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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 nobles 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 passes 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.
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 altitude 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 altitude of over ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, we traversed for many miles a grassy 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 Tenochtitlan 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.
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 assemblage 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 señoritas, on their balcony smiled upon me as we passed, 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 cucumbers 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.
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 altitude, 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.
It was afternoon when we drew out of Cuernavaca for the long climb to the height of land. As we ascended, the evening shadows were lengthening and creeping out from every cleft and hollow along the mountain sides; and toward the east, splitting the blue sky, towered Popocatepetl. The most profound impression of my sojourn in Mexico, a memory which will follow me through life, is that of the mighty, glittering, distant, yet ever-present, snow-bound cone of Popocatepetl.
As we crossed the height of land and began our descent, the long evening shadows filled the great valley of Anahuac, while forth from every vale and hollow crept little bunches of cloudlike mist, until at last, with strange and weird effect, the assembled vapors shut from my vision the whole extent of the valley beneath, and made it seem as though we were plunging into the unfathomable depths of a white sea. The land, the lakes, the towns, the villages, and the city were hid beneath the impenetrable, fleecy cloud-billows.
It was dark when we entered the city. I took a cocha, and I am here again in my stone-walled chamber of the hotel. I entered the city from the north, I now leave it by the east, along the route which was traversed by the invading conquerors from old Spain, when four hundred years ago they came up from the placid waters of the sea, a dreadful apparition, bringing death in their mailed fists, and pestilence and cruel enslavement to a proud and ruling race.
XVIII
The Journey by Night from Mexico City – Over the Mountains to the Sea Coast – The Ancient City of Vera Cruz
Vera Cruz, Mexico,December 19th.
Last night was to be my final one in Mexico, and as a troupe of Spanish actors was billed at one of the larger theaters, I went to see the play. There are a number of playhouses in the city, and paternal government is laying the foundation for an opera-house which, it is announced, will be one of the most “magnifico” in the world. The theater we attended was one of the largest, and the actors, Spaniards from Barcelona, were filling a season’s engagement. In purchasing tickets, the first novelty was the separate coupons which are issued for each act. You buy for one act or another as you prefer. The Mexicans rarely stay the play out, but linger for an act or two and then depart. There are tiers of boxes around the sides, in which were many men and ladies in evening dress, the belles and beaux of the city. We sat among the occupants of the seats upon the floor, the greater part of whom were men. The first noticeable difference between the audience here and that at home is that every man keeps on his hat except when occupying a box. It is bad enough, we think, for a woman to retain her hat or bonnet, but imagine how it is when you are confronted by multitudinous high-peaked broad-brimmed sombreros of the most obtrusive type. The excuse for the wearing of these great hats upon all occasions is, that in the chilly air of these high altitudes, it becomes a necessary protection.
The faces about me were dark; even the men in the boxes were of darker color than would be those of the pure Spanish blood. The women are also dark, their color much darker than that of the usual mulatto in the States. This is due to the large infusion of Indian blood among the Mexican people, even among the leisure classes.
The actors were of the Spanish swarthy type, but among the actresses, there were, as always, two or three with conspicuously red heads, the Venetian red so pronounced and popular among the London shopgirls. These red headed belles received the entire attention and applause of the male portion of the audience. The audience also smoked incessantly, the gentlemen large Mexican cigars, the ladies their cigarettes. The right to smoke is an inalienable privilege of both sexes in Mexico, the women using tobacco almost as freely and constantly as do the men. The acting was good, and some of the fandango dances brought thunders of bravos. The pauses between acts were long. In one of the intervals we sauntered out upon the streets, where a mob of ticket brokers so assailed us and bargained so successfully for our remaining coupons, that we sold them at an advance over the figure we had paid. The plays begin early, about seven o’clock, and the doors stay open until midnight, the constantly changing audiences giving to the actors fresh support.
On a previous night we visited another theater, where a more fashionable company gathered to see the well-known Frenchman, Frijoli, in his clever impersonations of character. Here were assembled Mexico’s most fashionable set, among them a party of distinguished South Americans attending the Pan-American Congress, the ladies from Brazil, Argentina, and Chili wearing costly diamonds, and being in full decollete attire.
Here also the sombrero reigned supreme in dress circle and on parquet floor, and smoking was everywhere indulged in.
