On the Mexican Highlands Part 9

The Jesuits here sustain the fine college of San Nicholas for men, where Hidalgo once taught and Morelos learned, and which, founded in 1540, boasts that it is the oldest inst.i.tution of learning in the Americas. The Jesuits also maintain a large school for young women.

They are endeavoring to resist the tide of progress which is so fast Americanizing the land. But even here the upgrowing generations are giving steadily increasing support to the policies of the enlightened and liberal men now guiding the destinies of the Republic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WILD OTOME IN FLIGHT FROM MY KODAK]

XVI

Morelia and Toluca--The Markets--The Colleges--The Schools--The Ancient and the Modern Spirit

TOLUCA, ESTADO DE MEXICO, MEXICO, _December 14th_.

Yesterday afternoon at four o'clock I left Morelia by the National Railroad and reached here at three o'clock in the morning. Tio continued on to Mexico City, but I stopped over to spend the day with my friend, El Padre, the missionary, who has been one of our party to the _Tierra Caliente_.

From my hotel Jardin, in Morelia, I rode down to the station in a most ancient little car pulled by a single mule; the electric tramway has not yet arrived at that capital.

It was yet dark when I was awakened for Toluca. When I left the train the air was cold, frosty. The city was silent, but it was well lighted with electricity, and a modern electric tram car awaited me at the station. Toluca thus gave me at the hour of my night arrival the impression of being more modern than Morelia, and this impression was borne out upon later acquaintance.

Toluca is one of the more vigorous of the growing cities of the republic. It is a community of some twenty-five thousand people, the capital of the State of Mexico, and lies one thousand feet higher in the air than Mexico City. It is near the center of a fertile valley, forty or fifty miles in length, and ten to twenty broad, while ten miles to the southwest towers the snow-capped Volcano de Toluca, lifting its gleaming cone fifteen thousand feet into the heavens, its melting snows giving an abundant supply of pure water to the town.

The religious differentiation between Toluca and Morelia is marked.

Morelia is one of the six cathedral cities of Mexico, and is the seat of one of the six Archbishops. Morelia is also the center of Jesuit activity in Mexico. In Morelia, the Spanish-Mexican takes off his _sombrero_ when he pa.s.ses the cathedral; the Indian kneels down in the street and crosses himself. The several hundred churches are kept in excellent repair. Ecclesiasticism dominates, the layman is subordinate. In Toluca, on the contrary, Church rule is pushed aside; while there are a number of churches, they are old and most of them dilapidated. The foundations of a great cathedral, laid many years ago, are now overgrown with gra.s.s and bushes. No money has been forthcoming from Tolucan pockets to build it up. The governor of Toluca is among the most progressive and liberal men of the republic.

His administration maintains large schools and academies for the instruction of young men and women, where the sciences are taught, where enlightened thought rules, and where particular attention is paid to the English language and literature. Several of the instructors are from Chicago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DILIGENCIA--TOLUCA]

There are many fine residences in Toluca, with handsome private grounds. The public buildings are new and imposing; the Alameda Park, with its groves and gardens and mult.i.tudes of birds, is as beautiful as Chapultepec.

There is also great business activity in Toluca and a number of successful manufactures.

The morning of my visit, I noticed an unusual crowd upon the streets.

It surged toward me. It was respectful and quiet. The swarthy company were pressing to look wonderingly upon two little Swedish girls, with the bluest eyes and pinkest cheeks, and braids of the most golden hair--perfect types of the Scandinavian North. They were the children of workmen imported from Sweden and now teaching Tolucans the skilled manufacture of iron.

The rich valley, with its climate of perpetual spring, is the home of a large Aztec and Otomy Indian population. These live in many towns built of stone and adoby, containing two and three thousand souls, even yet speaking their ancient Aztec tongue, knowing only Spanish enough to trade. They are mostly agriculturists, and raise large crops of wheat and corn, which are borne to market upon the backs of men and mules and _burros_. We met many such burden-bearing cavalcades entering the city, and generally driven by Indians of the wildest types we yet have seen. The st.u.r.dy and rugged men are of a stronger race than the inhabitants of the _Tierra Caliente_ along the valley of the Balsas. These Indians run, not a man of them walks. They take a quick, short step, a sort of jog-trot, which carries them forward a great many miles a day.

