Yucatan, the site of the ruins of the Maya civilization, was the first
part of Mexico to be discovered, for it was the point of the mainland
nearest to the Indies. De Cordova visited it in 1516-1517; Juan de
Grijalva called there in 1518 and going further, searched the coast
of the Gulf for islets. He was recalled and dishonored, though it is
recorded that he was a most honorable man. Honor among pirates is no
saving virtue. Cortes followed him, and he had the craft and style to
play hero or villain as occasion offered. The Spanish wanted gold;
they did not want glory, least of all any one else's glory. Cortes,
however, had as great an eye for glory as he had for gold. That he was
a great man few who read his history can doubt. He had to fight not
only the Indians but the headstrong Spaniards of his own following,
the malevolent Velasquez, Governor of Cuba, who had control of his
supplies, and even enemies in far-off Spain who hid his glories from
the Emperor.
How he resigned his office and got himself elected by his own troops,
how he persuaded them to burn their boats so that there could be no
return, how he reinforced his army by capturing an army sent against
him, how he beguiled Montezuma and fooled him—is a great story,
revealing a character which it might have delighted Shakespeare to
describe.
But what Cortes was and what he and his followers achieved are two
different matters. The brilliance of the exploits of Cortes has blinded
many to the sordid material nature of the deeds effected. It is true
he cast down a thousand altars of blood and washed away the hideous
scarlet stain, putting up white crosses with flowers and Madonnas to
whom could be no reproach. But there the ideal side of the adventure
ended. The rest was vulgar spoliation, the furtherance of one quest
only—the making of a fortune to take back to Spain.
Before Cortes' expedition no one had surmised the wealth of Mexico. The
Spanish of the Indies wasted their time, kidnaping natives and selling
them to the slavers, not knowing that El Dorado was just a little
further out of doors. But Cortes readily grasped that there were rich
kingdoms to sack. He founded Vera Cruz with the name "Rich City of the
True Cross." He marched to meet the Totonacs at Cempoalla and found
a people who wore golden necklaces and bracelets and rings of gold,
gems in their noses and ears, headdresses of gold. Spanish eyes stared
sultrily at these ornaments on the persons of a tribe who were friends.
Some must have wished the Totonacs were enemies.
The fame of Mexico City determined Cortes to march toward it. Health
lay in that direction. For a mountain wall had to be scaled, and even
a day's march took the army out of the fever flats of Vera Cruz. He
climbed up to Jalapa, the city of flowers, and thence to the heights
of the plateau where at Xocotlan he found thirteen high temples and
pyramids made of tens of thousands of human skulls. The Totonacs
accompanied him all the way, for they told of another tribe which might
ally itself with Cortes, the Tlascaltecs, who had constantly fought the
Aztecs and never been beaten by them. The Tlascaltecs fought Cortes
first to see what his troops were made of—and nearly worsted him. But
afterwards, having tested him and liked him, they became his best and
most lasting friends. Through them more than through his own Spaniards
or through the help of God, he won. A month after he left the shore
Cortes entered Tlaxcala and was given a marvelous flower festival.
Thence Cortes marched to the pious Cholultecs at the Pyramid of Cholula
and massacred them, and then he built a causeway over the collar which
holds the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, and marched by
Izcalpan and Ayotzinco to the lakes and canals of the Valley of Mexico.
From Iztapalapan, now at the end of a tramway, he marched to the great
meeting of welcome with Montezuma and his nobles.
Mexico City had become haunted for us since Wilfrid Ewart's death, and
we were glad when occasion offered to go down to the lower country, to
Vera Cruz and the historical country between that city and the capital.
Up and down these heights soldiers have constantly streamed in battle.
It is Mexico's fighting ground, scene of her victories and of her
defeats.
Of the port of Vera Cruz, the old Villa Rica, I will say little except
that it has become a place of great commercial and military importance.
It is not so great a port as Habana or New Orleans, but it is clearly
capable of development to a point of rivalry with these. With all her
great seaboard Mexico is nevertheless greatly deficient in natural
harbors. The Pacific side is even poorer than the Atlantic side. For
that reason Vera Cruz ought to have an enormous trade.
Strategically also an attacking force is somewhat dependent on Vera
Cruz. It is the obvious base for an invading army. Cortes started
thence in 1520, the Americans in 1846, the French in 1860, and, in the
abortive war of 1913-1914, it was occupied by the American marines who
had outposts even as far inland as Los Cocos. The Great War showed how
easily it could be defended—by mines, but I doubt if the Mexicans have
enough intelligence to apply the lessons of the War to the defense of
their own country. The Turks learned the use of mines in Asia Minor and
cleared Smyrna of foreign ships. But the Mexicans are less intelligent
than the Turks, less capable of defending themselves against foes.
During the American occupation of 1913-1914 a great work of sanitation
and cleansing was carried out, and the city has never been again the
pesthole it was. Some of the scavenging then begun has been carried
on. There is a notable decrease in fevers and plague. Yellow fever,
for which it had a very evil name, has almost disappeared. It is worth
noting that wherever the American army has been sent to keep order or
to take possession the general physical health of the community has
been benefited.
Vera Cruz now, under a revolutionary administration, is not a pleasant
city for visitors. "Make the Foreigner Pay" is applied by all and
sundry, to those who have to pass through the port, for business or
pleasure. Porters, hotels, shops, are all operated on this plan, and it
defeats itself, for no one stays in the city longer than he can help.
