Land without chimneys; or, the byways of Mexico

by Alfred Oscar Coffin

In Ethnology and Zoology the exhibits would require days to see. The museum is open every day but Saturday, and is thronged ever. The Indians never tire gazing on the scenes which recall the times when they were masters. In the midst of the quadrangle is a beautiful garden of rare plants and tall palms.

Soldiers guard the entrance and police welcome you and ask for your camera and umbrellas, and as your party starts, a uniformed lad will fall in at your heel, attach himself to your shadow and never leave you till you descend the steps to the exit. He does not seek your companionship necessarily for publication, “but as an evidence of good faith.” He is not intrusive nor garrulous; his duty is simply to be ever present. With tens of thousands of valuable relics in easy reach, probably they are acting wisely upon past experience.

The next door leads to San Carlos, the National Art Gallery. Here are the famous paintings of “Padre Los Casas,” “The Deluge,” and Murillo’s “San Juan de Dios” and “The Lost Sheep.” In the fourth and fifth salons are the works of native Mexicans, and their love to old Spain is shown by their paintings; whole sides of the salons are given to the cruel tale of the Conquest and the Inquisition: Spanish Cavaliers, holding up the cross in one hand and the drawn sword in the other, and cutting down the ignorant natives who would not confess the Virgin; the death of Montezuma, surrounded by heaps of gold so gluttonously hoarded by the Spaniards; the fate of his brother, Guatemotzin, the last of the Aztec chieftains, whose feet are held in the fire by his Christian torturers, to disclose his hidden treasures, and the haughty chieftain still kept his heroic mien without a murmur.

One of his generals who was similarly tortured appealed to him. Turning a look of scorn upon him Guatemotzin replied: “And say, am I on a bed of roses?” There is a weird fascination about the paintings that makes you feel that the paintings have just stepped from the pages of Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. It is the Chamber of Horrors where the Spanish Inquisition is depicted by men who knew. Overhead are scores of medallions of famous men of Mexican birth, and beneath each a famous picture. Leaving this salon we come to a well lighted hall with several hundred easels and folding stools. This is the instruction room, and is filled with students and models and casts and charts, where lessons are given to all who apply without regard to creed or race or color. The Color Line has no place in Mexico. Beneath the salon are halls filled with statuary, where clay modeling and sculpture is taught, and as you leave with weary limb you are convinced that it is in truth a National Academy.

Then there is the Mineria, the School of Engineering and Mines, on San Andres and Betlemita streets. It cost a million and a half of dollars, and was the work of the sculptor and architect, Tolsa. It contains rich collections of geological and minerological specimens, and a meteorological observatory, also a fossil of the Pleiocene horse of three toes. The mint on Apartado Street struck its first coin in 1535, and since then the coins of republics, empires and dictatorships have run from it in a constant stream of gold and silver to the enormous sum of $2,200,000,000.

Then there is the National Library and the Preparatory School on San Ildefonso Street, with a thousand students and fine equipment and botanical garden. Public instruction is free and gratuitous in every respect, without regard to race or religion.

Just beyond the Cathedral is a National Pawnshop, Monte de Piedad, “Mountain of Mercy.” It was founded more than a hundred years ago by Count Regla, the owner of the famous silver-mine of Real de Monte, who gave three hundred thousand dollars for the purpose, so that the poor and needy could get money on their belongings at reasonable interest. Any article deposited is valued by two disinterested parties, and three-fourths of its value is promptly advanced. If the party ceases to pay interest on the loan, the article is kept six months longer, and then exposed for sale. If not sold in the next six months, it is sold at public auction, and all that is realized from the sale above the original pawn, is placed to the borrower’s credit. If this money is not called for in a specified time, it reverts to the bank of the institution. This is a government institution, and has entirely broken up the small pawn-shops that charge unreasonable interest. The rate of interest is never raised, and it lends a million dollars a year, and has fifty thousand customers. One dollar is the smallest sum loaned, and ten thousand the largest, and the loans are about three hundred daily. About one-third of the articles pawned are never redeemed, and tourists can find some wonderful bargains here. The Diamond snuff-box presented Santa Anna when he was Dictator is here. $25,000 will buy the little trifle.

In all the wars and revolutions this old city has seen, all parties have respected this grand institution, with one exception: When Gonzales was president in 1884, he ran so short of money, that to keep the National credit, he levied upon its treasury. An English syndicate with a capital of $25,000,000 has recently bought the institution for one million, and will still carry on the banking business.

Chapultepec, “The hill of the Grass-hopper,” is the president’s White House and the West Point of Mexico. It is three miles from the city, and is situated upon a perpendicular rock, two hundred feet high, and was a veritable Gibraltar in war times when cannon were unknown. This castle was the pride and ambition of Carlotta, the wife of Maximilian, and she spent half a million dollars on the interior furnishings. The interior is remodeled on the Pompeiian style. The castle is reached by a winding road around the hill, and also by a secret cavern through the hill. On the rock in front are the engraved pictures of Montezuma I. and his successor. In the rear is the immense park of ahuehuete or cypress trees, next in size to the redwoods of California. One of these venerable monarchs is fifty feet in circumference and one hundred and seventy feet high, under which was Montezuma’s favorite seat. This park measures two miles in length, and reaches to Molino del Rey, “The King’s Mill,” which figured in the war with the United States. It is now the National Arsenal.

The Military Academy is at Chapultepec, and the whole hill is a military camp. From the citadel a view can be had of the whole valley of Mexico, forty miles long and thirty wide. To the left of the road leading up to the castle is a cave, closed with an iron gate. This is said to have been the treasure house of both Montezuma and Cortez. A stairway leads up through the hill to the castle. A large collection of animals are in the park and a beautiful flower garden. From here leads an aqueduct that supplies the city with water, just as it did before the Conquest. Here was made the last stand against the American army under General Pillow, and U. S. Grant was one of the first to mount the hill, and the flower of the cadet army was slain here, and they were only boys. The occasion has been remembered by the government, and at the foot of the hill stands a large monument with the names of all the boys who fell. On one side is this inscription: