Aztec Land by Maturin Murray Ballou (i have read the book TXT) 📖

among his lady friends. Looking on at the suggestive scene is a scantily-clad Indian girl, with a curious hungry expression upon her face. Is it flowers or food that she craves? She shall have both. How rich the color of her cheek; how eloquent the expression of her dark eyes; how grateful her hesitating smile, as she receives from the stranger a piece of silver and a cluster of flowers!

On the open space in front of the cathedral a sort of daily fair is held, where a most incongruous trade is carried on amid great confusion; but there are no more male and female slaves offered for sale here, as in the days of the Spanish victors. Slavery existed both under Aztec and Spanish rule; but it was abolished, as an institution, soon after the establishment of Mexican independence. The match boys, lottery-ticket venders, fruit men, ice-cream hawkers, cigar and cigarette dealers, and candy women (each with a baby tied to her back), rend the air with their harsh and varied cries, while the stranger is quickly discovered, and importuned to the verge of endurance. We were told that this army of hawkers and peddlers were allowed just in the shadow of the church by special permit, a percentage of the benefit derived from the sales accruing to the priests, who carry on their profession inside the walls of the grand and beautiful edifice, where a less noisy, but quite as commercial a performance is going on all the while, "indulgences" being bartered and sold to moneyed sinners nearly every hour of the day.

The principal market-place has always been near the plaza, at its southwest end, a single block away; but a new and more spacious one is in course of erection at this writing, progress being made in the usual _manana_ style. Sunday morning is the great market day of the week, the same as in all Mexican cities, when there is here a confusion of tongues that would silence the hubbub of the Paris Bourse. How a legitimate business can be accomplished under such circumstances is a marvel. Each line of trade has its special location, but confusion reigns supreme.

In passing through the Calle de San Francisco, we were struck with the difference of temperature between the sunny and the shady sides of the street. It must have been fully ten degrees. One becomes uncomfortably warm while walking in the sunshine, but upon crossing into the shade he is quickly chilled by the frostiness of the still, dry atmosphere and a realizing sense of dampness beneath his feet. "Only dogs and Americans walk on the sunny side," say the Mexicans. To this we can only answer by commending the discretion of both men and beasts. In the early evening, as soon as the sun sets, the natives begin to wrap up their throats and faces, even in midsummer. Yet they seem to avoid the sun while it shines in the middle of the day.

In New Zealand and Alaska, when two natives meet each other and desire to express pleasure at the circumstance, they rub their noses together. In Mexico, if two gentlemen meet upon the street or elsewhere after a considerable absence, they embrace cordially and pat each other on the back in the most demonstrative manner, just as two parties fall on each other's neck in a stage embrace. To a cool looker-on this seemed rather a waste of the raw material, taking place between two individuals of the same sex. In Japan, two persons on meeting in public begin bowing their bodies until the forehead nearly touches the ground, repeating this movement a score of times. In China, two gentlemen who meet greet each other by shaking their own left hand in their right. In Norway and Sweden, the greeting is made by taking off and replacing the hat half a dozen times; the greater number of times, the more cordial is the greeting considered; but in Mexico it is nothing more nor less than an embrace with both arms.

The carrying of concealed weapons is prohibited by law in the United States and some other countries, but in Mexico a statute is not permitted to be simply a dead letter. While we were at the Iturbide, the police of the capital were vigorously enforcing a new law, which forbids the carrying of any sort of deadly weapon except in open sight. The common people were being searched for knives, of which, when found, they were instantly deprived, so that at one of the police stations there was a pile of these articles six feet high and four wide. They were in all manner of shapes, short and long, sharp and dull, daggerlike or otherwise, but all worn for the purpose either of assault or defense. They came from the possession of the humble natives, who could not plead that they kept them for domestic uses or for eating purposes, since they use neither knife nor fork in that process. We were told that this wholesale seizure had been going on for a month or more, the police stopping any person whom they chose in order to search them in the street. Such a thing as resistance is not thought of by a peon; he knows that it is of no sort of use, and will be the cause of sending him to prison immediately. Quarrels at low drinking places are no longer followed by the use of knives. It was the frequency of these assaults which filled the hospitals with victims and caused the passage of a law which meets the exigencies of the case. The fine for carrying concealed weapons is heavy, besides involving the penalty of imprisonment. A certain class of persons coming from out of the city are permitted to carry revolvers, but they must be in a belt and in full sight. Probably no municipal law was ever more thoroughly enforced than this of disarming the common class of this city.