The whole State suffers from economic disorganization, personal greed,
sloth, and violence. Against this strive many American and British
and German companies. If there is anything clean or practical or
prepossessing it derives from these countries. It is easy to grasp
that if these companies were forced to retreat the Spanish-speaking
community would revert to the primitive state.
It is a very Indian State, though Negro blood is mixed in on the
coast as it is not in the interior. Negroes in company with Jews and
Moors have generally been excluded from Mexico. But at Vera Cruz and
Tampico and Puerto Mexico there has naturally been some admixture.
The Indian mentality has triumphed but it is a weak one. The favorite
buffoonery of the natives when Cortes called on them to surrender and
they refused, was to cry out—"We shall eat you with chili to-morrow.
We believe you will taste well." To-day modern civilization is in the
place of Cortes and still it challenges the Mexicans and they cry out,
"We'll have you with chili."
Cortes marched up to it from the sea. Montezuma's messengers met him
with golden ducks, discs of the sun in gold, large stones of jade,
gifts of plumed armor and golden arrows, and they prayed him to go
away. Jalapa was the chief city of the Totonac Indians—it was a city
of flowers; there were silver houses there. There were blood altars.
Cortes said "No," he would not go away till he had delivered in
person a message which he bore from the King of Spain. That message
he invented—but he had a message nevertheless, obtained out of the
book of Fate, and in due time he delivered it. His message dissolved
the Aztec Empire and laid low the greatest cultural achievement of the
Indians. Anahuac became New Spain.
Four hundred years have just passed since that conquest was achieved,
but the Mexicans have not marked it with festivity. Cortes' bones have
been driven from cathedral to cathedral and his memory has become
unhallowed.
Jalapa, famous for centuries for the export of jalap, is to-day very
different from anything it ever was in the past. It is the capital of
a Bolshevik State. Nowhere during the ten years revolutionary struggle
which followed the fall of Diaz did the proletariat gain more control
than in the State of Vera Cruz, and Jalapa is its capital. It should
be understood that the United States of Mexico are very much disunited
in politics. In five or six of them, such as Tlaxcala, there are
actually two legislatures, old and new régime, trying to sit at the
same time. But it is safe to say that the majority in all Mexico is
Radical and very decidedly anticapitalistic. Where the distribution
of the land among the peasants has not been carried out there are
continual armed raids. The Mexican landowners and bourgeois are busy
organizing a "Fascisti" movement, but that has little chance of success
unless the President of the Republic favored them. Obregon, however,
is an enigmatical personage. He is anticapitalistic but he is ready
with Federal troops to quell riots of the proletariat. His popularity
with the masses is waning, but his ability to govern the country shows
itself more and more powerfully. The trial of his strength comes
between now and the 1924 elections. Mexico depends on him almost as it
depended on Diaz. When he goes from power the revolution in its fury
may easily break out again.
Jalapa, in which we spent some ten days, is a city of "Red"
demonstrations. The "Agrarians" and the Coöperatists parade with their
blood-red banners and violent inscriptions. They occupy the Town
Hall or the Governor's Palace, and their leaders harangue the crowds
from the balconies; the Governor himself lends a hand. Men with red
flags climb the steeple of the cathedral and whenever a strong break
of oratory is made from the Town Hall balcony below, they ring the
cathedral bells with a grand clash.
What is the matter? The workmen of the Maritime Zone have boycotted an
Oil Company on which depend for fuel all the railways of the South and
most of the factories. Half Mexico is in danger of economic paralysis.
It was so all the winter of 1922-23. The company, an English one, was
holding out against a proposed seventy-five per cent increase in wages,
wages to be paid daily, premiums on dismissal, etc. Wages paid daily
is a great feature of the Labor demand, the idea being to make it more
easy to go on strike.
There has also been a no-rent campaign, whole populations refusing to
pay rent. When in Vera Cruz you decide no longer to pay rent you hang
out a red flag from your window. There is also here, as in most of the
States, a strained relationship between the Indian peasants and their
former masters the landowners.
Against Red rule, the newspapers of Mexico have arrayed themselves,
especially Excelsior, Mr. Lloyd George's Mexican platform, and El
Dictamen, both run in favor of capitalism and "common sense." But
one of the latest phenomena has been a boycott of these papers in the
Maritime Zone largely organized by the Governor of Vera Cruz himself.
It is lucky for the people of Jalapa that the currency of Mexico is
federally controlled and is of gold and silver. Otherwise one can
imagine the inflation of paper money that would take place in a State
run on the lines of that of Vera Cruz. As it is, the disorganization
caused by strikes has raised the cost of living to almost double that
of the quieter States of Oaxaca and Puebla.
How important this condition of affairs is may be judged from the fact
that Vera Cruz is the key of the Republic. Mexico has been three times
conquered and its capital taken, by Spain, by the United States, and
by France; and all three campaigns started from Vera Cruz. Did not the
American soldiers in 1848 play baseball in Jalapa with the President
of Mexico's wooden leg? That was the time of one-legged Santa Ana. Now
is the time of one-armed Obregon. Despite the great army of Mexico
to-day one cannot help feeling that in case of foreign intervention via
Vera Cruz and Jalapa there would not be enough moral power to resist
invasion.
