Mexico and its Religion Part 10

CHAPTER XIV.

First Sight of the Valley of Mexico.--A Venice in a mountain Valley.--An Emperor waiting his Murderers.--Cortez mowing down unarmed Indians.--A new kind of Piety.--Capture of an Emperor.--Torturing an Emperor to Death.--The Children paying the Penalty of their Fathers' Crimes.--The Aztecs and other Indians.--The Difference is in the Historians.--The Superst.i.tions of the Indians.--The Valley of Mexico.--An American Survey of the Valley.--A topographical View.--The Ponds Chalco, Xochimulco, and Tezcuco were never Lakes.

My first view of the Valley of Mexico was from the point where the Acapulco road pa.s.ses the Cross of the "Marquis of the Valley." I had read with eagerness the History of the Conquest, and of the adventures of the n.o.ble _Conquistador_. Not a shadow of a doubt had then crossed my mind in regard to the truth of all that had been so elegantly written. Beautiful composition had supplied the place of evidence, and that practice of writing romances of history which the Spaniards had inherited from the Moors had completely captivated me, as it had thousands of others. The aspect of the valley was all that my fancy had painted it. The sun was in the right quarter to produce the greatest possible effect. The unnumbered pools of surface-water that abound in the valley appeared at that distance like so many lakelets supplied by crystal fountains, as each one reflected the bright sun from its mirror-like surface; these all were inclosed in the richest setting of nature's green.

It was such a scene as would justify the extravagant language which Spaniards have employed in describing it. While I recalled its traditional history, I was tempted to exclaim as a native would have done, and to give credence to the fables of which this valley has been the scene. Here, as the story ran, amid floating gardens of rarest flowers and richest fruits, lay, in olden time, another Venice--a Venice in an inland mountain valley--a Venice upon whose Rialto never walked a Shylock with his money-bags; for in this market-place the most delicious fruits the world produces, the loveliest flowers, rich stuffs resplendent with Tyrian dyes, and princely mantles of feather-work, were bought with pretty sh.e.l.ls, and such money as the sea produces. It was a Venice with its street of waters and its central basin, where jostled the gondolas of the Aztec n.o.bles and the light canoes of birch bark among the vessels of commerce which came laden with slaves and other merchandise from the surrounding villages--a basin that disappeared the same day that the Indian empire fell.

GUATEMOZIN.

This basin was the last vestige of Aztec dominion; and when there no longer was any safe shelter upon the land, Guatemozin retired to his canoe and took shelter here, and calmly waited till his time should come to be murdered. He could not flee. He could not capitulate, for he was an emperor. As he sat here waiting for death, what must have been his reflections! What thoughts did not the very boat he occupied call up! How often had it carried him out upon the lake to the floating gardens and volcanic islands, where he had witnessed so many times the gorgeous reflections of an evening sun upon the snow-capped Popocatapetl, in whose bowels "the G.o.d of fire" had his dwelling! And then the lake itself, how much it had perplexed his thoughts, that in one part its waters should be fresh, with islands teeming with the richest vegetation, and in another part salt and bitter, with utter barrenness resting upon its sh.o.r.es! How he used to meet his brother of Tezcuco in the after part of the day, to exchange congratulations and talk over affairs of interest to both the royal families! Now all these pleasures were terminated forever. His brother of Tezcuco was in the ranks of his enemies, seeking his destruction.

Thus sat the emperor, surrounded by a numerous fleet of canoes, whose occupants were without hope of escape or strength to fight; but, with Indian stoicism, all sat waiting their inevitable doom from freebooters whom they had disappointed of their prey. As the emperor and his n.o.bles sat here witnessing the destruction of their pumice-stone palaces and mud-built huts, and the filling up of their ca.n.a.ls, they consoled themselves with the reflection that their gold and their wealth were all at the bottom of these ca.n.a.ls, and that the Spaniards, in their hot haste to enjoy the spoils of the city, were unwittingly burying forever the prize for which they were contending. Such were the thoughts of these Aztecs as they sat in their canoes, longing for death to relieve them from agony of suspense, enduring all the torments of the extremest thirst, which they vainly sought to quench by draughts of the brackish water of the lake. They had not long to wait; for, by the express commands of Cortez, his followers were mowing down unresisting citizens, because the emperor, over whom they had no control, would not surrender himself.

