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

by Edward B. Tylor

Of course, where thieving is so general, the market for stolen goods must be a place of considerable trade, and this Baratillo is one of the principal depôts for such wares. One may realize here the story of the citizen, in the old book, who had his wig stolen at the beginning of his walk through London, and found it hanging up for sale a little further on. Here the deserter comes to sell his uniform and his ricketty old flintlock. Small blame to him. I would do the same myself if I were in his place, and were compelled to serve under one rascally political adventurer against another rascally political adventurer—to say nothing of being treated like a dog, half-starved, and not paid at all, except by a sort of half license to plunder. “Those poor soldiers! we can’t pay them, you know, and they must live somehow.”

I have abused the Mexicans for being thieves, and not without reason, though, as regards ourselves personally, we never lost anything except a great brand-new waterproof coat which my companion had brought with him, promising to himself that under its shelter he should bid defiance to the daily rain-storms of the wet season. As we dismounted from the Diligence in Mexico, in the courtyard of the hotel, some one relieved him of it. We did not know of the Baratillo in those days, or would have gone to look for it there. At the time of our visit it was too late, for if it ever had been there, the Mexicans understand too well the value of an English “ulli,” as they call them, to let it hang long for sale. “Ulli” is not a borrowed word, but the genuine Aztec name for India-rubber, which was used to make playing-balls with, long before the time of Columbus.

I mentioned the water-bottles as part of our equipment. They are gourds, which are throttled with bandages while young, so as to make them grow into the shape of bottles with necks. Then they are hung up to dry; and the inside being cleaned out through a small hole near the stalk, they are ready for use, holding two or three pints of water. A couple of inches of a corn-cob (the inside of a ear of Indian corn) makes a capital cork; and the bottle is hung by a loop of string to the pummel of the saddle, where it swings about without fear of breaking. One may see gourds, prepared in just the same way, in Italy, hanging up under the eaves of the little farm-houses, among the festoons of red and yellow ears of Indian corn; and indeed the gourd-bottle is a regular institution of Southern Europe.

We sent Antonio on with the horses to Cuernavaca, and started by the Diligence early one morning, accompanied by one of our English friends, whom I will call—as every-one else did—Don Guillermo. It is the regular thing here, as in Spain, to call everybody by his or her Christian name. You may have known Don Antonio or Don Felipe for weeks before you happen to hear their surnames.

The road ran at first over the plain, among great water-meadows, with herds of cattle pasturing, and fields of wheat and maize. Ploughing was going on, after the primitive fashion of the country, with two oxen yoked to each plough. The yoke is fastened to the horns of the oxen, and to the centre of the yoke a pole is attached. At the other end of this pole is the plough itself, which consists of a wooden stake with an iron point and a handle. The driver holds the handle in one hand and his goad in the other (a long reed with an iron point), and so they toil along, making a long scratch as they go. A man follows the plough, and drops in single grains of Indian corn, about three feet apart. The furrows are three feet from one another, so that each stalk occupies some nine square feet of ground. When the plants are growing up they dig between them, and heap up round each stalk a little mound of earth.

We passed many little houses consisting of one square room, built of mud-bricks, with mud-mortar stuck full of little stones; without windows, but generally possessing the luxury of a chimney, with a couple of bricks forming an arch over it to keep out the rain. Glimpses of men smoking cigarettes at the doors, half-naked brown children rolling in the dirt, and women on their knees inside, hard at work grinding the corn for those eternal tortillas.

At San Juan de Dios Mr. Christy climbed to the top of the Diligence, behind the conductor, who sat with a large black leather bag full of stones on the footboard before him. Whenever one of the nine mules showed a disposition to shirk his work, a heavy stone came flying at him, always hitting him in a tender place, for long practice had made the conductor almost as good a shot as the goat-herds in the mountains, who are said to be able to hit their goats on whichever horn they please, and so to steer them straight when they seem inclined to stray. But our conductor simply threw the stones, whereas the goat-herd uses the aloe-fibre honda, or sling, that one sees hanging by dozens in the Mexican shops.

We pass near Churubusco, and along the line by which the American army reached Mexico. The field of lava which they crossed is close at our right hand; and just on the other side of it lie Tisapán and our friend Don Alejandro’s cotton-factory. On our left are the freshwater-lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco, which had risen several feet, and flooded the valley in their neighbourhood. Between us and the great mountain-chain that forms the rim of the valley, lies a group of extinct volcanos, from one of which descends the great lava-field.

Passing in full view of these picturesque craters, now mostly covered with trees and brushwood, we begin to ascend, and are soon among the porphyritic range that forms a wall between us and the land of sugar-canes and palms. Along the road towards Mexico came long files of Indians, dressed in the national white cotton shirts and short drawers and sandals, made like Montezuma’s, though not with plates of gold on the soles, such as that monarch’s sandals had. Some of these Indians are bringing on their backs wood and charcoal from the pine-forest higher up among the mountains, and some have fastened to their backs light crates full of live fowls or vegetables; others are carrying up tropical fruits from the tierra caliente below, zapotes and mameis, nisperos and granaditas, tamarinds and fresh sugar-canes. These people are walking with their loads thirty or forty miles to market: but their race have been used as beasts of burden for ages, and they don’t mind it.

Bright blue and red birds, and larger and more brilliant butterflies than are seen in Europe, show that, though we are among fields of wheat and maize, we are in the tropics after all. As the road rises we get views of the broad valley, with its lakes and green meadows, and the great white haciendas with their clumps of willows, their church-towers, and the clusters of adobe huts surrounding them—like the peasants’ cottages in feudal Europe, crowding up to the baron’s castle.