Still, whatever happens, there is one thing in which Jalapa will not
change, never has changed; that is, in the grandeur of her scenery.
The city is unfortunately often in the clouds, and warm rolling mists
enwrap its stone ways and houses whilst jackdaws innumerable create
an unearthly hubbub in the twilight. But when the clouds vanish the
landscape appears. The mountains lift themselves in great steps to
Himalayan heights. Jalapa is on a ledge five thousand feet above the
sea—she is halfway up the Sierra Madre. And above her, above all
her clouds, stands Orizaba, twenty thousand feet high, which great
snow-crowned mountain has often been called the guardian spirit of
Mexico. Orizaba watches the sea, and should she see approaching gods
or men she passes word to Popocatepetl, the guardian of the capital.
Orizaba must have passed on many messages in her time, though not with
much avail.
Tlaxcala surely is the most romantic place in Mexico, the little
mountain city whence Cortes gleaned his greatest allies, an Indian
Sparta. The Tlascaltecs displayed a devotion to the Spaniards which
in its unthinking generosity was very characteristic of the Indians.
At a word from Malinche, as they affectionately called him, they even
changed their religion and consented to be baptized. They never foresaw
how the Spaniards in victory would prove ungrateful. They reinforced
Cortes in thousands and went with him to Cholula. The Cholultecs hated
them, and, while pretending to receive Cortes amiably, demanded that
the Tlascaltecs camp outside and not inside their city bounds. When
with his allies Cortes fell upon the Cholultecs it was natural that
the insulted Tlascaltecs did great execution, had in fact eventually
to be restrained. The Highlanders of Tlaxcala spared neither breath
nor spoil. They were almost as avid in victory as the Spaniards
themselves. But a nod from Cortes was enough to hold them in check.
They gladly followed his horses and men to Montezuma and made no small
show of danger to the hated Aztecs. The Aztecs were the imperialists
of their days, oppressing all the lower races, but unable to quell the
Tlascaltecs. Tlaxcala, therefore, marched against Montezuma. And when
Cortes on the "Dreadful Night" was beaten, Tlaxcala still stood by him
enabling him to return to the field and win.
You approach Tlaxcala by narrow lanes all fenced with candelabra
cactus. This cactus, branching near its root, grows in green pillars
as regularly as the stems of a branched candlestick. Sometimes it is
called the "organ" cactus from its likeness in shape to organ pipes.
These pipes or pillars grow close to one another to a height of six or
seven feet when young, often to twenty feet when matured. They make the
simplest and most effective of palings, for their barbs forbid any one
struggling to get through them. The old stone ways of Tlaxcala, worn by
myriads of bare feet of Indians, are now hedged with this cactus and
you walk from the old fields up to what were once citadels, temples,
palaces, now in shapeless ruin and overheaped with mold and overgrown
with flowers. You may sit up there among the mountains and muse on what
was Tlaxcala.
Eight thousand feet up, the ancient city was higher than the new one.
And it was much larger. Tlaxcala has decayed. It supported the sturdy
warriors and their families of pure Tlascaltic origin. Seemingly the
half-Spanish breed is idler, lazier, and has not taken kindly to a
bleak site of civilization and life. The windy city is cold and poor.
Its chief life is in its soldiery who make of it a stamping ground.
The drums and fifes make a great clangor in the stone-walled, echoing
city, a hubbub which does not cease all day. The soldiers march well
on the cobbles and certainly make a smart turn-out. One's sympathies
are with them and with Mexico until a plain-clothes colonel with riding
whip comes on the scene and flogs the soldiers as they march. That
brutality immediately alienates one's affections. Surprising that the
soldiers stand it—after the revolution! But they are bound in the
traditions of peonage. Disaffection takes longer to breed in them than
it has done in the ex-serfs of Russia.
The most remarkable objects in Tlaxcala are, however, in the churches.
There you may see the large stone font in which Xicotencatl, the old
general, and all the leading Indians consented to be baptized in 1520,
in their nakedness and with the rites of the Catholic Church. The mind
can visualize a remarkable scene. The old pulpit whence after they were
baptized they were sermonized in Spanish is also there and in situ.
And you may see the first pictures of the new gods, the first pictures
of Christ and the Madonna specially painted by Cortes' men and sent as
gifts to the first Christian chapel of the Indians. These are appalling
in their ugliness. The ugliness of Death has been added to the ugliness
of madness, and together in one face something has been obtained worthy
of fear. No loving Savior was presented to the Tlascaltecs, but a worse
bogy than their own. Their god of war was ugly, and authorized terrible
deeds in his name. But the God of the Christians was more terrible
and, as would be proved, would apparently preside over worse human
acts—over slaughters, tortures, and human fires innumerable.
It is curiously naïve that the Spanish missionaries to Mexico
constantly averred—"Your religion is not unlike ours; only the names
of the gods are different."
Since the discovery of the tomb of King Tut-ankh-a-men there has been
in Mexico an amusing feeling of jealousy of Egypt. The era of the
mythical Atlantis has been pitted against the era of the biblical
Pharaohs. Archeologists in Yucatan are reputed to be digging feverishly
for some remains of the Maya civilization which will divert the
interest of the world from Luxor.
