Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern

by Edward B. Tylor

Mr. Christy’s drawer-roll of letters of introduction has produced an immediate crop of pleasant acquaintances, whose hospitality is boundless. We are not idle, far from it; and a long day’s work is generally followed by a social dinner, and an evening spent in noting down the results of our investigations.

Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico has been more read in England than most historical works; and the Mexico of Montezuma has a well-defined idea attached to it. The amphitheatre of dark hills surrounding the level plain, the two snowy mountain-peaks, the five lakes covering nearly half the valley, the city rising out of the midst of the waters, miles from the shore, with which it was connected by its four causeways, the straight streets of low flat-roofed houses, the numbers of canals crowded with canoes of Indians going to and from the market, the floating gardens moved from place to place, on which vegetables and flowers were cultivated, the great pyramid up which the Spanish army saw their captured companions led in solemn procession, and sacrificed on the top—all these are details in the mental picture.

Much of this has changed since the Spaniards first saw it. Cortes tried all ordinary means to overcome the desperate obstinacy with which the Aztecs defended their capital. The Spaniards conquered wherever they went; but, as they moved forward, the Mexicans closed in again behind, and from every house-top showers of darts, arrows, and stones were poured down upon them. Cortes resolved upon the utter demolition of the city. He was grieved to destroy it, he said, for it was the most beautiful thing in the whole world; but there was no alternative. He moved slowly towards the great teocalli, his fifty thousand Tlascalan allies following him, throwing down every house, and filling the canals with the ruins. When the conquest was finished, but one district of the city was left standing, and in it were crowded a quarter of the population, miserable famished wretches, who had surrendered when their king was taken. All that was left besides was a patch of swampy ground strewed with fragments of walls, a few pyramids too large for present destruction, and such great heaps of dead bodies that it was impossible to get from place to place without walking over them.

Cortes had resolved that a new city should be built, but it was not so easy to decide where it was to be. The Aztecs, it seemed, had not originally established themselves on the spot where Mexico was built. When they came down from the north country, and across the hills into the valley of Mexico, they were but an insignificant tribe, and as yet mere savages. They settled down in one place after another, and were always driven out by the persecutions of the neighbouring tribes. At last they took possession of a little group of swampy islands in the lake of Tezcuco; and then at last, safe from their enemies, they increased and multiplied, and became a great and powerful nation.

The first beginnings of Mexico, a cluster of huts built on wooden piles, must have borne some likeness to those curious settlements of early tribes in the shallow part of the lakes of Switzerland and the British Isles, of which numerous remains are still to be found. As the nation increased in numbers, Tenochtitlán, as the inhabitants called their city (they called themselves Tenochques), came to be a great city of houses built on piles, with canals running through the straight streets, along which the natives poled their flat-bottomed canoes. The name which the Spaniards gave to the city, the “Venice of the New World,” was appropriate, not only to its situation in the midst of the water, with canals for thoroughfares, but also to the history of the causes which led to its being built in such a situation.

The habit of building houses upon piles, which was first forced upon the people by the position they had chosen, was afterwards followed as a matter of taste, just as it is in Holland. Even after the Aztecs became masters of the surrounding country, they built towns round the lake, partly on the shore, and partly on piles in the water. The Spanish chroniclers mention Iztapalapán, and many other towns, as built in this way. Like the Swiss tribes, the early inhabitants of Mexico depended much upon their fishing, for which their position gave them great facilities.

If you look at the arms of the Mexican Republic, on a passport or a silver dollar, you will see a representation of a rock surrounded by water. On the rock grows a cactus, and on the cactus sits an eagle with a serpent in his beak. The story is that the wandering tribe preserved a tradition of an oracle which said that when they should find an eagle, holding a serpent, and perched on a cactus growing out of a rock, then they should cease their wanderings. On an island in the lake of Tezcuco, they found eagle, serpent, cactus, and rock, as described, and they settled there in due course. What fragment of truth is hidden in this myth it is hard to say. Tenochtitlán means “The Stone-cactus place;” and the Aztec picture-writings express its name by a hieroglyph of a prickly pear growing on a rock. Putting this history out of the question, the Aztecs had excellent reasons for choosing this peculiar site for their city; but these reasons were not equally valid in the case of the new invaders. For them the surrounding salt-water was not needed as a protection, and was merely a nuisance. Every year, when the lake rose, the place was flooded, with enormous damage to the property of the inhabitants; and sometimes an inundation of greater depth than usual threatened as complete a destruction as Cortes and the Tlascalans had made. At the best of times, the site was a salt-swamp, an ugly place to build upon. And, lastly, all the fresh water must be brought from the hills by aqueducts, which an enemy would cut off without difficulty, as the Spaniards themselves had done during the siege. Now Cortes was certainly not ignorant of all this, and he knew of many places on the rising ground close by, where he could found his new city under more favourable circumstances. He deliberated four or five months on the matter, and at last decided in favour of the old site, giving as his reason that “the city of Tenochtitlán had become celebrated, its position was wonderful, and in all times it had been considered as the capital and mistress of all these provinces.”