Yesterday was to be my last day in Mexico. I started out in the morning to lay hold of a good opal and try my luck in buying mantillas. From the young woman in the shop where I had had my kodak films prepared, I learned the location of an establishment where mantillas were sold. She could not talk to me in my own tongue. I was puzzled what to do, then an idea came to me. I took out a pencil and paper. I handed them to her. I indicated by signs that I would have her make a picture. Quick as a flash she interpreted my thought. She laughed, and drew for me a perfect little map, showing the shop wherein I stood, the street it opened out upon, the streets and blocks I should follow until I came to the place where the mantillas were, and she marked my final corner with an “X.” I bowed to her profoundly, saying, many times, “Muchas gracias, mil gracias, señorita,” and, with paper in hand, started on my quest. I had no trouble in finding my way. I finally halted before a big French retail dry goods store. All dry goods establishments here are either French or Spanish, just as the hardware and drug stores are all German; the native Mexican is not keen in trade, and but few business houses are his.
It was a large concern, and many customers were passing in and out. A number of clerks, all men, – I have seen no woman clerks anywhere – were standing behind long tables, while the public moved up and down between. I repeated the word mantilla, and was shown to where were many shelves filled with flat pasteboard boxes. Several of these were taken down and the beautiful pieces of lace shown me. As I stood there, in a quandary what to select, a pleasant-faced, short, stout man with a dark-haired woman approached me. As they neared the table, she turned to him and said in good United States, “O, here are the mantillas we are looking for.” Her appearance attracted me, and so, turning to her and lifting my hat, I bowed and begged her aid. He and I then exchanged cards. He was a Dr. S., of Washington, for many years physician to Mrs. T., whose wedding I attended two years ago, making geological studies in Mexico, and soon going to Central America. We were at once friends. He was gathering information for the Smithsonian Institution. The lady was his wife. She aided me in selecting two lovely mantillas of black silk. Later, they accompanied me in my search for opals, and helped me choose several fine stones. Afterward, at their hotel, the Jardin, they showed me their collection of photographs, and many of the mementoes and curios they were collecting. In the afternoon we dined together at my Creole restaurant. At last, we parted, with mutual regret.
The train which bore me from the city left the station of the Mexican Railway (“The Queen’s Own”), about nine o’clock P. M. It is a standard gauge railroad. I had a comfortable lower berth in the Pullman. The car was crowded. Several young officers in their smartest uniforms were saying adios to a number of black-eyed señoritas and their mammas. The young men at parting, wrapped wide scarfs about their mouths, almost hiding their faces up to their eyes, a common practice used against pneumonia. The night air was cold. I wore my overcoat, and shivered where I stood upon the rear platform of the car watching through many miles the city’s receding lights. We traversed the valley toward the east, and then began to climb the lower slopes of the mountain range we must cross before we should finally descend to Vera Cruz.
When I awoke in the morning we were yet three hours from the Gulf. We had crossed the mountains in the night; we had ascended three thousand feet, and come down eleven thousand feet, through wild and beautiful scenery; a journey never to be taken by night, unless necessity demands. We were more than two hours late, having been detained at Orizaba, while we slept. This was fortunate for me, for it gave me the daylight hours to view the lowlands through which the road passes from the mountains to the sea.
Back of us, high, high into the cloudless blue[Pg 203][Pg 204] sky, glittered the snowy peak of Mexico’s greatest volcano, the lofty, mighty Orizaba, now known to be higher than Popocatepetl, and much like it in the contour of its cone; a most imposing sight as it shone in the light of the rising sun. Wherever we turned, wherever we went, mighty Orizaba followed us. We never lost sight of it, we could not escape its stupendous bulk. I am fortunate to have seen four of the chief snow-capped volcanoes of Mexico, and to have fine photographs of them all – Popocatepetl, Ixtaccihautl, Nevada de Toluca, and Orizaba.
The lowlands we were traversing are wholly tropical; we were among extensive plantations of bananas, palms of many sorts, coffee orchards, and impenetrable jungles. The sun was as hot as upon the llanos along the river Balsas in Michoacan.
