Yet the clergy still has a tremendous hold upon the people. It abides by the letter of the law. The bells ring for one minute only, but they ring loudly and with rapid strokes. The churches, although no collections are taken, are filled with boxes for offerings. Mexico is covered with chapels and shrines, religious holidays number about three hundred and sixty-five a year, and the custom of pilgrimage is well established. Practically the entire population professes the Catholic faith.
Of all the many shrines, that of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, is the most popular. According to legend, a poor Indian on his way to mass met the Virgin Mary at this spot, and was sent to the Bishop with the command that a church should be erected here. When the Bishop was incredulous, the peon brought him a bunch of roses plucked from a barren hillside. Convinced that a miracle had transpired, the Bishop erected the church, and it became at once so popular that a deluge of miracles swept all over Mexico, and every other good friar erected a chapel. But none has ever rivaled that of Guadalupe.
It is situated only a brief distance from the capital. A trolley took Eustace and myself there, stopping at a small square filled with rude stands under improvised awnings where Indians sold soft drinks, beads, edibles, and candles. Before the square stood a church and a merry-go-round. Above it, reached by a long flight of winding stone steps, there stood a small white chapel.
On each step sat a crippled beggar, seemingly a poor advertisement for a shrine that purports to heal all ailments. Yet the Mexicans saw no inconsistency in this, and no irreverence in the merry-go-round nor in the host of tin-type photographers who had set up their stands upon the vestibule of the church. Many of the Indians who pilgrimaged here had come from the farthest ends of the republic, making the journey on foot, and supporting themselves by plying along the way whatever trade they possessed. Most of them sold trinkets, and were now selling them at the shrine itself.
The flight of steps was long and steep. On certain holidays, the faithful were accustomed to ascend it slowly upon their knees. In the high altitude, it was sufficiently arduous to walk up. But the little chapel on the hilltop was white and clean and simple. Behind it lay a very peaceful, fragrant cemetery, neatly kept, with many flowers. One wall was honeycombed with tiny little alcoves, where one might rent “Nichos para restos perpetuedad $100.00”—“permanent niches for corpses at 100 pesos”—or niches to be paid for by the year or month, with the penalty, in case of non-payment, of seeing the ancestral bones consigned to the scrap-heap. But there were graves and tombs as well, many of them so handsome as to suggest that even while Guadalupe, like the Cathedral, was mainly a peon institution, the aristocrats sometimes came here after death.
Descending by another long flight of steps, we came to the Chapel of the Well—another small chapel under a big dome of glittering tiles, containing a well of curative waters. Ecstatic peons, their faces shining with joy, were lowering a bucket and drinking, seizing the receptacle from one another’s hands in their eagerness. At a near-by counter, where crosses were sold, and ribbons marked with the measure of the Virgin’s head or feet, one might also obtain empty bottles—some of them still bearing unhallowed labels—and these the natives filled at the well for their fellow-villagers at home.
Turning around the corner, we came back to the larger church. In its cellar was the evidence of the cures effected. There was the usual pile of crutches to be seen in all healing shrines. The wall was covered with letters of thanks, letters accompanied invariably with pictures, as though their authors, who in their inability to read or write had been forced to dictate their messages to a professional scribe, assumed that their Benefactor was equally illiterate. Many of them were from supplicants who could not reach the shrine, describing their troubles and begging assistance. The illustrations showed them being run over by a trolley-car, shot in battle, caught between two colliding steam engines, massacred in other startling fashions or confined to a gloomy sick-bed. There was one of papa looking out from between prison bars, with a note from the family asking the Virgin to soften the heart of the Magistrate. And there was one from a very pretty young girl, inclosing her photograph, and thanking the Virgin—with an absence of detail that piqued one’s curiosity—for having given her what she most desired. The writing was frequently illegible, the words misspelled, and the paintings execrably done by the very worst of artists. Yet groups of peons, surveying them, murmured their admiration of the bright coloring, and exclaimed aloud with astonishment at the marvelous cures.
No other church could so satisfy the Mexican peon.
X
We came back from Guadalupe to find a uniformed Staff-Officer awaiting us. Old Barlow was entertaining him in our absence.