Aztec Land by Maturin Murray Ballou (best summer books TXT) 📕

gallons of pulque are consumed daily in the national capital. It is to be regretted, as we have seen it announced, that an American company propose to go into the business of pulque making by the use of improved facilities, claiming that it can be produced by the use of this machinery at one half the present cost, the plants being also made to yield more copiously. Of course it will be adulterated, every intoxicant is, except pulque as at present made from the maguey by the Indians.

The Mexicans have two other forms of spirituous liquors, namely _mescal_, which is also prepared from another species of the maguey, by pressing the leaves in a mill, the juice thus extracted being distilled; and _aguardiente_, or rum, made from sugar-cane juice. Both of these are powerful intoxicants. A very valuable and harmless article is thus sacrificed to make a liquid poison. So in our Middle and Western States we pervert both barley and rye from their legitimate purposes, and turn them into whiskey,--liquefied ruin.

Wherever we go among civilized or savage races, in islands or upon continents, in the frigid North or the melting South, we find man resorting to some stimulant other than natural food and drink. It is an instinctive craving, apparently, exhibited and satisfied as surely in the wilds of Africa, or the South Sea Islands, as by the opium-eating Chinese, or the brandy-drinking Anglo-Saxons. Every people have sought some article with which to stimulate the human system. Oftenest this is a fermented liquor; but various articles have been found to serve the purpose. The Aztecs, and the Toltecs before them, had the fermented juice of the maguey plant. The Chinese get their spirituous drink from rice. People living under the equator distill the saccharine product of the sugar-cane for aguardiente. The German combines his malt and hops to produce beer. The Frenchman depends upon the juice of the grape in various forms, from light claret to fierce Bordeaux brandy. The Puritans of Massachusetts distilled New England rum from molasses. The faithful Mohammedan, who drinks neither wine nor spirits, makes up for his abstinence by free indulgence in coffee. In the islands of the Indian Ocean the natives stimulate themselves by chewing the betel nut; and in the Malacca Straits Settlements, Penang, Singapore, and other islands, the people obtain their spirit from the fermented sap of the toddy-palm. In Japan the natives get mildly stimulated by immoderate drinking of tea many times each day; and all of the civilized and barbaric world is addicted, more or less, to the use of tobacco.

One of the staple commodities produced here is that classic, beautiful, and precious gem, the opal. It is found imbedded in a certain kind of rock, in the neighboring mountains, sometimes in cubes, but oftener in very irregular forms. It will be remembered that Nonius, who possessed a large and brilliant specimen of the opal, preferred exile to surrendering it to Marc Antony. Whether he was opal-mad or not, it is clear that persons who visit this place are very apt to become monomaniacs upon the subject of this beautiful gem. Our party expended considerable sums for these precious stones, cut and uncut, during the brief period of our visit. The choicest of these specimens is the true fire-opal, which in brilliancy and iridescence excels all others. Nearly every person one meets in Queretaro seems to have more or less of these lovely stones to sell; nine tenths of them are of a very cheap quality, really fine ones, being the exception, are valued accordingly. The pretty flower-girl, who first offers you her more fragrant wares, presently becomes confidential, and, drawing nearer, brings out from some mysterious fold of her dress half a dozen sparkling stones which she is anxious to dispose of. Even the water carrier, with his huge red earthen jar strapped to his head and back, if he sees a favorable opportunity, will importune the stranger regarding these fiery little stones. These irresponsible itinerants have some ingenious way of filling up the cracks in an opal successfully for the time being; but, after a few days, the defect will again appear.

The finest specimens of the opal come from Hungary. They are harder in texture than those found in other parts of the world. Those brought from Australia are nearly equal in hardness and brilliancy, while, so far as our own experience goes, the Mexican often excel either in variety of color and brilliancy; but it is not quite so hard as those from the other two sources. This quality of hardness is one criterion of value in precious stones, the diamond coming first, the ruby following it, and so on. The author has seen an opal in Pesth weighing fourteen carats, for which five thousand dollars were refused. They can be purchased at Queretaro at from ten dollars to ten hundred; for the latter price a really splendid gem may be had, emitting a grand display of prismatic tints, and all aglow with fire. The natives, notwithstanding the seeming abundance of the stones, hold very tenaciously to the valuation which they first place upon them. Of course, really choice specimens are always rare, and quickly disposed of. While the ancients considered the opal a harbinger of good fortune to the possessor, it has been deemed in our day to be exactly the reverse; and many lovers of the gem have denied themselves the pleasure of wearing it from a secret superstition as to its unlucky attributes. This fancy has been gradually dispelled, and fashion now indorses the opal as being both beautiful and desirable.

Mexico also produces many other precious stones, among which are the ruby, amethyst, topaz, garnet, pearl, agate, turquoise, and chalcedony, besides onyx and many sorts of choice marbles.

