The climate we are seeking is not a tropical one. Whoever associates Mexico with the characteristics of heat, malaria, venomous reptiles, has received a wrong impression of it. Such places, with their drawbacks, exist within the geographical limits of the country, but it is wholly unnecessary to seek them; for the towns of historical and picturesque interest are above the reach of tropical dangers, for the most part, while there are seasons of the year when even the warmer portions can be visited with safety and delight. At Orizaba the climate is temperate, fresh, and cool, beginning to have the elements of mountain altitudes. It is well to stop here for a day or two to become accustomed to the rarer air. It is a summer place of recreation for the inhabitants of Vera Cruz, while in winter it is a favorite excursion from the places higher up on the plateau.
As we are travelling only in imagination, we may safely, without pause, press upward to the great plateau where most of the scene is laid of our story. For Mexico, with the exception of the narrow border of sea-coast we have just crossed, is a lofty table-land between two oceans, a mountain ridge continued up from the Andes in South America, contracted at the Isthmus of Panama to a narrow chain of granite, to grow broad in Mexico as it stretches to the northwest, until it spreads, at an elevation from 4,000 to 8,000 feet, almost from ocean to gulf. This is Anahuac, the so-called table-land of Mexico, a broad plateau upon which the picturesque romantic drama of Mexican history has been played. Upon this high plateau, which is by no means level, rise the crests of the great volcanic ridges, of which the highest are Popocatepetl and Istaccíhuatl. The table-land rolls off northward at first, keeping its high level, growing narrower, gradually sinking as it approaches the Rio Grande, until at the boundary line of the United States it has fallen to 3,000 feet.
Thus Mexico possesses three well defined climates, due to variation in altitude: the tierra caliente, or hot lands of the coast; the tierra templada, or temperate region; and the tierra fria, the cold regions of the mountain tops, more than 6,000 feet above the level of the sea. These climates, moreover, are modified by the latitude, so that between the cold altitudes of the northern portions, and the warm tropical levels of the south, there is a vast range of atmospheric change.
Our story has its stage, for the most part in the tierra templada, where the year is divided into two seasons: the dry season, from November to May; the rainy one, from June to October. The pleasanter one is the rainy one, in spite of its name. The rains are not continuous, but fall usually late in the afternoon and during the night, leaving the morning bright and clear, and the air deliciously fresh and cool. All the year roses bloom in the city of Mexico, and there are places where you may eat strawberries every day in the three hundred and sixty five.
Spreading over the greater part of this lofty region, there are broad, level plains of rich verdure, bright with all imaginable wild-flowers growing in profusion; large lakes, as picturesque as those of Northern Italy, surrounded by hills that are mountains, reckoning from the sea level; lofty mountain peaks, eternally snow-covered, barren and rocky below their snow-summits, then clothed with pine, and nearer at hand with fine oaks and other trees of temperate climates. Brawling streams water the valleys, and at the edge of the plateau make deep barrancas, whose depths reach to the lower level, their dangerous chasms hidden by rich growths.
On this elevated plateau, which with all its variety seems a world of its own, until within the period of modern inventions all but inaccessible to the lower country and the ocean beyond, we find the traces of an ancient civilization, reaching backward until it is lost in legend. Long before the invasion of Anahuac by Cortés, it was inhabited by intelligent races of men. The mystery which hangs about these people makes the search for their history full of interest. In the present native population, we seek to find some clue to the manners and customs of the first inhabitants, by which to read the meaning of the monuments they have left. They are gone, their institutions overthrown by a power stronger than they were, by reason of the resources of advancing civilization, their idols and temples overturned by the zealots of another belief.
Outraged by the human sacrifices of the Mexican tribes, Cortés destroyed, with a reckless hand, all the evidences of what he regarded heathen worship. In so doing, the records of the race were lost, together with carved images of gods. It is unfortunate that his zeal was not tempered with discrimination, for it is now difficult, through the clouds of exaggeration surrounding the Spanish Conquistadores, to find out what sort of people they were, who preceded them on Anahuac.
Empires and palaces, luxury and splendor fill the accounts of the Spaniards, and imagination loves to adorn the halls of the Montezumas with the glories of an Oriental tale. Later explorers, with the fatal penetration of our time, destroy the splendid vision, reducing the emperor to a chieftain, the glittering retinue to a horde of savages, the magnificent capital of palaces to a pueblo of adobe. The discouraged enthusiast sees his magnificent civilization devoted to art, literature, and luxury, reduced to a few handfuls of pitiful Indians, quarrelling with one another for supremacy, and sighs to think his sympathies may have been wasted on the sufferings of an Aztec sovereign dethroned by the invading Spaniard.
Yet perseverence, after brushing away the sparkling cobwebs of exaggerated report, finds enough fact left to build up a respectable case for the early races of Mexico. Visible proofs of their importance exist in the monuments, picture writings, and, above all, their traditions, which, at all events, remain a pretty story, with a sediment of facts the student may precipitate for himself. These traditions make of the early settlers of Anahuac a very interesting study, all the more from their shadowy nature, leaving still much margin for fancy.
They were overwhelmed by the Spaniards, but not destroyed, for the descendants of the conquered races still form a large proportion of the population of Mexico. Their teocallis and hideous carved gods gave way to Roman Catholic cathedrals and images of the Holy Virgin. Spanish viceroys, after the first atrocities of military discipline, ruled the gentle descendants of the Aztecs with a control for the most part mild and beneficent. The Catholic fathers who crossed the ocean to labor for the spiritual welfare of the natives, wisely engrafted upon the mysteries of their own faith the legends and superstitions of the older belief. Thus we find in many of the religious ceremonies in Mexico, a wild, picturesque element, which is lacking in the church festivals of the Old World.