I have, however, stood in the Kings Chamber in the center of Cheops
Pyramid and now I have stood on the apex of the great pyramid of
Cholula, and though the remains of Mexico's great past are impressive
Egypt is by far the more haunting to a European mind. The thought,
however, strikes one—what if in that era of the past when these
pyramids were built, the people of these lands so far apart knew one
another? Is it possible that the repute of the pyramids of Egypt raised
the pyramids of Mexico?
At the time when Cortes came the Aztecs were building pyramids as fast
as we build churches; but there were several pyramids in the land
which had been there before the Aztecs came to the country ascribed to
Toltecs and Chichimecs and other imperial races which had had their
day. The Aztecs hewed massive altars of stone and raised them to the
heights of the old pyramids, and they made human sacrifice on them and
lit votive flames, which glared red in the night as the army of Cortes
marched inland from the sea.
Cholula was the holy city of Anahuac, possessing many temples. It was
a center of pagan piety, conservative, uncompromising. Cortes did not
believe its people could possibly be his friends, and so, with the
psychology of a tragedy villain, he suddenly in the midst of friendly
seeming accused them of treachery and put them to the sword. The
populace took refuge on the hundred and twenty steps of the great
pyramid, which had then superstructures of wood, but the Spaniards
fired it and all who stood on the pyramid perished, even the priest who
came out on the apex invoking Quetzalcoatl, the God of the Air. The
priest in a shroud of flame burned to death in the sight of all who
were below. The remaining Cholultecs fled to the hills. Cortes put up a
cross on the apex of the pyramid and then rode away.
The massacre of Cholula was one of the chief crimes charged against
Cortes by his enemies in Spain. That it was a dark and impolitic act
was not denied, and had the Emperor Montezuma been a warlike monarch
he would have met the Spaniards straightway in arms and have certainly
destroyed them. He had hundreds of thousands at his command, but the
army of Cortes was only a little over four hundred men. But Montezuma,
abounding in manners and piety, was notably deficient in brains and
pluck. Cortes built a causeway from Cholula to the saddle of the ridge
which separates Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, the great volcanoes, and
from the height he and his followers looked down on the rich valley of
the capital and upon the scene of a decade of loot and centuries of
struggle. When they reached the city the Emperor came out in friendly
guise to meet them and Montezuma bade Cortes sit upon his right hand as
an equal.
So the destruction of Cholula was proved no error The Spaniards won
their way. They obtained vast quantities of gold, later to be lost;
they sacked the pagan temples and destroyed not only the false gods
but all the records of the people. They put up Christian churches. They
carved out the vice-royalty of New Spain. As they had no women of their
own they took Indian wives. Every Spaniard in those days was a Solomon.
And they bred the Mexican who now appears.
I stood on the top of that old pyramid of Cholula. I climbed by an old
stone way, not seldom stepping over stones graven with hieroglyphics of
a lost religion. Beside an old cross and in the shadow of a Catholic
church I looked on what was Cholula; a squat city with a petrol street
car running through it, a dozen old rusty-colored churches built of the
stones of shattered Aztec temples, a vast ill kept city square where a
large army could be assembled but now tenanted by fifty Indian women
selling wares which were spread on the dirt—herbs, fruits, cottons,
imitation jewelry—a fountain with stone angels but no water inscribed
to Philip III, King of Spain and the Indies; poor people, beshawled
women, bare-footed men with ancient, grimy, high-crowned hats of straw.
Change has followed change. By the last revolution in Mexico the
Indian has attained equality with the Spaniard; he has in many parts
seized the lands of the Spanish; the great haciendas are no more.
As workingman the Indian terrorizes capital. And as for the Catholic
Church into which his forefathers were forcibly baptized, he comes
daily to spurn it more. In no other Catholic country in the world is
Catholicism more openly humiliated than in Mexico. Is not the popular
craze of the time a climbing of the façades of the cathedrals by
acrobats and small boys, a kicking off of the noses of the saints in
order to advertise beer! Whilst the Papal Nuncio is told sharply to
pack up and quit the country with less notice than would be given a
general servant, the petty indignities are manifold and great.
As I go from Cholula in the night and look behind me I see a
light burning above the apex of the pyramid—no, not the fires of
Quetzalcoatl broken out again, only an electric lamp hung above the
cross of the church that you may know that it is there.
Puebla, the third largest city in modern Mexico, has grown up near
Cholula—one of the few cities that has no Indian history behind
it. Puebla was built by the Spaniards and exclusively populated by
Spaniards. There at least the Indian woman was not a bride. Something
purely Spanish was bred there—as a racial bulwark against possible
foes. It remains to-day the most Spanish of all the cities of Mexico
and therefore the most conservative and the most unalterably Catholic.
Puebla is a beautiful and quiet city, largely adorned by the brightly
colored tiles which are a feature of its architecture. Façades of terra
cotta and gold, purple and yellow tiled domes, are common features
of the churches. Around the great Cathedral are pillars supporting
a hundred angels and each angel holds an electric light which is
generally burning all day as well as all night. Mimosa and palm trees
grow over the cool green lawns of the Plaza and lilies bloom beside
many fountains. There is some military parade, as at Tlaxcala, and
upon occasion "reactionary" demonstrations. The industrial life is
greatly hit by revolutionary economics, and it seems impossible for the
city to get back to the prosperity which it used to enjoy.