Who can stand for the first time upon the mountain rim that incloses this valley, and not have his thoughts carried back to some such scene as this? The recollection is not easily eradicated that the remnant of a once powerful tribe of Indians, partially emerged from barbarism, here received their death, in cold blood, at the hands of a party of white murderers. The good Archbishop Loranzana commends the piety of Cortez in never neglecting to attend ma.s.s before going out to his daily work of slaughter. It was a pious act, no doubt, that on the last morning of the siege he stopped and listened to a ma.s.s--that pantomime which set forth the death of the Redeemer of the world--preparatory to consummating the butchery of Indians incapable of resistance.

Garci Holguin, the master of a brigantine, or rather flat-boat, bolder than the rest, drove through the fleet of canoes that occupied the basin, until he encountered in the centre a canoe containing the person of the emperor, whom he made prisoner and brought to Cortez, whereupon the slaughter ceased.

Neither the horrid sight which the city presented, nor the fallen fortunes of a brave enemy, could move the soul of Cortez. A brigand knows no remorse and feels no pity. Gold had been the object of his pious mission, and when he found not gold enough to satisfy the cravings of his gang, he soaked the fallen emperor's feet in oil, and then burned them at a slow fire, to extort from him a confession of the place of concealment of his supposed treasure; and when, in after years, he was tired of the burden of such a prisoner, he wantonly hanged him up by the heels to die in a distant forest.

In this very city where Cortez tortured Guatemozin was a son of Cortez, who inherited the spoils of his father's atrocities, put to the torture by one of the Vice-kings, while the children's children of the Conquistadors paid for the wealth they inherited in the terrible penalties inflicted upon them by the buccaneers, that ravaged their coasts for two hundred years. Have not the sins of the fathers been visited upon the children?

The Aztecs, their empire, and their city, have long since disappeared; their crimes, and the despotism which they exercised over the tribes they had conquered, are all forgotten in the terrible catastrophe that extinguished their national existence. Three hundred years of servitude in the indiscriminate ma.s.s of Indian serfs has blotted out every feeling of nationality. A few vagabonds among them still claim royal descent, and, by virtue of their blood or their imposture, pretend to exercise, in obscure villages, an undefined jurisdiction over Indians as oppressed as themselves. But the characteristics of the North American Indians are still visible; they still exhibit the contradictory traits of Indian character--cruelty and kindness, shyness and self-possession; enduring the greatest trials without a murmur, and suffering oppression without complaint; delighting as much as their northern brethren in tawdry exhibitions, in traditions of the marvelous, they seem to carry hidden in their inmost soul an idea that the time will come when they may take vengeance of the despoilers of their race. They have the Indian's love of adventure and want of courage. They delight rather in a successful stratagem than in open hostility, and deem no act of treachery dishonorable by which they can gain an advantage. Still, they have less romance in their composition than the unenslaved northern Indians, into whose souls the iron of despotism has never entered.

THE AZTECS AND THEIR HISTORIANS.

The great difference between what is recorded of the North American Indian and the Aztec is owing less to any difference in themselves than to the character of the historians who have written of them. The northern writers were not carried away by the romance of Indian life; they were matter-of-fact men, and they drew only matter-of-fact pictures. Spanish historians, and all early Spanish writers upon New Spain, except the two brigands, Cortez and Diaz, were priests. With them, truth was not an essential part of history. By the law of all countries, the Conquistadors had outlawed themselves by levying unlicensed war; but as they bore a painting of the Virgin Mary on one of their standards and the cross on the other, it would be impiety to place their conduct in its true light. Las Casas was an exception, and endured persecution for speaking the truth. "He had powerful enemies,"

was all that his apologist dare say, "because he spake the truth." And if we add to this the sevenfold censorship already described, my reader will agree with me that it is absurd to place confidence in records over which the Inquisition exercised a surveillance.

The fabled Aztec empire has almost pa.s.sed from the traditions of the Mexican Indians. The name of only one of their chiefs, Montezuma, remains among them, and this name is affixed to almost every thing that has an ancient look and is in a dilapidated condition. In my wanderings among them, I never rejected their proffers of rude hospitality, and I have listened with pleasure to their wild traditions. I soon found that, like other Indians, they draw from a supernatural "dream-world"

the fort.i.tude that enables them to bear without a murmur their hard lot in the present. They readily embraced the superst.i.tions of the Spaniards, and rendered to the virgin of Guadalupe the adoration they had formerly bestowed upon their own G.o.ds. Their conversion may be summed up in the words of Humboldt: "Dogma has not succeeded to dogma, but ceremony to ceremony. The natives know nothing of religion but the external forms of worship. Fond of whatever is connected with a prescribed order of ceremonies, they find in the Christian religion particular enjoyment. The festivals of the Church, the fire-works with which they are accompanied, the processions mingled with whimsical disguises, are a most fertile source of amus.e.m.e.nt to the lower Indians."