The invaders were old hands at slave-driving, and so hard did they drive the conquered Mexicans, that in four years there had arisen a fine Spanish city, with massive stone houses of several storeys, having the indispensable inner courts, flat roofs, and grated windows,—every man’s house literally his castle, when once the great iron entrance-gates were closed. The Indians had, of course, been converted en masse, and churches were being built in all directions. The great pyramid where Huitzilopochtli, the God of war, was worshipped, had been razed to the ground, and its great sculptured blocks of basalt were sunk in the earth as a foundation for a cathedral. The old lines of the streets, running toward the four points of the compass, were kept to; and to this it is that the present Mexico is indebted for much of its beauty. Most of the smaller canals were filled up, and the thoroughfares widened for carriages, things of course unknown to the Mexicans, who had no beasts of burden. In the suburbs the natives settled themselves after their own fashion, baking adobes, large mud bricks, in the sun, and building with them one-storey houses with flat roofs, much as they do at the present day. And thus a new Mexico, nearly the same as that we are now exploring, came to be planted in the midst of the waters. Three centuries have elapsed since; the city has grown larger, churches, convents, and public buildings have increased, but the architectural character of the place has scarcely altered. It is the situation that has changed. The lake of Tezcuco is four miles off, though the causeways which once connected the city with the dry land still exist, and have even been enlarged. They look like railway-embankments crossing the low ground, and serve as dykes when there is a flood, a casualty which still often happens.

This change is interesting to the student of physical geography; and Humboldt’s account of the causes which have brought it about is full and explicit. When Mexico had been built a few years, the frightful inundations which threatened its very existence at length awoke the Spaniards to a sense of the mistake that had been made in placing themselves but a few feet above the lowest level of the valley, in such a way that, from whatever point the flood might come, they were sure to get the benefit of it. The Spanish authorities at home, with their usual sagacity, sent over peremptory orders that the city should be abandoned, and a new capital built at Tacubaya—a proposal something like intimating to the inhabitants of Naples that their position, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, was most dangerous, and that they must leave it and settle somewhere else. In those days the valley was a complete basin, with no outlet—at least not one worth mentioning; and the heavy tropical rains and the melted snow from the mountains, poured vast quantities of water into it. Had the valley been at the level of the sea, it would simply have become a great lake, surrounded by hills; but at three thousand feet higher, the atmosphere is rarefied, and evaporation goes on with such rapidity as to keep the accumulation of water in check. So the affair had adjusted itself in this wise, that the land and the five lakes should divide the valley about equally between them. It became necessary to alter this state of things, and a passage was cut at a place where the hills were but little above the level of the highest lake. The history of this passage, the famous “Desague de Huehuetoca,” is instructive enough, but it has been written so threadbare that I cannot touch it. Suffice it to say, that by this means a constant outlet was made for the lake of Zumpango, the highest of the five, and for the Rio de Guatitlán, a stream which formerly ran into it.

So much for one cause of the change in the present appearance of the city. Then the Spaniards were great cutters down of forests. They rather liked to make their new country bear a resemblance to the arid plains of Castile, where, when you arrive in Madrid, people ask you whether you noticed the tree on the road; and moreover, as they wanted wood, they cut it, without troubling themselves to plant for the benefit of future generations. Now, when the trees were cut down, the small plants which grew in their shade died too, and left the bare earth to serve as a kind of natural evaporating apparatus. And, between these two causes, it has come to pass that the extent of the lakes has been so much reduced, and that Mexico stands on the dry land—if, indeed, that may be called dry land, where you cannot dig a foot without coming to water.