Like Jalapa, Puebla is an important strategic point. It has been the
scene of many battles, and a short walk outside the gates of the
city brings you to the old trenches of Frenchmen and Spaniards. In
the American War of 1846-1848 the plaza of the town was occupied by
a little army and many wounded and sick, and the Americans defended
it against all comers, talking and bluffing as well as firing and
barricading, for a whole month, when they received reinforcements and
were able to withdraw.
This can be said for Puebla and its more purely Spanish population—it
is more honest, more dignified, less drunken than Mexico City or Vera
Cruz or any of the cities where the Indians are in strength.
The way to Mexico City from Puebla tells something of the debauch of
the people. It is over a hundred miles and the country is rich either
for pasture or for the cultivation of grain. Rainfall is abundant. Heat
and cold are seldom in extremes. But you see no herds grazing there,
and few, very few, cornfields. Instead, there are interminable vistas
of cultivated cactus, the maguey, raised merely for pulque, for the
drink that stupefies the nation that takes to it. The freight cars
marked "pulque only" block the lines. At the railway stations women
in scores come to the trains with pulque bottles. The only rich are
the owners of the pulque farms, and you see them on silver-mounted
saddles, pricking their fine horses with silver spurs. They are on the
one hand and a vast ragged sodden population on the other.
Thus to San Juan and the Pyramids of the Sun and the salt lakes and the
canals and the floating gardens, to Texcoco and Chalco and Xochimilco,
to Iztapalapa and the metal-shod causeway by which Cortes marched to
the city. Iztapalapa is a sad place now, like a sort of Arab village
except for the visiting tram car which comes out from the great
metropolis, loops a loop at the Plaza, and returns through the dust and
dirt to the Zocalo, the square of the great pyramid in Mexico City.
Near where Montezuma and Cortes met now stand ugly but powerful
and suggestive national monuments—of Indian warrior and squaw,
designed for the Zocalo but felt by the Mexicans to be too indelicate
for a prominent public place. The Mexicans of to-day are proud of
their Indian blood but do not care to be reminded too realistically
of what the Indians were. The squat, broad-nosed, large-mouthed,
pendulous-cheeked faces, the short legs, the barrel-shaped bodies,
the feather ornaments, the war clubs and darts, do not appeal to the
mind of the modern Mexican who would rather think of his ancestors as
debonnair, Frenchified, with faces and bodies like those of Greek or
Roman heroes.
Montezuma regaled the Spaniards very well, not only feeding them and
gilding them with presents, but bestowing upon each soldier a bevy of
wives. There was not one who had less than ten wives. Cortes could not
find his men, they were lost among the young squaws. He was obliged
to limit the numbers of female servants—but Montezuma hearing of the
trouble arranged special quarters for the harems of the soldiers.
Cortes himself was much embarrassed by the number of princesses he was
called upon to marry. He had his troubles with the women—did he not
push his first wife down a well—and according to the historians made
great scruple against taking new ties. However, he took to himself the
peerless Marina, who helped him greatly in his conquest of her brother
Indians.
The Aztecs, it appears, had no code of morals kin to those current in
the Old World. Sensual lust was not a violent passion amongst them.
They bought and sold their women, lived polygamously, but women were
not centers of voluptuousness. This, it seems, has remained. The
Mexican is not hot-blooded over women. He is comparatively cold, and
the women are demure and chaste. The contrast, for instance, between
Cuban and Mexican is considerable; the mixed blood of Spaniard and
Negro is very lustful, the mixed blood of Spaniard and Indian is cold
and self-sufficient in the matter of sex.
One reads of the bestowal of beautiful girls upon the Spaniards, but
the beauty was doubtless exaggerated. It is difficult to find much
feminine beauty among the Aztecs now. There is a moment of unearthly
beauty, just a moment, early in the teens, and then the Aztec girl goes
heavy and repulsive-looking; her coal-black hair becomes coarse as a
horse's mane, her bosom spreads, dirt gets the better of her body. The
Mexicans of all classes are remarkably indelicate and dirty. As for
their children, a foreigner might be tempted to caress them or play
with them, but a glance at the faces causes him to draw away his hands
from unwashed skins and sores.
There is no doubt that the Spaniards in allying themselves to the
Aztecs joined themselves to a race which was lower than themselves. In
the romantic attitude to the Aztecs it is often forgotten that they
were cannibals and ate their prisoners of war. A race whose instincts
permitted them to do that was obviously in a degraded state. It may
safely be said that the Aztecs had no great future, even if Cortes had
not come; they were brutal, mentally deficient and depraved, possessed
of rites and customs repellent to all who possess a living God.
Cortes was recognized and rewarded and he made a happy end of life. He
overcame all the intrigues. His success, like a rising sun, triumphed
over all mists and clouds and at its zenith shone over half the world.
His Emperor honored him and granted to him and his heirs in perpetuity
the lands of the Valley of Oaxaca with all the wealth therein
contained, both potential and actual. On the strength of it the Cortes
of to-day ought to be Morgans or Rothschilds. Oaxaca is one of the most
golden valleys of Mexico, a marvelous place, El Dorado itself in the
eyes of the first pioneers who grabbed what they could carry and lost
what they could not defend.
