, and an old fellow with a face like a baboon was squatting in one corner and producing the music we had heard. To do them justice, I must say that we found, on further enquiry, they had not come from their respective ranchos merely to make fools of themselves in this way, but that there was to be some horsefair in the neighbourhood next day, and they were going there.

Our not being able to get any supper but eggs and bread, and having to sleep on the supper-table afterwards, confirmed us in the theory we were beginning to adopt, that nature and mankind vary in an inverse ratio; and we were off at daybreak, delighted to get into the forest again. We rode over hill and dale for four or five hours, and then along the edge of a barranca for the rest of the day. This was one of the grandest chasms we had ever seen, even in Mexico. It was four or five miles wide, and two or three thousand feet deep, and its floor was a ma.s.s of tropical verdure, with here and there an Indian rancho and a patch of cultivated ground on the bank of the rapid river, whose sound we heard when we approached the edge of the barranca. There were more orchids and epidendrites than ever in the forest. In some places they had killed every third tree, by forming so and close a covering over its branches as to destroy its life; they were flourishing unimpaired on the rotting branches of trees which they had brought down to the ground years before. The rainy season had not yet set in in this part of the country; and, though we could hear the rushing of the torrent below, we looked in vain for water in the forest, until our man Martin showed us the _bromelias_ in the forks of the branches, in the inside of whose hollow leaves nature has laid up a supply of water for the thirsty traveller.

We loaded our horses with the bulbs of such orchids as were still in the dry state, and would travel safely to Europe. Sometimes we climbed into the trees for promising specimens, but oftener contented ourselves with tearing them from the branches as we rode below. When saddle-bags and pockets were full, we were for a time at fault, for there seemed no place for new treasures, when suddenly I remembered a pair of old trousers. We tied up the ends of the legs, which we filled with orchids; and the garment travelled to Jalapa sitting in its natural position across my saddle, to the amazement of such Mexican society as we met. The contents of the two pendant legs are now producing splendid flowers in several English hothouses.

By evening we reached the _Junta_, a place where the great ravine was joined by a smaller one, and a long slanting descent brought us to the edge of the river. There was a ferry here, consisting of a raft of logs which the Indian ferryman hauled across along a stout rope. The horses were attached to the raft by their halters, and so swam across. On the point of land between the two rivers the Indians had their huts, and there we spent the night. We chose the fattest _guajalote_ of the turkey-pen, and in ten minutes he was simmering in the great earthen pot over the fire, having been cut into many pieces for convenience of cooking, and the women were busy grinding Indian corn to be patted out into tortillas. While supper was getting ready, and Mr. Christy's day's collection of plants was being pressed (the country we had been pa.s.sing through is so rich that the new specimens gathered that day filled several quires of paper), we had a good deal of talk with the brown people, who could all speak a little Spanish. Some years before, the two old people had settled there, and set up the ferry. Besides this, they made nets and caught much fish in the river, and cultivated the little piece of ground which formed the point of the promontory. While their descendants went no further than grandchildren the colony had done very well; but now great-grandchildren had begun to arrive, and they would soon have to divide, and form a settlement up in the woods across the river, or upon some patch of ground at the bottom of one of the barrancas.

We were interested in studying the home-life of these people, so different from what we are accustomed to among our peasants of Northern Europe, whose hard continuous labour is quite unknown here. For the men, an occasional pull at the _balsas_ (the rafts of the ferry), a little fishing, and now and then--when they are in the humour for it-- a little digging in the garden-ground with a wooden spade, or dibbling with a pointed stick. The women have a harder life of it, with the eternal grinding and cooking, cotton-spinning, mat-weaving, and tending of the crowds of babies. Still it is an easy lazy life, without much trouble for to-day or care for to-morrow. When the simple occupations of the day are finished, the time does not seem to hang heavy upon their hands. The men lie about, "thinking of nothing at all;" and the women--old and young--gossip by the hour, in obedience to that beneficent law of nature which provides that their talk shall increase inversely in proportion to what they have to talk about. We find this law attaining to its most complete fulfilment when they shut themselves up in nunneries, to escape as much as possible from all sources of worldly interest, and gossip there more industriously than anywhere else, as we are informed on very good authority.

