Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

You leave this place weighed down with impressions of magnificence, wealth and beauty. Outside the door of this four million dollar church you step over a hundred naked, starving beggars, holding their skeleton fingers for coppers. One cent seems to be the regulation fee expected, and if you give a beggar five cents he returns four cents change.

Near by is the government building in which the treaty of peace was signed between Mexico and the United States. Guadalupe Hidalgo is what the treaty is called in history, out of patriotism for the memory of Hidalgo. By the little chapel is a geranium plant in full bloom. Its stem is five inches in diameter, and the top is thirty feet in the air. I suppose the Virgin exercises an influence over it as with every thing else here. Across the little plazuela is another miracle attributed to the image. At the foot of the rocky hill where the vision appeared the last time, boils up a spring of water that is a veritable geyser. It is said to have appeared after the apparition had vanished. It is covered with a pavilion, Capillo del Pocito, and is about ten feet in diameter, and about the same from the curb to the water. The dangerous pit is fenced in with an iron railing, and as you gauze into its chalybeate depths surging below, an attendant draws up a basin of water and passes it to you with a wonderful narrative of its curative properties for unfruitful women, and the large number of such women who annually resort to it for relief with the Virgin’s blessing.

This is the Indian’s Mecca, and on December 12, all Indians make a pilgrimage here in honor of Juan Diego, the only Indian saint in the calendar. The encircling town of ten thousand devotees with a permanent residence here is an earnest of the strong hold it has upon them. It is said that whoever drinks from this miraculous spring is compelled to return again, no matter how far he may wander. And so I was impelled to drink of the vile smelling water with the hope that at some time it will carry me to Guadalupe again without the necessity of a yard and a half of railroad ticket which gets punched into fragments on a ninety day circular tour. I stayed the violent eruption which the medicated water threatened within, and turned to the broad stone steps that led to the top of the hill where Juan plucked the roses. The beautiful line of steps leads up the basaltic cliff to a height of a hundred and fifty feet, and where the roses grew is a little chapel, “La Capilla de Cerrita,” crowning the summit of Tepeyacac. Though nearly four hundred years old, the chapel is in good repair, and is still the holiest shrine in Mexico. The entire walls are covered with pictures of the miraculous cures by the image.

There is a picture of a man falling from a church steeple, and afterwards brought to life by the passage of the image, and a bull-fighter impaled on the horns of the enraged bull, and a hundred similar scenes where the image had asserted itself.

It was worth much to see the adoration and utter abandon lavished upon this image. Pilgrims from everywhere stretched themselves prone upon the floor, and the look of resignation said as plainly as the words could, “Now Lord lettest Thou Thy servant die in peace.”

I shook myself up to see if I could awaken a little devotion within myself, but the only feeling I had was borrowed from that little incident on Mount Carmel, when that rugged old spokesman, Elijah, the Tishbite called down fire to consume the worshipers of Baal.

The faithful looked up as I wandered among them with note-book and pencil. They did not speak, but that look would have filled three columns of close printed small pica type if translated, about the unregenerate heathen that did not bow to the sacred image nor cross himself when he passed by the holy water. The scribe was there solely in pursuit of knowledge, and when he had all the little chapel contained, he stepped over the prostrated forms on the floor and passage-way and went out to see some more miracles performed by the Virgin.

Ten steps from the door loomed up another miracle as big as life and almost as natural. This was the old stone sail and ship’s mast, and thereby hangs a tale, to wit, namely, as follows:

“Once upon a time,” as the story-books go, a very rich family owned a ship which was long over-due at Vera Cruz, so this family went to the Virgin, or to the image rather, and laid the case before it. They said the ship’s cargo was worth almost its weight in Spanish doubloons, and if she would bring that ship to port, they would make her an ex voto offering of the ship, if she would let them have the cargo. The image listened and concluded that the bargain was fair enough, so she let the ship come to port. True to their promise, the owner had the mast, sails and cordage brought across the Cordillera Mountains 265 miles to Guadalupe and set them up in front of the church and then encased the whole in stone just as you see it today, and if any one doubts that the Virgin saved the ship, why, “there stands the mast itself to prove it.” It is useless to argue against facts. A single look of interest draws a half dozen guides who want to explain all about the Virgin and the image. I give them enough money to get drunk on and die if they will leave me alone and tell me no more about the wonder. After they are gone I turn to the Campo Santo, just behind the chapel. This is the Westminster of Guadalupe, full to running over with illustrious pilgrims, bandits and all.

At the barred gate I was met by a tall pirate who claimed my camera. I told him I had passed the custom-house with that box, and that there was nothing seditious in it but a half dozen exposures of his fellow-citizens, and from the scarcity of clothes they had on they were really exposed before I found them, and besides, I had a deed and title to that camera stretching all the way to Boston. He said that was all bueno, but he did not care a hot tamale about that, but he would swear by all the saints and the Virgin herself that I and my camera would part company before I entered that gate. “Why sir, don’t you know that you stand on holy ground, right on the Hill of Tepeyacac itself, and right in that gate is the tomb of Santa Anna?” I told him that was all bueno, too, but we had Santa Anna’s wooden leg in the Smithsonian Institution, and I was not afraid of any one-legged man hurting me, especially one that had been planted twenty-six years. And besides, I told him the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed right here February 2, 1848, and if I remembered correctly the treaty acknowledged that he got licked, and we could lick him again and tie one hand behind our backs. I did not want to trouble the Virgin to bring this gate-keeper back to life, so I gave him my camera.