Hernando Cortes became the "Marquis of the Valley," known commonly in
Spanish annals as "the great Marquis," a title which in British history
is, however, associated with a nobler man, the Marquis of Montrose.
Oaxaca, pronounced Wahahca, is some three hundred miles southwest of
the capital, reached by rocky, narrow, and often precipitous trails
once the secret knowledge of Indians but now followed by a railroad
considered a marvel of scientific engineering. No motor road goes
through—and it is adventurous going for either horseman or pedestrian.
It is one of the ways to the Pacific shore, and once the capital of the
marquisate is reached it is not a difficult journey on horseback to
Tehuantepec or Salina Cruz, down on the quiet beaches of the Southern Sea.
It should be said that Oaxaca is now a State and that the heirs
of Cortes have long since dissipated their fortunes. English and
Americans now own the most valuable properties of the Valley which is
recognized still as one of the richest mining districts of Mexico.
Oaxaca has enriched thousands of individuals. Mexicans without doing
work pathetically hope to stumble suddenly on large fortunes. The
legends they preserve of hidden gold are many. The Indians especially
are supposed to hold secrets which they hand down from generation
to generation, of the shrines and treasures of their lost gods. As
cupidity is not a vice of the pure-blood Indian this seems always
conceivable. You can find out nothing by asking Indians questions.
Their innocent mirthfulness under cross-examination has always been one
of the most baffling matters to the Spaniard. The days of burning them
alive to find their secrets has of course long passed, but the Indians
told little under stress of pain. Over the slow fire their innocent
mirth changed to a suffering taciturnity and that unearthly fixed gaze
which showed a race that had conquered pain.
Out in this valley most of the people now are pure-blood Indians,
either Zapotecs or Mixtecs, unambitious, easy-going, fruitful, and
true to the soil on which they have always lived. They were never an
imperial race like the Aztecs, nor revengeful like the Totonacs. They
have no inheritance of ill-will, and all seem as happy as kings. Oaxaca
to-day, despite the turmoil of the revolution, presents a picture of
what Mexico as a whole might be if her peoples possessed the right
temperament. For my part, I count the three weeks I spent in the
Marquisate as the happiest in Mexico. One could easily become content
to live a long while there. The people retain their national customs
and are marvelously good-humored; crime is rare, pistols infrequent,
and the cost of living is less than half that of the capital—you can
live very well on two dollars a day—and the winter climate is perfect.
The happiness of the little city is greatly enhanced by a large city
square where a fine brass band plays every evening amid palms and
electric lights and lilies and hanging rosy pomegranates.
The cathedral faces the Palacio, and colored stone porticos of shops
face porticos of other shops. The broad efflorescent square or plaza
is between. The cathedral, alas, looks like a ruin and has been taken
and retaken by soldiers in many fights! The Church is too poor to
repair it. I saw the "Hombre Mosca," the "Human Fly" climb its pretty
façade one morning, stepping on the carved saints and patting the
Infant Christ in St. Christopher's arms on his way up, and the Church
was quite impotent to stop the insult, even on a Sunday when Mass was
observed within. A curious contrast surely, a whole congregation on
its knees listening to the sermon of an archbishop within, a hilarious
crowd outside cheering the Human Fly and the brass band playing
lustily. Something of the destiny of Mexico in that! But in my opinion
the human flies hold the future. Sitting on the top of the Cross on the
turret of the Cathedral an American acrobat called "Babe White" unfurls
a flag on which is printed "Drink Montezuma Beer." Poor old Pope, dead
and gone Holy Inquisition, what think you of that?
The Palacio, where I saw the Governor, Garcia Vigil, just before he
left for Mexico City where he was badly shot by a hired assassin, is a
fine building rendered more impressive by its Indian sentries, some of
whom are extremely handsome and fine-looking soldiers. The legislative
business of the State is transacted in this palacio and it occupies
the whole of one side of the square. Here one may commonly see in the
evenings and on Saturday morning long lines of Indians waiting for
wages. On Saturday mornings the band enters the interior square of the
palacio and plays while waiting for its pay.
The shops which flank the other two sides exhibit various novedades
in dress and many marvelous hats ranging in price from ten to a
hundred dollars. As Mexicans are more proud of their head wear than of
any other part of their attire they are ready to pay fantastic prices
for hats. These sombreros which are usually of felt or velour are
sometimes two feet high and three feet across from rim to rim. When a
little dark man puts on one of these he changes in aspect and looks
like some sort of fantastic magician.
In front of the shops and yet under the covered way of the porticos are
many tables and booths, and at the tables men wearing these sombreros
and long black moustachios play dominoes and drink beer. At the booths
quiet-eyed women sell cigarettes and sweets, and all along the curb
outside the colored arches of the porticos sit Indian women with their
hair hanging to the pavement, breasts exposed and papooses sucking
there.
The scene in the plaza at nightfall, when the whole population comes
out in parade, is in its way a ballet, unrehearsed and yet faultless.
The life of the whole seems to be the band up in the fine stand in the
central circle of the square. There stands the perfect little Zapotec
conductor facing another Indian who with gourds in his hands waves his
rattle with long arms, and on each side of them and around them is
resounding brass. A fine discipline has been achieved and a military
precision in play. German and Spanish compositions alternate. Marches
and Spanish dances seem to have a preference and with joyous clamor and
seductive melodies take possession of every man, woman and child in the
plaza. Most remarkable are the tatterdemalion crowds of Indians who in
cotton slops and bits of old blankets tied together tramp into town and
creep out of the dirt and the dust to the inner court of the bandstand.