Like all the other Mexican Indians whose houses we visited, the people here showed but little taste in adorning their dwellings, their dresses and their household implements. Beyond a few calabashes sc.r.a.ped smooth and ornamented with coloured devices, and the blue patterns on the women's cotton skirts, there was scarcely anything to be seen in the way of ornament. How great was the skill of the Mexicans in ornamental work at the time of the Conquest, we can tell from the carved work in wood and stone preserved in museums, the graceful designs on the pottery, the tapestry, and the beautiful feather-work; but this taste has almost disappeared in the country. Just in the same way, contact with Europeans has almost destroyed the little decorative arts among most barbarous people, as, for example, the Red Indians and the natives of the Pacific Islands; and what little skill in these things is left among them is employed less for themselves than in making curious trifles for the white people, and even in these we find that European patterns have mixed with the old designs, or totally superseded them.

The Indians lodged us in an empty cane-hut, where they spread mats upon the ground, and we made pillows of our saddles. We were soon tired of looking up at the stars through the c.h.i.n.ks in the roof, and slept till long after sunrise. Then the Indians rafted us across the second river; and we rode on to Jalapa, having accomplished our horseback journey of nearly three hundred miles with but one accident, the death of a horse, the four-pound one. He had been rather overworked, but would most likely have got through, had we not stopped the last night at the Indian _ranchos_, where there was no forage but green maize leaves, a food our beasts were not accustomed to. It seems our men gave him too much of this, and then allowed him to drink excessively; and next morning he grew weaker and weaker, and died not long after we reached Jalapa. Our other two horses were rather thin, but otherwise in good condition; and the horse-dealers, after no end of diplomacy on both sides, knocked under to our threat of sending them back to Mexico in charge of Antonio, and gave us within a pound or two of what they had cost us. There, is a good deal of trading in horses done at Jalapa, where travellers coming down from Mexico sell their beasts, which are disposed of at great prices to other travellers coming up from the coast. Between here and Vera Cruz, people prefer travelling in the Diligence, or in some covered carriage, to exposing themselves to the sun in the hot and pestilential region of the coast.

Jalapa is a pleasant city among the hills, in a country of forests, green turf, and running streams. It is the very paradise of botanists; and its products include a wonderful variety of trees and flowers, from the apple- and pear-trees of England to the _mameis_ and _zapotes_ of tropical America, and the brilliant orchids which are the ornament of our hot-houses. The name of the town itself has a botanical celebrity, for in the neighbouring forests grows the _Purga de Jalapa_, which we have shortened into _jalap_.

A day's journey above it, lies the limit of eternal snow, upon the peak of Orizaba; a day's journey below it is Vera Cruz, the city of the yellow fever, surrounded by burning sands and poisonous exhalations, in a district where, during the hot months now commencing, the thermometer scarcely ever descends below 80, day or night. Jalapa hardly knows summer or winter, heat or cold. The upper current of hot air from the Gulf of Mexico, highly charged with aqueous vapour, strikes the mountains about this level, and forms the belt of clouds that we have already crossed more than once during our journey. Jalapa is in this cloudy zone, and the sky is seldom clear there. It is hardly hotter in summer than in England, and not even hot enough for the mosquitoes, which are not to be found here though they swarm in the plain below.

This warm damp climate changes but little in the course of the year.

There are no seasons, in our sense of the word, for spring lasts through the year.

We walked out on the first afternoon of our arrival; and sat on stone seats on a piece of green turf surrounded by trees, that reminded us pleasantly of the village-greens of England. There we talked with the children of an English acquaintance who had been settled for many years in the town, and had married a Mexican lady. They were fine lads; but, as very often happens in such cases, they could only speak the language of the country. Nothing can show more clearly how thoroughly a foreigner yields to the influences around him, when he settles in a country and marries among its people. An Englishman's own character, for instance, may remain to some extent; but his children are scarcely English in language or in feeling, and in the next generation there is nothing foreign about his descendants but the name.

When we reached our hotel it was about sunset, and the heavy dew had wetted us through, as though we had been walking in the rain. This was no exceptional occurrence. All the year round such dews fall morning and evening, as well as almost daily showers of rain. The climate is too warm for this dampness to injure health, as it would in our colder regions. To us, who had just left the bracing air of the high plateaus, it seemed close and relaxing; but the inhabitants are certainly strong and healthy, and one can imagine the enjoyment which the white inhabitants of Vera Cruz must feel, when they can get away from that city of pestilence into the pure air of the mountains.

Our quarters were at the _Veracruzana_, where we occupied a great whitewashed room. A large grated window opened into the garden, where the armadillo was fastened to a tree by a long string, and had soon dug a deep hole with his powerful fore-claws, as the manner of the creature is. The necessity of supplying the "little man in armour" with insects for his daily food gave us some idea of the amazing abundance and variety of the insects of the district. We caught creeping things innumerable in the garden, but narrowly escaped being stung by a small scorpion; and therefore delegated the task to an old Indian, who walked out into the fields with an earthen pot, and returned with it full of insects in about half an hour. We reckoned that there were over fifty species in the pot.

