They had no poets with them, only brutal soldiers and vulgar priests. They were even capable of burning these innocent Indians alive, and proposed, as a lesson in their Christianity, to burn two hundred of them at once in one day. Even that was waste of time when the question of gold was in the mind. Behold, a clever Indian has started the story of Golden Quivira, and will lead Coronado a thousand miles further into the desert, away from Cibola which asks only to be left in peace.
The Spaniards in Southern Mexico found gems innumerable and gold without price, and they obliterated without a thought Aztec culture. But in the North they found nothing but sand and cactus, and so left the Indians for the most part at peace.
So to-day at the "center of the earth" the Shalecos still come down from the mountains and dance for the children of Cibola. We watched them till dawn—then we returned to our room. Emily, our little Zunyi hostess, was sleeping in my blanket on the floor, and was alarmed and about to get up again when she saw us return, but I gently put her back on the floor and patted her on the cheek so that she settled down to sleep again. The rest of us lay down on the floor in the miscellany of blankets and wraps and slept as we could for an hour or two till the sun came up. For it had been a tiring night, even for us who merely looked on.
Only next noon did I encounter Wilfrid Ewart, though he also had been pilgrimaging from room to room and dance to dance the night long. Which shows how much was happening in Zunyi when two friends could thus miss one another all night.
"What happens to-day?" he asked of a tall friendly Indian standing bareheaded in the snow.
"Shaleco go way back up into the mountains. Not come for another year," said he playfully. "Way up ... and no come for another year. Next year Shaleco come again."
And in a little while the six Shaleco Birds came out of the houses and crossed the river, and the Longhorns came, and the Firegod, and the one I call the Child of Dawn, and they danced in the snow which had melted under the noonday sun and in the mud. First the Longhorns danced alone. Then they returned to the pueblo and its streets and roofs, and smote men and women on their backs; once, thwack, twice, thwack, whilst the fleet-footed Shalecos danced by the river's edge.
Hundreds of men and women watched from the house tops of the pueblo. Over a hundred horsemen, with gay kerchiefs about their brows, stood on the further side of the river with the Shalecos, and five or six cars with American sightseers were drawn up also. The mighty mountains, the Butte and the Twin Butte, immemorially sacred, looked down at the scene across the snows. Then the Longhorns returned from smiting the village and danced again with the great strange Shaleco birds. The hundred horsemen suddenly galloped away toward the mountains, and Shalecos and Longhorns began to move rapidly away from the pueblo. And I stood with Wilfrid Ewart in the snow and shine of that fair afternoon and watched them fade from our eyes.
"Shaleco has gone away to the mountains. Shaleco not come again for another year," said I softly, echoing the Indian.
"By Jove!" cried Wilfrid, as if waking from a reverie. "That was fine. This has been the best of it all—"
And then Wilfrid had to go. For he was one in a crowd in a car. And I was left behind when almost every one else had gone.
And at night I saw the Mudheads dance again, this time without their masks, and showing their true features. Two old men stood, one each side of the sacred shrine, and balanced eagle feathers while they danced, now and then dipping the feathers in the sacred meal. The drum men beat the drums and hallooed, and the brown men danced and perspired. The Shalecos, alas, were gone. The Mudheads had become ourselves, now repentant and prayerful and asking blessings from the Bird.
Its discovery was part of the fruitless quest of El Dorado by Coronado—the greatest hole in the world and nothing in it. He had hoped to find another Mexico in the North and despoil it of its jewels. Like the Vandal he was, he plunged into the American Sahara to loot another Rome. Cibola and Quivira were his glittering dreams. He rode in all two thousand miles, cactus and alkali-whitened plains all the way. He fought not men but deserts; instead of storied Cibola he found the mud huts of the Zunyi Indians, rich only in their personal adornments of turquoise and silver; and instead of fantastic Quivira with princes in golden armor, he found near the great bend of the Arkansas River, the tent dwellers of what is now Wichita. The mirage of El Dorado appeared constantly before him and his followers. His horsemen wandered in many directions seeking tidings of gold or of kingdoms to conquer. And one of them came, as was inevitable, to the great gap in the earth hundreds of miles long, leagues across, leagues as it seemed downward, the Cañon del Grande, and the descent of it was as a descent to the hidden heart of the world. It added one more fantastic page to the story of the King of Spain's new lands wherein "of antres vast and deserts idle" much was spoken.
Geologists do not agree as to the number of thousands of years ago the accident occurred which made the Cañon. We shall, therefore, appear pathetically human in our narrow gaze if we say, "Now nearly four hundred years have passed since the Spaniards discovered it." There are dwellings of cave men on the northern cliff, inaccessible as the nests of the white eagles who stare from the ledges. And yet it does mean something to us living now that it is nearly four hundred years since our civilization took cognizance of the Grand Cañon, this bit of chaos left over at the creation of the world.
We have tamed Niagara with power houses, and they have put lunch counters among the branches of the giant trees of California. Nearly all the natural wonders of America have been altered. But the Grand Cañon remains changeless and unchangable. It is true it has become a wonder gaze for tourists, a "stop-over" 'twixt Los Angeles and Chicago. But there is nothing in that. Ninety-six in every hundred of those who visit the Cañon merely look at it, go along the rim, spend a night at the railway hotel, and resume their journey next day. But four in a hundred venture down into the abyss.
After going to Cibola Ewart and I decided to leave this part of the country, but before departing we went to the Grand Cañon together. So with knapsacks on our shoulders we left New Mexico for the wilderness of Northern Arizona. And we determined to walk down into the depths of the Cañon, from the snow and ice of the dreadful plateau down to flowers blooming and gentle airs.
Early one morning in December, therefore, we stood on the verge, and in its sublimity its first awful grandeur was disclosed; its gigantic abysses and gray-green pyramids, its rosy, castellated heights gleaming with sunshine.
"Some hole in the wall, I'll say," cried a Mr. Babbitt, consuming a "stack of hot cakes" at the Harvey lunch counter. "Me to hike it down there—not ... on ... your ... life!"
The trail is heavily frosted, steep and narrow. It is even difficult to stop oneself in the first slides that are strides. Both of us sat down suddenly and unpremeditatedly once or twice. We held on to scrub and jagged rock, footing the snow gingerly.
But something of magic had taken us. The rock walls in long slabs looked at us, came up to us, stared at us. There was a new morning silence in which occasionally we heard the wings of tiny birds fluttering. As it were climbing the outer stairway or stone spiral of some great dungeon or keep built on a mighty rock—so we looked out over abysses, and were granted at moments unexpected views of frowning and dreadful cliffs. The eyes spoke to the mind of vaster surfaces and greater bulks of rock than it yet had known. And an intellectual perspective was obtained.