There they crouch and stare, though they get the music in ear-breaking
blasts, being far too close. But they love to hear in the midst of it
the rattle of the gourd players, the rattle of the rain drops as in
their own half-forgotten rituals. Huddled together they stare at the
brass, at the gourds, at the Zapotec bandmaster in his perfectly ironed
regimentals.
From the inner court of the bandstand go six shady tracks under palms,
and scarlet-flowering trees, and orange fruits dripping from boughs,
and pomegranate trees; and these tracks reach the broad outer court,
round which like mystic shapes the great crowd comes and goes.
Here run the newsboys crying, "Patria, Patria," and the boys with
dozens of bottles on their little heads shouting, "Frescos, frescos,"
and scores of bootblacks with little wooden stools calling to all and
sundry "Grasar, grasar." Here walk stately icecream merchants with
colored barrels balanced on their heads, and swarthy, sunburned men
with sheaves of blankets for sale. Every Indian wears a blanket either
slit at the middle for his head to go through or swathed about his body
from head to foot as the Arab wears his burnous. Scarlet and orange
are the commonest colors of these blankets. They wear their sombreros,
the poor ones of straw, the rich ones of felt, Popocatepetls of felt,
high-domed, vastly brimmed, embroidered. Here are gray hats all
decorated with sailing ships and anchors worked in brown silk. Here
are white hats bedizened with silver tinsel sewn on as the Indian women
sew beetle-backs and butterfly wings into their embroideries in India.
The great hats flock, they shadow the pavement. And all the while
tran-tan-tan above it dominates the band.
Little boys carrying sugar canes eight feet long all hung with tiny
flags add great color to the scene. The canes are perforated with tiny
holes and in each hole is a sugar plum mounted on a long match or wire
and each sugar plum has a tiny flag hanging from it. A dozen boys are
carrying these resplendent poles; several others are carrying gourds
perforated and adorned in the same way.
There are park seats all the way round and there sit the more leisurely
of the listeners, and the tired, and watch the world go by. Old dames
with trays of pineapple and girls with baskets of pine kernels go from
seat to seat selling their wares.
The Zapotec women are straight as pine trees. They wear voluminous
cotton skirts but their feet are bare. Above the waist they do not mind
how much of their bodies they expose; they wear commonly a slightly
embroidered cotton vest cut as low as the rise of their bosoms and
leaving their arms bare from just below the shoulders. They have broad,
open faces, carved mouths, lined brows, and an enormous flow of raven
hair almost to their knees which they allow to hang. They wear earrings
of filigree gold and beautiful gold chains round their bare necks. They
may be on the point of beggary and yet wear these. The young ones are
very beautiful, but quiet-eyed and never lascivious. They hold their
heads so far back that if they wore hairpins and dropped one it would
always fall clear of their bodies.
Outside the Palacio the sentries march to and fro with bayonets fixed
and loaded rifles. The sergeant of the guard has golden bobinets
hanging from six golden chevrons. At the changing of the guard
bugles sound within the Palace yard in a sort of counterblast to the
triumphant choruses of brass coming from the branches of the palm trees
and the electric lights of the bandstand. Oaxaca, birthplace of Diaz,
birthplace of Juarez, is proud of itself and makes some show under the
Mexican sky.
Round and round walks the crowd and there mingle with the Indians
American men and women, jaunty men dressed anyhow and women in low-cut
evening gowns, simpering to one another and to their male companions.
Mexican belles also come out, with highly painted faces and dainty,
manicured hands. Girls in their teens join one another and all holding
arms walk in strings of sevens and eights. Youths of similar age walk
in similar strings. Horsemen with tight trousers and silver spurs
dismount and tie up their steeds and join the throng. The Governor
himself, the legislature of the State, joins the parade. There is the
highest and also the lowest. Bow, bow, bow, come the beggars. You give
them centavos or you give them cakes. They wear old dusty sombreros of
straw and you put the cakes in the brim. You see beggars with dozens of
cakes and tortillas and rolls in the brims of their straw sombreros.
The blind beggars walk in tandems; blind mother led by seeing child,
sister by sister, grandfather by grandson. There are two pseudo
beggars, too proud actually to beg, and they get more alms than all the
rest. One is a magnificent fellow with a gigantic straw sombrero. He
has lost both legs at the knee, but he must have been very handsome.
He has large pads now like the wooden boots put on horses drawing the
heavy roller over a lawn, and on these pads he walks like any other
man using hip muscles where we use the muscles of the knee. His yellow
hat points backward from his head—he carries a bootblack's stool and
wherever he goes the crowd makes way for him—a king of the pavement
and of all beggars and bootblacks. The other pseudo beggar is a boy
with curved spine and twisted body. He walks on all fours and has a
basket of matches or sweets hung from his neck. All among the people he
jumps like a frog—and whose heart can be so hard as to refuse him when
he looks up with angel smile, so sweetly, so appealingly? You pretend
to buy, he looks at what you give him, meditatively. He looks up at you
smiling, but perhaps a little troubled in expression.
"Adios?" he asks as if it were a question.
"Adios," you reply.
