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

by Edward B. Tylor

Jalapa was not always the stagnant place it is now. Its pleasant houses and gardens date from a period when it was a town of some importance. In old times the only practicable road from Vera Cruz to Mexico passed this way; and Jalapa was the entrepôt where the merchants had their warehouses, and from whence the trains of mules distributed the European merchandise from the coast to the different markets of the country. By this arrangement, the carrying from the coast was done by a small number of muleteers, who were seasoned to the climate, while the great mass of traders and carriers were not obliged to descend from the healthy region. This was of the more importance, because, though the pure Indians are not liable to the attacks of yellow fever, the disease is as deadly to the other inhabitants of the high lands as to Europeans; and even those of the mestizos who have the least admixture of white blood are subject to it. Of late years, this system has been given up, and the carriers from the high lands go down to the coast to fetch their loads, and every year they leave some of their number in the church-yards of the City of the Dead; while many others, though they recover from the fever, never regain their former health and strength. The high-road to Mexico now goes by Orizaba, so that the importance of Jalapa as a trading-place has almost ceased.

Our Mexican journey was now all but finished, and I left my companion here, and took the Diligence to Vera Cruz, to meet the West India Mail-packet. Mr. Christy followed a day or two later, and went to the United States. We dismissed our two servants, Martin and Antonio. Martin invested his wages in a package of tobacco, which he proposed to carry home on his horse, travelling by night along unfrequented mountain-paths, where custom-house officers seldom penetrate. We never heard any more of him; but no doubt he got safe home, for he was perfectly competent to take care of himself, and he probably made a very good thing of his journey. It was quite with regret that we parted from him, for he was a most sensible, useful fellow, with a continual flow of high spirits, and no end of stories of his experiences in smuggling, and hunting wild cattle in the tierra caliente, in which two adventurous occupations most of his life had been passed. In his dealings with us, he was honesty itself, notwithstanding his equivocal profession.

We offered Antonio a cheque on Mexico for his wages, as he was going back there, but he said he would rather have hard dollars. We paid his fare to Mexico by the Diligence, and gave him his money, telling him at the same time, that he was a fool for his pains. He started next morning; and we heard, a month or two later, that the coach was stopped the same afternoon in the plains of Perote, and Antonio was robbed not only of his money but even of his jacket and serape, and reached Mexico penniless and half-naked. He was always a silly fellow, and his last exploit was worthy of him.

Mr. Christy sat up till daybreak to see me off, filling up his time by writing letters and pressing plants. When I was gone, he lay down in his bed, in rather a dreamy state of mind, looking up at the ceiling. There was a large beam just above his head, and at one side of it a hole, which struck him as being a suitable place for a scorpion to come out of. This idea had come into his head from the sight of the specimen in the tumbler on the table, who had with great difficulty been drowned in aguardiente. Presently something moved in the hole, and the spectator below instantly became wide awake. Then came out a claw and a head, and finally the body and tail of a very fine scorpion, two inches and a half long. It was rather an awkward moment, for it was not safe to move suddenly, for fear of startling the creature, whose footing seemed anything but secure; and if he fell, he would naturally sting whatever he might come in contact with. However, he met with no accident on his way, and getting into another hole, about a yard off, he drew up his tail after him and disappeared. Mr. Christy slipped out of his bed with a sense of considerable relief; and having ascertained that there were no holes in the ceiling above the bed on the other side of the room, he turned in there, and went comfortably to sleep.

My only companion in the Diligence was a German shopman from Vera Cruz, who was sociable, but not of an instructive turn of conversation. When we had descended for a few hours, the heat became intolerable. Scarcely any habitation but a few Indian cane-huts by the way-side, with bananas and palm-trees. We stopped, about three in the afternoon, at a rancho in a small village, and did not start again until next morning, a little before day-break. Negroes and people of negro descent began to abound in this congenial climate. I remember especially the waiting-maid at the rancho, who was a “white negress,” as they are called. Her hair and features showed her African origin; but her hair was like white wool, and her face and hands were as colourless as those of a dead body. This animated corpse was healthy enough, however; and this peculiarity of the skin is, it seems, not very uncommon.

The coast-regions through which I was passing abound in horned cattle, but they are mostly far away from the high-roads. In spite of the intense heat of the climate they thrive as well as in the higher lands. Some are tolerably tame, and are kept within bounds by the vaqueros; but the greater proportion, numbering tens of thousands, roam wild about the country. In comparison with these cattle of the tierra caliente, the fiercest beasts of the plateaus are safe and quiet creatures. The only way of bringing them into the corral is by using tame animals for decoys, just as wild elephants are caught.

Our man Martin, who had once been a vaquero on the Vera Cruz coast, used to look upon the bulls of the high lands with great contempt. If you chase them they run away, he said. If you lazo a bull of the hot country, you have to gallop off with all your might, with the toro close at your heels; and, if the horse falls, it may cost his life or his rider’s.

We thus find the horned cattle flourishing at every elevation, from the sea-level to the mountain-pastures ten thousand feet above it. Horses and sheep show less adaptability to this variety of climates. The horses and mules come mostly from the States of the North, at a level of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet; that remarkable country of which Humboldt’s observation gives us the best idea, when he says that, although there are no made roads, wheel-carriages can travel distances of a thousand miles over gently-undulating prairies, without meeting any obstruction on the way.

Numbers of sheep are reared in the mountains, principally for the sake of the tallow, for the consumption of tallow-candles in the mines is enormous. The owners scarcely care at all for the rest of the animal; and popular scandal accuses the sheep-farmers of driving their flocks straight into the melting-coppers, without going through the preliminary ceremony of killing them. People told us that the tallow made in the cold regions loses its consistency when brought down into hotter climates, but we had no means of ascertaining the truth of this.

Artificial lighting by means of tallow was not known to the ancient Mexicans, who could not indeed have procured tallow except from the fat of deer and smaller animals.