The climate of Toluca is colder and drier than that of Mexico City, the town being so much higher above the sea. The temperature at night, all the year round, is said to be nearly at frost, falling as low as thirty-nine degrees (Fahrenheit). In the markets to-day I have seen oranges, limes, tamarinds, apples, guavas, hawberries, three sorts of bananas, strawberries, and several other fruits I did not know, as well as fresh peas, beans, lettuce, turnips, beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and several other edible tubers. I have also just purchased some of the celebrated Toluca lace, made by the Indians, and some pretty head shawls, (_tapalos_), of native make. An Indian pottery, made here, is also attractive--a brown and yellow ware, made into jars and water jugs, some of which I am sending to Kanawha.

What a land this country of temperate highlands would have become if only our Puritan and Cavalier ancestors had discovered and taken it!

But the descendants of Puritan and Cavalier have at last found out the charm and richness of this great country and, little by little, are beginning to come into it, sympathetically collaborating with its people. Mexico will yet become a most potent factor in the world's affairs. Progressive Mexicans hope for the day when Mexico will become even more closely knit to the great Republic of the North. Reactionary Mexicans, the conservatives of the Roman Church, dread and deprecate the impending change. El Mundo, chief newspaper of the ecclesiastical party, continually declaims against what it denounces as the "Peaceful Conquest," of _Los Americanos_.

In Toluca there was no extensive celebration of the twelfth of December, "The Coronation day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Indian Madonna," to every Indian the greatest festival of the year. In Morelia, on the contrary, just as in Patzcuaro, the town was lit up from one end to the other with electricity, with gas jets, with lanterns, with mult.i.tudes of candles, with torches. The cathedral and the many churches were trimmed with bands of fire along each cornice, up and down each belfry and tower, and all the hundreds of bells were clanged discordantly. The bells of the churches of Mexico are not swung and rung, nor have they any clappers hanging in their throats.

The bells are made fast in one position, are struck with a ponderous hammer, and distract the stranger with their incessant dissonance.

The illumination of Morelia is said to be paid for from the Archbishop's chest, although each layman is expected to set out his own candles before his door. In front of the cathedral a company of priests touched off elaborate fireworks. During the day, hundreds of Indians came into the city, even as I saw them entering Patzcuaro.

They camped along the streets, cooked at little fires along the curbs, and slept wherever they happened to be. These Indians were chiefly afoot, the women brought their babies upon their backs, even the old folks were sometimes being carried along upon the shoulders of the younger men. The thronged and excited city was early awake. In fact, it never slept. And there were not only the swarms of Indians, but also groups of dashing _haciendados_ in their high _sombreros_, short velvet jackets, and tight-fitting, silver-laced and b.u.t.toned _pantaloones_, all mingling and promenading and celebrating the _fiesta_ of Mexico's patron saint.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SNAP-SHOT THROUGH A DOORWAY--TOLUCA]

In Morelia no one has yet dared to sell a foot of ground to the Protestant missionaries. To do so would mean the seller's ruin.

In Toluca the Protestant Church (the Baptists) have purchased buildings and opened a fine school for boys and girls, which is become the pride and life work of El Padre.

So many smooth and cunning scoundrels have fled to Mexico, there to hide from American justice, that the Mexican has begun to doubt us all. Hence it is doubly gratifying when one finds here honored and esteemed the better type of our enlightened citizenship like El Padre, and some others whom I have met.

XVII

Cuernavaca--The County Seat of Montezuma, of Cortez and Spanish Viceroys, of Maximilian--A Pleasant Watering Place of Modern Mexico

HOTEL ITURBIDE, MEXICO CITY, _December 17th_.

This is my last night in Mexico City. I shall leave here to-morrow, Wednesday, at 9.30 P. M., by the Mexican Railway for Vera Cruz. I will reach there in time for breakfast, board the Ward Line's steamer, _Monterey_, and sail about noon for Havana, via Progresso, Yucatan.

I delayed my departure until the evening, in order that I might visit Cuernavaca and have a glimpse of that famous watering place and the rich valley wherein it lies--where Montezuma and his n.o.bles held luxurious court, where Cortez made his winter residence, and Maximilian erected a lovely villa for his Empress Carlotta; and which is, to-day, the favorite resort of fashionable Mexico. My pa.s.ses would have taken me a hundred and fifty miles further along the river Balsas--two hundred miles above where I saw it at Churumuco--but limited time prevented my going so far, and I contented myself with the lesser journey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUSPICIOUS OF MY CAMERA]

I took the train this morning for Cuernavaca, at the large station of the Mexican Central Railway. I sat in a drawing-room car, as new and comfortable as though just leaving Chicago or New York. Quite a party of the ladies of the American Colony went down with me; along with them were several gentlemen, who seemed to belong to the diplomatic corps, and among these was the Swedish Consul, with whom I made conversation in German and French.

