Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, I have sometimes compared, in my own mind, the appearance of a fashionable London chapel with that of a Mexican church, on the occasion of a solemn fête, and the comparison is certainly in favour of the latter. The one, light, airy, and gay, with its velvet-lined pews, its fashionable preacher, the ladies a little sleepy after the last night's opera, but dressed in the most elegant morning toilet, and casting furtive glances at Lady ——-'s bonnet and feathers, and at Mrs. ——-'s cashmere shawl or lovely ermine pelisse, and exchanging a few fashionable nothings at the door, as the footmen let down the steps of their gay equipages—the other, solemn, stately, and gloomy, and showing no distinction of rank. The floor covered with kneeling figures—some enveloped in the reboso, others in the mantilla, and all alike devout, at least in outward seeming. No showy dress, or gay bonnet, or fashionable mantle to cause the eye of the poor to wander with envy or admiration. Apparently considering themselves alike in the sight of Heaven, the peasant and the marquesa kneel side by side, with little distinction of dress; and all appear occupied with their own devotions, without observing either their neighbour's dress or degree of devoutness. Religious feeling may be equally strong in the frequenters of both places of worship; but as long as we possess senses which can be affected by external objects, the probabilities of the most undivided devotional feeling are in favour of the latter. The eye will wander—the thoughts will follow where it leads. In the one case it rests on elegant forms and fashionable toilets—in the other, it sees nothing but a mass of dark and kneeling figures, or a representation of holy and scriptural subjects.
However, one consequence of the exceeding dirtiness of the Mexican churches, and the number of léperos who haunt them, as much in the way of their calling as from devotion, is that a great part of the principal families here, having oratorios in their houses, have engaged the services of a padre, and have mass at home. There is a small chapel in the house of General B—-a, the handsomest house in Mexico, where there is a virgin carved in wood, one of the most exquisite pieces of sculpture that can be seen. The face is more than angelic—it is divine; but a divine nature, suffering mortal anguish.
27th.—On the first of February we hope to set off on an expedition to tierra caliente, from which C—-n returned some time ago. We have, by good fortune, procured an excellent Mexican housekeeper, under whose auspices everything has assumed a very different aspect, and to whose care we can intrust the house when we go. Nothing remarkable has occurred here lately—the usual routine of riding on horseback, visiting in carriage, walking very rarely in the Alameda, driving in the Paseo, dining at Tacubaya, the three weekly soirées, varied by a diplomatic dinner in the house of the ——- Minister, and by the dinner of the English club who met here yesterday—by a sale of books after dinner, in which the president of the society fined me five dollars for keeping a stupid old poem past the time, upon which I moved that the poem should be presented to me, which was carried nem. con.
We have been strongly advised not to attempt this journey, and the stories of robbers and robberies, related by credible persons, are not encouraging. Robbers, bad roads, horrible heat, poisonous animals; many are the difficulties prognosticated to us. The season is already rather advanced, but it has been impossible for us to set off sooner. Our next letters will be written either during our journey, should we find the opportunity, or after our return.
LETTER THE THIRTY-FIRST
Leave Mexico—Cuernavaca—Tierra Caliente—Atlacamulco—Orange
Groves—Sugar-cane—Annual Produce—Will of Cortes—Description—Coffee
Plantation—Scorpions—List of Venemous Reptiles—Acapansingo—Doubts and
Difficulties—A Decision.
ATLACAMULCO, February 2nd.
A quiet day in a hospitable country-house, too sunny to go out, and nothing else to do, are temptations sufficient to induce me to sit down and give you an account of our proceedings during these last two days. Yesterday, the first of February, at four in the morning, very sleepy, we set off in the diligence which we had taken for ourselves; our sole luggage, two portmanteaus and a carpet bag; our dresses, dark strong calico gowns, large Panama hats, rebosos tied on like scarfs, and thick green barege veils. A government escort of four soldiers with a corporal, renewed four times, accompanied us as far as Cuernavaca, which is about eighteen leagues from Mexico, and the entrance as it were to tierra caliente. These are supposed sufficient to frighten away three times the number of robbers, whose daring, however, has got to such a height, that no diligence now arrives from Puebla without being robbed. Six robberies have happened there in the last fortnight, and the road to Cuernavaca is said to be still more dangerous. We took chocolate before starting, and carried with us a basket of cold meat and wine, as there is nothing on the road that can be called an inn. When we set off it was cool, almost cold; the astral lamps were out, and the great solar lamp was not yet lighted.
"But soon, like lobster boiled, the morn,
From black to red began to turn."
By the time we had reached San Agustin, where we changed horses, the sun had risen, enabling us to see all the horrors of the road, which, after leaving that beautiful village with its trees and gardens, winds over the mountain, amongst great volcanic rocks, a toilsome ascent; and passes by the village of Ajusco, a miserable robber's nest. Yet the view, as we looked back from this barren tract, while the sun was breaking over the summits of the mountains, was very grand in its mixture of fertility and wildness, in its vast extent of plains and villages with their groves and gardens, and in its fine view of Mexico itself, white and glittering in the distance. The mountain of Ajusco, clothed with dark forests of pine, frowned on our right, and looked worthy of its brigand haunted reputation. At La Guarda, a collection of miserable huts, we changed horses, and declined some suspicious-looking frijoles in dirty saucers, which were offered to us; a proof both that we were young travellers in this country, and that we had not exhausted our basket of civilized provender.