The tramway facilities are so complete in the city of Mexico that one has very little occasion to employ hackney coaches. Sometimes, however, these will be found, if not absolutely necessary, yet a great convenience. The legal charges are very moderate, and may well be so, for the entire turnout is usually of a most broken-down character,--poor horses, or mules, a stupid driver, and a dirty interior, with such a variety of offensive smells as to cause one to enter into an analysis to decide which predominates. One dollar an hour is the average charge made for these vehicles, the driver expecting, as in similar cases in Paris, Berlin, or elsewhere, a trifle as a _pourboire_ at the end of the service for which he is engaged. Where these ruinous structures which pass for public carriages originally came from is a conundrum; but there can be no possible doubt as to their antiquity. Mexican fleas, like those of Naples and continental Spain, are both omnivorous and carnivorous, and these vehicles are apt to be itinerant asylums for this pest of the low latitudes. There are three grades of hackney coaches in the capital, those comparatively decent, another class one degree less desirable, and a third into which one will get when compelled to do so, not otherwise. Each of these grades is designated by a small metal sign in the shape of a flag, of a certain color, and the charges are graduated accordingly. As to the drivers, they are not such outright swindlers as those of their tribe in New York, nor by any means so tidy and intelligent as those of Boston.


CHAPTER IX.


A City of Vistas.--Want of Proper Drainage.--Unfortunate Site.--Insecure Foundations.--A Boom in Building Lots.--Pleasant Suburbs.--Night Watchmen.--The Iturbide Hotel.--A Would-be Emperor.--Domestic Arrangements.--A New Hotel wanted.--Places of Public Entertainment. --The Bull Ring.--Repulsive Performance.--Monte de Piedad.--An English Syndicate purchase it.--The Alameda.--The Inquisition.-- Festal Days.--Pulque Shops.--The Church Party.--Gilded Bar-Rooms. --Mexican Marriages.--Mothers and Infants.--A Family Group.


Mexico is a city of vistas. One looks down the long perspective of a thoroughfare north, south, east, or west, and at the end he sees the purple mountains, some far away, some quite near to view, some apparently three miles off, some sixty; but the air is so transparent that even the most distant objects seem to be very near at hand. Beneath the plain which immediately surrounds the city is a dry marsh which was a broad lake in Cortez's day,--indeed, it is a lake still, four or five feet below the surface of the ground, containing the accumulated drainage of centuries. The site of the national capital was formerly an island, only a trifle above the level of Lake Texcoco; hence there are no cellars possible beneath the dwelling-houses of the populace. Herein lies the secret of the want of drainage, and of the unpleasant and unwholesome odors which are constantly saluting the senses and challenging the remarks of strangers. Were it not for the absence of atmospheric moisture in this high altitude, where perishable articles of food dry up and do not spoil by mould or putrefaction, the capital would be swept by pestilence annually, being underlaid by a soil reeking with pollution. As it is, typhoid fever prevails, and the average duration of life in the city is recorded at a fraction over twenty-six years! Lung and malarial diseases hold a very prominent place among the given causes of mortality. Owing to the proximity of the mountains, the rains sometimes assume the character of floods. A resident friend of the author's told him that he had seen the surrounding streets and the Plaza Mayor covered with two feet of water, extending a quarter of a mile up San Francisco Street after a sharp summer shower, which did not continue much more than an hour. Of course this gradually subsides; but the inconvenience of such an episode in a busy city, not to speak of its unwholesomeness, is a serious matter. The wonder is that Cortez, after destroying the Aztec capital, should have rebuilt it on so undesirable a site, while there was plenty of higher and more inviting ground close at hand. To this blunder is owing the unhealthfulness of a city which might have been rendered one of the most salubrious dwelling-places on the continent, if placed on any of the neighboring elevated lands, with their possibilities for pure air, their location above fogs, and their being so entirely out of the range of devastating storms. Peter the Great had good and sufficient reason for building his capital at such enormous expense upon marshy ground beside the Neva, but one can see no good reason for Cortez's choice of a site for this capital. History gives us an account of seven disastrous floods which have occurred in this city since 1521, all of which were accompanied with serious loss of life, as well as great destruction of property. If a broad channel could be opened so as to reach the Tula River, some forty miles away, adequate drainage might be obtained for the capital. This is too stupendous an undertaking, however, for Mexican capital or enterprise. Perhaps a foreign company will some day accomplish it; but whether such a scheme would be a safe one, _quien sabe_? It is possible that in attempting to procure perfect drainage, even a worse condition of affairs might be brought about. The city, it will be understood, rests upon a body of water supported by an intervening stratum of earth and accumulated debris. If this buried lake were to be drained, that is, absolutely removed, would not a collapse of some sort necessarily take place? What would support the present frail foundations of the city buildings, which seem to be now sustained by hydraulic pressure? Even as it is, no heavy structure can be found in the limits of the capital which is not more or