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

by Edward B. Tylor

The Indians here had not the dull sullen look we saw among those who inhabit the colder regions; and, though belonging to the same race, they were better formed and had a much freer bearing than their less fortunate countrymen of the colder districts.

Our business in the village was to get guides for the cavern. While some men were gone to look for the Alcalde, we walked about the village, and finally encamped under a tree. One of our men had got us a bag full of fruit,—limes, zapotes, and nisperos, which last are a large kind of medlar, besides a number of other kinds of fruit, which we ate without knowing what they were. Though rather insipid, the limes are deliciously refreshing in this thirsty country; and they do no harm, however enormously one may indulge in them. The whole neighbourhood abounds in fruit, and its name Cacahuamilpán means “the plantation of cacahuate nuts.”

It soon became evident that the Alcalde was keeping us waiting as a matter of dignity, and to show that, though the white men might be held in great estimation elsewhere, they did not think so much of them in this free and independent village. At last a man came to summon us to a solemn audience. In a hut of canes, the Alcalde, a little lame Indian, was sitting on a mat spread on the ground in the middle, with his escribano or secretary at his left hand. Other Indians were standing outside at the door. The little man scarcely condescended to take any notice of us when we saluted him, but sat bolt upright, positively bursting with suppressed dignity, and the escribano inquired in a loud voice what our business was. We told him we wanted guides to the cave, which he knew as well as we did; but instead of answering, he began to talk to the Alcalde. We quite appreciated the pleasure it must have been to the two functionaries to show off before us and their assembled countrymen, who were looking on at the proceedings with great respect; and we had not minded affording them this cheap satisfaction; but at last the joke seemed to be getting stale, so we proceeded some to sit and some to lie down at full length, and to go on eating limes in the presence of the August company. Thereupon they informed us what would be the cost of guides and candles, and we eventually made a bargain with them and started on foot.

On looking at the map of the State of Mexico, there is to be seen a river which stops suddenly on reaching the mountains of Cacahuamilpán, and begins again on the other side, having found a passage for itself through caves in the mountain for six or seven miles. Not far from the place where this river flows out of the side of the hill, is a path which leads to the entrance of the cave. A long downward slope brought us into the first great vaulted chamber, perhaps a quarter of a mile long and eighty feet high; then a long scramble through a narrow passage, and another hall still grander than the first. At the end of this hall is another passage leading on into another chamber. Beyond this we did not go. As it was, we must have walked between one and two miles into the cavern, but people have explored it to twice this distance, always finding a repetition of the same arrangement, great vaulted chambers alternating with long passages almost choked by fallen rocks. In one of the passages, I think the last we came to, the roaring of the river in its subterranean bed was distinctly audible below us.

Excepting the great cave of Kentucky, I believe there is no stalactitic cavern known so vast and beautiful as this. The appearance of the largest hall was wonderful when some twenty of our Indian guides stationed themselves on pinnacles of stalagmite, each one holding up a blazing torch, while two more climbed upon a great mass at one end called the altar, and burnt Bengal lights there; the rest stood at the other extremity of the cave sending up rockets in rapid succession into the vaulted roof, and making the millions of grotesque incrustations glitter as if they had been masses of diamonds: All the quaint shapes that are found in such caverns were to be seen here on the grandest scale, columns, arched roof, organ-pipes, trees, altars, and squatting monsters ranged in long lines like idols in a temple. There may very well be some truth in the notion that the origin of Gothic architecture was in stalactites of a limestone cavern, so numerous and perfect are the long slender columns crowned with pointed Gothic arches.

Our procession through the cave was a picturesque one. We carried long wax altar-candles and our guides huge torches made of threads of aloe-fibre soaked in resin and wrapped round with cloth, in appearance and texture exactly like the legs and arms of mummies. As we went, the Indians sang Mexican songs to strange, monotonous, plaintive tunes, or raced about into dark corners shouting with laughter. They talked about adventures in the cave, to them of course the great phenomenon of the whole world; but it did not seem, as far as we could hear, that they associated with it any recollections of the old Aztec divinities and the mystic rites performed in their honour.

No fossil bones have been found in the cavern, nor human remains except in one of the passages far within, where a little wooden cross still marks the spot where the skeleton of an Indian was found. Whether he went alone for mere curiosity to explore the cave, or, what is more likely, with an idea of finding treasure, is not known; nothing is certain but that his candle was burnt out while he was still far from the entrance, and that he died there. I said no fossil remains had been found, but the level floors of the great halls are continually being raised by fresh layers of stalagmite from the water dropping from the roof, and no one knows what may lie under them. These floors are in many places covered with little loose concretions like marbles, and these concretions in the course of time are imbedded in the horizontal layers of the same material.

As we left the entrance hall and began to ascend the sloping passage that leads to daylight, we saw an optical appearance which, had we not seen it with our own eyes, we could never have believed to be a natural effect of light and shade. To us, still far down in the cave, the entrance was only illuminated by reflected light; but as the Indians reached it, the direct rays of sunlight fell upon them, and their white dresses shone with an intense phosphoric light, as though they had been self-luminous. It is just such an effect that is wanting in our pictures of the Transfiguration, but I fear it is as impossible to paint it upon canvas as to describe it in words.

Next morning our friend Don Guillermo said good-bye to us, and started to return post-haste to his affairs in the capital. We stayed a few days longer at Cocoyotla, never tiring of the beautiful garden with its groves of orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, and the river which, running through it, joins the stream that we heard rushing along in the cavern, to flow down into the Pacific.

On Sunday morning the priest arrived on an ambling mule, the favourite clerical animal. They say it is impossible to ride a mule unless you are either an arriero or a priest. Not that it is by any means necessary, however, that he should ride a mule. I shall not soon forget the jaunty young monk we saw at Tezcuco, just setting out for a country festival, mounted on a splendid little horse, with his frock tucked up, and a pair of hairy goat-skin chaparreros underneath, a broad Mexican hat, a pair of monstrous silver spurs, and a very large cigar in his mouth. The girls came out of the cottage doors to look at him, as he made the fiery little beast curvet and prance along the road; and he was evidently not insensible to the looks of admiration of these young ladies, as they muffled up their faces in their blue rebozos and looked at him through the narrow opening.