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Spanish America, Its Romance, Reality and Future, Vol. 1 (of 2)

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Title: Spanish America, Its Romance, Reality and Future, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Author: C. Reginald Enock


        
Release date: November 21, 2014 [eBook #47415]
                Most recently updated: November 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPANISH AMERICA, ITS ROMANCE, REALITY AND FUTURE, VOL. 1 (OF 2) ***




Produced by Josep Cols Canals, Julia Neufeld and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)





Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

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Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.


       *       *       *       *       *




SPANISH AMERICA




THE SOUTH AMERICAN SERIES

_Demy 8vo, cloth._


     1. =CHILE.= By G. F. SCOTT ELLIOTT, F.R.G.S. With an
     Introduction by Martin Hume, a Map, and 39 Illustrations. (4th
     Impression.)

     2. =PERU.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. With an
     Introduction by Martin Hume, a Map, and 72 Illustrations. (3rd
     Impression.)

     3. =MEXICO.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. With an
     Introduction by Martin Hume, a Map, and 64 Illustrations. (3rd
     Impression.)

     4. =ARGENTINA.= By W. A. HIRST. With an Introduction by
     Martin Hume, a Map, and 64 Illustrations. (4th Impression.)

     5. =BRAZIL.= By PIERRE DENIS. With a Historical Chapter by
     Bernard Miall, a Map, and 36 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)

     6. =URUGUAY.= By W. H. KOEBEL. With a Map and 55
     Illustrations.

     7. =GUIANA: British, French, and Dutch.= By JAMES RODWAY.
     With a Map and 36 Illustrations.

     8. =VENEZUELA.= By LEONARD V. DALTON, B.Sc. (Lond.),
     F.G.S., F.R.G.S. With a Map and 36 Illustrations. (2nd
     Impression.)

     9. =LATIN AMERICA: Its Rise and Progress.= By F. GARCIA
     CALDERON. With a Preface by Raymond Poincaré, President of
     France, a Map, and 34 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)

     10. =COLOMBIA.= By PHANOR JAMES EDER, A.B., LL.B. With 2
     Maps and 40 Illustrations. (2nd Impression.)

     11. =ECUADOR.= By C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S.

     12. =BOLIVIA.= By PAUL WALLE. With 62 Illustrations and 4
     Maps.

     13. =PARAGUAY.= By W. H. KOEBEL.

     14. =CENTRAL AMERICA.= By W. H. KOEBEL.

"The output of the books upon Latin America has in recent years been
very large, a proof doubtless of the increasing interest that is
felt in the subject. Of these the South American Series edited by
Mr. Martin Hume is the most noteworthy."--TIMES.

"Mr. Unwin is doing good service to commercial men and investors by
the production of his 'South American Series.'"--SATURDAY REVIEW.

"Those who wish to gain some idea of the march of progress in these
countries cannot do better than study the admirable 'South American
Series.'"--CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL.

[Illustration: COLON: STATUE REPRESENTING COLUMBUS PROTECTING THE
INDIANS.

  Vol. I. Frontispiece.]




  SPANISH AMERICA

  ITS ROMANCE, REALITY
  AND FUTURE


  BY

  C. R. ENOCK, C.E., F.R.G.S.

  AUTHOR OF "THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON," "PERU,"
  "MEXICO," "ECUADOR," ETC.


  WITH 25 ILLUSTRATIONS


  VOL. I


  T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
  LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE




  _First published in 1920_


  (_All rights reserved_)




PREFACE


The purpose of this work is twofold--to afford a broad survey of
the Latin American countries, with the colour and interest which
so strongly characterizes this half of the New World; and to offer
in some degree a detailed study of the region as concerns what
(elsewhere) I have ventured to term a "science of humanity" or
science of corporate life, whose main factors are topographical,
occupational or industrial, and ethical or ethical-economic. New
responsibilities are arising in our dealings and contact with
foreign lands, especially those whose social affairs are still
backward. We must beware how we regard the folk of such lands mainly
as hewers of wood and drawers of water, or absorbents of exported
goods or producers of dividends, or their lands as mainly reservoirs
of raw material. Elemental forces are at work in the world to-day,
which only justice and constructive intelligence can control.
The English-speaking peoples have wide interests and consequent
responsibilities in these lands: matters which are discussed in the
final chapter.

As will be seen, I have embodied many descriptive passages in this
book from the various authors of the _South American Series_, to
which the present work is in a measure auxiliary.

  C. R. E.

  FROXFIELD, HANTS, ENGLAND.
  _May 1920._




CONTENTS


                                                         PAGE

        PREFACE                                             5

  CHAPTER

     I. A RECONNAISSANCE, AND SOME INFORMAL GEOGRAPHY      11

    II. A HISTORICAL OUTLINE                               40

   III. CENTRAL AMERICA: GUATEMALA, HONDURAS,
          BRITISH HONDURAS, NICARAGUA, SALVADOR,
          COSTA RICA, PANAMA                               63

    IV. ANCIENT AND MODERN MEXICO                          99

     V. ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST: IN COLOMBIA,
          ECUADOR AND PERU                                151

    VI. ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST: IN PERU, BOLIVIA
          AND CHILE                                       176

   VII. THE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES: IN ECUADOR,
          PERU AND BOLIVIA                                209

  VIII. THE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES: IN BOLIVIA,
          CHILE AND ARGENTINA                             266

        INDEX                                             291




ILLUSTRATIONS


  COLON: STATUE REPRESENTING COLUMBUS PROTECTING
  THE INDIANS                                  _Frontispiece_

                                                 TO FACE PAGE

  AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO                          20

  THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: STONE STELÆ AT QUIRIGUA,
    CENTRAL AMERICA                                        32

  THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: RUINS OF MITLA, MEXICO         60

  THE CATHEDRAL, GUATEMALA                                 70

  THE CITY OF GUATEMALA                                    80

  A COFFEE ESTABLISHMENT IN CENTRAL AMERICA                86

  CUTTING SUGAR-CANE IN CENTRAL AMERICA                    96

  SCENE ON THE GREAT PLATEAU, MEXICO                      104

  THE CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO                           114

  CORDOVA AND THE PEAK OF ORIZABA, STATE OF VERA
    CRUZ                                                  132

  VILLAGE ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE, MEXICO                    140

  VIEW ON THE GRIJALVA AND USUMACINTA RIVERS, MEXICO      150

  THE WHARF AT GUAYAQUIL                                  158

  CULTIVATED LANDS ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF PERU           176

  THE LANDING STAGE AT VALPARAISO                         198

  THE MALLECO RIVER AND BRIDGE, CHILE                     206

  THE APPROACH TO QUITO                                   222

  PIZARRO, THE CONQUISTADOR                               240

  IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES                                   250

  PERU, LLAMAS AND ALPACAS                                260

  PERU: NATIVE BLANKET WEAVER IN THE ANDES                260

  THE RUINED INCA FORTRESS OF OLLANTAYTAMBO, PERU         264

  INDIAN RAFTS ON LAKE TITICACA                           274

  ACONCAGUA, THE HIGHEST ANDINE PEAK, CHILE               288




SPANISH AMERICA




CHAPTER I

A RECONNAISSANCE

AND SOME INFORMAL GEOGRAPHY


Who has not felt at some time the lure of Spanish America, the
attraction of those half-mysterious lands--Peru or Panama, Mexico
or Brazil, and all that galaxy of far-off States, with the remains
of their ancient civilization and their picturesque modern
setting--beneath the equatorial sun, beyond the Western sea? They
drew us in our youth, were it but in the pages of Prescott, when
with Cortes and Pizarro the Aztec and Inca Empires lay before us;
they draw us even in maturer years.

Yonder lies the Spanish Main, glittering in the sun as when we
sailed it first--in that long-foundered pirate craft of boyhood;
there stretch the tropic shores of wild Guiana; there the great
Andes rears its towering crests, and over golden sands the Orinoco
and the Amazon pour down their mighty floods; whilst, in slumberous
and mysterious majesty beyond, wide as the sea of Time, the vast
Pacific echoes on its boundless shores. And for those, who would
seek the true El Dorado of the West the great Sixteenth Century has
not closed yet, nor ever will; the days of ocean-chivalry are not
dead, the Elizabethan mariners come and go, for their voyages have
no end within those spacious days of history.

Spanish America, in fact, is enshrouded in an atmosphere of romance
and interest which time does not easily dispel, and remains a land
of adventure and enterprise. Its sunny shores, its picturesque
folk with their still semi-mediaeval life, despite their advancing
civilization--the great untravelled spaces, the forests, the
mountains, the rivers, the plains, and all they contain, the lure
and profit of commerce and of trafficking--all these are matters we
cannot separate from the New World as peopled by Spain and Portugal.

It is, moreover, peculiarly a world of its own, born in an
impressionable period, indelibly stamped with the strong
individualism of the Iberian people who overcame it, and it
remains apart, refusing the hegemony of the commercialistic age--a
circumstance for which we may be grateful, in a sense. Its future is
on the lap of the unknown, offering always the unexpected: geography
has everywhere separated it from the Old World; temperament keeps
the seclusion.

Whatever be our errand in this new world--erroneously termed "new,"
for it is old, and had its folk, its Toltecs and pre-Incas, in the
apogee of their ancient culture developed a shipbuilding as they
did a temple-building art, they might have come sailing around
the world and found us here in Britain still "painted savages";
whatever, I say, be our errand there, we shall not understand
Spanish America and its people, just as they will never understand
us, the people of Anglo-Saxon race. The gulf between us is as deep
as the Atlantic, as wide as the Pacific. The incomprehensible
Spaniard has added himself to the unfathomable Indian, the red-brown
man who sprang from the rugged soil of America (perhaps from some
remote Mongolian ancestry), who, inscrutable as a dweller of the
moon, is still sullen and secretive as he was and well might
be--after the rapine which followed on the white man's keel and sail
upon his shores four centuries ago; the white conqueror, who in his
adventurous greed destroyed the Egypt and the Chaldea of America and
trampled their autochthonous civilization in the dust.

And as to the Spaniards, it is their strong individualism which
presents a marked attraction here, though one which may not
generally have been put into words: the individualism of nations
founded upon historical and geographical bases, as has already
been said. We approach here, not a mere United States of Spanish
America, not a confederation of vast municipalities or provinces
whose borders are imaginary parallels or meridians, but a series of
independent nations, each stamped with its own character, bearing
its own indelible and romantic name, whose frontiers are rivers and
mountain ranges.

Is there any virtue in these things? In the day when prosaic
commercialism, when megalomania and money so sway us, there is a
refreshing atmosphere about the refusal to conglomerate of these
picturesque communities, whose names fall pleasingly on our ears.
Yet there are penalties too. Rugged and difficult of approach--the
vulgar gaze may not easily rest upon them by the mere passport of a
tourist's ticket--as are these vast territories of forest, desert
and Cordillera, Nature, though grand and spacious, is ill at ease,
and the mood might seem to be impressed upon the people of the land
that neither is there peace for them. For they have soaked their
land with the blood of their own sons, and we might at times despair
of self-government here.

But we need not despair. The malady is but part of one that afflicts
the whole world, whose cure awaits the turning of the next page
of human evolution--a page which can be turned whenever slothful
humanity desires to do it.

Spanish America is really one of the most interesting fields of
travel in the world, even if it does not make great pretension of
its attractions. From the point of view of the holiday-maker it
has remained undeveloped. The traveller who requires luxuriance of
travel, of hotel and pleasure-resort, such as the playgrounds of
Europe afford, will not find such here, except perhaps in a few of
the more advanced cities. It is a continent which, despite its four
centuries of discovery, has so far done little more than present its
edge to the forces--and pleasures--of modern life. Nature is in her
wildest moods: it is an unfinished world; mankind is still plastic.
The mountain trail and the horse are more in evidence than the
railway and the motor-car; the _fonda_ rather than the hotel. Here,
moreover, Don Quixote de la Mancha has taken up his abode, and we
may find him often, to our pleasure if we like his company, as some
of us do.

But let us dismount. Here are beautiful cities too. A sensitive
and developing people, the Spanish American folk would resent any
aspersion of their civilization. They have all the machinery of
culture to their hand. Here the Parisian toilette rubs shoulders
in their streets and _plazas_ with the blanketed and sandalled
Indian; the man of fashion and the man of the Stone Age walk the
same pavement. Here in these pleasing towns--some of them marvels
of beauty, some of them in an atmosphere of perpetual spring, some
miles above the sea--are palaces of justice, art and science. Here
are republican kings and plutocrats, rich with the product of the
field and mine, here are palms and music, homes of highly cultured
folk, speaking their soft Castilian: shops stored with all the
luxury of Europe or the United States. Here are streets of quaint
colonial architecture, and courteous hosts and hostesses, and
damsels of startling beauty in all the elegance of the mode.

Here, too, are smooth-tongued lawyer statesmen, dominating (as they
always do) the Senatorial Councils. It is true that from time to
time there are disturbing elements when rude soldier-politicians
break in upon the doctor-politicians with the clatter of a
mule-battery, on the pavement, and the sword takes the place of the
bauble; it is true that the walls of the streets are pitted here
and there with bullet marks, from some whiff of grapeshot, and that
there are stains of blood upon the pavements; and it is true that
against the white walls of justice, science, art and oratory stands
silhouetted the figure of the poor Indian, or _peon_, who slinks
_humilde_ amid the palms and music--doffing his hat as he passes
the Cathedral precincts--and that the veneer of civilization, torn
aside, reveals at times both the cultured and the uncultured savage.

Here, too, congregate the merchants and traffickers of all the
world, Old and New, from all the four corners of the earth to buy
and sell. Here is the Frenchman with his emporium of finery, the
Spaniard with his groceries, or the Italian with his wares, the
Arab with his little shop, the Chinaman with his laundry (and his
peculiar affinity with the Indian, perhaps of the same mother-race),
the German with his hardware, drugs and cheap jewellery and much
besides; the English or American with every commodity, and in
addition his mining schemes and railways and steamers, or his
municipal stocks and bonds. For Spanish America is now a peculiarly
attractive Mecca of the international merchant and pedlar, who does
it services both good and ill.

Here, in this financial and business field, the Englishman has been
predominant (though that predominance may not always be, for he is
closely pressed now and must not muddle on).

England, indeed, soon conquered a world commercially which she
bungled in overcoming in conquest. She early scorned Columbus,
or would not help him; at Cartagena, Callao, Rio de Janeiro,
Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, and elsewhere, her admirals and generals
seem to have failed, and she secured but a couple of small footholds
on the continent and some rich islands off its coast. Perhaps it
was destiny; perhaps we would not now have it otherwise, and the
Spanish American civilization develops more interestingly alone. But
interesting too would have been a British Indian Empire in America,
perhaps with possibilities and results of value to the world.

But, despite all this, the British name here stands high, and heaven
grant it always may.

Not for all her past misdeeds, nor the present defects arising from
them, shall we forget the gifts that Spain has made to the New
World. To-day it might indeed be said that some of the main problems
of colonial empires are but beginning (as witness Egypt and India
under British rule). Spain made nations, even it they afterwards
fell from her by misgovernment or from natural causes. She implanted
her religion, literature, culture, language, architecture over
hundreds of thousands of miles of forbidding desert and Cordillera,
as we shall see in these pages. Over a zone of the earth's territory
seven thousand miles long, from the Mexican border with the United
States, throughout the twenty Republics of Central and South
America, to the tapering end of Chile, the Spanish language is the
medium of communication, a language-area vaster than any in the
world.

And Portugal, the patron of great voyagers and explorers, has left
her mark and language upon her half of the New World, the old empire
of Brazil, with a population greater than that of all her neighbours
combined. Less dominating than the Spaniard in the long run--for
Portugal has always said of herself that she could conquer but not
colonize--Portugal has left her own Iberian culture in Latin America.

Here, indeed, are the elements of life in the making, of a
civilization whose life is before it rather than behind it; often
picturesque, often sombre, always, as we have said, a world of its
own, and possessed of its own peculiar attractiveness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some rather serious doubts have assailed my mind in regard to the
succeeding portion of this chapter, as to how far the weighty
matters of geography and travel-description may be treated
informally. Dare we "speak disrespectfully of the Equator," or too
lightly tread over Cancer or Capricorn?

But the home-returned traveller knows that treatment of geography
and travel is generally informal--not to say casual--especially
among our good English folk, and at dinner, where white
shirt-fronts do gleam, and feminine elegance is displayed, he may
have to answer somewhat elemental questions upon the whereabouts of
this or that land, region, or locality he has visited, or upon the
nature and customs of its particular inhabitants.

Nor is this confined to Society chatter alone at such pleasant
moments. In the London Board Room perhaps some stout and comfortable
director of possibly half a dozen companies whose operations are of
no meanly distributed geographical range may ask where such and such
a country is, with most complacent ignorance of maps and globes;
perhaps, also, in a few words doing what it was long since said we
could not do, "drawing up an indictment against a whole nation," for
doubtless weighty (financial) reasons of his own. As to the general
public, it goes on its way careless of where places are--except
that, by reason of the Great War, it has grown accustomed to looking
at the maps so beneficially inserted in the columns of our daily
Press, and strives to hold the balance between kilometres and miles.

The foregoing lack of familiarity with the round world and they that
dwell therein is especially true of the lands of Spanish America
(or Latin America, to use that more cumbrous but more accurate
term). "Where in the world is Ecuador, or Costa Rica, or Paraguay?"
some one may impatiently exclaim if we mention that we were held
up by quarantine in Guayaquil on account of yellow fever, or
other incident of other spot. "Where is Bolivia?" is another not
infrequent query, but generally made in ignorance of its first and
classical utterance, it is reputed, in the anecdote relating to Lord
Palmerston and the President--many years ago--of that Republic.

Some think Mexico is in South America, and, no doubt drawing
their ideas from their or their parents' study of Prescott in the
Victorian age, ask if the Mexicans really wear feathers and carry
knives. The position of Peru puzzles many good folk, although it is
generally believed to be somewhere in South America, which of course
is right. Chile, again; where does it lie? Did not some one once
describe Chile--if you look at the map--as a country two thousand
miles long and two inches wide? Again, striving to give an idea of
the vast length of Chile, one writer of the country has graphically
remarked that you may conceive it as a "long, narrow trough of
which one end could be placed at Queenstown and the other near New
York, but along which luggage could not be rolled." No offence is
here meant to the enterprising people of that land, who resisted
so stoutly the pretensions of their neighbours of Argentina in
order that this narrow width might not be pared down still closer,
a contention finally ended by the arbitration of King Edward of
Britain.

For both Argentina and Brazil seem to have been bent, at one time
or another, on carrying out the principle that to him who hath not
shall be taken away even that which he hath, for both of them
sprawl--geographically that is--across the South American Continent
and crowd their smaller neighbours into its margins or corners,
if crowding be possible here. As for Brazil, it must have more
political frontiers, one imagines, than any other nation in the
world.

[Illustration: AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.

  Vol. I. To face p. 20.]

The traveller sometimes finds it necessary to explain that Colombia
has nothing to do with British Columbia. It is a republic quite
unassociated with our Imperial outpost of British Columbia. As for
Venezuela, only those who have been there can ever be expected to
know where it is, notwithstanding that it is the part of South
America nearest to Europe and was that first sighted by Columbus.
The Guianas are rightly associated by many with Demerara sugar,
but Demerara, it has to be mentioned, is not the whole of British
Guiana, and there are in addition French and Dutch Guiana. British
Guiana and British Honduras--which latter, let us remark, is not in
South but in Central America (location to be explained later)--are
the only foothold of the British Empire on the mainland of Spanish
America. Guiana, moreover, has nothing to do with Guinea, in Africa,
or New Guinea, in Asia. Few people at home know where these places
are or who lives there or what they do. As to the first-named, it
is interesting to see that a deputation has recently arrived from
the colony in the Mother Country, to remind that parent of her
offspring's existence.

Both these small places--they are as large as England--are perhaps
among the most backward portions of the Empire. It is not their
fault, or not alone. It is largely due to the stupidity or lack of
interest of the Home Government. It is also due, in general terms,
to the stupidity and ignorance of British folk in general, who take
little interest in their possessions overseas, and who from one
point of view do not deserve to have them. The tropical colonies of
Britain, and among them are these of South and Central America--not
to mention the magnificent heritage of the West Indies, which
of course are geographically part of America--are most valuable
charges, most essential elements of the national food supply. They
are at least geographical larders, and it is time they were much
more fully developed and cared for.

It is well to recollect, moreover, politically, that Britain has
scarcely given an efficient object-lesson of development, social and
economic, to the backward States of Spanish America in her control
of these two Crown Colonies.

But we digress. If the geography of the South American States
is nebulous to the ordinary person at home, how much more so is
that of Central America? In the first place, it may be asked,
where or what is Central America? Many well-informed people do
not know. North America and South America are easily realizable
as geographical entities, but where can a third America exist?
Central America is not the centre of the South American Continent,
as some well-meaning people think, but is that part of America
lying between the two continents, and includes no less than six
independent Republics, together with British Honduras. The Panama
Canal cuts through it; the Tehuantepec and other railways cross it.
Thus when we are asked where is Costa Rica or Nicaragua or Salvador,
Honduras or Panama, where perhaps the latest revolution has just
broken out, or the Government have just repudiated a loan, or
managed to pay an instalment of the interest due upon a loan, we may
reply in Central America.

And Paraguay--ah, Paraguay! Where is it? And Hayti, too?

Many people in England have relatives in Spanish American countries,
and it is interesting to be able to inform them where the particular
localities are situated, and how to get there, also the distances
approximately places are apart. "I have a cousin who is Chargé
d'Affaires in Revolutia," says a lady at a reception. "I do trust
he has not been injured by that terrible South American earthquake
we saw in the paper this morning." We are able to assure the lady
that the earthquake was in San Volcania, at least two thousand
miles from the enterprising Republic where her relative carried on
his doubtless invaluable diplomatic duties. "Have you ever been in
---- (we will call it Santa Andina)?" says a stout, bald-headed
gentleman, who looks like a company promoter (and we afterwards
found that he was such), referring to a well-known Spanish American
capital, adding that he thought of going there, and had heard
that no great difficulties attended the journey. He thought oil
concessions were to be obtained there. When he learned that you take
a river steamer, then a train, then a canoe, then a steamer again,
and lastly a mule, his _wanderlust_ seemed somewhat to abate. The
story of the lady who had a relative in New York, and hoped he would
call one morning on the brother of another person present who lived
in Buenos Ayres has often been told, but I am inclined to regard it
as far-fetched. The point is that the lady, knowing that both places
were in America, imagined they must be in easy daily radius of each
other.

The traveller who knows Spanish America and speaks the Spanish
language--which language is a veritable delight when you know
it--will often wish that English people would set out to acquire
at least a slight knowledge of the pronunciation of Spanish words
and place-names. He does not like to hear, for example, Buenos
Ayres spoken of as "Boners' Airs," or Callao as "Cally-oh"! And the
pronunciation of señor as "seenyor" is most offensive. Again, why
will the English Press persist in depriving "señor" and the Spanish
letter "ñ" generally of its ~, or in using Don where Señor should
be used (as is done even in _The Times_), or in the rendering of
the Spanish (or its Italian or French equivalent) _Viva!_ as "long
live." It does not mean "long live," but "live" or "may he live,"
and is generally followed by _que viva!_ "Let him live." It would
be better translated as "Hurrah for So-and-So." However, the Press
does not generally treat Spanish America very seriously. There is an
_opéra bouffe_ element.

The Spanish language is perhaps the most beautiful and pleasing in
the world, when we take into account its virility and brevity. It
says what it means at once, and every letter, except the aspirate,
in every word is pronounced. It is a simple language, easily
learned. It is spoken over an enormous part of the earth's surface,
and there is little variation between the Spanish of Castile and
that of Spanish America.

When we converse--in their own language--with the educated Spanish
American folk, we find them full of wise saws and modern instances.
They are shrewd and philosophical, and the Spanish language abounds
with proverbs and aphorisms applicable to the things of everyday
life. They are born statesmen and lawyers and orators. They go
back to the remote classics for their similes. All this is very
delightful in its way, and the Englishman, after a course of years
of it will come home and think his own countrymen rather stupid and
unimaginative; that is if his own common sense does not balance
their own more solid qualities against the more surface attainments.
What he wishes is that the one race might partake more of the
qualities of the other, and vice versa. Oratory and theory cannot
replace practical politics and justice, but we miss the amenities.

  Mucha tinta y poca justicia!

so says the Spanish American (or the Spaniard), referring to the
national power of document-compiling and red tape; that is to say:
"Much ink and little justice."

Nor yet can the most delightful spirit of hospitality make amends
for the insufferable defects of the _fonda_ and the inn, and

    De tu casa a la ajena
    Sal con la barriga llena!

is the soundest advice in Latin America to the traveller in the
interior, or, as one would say, "From your own to a stranger's home,
go forth with a well-filled belly."

The Spanish American people, as we have remarked, are of a poetical
and sentimental temperament, given to oratory, and they produce
many poets, many of which, however, would, if criticism is harsh,
be termed versifiers. They are fond of what might be termed
descriptive embroidery; what, indeed, one of their own race has
termed _desarollos lyricos_ ("lyric developments"). Love verses are
an absorbing theme, and their small magazines overflow therewith,
and even the daily Press does not disdain such. It might be said
that versifying in Spanish in matters amorous may be facile,
because _amores_ (love), _flores_ (flowers), _olores_ (perfume),
and _dolores_ (grief) all rhyme! One cynical Spanish American poet,
however, has propounded the following, descriptive of the social and
natural ambient:

    Flores sin olor
    Hombres sin honor
    Mujeres sin pudor!

That is to say: "Flowers without perfume, men without honour, women
without modesty." It is true that the flowers in the New World here
sometimes lacks perfume, where we might have expected to find such,
and that at times men and women lack the cardinal virtues, but the
same could be said anywhere, and is merely an epigram.

The verse-making of the young poets is often erotic and neurotic,
addressed to the object of undying affection, or to the shades
of night, or the cruelty of destiny--which tears lovers apart
or carries them off to early graves. In this connexion Byron is
well regarded (but let us say nothing derogatory of Byron) and
Shakespeare appreciated.

However, it is to be recollected that these are rather symptoms of
youth in a nation, and if the more blasé and practical Briton--and
the still more practical and less poetical North American--finds
their verse hackneyed (if he be able to read it, which is not
frequently the case), this sentiment has its valuable psychical
attribute. The English, indeed, are regarded by the Spanish American
as of a romantic temperament, or of having a reputation for romance,
and this is possibly due in part to Byron.

But let it not be forgotten that there are famous Latin American
poets, to which space here forbids even the barest justice to be
done.

The Spanish Americans are great panegyrists, moreover. The
most extraordinary adulations of public personages are made and
published, such as it might be supposed would cause the object
thereof to blush. The late President Diaz of Mexico was always to
his admirers--or those who hoped to gain something by his adulation,
and this it is not necessarily unkind to say is often the motive
of the panegyric--a "great star in a Pleiades or constellation of
the first magnitude," and similar matters are found in all the
republics. A stroke of ordinary policy becomes thus "_un acto de
importancia transcendental_," which sufficiently translates itself;
and so forth.

Of course, it is the case that the Spanish language lends itself
peculiarly to "lyric developments"; it is expressive and sonorous,
and even the uneducated person has in it a far wider range of
thought and expression than has the apparently unimaginative and
tongue-tied Briton, or American of Anglo-Saxon speech. Upon this
theme we might greatly enlarge, but we must refrain.

As I have already remarked, the general conception of the Spanish
American people by English folk is a vague one. To such questions or
remarks as: "Are they mostly Indians?" or "I suppose they are not
mainly niggers, or at least half black?" in brief terms, the reply
is that the Spanish American people are a blend of the aboriginal
Indian race--which possessed an early civilization of its own in
certain districts, as in Mexico and Peru, and has many valuable
qualities--and of the Spaniard, or in Brazil of the Portuguese.
They are not "half-breeds" now. We might as well, in a sense, call
the English half-breeds, because we are a mixture of Celt and Saxon
and Norman.

The "Indians" of Mexico and Peru--they are, of course, not Indian
at all in reality, that was an error of Columbus--had, before the
Spaniards destroyed it, a fine culture of their own and practised
the most beautiful arts. As to the modern culture, or that of the
upper strata, it surprises good cultured English folk to learn that
in matters of serious culture, knowledge and social etiquette, and
knowledge of the world, they themselves would have difficulty in
holding their own. The world, or outlook, of the educated man or
woman of Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, or any
other of these States, is a wider one than that of the British
middle-class folk: that great respectable body of persons so closely
engaged upon their own affairs.

Some writers have deplored the separate autonomy or absence of
"unification" of the Latin American States. They would like to see a
"United States of South America" or a Federation of Central America.

But this largely arises, perhaps, from the peculiar ideas of
hegemony which the last and present century brought to being. We
were to have vast empires. Weaker nations were to be controlled
by stronger. There were to be great commercial units. Is this
advisable, or will it be possible? The condition of the world after
the Great War would seem to indicate the negative. It would seem to
show that small nations have their own destiny to work out.

As regards Spanish America, its different States are, in general,
better in being separated. Both geographical conditions and those
of temperament support this. These States, or their capitals and
centres of population, are generally divided by Nature from each
other, often by tremendous barriers of mountain chains, rivers or
impenetrable forests. How could a single or centralized government
be set up to control either their home or foreign policy? Where
would it be, and how would it operate?

It might be said that similar topographical conditions obtain in
the case of the United States, Canada, or Australia, which prefer
to live as federations. But the natural geographical barriers of
Spanish America are, in reality, much more formidable. Again,
the present multiplicity of states, each with its complement of
president and state officers, gives opportunity for more intensive
political training, more pleasing social life and a greater general
opportunity for partaking in government by the people than does a
centralized government.

Let us thus refrain from judging too hastily or too harshly the
Spanish American people. Their temperament, their environment is
different from ours. They have not chosen or been able to follow
the more prosaic, more useful life of England or North America in
the commercial age. They had not our inventive, our mechanical
gifts. Under their warmer skies idealism played a stronger part.
They could not agree to live together unless idealistic conditions
were to dominate them--conditions which were impossible of course,
and they never were able to oil the wheels of life with that spirit
of compromise which providence--if it be a providential gift--gave
to us. Moreover, they have a dreadful history of oppression behind
them, and the dead-weight of a great Indian bulk of folk who were
ruined by the arrogant Spaniards, who despised them without a cause.

Rather let us see that they are endowed with many gifts, and that a
different phase of world-development and civilization may give these
people an opportunity to display their best qualities, of overcoming
their serious errors.

The thoughtful traveller will find matter of interest in Spanish
America wherever he journeys, in the delightful place-names he
encounters, which a little trouble will enable him to pronounce,
and often whose pleasing origin some study will permit him to
understand. Here are no duplications of "Paris," "Berlin," "London";
no monstrosities of "Copperville," "Petroleumville," "Irontown,"
and so forth, such as in Anglo America, the United States and
Canada, the developers of that part of America in some cases
hastily assigned to their places of settlement or industry, either
through lack of or laziness of search for original topographical
nomenclature. Here in Spanish America its old and rightful folk had
given poetical baptism to their localities. Such were often the
abiding places of deities or spirits. Yonder mountain, for example,
was "the home of the wind god" of the Quechuas; yonder point the
"place of the meeting of the waters" of the Aztecs, or the "field
of the fruitful," or the "forest of the dark spirits"; and thus is
imprinted upon them for all time the poetic fancy of their founders.
There rises the "snow-forehead" of the Andes, there is the "cañyon
of a thousand ripples," there is the "_pompa_ of the Holy Saints."
The names flow liquidly from the lips of the Indian, perhaps our
harsher tongues can ill articulate them in comparison.

Moreover, let us remark the wealth of topographical nomenclature,
both in the native languages of Mexico and Peru, and all the
sisterhood of states, and in the later Spanish tongue. Every hill,
hill-slope, stream, wood, plain, valley, desert, every kind of hill,
feature and topographical change of form is designated.

The present chapter, it is seen, is, in some small degree, designed
to prime the intending traveller to Spanish America--or, if not
the traveller, the person athirst for information concerning the
region--with such geographical detail as he or she may assimilate
without mental indigestion. In accordance with this purpose we may
consider a few figures, which are indispensable if we are to gather
any intelligent idea of extent and distance.

There are twenty independent republics of Spanish, or rather Latin
America, ranging from the enormous Brazil, with an area of three
and a quarter million square miles, down to little Salvador,
with only seven thousand two hundred and twenty-five square miles.
Among these twenty States we include Hayti and Santo Domingo, places
which, although often mentioned with a smile when independent
republics are spoken of, are nevertheless worthy of geographical
respect.

[Illustration: THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: STONE STELÆ AT QUIRIGUA,
CENTRAL AMERICA.

  Vol. I. To face p. 32.]

Between these great extremes of area mentioned above we have such
countries as Argentina, with over a million square miles, and
Mexico, Bolivia and Peru, with from nearly to over seven hundred
thousand square miles, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile, with from over
four to under three hundred thousand, Ecuador and Uruguay with half
and a third those areas, and the remaining nine States of from about
seventy thousand square miles down to about a tenth thereof.

The total area thus covered of this very diversified part of the
earth's surface is about eight and a quarter million square miles,
with a total population in the neighbourhood of eighty million souls.

It is of interest further to recollect that Brazil is larger than
the United States or Canada, or larger than Europe without Russia.
Even the little but progressive country of Uruguay, crowded by
Brazil and Argentina into a corner of the Atlantic coast, is much
larger than England.[1]

  [1] The good Church of England, in caring for her sons in Spanish
  America, is perforce obliged to have regard to the vast distances
  she must cover here. Thus the Bishop of the Falkland Islands'
  flock--his diocese--extends over the not inconsiderable territory
  covering the west coast of South America, including Chile, Peru,
  Bolivia, Ecuador and so forth--a strip some five or six thousand
  miles long. As I formed one of a committee with the good bishop to
  endeavour to raise funds among English business men to carry on his
  work (and incidentally to lecture on the subject), I had the matter
  brought specially to my notice. Again, the Bishop of Honduras, in
  a recent letter to _The Times_, appealed for funds for a vessel,
  by means of which he might visit his flock over the vast diocese
  that included Honduras and British Honduras, Costa Rica, Salvador,
  Nicaragua and Panama.

  And again, in giving evidence before the Select Committee of the
  House of Commons to inquire into the Putumayo rubber scandals, which
  I was called upon as a witness to do, concerning the Indians of
  Peru, it was necessary to inform the gentlemen of the Commission
  that the easiest way of reaching Eastern from Western Peru was to
  take steamer up the Pacific coast, cross the Isthmus of Panama, go
  home across the Atlantic to Liverpool, and come back again to the
  Amazon and go up that river!

It is to be recollected that the areas given to these countries
themselves in some cases include territory claimed by their
immediate neighbours, for there are unsettled boundaries and
frontiers, especially in the Amazon Valley. They must be regarded as
only approximate.

The same remark holds good with regard to the population of these
States. Exact enumeration is impossible, for the reasons both that
the inhabitants are often enormously scattered over vast territories
and that they often refuse to be numbered, or escape the census,
fearing that they are to be taxed, or pressed into military service
against their will, which latter condition has been a curse of
Spanish America all through its history.

Much of our earlier knowledge of Northern South America and Mexico
was due to Humboldt, the famous German savant and traveller. He
was born in Berlin in 1769, but it would appear that Berlin was
certainly not his "spiritual home." Paris was the only centre
congenial to him, and he settled there in 1808, after his travels,
in order to be able to secure the needful scientific co-operation
for the publication of the results of his work. "The French capital
he had long regarded as his true home. There he found not only
scientific sympathy, but the social stimulus which his vigorous and
healthy mind eagerly craved. He was equally in his element as the
lion of the _salons_ and as the savant of the institute and the
observatory. The provincialism of his native city was odious to
him. He never ceased to rail against the bigotry without religion,
aestheticism without culture, and philosophy without common sense,
which he found dominant on the banks of the Spree. He sought relief
from this 'nebulous atmosphere' in Paris."[2]

  [2] _Vide_ Humboldt, _Encyc. Brit._, Eleventh Edition, 1910.

It was by an accident that Humboldt directed his steps to Spanish
America, for he had hoped, with Bonpland, to join Bonaparte in
Egypt, but in Madrid he determined to make Spanish America the
scene of his explorations. He explored the Orinoco, crossed the
frozen Cordillera to Quito, investigated the mighty avenue of the
Ecuadorian volcanoes--the farm he occupied still exists at their
foot--and did much else in South America and in Mexico, geological,
archæological, and botanical.

The foregoing glimpse of Berlin which Humboldt's view of his native
city affords is not without interest to-day, when the savagery of
the German character--a curious development of that earlier obscure
philosophy--has been brought so prominently before the world and has
brought Germany to moral ruin, and what is in part financial ruin
and the loss of her colonies.

As has been said, methods of travel here are less inviting to the
ordinary tourist than the well-prepared fields of the Old World. Its
hotels--apart, perhaps, from a few here and there--are primitive,
its railways are conducted for commercial purposes, there are
no planned centres of delight and ease. No roads traverse the
countryside whereon the motor-tourist may spend his hours. Between
the primitive mule-trail or the bypath which the simple Indian has
found sufficient for his purposes since the world began, and the
railway, there is no _via media_. The coaching days of England
never had their counterpart in Spanish America. The _caballero_,
the horseman-gentleman, transplanted from old Spain, and all he
represented embodied, and still embodies, the philosophy of the
road. Here no one may walk the countryside, except the necessitous
Indian. The dust would smother him, the naked rocks would cut his
feet, he would lose caste for being on foot. No "local" botanist,
antiquarian, nature-lover sallies forth from Spanish-American
villages. The country squire is unknown, the landed estate is a
_hacienda_, a hive of _peones_, dependent body and soul on the will
of their masters. There are no week-end cottages; the "picnic,"
though its English name is not unknown, is a rare event. Sport,
where it exists, is an institution engrafted from abroad.

Woman here is much enclosed in the seclusion of her home, save
when she ventures to the temple and the priestly Mass, or to
well-chaperoned and formal events--she dare not traverse the road
alone, and, it may be said, with sufficient reason! The Spanish
American youth, with his patent leather shoes and breadth of cuff
and collar, loves not to leave the easy pavements of his towns, or
their bars and cafés, for the unknown world beyond, whose beginning
is the squalid Indian quarter which fringes the place around--unless
indeed he may have turned revolutionist, a phase which does not
usually take place much before middle age, when the Latin American
generally takes on his serious political habit. Then indeed he must
take to the road, unless a fortunate _golpe de estado_[3] shall
complete the uprising within the city plaza.

  [3] _Coup d'état._

The inland method of travel is the horse or mule: the saddle.
Unfortunately the horse is not very happy here. In the Day of
Judgment, if the beasts of the field ever bear witness against man,
the horse will have a severe indictment to bring against the Spanish
American people. He and his relative the mule have nowhere perhaps
been so dreadfully ill-treated as in these lands of mountains
and deserts. In Mexico we see him ridden to death by the callous
vaquero; his thin and starving body passing like a swift shadow
across the wilderness under the stimulus of enormous spurs. Or he is
gored to death in the bull-ring. In South America he climbs, with
enormous loads, the dizzy ridges of the Andes, under the blows and
curses of the arriero, and, stumbling over the precipice, finds rest
at times a thousand feet below, where his mummified carcass remains
a warning to his kind. Or he passes his life on high uplands where
pasture is unknown: his fodder a little dry straw.

The fact is that the Spanish American lands, in great part, did
not seem fitted by nature for the equine race, and there was no
horse in America before the Europeans introduced the animal there.
There was nothing but the llama, the friend of the Indian, which is
not ridden, but bears a small burden. The Indian himself at first
displayed great terror of the horse (especially with an armoured
Iberian on its back). He himself was accustomed to carrying his
burdens. When he was told to take a horse he said: "No, horses get
tired; we do not." When a Spaniard rode across the Isthmus of Panama
upon a jackass he met some Indians, and the animal brayed, and the
Indians fell down in terror and offered up their gold ornaments!

Yet the Latin Americans are perhaps the most expert of horsemen, and
train and manage their steeds as no one else can.

Spanish America is not a land for the huntsman, not a land of big
game. Its zoology is stinted. The lion and the tiger are represented
only by some almost insignificant felines, and the other huge
quadrupeds of the sportsman's rifle came not to being in the New
World, or deserted it by now fallen land bridges before their
skilled tormentor appeared upon the earth. There is, relatively, but
little game, and the traveller who might think to subsist upon it in
his passage through the wilds will do well to ponder the experience
of the early Conquistadores, some of which have been set down
briefly in these pages.

Thus far the picture of travel here. There are phases on the other
side to be considered. It is the explorer, the pioneer, who will
find material for his desires in these lands. The geographer, the
antiquarian, the naturalist, the ethnologist has before him a field
which is the equal of any region, and the engineer, that most
practical and valuable of travellers, has work before him in this
score of independent states whose magnitude has, so far, no limit.




CHAPTER II

A HISTORICAL OUTLINE


It would be manifestly impossible, in the present work, to enter
in detail upon the wide field of the history of the Spanish
American States. Yet, just as in order to gain an intelligent idea
topographically of the region we must refer to its main geographical
features and disposition, so must we cast a glance at its historical
outlines. Those readers who are drawn on to fill in the detail have
ample material at hand in the books recently published on the Latin
American States.[4]

  [4] Each volume of the South American Series contains such.

The beginnings of history and of geography are, of course,
inextricably interwoven, and in the case of America this is markedly
so. America, in a sense, was discovered by accident, and its first
discoverers did not know they had brought to being a new continent.
Columbus, to his dying day, believed it was India he had reached,
which he had set out to reach, and would not be persuaded to the
contrary.

On the maps of the earlier geographers there was, in fact, no
room for America. From the shores of Europe and Africa to those
of Cathay--the old, mediaeval, and still the poetical name for
China, the great Asiatic coast--stretched one sea, the Western
Ocean, broken by some small islands and Cipango, or Japan. Scholars
and dreamers, studying isolated passages in cryptic and classic
writings, or arguing from general principles, in which the wish was
at times father to the thought, believed that by sailing west India
could be reached.

These dreams of poets and the beliefs of scholars crystallized in
the mind of the Genoese sailor, Columbus, a man of humble origin,
and after many disappointments and disillusions, in the interviewing
of kings and high personages for aid and patronage (among them the
King of England, but England with characteristic lack of imagination
would have none of it, and the King of Portugal, who tried to cheat
him), was enabled to set sail by aid of the Queen of Spain--women
having more imagination than men--in three small vessels, and made
his great and memorable landfall in the New World on October 12,
1492, in the Bahamas.

These islands Columbus and his officers believed to be those
described by Marco Polo, as forming the eastern end of Asia; and
thus arose the name of "Las Indias," the Indies, which America long
retained.

As a result of this discovery, a controversy arose between Spain
and Portugal, for, in 1454, the Pope had given the Portuguese--by
what right he himself doubtless best knew--exclusive control of
exploration and conquest on the road to the Indies, although his
Bull had in view only the eastern route. Now, however, "spheres of
influence" might easily clash. The two Powers repaired again to the
Pope, successor of the former, and he, drawing a line across the
map of the world from north to south, in a position west of the
Azores a hundred leagues, awarded Spain everything that might lie
beyond it. The Pope was a Spaniard. The Portuguese did not think the
award fair. (It might have been mentioned that the Portuguese King,
his "especial friend," had treacherously endeavoured to forestall
Columbus by dispatching a caravel on his proposed route secretly,
instead of helping him, a futile errand, however.) They protested,
and by common consent the line was shifted to 370 leagues west of
the Cape Verde Islands, corresponding to-day to the 50th degree of
longitude.

Such a line cuts South America across the mouth of the Amazon, and
the Spaniards claimed the right to exclude all other people and all
trade but their own from beyond this line.

The subsequent conquest and discovery of America embodies some of
the most romantic and stirring episodes in history. In his last
voyage Columbus explored the West Indies and reached South America,
landing at the mouth of the Orinoco, and he sailed along the coast
of the Caribbean and Central America to Nombre de Dios--"Name of
God"--near Colon. Henry VII of England--who had declined to help
Columbus--now kindly permitted John Cabot to sail, in 1499, who
discovered Newfoundland and did other valuable exploits. Hispaniola
was the first Spanish Settlement, on the Island of Hayti, and this
spread to the mainland. In 1513 Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed
the Isthmus of Darien and Panama and beheld the "South Sea," as
described in our chapter upon Central America. The insistent hope
of a "strait" or passage through these lands, giving a way to the
Spice Islands of the Indies, was now given up, and when Magellan,
in 1520, passed through the strait which bears his name, and sailed
across the Pacific, it was understood that a vast continent and a
vast ocean divided the world from Asia here, a new world, and that
lying mainly within the sphere of influence which the Pope had so
generously assigned to Spain.

With regard to this obsession of Colombus that westward lay the
shortest route to India, and the insistent idea of a strait, have
not these been materialized in the Panama Canal, and are not these
ancient mariners vindicated to-day?

The New World now belonged to Spain. Perhaps the first purpose of
the Spaniards was trade with the Indies, but their main object
was that of gold, to be gained by slave labour. They could not
themselves work in the tropics, even if they had had any desire for
manual labour, which they had not. However, they began to introduce
European plants and animals into Cuba and Hispaniola, a service
which was of enormous value later to America, which possessed but
a meagre range of staple food products and no beasts of burden
or bovines. But gold--that was what they wanted. The shallow
deposits of the island were soon exhausted, as were the poor willing
Indians, killed off by forced labour. The barbarous treatment of the
aborigines of the New World by the Spaniards--and the Portuguese--is
one of the most dreadful blots on the history of America, indeed of
the world.

The easily gotten gold being exhausted, it was necessary to go
farther afield. The Darien Settlement was transferred to Panama, the
coasts of Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico were explored by Cordova
and Grijalva, from Cuba, and in 1519 the great Conquest of Mexico
was entered upon by Cortes.

So far the Spaniards had found little difficulty in subduing the
Indians to their will, the inoffensive islanders, and Caribs, which
latter became almost exterminated. The Indian folk of these islands
were generally a simple and credible race, who at first looked upon
the white man as a demi-god, but these simple children of the soil
were treated with utmost callousness and barbarity. There is an
example in the treatment of the natives of Watling Island in the
Bahamas, which, as before remarked, was the first point in the New
World trodden by Columbus. Of this land and its folk the explorer
wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella: "These beautiful islands excel
all other lands. The natives love their neighbours as themselves,
their faces are always smiling, their conversation is the sweetest
imaginable, and they are so gentle and affectionate that I swear to
your Highness there is no better people in the world." But what was
the lot of these folk? The Spaniards wanted further labour in the
mines of Hispaniola, and to get these natives there they, trading on
a characteristic love of the people for their ancestors and departed
relatives, promised to convey them to the heavenly shores, where
these were imagined as dwelling; and so, treacherously getting them
on board the ships, they were taken away to the mines, where it is
said 40,000 perished under starvation and the lash.

The natives of Mexico were people of a different stamp. The Aztecs
were _pueblo_ or town Indians, highly organized as soldiers, skilled
in arts and crafts, with a developed civilization and certain
intellectuality. They were highland folk, the Mexican plateau
lying at seven to eight thousand feet above sea level, protected
by mountain fastnesses. It was, in fact, an empire of the New
World such as, in some respects, might compare with those ancient
semi-barbaric empires of the Old World, in times more ancient. Its
conquest by Cortes was an affair of great enterprise and toil,
entailing heavy loss and suffering on the part of the Spaniards, and
at one time their defeat, from which only a superhuman rally saved
them, at the Battle of Otumba. There was one specially weak point
about the Aztec rule. It was a hegemony, exercised over various
other Mexican races, who hated Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, and his
people. Cortes was skilful enough to take advantage of this flaw in
the Mexican armour, to fan the jealousies of the subject tribes, and
enlist them to march against Tenochtitlan, the capital of Mexico.
These allied Indians, when the place fell, themselves committed the
most unheard-of barbarities on the Aztec population, such as shocked
the Spaniards, who were unable to restrain them.

The Conquest of Mexico was effected by 1521, and the success, the
romance, the adventure, and the objects of gold and silver sent by
Cortes to Spain, and the loot of the soldiers, fired the imagination
of the Spaniards in Hispaniola and Darien to other quests. The
settlers at Panama had heard of another empire where gold was to be
had for the taking, perhaps richer and greater even than that of the
Aztecs. This was Peru, and Francisco Pizarro and Diego Amalgro set
sail from Panama to explore and conquer that unknown region along
the sunset shores of America to the south.

This adventure too was an arduous one, not by reason of the
opposition of savage natives, for the Incas of Peru were a gentle
and philosophical people, animated by a remarkable social system,
and they offered little resistance to the white men and the
formidable men-animals, or horsemen, and their guns. It was famine
that assailed Pizarro and his followers, and insufficient support.
Also he, like Cortes, had to contend with the jealousies and
double-dealing of the Spanish Governor of the Indies. As for Peru,
its coast was barren, as it is to-day, and only after surmounting
the dreadful fastness of the Andes, amid the inclement climate of a
region twelve to fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea,
was the Inca Empire reached and subdued. Here lay Cuzco, the Mecca
of Peru, and Cajamarca, a more northern capital. The stores of gold
recovered seem to have filled these Spaniards' expectations, and
great renown was the result of this conquest, which was completed by
1533.

These exploits were followed by a period of strife among the
Spaniards, and Pizarro was murdered, after founding Lima, the
capital of Peru. But in 1536 the regions lying between Peru and
Panama, which to-day we know as Ecuador and Colombia, were explored
and conquered, the first by Sebastian de Benalcazar, the second
by Jimenez de Quesada. Here were dwelling other advanced people
or tribes. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, had been the home of
the Shiris, a cultured people who were overthrown by the Incas
before the Spanish advent. The city was joined to Cuzco, eleven
hundred miles to the south, by the famous Inca roads, one along the
Cordillera, the other along the coast. Some early Spanish historian
delighted to speak of these roads as equal to those of the Romans,
but this was an exaggeration. Colombia was the culture-area of the
Chibchas. The Spaniards had heard of a further great empire, a rich
El Dorado, in this region, and encouraged by the ease with which
Pizarro had conquered Peru, they made their way up the Magdalena
River from the Caribbean Sea. A pleasing land and much gold was
encountered, after severe hardships, the people being of some
considerable degree of civilization, although not of the status
of the Aztec or the Inca. The richest plums, in fact, had fallen.
Quesada named this region New Granada, with its capital at Bogota.

There still remained the conquest of the huge territory south of
Peru, known as Chile, and this, attempted by Almagro in 1537, was
carried out by Pedro de Valdivia, who, however, was checked by
the redoubtable Araucanian Indians. These form one of the chief
admixtures of the Chileans to-day, a hardy and enterprising nation,
in contrast with the Peruvians of a more sentimental temperament,
with a basis of the Quichua Indians of the Incas. Terrible excesses
were committed upon the Indians on these expeditions. A terrible end
was visited upon the Spanish leader by the Indians. "You have come
for gold," said the savage chief who captured him. "You shall have
your fill." And he caused _molten_ burning gold to be poured into
his mouth. Then he was cut to pieces with sharpened oyster shells.

From the Southern Andes, the Spaniards, in the following years,
descended to the great plains which now form the republics of the
River Plate, Argentine, Uruguay and Paraguay. The exploration
of Brazil had been begun in 1510, and the region was traversed
by Orellana in his descent of the Amazon from Quito, and it was
gradually settled by the Portuguese.

The lands lying between Panama and Mexico, which to-day form
the Central American States, Guatemala, Costa Rica and others,
were conquered after the fall of Mexico. Here were evidences of a
splendid past, in the beautiful temples of sculptured stone found in
their forests and deserts, ruins even then abandoned. These remains
astounded Europe, when they were first revealed.

Thus did all this enormous region of Latin America, from tropical
Mexico--indeed, from California--to the frigid extremity of
Patagonia, fall into the possession of Spain and Portugal. In
some respects it is a dreadful history. The Spaniards overthrew
civilizations in Mexico and Peru which in many respects were
superior to their own, civilizations that had developed marvellously
without the resources that the Old World commanded, for there was
neither ox nor horse, nor even iron nor gunpowder. The Spaniards
destroyed everything that these people had done. For centuries
unknown they had evolved their arts and crafts and laws; laws, in
the case of the Incas of Peru, far more beneficial and democratic
than anything Europe had produced at that period, and millions of
these people were most ruthlessly destroyed.

To read the accounts of the happenings of those times is enough to
break one's heart. To-day, throughout the length and breadth of
this vast territory--of which not an acre now belongs to Spain--the
spirit of the Indian has so far remained faithful that there is not
a single statue raised to Cortes or Pizarro. Columbus, of course,
is commemorated by his monuments in every capital.

These great New World territories, by virtue of the papal Bull,
were held as the peculiar property of the Sovereign. The Spanish
possessions were divided into two "kingdoms," the Kingdom of
New Spain, consisting of Mexico and all lands to and including
Venezuela, and New Castile, later called Peru. This last viceroyalty
was found unwieldy, and New Granada and the River Plate regions were
constituted apart under viceroys. The administrative powers of these
functionaries were very great, but they were held in some control by
the Laws of the Indies: measures passed for native protection. Even
the frightful dominance of the Inquisition did not extend to the
Indians, who were regarded as merely catechumens. Queen Isabella of
Spain, by whose imagination and aid discovery of the New World had
been rendered possible, would not permit--and her memory should be
revered for it--the enslavement of the Indians, if she could prevent
it, and when Columbus returned home with a cargo of natives, whom
he proposed to sell as slaves, Isabella interfered. Let them be set
at liberty, she said, and sent back to their homes. Columbus has in
general been represented as a protector of the Indians, and must not
necessarily be judged in the light of this incident.

In the general condemnation of Spain at that period, these facts
should be recollected. It was declared by the home government that
the Indians were to enjoy the privilege of free subjects, and
that their native princes were to be upheld in their authority.
Censure was frequently visited upon the conquerors and governors
of Mexico and Peru, from home, for their displacement or execution
of these, as any who will study Spanish colonial history may see.
Some modern writers, in their democratic zeal, have overlooked
this. The declaration was opposed by the colonists, as well as the
colonial authorities, and indeed by the clergy. Some compulsion was
necessary, of course, if civilization was to make its way among
the Indians, for they were often loath to work, and stood sullenly
aloof from the white race. The _System of Repartimientos and
Encomiendas_--the assigning of bodies of Indians to the industrial
charge of colonists--was well meant, but the greed of the colonists
and their callous habit as regarded human life offset these
influences.

Another side of the question also presents itself. Under Philip
II, the colonies were governed not so much in their own interests,
as for the enrichment of Spain and its predominance. He yearned to
injure Protestant England, and the colonists were taxed and goaded
to produce wealth, and their interests sacrificed in the furtherance
of this end. Those into whose hands the unfortunate Indians had been
delivered body and soul, drove the unfortunates into the mines,
branded them on the face, flogged them to death, chucked their
miserable carcasses aside, when they fell from exhaustion, a prey to
the dogs.

We know what these things led to. England and other European
nations refused to recognize the exclusive control of the American
continents by the Peninsula Powers, and hardy buccaneers and
privateers streamed forth to dispute Spanish pretensions. Drake
intercepted the stream of gold with which Philip was enabled to
equip his armadas and thus performed a marked strategic service for
England.

Moreover, such pretensions would never have been respected,
especially under the influence of the Renaissance and the
Reformation.

The restrictions upon colonial trade by Spain were, we see further,
an element in the downfall of the empire. The natural development
of South America was seriously hindered. All trade must come via
Panama, and anything opposed to Spanish interests was suppressed.
The growing trade between Acapulco and China was suppressed;
Hidalgo's vineyard in Mexico was destroyed by the Spanish
authorities because Spain alone must grow grapes. "Learn to be
silent and obey, and not to discuss politics," ran the proclamation
of a Mexican viceroy, near the end of the eighteenth century.

When--unlawfully--the throne of Spain came to be occupied with
kings having French sympathies, these short-sighted methods were
modified. _Audiencias_ or law courts, of which, from the reign of
Philip IV there were eleven, in Santo Domingo, Mexico, Panama,
Lima, Guatemala, Guadalajara, Bogota, La Plata, Chile, and Buenos
Ayres, acted as counsel to the Governors, with civil and criminal
jurisdiction. Appeal could be had to the Council of the Indies, that
great colonial body at Seville. For centuries the history of Spanish
America is made up of the deeds and misdeeds of the viceroys.

The political and commercial control of the colonies was thus
entirely in the hands of the Crown. The territories were expected to
send quantities of gold and other precious metals home to Spain with
regularity, and indeed Spain later became a mere sieve into which
this treasure from the Indies was poured. They were also bound to
send raw material and to take all their manufactured goods from the
Mother Country.

It must be recollected that the ill-treatment meted out to the
natives of these lands was mainly the work of the Spanish settlers.
They generally both despised the Indians, and wished to enrich
themselves from their labours. They were, for the man of Iberian
race, inferior creatures, to be used at his will, and the forced
labour in the mines was a cause of the reduction of the population.
Questions have been raised by historians as to whether the dreadful
treatment of the American native by the Spaniard was worse than that
meted out to him by the Anglo-Saxon settlers in North America. There
have been grave abuses in the latter field. The Indians in Spanish
America, however, numbered many millions, as against a few hundred
thousand elsewhere. The Spanish Crown and Government certainly did
not countenance the excesses carried on by the colonists, but
strove to protect the Indians.

As for the English colonies in America, they enjoyed a greater
measure of self-government and had taken firm root under more
prosaic but more fruitful form. The same policy, however, on the
part of the Mother Country was enacted in commercial matters; that
trade should consist almost exclusively of exchange of colonial
raw material for English manufactured articles. French colonies in
America were less noteworthy or prosperous, but they played their
part in history, for the fall of French control in North America
was in reality the beginning of independence for all colonies in
the New World; as did the ideas of the French philosophers, which
found a ready soil in the Spanish American folk. The establishment
of the United States was but the precursor to the establishment
of the numerous Latin American States. The Spanish Government saw
its danger, but was too apathetic to move. However, some reforms
were introduced, and it may be said that Spanish America was well
governed at the time of revolution, and was prosperous.

But it has been said that "across the face of all human reform are
written the words 'too late,'" and this is in effect what happened
in Spanish America. The French Revolution, and the defeat of
British expeditions to Buenos Ayres by the colonists in 1806 and
1807 had their effect. The struggle for Independence lasted from
1810 to 1826, until the flag of Spain was entirely ousted from
the vast territory of Spanish America, upon which she had stamped
her individuality, language, laws and all else, with much that was
splendid and enduring, and much that in the future development of
the world may have a value so far scarcely apparent.

The dark pictures of misrule of the century of republican life of
the twenty Latin Republics are interspersed with pages of a more
pleasing nature, but it is a chequered history, whose end we cannot
yet foresee.

Among elements making for disorder and bloodshed in Spanish America,
religion has played a prominent part. Many States developed bitter
antagonism between clerical and non-clerical parties. Some would
overthrow the Church and the all-pervading priestly power; others
would uphold it, whether out of pious conviction, whether because
it was a convenient party upon which to hang their own pretensions
and ambitions. Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Central America,
Chile--in fact, all have as part of their history the deadly
struggles between these factions. To-day this very fierceness
has flamed out, in the main, to be succeeded by a thinly veiled
materialism. What more can be expected of a hemisphere which was
cursed by the Inquisition?

In many instances the "reform" parties of these States having
triumphed by force of arms, confiscates all Church property--and
this often was enormous--which was handed to secular and public
purposes, or enriched the pockets of politicians. In Mexico,
where at one time it was not safe to pass along the street unless
seeming to be muttering a prayer, the power of the Church was
entirely overthrown, and convents, monasteries and other religious
establishments were forbidden to exist. In Ecuador similar
things were brought about, accompanied by massacre and other
dreadful deeds. But it would be unjust to pick out any state as
over-prominent in these acts.

The Church, in large degree, brought these troubles upon itself.
It sought for too much power, spiritual and temporal. The priests
exploited the superstition and needs of the poor, of the Indian,
and themselves often lived immoral and corrupt lives. But let us
do it justice. It protected the poor and oppressed often against
the grinding exactions of the civil authorities; its vicars often
exposed themselves in humane works. Often priests dashed in with
upraised crucifix to save the victims of dreadful passionate and
sanguinary revolutions, and themselves were torn to pieces. Often
the devout fathers spent their lives in the most desolate and savage
regions of the untamed wilderness, seeking by their piety and
devotion to better the lives of the poor Indians, the poor, ignorant
children of the mountain and the forest.

The Roman Catholic religion ingrafted itself with wonderful strength
upon the mind of the aboriginal of Spanish America. In some respects
it seemed a development of his own earlier superstitious culture,
and became blended with it. Tawdry images held for them and their
miserable lives the hope of eternal joy, of reprieve of sin, of
comfort in misery, and to-day we cannot enter a simple church of the
remote villages in those boundless Cordilleras and deserts without
stumbling over the prostrate forms, bent upon the earthern floors,
of poor, black-clothed Indian women passing their silent hour in
supplication and orisons. Men are not there: the women, as ever,
seem to link the material and the spiritual. May heaven succour
these poor Indian women-folk, and bring them a happier destiny yet.

A glance now at the earlier cultures of these lands and the earlier
religions of their people.

Who, upon beholding the beautiful ruined structures of the early
folk of America--for by America here we mean Spanish America, where
alone these vestiges are found--in the decaying sculptured walls
of their temples, or the massive stories of their fortresses and
palaces, or of the strange pyramids they raised, has not felt his
conception of the New World undergo a change? Nay, do we even study
the printed page which sets them forth, not having had the privilege
of journeying to where they stand, wrapped in the silence of the
jungle or stark upon the rocky ranges of the hills, we feel that
here is a page in the book of mankind whose turning opens to us a
vista little dreamt of.

The story of those strange old cultures of Mexico and Peru has
always fascinated us: the Aztec and the Inca stand forth from the
dry lore of archæology with a peculiar charm, which we may not have
felt even in contemplating the more wonderful and ancient cultures
of the Old World. For here we feel that the intellect and art of man
sprang unaided from the dust, to write his pathetic story in the
stones of a continent unvisited by the Jehovah of the Israelites,
unknown to history, unblessed of Christianity, unrecorded and
obscure. Here the reaction of man from his environment came forth
from no recorded Eden; no tree of knowledge, of good and evil,
opened his eyes; no Abraham here walked with God, no Pharaoh or
Nebuchadnezzar brought visions and dreams to these more sombre
pages, and no divine wisdom seemed to shed its light within these
sculptured walls.

There is the credit due to early America, to the ability of her
autochthonous cultures, even if they formed no permanent link in the
chain of human development, but were too early cut off and faded
away like the untimely fruit of a woman, that at least man rose
here, in accordance with the divine mandate, arose from the dust,
and if he did but build him "fanes of fruitless prayer" to strange
idols and savage deities, he had that in common with the majority of
the cultures of the Old World of Asia, Africa and India, where men
raised temples of the utmost beauty to shelter the most inane rites
or bloody religions.

Before Mitla and Palenque or Teotihuacan and Tiahuanako let us
mark the skill which carved these intricate walls or raised their
terraces and monoliths, the greater wonder because all that has
descended from those skilled craftsmen of a bygone age on the
American soil are the stolid Indian, incapable of squaring stone to
stone, ignorant of the bronze chisel, degenerate and fallen. The
skill and imagination which would have done credit to the Greeks
or the Chaldeans lies buried in the dust, nor is likely yet to be
resuscitated.

We have spoken of Teotihuacan--the name means in the ancient tongue
of Mexico the "house of God"--and this, the great pyramid of the
sun, the work of the shadowy Toltecs, may be seen by the traveller
to-day who, taking steamer and train, will convey himself to the
high plateau of Mexico, a few miles north of the capital. It is a
structure of stone and rubble seven hundred feet upon its broadest
side and two hundred feet high, and, anciently, upon its summit
stood the golden image of Tonatiuah, whose breastplate flashed
back the rays of the rising sun, what time the attendant priests
chanted their savage refrain upon the terraces beneath. Restored
by the Government of the Republic under President Diaz, the great
monument stands up much the same as it did in days of yore. How many
centuries have beaten upon it we can scarcely conjecture. It was in
ruins when the defeated Cortes and his Spaniards, after the dreadful
experience of the _Noche Triste_, the sorrowful night passed beneath
its shadow and wept thereunder for his fallen comrades and his
ruined enterprise.

If little we know of Teotihuacan, what shall be said of Mitla,
whose mysterious halls and corridors, scarcely defaced by time,
arise from the sands of Oaxaca.

And the builders of these temples, have they produced no songs of
beauty, no enduring psalms? Had their dreadful religious rites
nothing in common with the idea of a true Providence? Hear the psalm
of Nezahual-Coyotl, the Solomon of Mexico. This is what he sang:

    Truly the gods which I adore--
    The idols of stone and wood,
    They speak not nor do they feel,
    Neither could they fashion the beauty of the heavens,
    Nor yet that of the earth and the streams,
    Nor of the trees and the plants which beautify it.
    Some powerful, hidden and unknown God--
    He must be the Creator of the Universe,
    He alone can console me in my affliction.
    He alone can still the bitter anguish of this heart.

So spake Nezahual-Coyotl, in what has been termed the Golden Age
of Texcoco, whose historians, arts and poets were in their time
renowned among the nations of Anahuac, on the high Mexican Plateau.
This person was a philosopher and a poet, but the writings of
the period--the picture-writings--were perversely destroyed by
Zumarraga, the first Archbishop of Mexico after the Conquest--an
irremediable loss.

Hear also the Inca prayer to the Creator, as chanted by the priests
and nobles of Peru:

Oh Creator: Thou art without equal unto the ends of the earth! Thou
who givest life and strength to mankind, saying, let this be a
man and let this be a woman. And as thou sayest, so thou givest
life, and vouchsafest that man shall live in health and peace, and
free from danger. Thou who dwellest in the heights of heaven, in the
thunder and in the storm-clouds, hear us. Grant us eternal life and
have us in thy keeping.

[Illustration: THE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION: RUINS OF MITLA, MEXICO.

  Vol. I. To face p. 60.]

This last is from the _Rites and Laws of the Incas_.[5] It is
but one of many similar prayers, which, as regards sentiment and
language, might be taken from the Bible and Church Service.

  [5] _Molina_, Hakluyt Series, Markham translation.

These prayers to the Unknown God, written by the early people of
America, cut off from any contact with the Old World, would seem
to show that man, in the reaction from his environment, inevitably
develops within him the conception of a supreme deity.

It now remains for us to choose how we shall approach the Spanish
American lands. Shall we cross the Spanish Main, and land where
Cortes did at Vera Cruz, the city of the True Cross, and so enter
Mexico? Or shall we, still crossing the American Mediterranean, land
on the Isthmus of Panama and thence, as Pizarro did, voyage along
the great Pacific coast to mysterious Peru? Or shall we take steamer
to the River Plate, that more prosaic route to the lands of corn and
cattle? Or shall we go round the Horn? Perhaps the middle course is
best, and, at the isthmus, we will first explore Central America.

Then we may say with the poet Keats:

    Oft have I travelled in the Land of Gold
    ... Or like stout Cortes ... and all his men
    Gazed on the Pacific ... silent upon a peak in Darien.

Keats, however, was in error. It was not Cortes, but another who
gazed from the peak, as presently we shall see.




CHAPTER III

CENTRAL AMERICA

GUATEMALA, HONDURAS, BRITISH HONDURAS, NICARAGUA, SALVADOR, COSTA
RICA, PANAMA


On Michaelmas Day, in the year 1513, a Spanish adventurer,
surrounded by his followers--they had sailed from Hispaniola, or
Santo Domingo, on an expedition of discovery--found himself on the
high ridge of the land called Darien. His eyes, seeking the horizon,
fell, not on an endless expanse of mountain and forest, such as here
might have been expected to stretch away into the unknown solitudes,
but upon the sheen of waters. A smothered exclamation fell from his
lips. "_El Mar!_" ("the Sea!") he cried, and he and his followers
remained a space in the silence of astonishment.

The Spaniard was Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. It was one of the most
dramatic of geographical discoveries. They had but traversed an
isthmus, where they had expected a continent--to-day the Isthmus of
Panama. They had discovered an ocean; they realized in that moment
much that before had been a mystery.

Descending to the shore and wading deep into the waters, Balboa drew
his sword, and waving it thereover took possession of that ocean and
whatsoever shores it might wash for the King of Spain, naming it the
"South Seas," for, from the curvature of the isthmus, he was looking
towards the south, having crossed from the north.

Thus was the great Pacific Ocean first beheld by the white man, as
far as history records.

We have already seen that Balboa's exploit preceded the Conquest of
Mexico. The land of the Aztecs, like that of Peru, was undreamed
of, but the discovery of both followed, as did the passage of the
Magellan Strait by the explorer whose name it bears, and who first
crossed the Pacific, and from its gentle and favouring gales gave it
its name.

The discoverer of the isthmus and the great ocean was a _hidalgo_,
and had been Governor of a province, but to escape his creditors
in Hispaniola--according to one account--he concealed himself in
a barrel on board ship, and so began his voyage. Balboa, pressing
into his service a train of Indians, many of whom, it is said, died
under the lash in the task, caused the timbers of two vessels to
be dragged across the rugged neck of land and launched upon the
South Sea, bent upon the discovery of Peru, which, later, Andagoya
attempted, but which, however, the fates had reserved for Pizarro.
Balboa was afterwards treacherously done to death by Pedrarias
Davila, one of the most ruthless of the Spanish adventurers of that
time.

Thus did the inhabitants of this region we are now to traverse have
their foretaste of the white man's overlordship--a foretaste of
the dreadful lot which fate had in store for them, the simple folk
of Central America, who, with their ancient culture and beautiful
arts, akin in some respects to those of the Aztec and the Inca, were
almost stamped out under Pedro de Alvarado, who invaded Guatemala in
1522, and his successors of the early Colonial period.

Seven different States or entities to-day comprise this zone
of territory of Central America, washed on the one hand by the
Caribbean and on the other by the Pacific, whose people dwell in
one of the most beautiful and interesting part of the earth's
surface--Guatemala, with its coffee plantations and lavish fruits,
Honduras of the rugged surface, and British Honduras, Nicaragua with
its great lake, Costa Rica, the one-time "Rich Coast," Salvador,
most populous and advanced of all, Panama, the land of the famous
Canal.

We may be permitted a brief glance at the ancient inhabitants of
this portion of America, prior to the advent of the Spaniards.

As in the case of North America, in Mexico: and South America, in
Peru and Colombia, so in Central America was there a ruling caste or
culture. Here it was that of the Quiches, a people of Maya stock.

These people were most numerous in Western Guatemala, and at the
time of the Conquest the most powerful inhabitants of Central
America. The sacred book of the Quiches, known as the _Popol Vuh_,
embodies a mythological cosmogony, in which is a Creation story
and an account of a Flood, after the manner of that of the Old
Testament. (The Quiches are not to be confounded with the Quechuas
of Peru.) Their capital was Utatlan, near where stands the modern
Santa Cruz Quiche, and the place was cleverly fortified. Their
system of government was an elaborate one, as was their religion.
Indeed, the student remarks with surprise how far these early
peoples had gone in the development of social polity and economic
order. The Quiches, like the Aztecs, kept historical records in
picture-writing. The Incas, we may remark in passing, of Peru, kept
their histories by means of the _quipos_, a mnemonic system of
knotted and coloured cords.

The Sun God was the chief deity, but there were many lesser objects
of adoration. But the religion was of a high order in some respects,
although the Spanish priests, after the Conquest, strove to hide
the fact, and, indeed, there was wholesale destruction throughout
Spanish America of native records and objects, whether it were of
the beautiful picture-writings and scrolls of Mexico and Central
America, whether the pillars of stone by which the early Peruvian
priests skilfully determined the solstices. The jealous priestcraft
of the Roman Catholic religion could not tolerate anything that
showed ingenuity or knowledge by their pagan predecessors, and all
these things they considered, or affected to consider, "things of
the devil," and destroyed them wherever possible. The marvel is that
so much has remained, for the benefit of the archæologist to-day.

The religion of the Quiches, like that of the Mexicans, contained
horrible practices involving human sacrifices. This was probably
absent in Peru. Repulsive as it was, we may question whether it
was as cruel as the dreadful tortures of the Inquisition, such as
rendered Mexico and Lima and other places in the New World centres
of horror, until the time of Independence, when the infuriated
populace destroyed the Inquisitional centres.

We have previously remarked that Columbus sailed along the Atlantic
coast of Central America, that of Honduras and Costa Rica, and it
was here that, seeing the ornaments of gold on the swarthy bodies
of the natives, the voyagers' imagination was freshly aroused to
the possibilities of conquest. But the natives of this region were
not necessarily as docile as those of Hispaniola and the Antilles.
They mustered on the shore, leaping from the dark forests as the
strange sails of the Spaniards hove in sight, communicating rapidly
with each tribe by those peculiar methods they employed, and made
the air resound with the beatings and blasts of their war-drums and
bugle-shells, brandishing their clubs and swords of palm-wood.

Columbus, however, did not generally employ harsh methods against
the natives. He is regarded rather as their protector, and a
beautiful monument at Colon represents him as sheltering an Indian
who timorously looks up for protection--a contrast, as remarked
elsewhere, with the lack of monuments in Spanish America to Cortes
and Pizarro. However, under Bartholomé Columbus, the brother of
Christopher, great animosity was aroused on the part of the Indians
in the settlement at Veragua, resulting in the death of the Spanish
colonists.

One of the most tragic episodes after the Conquest of Mexico was the
expedition of Cortes to Central America, following on the expedition
he had sent into Guatemala under Pedro de Alvarado. There had been a
desperate fight between Alvarado's band and the redoubtable Quiches
of Utatlan, and it was only due to the fortunate circumstance
of dissension among the different predominant tribes that the
Conquest of Guatemala was so readily carried out. Thus was history,
as in Mexico and indeed in Peru, brought about also in Central
America--fall under dissension, a house divided against itself.

In Honduras Cortes committed a foul deed. Suspecting, or pretending
to suspect, Guahtemoc, the son of Montezuma--who after the fall
of Mexico accompanied the conquerors to Central America--of some
treacherous design, Cortes had the unfortunate young Aztec hanged
head downwards from a tree. It will be recollected that Guahtemoc
was the author of the saying, well known in Mexico, of "Am I,
think you, upon some bed of roses?" when, whilst the Spaniards
were roasting his feet in order to make him reveal the whereabouts
of the Aztec treasure, he replied to his companions who were also
being tortured and were groaning in agony, and who asked if he too
suffered. This scene is depicted on a beautiful sculptured monument
in the city of Mexico--the statue to Guahtemoc, in the Paseo de la
Reforma.

In the early colonial government of Central America the capital was
set up by Alvarado in the chief town of Guatemala. The scenery of
the region is striking. Great volcanoes overhang the countryside,
and these have at times wrought terrible havoc here, and still do
so. In fact, the history of the city of Guatemala is a record of
successive destruction and re-establishment, probably unique in the
history of any land, due to the dreadful forces of Nature, seismic,
tectonic and volcanic, exerted upon this unrestful point of the
earth's surface.

We may glance briefly at some of these catastrophes. They show the
trials which the inhabitants of this part of the world are called
upon to bear.

The first city was established by Alvarado in 1527, on the banks of
the Rio Pensativo, at the foot of the Agua volcano, but in 1541 this
unfriendly mountain threw from its crater a deluge of water that,
carrying rocks with it, rushed down the mountain side and bore upon
the doomed city, whose destruction was lighted by the terrible fire
which simultaneously burst from the angry peak.

Afterwards the surviving inhabitants removed their city to another
site, and for twenty years made solemn annual pilgrimages to the
Ciudad Vieja, as the former place came to be called--the old town
about a league from the new. This flourished greatly and became the
most populous place in Central America, with more than a hundred
churches and convents, devoutly administered after the fashion of
the Catholic priesthood and pious folk of the Spanish American lands.

But this progress and piety failed to give security from acts of
Nature. After being many times threatened, this beautifully built
town, in the midst of the most romantic scenery, was destroyed
by a dreadful earthquake in 1773--earthquake to which was added
the horrors of eruption from the volcano Fuego (or "Fire"), which
overlooks it. In vain the people confessed their sins in the open
street, in vain priests and people weepingly carried procession
of the saints and saintly relics from church to church. The
very pavements rose up against them with the undulations of the
earthquake; the very heavens rained down showers of stones and ashes
upon them, obscuring even the light of the volcano, and morning
dawned upon a ruined and broken city with its people crushed beneath
the walls of their own dwellings.

The city was moved again twenty-seven miles away, and became the
seat of government in 1779--the third attempt, though whether it
will be the last remains to be seen, for but a short time ago we
heard of serious earthquakes in the district. Lofty mountains
rise on every side, with deep ravines on the edge of the tablelands
upon which the city stands. The houses have been kept of one story,
as a measure of security. The general beauty and prosperity of
Guatemala city has earned for it the name of the Paris of Central
America. We may reach it by the railway which, starting from Puerto
Barrios on the Atlantic coast, winds upwards to the elevation of
5,000 feet, which is that of the plateau on which it stands, 190
miles from the sea, and continues for a further 75 miles to San José
on the Pacific.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, GUATEMALA.

  Vol I. To face p. 70.]

Guatemala is a land rich in natural resources, with fruitful plains
and valleys, and the peculiar volcanic constituents of the soil
are specially favourable for the production of coffee, which has
been the source of considerable wealth. There are vast plains and
extensive lakes, and innumerable rivers and streams. Many valuable
kinds of wood exist in the forests, and such products as cocoa,
sugar-cane, tobacco, bananas, and oranges, with other less common
kinds are plentiful. There are some small deposits of gold and other
precious and commoner metals. The climate is excellent, except on
the coast.

But this fruitfulness and bounty of Nature is not conducive
necessarily to peace among the people of the land. Rather the
restlessness of Nature, as evinced by earthquake unrest, is
reflected in the politics and general economy of the Republic. The
colonial civilization, which was marked by the destruction of the
Indians and their more or less beneficent old civilization, and
the enslavement of many tribes, with total extermination in some
cases, was succeeded by a republic in which pretenders and dictators
strove with each other, less to advance the interests of the country
than to satisfy their own ambitions and fill their own pockets.
There were, too, constant embroilments with the neighbouring
States, and bloody local wars. Some of the presidents, however, did
endeavour, side by side with their other activities, to promote
education and commerce, and to improve the means of transport and
communication--ever a vital matter in Spanish America, with its
rugged soil and vast extent.

We find in Guatemala many remains of the ancient folk, in
beautifully carved stelæ, in innumerable idols recovered from the
soil, and in the native arts, which, evincing the dexterity and
love of beauty of the aboriginal, have happily survived both the
destructive force of the Hispanic domination and, so far, the
equally destructive forces of modern commercialism, which ousts
their industries with imported goods.

In Quetzaltenango, the ancient "Town of the Green Feather"--the
Quetzal was the sacred bird of the Quiches--we shall specially
remark the native aptitudes in their quaint and pleasing
handicrafts. If these quiet and peaceful folk--for the natives
themselves are peaceful enough--are from time to time disturbed by
the subterranean roarings which precede earthquake shocks in the
hills and the tidal waves upon the coast, they soon forget these
manifestations of Nature, which, after all, are less destructive
than those due to the political ambition and ruthless cruelties of
mankind itself.

The characteristics, natural and human, which we have remarked in
the northern part of Central America, as represented by the Republic
of Guatemala, are found in varying degree in the sister States
extending to the south. The general topography of the isthmian
region which Central America embodies is that of a long backbone of
mountainous highlands extending from Tehuantepec for eight hundred
miles to the South American mainland. The physiography of the
region, however, is associated with that of the Antilles rather than
the northern and southern land masses, and its belts of volcanoes
correspond to those of the West Indies.

In earlier geological times the region probably consisted of
isolated stretches of land and mountains, and before man appeared
upon the earth there may have been not one but several isthmian
"canals" or apertures, with the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific
intermixing therein. Alternately rising and sinking--as evidenced
by the "drowned" Valley of the Chagres, on the site of the Panama
Canal, the land took on its present form, in which, however, it may
be that final stability is not yet reached. It is fervently to be
hoped, however, that the particular belt traversed by the Panama
Canal will remain immune from any earth movements, for that great
work of human ingenuity, carried out at such enormous cost, might
otherwise be rendered useless in a single instant.

Panama, however, forms the extreme south of Central America, and we
must cast a glance at the sequence of States below Guatemala.

Honduras is a land of considerable area, but among the most
backward portions of the region. The efforts of its Government
to encourage economic and commercial development have not been
very well sustained and successful, and there are only two
towns in the Republic of any size, one of which is the ancient
capital Tegucigalpa, picturesquely situated upon its river in an
amphitheatre of the hills, for Honduras is essentially a land of
mountains and depths, as its name signifies. The great grassy plain
of Comayagua, however, which extends across the country, upon which
great herds of cattle feed, redeems the land from too broken a
condition. The city of Comayagua was in earlier times the capital,
but it was ruined by the wars of the Central American Federation,
when, after an endeavour to establish some form of political
unification quarrels set in.

This little-known Republic has a long frontage upon the Atlantic
side, but only a few miles on the Pacific, which, however, affords
it an outlet of corresponding importance at the picturesque seaport
of Amapala, on the beautiful Bay of Fonseca. Indeed, this condition,
of straddling a continent, as it were, is one enjoyed by all the
Central American States, with the exception of Salvador, which lies
between the Pacific and the backbone of the highlands. Otherwise,
Honduras is unfortunate in its means of communication: its railways
are few and short; its roads are difficult of construction over the
broken topography, and in the absence of national funds and private
enterprise; and an attempt made of recent years to inaugurate
services of motor-cars did not meet with success. However, a railway
across from sea to sea should be of national value, and the wealth
of the country, both agricultural and mineral, may become more
intensively developed.

The name of Honduras is almost a byword for revolution, which occurs
with marked regularity.

The colony or possession of British Honduras lies in a commanding
position between its neighbours of Guatemala and Mexico on the west
and north, facing, on the Atlantic Ocean--under its local name here
of the Caribbean Sea--towards the important island of Jamaica, some
600 miles away.

Belize, as this foothold of the British Empire is otherwise termed,
is about the size of Wales, and not unhealthy in comparison with the
other British possessions of tropical America. It is well endowed
with a wide variety of natural resources and potentialities, but
it cannot be said that its economic progress is commensurate with
its position. One of the neglected offspring of Britain, it is,
like Demerara, an example of British national and governmental
supineness. It might have been supposed that a people such as
those of the United Kingdom, urgently requiring for their teeming
millions of folk the things in foodstuffs and material that
the Tropics produce--things of the grocer's shop and the store
cupboard--would have demanded a more vigorous administration and
development of this piece of national property, but it is doubtful
if one in a hundred would know where or what British Honduras is.

We cannot here dwell at length upon its possibilities and
attractions. Approaching the capital, Belize, from the sea, we
pass the green islands that fringe the coast, and extending along
the banks of the river we see the high roofs and wide verandas of
the houses and remark the coco-palm's grateful shade. Often an
invigorating breeze blows from the sea, the same gales that crisp
the surf at Colon, which the traveller will inevitably note, and
this and the high tides wash the fever-bearing mangrove swamps and
marshes, rendering them less unhealthy than otherwise would be the
case. The inhabitants are grateful for these tonic breezes from the
east upon this coastal belt.

This belt gives place in the interior to savannas, pasture lands and
forests of useful timber, which latter is cut for export; and beyond
are the Cockscomb Mountains, the birthplace of numerous streams.

In this interior region of British Honduras there lie the remains
of an ancient culture area, ruins of buildings such as we see in
Yucatan, the adjacent part of Mexico, and in Guatemala on the
west. They appear to show the existence of a larger population
in pre-Colombian times--part of that undoubtedly clever and
industrious ancient folk of Central America who have so entirely
disappeared.

To the buccaneers of the Spanish Main the colony largely owes its
origin, and to the logwood cutters. The coloured folk here are some
of the most expert woodmen in the world, and we see the results of
their labour in the rafts of timber--pine, cedar and dyewood--being
piloted down the flood of the Belize River. These people are
descendants of the buccaneers, people of European blood forming part
of the population, the majority of which is composed of a mixture,
the descendants of negro slaves, Indian and white settlers. There
is, of course, a small purely white class, official, colonial and
commercial, under colony government from Britain.

The natural products here most in evidence are the timbers, together
with bananas and other characteristic fruits, and coconuts, rubber,
coffee, cotton and fibre-producing plants; and gold and other
minerals are found and worked in small degree.

It might perhaps be said that a description of British Honduras is
out of place in a book such as the present, treating of Spanish
America. But geographical considerations would not thus be denied.
Further, this little outpost of the British Empire, if it should
always remain such, cannot fail to influence, and to be influenced
by, the Spanish American civilization around it. It might under
better development accomplish much good in this respect, if
the policy of drift were abandoned. A North American traveller
who had journeyed across the Central American Republics and had
been badgered unceasingly by revolutionary strife there, and by
customs-house officers and others of the bureaucracy of those
States, once exclaimed that the only peaceful moment of his journey
was when he at length entered the confines of a portion of "that
hated British monarchy"--British Honduras! This may have been an
exaggeration, but held something of truth.

The little Republic of Salvador, as already remarked, lies upon the
Pacific side of this interesting isthmian region of Central America,
but, small in size, it is the most thickly populated and perhaps
the most prosperous and advanced of all this group of States. Its
capital, San Salvador, may be regarded as a fine example of Spanish
American culture, and, with its buildings and institutions, would
compare more than favourably with a European or North American town.
The climate and general character of the uplands upon which it is
situated, and the social atmosphere of the place, are pleasing.

But the Pacific littoral is of that low and monotonous character
characteristic of the western slope of much of Central America, and
as a consequence the ports are often difficult of access through
shoal water and heavy surf. The interior is gained either from La
Libertad or Acajutla, by railway to the capital, ascending to 2,000
feet above the sea.

The Republic shares with Honduras and Nicaragua the beautiful Bay
of Fonseca, but this beauty is characteristically associated with
natural terrors, for not far inland arises the dreaded San Miguel
volcano, one of the worst burning mountains of Central America, ever
threatening the life of the capital. Upon this bay lies La Union,
the chief port of Salvador.

The Republic prides itself, and not unjustly, upon the freedom
of its life politically. But it is by no means immune from the
inevitable factional strife of Central America, the ambition
of dictators and the evils brought about by such corruption of
self-government. However, many foreigners carry on successful
businesses in the capital.

The population tends to increase with some rapidity, and we shall
remark the much smaller proportion of Indians found here; the bulk
of the people, the _Ladinos_, being a mixture of white and Indian,
distributed throughout a number of pleasing secondary towns, and,
in the country districts, are engaged in the production of coffee,
sugar, tobacco and other characteristic resources; whilst the
hills afford them those minerals with which the region in general
is dowered, with some mining establishments, which, as usual, are
controlled by foreigners.

The economic life of Salvador is too greatly dependent upon European
markets and financial centres; upon the export of coffee thereto;
upon the elevation or depression of such markets--a condition,
of course, common to many Spanish American States, but which a
better-ordered regimen will seek to rectify.

We might wander long through the beautiful scenery of Salvador,
enjoying the grand and imposing aspect of its volcanoes, the beauty
of its valleys and streams, for this part of Central America is
famed, or rather should be famed, for the beauty of the landscape.
Quaint towns and curious products, the quiet and in some respects
pleasant life of its folk, the budding industries, and a certain
promise for the future leave a pleasant impression upon the mind of
the traveller in this little State facing the broad Pacific.

Of the Republic of Nicaragua, which we may approach either from the
Atlantic or the Pacific, and which is the largest of this group of
States, many dismal descriptions have been given. It is described as
economically and in civic conditions the most backward. Yet some of
its towns are fine places. Leon was described as a splendid city by
travellers in 1665, and about that period the very active buccaneer
Dampier gathered rich booty from it. Granada, founded by Cordova in
1523, was also one of the richest cities in Central America, and
it, too, gave up its toll of booty to the corsairs. The Cathedral
of Leon is one of the most noteworthy, massive and ornate of the
great stone temples with which the Spaniards endowed the New World,
typical of the colonial architecture which redeems these centres of
life from the prosaic vulgarity of some other lands.

[Illustration: THE CITY OF GUATEMALA.

  Vol. I. To face p. 80.]

We may visit these towns from the line of railway which runs from
Corinto, the chief seaport on the Pacific coast.

The capital of the Republic, the city of Managua, is of less
interesting character, and was, in a measure, raised to that
position in order to put an end to the rivalry between Leon and
Granada, both of which claimed metropolitan predominance. It is
situated upon the great lake of Nicaragua, the most prominent
topographical feature of this part of Central America, and which,
it will be recollected, was at one time destined to form part of
the waterway of a proposed trans-isthmian canal in place of that of
Panama.

This great lake valley and its adjacent highlands form the most
plentifully inhabited part of Nicaragua, as the Spanish colonial
development seized first upon its more fertile soil, watered by the
lake and streams. This civilization entered the country from the
Pacific side, from which we remark the grim and distant ramparts
of the Central American Cordillera, with its volcanoes intervening
between the western versant and littoral, and the low, monotonous
and swampy region of the east, and the Mosquito Coast bordering
upon the Atlantic. The Pacific coast here is bold and rocky, with a
headland enclosing the Bay of Fonseca in Nicaraguan territory.

Through the Cordillera flows the San Juan River, draining this low
eastern slope, and here lay the route of the projected Nicaraguan
Canal, whose abandonment caused bitter disappointment to the people
of the Republic.

In places in this wild land we remark the remains of the
pre-Colombian folk, who have left vestiges of their temples and
other structures, and thus we realize once more how a chain of
temple and palace-building folk in ancient times was carried down
the length of the continents from Mexico to Peru.

If too gloomy a description of the eastern side of Nicaragua has
been given, this must be tempered by noting that it possesses
certain natural advantages which may render it one of the most
valuable districts, from an economic point of view, in the whole
of Central America. Its rivers may be navigated by ocean-going
steamers, and in the Bluefields district the industry of banana
production and shipment has risen to very considerable importance.

The name of Nicaragua comes from that powerful native chief, Nicoya,
who, when the Spaniards first arrived, received Davila, their
leader, in a friendly spirit, and accepted Christian baptism at the
hands of the Roman Catholic priests. But the Spaniards overran the
country; those who invaded it from the east clashing with their own
countrymen who came in from the west, and Nicaragua's fine Indian
chief--pathetic page of native history--could not conserve here
anything of independence for the rightful owners of the soil.

The Spanish rulers of this unhappy land were a dreadful band, of
which it has been recorded that "the first had been a murderer, the
second a murderer and a rebel, the third murdered the second, the
fourth was a forger, the fifth a murderer and a rebel!"

In time the Indians revolted against intolerable oppression,
and, later, rebellion after rebellion took place against the
Mother Country. After Independence, the Wars of the Confederation
constantly deluged the soil with blood, and the political government
of the State was distinguished by a continuous series of military or
civil revolts, during which the land was impoverished, debased and
ruined, and from whose effects it has never recovered so far.

Yet Nicaragua is rich in natural products, agricultural, forestal
and mineral.

Famous in local history is the name of the North American
filibuster, William Walker, who for a space became president, and
the doings of this man and his band are stirringly adventurous. The
traveller will also recollect the long British Protectorate over the
Mosquito Coast.

But few remember that Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar, nearly met his
death from fever in Nicaragua. The great sailor, sent to report upon
the prospect of a canal, stated his intention of occupying Lake
Nicaragua, which in his opinion was "the inland Gibraltar of Spanish
America," whose possession would permanently sunder Spanish America
into two parts. But Nature was against it. Nelson and his force
ascended the river to the lake and successfully attacked the Spanish
force. He was wounded by a cannon shot, fired by a sixteen-year-old
girl, wife of a Spanish officer, and the maid was rewarded for the
act by her people.

Of Nelson's army of two hundred men all but ten perished of fever,
and left their bones in the soil of Nicaragua.

In the adjoining States of Costa Rica and Panama we are approaching
the narrowing, curving form of the isthmus, whose topography
culminates in the famous neck of land which joins the twin
continents of America together, and which has been severed to give
access between the world's greatest oceans, in the great Canal.

Whence the name of Costa Rica? Their eyes ever sharp to the glint
of gold, the Spaniards who approached Central America from the sea
immediately remarked that the swarthy forms of the Indians were
decorated with trinkets of yellow metal. The savages wore earrings
of gold, which dangled invitingly from their scared countenances
when the bearded and armoured white warriors approached, and there
was little ceremony in the transference of ownership. "This is a
rich coast! This is _Costa Rica_!" the Spaniards exclaimed.

Indeed, it was part of the old culture area of Chiriqui, whose folk
were clever producers of native jewellery in gold and precious
stones. Pedro de Alvarado called the whole region, including
Salvador, Cuscatan, the native Mexican name, meaning "Land of
precious stones, of treasures and abundance." But here in Costa Rica
the greedy Iberians found disappointingly little gold, except for
these trinkets. This region was the limit of the Maya civilization.

To-day Costa Rica is a flourishing little State, with fertile
soil and bright sunshine, with many luscious fruits, with food in
plenty, famous for its splendid coffee, special product of the
volcanic earth: a land of small peasant owners, upon which is
founded some political stability and civic prosperity, an example
to other Spanish American States, where oligarchies monopolize the
countryside, and the labourer dwells in peonage.

The Pacific coast here displays as we approach it, bold headlands
and broad bays, among them the Gulf of Nicoya, the home of that
pious-minded Indian chief, who, as before described, gave his name
to the adjoining State of Nicaragua. Studded with richly wooded
islands, and famous for its purple-yielding murex (the beautiful
ancient dye of the whelk), its pearls and mother-of-pearl, is this
bay, from which, leaving our steamer at the port of Punta Arenas, we
may ascend by railway to the pleasing capital of San José de Costa
Rica, on a plateau between the Cordillera at an elevation of nearly
4,000 feet above the ocean.

Here we are in a well-advanced city, the amenities of whose
public life are creditable to Central America. The line runs on
and descends to Puerto Limon, on the Atlantic, thus crossing the
isthmus.

But, like its neighbours, Costa Rica stands perennially in awe of
the volcanoes which top the summit of the Cordillera. Turialba, ever
hot and angry, and Poas are among these, pouring forth smoke and
vapour.

Let us take our stand a moment on Irazu, 11,000 feet above the
sea--we may reach it on horseback--higher than the summit of the
Pyrenees, and looking east and west remark the vast horizons which
unfold below: on the one hand we see the gleaming waters of the
Atlantic, on the other those of the Pacific, whilst, between,
the whole expanse of the country unfolds. Here, indeed, may the
inhabitant of Costa Rica cast a glance over the whole domain of his
_patria_, and let fancy wander over the realms of ocean towards
Europe and Asia.

Costa Rica was peopled largely by Spaniards from Galicia, but the
bulk of the folk are to-day _Ladinos_ or _Mestizos_, and, where the
native tribes have not been exterminated, there are Indians still in
complete savagery. The land is one of the healthiest in the region
we are treading, and its products of fruits and foods, of timber,
tortoise-shell, rubber, cedar, mahogany, ebony, and great stores of
bananas, give to the land a further claim to the name of the Rich
Coast.

And now our vessel floats upon the beautiful Bay of Panama, studded
with verdant isles, and if perchance it be the sunset hour the
flashing colour of the sky may light up the towers of the old
colonial city near its shore, a romantic haven, whose memories of
Drake and of the cruel Morgan, of Nuñez de Balboa, of Pizarro, and
all that gallery of bygone adventurers who made the history of the
New World upon these tropic shores. The sun does not rise, however,
in the Bay of Panama, but sets, for the curvature of the isthmus has
disoriented us, at Panama.

[Illustration: A COFFEE ESTABLISHMENT IN CENTRAL AMERICA.

  Vol. I. To face p. 86.
]

This independent Republic of Panama threw off its allegiance to
Colombia, whose heritage the isthmus was, in a grandiloquent
manifesto after the--alleged--machinations of the Americans, who,
wearied of the dilatory tactics of the parent State, laid hands on
the isthmus to carry out their cherished plan of making the Canal.
"Just as a son withdraws from his paternal roof, so the isthmian
people, in adopting the destiny they have chosen, do so with grief,
but in compliance with the supreme and inevitable duty the country
owes to itself. Upon separating from our brethren of Colombia, we do
so without hatred and without joy." So ran the manifesto.

But the people of Bogata, of Colombia, consider that an unspeakable
outrage was perpetuated upon them, and regard the United States and
its then President, Roosevelt, as its author--an outrage which time
will take long to heal.

We shall see something of the doings of the immortal Drake in our
journey down the great Pacific coast of South America, undertaken in
another chapter.

The Panama Isthmus was to Drake a vantage point, from which he
viewed a promised land. After his attack on Nombre de Dios, a
fugitive slave--a _cimarron_--conducted him and his followers to the
summit of the isthmian hills. There lay before Drake the gleaming
waters of the vast Pacific, as they had lain before Balboa. Drake
fell on his knees. He prayed to sail those waters in an English
ship. It was partly his destined work of "Singeing the King of
Spain's beard." Back to England he went. The commission which Queen
Elizabeth had given him to sail the Spanish Main had been honourably
accomplished, even if the Spaniards at Cartagena and elsewhere did
not so regard it. The queen must extend the charter to the Pacific.
She did it, and Drake's exploits there and return home westwards are
among the most thrilling annals of those "spacious days."

Hear a tale now of Morgan the buccaneer, and Panama, and the
dreadful things that befel that city. Young Morgan, born in Wales,
kidnapped for a sailor in the streets of Bristol, also sailed the
Spanish Main. Drake was a gentleman; Morgan seems to have been a
bloody-minded corsair. At thirty-three years of age he sacked Porto
Bello, committing frightful cruelties and excesses. But at Panama he
surpassed himself. Yet praise must be given him for his bravery and
resource.

Ascending the Chagres River from Colon in boats, with a dreadful
struggle over the hills, Morgan and his men, like Drake and Balboa,
beheld the Pacific beyond. Whether he prayed for success or not
history does not record. But there lay the rich city of Panama. It
must be taken. It was defended by hundreds of Spaniards. But Morgan
had taken Chagres and killed three hundred Spaniards there, and
double his own number at Panama did not daunt him. Down they went to
Panama. The enterprise was a tough one, but the result may be seen
to-day in the massive ruins of the old city, a sight for sightseers,
buried in the jungle some miles from the present city. For within a
few hours the buccaneers attacked and slew its defenders and burned
the place with fire, leaving but an empty shell, having robbed it
of its treasure, excepting that which an escaping plate ship bore
safely from his clutches.

It has been said in extenuation of Morgan's doings here that the
place was in reality burned by the Indians and the slaves, who were
animated by the most bitter hatred of the Spaniards, and were quite
ready to assist the Englishmen.

The isthmus resounded for more than a century with the tramp of
mules bearing gold and silver from the Pacific plate ships; the
treasures of Peru, of Bolivia, the pearls of Nicoya and the isles,
the gold and silver stripped from the Inca temples, the silver bars
from Potosi, the silver mountain of the Andes. Along that dreadful
trail the mule-trains groaned their way. It was a rough road for
horsemen.

The trail became, as time went on, one of the world's greatest trade
routes, under the development of the Spanish Colonies. We have
seen how the great Nelson hoped to split these colonies in two by
establishing a "Gibraltar" on Lake Nicaragua. A toll of human life
has been paid upon this rugged path for every human movement over
it. Has it not been said that for every sleeper in the first Panama
railway a human being died in the terrors of construction? If it is
not true, it is true that of the eight hundred Chinamen who left the
Flowery Kingdom to build the line--labourers who knew nothing of the
horrors that awaited them in this fever death-bed--many committed
suicide. Crowds of labouring peasantry from Ireland found here, too,
a more emerald grave, and hordes of negroes filled up with their
poor bodies any vacant tombs.

Punishment fell upon this railway, for, according to an American
writer, it degenerated until its rails "became nothing but two
streaks of rust."

Another tale of Darien the fateful: Listen, ye sons of Scotia,
to the story of one William Paterson, and his New Edinburgh. Not
content with having founded the Bank of England, Paterson must
fight the great East India Company, and with another enterprising
"interloper" he got over-subscribed, a company with a capital of
£600,000, and set sail for the isthmus "amid the tears and prayers"
of half Scotland. The new settlement was "to hold the key of the
world's commerce." "Universal free trade" with all the world was
to be maintained; all differences of race and religion were to be
annulled in this Utopia. Death, fever, loss, the attacks of the
Spaniards and complete disaster--such was the answer of Fate to
their enterprise, and of the two thousand trustful souls who left
the Clyde in the closing year of the seventeenth century for this
desired haven of the Spanish Main, a few hundreds alone returned to
tell the tale.

Paterson's idea was in reality that of a great empire-builder. It
was a magnificent scheme, and only lacked the element of success.
England might have possessed another India, and in the New World.
The Scotch were fully alive to the position, but the English were
stupid, and lost an enormous opportunity.

The making of the Panama Canal has greatly appealed to the
imagination of the world, although its triumph, in a spectacular
sense, was interfered with by the rise of the Great War. Here was
a wild isthmus which cut off the Atlantic from the Pacific, Europe
from Asia to the west. An isthmus which, whilst it formed a barrier
between two oceans, did not, nevertheless, serve as a bridge between
two continents: those of North and South America. Its construction
is an epic of engineering, and, be it added, of medical skill, for
without the latter the former would have been of no avail. What has
been picturesquely described as the "Conquest of the mosquito,"
also the conquest of malaria and yellow fever, enabled this work to
be done. Formerly the traveller hurried fearfully from his steamer
at Colon by rail across the neck to Panama, and if his journey lay
beyond to his steamer at Panama, anxious to leave the deadly region
as soon as were possible. Now no such anxiety marks his journey.

The fight against the natural obstacles to the work--those of
climate, of inefficient labour, of mountainous cuttings, of floods,
of finance and political intrigue, and all else, was brought
to an end--or mainly so--in November 1913, four hundred years
after Balboa's dramatic discovery of the Pacific from the "Peak
in Darien"; when a vast concourse of people witnessed the great
explosion that blew up the last barrier, and a small steamer, the
little French steamboat _Louise_, which, twenty-five years before
had conveyed de Lesseps to turn the first sod, passed completely,
on its own keel, across from Atlantic to Pacific waters--an act of
American courtesy to France.

Several lessons were learned by the construction of the Panama
Canal. One was that corruption and inertia among officials will
ruin all effort, as it did with the French--who, however, did very
valuable work on the Canal. Another that, with modern appliances and
just methods, even so stupendous a work could be carried to success,
even in the face of enormous natural obstacles; that the obstacles
raised by Nature are less formidable than those man raises himself.

Another lesson was in the methods of overcoming the dreadful
tropical diseases of yellow fever and malaria.

The last lesson was in the treatment of labour, in this case that of
the negro; a matter of much importance to all tropical lands, which
may justify here a few words.

A great part of the labour employed on the Canal, in fact, the
majority of it later, was that of the West Indian negro, largely
from Barbadoes. But it was soon found that this labour was very
inefficient. The negro would not or could not "put his back" into
the work. In 1906 an American commission appointed to investigate
conditions, reported upon the impossibility of concluding the job
with negro labour. "Not only do they seem to be disqualified by lack
of actual vitality, but their disposition to labour seems to be as
frail as their bodily strength," ran the report. The negro was, in
fact, roundly cursed as a lazy or incapable hound.

But some, wiser than others, thought there must be a cause below
this inertia. Such, indeed, was found to be the case. It was shown
that the negro either could not afford, or was too idle to prepare,
proper food for himself; in short, that he was ill-nourished. A few
bananas, and whatever else the difficult conditions of the isthmus
afforded, formed his meals. It was then resolved that he must be
properly fed and housed. A commissariat was set up, at which the
negro was obliged to take his meals, and the bare cost was deducted
from his wages. No profit was to be made. The system answered
admirably; the actual cost was found to be only thirty cents
American money, equal to about one shilling and threepence, for a
day's board of good food. The result was that the negro performed
entirely satisfactory labour, and he practically built the Canal.

Many writers have sung of the deeds of the Canal building, which
must always furnish a thrilling story of the triumph of human
genius, and we need not enter upon it here.

The Great War over, the American fleet--which had played a valuable
and noble part--accomplished, in July 1919, a spectacular passage
of the Canal, which brings us to-day again to realize the strategic
value of the waterway. Some two hundred vessels of war, flying
the Stars and Stripes, including six Dreadnoughts, embodying the
American Pacific fleet, entered the eastern end of the Canal as
the sun was rising in the Spanish Main. But before the orb of day
had turned its "westering wheel" into the bosom of the Pacific,
the great procession had passed through the Canal and was ruffling
the waters of that great sea, thus accomplishing in a few hours, a
passage which the battleship _Oregon_, during the American war with
Spain in 1898, had taken nearly two weeks to make, around the South
American Continent.

The Americans have fortified the Canal, but blockading would be in
contravention of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with England; and indeed
it is to be hoped and believed that the United States will prove a
conscientious guardian of her charge and creation. Yet the future
may have much in store in this region for good or ill.

Enthusiastic descriptions of the possibility of the Canal to
commerce have been written, in the shortening of distances, in
the "shrinkage of the world," and there is no doubt of its great
utility, which it is not, however, needful to exaggerate. Since
the project was conceived and executed, the world has learned that
more than the passage of armaments and argosies of merchandise are
requisite for the stability and progress of mankind.

A glance now at the general life of the people of these States.[6]

  [6] A full account of all these States will be found in _Central
  America_, Koebel, South American Series.

In the aggregate the population numbers somewhat over five million
souls, but they tend to increase more rapidly than others of the
Spanish American countries, or at least in some of the Republics,
for the native women are prolific, and mortality is low, due to the
comparatively easy conditions of life and the beneficence of Nature.
In some districts illegitimacy, both among whites and Indians, is
very marked, and the economic condition in a modern sense is a low
one. Primary education is generally compulsory, the Governments
generally making considerable parade of educational intentions,
but, withal, only a small proportion of the population can read and
write. Naturally this is true mainly of the Indian and lower class
mixed race.

As to food, this is mainly such vegetable products as maize, beans
and bananas, and at times jerked meat. Excessive drinking is a
frequent attribute of all Spanish American folk of the working
classes, and it is not in the financial interests of their masters
to stint the supply of liquors, the fiery _aguadientes_ or spirits,
which are so remunerative a product of the sugar-cane plantations,
possessions of the large landowners frequently. The Indians are
generally a peaceful folk, however, except when under the influence
of liquor, and they have many good qualities, which it is time
should now be more beneficently and wisely fostered by those in
whose hands their destiny so greatly lies.

The Central American States are dowered, as regards Nature, with
almost everything that could make a people happy and prosperous.
The varying elevations of their lands above sea-level afford every
variety of climate, and consequently of food product and industrial
material. They can enjoy their own beef and corn, produced in their
highlands, or, descending to the torrid strip of their coasts,
gather coffee, cocoa, bananas, oranges, sugar-cane, and a variety
of fruits which tempt both the eye and the palate. As for their
minerals, the precious metals of gold and silver in the hills could
provide sufficient for their uses and to spare, the baser for
manufactures. The timber of the forests is rich and varied, the
fibrous plants are of innumerable uses.

The noble landscapes which open to the view, of wooded mountains and
majestic peak, of romantic river valley, and the blue line of the
tropic sea, are such as might well bring out those attributes of the
poet and the artist which exist in the Spanish American mentality.

In brief, there are here, in each State, the elements of a quiet
and pleasing existence, far, it is true, from the world's more
ambitious centres, but nevertheless capable of producing peace and
plenty. Alas! however, for the unsettled temperament which cannot
yet assimilate the bounties of Providence in such method as shall
ensure their equitable enjoyment.

[Illustration: CUTTING SUGAR-CANE IN CENTRAL AMERICA.

  Vol. I. To face p. 96.]

To the foreign traveller, Central America might afford an extremely
pleasing field of travel. There is a charm in the remains of the
prehistoric American cultures, the carved walls of the old temples,
the buried idols, the ancient industries. Restful and quaint
are these little towns with the stamp of the Spanish Colonial
architecture. Here man and Nature soon forget the bloodshed and the
enmity of the torn and stained pages of history. The simple folk of
the countryside are full of courtesy, the needs of life are cheap
and plentiful, for the earth is bountiful. All these are elements
which impress themselves upon the mind of the traveller here.

This, then, is Central America, that region so slightly known to the
world outside that, as elsewhere remarked, its very geographical
position is often a matter of doubt. But, in the future--it may be
distant--it cannot be doubted that, with its advantages, the region
must play a more important part in the developing world.

Three Latin American island-Republics enclose the Caribbean Sea and
Spanish Main to the north: those of Cuba, Hayti, and Santo Domingo,
upon which, however, we cannot here dilate at length.

Nature has, in general, endowed these regions of the Antilles
with great beauty, but man, in their past history, has made them
the scene of the utmost cruelty, first by the Spaniards, in the
ill-treatment and extermination of the gentle and harmless natives,
and second, in the slave trade.

Cuba stretches its long, thin bulk from the Yucatan Strait, off the
Mexican coast, and the line is continued by the Island of Hayti,
containing the Republic of that name, the famous Hispaniola of the
days of the Conquistadores, now a French-speaking negro State, and
Santo Domingo, whose capital, the oldest settlement in the New
World, founded in 1496, may be regarded as the most perfect example
of a sixteenth-century Spanish town. Its cathedral contains the
reputed burial place of Columbus.

No countries in the world excel these lands in the variety and
richness of their tropical products, and in the beauty of their
scenery. Havana, the handsome capital of Cuba, was the last
stronghold of Spain in America, the Spanish flag flying there until
the time of the war between Spain and the United States in 1899. The
American attitude towards Cuba revealed the wisdom and generosity of
the great Anglo-Saxon Republic.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our way now lies to the north, into Mexico, that buffer-state
between the Spanish American and the Anglo - American civilizations,
which, upon its frontier, roll together but do not mingle.




CHAPTER IV

ANCIENT AND MODERN MEXICO


Of all the lands of the New World, none perhaps has impressed itself
more on the imagination than the picturesque and enigmatical land
of Mexico. It seems to stand, in our thoughts of distant countries,
apart from all others, a riddle we cannot read, surrounded by a
halo or mist of unreality, a region vague and shadowy as its Toltec
ancestors.

Perhaps this view has in part arisen from the description of the
Conquest by famous writers, which so greatly interested our forbears
of the Victorian period, and by the romantic story-writers of the
same era. But these matters alone would not account for the hazy
atmosphere surrounding the old land of the Aztecs, which even the
prosaic matters of trade and finance do not seem to lift. There are
many English and American folk with commercial interests in Mexico,
who draw perhaps, or in happier times there have drawn, dividends
from their investment in mine, or railway, or other enterprise; but
even this material standpoint fades into intangibility before the
endeavour to form a true mental image of the land.

Who are the Mexicans, where does their country lie, what language do
they speak, what dress do they wear? Geography and ethnology will
furnish us with the most exact replies; the books of travellers will
fill in abundant detail, but nevertheless, Mexico remains for us an
enigma.

We shall not hope here successfully to dispel this mystery, even
though we may have been there, traversed its varied surface, and
lived among its people. To say that Mexico is the Egypt of the New
World, whilst it is not untrue, is to deepen the atmosphere. The
sandalled Indian creeps across his desert sands and irrigates them
with his native torrents as he did in centuries past, lives in his
wattle or adobe hut, and, if he no longer worships the sun, at least
he stands before its morning rays to embrace its warmth--_el capa
de los pobres_ ("the poor man's cloak")--for poverty denies him
other comfort. The rich man is clothed in fine textures of European
model and may dwell in a palace, but beneath his modernized exterior
are traits of the Orient, and the blood of the Moor, the Goth, the
Vandal, the Roman, the Celt, the Semite, brought hither in the
Spaniard, is mingled with that of the Aztec, who lived upon the
great plateau and built his temples of strange and bloody worship.

No other American nation constitutes so wide a blending of original
races. Spain itself was a veritable crucible of languages, peoples
and creeds, whilst aboriginal Mexico contained a large number of
tribes, each with their particular culture, or lack of such.[7]
For Mexico, it is to be recollected, was not a land like the United
States or Canada, which contained, relatively, but a few bands of
Indians, without any particular form of government or developed
institutions.

  [7] Some of these tribes were unutterably savage and brutal, but
  it is doubtful if their methods were worse than those of the
  Anglo-Saxon who invaded Britain, with the repulsive horrors they
  visited upon the early Britains, in wholesale massacre and torture
  of the Celts.

The grandees of Spain came out to rule this diversified land, and
they did not disdain to make it their home. Spain gave it of her
best often, with capable legislators, laws; the _Ley de Indias_,
enacted for the benefit of the colonies, and erudite professors and
devout--over-devout--ecclesiastics; and these often carried out
their work with patriotism and fervency. Although it is not yet,
the student of history will be fain to think that out of this seed
a good growth must in the future come to being, and this we may say
without any unnecessary apologetics for Mexico.

But what, we may ask, is the influence here, that throws back this
fruitful land from time to time to anarchy, and makes its name a
byword?

Disorder and treachery periodically arises, dictator succeeds
dictator, revolution follows revolution, and the country's soil,
whether in the streets of its capital, whether upon its desert
plains or in its tropic valleys, is drenched with the blood of its
own sons. The results of thirty years of a constructive national
policy which Diaz gave, the hopes and pretensions of a high
civilization, laboriously built up, sink down to nought, revert
to the conditions of that dreadful half-century that followed
upon Independence, from which stand forth the names--noble and
ignoble--of Iturbide, Maximilian, Juarez, or Morelos. What ails this
strange land? Is it capable of no better life?

In reply, Mexico is a land following the inevitable law of reaping
what it has sown, and both the sowing and the reaping are but
exaggerated forms of processes that are affecting the world at
large. Judgment must not be too heavily passed upon Mexico as a
whole, for, as I shall later show, a whole nation must not be
condemned by reason of some of its nationals.

Mexico, like all Spanish American States, is at the mercy,
politically and economically, of certain small sections of the
people. Government is of an oligarchy in normal times, which often
abuses its position. The bulk of the people have neither art
nor part in their own governance. The ballot box is too often a
delusion and a snare. A turbulent or ambitious element can seize
power at any moment by a _golpe de estado_ (a _coup d'état_). The
upper and refined class, which, be it said, is the equivalent of
and as well-informed often as that in Europe, stand aloof from
political revolution and disturbance, and would be the last to
commit the excesses which bring execration upon the country's name.
The educated Mexican has all the traditions of the _caballero_,
the gentleman; the Mexican lady is refined, devout, delicate and
tenderhearted. The peon and the Indian are not turbulent, but
well-meaning and generally industrious.

These matters we shall further consider; for the moment let us pass
on to survey the land itself, to traverse its wide and diversified
surface, with its many elements of beauty, interest and utility.

Here, then, is a land of vast extent, in which various European
countries could be contained; stretching from the borders of Central
America northward to those of the United States, two thousand miles
long upon its major axis, shaped upon the map like a cornucopia,
washed on one side by the Atlantic, on the other by the Pacific, and
containing within itself every resource of Nature which could make
for plenty and progress. Its southern half lies within the Tropics,
but consisting in great part of an elevated tableland, where the
diurnal range of temperature--from the heat of the day to the cold
of the night--is so considerable that latitude we find is not a
reliable guide to climate.

This great plateau, whose escarpments, viewed as we approach from
either side present the appearance of mountains, is in large
part sterile, treeless, and without rivers of importance or
navigability. But it is crossed by ranges of steely-blue hills and
intersected by fertile valleys, where agriculture is carried on
under irrigation--an ancient art by means of canals fed from the
intermittent streams. Cacti, strange and gaunt, clothe it by nature,
but there are large coniferous forests upon the mountain slopes in
places.

Do we approach the country from the north, by the railway lines
from the United States border, we traverse deserts among the most
dreadful of the New World, deserts yet with a certain cruel beauty
of their own, where once the Apache roamed--cruellest and most
horrible of all the world's savage folk.

But Nature has disposed along this high plateau, vast, fabulously
vast mineral wealth, and from the famous mines of Guanajuato,
Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Durango, Potosi, Aguascalientes, Pachuca; and
places--some of them noble towns, dowered with royal charters before
the _Mayflower_ sailed for New England--silver and gold poured forth
to fill the needy coffers of Spain. Later, the English shareholder
tried his hands upon the "mother-lode" with varying fortune, and
copper, iron and other metals also came like magic from the rocks of
this great wilderness.

On the eastern and western versants of the country, and in the
south, we encounter a different landscape. Here Nature smiles. In
places it may be hot and humid, perhaps malarious, with tangled
forests. But rich vegetation, gorgeous flora and profuse animal
life--bird, insect, reptile--abound. Here are fruitful plains and
valleys, vast sugar-cane plantations, luscious fruits of kinds
unknown to the world outside--among them the _mamey_, the "fruit of
the Aztec kings," with orange and banana groves, coffee gardens,
cocoa-trees, yielding the _chocolatl_ of the Aztecs, rubber-trees
with elegant foliage, whilst above, the graceful coco-palm rears
its stately column and feathery plume high against the azure sky.

[Illustration: SCENE ON THE GREAT PLATEAU, MEXICO.

  Vol. I. To face p. 104.]

Here, indeed, is a region where it might have been supposed that
man could dwell in peace and plenty, with a minimum of toil and
ambition, of care and evil.

The climatic zones of Mexico were named by the Spaniards in
accordance with the condition of their varying temperatures
respectively, as, the _Tierra Caliente_, or hot lands, the _Tierra
Templada_, or temperate lands, and the _Tierra Fria_, or cold lands:
the first lying upon the coast, the second midway up the slopes,
and the last the higher regions, reaching an elevation of 8,000 to
10,000 feet and more above the level of the sea.

In this intermediate zone of the Tierra Templada lies a land which
has been not unjustly termed a region of perpetual spring, a truly
desirable land, where the fortunate inhabitant lives close to the
kindly earth as if in some mortal paradise--as far as Nature is
concerned. In the high zone, healthful and invigorating, lies the
beautiful city of Mexico in its enclosed valley; and many a handsome
town is found throughout the three zones.

This city of Mexico was the coveted prize of Cortes and his
Spaniards, and through the varying zones they passed after having,
on that Good Friday in 1519, landed on the shores to which they
gave the name of Vera Cruz--the place of the True Cross. Across the
waters of the Gulf as they approached the unknown land was seen the
gleaming peak of Orizaba, called by the natives Citlalteptl, or the
Mountain of the Star, hanging in mid-heaven, its point over thirteen
thousand feet above the sea.

From the shore, the native runners of Montezuma bore swiftly
upwards to the mountain city news of the white man's arrival--long
expected of old, from the traditions of Quetzalcoatl, the mystic
god-man of white race. These messengers made curious but faithful
"picture-writings," on Mexican paper, of the great "water-houses" or
caravels swinging in the bay, the dread "men-animals" or horsemen,
and the thunderous guns of the Spaniards, and hastened thence to
warn their master.

Swiftly they returned from the mountains. "Go back," the Aztec
Emperor said, "come not hither, the road is long and difficult," and
he sent presents--a huge wheel of gold and beautiful feather work
and other objects.

But Cortes, heeding not the message, burned his boats; the customary
Mass was rendered by the Padre Olmedo--the Spaniards were always
devout, partly in sincerity, partly as a custom--and the adventurers
set forth on that remarkable and adventurous journey which forms one
of the most thrilling episodes in early American history. Let us
briefly review it.

The Spaniards have allied themselves, in the fruitful land of
Tlascala--the "Land of Bread" in the native tongue--with the
Tlascalans, foes at first but friends afterwards, and then began the
most stirring events of their march.

"The Tlascalans were a people who had developed a remarkable
civilization and social and military organization, akin to that
of the Aztecs. On the arrival of the messengers of Cortes much
dissension had prevailed in their councils, some of the chiefs--the
community was ruled by a council of four--maintaining that this was
an opportunity for vengeance against their hereditary enemies, the
hated Aztecs and their prince, Montezuma. 'Let us ally ourselves
with these terrible strangers,' they urged, 'and march against
the Mexicans.' For the doings of the Spaniards had echoed through
the land already, with a tale of smitten tribes and broken idols.
But the wily old Xicotencatl thought otherwise. 'What do we know
of their purpose?' was his counsel; so it was agreed that the
army of the Tlascalans and Otomies, who were in force near the
frontier, under the command of the fiery young warrior--son of old
Xicotencatl, and bearing the same name--should attack them. 'If we
fail,' the old barbarian urged, 'we will disavow the act of our
general; if we win----'!

"The stone fortification at the valley's end had been undefended,
and with Cortes at their head the Spaniards entered Tlascalan
territory. Skirmishing was followed by a pitched battle between the
Christians and the Tlascalans, in which the firearms and lances of
the Spaniards wrought terrible havoc on their antagonists. Astounded
at the sight of the horses--those extraordinary beings, whether
of animal or demoniacal origin they knew not--and appalled by the
thundering of the guns, which seemed to have some superhuman
source, the Tlascalans at first fell back. But they overcame their
fears, fell savagely upon the invaders, and were with difficulty
repulsed, having managed to kill two of the horses. Greatly to
Cortes's regret was this, for the noble animals were few, and--more
serious still--their death removed that semi-superstitious dread
regarding them, which the natives held. However, the Spaniards
afterwards buried them from sight.

"Night fell, a season when the Indians fought not, but on the morrow
the messengers which had been sent to the Tlascalans arrived--having
escaped--with the news that the enemy was approaching in great
force. So indeed it befel, and upon the plain in front of the
Spaniards appeared a mighty host, varyingly estimated between
thirty and a hundred thousand warriors. The Spaniards with their
allies numbered--fearful odds!--about three thousand. 'The God of
the Christians will bear us through,' said the brave and beautiful
Marina. A frightful battle now ensued, the issue of which hung in
the scale for hours. Charging, volleying, borne this way and that by
the flood of the enemy's numbers, the gallant band of the Spaniards
snatched victory from almost certain defeat, their superior weapons
and cavalry, together with the bad tactics of the Indians, who
knew not how to employ their unwieldy army to best advantage, at
length decided the day for the Christians, who inflicted terrible
punishment upon their foes. The Tlascalans' policy now showed
signs of weakening, but further assaults were necessary, and some
treachery, under the guise of friendship, having been discovered on
the part of the fifty Tlascalan envoys to the Spanish camp, Cortes
barbarously cut off the hands of these and sent them back to tell
the tale.

"The upshot of these engagements was that the Tlascalans
capitulated, apologized for their conduct, invited the strangers to
take possession of their capital, and assured them that they would
now be allies, not enemies, of the white men, who were undoubtedly
the representative of the great and long-expected Quetzalcoatl. The
joy in the Spanish camp at this turn of affairs knew no bounds; well
did the Spaniards know that the continued opposition of the Indians
would have been their ruin, whilst in their alliance was salvation
and the key to the Conquest.

"Behold the war-worn and hungry Spaniards, lean and tattered from
marching and privations in the inclement uplands, now installed in
comfort in the centre of the powerful Tlascalan capital. Forth had
come to greet them young Xicotencatl, who, to do him justice, took
upon himself the responsibility of the war; and as the Spaniards
entered the capital the streets were lined with men, women and
children, and decorated with garlands of flowers as for a triumphal
procession. The old chief who had urged for opposition now changed
his tactics, and as Cortes entered he embraced him, passing his
hand over the face of the Spaniard to see what manner of man he
was, for the aged Tlascalan was blind, having reached, it has been
said--probably with exaggeration--a hundred and forty years of age!
'The city is much larger than Granada,' wrote Cortes to Carlos V,
with a description of its markets, shops, houses and intelligent and
industrious population.

"Six weeks the Spaniards sojourned there, recuperating their
energies, living on the best the plentiful land afforded--Tlascala
signified in the Indian tongue 'the land of bread'--taking wives
from among the maidens, the chiefs' daughters, and endeavouring,
first with the foolish haste of Cortes and then with the slow
prudence of Father Olmedo, to instil some tenets of the Christian
religion into their hosts. But religious fervour had to give way to
material necessities, and the Tlascalan idols remained unsmitten,
although their human sacrifices were somewhat stayed.

"Rested and mended, the Spaniards now set impatient gaze upon the
oak- and fir-clad mountain slopes which bounded the valley. Above
them loomed upward the great Malinche, snow-capped queen of the
Tlascalan mountain fastnesses; and still the friendly Tlascalans,
stern foes but noble allies, loaded them with every favour and bid
them tarry. When, however, they would stay no longer they raised a
great body of warriors to accompany them, warning Cortes against the
wiles of Montezuma. 'Beware of his presents and his promises; he is
false and seeks your destruction,' they urged, and their implacable
hatred of the Aztecs showed itself in their words and mien.

"Contrary to the advice of their new allies, the Spaniards decided
to journey on to Mexico through Cholula, the land of the great
pyramid. Embassies had arrived, both from Montezuma and from the
Cholulans, the latter inviting the Spaniards to go that way; and
the great Aztec monarch, swayed now by the shadow of oncoming
destiny, offering the Spaniards a welcome to his capital. 'Trust
not the Tlascalans, those barbarous foes,' was the burden of his
message, 'but come through friendly Cholula: a greeting received by
the Tlascalans with sneers and counter-advice. The purpose of the
Tlascalans was not a disinterested one. An attack upon Montezuma
was their desire, and preliminary to this they hoped to embroil the
Spaniards with the perfidious Cholulans. Another embassy--and this
was an important event--had waited upon Cortes. It was from the
Ixtlilxochitl, one of the rival claimants for the throne of Texcoco,
which, it will be remembered, was a powerful and advanced community
in confederation with the Aztecs; and Cortes was not slow to fan
the flame of disaffection which this indicated, by an encouraging
message to the young prince.

"A farewell was taken of the staunch Tlascalans, the invariable
Mass was celebrated by Father Olmedo, and, accompanied by a large
body of Tlascalan warriors, the Spaniards set out for Cholula. What
befel in this beautiful and populous place--which, Bernal Diaz
wrote, reminded him, form its numerous towers, of Valladolid--was of
terrible and ruthless import. Cholula, with its great _teocalli_,
was the Mecca of Anahuac, and was veritably a land flowing with milk
and honey. Well-built houses, numerous _teocallis_, or pyramidal
temples, well-dressed people with embroidered cloaks, and numbers
of censer-swinging priests formed the _ensemble_ which greeted
the Spaniards' eyes, whilst the intense cultivation of the ground
and the fields of _maguey_, _maiz_, and other products, irrigated
by canals from the mountain streams, formed the environment of
this advanced community. 'Not a palm's-breadth of land that is
not cultivated,' wrote Cortes in his dispatches to Castile, 'and
the city, as we approached, was more beautiful than the cities of
Spain.' Beautiful and gay doubtless Cholula was when the Spaniards
entered; drenched with the blood of its inhabitants and devastated
by fire it lay before they left it! There had been signs of
treachery, even on the road thither, work of the Cholulans; but,
lodged in the city, the Spaniards discovered, through the agency
of the intelligent Marina, a plot to annihilate them later. Taking
the Cholulans unawares as they crowded the streets with--at the
moment--harmless curiosity, the Spaniards, with cannon, musket
and sabre, mowed down the unfortunate and unprotected natives in
one bloody massacre, aided by the ferocious Tlascalans, who fell
upon the Cholulans from the rear. The appalling and unnecessary
slaughter at Cholula has called down upon the heads of Cortes and
the Spaniards the execration of historians. Some have endeavoured
to excuse or palliate it, but it remains as one of the indelible
stains of the Spanish _Conquistadores_ upon the history they were
making. Having accomplished this 'punitive' act, an image of the
Virgin was set up on the summit of the great pyramidal temple,
and some order restored. 'They are now your Highness's faithful
vassals,' wrote Cortes to the King of Spain!

"After this the way seemed clear. Far on the horizon loomed the
white, snow-capped cones of Popocateptl and Ixtaccihuatl, beautiful
and pure above the deserts, the canyons, and the forests beneath
them--the gateway to Mexico. From the foremost, above its snow-cap,
there belched forth a great column of smoke, for at that period
Popocateptl was an active volcano. Onwards the Spaniards pressed
with buoyant hearts and eager feet, and when they stood upon
the summit of the range their eyes beheld the beautiful valley
of Mexico, the haven for which they had long toiled and fought,
stretched below. There, shimmering in distance, lay the strange,
unknown city of the Aztecs, like a gem upon the borders of its
lakes: its towers and buildings gleaming white in the brilliant
sun of the tropic upland beneath the azure firmament and brought
to deceptive nearness by the clear atmosphere of that high
environment. There at last was their longed-for goal, the mysterious
Tenochtitlan."[8]

  [8] _Mexico_, by the Author, South American Series.

       *       *       *       *       *

The city of Mexico, notwithstanding its modern attributes, is
stamped with history and tradition, and in this respect is perhaps
the most noteworthy metropolis on the American continents. It is,
as it were, a mediaeval city, transplanted from the Old World to
the New. The United States has, naturally, no place which may
compare with it, and in happier times Mexico City has been a tourist
centre for Americans, who, escaping from the more materialistic and
commercial atmosphere of their own busy towns, and the extremes of
heat or cold which alternate therein, have sought the equable and
healthful condition of the Mexican upland capital--an easy journey
comparatively, of a few days in a Pullman car, amid landscapes
attractive from their novelty.

We are in a city of churches and convents. Elsewhere I have
described some of these remarkable edifices, home of the Roman
Catholic faith, and as we view the city from the pleasing hills
surrounding the valley their domes and towers stand up refreshingly.

The houses of Mexico are of a type unknown to the Anglo-Saxon
American; the social customs, the aspects of the streets, the
markets, the flower-market, the old, massive public buildings,
the cotton-clad Indian folk in the _plazas_ side by side with
beautifully dressed señoritas and correctly attired, grave and
ceremonious men--statesmen, lawyers, doctors and men of many
professions, the _serenatas_ or concerts in the _alamedas_, the
lottery ticket vendors thrusting their flimsy wares into one's face,
urging you to tempt fortune--for will not the wheel be turned in
the public square in half an hour, and may you yourself not be
the winner of the sorteo?--all these features catch the traveller's
eye as in the genial sunshine, before the midday heat renders the
shade of the _patio_ or veranda advisable, we observe the life of
the Mexican city. In the market-place, at an early hour or in the
evening, the odour of the _tortilla_ or the _frijoles_, fried in the
open for ready sale, will greet our nostrils, and there are piquant
_chiles_--a favourite article of diet--and many luscious and unknown
fruits which we cannot resist.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO.

  Vol. I. To face p. 114.]

Under the shade trees in the plaza or the alameda, escorted by
Indian maid-servant, or perhaps entering or leaving the temples, are
sweet-faced girls of the upper class, pale oval-faced _señoritas_
with dark hair and expressive eyes, with the mantilla drawn over the
head, bent on their early-morning orisons: but though their thoughts
are at the moment doubtless dwelling upon matters spiritual, there
are glances from expressive eyes--

    Para que te miré, mujer divina?
    Para que contemplé tu faz hermosa?

Sentiment and love, indeed, play a strong part in the temperament of
this southern race, with all its reserve and seclusion.

The foreigner in Mexico will thus find a varied local colour in the
Mexican capital and in other cities throughout the Republic, such
as could long occupy his pen, and indeed his brush, if he wield
such. To come into actual touch with the people in their homes is
more difficult, but if he is fortunate enough to be the guest in
an upper class Mexican family, he will experience the most pleasing
hospitality. To penetrate such circles, however, there must be the
appropriate qualities and circumstances.

In this peaceful city there are few signs of revolution, disorder or
bloodshed. The walls here and there may be pitted with bullet-marks,
but the things which caused them come and go, and the populace lives
its life with merely passing notice of them.

We may wander somewhat farther afield in the valley: to the
suburbs where the palaces of the wealthy lie embowered in flowers
and orange-trees; to Xochimilco, the Field of Flowers; to
Chalpultepec--the Aztec "Hill of the Grasshoppers," where stands
the presidential castle; to the shrine of Guadalupe, the Lourdes of
Mexico, where the Virgin, it is said, appeared in a vision to Juan,
the poor Indian.

The great lake of Texcoco, a dreary body of water now--it is partly
drained by a great canal, to the far greater salubrity of the
place--formerly extended to the city, which, indeed, at the time of
the Conquest, was built upon it and reached by stone causeways--a
position which might have been impregnable.

The first attempt by Cortes and the Spaniards upon Tenochtitlan
ended in disaster. They were enjoying the Aztec hospitality, which,
however, they outraged. They attacked and massacred a number of the
people and took Montezuma a prisoner in the stout palace which had
been assigned as their quarters. They stormed and carried the great
_Teocalli_, or pyramid-temple, and threw down the great idol of the
Mexicans. Montezuma was killed, either by a missile from without or
treacherously by the Spaniards whilst in their power. All seemed
lost as a result of the mad act of Alvarado in attacking the people.
The story of the disaster is a thrilling one.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The bridges broken, the savages screaming outside the walls,
hope of victory gone, there was now no counsel of war for the
Spaniards save that of escape. But how? At night and along the great
causeway was the only plan. A weird scene it was on the beginning
of that _Noche Triste_--the sorrowful night--which stands forth so
unforgettably in the history of the Conquest. Disorder everywhere;
piles of gold and valuables on the floor, each Spaniard, whether
cavalier or boor, loading himself with what he thought he could
carry. 'Pocket what you can,' Cortes said, 'but recollect that gold
is heavy and we have to travel swiftly'--grave advice, the neglect
of which cost some their lives upon that awful night.

"And then began the retreat along the fatal causeway. It was known
that there were three openings in this, and a portable bridge had
been made and was borne along to enable passage to be effected.
Hurrying on in the hope of passing the breaches before alarm might
be given, the Spaniards entered upon the causeway and placed their
portable bridge upon the first breach. Was safety to be theirs?
No! what was that appalling sound, sonorous and melancholy, which
rang over the city and the waters amid the darkness? It was the
great drum on the _teocalli_; the _tambor_ of the war-god, sounded
by vigilant priests, calling the people to vengeance and battle.
And in their myriads the Aztecs poured forth and fell upon the
Christians, raining darts and stones upon them, and making the night
hideous with their war-cries. Meanwhile Cortes and the advance
guard had passed over, and reached the second breach. 'Bring up
the bridge!' was the repeated order, as those behind crowded on.
Useless; the bridge was stuck fast in the first breach, wedged
down by the weight of guns and horses which had passed over it,
and as these dread tidings were heard the mass of men upon the
narrow causeway lost their presence of mind. Those behind crowded
on those in front; men and horses rolled into the lake; Spaniards
and Tlascalans fell victims to the Aztecs, who crowded the water in
their canoes and leapt upon the causeway; the shouts of vengeance
and triumph of the savages resounded all along the dyke, silencing
the muttered oath or prayer of the Christians huddled at the breach.
Down went horse and man, artillery and treasure, until the bodies
of Christians and Indians and horses, and bales of merchandise
and chests of ammunition the breach was almost filled, and a
portion of the fugitives passed over. And now the third breach
yawns before them--deep and wide. The morning is dawning upon the
fatal scene; the salt waters of the lake have closed over many a
gallant Christian head; the frightful causeway is strewn with wreck
of man and merchandise. 'The rear guard perishes!' and 'back and
save them!' were the words which rang out then, and Cortes and his
remaining cavaliers, who were in the lead, rode back, even in that
frightful hour--be it recorded to their honour--and, swimming the
breach once more, strove to support their comrades. There stood
Alvarado unhorsed and battling, with the savages pressing upon his
rear. Escape there seemed none. Canoes and spears teemed on every
side, and Cortes and his companions were forced onward."[9]

  [9] _Mexico_, loc. cit.

       *       *       *       *       *

The figure of Alvarado stood up against the grey sky alone--a
moment--and then he measured the breach with his eye. Planting his
lance on the wreckage in the waters of the breach, after the manner
of a leaping-pole, the heroic Spaniard, collecting his energies,
leapt forward, and passed the chasm at a bound. The Aztecs paused in
admiration of this feat of the "Son of the Sun," as they had named
Alvarado, from his fair hair and ruddy countenance. To-day we may
still see the place where this part of the causeway lay, known as
the _Puente de Alvarado_.

Away off the causeway into the grey dawn passed the remnant of the
routed Spanish Army, wounded, bleeding, starving, their comrades
gone, some to death, some to the dreadful sacrifices of the Mexican
priests, where their hearts would be torn living from their breasts,
and annihilation threatening all. Baggage and artillery were gone,
not a carbine was left, and Cortes, seating himself upon the steps
of a ruined temple on the shore, wept bitter tears of sorrow for the
loss of his comrades and his vanished fortunes.

So ended the _Noche Triste_, and to this day may be seen an ancient
tree under which it is said Cortes wept.

The Spaniards, however, were not of such stuff as easily gives in
to difficulty and disaster. Had it been otherwise, Mexico to-day
might have had a different destiny. It might have developed a purely
aboriginal or Indian state. But fate seems not to have willed it
that any such nation should exist in the New World.

Cortes and the remnant of his army--there was no other course
for them--returned to their Tlascalan allies, fighting their way
even here, however, for after passing the ancient pyramid of
Teotihuacan, even then standing ruined and desolate a few miles
north of the city--monument of the shadowy Toltecs, who preceded
the Aztec hegemony, and which, restored by the Mexican Government
under President Diaz, is an object of great interest to the
traveller--they looked down on the Plain of Otumba, and beheld
the forces of the Otomies drawn up in battle array against them.
These warriors wore armour of thick quilted cotton, which formed a
considerable protection against the rude weapons of the country,
and the Spaniards were now without firearms. They were so numerous
that, it is recorded, the plain "looked as if it were covered with
snow," from the white armour.

But the Christians routed them, and thus the Battle of Otumba
was one of the turning-points in New World history, as elsewhere
remarked.

Reinforced by the Tlascalans, Cortes returned to the siege of
the city. Fresh supplies of arms and ammunition had reached the
Spaniards from the coast, with horses and two hundred Spaniards sent
from Hispaniola. Cortes built a number of brigantines, which were
carried by the Indians to the lake in order to attack Tenochtitlan
by water as well as land. But the whole enterprise would have been
hopeless had not the other Mexican tribes, hating the Aztecs, joined
forces with the white men. The plan was to starve out the city on
the lake by laying waste the surroundings, for it was dependent upon
these for its food. To the dead Montezuma's place had succeeded
his nephew Guahtemoc, a noble Aztec prince, animated by the utmost
spirit of patriotism in defending the heritage of his forefathers.

       *       *       *       *       *

"A series of severe struggles began then, both by land and
water--burning, slaughter and the destruction of the lake towns.
The Aztecs, with their great number, raining darts and stones upon
the invaders at every engagement, attacked them with unparalleled
ferocity both by forces on shore and their canoes on the lake.
The Spaniards took heavy toll of the enemy at every turn, assisted
by their allies the Tlascalans, as savage and implacable as the
Aztecs, whom they attacked with a singular and persistent spirit
of hatred, the result of long years of oppression by the dominant
power of Anahuac. Cortes, on every occasion when it seemed that the
last chance of success might attend it, offered terms to the Aztec
capital, by no means dishonourable, assuring them their liberty and
self-government in return for allegiance to the Crown of Spain and
the renouncing of their abominable system of sacrificial religion.
These advances were invariably met by the most implacable negatives.
The Aztecs, far from offering to yield, swore they would sacrifice,
when the day was theirs, every Spaniard and Tlascalan on the bloody
altars of their gods; and as for entering into any treaty, the last
man, woman and child would resist the hated invaders until the last
drop of blood was shed and the last stone of their city thrown down.
This vaunt, as regards the latter part, was almost literally carried
out, and to some extent as regards the former.

"The siege operations were conducted vigorously both by land and
water. Again before the eyes of the Spaniards stretched that fatal
causeway--path of death amid the salt waters of Texcoco for so
many of their brave comrades upon the _Noche Triste_ of their
terrible flight from Tenochtitlan. And there loomed once more that
dreaded _teocalli_, whence the war-drum's mournful notes were
heard. Guarded now by the capable and persistent Guatemoc, the city
refused an offer of treaty, and invited the destruction which was to
fall upon it. From the _azoteas_, or roofs of their buildings and
temples, the undaunted Mexicans beheld the white-winged brigantines,
armed with those belching engines of thunder and death whose sting
they well knew: and saw the ruthless hand of devastation laying
waste their fair towns of the lake shore, and cutting off their
means of life.

"But the Spaniards had yet to learn to their cost the lengths of
Aztec tenacity and ferocity. It will be recollected that the city
was connected to the lake shores by means of four causeways, built
above the surface of the water; engineering structures of stone and
mortar and earth, which had from the first aroused the admiration
of the Spaniards. These causeways, whilst they rendered the city
almost impregnable from attack, were a source of weakness in the
easy cutting-off of food supplies, which they afforded to the
enemy. A simultaneous assault on all these approaches was organized
by the Spaniards, under Sandoval, Alvarado and Cortes himself,
respectively, whilst the brigantines, with their raking artillery,
were to support the attack by water, aided by the canoes of the
Tlascalan and Texcocan allies. A series of attacks was made by this
method, and at last the various bodies of Spaniards advanced along
the causeways and gained the city walls. But frightful disaster
befel them. The comparative ease with which they entered the city
aroused Cortes's suspicions; and at that moment, from the summit of
the great _teocalli_, rang out a fearful note--the horn of Guatemoc,
calling for vengeance and a concerted attack. The notes of the horn
struck some ominous sense of chill in the Spaniards' breasts, and
the soldier-penman, Bernal Diaz, who was fighting valiantly there,
says that the noise echoed and re-echoed, and rang in his ears for
days afterwards. The Spaniards, on this, as on other occasions,
had foolishly neglected to secure the breaches in the causeways as
they passed, or at least the rash Alvarado had not done so with his
command, his earlier lesson unheeded; and when the Christians were
hurled backwards--for their easy entrance into the great square of
the city had been in the nature of a decoy--disaster befel them,
which at one moment seemed as if it would be a repetition of that
of the _Noche Triste_. 'The moment I reached that fearful bridge,'
Cortes wrote in his dispatches, 'I saw the Spaniards returning in
full flight.' Remaining to hold the breech if possible, and cover
the retreat, the chivalrous Cortes almost lost his life from a
furious attack by the barbarians in their canoes, and was only
saved by the devotion of his own men and Indian allies, who gave
their lives in his rescue. Word, nevertheless, had gone forth among
the men that Cortes had fallen; and the savages, throwing before
the faces of Alvarado and Sandoval the bloody heads of decapitated
Spaniards, cried tauntingly the name 'Malintzin,' which was that
by which Cortes was known among the Mexicans. Men and horses rolled
into the lake; dead bodies filled the breaches; the Christians and
their allies were beaten back, and 'as we were all wounded it was
only the help of God which saved us from destruction,' wrote Bernal
Diaz. Indeed, both Cortes and the Spaniards only escaped, on these
and other occasions, from the Aztec's desire to take them alive for
sacrifice.