Many of the houses and Indian huts were adorned with collections of insects pinned on the walls in patterns, among which figured scorpions some three inches long; and the centre-ornament was usually a tarantula, said to be one of the most poisonous creatures of the tropics, a monstrous spider, whose dark grey body and legs are covered with hairs. A fine specimen will have a body about as large as a small hen's egg, and, with his legs in their natural position, will just stand in a cheese-plate. The Boots of the hotel went out and caught a fine scorpion for our amus.e.m.e.nt; he brought it into our room wrapped in a piece of brown paper, and was on the point of letting it out on our table for us to see it run. We protested against this, and had it put into a tumbler and covered it up with a book.

The inner _patio_ of the hotel was surrounded with the usual arcade, into which the rooms opened. Close to our door was a long table, with a green cloth, where the Jalapenians were constantly playing _monte_, from nine in the morning till late at night. All cla.s.ses were represented there, from the muleteer who came to lose his hard-earned dollars, to the rich shopkeepers and planters of the town and neighbourhood.

I went early one afternoon to the house of the princ.i.p.al agent for the Vera Cruz carriers, to arrange for sending down our heavy packages to the coast. There was no one at the office but a girl. I enquired for the master--"_Esta jugando_,"--"He is playing," she said. I need not have gone so far to look for him, for he was sitting just outside our bedroom door, and indeed had been there all day. Before he condescended to arrange our business, he waited to see the fate of the dollar he had just put down, and which I was glad to see he lost.

Jalapa was not always the stagnant place it is now. Its pleasant houses and gardens date from a period when it was a town of some importance.

In old times the only practicable road from Vera Cruz to Mexico pa.s.sed this way; and Jalapa was the entrepot where the merchants had their warehouses, and from whence the trains of mules distributed the European merchandise from the coast to the different markets of the country. By this arrangement, the carrying from the coast was done by a small number of muleteers, who were seasoned to the climate, while the great ma.s.s of traders and carriers were not obliged to descend from the healthy region. This was of the more importance, because, though the pure Indians are not liable to the attacks of yellow fever, the disease is as deadly to the other inhabitants of the high lands as to Europeans; and even those of the _mestizos_ who have the least admixture of white blood are subject to it. Of late years, this system has been given up, and the carriers from the high lands go down to the coast to fetch their loads, and every year they leave some of their number in the church-yards of the City of the Dead; while many others, though they recover from the fever, never regain their former health and strength. The high-road to Mexico now goes by Orizaba, so that the importance of Jalapa as a trading-place has almost ceased.

Our Mexican journey was now all but finished, and I left my companion here, and took the Diligence to Vera Cruz, to meet the West India Mail-packet. Mr. Christy followed a day or two later, and went to the United States. We dismissed our two servants, Martin and Antonio.

Martin invested his wages in a package of tobacco, which he proposed to carry home on his horse, travelling by night along unfrequented mountain-paths, where custom-house officers seldom penetrate. We never heard any more of him; but no doubt he got safe home, for he was perfectly competent to take care of himself, and he probably made a very good thing of his journey. It was quite with regret that we parted from him, for he was a most sensible, useful fellow, with a continual flow of high spirits, and no end of stories of his experiences in smuggling, and hunting wild cattle in the _tierra caliente_, in which two adventurous occupations most of his life had been pa.s.sed. In his dealings with us, he was honesty itself, notwithstanding his equivocal profession.

We offered Antonio a cheque on Mexico for his wages, as he was going back there, but he said he would rather have hard dollars. We paid his fare to Mexico by the Diligence, and gave him his money, telling him at the same time, that he was a fool for his pains. He started next morning; and we heard, a month or two later, that the coach was stopped the same afternoon in the plains of Perote, and Antonio was robbed not only of his money but even of his jacket and serape, and reached Mexico penniless and half-naked. He was always a silly fellow, and his last exploit was worthy of him.

Mr. Christy sat up till daybreak to see me off, filling up his time by writing letters and pressing plants. When I was gone, he lay down in his bed, in rather a dreamy state of mind, looking up at the ceiling.

There was a large beam just above his head, and at one side of it a hole, which struck him as being a suitable place for a scorpion to come out of. This idea had come into his head from the sight of the specimen in the tumbler on the table, who had with great difficulty been drowned in _aguardiente_. Presently something moved in the hole, and the spectator below instantly became wide awake. Then came out a claw and a head, and finally the body and tail of a very fine scorpion, two inches and a half long. It was rather an awkward moment, for it was not safe to move suddenly, for fear of startling the creature, whose footing seemed anything but secure; and if he fell, he would naturally sting whatever he might come in contact with. However, he met with no accident on his way, and getting into another hole, about a yard off, he drew up his tail after him and disappeared. Mr. Christy slipped out of his bed with a sense of considerable relief; and having ascertained that there were no holes in the ceiling above the bed on the other side of the room, he turned in there, and went comfortably to sleep.

My only companion in the Diligence was a German shopman from Vera Cruz, who was sociable, but not of an instructive turn of conversation. When we had descended for a few hours, the heat became intolerable. Scarcely any habitation but a few Indian cane-huts by the way-side, with bananas and palm-trees. We stopped, about three in the afternoon, at a _rancho_ in a small village, and did not start again until next morning, a little before day-break. Negroes and people of negro descent began to abound in this congenial climate. I remember especially the waiting-maid at the _rancho_, who was a "white negress," as they are called. Her hair and features showed her African origin; but her hair was like white wool, and her face and hands were as colourless as those of a dead body. This animated corpse was healthy enough, however; and this peculiarity of the skin is, it seems, not very uncommon.

The coast-regions through which I was pa.s.sing abound in horned cattle, but they are mostly far away from the high-roads. In spite of the intense heat of the climate they thrive as well as in the higher lands.

Some are tolerably tame, and are kept within bounds by the _vaqueros_; but the greater proportion, numbering tens of thousands, roam wild about the country. In comparison with these cattle of the _tierra caliente_, the fiercest beasts of the plateaus are safe and quiet creatures. The only way of bringing them into the _corral_ is by using tame animals for decoys, just as wild elephants are caught.

Our man Martin, who had once been a _vaquero_ on the Vera Cruz coast, used to look upon the bulls of the high lands with great contempt. If you chase them they run away, he said. If you lazo a bull of the hot country, you have to gallop off with all your might, with the _toro_ close at your heels; and, if the horse falls, it may cost his life or his rider's.

We thus find the horned cattle flourishing at every elevation, from the sea-level to the mountain-pastures ten thousand feet above it. Horses and sheep show less adaptability to this variety of climates. The horses and mules come mostly from the States of the North, at a level of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet; that remarkable country of which Humboldt's observation gives us the best idea, when he says that, although there are no made roads, wheel-carriages can travel distances of a thousand miles over gently-undulating prairies, without meeting any obstruction on the way.

Numbers of sheep are reared in the mountains, princ.i.p.ally for the sake of the tallow, for the consumption of tallow-candles in the mines is enormous. The owners scarcely care at all for the rest of the animal; and popular scandal accuses the sheep-farmers of driving their flocks straight into the melting-coppers, without going through the preliminary ceremony of killing them. People told us that the tallow made in the cold regions loses its consistency when brought down into hotter climates, but we had no means of ascertaining the truth of this.

Artificial lighting by means of tallow was not known to the ancient Mexicans, who could not indeed have procured tallow except from the fat of deer and smaller animals.

Bernal Diaz tells how the Spanish invaders used to dress their wounds with "Indian Ointment." He explains the nature of this preparation in another place. The Spaniards could get no oil in the country, nor anything else to make salve with, so they took some fat Indian who had just been killed in battle, and simply boiled him down.

Our ride next morning was but a few hours, the journey being so divided in order that the pa.s.sengers may reach Vera Cruz before the heat of the day begins. We pa.s.sed over a dreary district, generally too dry for anything but cactus and acacias, but now and then, when a little water was to be found, displaying clumps of bamboos with their elegant feathery tufts. Then the railway took us through the dismal downs, with their swamps and sand-hills, and so into Vera Cruz.

The English merchants we had already made acquaintance with were as kind and hospitable as ever, and I found an Englishman, whom we had known before, going as far as Havana by the same packet. The yellow fever was unusually late this year, and, though June had begun, there were but few cases. We heard afterwards that it set in a week or two after our departure, and by its extraordinary severity made ample amends for the lateness of its arrival.

After sunset, the air was alive with mosquitos, and the floors of the hotel swarmed with c.o.c.kroaches. The armadillo took quite naturally to the latter creatures, and crunched them up as fast as we could catch them for him. I was surprised to find that our word "c.o.c.kroaches" does not come from the German stock, like most of our names for insects and small creatures, but from the Latin side of the house. The Spanish waiter called them _cucarachas_, and the French ones _coqueraches_. The history of the armadillo ends unfortunately: for some days he seemed to take quite kindly to the diet of bits of meat which we had to put him on, on shipboard, but he fell sick at Havana, and died.