The railway leaves the city on the east side, curves to the north, and circles around the northern suburbs, until it begins to climb toward the southwest.

As we rise--a four per cent. grade--the fertile and beautiful valley of Anahuac, in which Mexico City is situated, spreads out before me.

The big white city, its red and black-tiled roofs, its many domed and towered churches; the numerous lesser towns and villages scattering out into the bowl-like valley; the shimmering surfaces of lakes Tezcoco, Xochimilco, and Chalco, and bordering ponds; the plantations of dark maguey; the orchards of citrous fruits; the innumerable gardens, floating gardens some of them, from which are gathered the fresh vegetables daily displayed in the city's several markets; the dark green groves of the splendid cypress of the Alameda and of Chapultepec, as well as the palace itself, perched high upon its rocky base; the circling ranges of lofty mountains, and, in the far southern distance, the mighty volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, snow-crowned and glittering with dazzling refulgence in the light of the morning sun,--all these made a picture as grand and imposing as any landscape I have seen or may ever see, and as astonishing in its contrasts of light and shadow, of green semitropical valley and icebound heights.

For several hours we crept slowly upward,--the views and vistas ever changing. Everywhere there were plantations of maguey, and everywhere at the stations Indian women were selling fresh _pulque_ to the thirsty travelers of the train. Then, little by little, as we were lifted above the warmer airs, we came into the alt.i.tude of the oaks, extensive forests of well-grown oaks, and then yet higher we came into splendid forests of pine. The mountains now lost the smoothness of surface, which marked the lower slopes. We came into wide reaches of volcanic ash, tufa, beds of lava, all rough and sharp pointed, with deep cavernous clefts between, apparently lying just as they fell and flowed and hardened uncounted centuries ago.

Upon reaching the summit, attaining an alt.i.tude of over ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, we traversed for many miles a gra.s.sy tableland, where were herds of the long-horned cattle, and flocks of the thin-wooled sheep with their keepers. Running parallel to our track extended the ancient Royal Turnpike, built long ago by Montezuma and maintained by Cortez with the labor of his conquered Aztec slaves, and still called "El Camino Real del Rey." On the very summit of the height of land stood the ruins of an old roadhouse and towered fortress. Here Cortez placed his soldiers, and here garrisons of troops have ever since remained to guard the public, to protect the royal mails, to preserve the dignity of the Republic, and even to-day to save the railroad trains from being held up by modern bandits as bold and merciless as their predecessors of bygone centuries. It is the tradition concerning these heights that they have always been the rendezvous of tribes and bands, whose immemorial privilege and occupation it has been to kill and rob. Gruesome are the tales to-day related of the murders and plunderings which once were of almost daily occurrence, and sometimes do yet occur along this famous road. Even now, I notice the camp of soldiers in permanent quarters beneath the shadow of the crumbling tower. Diaz, of the iron hand, takes no chances with the turbulent residents of these mountain solitudes! All along we are among the ancient lava beds, while always lifting into the deep azure sky far out to the left, glitter the snow-clad summits of Iztaccihuatl (_Ista-se-wahtl_) and Popocatepetl. They appeared to be close to us, and yet we never came any nearer to them,--although we steamed toward them almost half a day.

The descent was rapid--we came down nearly five thousand feet in an hour and a half--into a most lovely verdant valley, two thousand feet lower than Lake Tezcoco. Here grew great crops of sugar cane, bananas, coffee, and oranges, limes and pomegranates--a profuse verdure. The valley, from ten to twenty miles in width, stretched away in broad sweeping curves both east and west, while through it flowed the upper waters of the River Balsas. Here the river takes its rise from the fountains of the melting snowfields upon the volcano's distant flanks.

The valley is one of the most fertile and salubrious in all Mexico.