"Once more, after disastrous retreats and heavy loss, the bleeding
and discouraged Spaniards lay in their camp, as evening fell. Of
dead, wounded and captured, the Spaniards missed more than a hundred
and twenty of their comrades, and the Tlascalans a thousand, whilst
valuable artillery, guns and horses were lost. But listen! what is
that mournful, penetrating sound which smites the Christians' ears?
It is the war-god's drum, and even from where the Spaniards stand
there is visible a procession ascending the steps of the _teocalli_,
and, to their horror, the forms of their lost comrades are seen
within it: whose hearts are doomed to be torn out living from their
breasts to smoke before the shrine of Huitzilopochtli, the war-devil
of their enemies. From that high and fearful place their comrades'
eyes must be gazing with despairing look towards the impotent
Spanish camp, glazing soon in death as the obsidian knives of the
priests performed their fiendish work. The disastrous situation of
the Spaniards was made worse by the desertion, at this juncture,
of the Tlascalan and other allies. Awed by a prophecy sent out
confidently by the Aztec priests, that both Christians and allies
should be delivered into their hands before eight days had passed
(prophecy or doom, which the priests said, was from the mouth of the
war-god, appeased by the late victory), the superstitious Indians of
Cortes's forces sneaked off in the night.

"Continued reverses, in the face of long-continued action and desire
for the attaining a given end, forges in the finer calibre of mind
a spirit of unremitting purpose. Blow after blow, which would turn
away the ordinary individual from his endeavour, serves to steel
the real hero to a dispassionate and persistent patience, and the
purpose from its very intensity becomes almost a sacred cause, and
seems to obtain from the unseen powers of circumstance success
at last. So with Cortes and others of the Spaniards. The period
prescribed by the somewhat rash prophecy of the Aztec priests and
their infernal oracle having passed without anything remarkable
having taken place, the Tlascalan and Texcocan allies, upbraided and
warned by the Spaniards' messengers, now sneaked back to resume the
attack against the city. The Aztecs had sought to cause disaffection
in outlying places by sending round the bloody heads of decapitated
Spaniards and horses, but with little effect. Cortes then prepared
for a final effort. The plan adopted was to be slower but surer than
the former one of simple slaughter. It was determined to raze the
city to the ground; to destroy the buildings step by step, fill up
the canals, and so lay waste the whole area from the outside, so
that unobstructed advance might be maintained.

"The execution of this plan was begun. The city ends of the
causeways were captured and held; street after street was
demolished, and canal after canal filled up amid scenes of incessant
fighting and slaughter. Day after day the Spaniards returned to
their work; day after day with admirable tenacity the inhabitants
of Tenochtitlan disputed the ground inch by inch, watered with the
blood of themselves, their women and their children. Their supplies
cut off, famine and pestilence wrought more terrible havoc among
them--crowded as they gradually became into one quarter of the
city--than the arms of the Spaniards and the Tlascalans. At the
termination of each day's work the Spanish prepared an ambuscade
for the enemy, drawing them on by seeming to retire, and massacring
them with the artillery and gun-fire and lances, to say nothing
of the weapons of their savage allies. On one of these occasions
'the enemy rushed out yelling as if they had gained the greatest
victory in the world,' Cortes wrote in his dispatches, and 'more
than five hundred, all of the bravest and principal men, were
killed in this ambush.' He added, and it was a common occurrence,
'our allies'--the Indians--'supped well that night, cutting up and
eating their captives!' During the days of this terrible siege the
famous catapult was made, an extraordinary engine to discharge
great stones upon the enemy. This was to enable the Spaniards to
husband their powder, which was getting low, and the Aztecs watched
the construction of this machine with certain fear. It was completed
and set to work, but the builder, a Spanish soldier of inventive
faculty, nearly played the part of the engineer hoist with his
own petard, for the great stone fired rose, it is true, but went
straight up and descended again upon the machine, which was ever
afterwards the laughing-stock of the army.

"Further severe losses were now inflicted upon the beleaguered
inhabitants, as more ammunition had been obtained. Peace had again
been offered by the Spaniards, and again refused by the Aztecs. An
Aztec chief of high rank had been captured, and then returned to
Guatemoc as a peace envoy. The Mexicans' reply was to execute and
sacrifice the unfortunate emissary, and then collecting their forces
they poured out upon the causeways like a furious tide, which seemed
as if it would sweep all before it. But the Spaniards were prepared.
The narrow causeways were commanded by the artillery, which poured
such a deadly hail upon the enemy's numbers that they returned
fleeing to the city.

"And soon the end approaches. The division led by Cortes made a
fierce assault; and whilst the battle raged the Spaniards observed
that the summit of one of the _teocallis_ was in flames. It was the
work of Alvarado's men, who had penetrated already to the plaza.
Forces were joined, and the inhabitants of the city, driven into one
quarter thereof, still made their stubborn and--now--suicidal stand.
For the streets were piled up with corpses, the Aztecs refraining
from throwing the bodies of their slain into the lake, or outside
the city, in order not to show their weakness. Pestilence and famine
had made terrible inroads upon the population. Miserable wretches,
men, women and children, were encountered Wandering about careless
of the enemy, only bent upon finding some roots, bark or offal which
might appease the hunger at their vitals. The salt waters of the
lake, which they had been obliged to drink, for the Spaniards had
cut the aqueduct which brought the fresh water from Chapultepec,
had caused many to sicken and die. Mothers had devoured their dead
children; the bodies of the slain had been eaten, and the bark
gnawed from the trunks of trees. In their dire extremity some of the
chiefs of the beleaguered city called Cortes to the barricade. He
went, trusting that capitulation was at hand, for, as both he and
his historians record, the slaughter was far from their choosing.
'Do but finish your work quickly,' was the burden of their parley.
'Let us go and rest in the heaven of our war-god; we are weary of
life and suffering. How is it that you, a son of the Sun, tarry so
long in finishing, when the Sun himself makes circuit of the earth
in a day, and so accomplishes his work speedily?'

"This remarkable appeal struck renewed pity to the heart of
Cortes, and once more he begged them to surrender and avoid further
suffering, and the Spaniards drew off their forces for a space.
But the inexorable Guatemoc, although he sent an embassy to say he
would hold parley, and the Spaniards waited for him, did not fulfil
the promise at the last moment. Incensed at this behaviour, the
Spaniards and the Tlascalans renewed the attack with overpowering
energy on the one part and barbaric savagery on the other. Contrary
to the orders of the Spaniards, their savage allies gave no quarter,
but murdered men, women and children in fiendish exultation. The
stench of the dead in the beleaguered city was overpowering; the
soil was soaked with blood; the gutters ran as in a rain-storm,
say the chroniclers, and, wrote Cortes to the King of Spain: 'Such
slaughter was done that day on land and water that killed and
prisoners numbered forty thousand; and such were the shrieks and
weeping of women and children that there were none of us whose
hearts did not break.' He adds that it was impossible to contain the
savage killing and torturing by their allies the Tlascalans, who
practised such cruelty as had never been seen, and 'out of all order
of nature.'

"At nightfall the attacking forces drew off, leaving the remainder
of the inhabitants of the stricken city to consider their position.
It is stated that the Tlascalans made a great banquet of the flesh
of the fallen Aztecs, and that on this and other occasions they
fished up the bloated bodies of their enemies from the lake and
devoured them! At sunrise on the following day Cortes and a few
followers entered the city, hoping to have a supplication for
terms from Guatemoc. The army was stationed outside the walls,
ready, in the event of a refusal--the signal of which should be
a musket-shot--to pour in and strike the final blow. A parley
was entered into as before, which lasted several hours. 'Do you
surrender?' Cortes demanded. The final reply of Guatemoc was, 'I
will not come: I prefer to die where I am: do your worst.'

"A musket-shot rang out upon the air; the Spaniards and their allies
fell on to merciless slaughter: cannons, muskets, arrows, slings,
lances--all told their tale upon the huddled mass of panic-stricken
people, who, after presenting a feeble and momentary front, poured
forth upon the fatal causeways to escape. Drowned and suffocated in
the waters of the lake, mowed down by the fire from the brigantines,
and butchered by the brutal Tlascalans, women, children and men
struggled and shrieked among that frightful carnage; upon which
it were almost impious to dwell further. Guatemoc, with his wife
and children, strove to escape, and the canoe containing them
was already out upon the lake, when a brigantine ran it down and
captured him. All resistance was at an end. No sign of life or
authority remained among the ruined walls; the fair city by the
lake was broken and tenantless, its idols fallen, and its people
fled. The Homeric struggle was over; the conquest of Mexico was
accomplished."[10]

  [10] _Mexico_, loc. cit.

       *       *       *       *       *

Under the long rule of the viceroys that followed the Conquest,
Mexico lived her life in a mediaeval but often peaceful and not
unhappy state, and had Spain but understood her and developed the
resources of the land and protected her simple Indian folk instead
of exploiting them, and at the same time antagonizing the colonists,
there is no reason why a magnificent and permanent Spanish empire
should not have grown to being.

We have remarked elsewhere on the abundant mineral wealth of the
country. The great silver deposits of Guanajuato were discovered as
a result of a camp-fire made on the rocks by some muleteers, who
found refined silver among the ashes, which the heat had smelted
from them. The great "mother lode" here yielded up enormous wealth.
The pleasing city of Zacatecas to-day grew from another discovery
of silver ores, which produced a value, up to the middle of last
century, of nearly eight hundred million dollars. The curious
archives of these mines, which still exist, show how carefully the
Spaniards worked them. The Pachuca mines, which to-day are still
worked, yielded similar wealth, and it was here that the well-known
_patio_ or amalgamation process was discovered, with quicksilver
from Peru.

There are other centres, scarcely less important, well known to
the mineralogist. The mineral-bearing zone of Mexico is sixteen
hundred miles long, and yields nearly all the metals known to
commerce. Coal, however, is not a frequent product. The country
has been described as a paradise for the prospector. The mines are
innumerable: almost every hill is pierced or perforated by shafts
and galleries, ancient or modern; some are enormous tunnels, or
_socavones_.

[Illustration: CORDOVA AND THE PEAK OF ORIZABA. STATE OF VERA CRUZ.

  Vol. I. To face p. 132.]

The Mexican native miner is, in his way, expert and active, and with
rude appliances performs marvels in the work of ore extraction. Halt
a moment by yonder pit in the rocky slope. Look down: a notched pole
descends, upon which you would hesitate to venture, giving access
to the workings beneath. Yet, in a moment, perhaps, a peon, bearing
on his back an enormous load of rock in a hide or sack, will ascend
from the bowels of the earth, panting and groaning--we shall hear
the noise of his breathing before we see him. He will cast his load
at our feet, and from it will roll the gleaming quartz and pyrites,
with perhaps the red of the _rosicler_, or rich oxide ore of silver,
or the yellow ochres of the decomposed gold-bearing sulphides, more
readily prepared by Nature for treatment and winning of the yellow
metal. Or he may bear it to the stream-bed, there to treat it in
some primitive stone mill.

Otherwise we may visit huge modern mills where hundreds of stamps
are clanging and engines are winding and furnaces are burning, for
a host of these exist throughout the land, though disorder and
revolution may have suspended their operations.

Many curious products of the vegetable world attract our eyes.
Behold yonder stupendous cactus-trees--the organo cactus, whose
symmetrical spiny branches like a giant candelabrum, weighing
perhaps tons, with their mass of sappy foliage, arise from a single
stem, which could be brought down by a stroke of a _machete_, or
wood-knife--that formidable implement or weapon (made perhaps in
Birmingham) which the Mexican peon loves to wield or use. Look at
the marvellous giant leaves of the juicy _maguey_, or agave, as
long as a man, and see the peon insert his siphon to the heart of
the plant to draw forth its sap, which he blows into the goatskin
on his back, and from which he will presently make his _pulque_.
This plant, the great American aloe, comes into flower and dies in
a few years. It exhausts itself in flowering. In England we call it
the century plant, for the exotic lingers long in the unfavourable
climate, and with difficulty puts forth its blossoms at all. There,
too, are hedges and _circas_ of prickly-pear, or nopal, which yield
the delicious wild fig--the cactus familiar to the traveller in the
Holy Land and Syria, whence it was taken from Mexico.

In the coastal lands, as before remarked, the feathery coconut-palm
waves over the villages, and the elegant leaves of the banana form
refreshing groves, and the _cacao_ yields its stores of chocolate.
Lovers of this sweetmeat might hear the name of Mexico in gratitude
indeed, for is not the very name and product of Aztec origin--the
_chocolatl_ of the early folk here? In the tropic forests and
plantations the beautiful rubber, the _Castilloa elastica_-tree,
rears its stately foliage, and here, again, are we not indebted to
Mexico? Remember it, ye lovers of lawn tennis. For when the early
Spaniards arrived they found the Mexicans playing tennis, with balls
of rubber, in those curious courts whose ruins still remain in the
jungles of Yucatan.

Again, yonder flies the wild turkey. Was he not the progenitor of
that noble bird which comes upon our Christmas tables? Here, too,
is the _zenzontl_; or mocking-bird, and a host of gorgeous winged
creatures besides.

Through many a desert range and over many a chain of hills, violet
in the distance, alluring and remote; past many a sacred well or
hill marked by a cross, hard by the paths worn by the generations
of bare or sandalled feet we may pass; and here, perchance, by
some spring stands a startled native maid, her _olla_, or great
water-pitcher, on her shoulder--stands in classic but unwitting
pose. Or through the heat a mounted vaquero rides upon his
attenuated mule or horse--for the equine race works hard and eats
little here, but bit, spur and the bridle are his till the day he
leaves his bones upon the trail--and, "Buenos dias, señor," with
doffed hat the horseman gives us as he passes, with ever-ready
Mexican courtesy to the foreigner; or he did so until of recent
times, when, for reasons we need not here dilate upon, the
foreigner has come to be regarded with anything but friendship.

There was always a charm about this old land of Mexico; there
still is, despite its recent turbulent history. Small wonder that
foreigners in increasing numbers loved to make their life in its
quaint towns, to take up land and industry within it.

Of these towns we cannot speak here; Guadalajara, Puebla, Oaxaca
and many another invite us to their pleasing streets and ancient
buildings. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from north to south,
they are dispersed over the wide area of the Republic.

The southern, or rather easternmost States of Mexico are, as regards
their landscape and life, often of peculiar interest, mainly by
reason of the more tropical surroundings and the large rivers, such
as those that flow into the Gulf of Campeche, in Vera Cruz and
Tabasco.

Typical of these rivers are the Grijalva and the Usumacinta. In
places lined by dark forests, the banks elsewhere open out to permit
of plantations of bananas, tobacco, maize, pineapples, rubber and so
forth, and an occasional village, its white walls gleaming among the
foliage, the roofs thatched with palm, gives the human touch thereto.

Ascending the river in a slow stern-wheel steamer, we remark an
occasional canoe, laden with skins and other produce, or moored
inshore whilst its occupants are fishing in the plentifully stocked
waters. There are great trees festooned with masses of moss and with
trailing lianas, where monkeys play by day and from whence at night
their howling falls on the ear. The white heron and aigret, whose
snowy plumage is so valuable an article of commerce, startled by the
passage of the boat, sail gracefully away to the bends of the river,
and flocks of parrots, similarly disturbed, scream their defiance,
whilst wild ducks and cranes and birds of the brightest plumage are
in sight at every moment. The alligators, large and small, that
throng the shoals project their grotesque forms into the water,
offering a mark to the gun of the idle huntsman.

In the flower world Nature is often gorgeously arrayed here. Pure
white lilies lie at the base of flowering trees that rise in a mass
of bloom for forty feet or more, of a profusion and beauty almost
inconceivable. The queen of the banks, the stately coco-palm,
carries its load of nuts, waiting for nothing but the gatherer of a
harvest provided by Nature. Here, too, is the cinchona-tree, with
its bright, smooth red trunk and branches and rich green leaves,
offering its virtues of quinine bark. The arnica plant, with its
daisy-like yellow flowers, and the morning glory of rich and
brilliant hue abound, and the orchids--"not the dwarfed product of
a northern hothouse, but huge, entrancing, of the richest browns,
the tenderest greens, the most vivid reds and the softest yellow,
sometimes as many as half a dozen upon one tree"--decorate the
decayed trunks of the trees. There are, too, natural plantations of
wild pineapples, and many fruits besides.

A good deal of land in these regions is capable of cultivation, and,
extremely fertile, yields profitable returns. But means of transport
are, of course, defective, although the rivers offer long lines of
communication. The Indians do not love work, except inasmuch as such
may fill their own small requirements, for in so bountiful a region
Nature supplies them with many things necessary for life, which a
very few hours' labour will supplement for a whole year. There is
rivalry between the established planters for the available labour,
and peonage is largely carried out.

In Yucatan, the labour system upon the plantations of the Mexican
millionaire hemp-growers of the peninsula has been described as
little more than slavery by some writers. But great wealth and
some measure of progress have resulted from this special Yucatan
industry, and Merida, the capital city, shows these elements in
marked degree.

The Yucatan peninsula is a curious limestone plain, originally
covered, and still covered in great part, with tropical jungle,
riverless, but with underground streams. The water was used by
the ancient builders of the Maya cities here, whose beautifully
sculptured palaces and pyramid temples are among the chief
archæological wonders of Spanish America. They constructed wells
adjacent to the buildings--the curious _cenotes_, or sacred wells.

The lore of these silent, buried temples, over-run by the jungle,
the haunt now of wild creatures, is fascinating in its mystery.
Some observers have likened their details of the façades of these
structures to Hindu temples, others to Egyptian, and so forth,
whilst others stoutly proclaim them to be of purely autochthonous
culture.[11] This culture area, we have already seen, extended into
Guatemala.

  [11] Vide _Mexico_, loc. cit.

To turn for a moment now to the Pacific coast of Mexico, this
presents its own special points of interest. From hence may have
come the Toltecs originally, with their wonderful native knowledge
and stone-shaping arts, among famous objects of whose handiwork is
the famous Calendar Stone, to be seen in the Museum of Mexico. This
remarkable stone shows the early Mexicans to have had a more exact
division and calculation of solar time than their contemporaries,
the cultured nations of Europe. However, the principal Toltec
remains are not upon the Pacific coast, but at Tula, on the Plateau,
which appears to have been their ancient capital.

Upon the long Pacific coastline Mexico possesses several important
seaports, to some of which access may be gained by railway, and
many picturesque places rarely heard of by the outside world,
together with vast areas of fruitful land and valuable forests.
This littoral, indeed; forms a region which must some day take its
place in the economy of the globe. The long peninsula of Lower
California, forming an isolated part of Mexico, is in many respects
remarkable, and into the head of the Gulf flows the Colorado River,
with many peculiar characteristics.

What we have here said as to the topography of Mexico, with its
beautiful mountains, rivers, archæological remains, cities and so
forth, is little more than an index to a vast field of interest,
which, however, must be studied elsewhere. We are now bidden to
cast a further glance at the people who have their being upon the
diversified surface of the Republic.

A small proportion only of the Mexicans are white--perhaps ten per
cent. The remainder are of varying shades of brown. But there is no
"colour line," although, naturally, the purest European blood is
found among the upper and governing classes.

However, the brown race has produced some of the best of Mexico's
people. The famous Juarez, the lawyer-president who preceded Diaz,
and who was responsible for some of the most important measures of
reform, was a pure Indian by birth, and Diaz himself was proud of
his partly aboriginal ancestry. In fact, it cannot be said that
there is any dividing line in the composition of the Mexicans. The
bulk of the people are thus of _mestizo_ or mixed race, but there
are various districts where only pure Indians are found.

The working population of the country, perhaps three-quarters of
the total, are peones. Peonage is a state of what might be termed
debt-bondage. They dwell upon the great landed estates, dependent
for their livelihood upon the owners of these, unable to leave them,
and are paid their small wage largely in goods under a species
of "truck system." They are often purposely kept in debt. Their
economic condition is a low one. They own nothing of the land upon
which they dwell; they carry on occupations which are not profitable
to themselves, and are subjected to many abuses in this respect;
they dwell in _adobe_, or dried mud huts, generally of the poorest
kind; their food is of the most primitive, and often scanty--meat
is an article which rarely enters into their diet; if a cow dies on
the plain they cut it up for food--but nevertheless they labour hard
from 

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