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO.

There has been a great deal of poetry and very little plain prose written about the valley of Mexico. At an early morning hour I stood upon the heights of Rio Frio; at another morning, as already said, at the Cross of the Marquis; again, upon the highest peak of the Tepeyaca, behind Guadalupe, I saw a tropical morning sun disengage itself from the snowy mountains. From these three favored spots I have looked upon the valley, where dry land and pools of water seemed equally to compose the magnificent panorama. Immense mirrors of every conceivable shape and form were reflecting back the rays of the sun, while the green sh.o.r.es in which they were set enhanced the effect. The white walls, and domes, and spires of the distant city heightened the effect of a picture that can only be fully appreciated by those who have looked downward through the pure atmosphere of such a lofty position; but when I came down to the common level, the charm was broken. Instead of lakelets and crystal springs, I found only pools of surface-water which the rains had left; and the ca.n.a.ls were but the ditches from which, on either side, the dirt had been taken to build the causeway through the marsh, and were now covered with a coat of green. These lakes have no outlet, and as evaporation only takes up pure water, all the animal, vegetable, and mineral matter that is carried in is left to stagnate and putrefy in the ponds and ditches.

A practical "man of the times," with more common sense than poetry in his composition, must grieve as he looks at the great advantages here possessed for drainage and irrigation which are unimproved. There is not a spot in the whole valley that is not capable of the most perfect drainage,[28] while basins have been formed by nature in the highest points, from which irrigation could be supplied to the whole valley; but decay and neglect--fitting types of the social condition of the people--every where exhibit themselves. Water stands in all the narrow ca.n.a.ls or ditches that occupy the middle of the streets, for the want simply of a sewer to draw it down to the level of the Tezcuco. Once a year the flags are taken off from the covered ditches, and the mud is dipped out, while a bundle of hay, tied to the tail of a dirt-cart, is daily dragged through the open ones.

I have spoken only of the lower division of this valley--the valley in which the city stands. If we consider the two partly separated valleys as one, the whole will const.i.tute an oval basin 75 miles long from north to south, with an average width from east to west of 20 miles.

Two thirds of the southern valley is a marsh, and might well be called the "Montezuma Marsh," it so strikingly resembles the marsh of that name in the State of New York, though the whole body of ponds and marshes of this valley contains much less water than its northern namesake. The stage-road from Vera Cruz crosses this marsh for fourteen miles, and has a great number of small stone bridges, beneath which the water runs with considerable current toward the north, on account of the difference of level between the southern fresh-water ponds and the lower salt-water ponds, as in the days of Cortez. There are occasional dry spots, and now and then there is open water; but the greater portion is filled with marsh gra.s.s, and furnishes good feeding for the droves of cattle that daily frequent it for that purpose. The ancient village of Mexicalzingo, or "Little Mexico," the traditional home of the Aztecs before they built Mexico, is situated on one of the dry spots, slightly elevated above the level of the fresh water; and on another dry spot or island, six miles distant, stands the famous city of Mexico itself, resting on piles driven into a foundation of soft earth. The ca.n.a.l of Chalco commences at the northerly extremity of the Xochimulco, and, pa.s.sing by Mexicalzingo and the floating gardens, continues along the eastern front of the city, and empties itself into the salt (_tequisquite_) pond of Tezcuco, having received as a tributary the ca.n.a.l of Tacubaya, which pa.s.ses along the southern boundary of the city.

THE LAKES OF THE VALLEY.

The highest water of the valley of the city of Mexico is the pond of Chalco, in the extreme southeast, being 4-8/12 feet above the level of the Grand Plaza of the city, and 20 miles distant therefrom, and 11-2/12 feet above Tezcuco;[29] but its volume being small for the last 400 years, the slight impediments of long gra.s.s and a few Indian dikes have prevented any injury to the city by a too rapid flow to the northward. Xochimulco is the pond, or open s.p.a.ce in the marsh, that extends from the Chalco to near Mexicalzingo. Tezcuco is the lowest water in the valley, being 6-1/2 feet below the Grand Plaza of the city.[30] It receives the surplus of the waters that have not already been evaporated in the other ponds. At this great elevation, 7500 feet, evaporation does its work rapidly all over the valley, but it is in Tezcuco that the residuum of the waters is deposited.

[28] Report of M. L. Smith, Lieutenant of Topographical Engineers, United States Army.

[29] Lieut. Smith's Report.

[30] Ibid.

CHAPTER XV.