It was half-past nine when the train pulled into the station at Vera Cruz. A big negro, black as night, dressed in immaculate white duck, collared me the very instant my feet touched the ground. He spoke in soft, smooth English, with marked British accent. He introduced himself as “Mr. Sam.” “I am a British subject from Jamaica,” he said, “and representative of the Hotel Metropolitán.” He offered to conduct me to that institution. He assured me it was “the finest establishment upon the coast.” As that was my predetermined destination, I permitted him to precede me there, carrying my bags. The sun was fierce, the atmosphere dull and heavy. We walked through filthy streets, streets never yet cleaned in all the four-centuries’ life of Vera Cruz. The ill-paved and stinking gutters were filled with slime. The streets were bordered with low-built stucco houses. We entered an ill-kept plaza where grew lank bananas and cocoanut palms, a low government building with a graceful tower bounding its eastern side. Here we came to the hotel, an old stone edifice two stories high, with a loggia overspreading the sidewalk, and a curtain hung between the pillars and the street to keep the hot sun from the footway which ran beneath. “Mr. Sam” instructed me in what I should have to do. First, I must follow him to the American doctor, and in the presence of the American Consul, procure a certificate of health. Then he would take me to the “Fumigation Office” of the Mexican government to have my baggage examined and certified as free from yellow fever and contagious disease. Then he would take me to the office of the Ward Line Steamship Company to have my ticket, which I had bought the day before in the office of the company in Mexico City, examined and certified, and then he would arrange that “The Express Company,” for a stiff fee, should convey my through[Pg 205][Pg 206] baggage from the station of the railway to the steamer Monterey, lying at anchor out in the open Gulf, although the day previous it had all been checked through from Mexico City to Havana. Later, he himself would row me out to the vessel and put me in my stateroom, free from further molestation of red tape. “Mr. Sam” proved himself true, extracting from me, however, sundry centavos along the way. He did not intend me at any time to escape. Nevertheless, I did shake myself free from his superintendence for one short hour, and strolled alone about the ancient town. It is a city of filth, stinks, and squalor – just the home for the perpetual breeding of pestilence. It is no wonder that the plague of yellow fever has for centuries stalked remorselessly in its midst. But the Mexican Government, stimulated by the example of the scientific cleanliness of Cuba, is now laying a modern sewer system, and has employed English engineers to construct extensive dock facilities, and is transforming Vera Cruz into a clean and modern city. There is thus hope for both the health and the commerce of Vera Cruz.
I visited the famous cocoanut palm grove in the Alameda Park, and seating myself upon one of the stone benches, watched the flocks of tame vultures which abound in Vera Cruz, and are the regular street scavengers of the town. Protected as they are by city ordinance, they run about like flocks of chickens. They scarcely move aside for the passer-by. There is not much of interest in Vera Cruz, although the city contains several ancient churches, Spanish towers, and one mediæval fortress, built in the early period of the Conquest.
After lunch at the hotel, where I was sadly overcharged, “Mr. Sam” rowed me a quarter of a mile to the steamship Monterey. My baggage was brought out by the “express company” in a lighter along with that of other fellow-travelers of my train, and although we were through passengers from Mexico City to Cuba and New York, yet extra charges were made for this necessary service, an evident extortion.
I had reached my ship about half-past three in the afternoon; we were scheduled to leave at four; we did not sail until long after the appointed hour, so slow is the “lighterage” process of taking on cargo. The largest vessels can lie at the new piers, but either to save port charges, or, as they claim, “to avoid the possibility of yellow fever,” these boats anchor far out in the harbor and compel all passengers and freight to be brought on board.
Our motley cargo included sheep and cattle for Havana; a menagerie, lions, tigers, monkeys, and an elephant carefully hoisted and standing in a specially constructed crate in the forward hold, uneasy and swaying his body in great terror; and also many and divers crates and bales of merchandise.
We carry a large company of cabin passengers for Progresso, the chief port of Merida, in Yucatan. Among them I have noticed a group of gentlemen who upon the train seemed to be suffering greatly from the cold. I learned that they are rich planters from Merida. One is a senator in the Mexican National Congress. He is a large, thick-set man, with high cheek bones, blue eyes, light-brown hair, a white man much burned and browned by tropical suns. I thought he might possibly be a German or Scandinavian. Imagine my astonishment when I am advised that he is a full-blooded “Yucataka Indian!” He is one of that strange tribe of blue-eyed, light-haired people, whom the Spaniards never conquered, and whom the Mexican government have never yet been able to subdue, and in recent years have only been won over through Diaz’s subtle diplomacy. Whence came this tribe is one of the unsolved riddles of history. Possibly some Viking crew, drifted far out of their northern waters, may have been the forefathers of this blue-eyed, unconquerable race.
We are weighing anchor. The propeller blade begins to turn. On our port side rise the white walls of San Juan de Ulloa, the famous fortress and now state prison of Mexico, – an island of itself, – within the cells and dungeons of which yellow fever perpetually removes the imprisoned wretches sent there to die.
To starboard lies at anchor the Mexican navy – a small-sized tug. Our voyage to Cuba is begun.
