Mexico / Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation, History, Political Conditions, Topography, Natural Resources, Industries and General Development

by C. Reginald Enock

A PUBLIC GARDEN IN TROPICAL MEXICO: VIEW AT COLIMA.

The first city of importance in the country is, of course, the Federal capital of the Republic, with its population of 369,000 inhabitants.

Standing towards the southern extremity of the great plateau of Anahuac, reposing in a beautiful valley full of natural resources, and rich with historic lore, is the City of Mexico. Of singular and varied interest is this capital of the prosperous North American Republic whose name it bears, for its geographical situation and historical associations are such as assign it a leading place among the great centres of Spanish-American civilisation.

In many respects the capital of Mexico may be considered the queen city of Latin America. Buenos Ayres is much larger and of greater importance as a centre of population, but it has not Mexico's history and tradition. The commerce of Santiago and Valparaiso are potent factors in the life of the Pacific coast, but the Chilean capital and seaport are but modern creations in comparison with the old city of the land of Anahuac. Only Lima, the beautiful and interesting capital of her sister nation—Peru—is comparable with Mexico as a centre of historical tradition and Spanish-American culture. Of course, the City of Mexico with its large population is much larger than Lima, with less than 150,000.

Indeed, there are many points of similarity between Mexico and Peru, such as have been discussed elsewhere, and which are the common knowledge of the student, but the City of Mexico possesses a special interest in that it was actually the seat of a prehistoric American civilisation—that of the Aztecs—whilst its position between the great oceans which bathe the American coasts, give it a value for the future of untold possibilities.

The Valley of Mexico, wherein the capital is situated, is a broad elevated plain, or basin, surrounded by hills, which culminate far away to the south-east in the snow-clad summits of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl—the extinct volcanoes of the Sierra Madre. The combined conditions of its latitude and elevation above sea-level—19° 26 N., 99° 7 W., and 7,410 feet—have dowered it with an agreeable and salubrious climate, with an annual range of temperature from 60° F. to 75° F. The mornings are cool and bracing, often bitterly cold indeed; whilst the midday sun is often hot, and the Mexican stays within the cool of his thick-walled house, for it is the hour of siesta. Excessive extremes of heat and cold are not encountered, although at night the Mexican gladly dons his velvet-lined cape, and the foreigner his overcoat, whilst the poor peon shrouds himself in his serape.

The city is one of handsome buildings, wide streets, and fine avenues. Its architecture bears the stamp of its Spanish origin—the typical and picturesque façades of the houses, the grille-covered windows, the balconies looking on to the streets, and other characteristic features well known to the traveller in Spanish-America. The great plaza, ever the pulse and centre of these communities, is known here as the Zocalo; and this ample square is that same one around which the Aztec city—the famous Tenochtitlan—was built, upon whose foundations the Mexican capital arose.

The plan of the city is more or less the geometrically regular one of main and cross-streets running at right angles to each other, and the principal of these are lined with shops, whose windows display luxurious articles of jewellery, clothing, and other effects such as betoken the taste and purchasing power of a wealthy upper class. It is a city of domes and towers, which rise above the surrounding roofs, and convey that aspect of charm and refinement unknown to the purely business cities of Anglo North America. The strong part which the Church has played is shown by the numerous and handsome churches in every quarter of the city. There are more than one hundred and twenty churches and other edifices which were built and formerly occupied for ecclesiastical purposes. The cathedral is the dominating structure, and its two great towers, nearly 200 feet high, are conspicuous from any point of view.

Let us behold this pleasing city from afar before examining more in detail the institutions and habitations of its people. The environs of the capital form a good setting to its beauty. Taking our stand on the range of hills which bound the Valley of Mexico, our eyes rest upon the cultivated fields and gardens of the smaller towns which dot the plain and lead up to the central mass. Green meadows, running streams, great plantation of maguey, giving their characteristic semi-tropical aspect to the landscape, surround haciendas and villages embowered in luxuriant foliage, all lying beneath the azure vault of the Mexican sky. The gleam of domes and towers, softened in the glamour of the distance, catches our eyes; and the reposeful atmosphere and mediæval tints seem to belie the strife of its past, or even the incidents of its modern industrial life. There is the Castle of Chapultepec surrounded by trees, the beautiful and venerable ahuahuetes, or cypresses, surmounting its hill—the Aztec "Hill of the Grasshoppers" where Montezuma's palace was, and where stands the fine structure reared by the viceroys, now the official residence of the Presidents of Mexico of to-day. And there lies Guadalupe gleaming in the sun, with its famous shrine of miraculous visions and cures—the Lourdes of Mexico. There lie Tacubaya, San Angel, and Tlalpam, luxurious and aristocratic suburban homes of Mexico's wealthy citizens, surrounded by their exuberant vegetation on fertile hillsides mid soft and soothing colour and balmy atmosphere. From the pine-clad hills whereon we stand, which form the rim of this singular valley, the whole panorama is open to the view, of lakes and flat plain, the latter crossed by the dusty roads cut by centuries of traffic through the white adobe soil, giving access to the surrounding villages and the serried lines of the maguey plantations, or the chess-board chequers of dark green alfalfa, lighter barley, and yellow maiz. And from plain and dusty road, and vivid hacienda and city domes and whitened walls, our gaze rises to the clear-cut, snowy crest of "The Sleeping Woman," Ixtaccihuatl, in her gleaming porcelain sheen, where she hoards the treasures of the snow, reminding us of the peaks of the great South American Cordillera, to whose system she and her consort Popocatepetl are but a more recent addition. Like legendary sentinels of a vanished past, they seem to overwatch the valley.

The Valley of Mexico is a flat plain, in the lowest portion of which the City of Mexico is situated, two or three miles from Lake Texcoco. The plain consists of lands barren and lands cultivated, marshes and swamps, all intersected by numerous streams falling into the lakes, as well as irrigation and drainage canals, whilst on the rising ground which appears in places the volcanic understructure is laid bare, often in the form of great lava sheets. The group of lakes have been elsewhere described in these pages. Lake Texcoco, whose shores are now distant from the city, is a dreary waste of brackish water with scarcely any fish-life, inhabited by water-fowl at certain seasons. During the period of overflow its rising waters cover many added square miles of ground, but in the dry season the water recedes, leaving saline-covered marshes of desolate aspect. Lakes Chalco and Xochimilco, however, are very different in their regimen and aspect. They are of fresh water, and stand at an elevation some 10 feet higher than Texcoco, into which they discharge. Fertile meadows surround these, and Xochimilco is now, as it was at the time of the Conquest, a "Field of Flowers," which is the meaning of its native nomenclature, not unworthy of the designation of an "earthly paradise," which the modern Mexicans bestow upon it.