The two Valleys.--The Lake with a leaky Bottom.--The Water could not have been higher.--Nor could the Lagunas or Ponds have been much deeper.--The Brigantines only flat-bottomed Boats.--The Causeway Ca.n.a.ls fix the size of the Brigantines.--The Street Ca.n.a.ls.--Stagnant Water unfit for Ca.n.a.ls.--The probable Dimensions of the City Ca.n.a.ls.--Difficulties of disproving a Fiction.--A Dike or Levee.--The Ca.n.a.l of Huehuetoca.--The Map of Cortez.--Wise Provision of Providence.--The Fiction about the numerous Cities in and about the Lake.

It may be well here to repeat that, strictly speaking, there are two valleys of Mexico--the upper northern valley, and the valley of the city of Mexico; the first extends in an oval form to the north of the hills of Tepeyaca, some sixty miles, and communicates with the plains of Otumba and Apam. In this valley are the two ponds, or _lagunas_, of Zumpango and San Cristobal, the highest waters of Mexico; and in it also is the half of the Tezcuco, which is the lowest laguna of the valleys. It is a country of fine farming lands, and was probably inhabited long before the time of the arrival of the Aztecs in the lower valley, as I infer from its proximity to the extensive ruins of Teotihuican, that have come down from a remote and highly-civilized antiquity.

THE ANCIENT LAKES.

The valley of the city of Mexico, which lies to the south of these hills, is also of an oval shape, but is not more than twenty miles in extent. The surface-water with which it is saturated is in part fresh, and in other parts _tequisquite_; that is, where the waters have a current, they are fresh; but where they remain from year to year discharging their volume only by evaporation, then they become infused with the saline properties of the soil,[31] and all about them is marked with barrenness. If the process of evaporation was less intense than it is,[32] all vegetation would die from the extreme humidity of the soil; as the gardener's phrase is, it would rot. Even in the city of Mexico itself, a couple of feet of digging in its alluvial foundation brings you to the water-level in the dry season, and seventy or eighty yards of boring does not carry you beyond the perceptible influence of _tequisquite_.[33] The effects of this law of evaporation puzzled the Aztecs, who were, of course, ignorant of all philosophical principles, and could only account for the disappearance of the immense ma.s.s of water that fell in the valley in the wet season, upon the hypothesis that the Tezcuco had a leaky bottom, or that there was a hole in the lake--an idea that thousands in Mexico credit to the present day. This was the origin of that absurd story which Cortez repeats in his letters, that this lake communicated with the sea, and had its daily tides.

There could not have been a much greater volume of water in this marshy valley in the time of Cortez than at present, if the whole acc.u.mulations of each year were to be carried off by evaporation alone from so small a surface as is here presented for the sun to act upon.

But as the volume of water is the turning-point in the history or fable of the conquest, I must adduce the proofs and arguments that are at hand to establish this statement. The level of the water could not have been higher, it is clear, for in that case neither Mexico, Mexicalzingo, or Iztapalapan could have been inhabited.

Cortez's account of deep waters has often been made plausible by adding the hypothesis that the acc.u.mulating mud of centuries has filled up the lakes, so that they now are only shallow ponds. But this by no means removes the difficulty, for then, as now, the waters of the southern laguna flowed into Tezcuco, conveying with them the infinitesimal infusion of _tequisquite_ that had instilled itself into the Chalco.

Had the volume of Chalco and Xochimulco been increased several feet, then the slight Indian barriers and the long gra.s.s would no longer have been able to r.e.t.a.r.d the progress of the water till evaporation had diminished its quant.i.ty, but, precipitating itself in a ma.s.s into the Tezcuco, it would have overwhelmed the town of Tezcuco and all other villages upon the sh.o.r.es, and established an equilibrium of surface in the two ponds.

All the lagunas, ca.n.a.ls, and ditches that have been described are navigated by small scows that draw but a few inches of water, which are the medium of an extensive internal commerce. Through the lagunas and ca.n.a.l of Chalco come from Cuatla all the supplies of the products of the hot country for the city and surrounding region. This commerce exceeds the whole foreign trade of the republic.[34] This kind of boat was probably introduced by Cortez, and in this convenient form his thirteen brigantines were probably made; for, had his brigantines been of a larger draught of water, they could not have navigated ca.n.a.ls intended only for Indian canoes. One of these vessels, when supplied with a sail, a cannon, and a movable keel or side-board, would be a formidable auxiliary in an a.s.sault upon the city at the present day.

And if one such scow was placed in the ditch on each side of the southern causeway, as Cortez alleges, it would enable an a.s.sailing enemy to present just so much more front as the additional width of two boats would give him.