On our route to the national capital we pass through a number of small cities and towns, while we ascend and descend many varying grades. Native women, here and there, bring _agua miel_, or fresh pulque, to us, of which the passengers partake freely. It is a pleasant beverage when first drawn from the plant, very much like new cider, and has no intoxicating effect until fermentation takes place. As we progress southward, occasional wayside shrines with a cross and a picture of the Virgin are seen, before which a native woman is sometimes kneeling, but never a man. Among other interesting places we come to Tula, which was the capital city of the Toltecs more than twelve centuries ago. The cathedral was erected by the invaders in 1553. The baptismal font in the church is a piece of Toltec work. There is to be seen the yellow, crumbling walls of a crude Spanish chapel, even older than the cathedral, now fast returning to its native dust. There are other extremely interesting ruins here, notably a portion of a prehistoric column, and the lower half of a very large statue situated in the plaza. Mr. Ruskin said in his pedantic way that he could not be induced to travel in America because there were no ruins. There _are_ ruins here and in Yucatan which antedate by centuries anything of recorded history relating to the British Isles. Across the Tula River and up the Cerro del Tesoro are some other ancient ruins which have greatly interested antiquarians, embracing carved stones and what must once have been part of a group of dwellings, built of stone laid in mud and covered with cement. The valley shows a rich array of foliage and flowers, forming bits of delightful scenery. There are some fifteen hundred inhabitants in Tula; but it must once have been a large city; indeed, the name indicates that, meaning "the place of many people." The locality of the ancient capital is now mostly overgrown and hidden from sight. We are fifty miles from the city of Mexico at Tula, and about seven hundred feet below it. The records of the Spanish conquest tell us that the natives of this ancient capital were among the first, as a whole community, to embrace the Christian religion; and it seems that its people ever remained stanch allies of Cortez in extending his conquests.

Here we experienced one of those freaks of tropical weather, a furious summer hail-storm. The thermometer had ranged about 80 deg. in the early day, when suddenly heavy clouds seemed to gather from several points of the sky at the same time. The thermometer dropped quickly some 30 deg.. It was a couple of hours past noon when the clouds began to empty their contents upon the earth; down came the hailstones like buckshot, only twice as large, covering as with a white sheet the parched ground, which had not been wet by a drop of rain for months. This unusual storm prevailed for nearly an hour before it exhausted its angry force. "Exceptional?" repeated the station-master on the line of the Mexican Central Railroad, in reply to a query as to the weather. "I have been here ten years, and this is the first time I have seen snow or hail at any season. I should rather say it was exceptional." By and by, after stampeding all the exposed cattle, and driving everybody to the nearest shelter and keeping them there, the inky clouds dispersed almost as suddenly as they had gathered, and the thermometer gradually crept back to a figure nearly as high as at noon. The fury of the storm was followed by a sunset of rarest loveliness, eliciting ejaculations of delight at the varied and vivid combinations of prismatic colors. One does not soon forget such a scene as was presented at the close of this day. The sun set in a blaze of orange and scarlet, seen across the long level of the cactus-covered prairie, while soft twilight shadows gathered about the crumbling, vine-screened walls of the old Spanish church in the environs of Tula. Soon the stars came into view, one by one, while the moon rode high and serene among the lesser lights of the still blue sky.


CHAPTER VII.


City of Mexico.--Private Dwellings.--Thieves.--Old Mexico.--Climate. --Tramways.--The Plaza Mayor.--City Streets.--The Grand Paseo.-- Public Statues.--Scenes upon the Paseo.--The Paseo de la Viga.-- Out-of-door Concerts.--A Mexican Caballero.--Lottery Ticket Venders. --High Noon.--Mexican Soldiers.--Musicians.--Criminals as Soldiers. --The Grand Cathedral.--The Ancient Aztec Temple.--Magnificent View from the Towers of the Cathedral.--Cost of the Edifice.--Valley of Anahuac.


As Paris is said to be France, so is the national capital of this country equally representative, it being indisputable that the main business and the social interests of the country all centre here. The city derives its name from the Aztec war-god Mexitli, and is a large and handsome metropolis, containing considerably over three hundred thousand inhabitants, who embrace a large diversity of nationalities. In 1519, when Cortez first saw it, the city is represented to have been nine miles in circumference, and to have contained half a million of inhabitants,--a statement which, we doubt not, is greatly exaggerated, as were nearly all of his representations and those of his followers. This capital originally bore the name of Tenochtitlan, and was completely destroyed by the invaders, who established a new city upon the same site. Cortez officially announced, three or four years afterwards, that the population was thirty thousand. "For a century," says Charles Lempriere, an able writer on Mexico, "the city continued to increase in numbers, wealth, and power, so that when Captain John Smith and his followers were looking for gold mines in Virginia and the Pilgrims were planting corn in Massachusetts, an empire had been founded and built up on the same continent by the Spaniards, and the most stupendous system of plunder the world ever saw was then and there in vigorous operation."

The streets of the city as we see them to-day are generally broad and straight, lined with two-story houses, and there are