Cortez seized upon it almost as soon as he had wrested _Tenocht.i.tlan_ from Montezuma's grasp. What he did not take for himself, he divided out in liberal gifts among the great captains in his train, granting to them immense _haciendas_, farms fifty miles across, embracing lands of unbounded fertility, even then smiling beneath the care of skillful tillers of the soil. The best of these monstrous estates are still owned by families descended from the _Conquestadores_. The lands originally were all subject to the law of entail, and the laws are still upon the statute books. Here are famous prehistoric ruins, among them those of the ancient pyramid and temple of Xochicalco and many hieroglyphics dating back to an antiquity more remote than the memory of even the Aztec people. Here also are the caves of Cacahuamilpa, equally famous. The great ruins, lying a day's journey from the city, I did not have a chance to see.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MY COCHA--CUERNAVACA]

My glimpses of the town of Cuernavaca were but flashlight peeps. The station, where we finally arrived, after descending by a long series of zig-zags and sweeping curves, lies a good mile outside the city.

Here a motley a.s.semblage were gathered to greet our advent, an array of _cochas_, _voitures_, and _cabriolets_, drawn by dusty, uncurried mules and horses. Remembering my experience, when last arriving in Mexico City, I hurried to an antique vehicle, drawn by a pair of mules, and bargained with the young _cochero_ that he should drive me to and about the city of Cuernavaca and bring me back to the station.

This after some haggling, he agreed to do, all for one _peso_ (Mexican silver dollar). I climbed into the dusty equipage. The _cochero_ swore at his mules in sonorous Spanish, and cracking his long-lashed whip, started them on a full run down the wide _camino_, amidst a cloud of white dust. Thus we entered the city and thus we proceeded through streets narrow and broad, until we had traversed and circled and driven through the chiefer part of it. He never stopped his swearing, he continually cracked his whip, and the mules never slackened in their wild gallop throughout the happy hour he was in my employ. There are no sidewalks in these Spanish towns. Men and women bolted from our onward coming, children fled into open doorways, and dogs and chickens and lank hogs scattered before us as chaff before the wind. We rattled past the one-time palace of Cortez, afterward of Carlotta, Maximilian's ill-fated mate, and now used as the State Capitol. We circled the pretty _plaza_ with its flowers and palms and tropical gardens and splashing fountains. We viewed the monstrous cathedral, all dilapidated. We drew rein a moment before the shrine of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, kodaked it, and swung along in front of the old church of the Franciscans.

My _cochero_ seemed to gain enthusiasm with each bounce of the _cocha_. He clamored continually in voluble and quite incomprehensible Indian-Spanish. The narrower and more ill-paved the street the more violently did he lash the mules like one possessed. A pair of pretty _senoritas_, on their balcony smiled upon me as we pa.s.sed, and I kodaked them in courteous acknowledgment of their good will; we beheld where the famous baths of Cuernavaca have for centuries been taken, and I had pointed out to me the magnificent and extensive Borda Gardens, where flowers and fruits, fountains and cascades, marble basins and miniature lakes express in utter riot the prodigal and exuberant fancies of an ancient half-mad millionaire; and still proceeding, never stopping, we at last whirled back amidst even greater clouds of dust to the railway station, just in time to catch the train. Another motley throng was gathered there. Half of the town seemed to have turned out to see the other half depart. Along the platform were many Indians selling fruit and compounding those curious peppered sandwiches, which so delight the seasoned palate of the Mexican. By this time the lining of my own mouth having become somewhat inured to these fierce foods, I let an old Indian crone make for me a particular combination of bread and oil and pepper and cuc.u.mbers and highly-seasoned and minced meat, only daring to eat it, however, when I had entered my car again, so that I might be in close neighborhood to copious supplies of water. The Mexican delights in this sort of burning sustenance, and for him it can never be made too spiced and too hot. On the platform of the station there were also many Mexican ladies of quality, come to say good-bye to husbands and brothers, who were returning to the capital. None of them wore hats, but the graceful _mantillas_ were universally in use, and, generally, the gowns were black.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHRINE OF THE VIRGIN OF GUADELOUPE--CUERNAVACA]

Cuernavaca with its baths and mineral waters is the favorite of all the resorts, easily accessible to the fashionable Mexican. Here also almost continually resides a large colony of the European ladies whose husbands do business in Mexico City, the high alt.i.tude, thin air, and chilly temperature of which rarely agree with the health of the women who come there from the lower sea levels. The men can stand it from the first, if their hearts and lungs are sound, but the women are often sent to Cuernavaca, there to sojourn until they become acclimated to the conditions of these highland plateaus. The harsh climate of Mexico City is particularly cruel to all convalescents; hence invalids also come here to regain their strength. Thus, there is much travel upon the railway between the capital of the republic and its most salubrious, nearby resort.