A feature of the town which is sure to attract the attention of a stranger is the fanciful manner in which the people adapt richly colored and highly ornamented glazed tiles for both internal and external decoration of public and private buildings. The effect of this was certainly incongruous, not to say tawdry. There are eight or ten tile factories in Puebla, and one glass manufactory. Some of the work turned out in both these lines is really very artistic and attractive. Large quantities are regularly shipped to various parts of the country. In several shops collections of onyx ornaments are to be seen, besides handsome baskets and mats of colored straw, all of which are of native workmanship. Onyx may be said to be the rage of Puebla. We remember an attractive store solely devoted to the sale of this stone, where the large and most artistic display formed a veritable museum. Here members of our party expended considerable sums of money in the purchase of pretty mementoes to take home with them as souvenirs of Puebla de los Angeles. Onyx articles are shipped from here in considerable quantities to London and Paris, where there are agencies for their sale. The quarries whence these fine specimens come are fifty miles away from the city, near Mount El Pizarro.
The State of Puebla is remarkable for producing a fine quality of wheat, and also for its heavy yield of other cereals. One may look in vain elsewhere for better apples, pears, peaches, and plums than are offered in the public market of this attractive town, all of which are grown in its immediate vicinity. Articles of embroidery were offered at one of the open stands in the market-place fully equal to the Fayal product so well known in Boston. The very low price demanded for fine linen handkerchiefs and napkins, representing days of patient labor on each, showed how cheaply these native women estimate their time. They will follow the most intricate design which may be given to them as a pattern, reproducing it with Chinese fidelity, and with as much apparent ease as though it were their own conception. It seemed to us, as we examined this delicate product, that art needlework could hardly go further as to perfection of detail. This work is not that of dainty fingers and delicate hands, educated and taught embroidery in some convent school, but the outcome of very humble adobe cabins, and the instinctive artistic taste of hands accustomed to the severe drudgery of a semi-barbarous life. It was found that the sales-people, when they first receive these goods from the natives, are obliged to wash and bleach them thoroughly, they are so begrimed, but they know very well how beautifully the work will prove to be executed, and gladly purchase it even in this soiled condition.
For so restricted a territory, Puebla contains a great aggregate of valuable resources,—a rich and extensive coal-mine near by on the ranch of Santa Barbara, inexhaustible stone-quarries on the hill of Guadalupe, abundant deposits of kaolin close at hand for the manufacture of porcelain ware, a sufficient supply of material for making lime to last a hundred years, an iron mine within eight or ten miles which employs a large foundry, running night and day; while the neighboring foothills are covered with an almost inexhaustible supply of good merchantable wood. Certainly, no city in Mexico is better situated as to natural resources. The state is so located as to embrace a great variety of climate. In the north it produces wheat, corn, and other cereals, also affording grazing ground to immense herds of domestic animals, while in the south it yields liberal crops of cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, and a great variety of fruits, together with many rich and beautiful cabinet and dye woods. Truly, this is a record which few localities can equal in any zone.
We have said that Puebla is the key to the national capital. This is proven by the fact that the chief events in its history have been the battles fought for its possession. A few of those which most readily occur to the memory are its capture by Iturbide, August 2, 1821; its occupation by Scott, May 25, 1847; its successful defense against the French, May 5, 1862; its capture by the French, May 17, 1863; and its capture from the French, April 2, 1867, by General Diaz, now President of the republic.
We were told that the thieving populace of Puebla had so provoked the agent of the company who own the road between Mexico and Vera Cruz, by abstracting everything they could lay their hands on, whether available for any purpose of their own or not, that he finally resolved to set a trap which should teach them a severe lesson. A small dynamite bomb with its brass screw at the vent was left exposed in the yard at night. One of the prowling, thieving peons climbed the wall and attempted to abstract the cap,—not because he was in want of a brass cap to a dynamite bomb; he would have stolen a railroad spike or an iron tie all the same. He hadn't fooled with this instrument more than sixty seconds before it was discharged in his hands with a report like a cannon. The consequence was, that not enough of that would-be thief could be found to give the body Christian burial! It was observed thereafter that peons didn't feel sufficient interest in the company's affairs to climb the wall which incloses the depot, and meddle with the articles of railroad property lying about the yard. This was a pretty severe dose of medicine, but it wrought a radical cure.
CHAPTER XIV.
Ancient Cholula.—A Grand Antiquity.—The Cheops of Mexico.—Traditions relating to the Pyramid. —The Toltecs.—Cholula of To-Day.—Comprehensive View.—A Modern Tower of Babel.—Multiplicity of Ruins.—Cortez's Exaggerations.—Sacrifices of Human Beings.—The Hateful Inquisition.—A Wholesale Murderous Scheme.—Unreliable Historians.—Spanish Falsification.—Interesting Churches.—Off the Track.—Personal Relics of Cortez.—Torturing a Victim.—Aztec Antiquities.—Tlaxcala.—Church of San Francisco.—Peon Dwellings.—Cortez and the Tlaxcalans.
In leaving Puebla for Cholula, which lies at a distance of only a couple of leagues to the westward, we first pass on the left the fine architectural group formed by the church of San Javior and Guadalupe, with its attractive cluster of domes, spires, and pinnacles. Our course lies through broad maguey fields and across the Atoyac River, a shallow stream most of the year; but at times it becomes a rushing torrent. The country hereabouts is under excellent cultivation, though the awkward plough introduced by the Spaniards centuries ago still does service here. Almost as soon as the city disappears from view, there looms in the distance the grand pyramid of Cholula, crowned by a lofty modern chapel, its dome of enameled and parti-colored tiles glistening in the warm sunshine. Far beyond the pyramid the volcanoes are seen in their lonely grandeur. Cholula lies upon a perfectly level plain, broken only by the great artificial mound called the pyramid, situated on the eastern outskirt of the present city. The town, Spanish history tells us, once contained over two hundred thousand inhabitants; but to-day there are less than nine thousand, while of its four hundred reputed temples, scarcely a trace now remains.