THE CAUSEWAYS AND Ca.n.a.lS.

Writers have expressed their surprise at the existence of two navigable ca.n.a.ls to each causeway, one on either side, as an immense expenditure of unnecessary labor. The explanation of this is found in the fact that in the construction of a pathway (for Cortez says that it was only 30 feet in width) through wet and marshy ground, a broad ditch is ordinarily made on either side to obtain earth for the embankment, and to keep the water-level permanently below the top of the pathway. So it is, and so it must always have been at Mexico, in order to keep these foot-paths in traveling condition. In the dry season, which is the winter, these broad ditches are covered with floating islands of green "sc.u.m;" but in the rainy season, which is the summer, they may be navigated by the shallow Mexican scows. A pathway of earth thirty feet in width could not endure the winds and waves of a navigable lake, or the wear and "swash" of a ca.n.a.l twelve feet deep on either side; and the fact that Cortez navigated the ditches in the rainy season establishes the insignificant size of his famous brigantines.

As the level of the surface of the land and the surface of the water at Mexicalzingo, at Mexico, and at the village Tezcuco, does not materially vary now from what it was in the time of Cortez, if we can take for data the foundations of the church built by the Conquistadors at these several places, we shall have to look to another quarter for a supply of water for the city ca.n.a.ls, which were sufficiently capacious for canoe navigation. This supply we readily obtain by allowing the waters of the ca.n.a.ls Tacubaya and Chalco to pa.s.s through the streets of the city in ditches sufficiently large for canoes, instead of pa.s.sing along the south and east fronts outside. By this hypothesis we obtain a current, a prerequisite to the very idea of a ca.n.a.l, particularly in the streets of a city.

The _savans_ of Europe have shown their profound ignorance of the first principles of ca.n.a.l navigation in taking it for granted that the ca.n.a.ls of Mexico were filled with stagnant water, that had "set back" from the stagnant pond of Tezcuco; and that the level of the pond must at all times have been so high as to fill the ca.n.a.ls, thus keeping the city in constant danger from any sudden rise in the laguna. But, aside from the rules of ca.n.a.l construction, there is an important sanitary question involved. The present ditches in the middle of the streets, though they have a perceptible current, and a slight infusion of _tequisquite_, are an intolerable nuisance, and have a deleterious effect upon the public health. How much more so must they have been when, from the uncleanly habits of the Indians, they were the common receptacle of all kinds of filth, and were constantly stirred up to their very bottoms by the setting-poles of the navigators? The system of ca.n.a.lling is a system of slack-water navigation, but abhors stagnant water.

We come next to the question of the dimensions of these street ca.n.a.ls.

We know that they were intended only for the navigation of Indian canoes; that two of them, which intersected the causeway of the night retreat, Cortez crossed with his army, all of them climbing down into the ca.n.a.l, wading across, and then climbing up on the other side while loaded with their armor, and fighting all the time against a superior force of the Aztecs; and that Alvarado actually leaped across one of the openings, shows conclusively that the ca.n.a.ls could not have more than equaled in breadth the present ca.n.a.l of Chalco. On the hypothesis that Cortez used scows that drew no more water than the scows that at present navigate the ca.n.a.ls, his story becomes credible, so far, at least, as the possibility of making the circuit of the city in large boats in a season of rains.

TRUTH AGAINST FICTION.

It is an ungracious task to sift truth from fables. One man is displeased at seeing held up as a fiction a narrative which he has been accustomed to read with pleasure, and to take for truth, because it was elegantly written; and he requires an acc.u.mulation of proofs and arguments before he will abandon a belief which he has adopted without evidence. Another man, who deals only in matters of fact, is easily convinced, and is annoyed at an acc.u.mulation of proofs and arguments where one is sufficient. The superst.i.tious man can not, of course, be convinced, for his belief does not rest upon evidence; and he is indignant that an attempt should be made to detract from the glory obtained by the Virgin Mary and the Church in this victory over the infidels. Had I attempted to prove that the feather which is now preserved with so much care in the Church of _San Juan de Lateran_ at Rome did not fall from the wing of the angel Gabriel when he came to announce to Mary her conception, and that the whole history of that feather was a fable, notwithstanding it has received the attestations of so many of the Holy Fathers, I should be cursed for my impiety no more than I shall be for raising the question of the authenticity of the histories of the Conquest. With all these difficulties before me, I will venture to add one or two more reasons that have induced me to doubt the existence of those famous brigantines, which required a depth of twelve feet of water.