Yet such is the courage of money-making in all parts of the world, that climate is regarded as only a bugbear. The trader in Vera Cruz enters on the campaign against “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” as if he had a patent for life. The streets, in the trading season, exhibit perpetual crowds; the harbour is full of masts, nestling under the protection of St Juan d’Ulloa from the bursts of wind which sometimes come with terrible violence from the north; and the funeral and the festivity go on together, and without much impeding each other, in a land which for the time exhibits the very Festino, or fête of the Merchant, the Sailor, and the Creole.
But, when this season ends, Vera Cruz is as sad as a dungeon, as silent as a monastery, and as sickly as an hospital. The señoras, a race of perfectly Spanish-visaged, black-eyed, and very coquettish beauties, sit all day drooping in their balconies, like doves upon the housetops, perhaps longing for a hurricane, an earthquake, or any thing which may break up the monotony of their existence. The sound of a guitar, a passing footstep, nay, the whine of a beggar, sets a whole street in motion, and there is a general rustling of mantillas, and a general rush to the windows. The men bear their calamity better; the señor, when he has once a cigar between his sallow lips, has made up his mind for the day. Whether he stands in the sunshine or sits in the shade—whether he wakes or sleeps, the cigar serves him for all the exercise of his animal functions. His brain is as much enveloped in smoke as his moustaches; his cares vanish like the smoke itself. It is not until his cigar-box is empty, that he reverts to the consciousness of his being an inhabitant of this world of ours.
But some are of a more aspiring disposition. They now and then glance round upon the noble landscape which encircles their city. But they do this with the most dexterous determination not to move a limb. Their houses are flat-roofed; some of them have little glazed chambers on the roofs; and there they sit with the sky above them, the mountains round them, and the sea beneath them, dreaming away like so many dormice. One of their American describers compares the whole well-bred population to a colony of beavers; but, we presume, without the industry of the quadruped. Their still closer resemblance would be to a wax-work collection on a large scale, where tinsel petticoats, woollen wigs, and bugle eyes imitate humanity, and every thing is before the spectator but life.
Jonathan, who thinks himself born to lay hold on every scrap of the globe by which he can turn one cent into two, looks, of course, on the whole shore of the gulf—towns, mines, and mountains—as his own. He frees himself from all scruples on the subject by the obvious convenience of the conception.
“No spot of the earth,” says one of those neighbourly persons, “will be more desirable than the soil of Mexico for a residence, whenever it is in possession of our race, with the government and laws which they carry with them wherever they go. The march of time is not more certain than that this will be, and probably at no distant day.”
And, on this showing, the man of “government and laws” proceeds to “sink, burn, and destroy,” in the “great cause of humanity,” edifies the native by grapeshot, and polishes him with the cutlass. In those exploits of a “free and enlightened” people, our only surprise is that diplomacy itself takes the trouble of offering any apology whatever. The comparative powers of resistance and attack settle the conscience of the affair in a word. The seizure is easy, and therefore why should it not be made? The riflemen of Kentucky and the hunters of Virginia, the squatters of Ohio and the sympathizers of Massachusets, all see the affair in the proper light; and why should the philosopher or the philanthropist, the man of justice or the man of religion, be listened to on subjects so much more easily settled by the rattle of twelve-pounders? The right of making war on Mexico has not yet found a single defender but in the streets; not a single ground of defence but in the roar of the rabble; not a single plea but in the convenience of the possession. Even the American journals have given up their old half-savage rant of universal conquest. Every drop of blood shed in a war of aggression is sure to be avenged.
The present town is not the town of Cortes. His “Villa Rica de Vera Cruz” (The Rich City of the True Cross) was seated six miles further inland. But trade decided against the choice of the great soldier. The pen, in this instance, conquered the sword a century before the conflict began in Europe. The population of the old city slipped away to the new and hasty hovels on the shore; and the ground consecrated by the banner of the Spanish hero was left to the donkey and the thistle.
The visible protector of the city and harbour (it has saints innumerable) is the island of St Juan de Ulloa, lying within 600 yards of the mole; and on which stands the well-known fortress. Ships, of course, pass immediately under its guns; and it is regarded as the most powerful fortress in Mexico, or perhaps in the New World, being now thoroughly armed. This is a different state of things from the condition in which it was found by the French squadron in 1839. The ramparts were then scarcely mounted, the guns were more dangerous to the garrison than to the enemy, and of regular artillerists there were few or none; engineers were unheard of. The French naturally did as they pleased; achieved a magnanimous triumph over bare walls, and plucked a laurel for the Prince de Joinville from the most barren of all possible soils of victory; but it served for a bulletin. They would probably now find another kind of reception, for the ramparts have guns, and the guns have artillerymen.
The aspect of the Mexican coast from the sea is singularly bold. On the north and west the waters of the Gulf wash a level shore; but on the south all is a crescent of mountains, rising to a general height of 12,000 feet above the level of the sea; but the noblest object is the snow-capped pinnacle of Orizaba, rising, according to Humboldt, 17,400 feet, and covered with perpetual snow from the height of 15,092. This is a volcanic mountain, but which has slept since the middle of the sixteenth century; what must have been its magnificence when its summit was covered with flame!
The mode of conveyance between Vera Cruz and Mexico is chiefly by an establishment of stage-coaches, making three journeys a-week between the capitals. Those vehicles, originally established by an American of the United States, are now the property of a Mexican whom they are rapidly making rich. The horses are Mexican, and, though small, are strong and spirited. The stage leaves Vera Cruz at eleven at night, and arrives about three o’clock in the next afternoon at Jalapa, a distance of about seventy miles, and a continual ascent through mountains. The houses on the wayside are few and wretched, constructed of canes ten feet long, fixed in the ground, and covered with palm-tree leaves. The villages strongly resemble those of the American Indians; hovels ten or twelve feet square, with a small patch of ground for Chillies and Indian corn—the only difference of those original styles of architecture being, that the northern builds with logs, the southern with mud in the shape of bricks.