He made his first stand at the Castle of Perote; but finding this too isolated a position, he marched to Oajaca, in the extreme southwest of the Republic, and took up his quarters in the Dominican convent of that city. As he was closely hemmed in by an active enemy, provisions grew scarce, and he was forced to resort to a novel method of supplying himself. On a feast-day, at the San Franciscan church, he dressed a party of his soldiers in the garb of monks, and, having placed them in a convenient position, he made prisoners of the whole assembled congregation, and then proceeded to divest them of all ready cash on hand, and then emptied the contribution-box of the money destined for the poor saints[8] ] at Jerusalem, and retired and ended the war; for the successful termination of the insurrection of the Acordada in the city of Mexico accomplished the object for which Santa Anna took up arms—the declaration by Congress, that General Guerrero, a man of mixed blood was the real President elect, instead of Pedraza, a white man, and the candidate of the aristocracy.
CAPTURE OF THE ARMADA.
When King Ferdinand had regained his despotic authority, in 1825, by the aid of French bayonets, he bethought himself of Mexico, the most productive of his lost colonial possessions in America, which had yielded, to his predecessors, the total sum of $2,040,048,426,[9] ] or rather an annual revenue in silver dollars of $6,800,000 during a period of three hundred years. He was also incited by his impoverished noblesse, who could no longer obtain colonial appointments for their sons. The Spanish merchants also complained of the loss of their monopolies. But what at last aroused him to activity was the expulsion of the Spaniards from Mexico, in consequence of the ascendancy of the democratic party. Those of mixed and Indian blood were now truly enfranchised; and they were heard to utter strange voices, which had until then been suppressed by the combined power of a spiritual and temporal despotism: so that the bones of Cortéz, the benefactor of the Kings of Spain, were no longer safe in the convent of San Francisco, where they had lain for three hundred years.[10] ] They were in such imminent danger of being dragged out and scattered to the winds by the mob, as those of "the accursed" enslaver of their race, that they were removed by stealth, and for a time deposited in the most sacred shrine in Mexico: afterward they were secretly removed to Europe, where they cried to the Spanish king for vengeance on the sacrilegious nation. An Armada was at last fitted out, and landed at Tampico; and now all Mexicans, from the President down to the humblest peon, watched the result with the deepest anxiety, as they saw Santa Anna undertaking the defense of the country with untried soldiers. For on the issue of the struggle depended the question whether the whole nation should be again reduced to servitude, or whether they should be left in the enjoyment of their newly-acquired liberty. The contest was one of several days' continuance: when at last it was terminated by a capitulation, all Mexico rang with rejoicing; and Santa Anna, then not thirty-five years of age, received the military rank which he now holds—General of Division.
CHAPTER VII.
In the Stage and out of the Stage.—Still climbing.—A moment's View of all the Kingdoms of the World.—Again in obscurity.—The Maguey, or Century Plant.—The many uses of the Maguey.—The intoxicating juice of the Maguey.—Pulque.—Immense Consumption of Pulque.—City of Perote.—Castle of San Carlos de Perote.—Starlight upon the Table-land.—Tequisquita.—"The Bad Land."—A very old Beggar.—Arrive at Puebla.
The time allotted for my visit to Jalapa had come to a close. I took out the ticket, endorsed Escala donde le convengo, which I translated—"Let him stop when, where, and as long as he pleases," and once more took my seat in the stage, which, on a fine afternoon, was starting for Perote upon the table-land. This short journey lay across the mountain of Perote, passing over an elevation of 10,400 feet, the highest elevation that a stage-coach has yet reached, and one from which the traveler can oftentimes enjoy a view of all the vegetable "kingdoms of the world in a moment of time." I took my seat upon the top of the coach, above the driver, that I might enjoy a last lingering look at this Nature's paradise, before the mountain-ridge should intervene between the world I had left behind, and the great salt desert that we were soon to traverse.
The prospect from the coach-top, as we traveled onward, was even more beautiful than that I have already described. For several miles beyond Jalapa we were descending and passing through one of those valleys of which the Spanish poets so often sing, where the roadside is covered with a profusion of the flowers and vegetation that flourish only in the most luxuriant soil. The valley was soon passed, and we began to ascend so rapidly, that before an hour had passed we could mark the changing vegetation, and observe the products of a colder climate; for this changing vegetation is a barometer, which, in Mexico, marks the ascent and descent as regularly as the most nicely-adjusted artificial instrument. So accurately are the stratas of vegetation adjusted to the stratas of the atmosphere which they inhabit, as to lead the traveler to imagine that a gardener's hand had laid out the different fields which here rise one above another upon the side of the mountain that constitutes the eastern inclosure of the table-land. The fertility of the soil did not seem to diminish; it was only the character of the vegetation that changed step by step, as we wound our way up toward the summit of the Perote.
MOUNTAIN VIEW.
We changed horses at La Hoya, a place memorable in the annals of civil war, as the spot where General Rincon blocked up the pass when Santa Anna was retiring in 1845, a fugitive from the country. Here the road becomes so steep as to induce the traveler to walk a little, for the better opportunities he can thus have of surveying the novel sights that present themselves at every turn of the road. When he is fatigued with climbing, and breathing the peculiar air of this altitude, he can seat himself by the roadside to wait the arrival of the coach, and to catch momentary glimpses, among floating clouds, of the country through which he has passed in his ascent from the coast. He can see a long distance through such a rarified atmosphere; but it is only a bird's-eye view, as the mass that is heaped together is more than his vision can fully take in, before a cloud, ragged and torn, has passed across the picture. The eye is delighted more with the details of a scene, than with this mass of all the excellences of all the climates. Still he has time to divide into sections the world below him; and as he thus contemplates in part, he at length realizes as a whole the scene that is presented. The art of man never has, and never can, produce such a combination in the arrangement of the courses of vegetation. As the traveler stands at an elevation where pine-trees crow in the tropics, where a post-and-board fence incloses a field of grain, and where a storm of snow and sleet had fallen only a few hours before, he can look down upon hills and plains, one below another, each one, in the descending scale, exhibiting more and more of tropical productions, until the regions of cocoa-nuts, and bananas, and sarsaparilla, and palms, and jalap, and vanilla, are reached in his perspective. This is a specimen chart, where all the climates and productions of the world are embraced within the scope of a single glance.