Going downward rapidly we met trees made tiny, and they started to our feet like feathers. Rocks which from above had been merely formalized bulks gained in character as if we were approaching drawbridges of fantastic castles. Old red pyramids torn by the ages stood before us in awful actuality, exhibiting the myriad scars and crusts of time.
The trail, an Indian one, was there before the Spaniards came, for the Indians used it and walked it nearly a hundred miles. But it is improved now and made safe for the tourist on a mule—safer still for the man upon his feet. The descent is naturally rapid. One strides over hundreds, over thousands of feet, which it is labor indeed to climb up. One moment one is facing the great cream and pale green fissured wall of the upper limestone, the "key stone," as it is called. At the next breathing space you are below that and facing red cliff which develops before the downward-going eyes into a mighty wall, whilst the cream rock is left far above you, a cliff in the sky.
At three thousand feet below, all the cold airs have gone; there are green leaves on the trees. The flowers of the willow herb have gone to seed but the leaves are tender. Japanese sunflowers are still poised blooming in the sunshine, and where spring water comes freshening from rock walls the gentle violet snuggles and is at home.
But we come out on an exposed plateau, above the madly rushing Colorado River but below the main masses of the ravine. Between wall and wall of the Cañon rise gigantic isolated rocks as if there were a city built in the trough of the river. Rim to rim the gap is sixteen miles across—so there is "verge enough and ample space" for adamantine temples, pavilions and towers. The plateau is bowlder-strewn and only enlivened by the irislike yucca stems and by small pink cactus and prickly pear. On our left is an appalling great red fortress of stone whose sheer wall cuts across the life light of the zenith; on our right and below us is the rock cleavage of the hidden Colorado River; whilst above us in a seraphically serene noonday bask the domes of isolated rocks fantastically named and yet happily named too—the Temple of Shiva, the Temple of Isis, the Temple of Buddha.
On the left as we walk on, comes into view, far aloft, a cream-colored sky castle, all happy in the sun. But, lowering the eyes, there resumes its sway the fortress whose great wall we are turning, and we begin to see its vast, blood-red and green base. We walk into a cold shadow which seems as substantial as the rocks themselves, and we cross the broad stony scarp of precipitous cliffs, going downward, till we come right under what seems an ancient castle—out of fairyland or the England of the Mort d'Arthur, a quadrilateral of blood in a hideous pool of darkness.
But no giant sallied forth with blood-stained ax. No one is at home in any fortress, castle, tower, or temple—no more than in the rooms of the stone and mud-closed caves of the cliff dwellers. Not even a tourist—no, not a mule. Only certainly wild asses in great numbers wherever there is any pasture, uncatchable donkeys who sneeze at you at the most unexpected moments.
Ewart and I sat by a spring at noon and rested and talked whilst the tumbling water spoke to us also, and we boiled a pot over dry weeds and bits of cactus later on and had our lunch. It was a happy moment—there was a sense of escape, as if we had gone to Southern California or Mexico and got away from the rigorous winter of the exalted deserts of the South.
"By George!" Ewart cried, "I nearly took a toss up above. What have you on your boots; I have nails."
I had rubber on mine.
"Yes, I could not get a foothold on that ice; I was reduced to hands and knees."
"Curious, they say they have had no human accidents here. The last accident was when eight horses yoked together and laden with T. N. T. went over the brink and fell a sheer five hundred feet."
"I did not hear of that."
"Yes, one of the horses was new to the Cañon and proved unruly. He fouled his neighbor and he slipped over the side, pulling all seven horses after him."
"That must have been a terrible splash."
"But the T. N. T. did not explode."
"No!"
"The horses were all killed instantaneously though; they jumped right out of their skins."
"You'd think the Grand Cañon would tempt suicides. It's a certain and sudden death. Dramatic and spectacular too!"
"Too much time for reflection and meditation before you get here," I hazarded. "The man coming to commit suicide changes his mind before he gets here and goes down on a mule instead."
Ewart laughed.
"You are a fellow who ought to be cautious," I said after a while.
"Why specially?"
"Because I don't think, strictly speaking, that you are over lucky. You are a person who has bad accidents. I've known you in three, any of which might have cost you your life."
"Well, I don't know," said Ewart. "I'd say I was lucky. I've come through the war and two motor accidents, and escaped with my life up till now."
He jumped nervously.
"Oh!" he cried unexpectedly. "Uberufen!" and turned round him to find a piece of wood to touch.
But there was no wood handy. We were in a woodless ravine. He seemed quite anxious and snatched at a piece of dead cactus.
I laughed heartily.
"What do you mean by 'Uberufen'?" I cried.
"I think one ought not to be too sure," said Wilfrid solemnly.
"What a fix, to be in a place with no wood to touch," said I mirthfully. "Supposing under such circumstances one was to touch one's head, implying modestly that it was the nearest thing to wood one could find, do you think the Fate that watches over us would be appeased?"
Ewart smiled.
We talked of President Wilson who was superstitiously unsuperstitious. An extraordinary thing; he did things for preference on the thirteenth of the month, sat down thirteen to dinner, sailed on the thirteenth of the month in cabin No. Thirteen, all of set purpose.
He has turned out to be frightfully unlucky—we agreed.
"Time to make a move now, if we're going to reach a shelter for the night. What do you think?"
Again we lifted our knapsacks and footed it across the stones—to rose-red mountains and cream and green pavilions of stone. Next time we sat to rest and to share an orange together we faced as it were an encampment of all the mountains. There were giant steps from the Northern heights down, down to the black river, and there was the sound of rivers running in the rocks like many rats. We walked to the great slides which overtopped the waters, to the hundred ledges of the serried gray rock which makes the river's bed. Then we passed into vast mountain chambers where, despite company, you felt you were alone whilst judges and distributors of dooms considered you.
Afternoon grew to dusk of evening, and the trail was harder to keep. Monument Creek rushed from underground its short course to the receiving Colorado. We were baffled with the way. Sunset rays far above made roseate the peaks and the ridges but rapidly faded down below, as if light would not carry to us. And night closed sharply in, with starlight and a swelling magnificence of all that was material in the womb of the earth.
Our quest had then become the Hermit Cabin or Camp, as it is called, a place wherein to spend the night. Darkness almost hid the vague Tonto trail, and the way as we traced it grew much wilder. There were many slippery rocks and queer drops which it seemed to us not even a mule could have taken.
We began to think not unhappily of a night in a cave or under some overhanging ledge of the cliff, when far away we espied a lost light that flickered uncertainly in the darkness. That indubitably must be the little rest house on the fast running Hermit River, and we took heart from the light and made for it.
We came to the door and no dog barked. All was utterly silent. We opened the door and faced a man and his wife who were working at a kitchen table on which was spread the most unlikely things to find at the bottom of the Grand Cañon—sugarplums, yes, bright red, green, and yellow squares of candy dusted with white sugar. In their spare time in the long winter evenings the keeper and his spouse made these sugarplums from the pith of the cactus and sold them later for a fair reward. For cactus candy is a good sweet, one made by the Indians before the white man came.
So we dined with the keeper and were given candy for dessert. And we listened to many curious tales of the Cañon and admired the skins of the wild cats the keeper had shot. Then we walked out into the balmy night air, and looked up to the flame points of the stars and the golden lines of their rays. The moon came up slowly from behind some vast black prison wall of stone, and she dimmed the stars. Then the grandeur of moonlight filled the Cañon as it were a precious basin. We slept down below moon and stars and crags upon a happy earth, and all night long the temples of Shiva and Isis and Buddha and the blood-red castle and the white cliff palaces stared into the Arizona sky. And we heard no coyote cry nor felt one chill breath of the snowland above us.
Next day the naked light of dawn lighted up stark cliffs and jagged sky pointers and the green cabins of Hermit Camp under their yellow umbrellas of wilted aspens. And we climbed up from the depth into the cold heights once more. The mountains on all hands grew up with us as we climbed, and towered above and were measured by us, and sank at last beneath us and remained down in the gap with the rushing river and the silences that are below. We looked down at sunset four thousand feet from the rim to the river, and we reflected that in a way the Cañon had possessed us wholly and we in our hearts possessed only part of it. It voided us out at the top, it plumbed our hearts, it took away our breaths, it turned the last page of the word books of our minds.
Returning from Grand Cañon we discussed plans for the coming year. Ewart had his Scots Guards history, which he ought to finish by the summer, and then he was going North to the Canadian Line, and proposed to make a study of the relationship of the two peoples, Canadian and American, for a book to be called "The Unguarded Line." I had in mind to go to Mexico, continuing this study of the quest of El Dorado along the traces of Cortes' conquest. The severity of the Santa Fe winter decided Ewart against staying there any longer, and he yearned to go with me to Mexico. Against the latter I dissuaded him. He had the weight of the history on his mind, as something which must be done, must be got over, for he had contracted to do it. He said he would take the history with him and do it there. But I felt Mexico too unsafe a place for him to be in by himself. He did not know any Spanish and therefore would be taken for a "Gringo" and treated accordingly by a people who had the reputation of being extremely disobliging. Ewart, however, was about equally drawn to New Orleans, which for long had been a city of romance to him, a place he certainly wanted to know. There he could live very well till the spring and then, if he wished, return to Santa Fe. We would all return to Santa Fe in the spring and have some last gallops over the desert before the summer. Ewart decided to go to New Orleans.
The immediate problem was the bestowal of our horses. Ewart referred the matter to Cowboy Pete, a near neighbor, asking him if he would like the use of a horse for the rest of the winter, or if he would like to buy a horse.
The cowboy was abusive and amusing.
"Do I want your powny? I tell yer the on-y way I'd take that thar broom-tail o' yourn would be with a twenty-dollar bill tied round his neck. The best thing you can do is put a brand on him, then take him up the mountains and leave him there. Turn him loose, I tell yar! Then if you come back in the spring and find him, why, you've got a horse, see; but if not, why, you've saved the price of his feed. If he's a sturdy powny he'll last out the winter or-right. But I tell you, right now, I can buy pownies like that o' yourn by the carload at five dollars apiece just now. No one has any use for pownies in the winter, cost more'n they're worth in feed. Tell yar straight I wouldn't give him hell room on the ranch. But put a brand on him—a new brand—and take him up the mountains."
Cowboy Pete spoke very loudly, evidently under the impression that Ewart was deaf, for the Englishman had a habit of asking questions twice. I stood by and interpreted the one to the other.
Ewart, however, did not trust to the idea of abandoning George among the snows, though it is a customary way of keeping horses in the winter in New Mexico. He had paid twenty-five dollars for him, and he thought he ought eventually to get some of it back. He therefore sedulously sought buyers. At length he struck a deal with a Mexican hauler of wood. George was to be delivered up for twelve and a half dollars.
"If only you could have been there," said Ewart afterwards. "I led old George down the street and was about to hand him over when the Mexican's brother came flying out of a cottage and started to abuse George in Spanish, finding every imaginable fault in him. I said he had carried the poet hundreds of miles without misadventure before I bought him but other Mexicans joined in the dispute and I was obliged to let George go for ten. The last I saw of him he was hauling wood on Palace Avenue."
My wife and I had become more attached to our horses, having had them longer and done more on them, and the idea of parting with them made us very sad. Only on the very last night did I part with Billy, and Buck went a day or so before. We found good homes for both of them, and I believe the happy life they had with us continues still, as friends bestride them.
Just before Christmas then we parted from Santa Fe, Ewart some days ahead of us for New Orleans and we for Mexico City. We expected to meet in the spring or summer in the States once more, and little imagined as we said good-by that we should be reunited at the end of the year and then separated, as it were, forever.
MEXICO
Mexico is a country marked for conquest. It is no doubt the most romantic country of the New World but its history has been the most sordid. It is gilded with tales of fortune and wonder. Even its sunsets must seem of a more marvelous coloring than those of other shores. It has been, and is, a land of riches. And it has for that reason attracted the violence of mankind. Even before the Spaniards came Mexico lived in a state of war. Empire had succeeded Empire. The crushing of the Aztecs by Cortes was not a surprise to the Indians; they fully expected some new race to come out of the horizon and destroy them as they themselves had destroyed others. The difference between warfare with the Spaniard and warfare before the Spaniard came was that the former was more racial and less covetous. Certainly there never had been a people with such a craving for gold as the bearded men of Cortes. Their passion for it was cited by Aztecs as a reason for disbelieving in their supposed divine origin. They could do without women but they could not go without gold. Though they seemed able to command the lightning were they not slaves of the yellow metal?
Gold as presents they took greedily. When presents ceased they took it by demand, and then by robbery. They tortured Indians to learn secrets of hidden treasure, burned noble enemies alive; they fought one another. Their love of it was stronger than their loyalty to one another. When they had got it they hid it for fear of being dispossessed of it, and when they had hidden it they lost it. And then others sought for it and fought for it. Gold was most freely mingled with Spanish blood.
The story of the quest of the gold is of the primitive kind that belongs not so much to economics and politics as to the child's picture novel. No doubt it can still cause a thrill in the pirate blood of many a grown man. But the interest is now gloriously fictional. Mexico is still a land of gold, but you no longer go there like Ali Baba or Cassim, with sacks. Now, somewhere or other, you have to get that prized oro over a bank counter. There is no great difference in the result, except that you may get more gold and lose less blood than in the old days, but, oh, the difference in the manner, in the style of getting it!
It seems incongruous to think of the mining enterprises, oil concessions, and trading concerns of to-day as carrying on the tradition of the Conquistadores of Spain. Nevertheless it is so; there are armies and navies behind the trade and there is policy correlating the significance of the whole.
One of the most profitable wars in history was that of 1848 by which the United States obtained the greater part of her mineral wealth of to-day, the gold of California, the silver of Nevada, the copper of Arizona. It is true that had these vast territories remained in the control of the Mexican people they would not have been exploited to the extent that they are now. The new, stirring civilization of California could hardly have sprung into existence. Under Mexican rule there would have been no new Western Universities, but no doubt there would have been new battlefields instead. On the other hand, if the United States had taken over the vast metalliferous State of Chihuahua as well, what wealth would be coming forth of it now!
Instead of wealth starting from the State of Chihuahua, revolutions start from there. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the wealth-seeking population of the United States should feel some urge to change political turbulence into productive peace.
The whole of Mexico is a great treasure cave for those who know the words which open the door. The Mexicans clearly do not know, or they have forgotten, the word. Instead of saying "Open Sesame" they say "Open Bloodvessels," or some such impolite cacophony. They say very loudly, "Make the Foreigner Pay," and things of that sort, but it does not open the door. President Obregon has said, rather pathetically, that Mexico is capable of sustaining a population of one hundred millions instead of the poverty-stricken fifteen millions which now inhabit it. And he has pointed out the paradox that the richest country in the world has the poorest people. Mexico and Russia are somewhat alike in this respect; in both cases the lands are marvelously rich and the people incredibly poor. But if they wish to be rich there is only one way, and that is to find the means of unlocking the potential treasures of the land. To the Anglo-Saxon that seems a simple matter—quit fighting, begin working, cultivate honesty, educate the illiterate, enforce the laws. But to the Mexican that seems to be psychologically impossible.
I believe that in time the United States will finish her conquest of Mexico. The conquest is being now furthered by peaceful penetration and partially thwarted by a revolutionary government and by the powerful character of General Obregon. Whether the conquest will be consummated ultimately by force of arms depends largely on the behavior of the politicians and generals fighting amongst themselves.
The speculative mind may pause on the thought of the material grandeur of the United States when it gets Mexico fairly going. The gold of the world is largely massed at Washington even now—the rich people of the world are the Americans. America is the greatest organized unity of peoples and unity of resources—she is already capable of initiating, if she wished, a world policy which no other nation dare dream of. But with the realization of the Mexican Ophir there will no longer be any quest of El Dorado. El Dorado will be discovered and identified. El Dorado will be the North American continent from Panama to the "Unguarded Line." El Dorado will be America.
It came as a pleasant surprise, upon entering Mexican territory, to receive gold coins in exchange for paper money. Mexico since 1920 has had a gold and silver currency and no bank notes. All the depreciated paper has been withdrawn from circulation, and there is that much wealth in the Estados Unidos Mexicanos which obtains in no European country to-day, a stability of the value of money.
One certainly feels as if one had in one's possession something real—with a pocketful of handsome gold pieces. The bright silver peso is rather heavy in the pocket, it is true, but one does not soon tire of looking at the coinage and rejoicing in it. When one has traveled round Europe with locally printed francs and wads of worthless crowns and marks, and even in the United States with its many shredded and grease-stricken one-dollar bills, one feels a due astonishment that Mexico in one respect is showing the world its way. Unfortunately however the new "Bank of Issue" is to begin printing bank-notes again very soon.
The ten-peso piece with "Independencia y Libertad" cut into its unmilled edge reminds of the Russian ten-rouble bits. But the Mexican twenty pesos, worth two guineas or ten dollars, is a beautiful and distinctive gold piece with its impress of the elaborate and detailed "Calendar Stone" of the Aztecs.
Mexico has triumphed over the currency trouble, but like Europe and the United States she still has the passport disease, requiring photographs and fees before you enter the land. The United States, however, has exerted her power and influence to remove this obstruction as far as her own nationals are concerned. American citizens go back and forth at will without show of visa. The British Foreign Office could achieve the same result, but is, I am told, too idle. It may seem a small matter to those who do not travel, but it is an undoubted convenience. The sudden demand for photographs often delays the British traveler twenty-four hours at El Paso or Laredo. And he naturally asks himself why he should pay ten shillings while his American neighbor gets in free.
For us these matters were arranged at El Paso. Here my wife and I spent a few days, met Duncan Aikman working on the El Paso Times, and with his hospitable assistance we viewed the frontier city. I learned from him that Wilfrid Ewart had broken his journey to New Orleans at this point and had decided to take a ten-day trip into Mexico. The tickets of the Southern Pacific Railroad give travelers special facilities for doing that. It enables Americans to get a drink if they wish. Ewart, I found, had bought a round trip ticket to take him to Mexico City and then back to Texas by a different route—by San Luis Potosi and Laredo.
I at once felt some apprehension for my friend. "I do hope he comes to no harm," I exclaimed.
"He'll be all right," said Aikman. "I have given him an introduction to the Governor of Chihuahua, General Enriquez. Mexico has become much quieter."
I was much struck by the contrast between El Paso and the Spanish city opposite it. El Paso grows and spreads on the desert like some super cactus barbed with every barb of civilization. It is amazing in its artificiality, its unwontedness. I have been in frontier cities between the Turkestan Desert and Mongolia—low, squalid, utterly unblessed by God or man. But El Paso on the Mexican line is nothing like them. The sidewalks of New York and Chicago are continued there; the line of their housetops against the Texas sky barely attenuates.
But opposite El Paso, on the southern side of the Rio Grande, is El Paso's opposite, la Ciudad de Juarez. There is only a bridge between, a mere thirty or forty yards of wood and iron—Mexico one side, America the other; Mexican squalor on one hand, American civilization in full blast on the other. The three-minutes' transition as you walk across the muddy Rio is surely one of the most surprising in the New World. The road is level, but you step down as into an abyss.
In the United States city is every sign of wealth and self-respect, of militant commerce and the rewards and aims of trade. Schools, theaters, churches vie with one another to raise the population and magnify the name of the city and the fame of America. The newspapers cry the news of the day and the El Paso Times seems no whit less vigorous or informed than the Tribune of Chicago itself. The hotels of El Paso, the luxurious Paso del Norte, the commodious Sheldon, are grandiose in charge and style. No drummer from another city needs to walk along a corridor for his bath. And as for restaurants there seems to be a sort of special El Paso chic. They infallibly bring you finger bowls, and no El Pasoan drinks from one by mistake. But without a jest, one fares better and is treated with more dignity in an El Paso café than in New York.
The air of El Paso is pure, the roads are clean, there are no hobos sitting in the little park where its alligators live under the fountain, the business men wear ironed clothes, their gait is dignified and steady except, perhaps, when coming from the direction of the Juarez bridge. What more can one say? El Paso is real genuine United States. And the fort above it with its barracks and soldiers worships the Stars and Stripes no more than does the business world below.
But walk across that little bridge and the vision is gone. You have more effectually left Uncle Sam than if you had spent a week on the Atlantic doing so. You are in Europe. You have left the banner of Kansas behind and are with the publicans and sinners once again.
Loungers, beggars, drunken men, saloons, gambling houses, dust and stink, moldering mud houses and poor wooden cabins give the first impression of Mexico in the North. Directly you cross the bridge the beggars, as in Spain itself, are whining and extending arms. Of course as one goes further there is a Cathedral and a bull ring, and there are some large American shops. An American trolley car comes out of El Paso, crosses that bridge, circles through Juarez like a figure-skater, and goes out again into America by another bridge, and the steel lines hypnotize one to follow back to the comfortable States.
The city of Juarez has, however, a bad name which is somewhat exaggerated. Vice by repute is generally magnified. Juarez and the other gate-city of old Laredo are both called the Monte Carlo of Mexico. There are columns in the press devoted to tales of their wickedness. There is said to be a large sale of cocaine and opium and that many young people are under the influence of these drugs. As for alcoholic drink there is no question but that in Juarez excessive quantities are taken. There has been much bootlegging on a large and petty scale. So many night excursions by aëroplane have been made by Americans that the Mexican Government has equipped an aërial fleet to police the frontier. Government prohibition agents of the United States have recommended that Mexico be asked to consent to the establishment of a "Dry Zone" all along the Border. President Obregon, when asked about this, said Mexico would welcome the establishment of such a zone, as he felt it humiliating that Americans, unable to satisfy their vicious cravings in America, should come to Mexico to do so. This, however, Obregon probably did not mean to be taken seriously. Like many other Mexican politicians he loves making witty remarks at the expense of America.
In connection with the American idea of control of the Border may be mentioned the resolution adopted by the House of Representatives of the legislature of Arizona requesting the President of the United States to start negotiations for the "purchase, lease, or joint control" of two hundred miles of the said border. But that is not so much to further "Prohibition" as to further trade, the people of Arizona seeking an outlet, a sort of Salonika on the Gulf of California. They would like the frontier of Arizona to run due west from the town of Nogales to the sea.
Nogales is going to be an important point in the approach to Mexico from the North. There is a railway which was wrecked during the revolutionary period. It ran between the Sierra Madre and the ocean, and was the only railroad development of the Gulf of California and the Pacific Coast for a thousand miles. It was not finished—but now I believe the Southern Pacific Company which possesses the franchise have been enabled to repair the damage and will soon run a service of trains from Arizona and California to Guadalajara. It should be said that Californians have naturally a much deeper interest in the American development of Mexico than most States. Financial groups have lately taken over large tracts of land near Tehuantepec and also in the State of Vera Cruz. California has as vigorous an attitude toward Mexico on the western side as Texas has on the east. California's destiny seems to hold the commercial domination of the Pacific Coast.
There is another grand railroad project on foot, the "Gran Ferrocarril Panamericano," which is to join New York with the Canal Zone of Panama by a permanent way through Mexico, Guatemala, etc. The establishment of this pan-American railway depends, however, more upon the Central American republics than on Mexico. A thousand miles of this road remains to be built over land much subject to earthquakes and revolutions. But the through carriages now running from Chicago to Mexico City via Laredo are a symptom of closer railroad connections.
I did not, however, enter by Laredo or Nogales but by El Paso. The distance to Mexico City is nearly two thousand kilometers, mostly of sand and piñon trees. The Santa Fe country seems to extend endlessly southward. Desert dust enters the train and almost stifles you. From the window of the railway carriage you see the yucca's withered stem, and the dead cactus extends to you a dusty hand, welcoming you to No Man's Land. The contours of the mountains are, as in New Mexico, wind-worked, wind-shaped, and there are great rounded hats of rock, gray and sun-wasted. Occasionally one comes to wretched, mud-built villages whose whole population turns out in rags to sell coffee and chili sandwiches to passengers at the halting places.
Three hundred miles south of El Paso the wilderness is broken by Chihuahua, of which Cunninghame Graham used to write, fondly pronounced Chihoo-a-hoo-a in London but locally Chi-wah-wah. I broke my journey in this city and enjoyed the refreshment of spirit which comes when you suddenly escape from winter and change one country grown familiar for one which is unfamiliar.
Chihuahua, capital of one of the "United States of Mexico," is a fine city, or the ruins of one. Not so deep as Pompeii, yet it lies well under the dirt. War and revolution have battered it. Mud has swept over its street-car lines. Economically it seems to be a peon of the United States. American goods alone are in the shops and at prices fifty or a hundred per cent higher than in America itself. Even food such as butter and sugar and cheese and bacon seems to be largely imported and heavily taxed. There is much poverty and want.
But what a spacious city it is! The gardens are fresh and flowering with violets. Fountains are playing. The tradition of Spain is strong in the architecture which expresses the dignity of human life—and of being a Spaniard.
Alas, the most striking characteristic of the city is, I suppose, characteristic of all Mexico, and that is the pearl- and ivory-mounted revolvers. There are shop windows full of pistols. Every other man has a pistol in his hip pocket. Pistols are discharged at all moments for joy, or to kill, or through mere ennui. The Mexicans fire off pistols to kill time.
The city seems to have two regular restaurants, and you either dine with Quong or dine with Sing. The city band plays in front of Porfirio Diaz's Palacio Nacional every afternoon. At the other end of the city you may watch soldiers drilling. In the evening there is nothing to do except watch "barnstormers" do an English musical comedy or look at an American picture show. On Sunday it is true there is always, at least in winter, a bull fight. These are not dressed as in Spain, though flower-decked bowers are put up for the "Queens of love and beauty," the presiding "most distinguished ladies." Probably when famous toreadors visit Chihuahua they wear their crimson and gold, but in the glimpse I had of the killing of a sixth bull the fighters were just men with their coats off—as it were the butcher had taken a holiday from his shop and with his long knife was taking extra pleasure in the darker side of his trade. The crowd kept calling to him to lead the bull away and bring out an ass. And blushingly he eyed the spot in the bull's back where the knife ought to go and made the last lunge. "He is not a bullfighter; he's just an ordinary man," said some one as he went away.
The State of Chihuahua has many bandits; life there is remarkably insecure compared with North of the Rio Grande. This is not entirely due to Mexicans; there are not a few wild Americans at large. Hundreds of men wanted by the American police have in time past crowded into the State of Chihuahua, there to live largely by their wits. "Two-gun Bill" of cinema fame may be met with if you ride from the city to the mine with gold. Political assassins and men of blood are a state product. Thus the life of General Villa and his murder there are natural enough.
The horsemen of Chihuahua are much better mounted than the cowboys of the American South-west—one may spend a pleasant afternoon on the Town Hall steps merely watching the horsemen riding in and out of town. And they are better armed and naturally more ready with hand to holster.
The State was governed by General Enriquez, a Mexican Liberal who has since resigned—but he had little control of the wild people about him. He had to cope with large numbers who believe they have won revolutionary reforms and with land-owning families who are accustomed to treat the rest like slaves. Poor people still call you "patron" instead of "señor." Enriquez staved off the demand for the splitting up and division of the large estates. He protected many business concerns from spoliatory labor laws. But he allowed the rule of daily payment of wages, a point much fought in the South. General Enriquez, who speaks English, is probably wider in his sympathies than most Mexicans. Wilfrid Ewart asked him the question direct—What did he think of the prospect of annexation by America? He replied that in his opinion the political ideals of America made that impossible.
But if the wild forces now loose in Mexico should overthrow all the civilized elements of life? There hides the possible moment of an effective American intervention.
I have not been surprised to read subsequently that the reason for Enriquez's resignation was despair. Four days in Chihuahua is not long enough to judge the whole of the State but any visitor might be struck by the daring faces of the Spaniards and by the almost complete savagery of the Indians. The latter, the Tarahumare, are black and nearly naked. They wear gigantic straw sombreros, and their bodies below are as it were triangled. Broad brows, sunstretched eyes, broad nose but pointed chin—their faces are triangular. Their bodies from shoulders to navel are black triangles, their loin-cloths hang in a triangle of dull rags, their thighs from the fullness of their loins to gaunt bony knees—two more triangles of dark dirt—and then wasted feet with mud-caked separate toes. A strange people these Indians, for they worship the Echino cactus and make sacrifice to it. The other citizens of this great State worship not the cactus but the revolver.
As I resumed my journey southward over hundreds more miles of desert I noted that the man next to me kept a loaded revolver on the couch beside him—ready in case of bandidos. It is a wild country—what do the foreigners go there for? Well, mostly for gold—for a fortune to be quickly won.
We had had some hope of meeting Wilfrid Ewart at Chihuahua, but he had left before we came. We found his signature in the register of the Hotel Robinson. We had gone to a little Spanish hotel in the Plaza called the San Luis. It seemed as if his ten days would be over before we reached Mexico City. After Torreon we began to watch for Laredo trains, not knowing that the railroad branches off at a much earlier point, Huehuetoca. It would have been amusing and pleasant to have shaken hands at some little station where our trains, going in different directions, were drawn up and steaming. But as it happened he had not left the capital.
In the train were several mining men, mostly Americans. One came up to me and said, "I saw you at the Hotel Sheldon and I said to my friend—'He's a mud-digger, I'll bet.'" There, however, he was mistaken, but if you are English and in Mexico it stands to reason you must be in the mining interest. The talk was of gold and opals and silver. Indians brought all manner of jewelry to the trains to sell, much of it manufactured stuff imported from Europe. They brought also lustrous pots which were more genuine, and peasant embroideries and boxes of sweetened cream and baskets of strawberries. At Irapuato on the 26th of December the whole station swarmed with vendors of strawberries. They say it always does, any time in the year.
The train emerged from the waterless sand on to the maguey plantations. The eyes rested gratefully on the green plumes of the banana palm and on the scarlet flowers of some tropical tree. The bougainvillæa bounced into a crimson effulgence of bloom. We entered at last a rich and verdant country fed by many rivers, and that was Anahuac, the fertile land of the Aztec Empire, of which the city now called Mexico but in their day Tenochtitlan is and was the capital.
Here the event happened which saddened the year: my friend was killed. Wilfrid Ewart, to whose genius and person I was devoted, and who in turn was very fond of us, was shot on Old Year's Night, a lamentable taking off over which one can never cease to grieve.
Arrived at Mexico City my wife and I sped along the Avenue Juarez to the Hotel Cosmos where we spent a night. Next day we repaired to the quieter and more comfortable Iturbide, a fine old structure built around stone courts and a garden of palm trees and flowering shrubs, with a fountain playing. I think we were fortunate, for while we paid only a moderate price we yet had a large airy room with writing desk and table and a pleasant outlook on the unfurling green of the banana palms. By no possibility could we have been shot from the street whilst standing at the window.
We wondered much whether Wilfrid Ewart were in the city. Although I knew he had only ten days wherein his ticket would be valid I knew the temptation was to stay longer. There is one perfectly safe and conventional hotel in Mexico City, and that is "The Regis," run in the American style and patronized chiefly by Americans and English. Its agents circulate on the Pullman cars of the trains and make sure of the English-speaking passengers. A hotel omnibus meets all trains and takes off guests for the hotel. We felt sure, therefore, that Ewart would have stayed there. So on our first morning we went thither and asked for him. He was not there. We consulted the register. He had not been there. Next day I called on Mr. Norman King, the British Consul General, but the consulate had not heard of him. Dr. E. J. Dillon and his wife had, however, arrived in the city and were staying at the "Princess," but Ewart was not registered at the "Princess." We wondered where he could have stayed. As a matter of fact a Spaniard on the train had given him the address of a hotel several streets distant from the center—the Hotel Isabel on the Street of the Republic of San Salvador, a hotel chiefly patronized by Germans and Spanish.
On Friday, the 29th of December, we went to the shrine of "Our Lady of Guadeloupe" and saw that famous image worshiped more by the Indians than by any other. We watched the Aztecs of to-day, candle in one hand, sombrero in the other, walk on their knees up the aisle to the altar, and looked on those grandiose ecclesiastical pictures which adorn the gilded church telling the story of the revelation of the Virgin and the Pope's remark, "Such things are not done for all nations." We recalled to mind December 12, the festival of the Guadeloupe Virgin and the resonance of it at Santa Fe among the Mexicans there; the firing of guns promiscuously in the streets, the lighting of festive fires. It had much astonished Wilfrid Ewart then.
Next day, the thirtieth, at noontide we met our friend by chance on the streets of the city. It was on the corner of San Juan de Latran and the street of the 16th September. We were in the act of choosing at which new restaurant we would partake of luncheon when suddenly we saw Ewart's tall figure on the edge of the curb; he was gazing in his short-sighted way up into the sky and did not see us till I cried out.
Then we moved joyfully together to a restaurant and had lunch.
"Well, Wilfrid Ewart, you are a wicked fellow!" I said to him reproachfully.
He ruffled a little.
"Well, I don't know," said he. "Isn't it the chance of a lifetime? I've been looking for a place like this all my life."
He seemed utterly charmed with Mexico City and spoke with a sort of rapture of Chapultepec Park. We agreed to go together on the morrow to San Angel to have lunch together on the last day of the year at the fine inn there. It was a place nine or ten miles from the center of the city, literally buried in flowers and palms, and he seriously thought of taking a room at the inn and staying there for three months.
One thing troubled him: that iron box of regimental papers and his portmanteau had gone to New Orleans; he carried only his knapsack and staff, like a pilgrim bound for a distant shrine. He could sacrifice his unused ticket, but how get these pieces of baggage forwarded to Mexico. We went after luncheon to talk to the railway agent about it, but the office was closed for the New Year holidays.
I then accompanied him to his hotel and saw the English-speaking German who kept it, "surprisingly civil," said Ewart; "trying to ingratiate himself with me," I thought. I went up to his room and admired the fine view of the mountains obtained from his window, but I did not care for the feeling of it—not a place to write in. I meditated getting him to change over to the Iturbide.
Next day, the thirty-first of December, we sat on a street car and went out together to San Angel. We had lunch in view of the great mountains Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl but their summits remained wreathed in cloud. A fine, warm air blew steadily thence, ruffling the blossoms of the garden, disturbing the eyes. Our luncheon was spread in an arbor. We were waited on by a French waiter. It was hardly a democratic resort. There were other arbors and tables set in a shady patio where rich Mexicans who had driven up in their cars dissected elegantly cooked sole and turkey, and ate strawberries and cream, washed down with imported wines. The straw-hatted, blanket-wrapped Mexicans, the descendants of the Aztecs, the women with gold ornaments on their necks and ears and flowing raven hair were hidden from view here. One might very well have been on the Riviera—except for those gigantic volcanoes and a certain dryness of the table-mountain air which spoke not of the sea.
Ewart had already been to the inn several times. He had been ill at ease in American civilization, and told us so. He thirsted for the elegance of Paris and the easy-going ways of London. "One thing the Americans have not yet learned to prize, and that is leisureliness," said he. His own marked, leisured utterance was strangely in contrast with the rapid speech and style of Americans.
Yet he was going back to America in the spring. He felt the fascination of modern America as much as any one. He was surprised that America had not yet annexed Mexico. Ideal considerations did not weigh in his mind. The only argument in favor of Mexico was that Mexico was unlike the United States and it might be worth while conserving her as something different.
Of them and of many things we discoursed during a long afternoon spent mostly on the roof of the San Angel Inn. And in the dusk of evening we took a returning tram to Mexico. As we passed the bull ring at Chapultepec the outcoming crowds swarmed on to the streets, and ere we reached the city the newsboys with the evening papers came clamorously on to the cars crying, "Glorious afternoon with the bulls! Great triumph of Rodolfo Gaon! Great triumph of Lalanda!" Gaon is an Indian bullfighter and the idol of Mexico for a time. Ewart had seen him kill four bulls in his garments of gold and silver, and was hideously impressed. But he was greatly tickled by the newscry "Glorious afternoon with the bulls!" and kept repeating it.
That evening we went together to the Teatro Lirico to see a revue called 1922. We sat in the midst of a wild crowd and looked on at something of which we did not understand very much, allusions of all kinds of happenings in the Republic of Mexico during 1922, danced out by girls and clowns in colored silks. There were acts representing the two years' peace of the Obregon régime, Liberty, the Graves of the Martyrs of the Revolution, and through it all there stalked a hooligan, drunk in every scene and creating a scandal in every part. In the graveyard of the heroes he makes love to the widow grieving over her dead husband and is only interrupted when the grave opens and the dead man inside roars a terrible reproval—the thrill of the evening. The whole ended on a sort of parade of the Republic and a rivalry of flags over which in a grand burst of the National Anthem triumphed the Red, White and Green of the Mexican nation.
By the time we came out of the theater it had become a wild night in Mexico City. Every one who had a car had brought it out. All the "camions" were filled with joy riders, every klaxon and horn was yelling, the sidewalks were packed with thronging crowds carrying colored paper flags and other baubles. Most of the men had pistols, some had guns. Promiscuous firing rattled and banged in side streets and about house tops. The cafés were full. Orchestras were playing. Men everywhere were under the influence of pulque and other cactus alcohols. I think we felt rather tired. Certainly we were ready for supper and we sought a table where we might sit down to eat and finish the night.
It was at the Cosmos that we sat down to supper—for the last time. There we lingered and would no doubt have seen the Old Year out, the New Year in, but an unkind Fate prompted otherwise. At half-past eleven or thereabout we sallied forth once more into the wild streets. I had a mind to go to the great central square, the Zocalo, where once stood the Great Pyramid, but we did not agree to go. Instead we gave one another last greetings and departed to our several hotels.
"A happy New Year!" Ewart cried, swaying his arm affectionately in a last handshake.
"A happy New Year!" said I. "And may you soon get that iron box" I added, involuntarily thinking of what was most on our minds.
So we parted. Even the Iturbide was in a strange condition, most of the servants being in that menacing drunken state which comes after drinking much pulque. But that was small matter. At midnight there outbroke a quintupled clamor over all the city. Hundreds of thousands of revolvers and guns must have been discharged and discharged repeatedly. The sound was of a great general engagement in war. I stood at the window and looked at the dark sky which, however, told nothing of the myriads of bullets flying into it. I was astonished. But little did I guess that Wilfrid Ewart doing the same at his window overlooking that wild street of the "Republic of San Salvador" was in these moments being killed—by a revolver bullet from below.
Yet so it was, and I will not say more here, except that we buried him in the British Cemetery beside the Tlacopan Causeway along which Cortes and the remains of his defeated army slowly retreated on the Noche Triste of July 1, 1520. A few English people stood beside a new-dug grave with tearful eyes and choking hearts. So we laid him to rest far away from his home. There were white roses buried with him. There are lilies growing near him.
I should not perhaps have narrated this happening here but that Wilfrid Ewart has become part of Mexico as Francis Drake became part of Nombre de Dios and the Spanish Main. It was Mexico that took him, sacrificing yet another victim on its Aztec altars. On the day after we buried Ewart another Englishman was killed, George W. Steabben, an English merchant. He was walking along a street with his family when suddenly a shooting affray took place between two parties of Mexicans in cars. Shots went in many directions, several people were wounded, and Steabben was killed. The quarreling parties were mostly officers and deputies—really above the law. Members of the Mexican Parliament enjoy immunity from arrest but nevertheless they are frequently implicated in crimes and outrages.
The social condition of Mexico has evidently greatly changed since Diaz' days. Porfirio Diaz ruled as a Dictator for a quarter of a century and enforced peace upon the country. He was the type of great man that Carlyle sought in history, the hero once found to be obeyed. The obedience to Diaz was very gratifying to foreigners in Mexico. His fame was extraordinary in his day. But now none so poor as to do him reverence. His name is not heard. Streets are not named after him nor monuments raised to him. His name represents bondage and oppression to the masses.
The ten years of civil war and revolution which followed the Diaz régime were no doubt strongly colored by the personal ambitions of aspirants to the Presidency. But the violence of them came from a popular upheaval, a rising out of the depths. What has happened in Mexico is not un-akin to what has happened in Russia.
The Mexican revolution began before the success of the Bolsheviks but it obtained a powerful inspiration from Russia. Mexican politicians came to Europe to study Bolshevism and in one or two States, notably those of Vera Cruz and Yucatan, it can be said that a dictatorship of the proletariat has been achieved. Bourgeois society and the enormous capitalistic concerns of Mexico are menaced by proletarianism.
The force of the law has been greatly weakened by this revolutionary triumph. Every Mexican feels that he is a law to himself and that he must be ready to protect himself should he be set upon. Hence the prevalence of firearms in the possession of citizens—and the many assaults, murders, accidents.
I suppose in no other capital in the world, not even in Russia, could a funeral cortège of a dead Communist be followed by banners inscribed "Viva Anarchia—Long live Anarchy!" Nor could a tram-strike such as we had this January and in an armed battle in the streets and nobody be punished.
There is much that is remarkable about Mexico City. It is an Indian capital, a Spanish capital, and an American capital in one. All three clash, producing a city of strange unrest. The Americans want only business, the Spanish believe they want culture, the Indians want only freedom. Spanish and Indians together make up the Mexican people, which on the whole is mentally deficient. They are loquacious and lose themselves talking. When they take to arms they do so without mathematics. Impregnable as Mexico seems, any civilised nation could defeat her in war—because, to use a colloquialism "she is not all there." That is why, in my opinion, in the first place Cortes with his handful of warriors was able to destroy the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs had a fourth part lacking in their mental equipment. Montezuma, magnificent as he was, was clearly, from a European point of view, something of a half-wit. That half-wittedness the Spaniards married gayly into and have not been able to throw it off. The conqueror has become the conquered.
Mexico is a city of some enchantment. It is not a place that can be understood at once—like Kalamazoo or a standard American city. It holds you, puzzled. The squads of Arum lilies, the joyous fountains playing under evergreen trees, the prattling children, and the noonday tropical sun, do not entirely give the mood of the city. It is not one of innocence.
Or again, the busy American and English business men, the gay modish shops of the Avenida Madero, the foyer of "the most exclusive" American hotel, or the buzz of English talk from mining men and drummers in Sanborn's café—they also do not convey the mood of the old Aztec capital. Its air of modern business is deceptive.
The daytime activities seem to be a veil of the real city. It is in many respects very pleasant by day, more pleasant for the business people than for any one else, I think. At night the city is different. The sense of security is less, the feeling of the presence of the unknown is much greater.
The underworld of the city is terrible, and no student of life could shut his eyes to it—poverty widespread and staring; a morose, drunken male population, women who suffer more than most poor women—every one morose, melancholy; fierce threatening faces much commoner than smiling ones.
There is a thin upper crust of rich people, very thin and very swell, who own fine villas and have their cars. And their womenfolk dress and parade in the motor-car parade which at a certain hour continually blocks the way on the Avenida Madero, while their chauffeurs with their horns shriek importance to the traffic police. These people shop at the fine shops and pay three prices for American goods, foregoing their own Mexican foods and manufactured ware for expensive imports. The real Mexican population is herded into a district called by Americans the Thieves' Market, a great open place where the Aztecs used to exercise themselves. And there you may see the women lined up in scores, holding in their hands chili sandwiches, all they have to sell, and supplicating you to buy. In their faces you see something of the mood of the city.
When Cortes came he found a stately city. He found also a place of gloom and awe, a city of slavery, of human sacrifice, of fanatical unbending paganism. His brutal adventurous four hundred tasted there the greatest fear of their lives and met of course in one battle the greatest disaster that Spanish arms ever met at Indian hands. At that time the greatest feature of the city was the grand square of the Pyramid which is now called the Zocalo and has become the terminus of all the swirling street cars and of hundreds of pirate buses. There eight great causeways approached a grand open place, the center of which was the stone-faced pyramid, the altar of Huitzilopochtli, god of war. The pyramid was cemented, its base was conglomerated with jade, emerald and gold, and for that reason was picked to bits by Spanish soldiers. Not one stone remained in situ when the Christian Cathedral was started to be built. On top of the pyramid stood the gigantic sacrificial stone, now in a museum hard by, and into the cavity in the middle of the stone were flung thousands of warm hearts, still beating in death. Did not the barbarity of the Aztec rituals go far to justify the brutality of Cortes' followers?
One night, the Noche Triste of July 1, 1520, Cortes saw his own Spaniards led to ghastly sacrifice, whilst hundreds of sacred fires lit up the sides and stone stairways and platforms of this pyramid and shone luridly on the faces of the priests and the Spanish victims and the ecstatic Indians. That marked the end of Montezuma's reign. That great square is all encroached on now by shops and wretched arcades, and instead of the Pyramid a squat cathedral, trying as it were to cover an original ground plan of paganism without any architectural plan. Half the open space has gone. Groves of low electric light standards supplied by an American foundry shed unnecessary glimmer on petty garden plots—and all the grandeur has gone.
Nevertheless, somehow at night the gloom and ancient horror of the square creeps out. Aztec beggars, half Aztecs, quarter Aztecs, shades of Aztecs, make for you threateningly and yet supplicatingly. Pulque-stricken men stare at you from their doped eyesockets—The eight streets are there, ill-lit, full of darkness, noise and beggars. The drivers and the hangers-on of the pirate buses yell their destinations—Takk-uba, Rom-a, Pi-e-dad, Sa-nangel. In churches in the gloom you may see converted Indians creep from the door to the altar on their knees. Outside the churches beggars are seen kneeling in silence, their lean faces and fevered eyes set as it were upon some star. They kneel and stare, hour after hour, and it seems nothing to them who passes by or what they receive in alms. There is something of the spirit of Quahpopoca and Cauhtemoc whom the Spanish burned over slow fires, who fixed their eyes upon a point and burned and did not say a word.
What is truly remarkable is that no ten minutes passes in the night without the sound somewhere of a gun shot, a revolver shot. To the violent street crowds shooting in air is an amusement. You walk carefully and circumspectly in the streets at night. It is true, of course, that they killed my friend here, and it preys on the mind. But to me Mexico City refuses to correspond to any type of civilization. It is still the city of the Pyramid of Huitzilopochtli.