Still, whatever happens, there is one thing in which Jalapa will not change, never has changed; that is, in the grandeur of her scenery. The city is unfortunately often in the clouds, and warm rolling mists enwrap its stone ways and houses whilst jackdaws innumerable create an unearthly hubbub in the twilight. But when the clouds vanish the landscape appears. The mountains lift themselves in great steps to Himalayan heights. Jalapa is on a ledge five thousand feet above the sea—she is halfway up the Sierra Madre. And above her, above all her clouds, stands Orizaba, twenty thousand feet high, which great snow-crowned mountain has often been called the guardian spirit of Mexico. Orizaba watches the sea, and should she see approaching gods or men she passes word to Popocatepetl, the guardian of the capital. Orizaba must have passed on many messages in her time, though not with much avail.
4. At Tlaxcala
Tlaxcala surely is the most romantic place in Mexico, the little mountain city whence Cortes gleaned his greatest allies, an Indian Sparta. The Tlascaltecs displayed a devotion to the Spaniards which in its unthinking generosity was very characteristic of the Indians. At a word from Malinche, as they affectionately called him, they even changed their religion and consented to be baptized. They never foresaw how the Spaniards in victory would prove ungrateful. They reinforced Cortes in thousands and went with him to Cholula. The Cholultecs hated them, and, while pretending to receive Cortes amiably, demanded that the Tlascaltecs camp outside and not inside their city bounds. When with his allies Cortes fell upon the Cholultecs it was natural that the insulted Tlascaltecs did great execution, had in fact eventually to be restrained. The Highlanders of Tlaxcala spared neither breath nor spoil. They were almost as avid in victory as the Spaniards themselves. But a nod from Cortes was enough to hold them in check. They gladly followed his horses and men to Montezuma and made no small show of danger to the hated Aztecs. The Aztecs were the imperialists of their days, oppressing all the lower races, but unable to quell the Tlascaltecs. Tlaxcala, therefore, marched against Montezuma. And when Cortes on the "Dreadful Night" was beaten, Tlaxcala still stood by him enabling him to return to the field and win.
You approach Tlaxcala by narrow lanes all fenced with candelabra cactus. This cactus, branching near its root, grows in green pillars as regularly as the stems of a branched candlestick. Sometimes it is called the "organ" cactus from its likeness in shape to organ pipes. These pipes or pillars grow close to one another to a height of six or seven feet when young, often to twenty feet when matured. They make the simplest and most effective of palings, for their barbs forbid any one struggling to get through them. The old stone ways of Tlaxcala, worn by myriads of bare feet of Indians, are now hedged with this cactus and you walk from the old fields up to what were once citadels, temples, palaces, now in shapeless ruin and overheaped with mold and overgrown with flowers. You may sit up there among the mountains and muse on what was Tlaxcala.
Eight thousand feet up, the ancient city was higher than the new one. And it was much larger. Tlaxcala has decayed. It supported the sturdy warriors and their families of pure Tlascaltic origin. Seemingly the half-Spanish breed is idler, lazier, and has not taken kindly to a bleak site of civilization and life. The windy city is cold and poor. Its chief life is in its soldiery who make of it a stamping ground.
The drums and fifes make a great clangor in the stone-walled, echoing city, a hubbub which does not cease all day. The soldiers march well on the cobbles and certainly make a smart turn-out. One's sympathies are with them and with Mexico until a plain-clothes colonel with riding whip comes on the scene and flogs the soldiers as they march. That brutality immediately alienates one's affections. Surprising that the soldiers stand it—after the revolution! But they are bound in the traditions of peonage. Disaffection takes longer to breed in them than it has done in the ex-serfs of Russia.
The most remarkable objects in Tlaxcala are, however, in the churches. There you may see the large stone font in which Xicotencatl, the old general, and all the leading Indians consented to be baptized in 1520, in their nakedness and with the rites of the Catholic Church. The mind can visualize a remarkable scene. The old pulpit whence after they were baptized they were sermonized in Spanish is also there and in situ. And you may see the first pictures of the new gods, the first pictures of Christ and the Madonna specially painted by Cortes' men and sent as gifts to the first Christian chapel of the Indians. These are appalling in their ugliness. The ugliness of Death has been added to the ugliness of madness, and together in one face something has been obtained worthy of fear. No loving Savior was presented to the Tlascaltecs, but a worse bogy than their own. Their god of war was ugly, and authorized terrible deeds in his name. But the God of the Christians was more terrible and, as would be proved, would apparently preside over worse human acts—over slaughters, tortures, and human fires innumerable.
It is curiously naïve that the Spanish missionaries to Mexico constantly averred—"Your religion is not unlike ours; only the names of the gods are different."