The trouble clears from his face; he is perfectly happy.
"Adios, adios," he exclaims and hops on like a frog amid the bare
brown feet of the Indians and the polished boots of Mexicans and
Americans.
Tran-tan-tan goes the band all the while, and the Zapotec bandmaster
with narrowed waist and rigid little head and shoulders looks like
Juarez himself. And the rattle of the gourds is like tambourines
struck on the knees of dancing girls.
The greatest tree in the Americas, though not the highest, is in the
far south of Mexico at Tule, some ten miles from Oaxaca; the highest
and perhaps the oldest is to be found among the Californian sequoias.
But in girth and grandeur the cypress of our Lady of Tule has no rival.
The Aztecs called it the Ahuehuetl, but it was a fine old tree at the
dawn of their history. It must have been a great tree in the time of
the Toltecs and was before them too. Perhaps some Emperor planted it
two thousand years ago. Who can say?
Cortes and his horsemen, on their way to Honduras, stood under it four
centuries ago, and their followers built a chapel there beside it, that
men might fitly turn from a marvelous creation to a marvelous Creator.
It is a pleasant ride from the city in the early hours of the morning.
The Zapotecs found us horses (with hooded stirrups and corded bridles)
and my wife and I rode out to Tule. It was market-day in the city and
we threaded our way through innumerable Indians and droves of asses
laden with panniers.
The astonishment of the Indian women at seeing a lady in riding attire
was very amusing. They for their part pick up their long flounced
cotton skirts and sit with their bare feet balanced on the asses'
shoulders. Flanked by baskets and sitting on heaps of merchandise
on the ass's back, so they ride to market, often suckling a baby
the while. But one of their sex astride! "Good Saint Anne!"—"Jesus
Maria!"—"Look sister!"—"Adios!" Their conventions were not our
conventions. They carried pigs strung by the legs to the asses' sides
and dangling turkeys and fowls. They brought pots innumerable and
baskets of eggs and tomatoes and alligator pears. Some Indians on foot
plunged through the dust, and waddling all across the broad highway the
asses came on in droves.
When we had ridden out of this turmoil into the fresher air we were in
a land of wild mimosa and that "smell of wattle" of which Kipling has
written memorable words—
The smell of the wattle at Lichtenberg
Riding in in the rain.
But there is no rain in Mexico all the winter long and all odors that
come on the air are warm. Trees with scarlet flowers bend over us.
The pomegranate hangs its rosy fruit, the coffee berries ripen on
the shrubs, and trees that know no fall, no nakedness of limb, hang
everlasting canopies of green. We ride gayly over plowed cornfields and
along the borders of plantations where sugar canes chatter with the wind.
Then anon towards noon we descry a settlement veiled in verdure, and
like a green knoll rising above it the vast upper story of a mighty
tree. There is no need to ask. It must be Tule and its tree. And we
ride by narrow shady lanes between banana palms, date palms, and
flowering shrubs, crisscross from the highway to the tree.
Behold a great cliff of wood, gray like a willow or an ash, with an
underbark of nut-fiber color, going upward in a grand sweep to the
branches. At the five bays of the tree one might build five fair-sized houses.
All is silent, all is beautiful round about it. A beggar only is
sitting under the tree. The large white church behind it reflects a
blaze of sunshine. A bougainvillæa, twenty feet high, is one mass of
crimson bloom all attended by bees and wasps. The solid white wall
which runs round with blockhouse at one corner is unimpaired. On
the white façade of the high broad church are painted tall Moorish
decorations in an intense royal blue, tall slender mosques of gleaming
blue, and big, red, empty niches for saints beside them.
The tree lifts its voluminous green bulk higher than the church,
but all its branches, all its stems and leaves, hang as it were in
reverence to the high-placed figure of the Virgin. It is plume-leaved,
and the tree is held sacred by many tribes as the tree of mourning. It
has the grand dignity of sorrow for the dead.
What a tree! A hundred horses could stand under it. Halfway up, in
the midst of the giant growth, starts straight and bolt upright, a
new tree, larger itself than any King Charles' Oak, larger even than
that tree in Palestine under which the Greek monks tell you Abraham
and Sarah entertained their Lord. The German Baron Humboldt, famous
traveler in his day, scratched his name on it in the year 1802, the
only name, the only vandalism which has been permitted. It is a
perfect tree in full maturity, the same species of cypress as the
Tree of the Dreadful Night at Mexico City, but in incomparably better
condition and much larger and older. If it could tell its story, the
lingering of Cortes and his men in its shade would be but a page. For
it must ever have attracted the attention of whoever passed that way.
The old cities like Mitla, twenty miles away, are choked in dust. But
with the freshness of spring the tree lives on.
Outside the walled churchyard which holds the tree is the town plaza
swarming with wasps but without gardens or bandstand or any of the
common adornments of such places, not even a statue of Juarez. But
there is an old portal and one shut shop bearing the curious name of
La Vuelta al Mundo, the Return to the World. But they have all gone
their way, those who sat under the tree in ages past, and none return
to tell us how it was in their day.
So—we to our horses once more, leaving, like the others, the Tree
behind like old Time itself.
Mitla is the American Luxor, and in the quieter days of Diaz' rule in
Mexico many were the travelers who went there, to gaze and wonder.
The ruins are those of some great city of a bygone civilization but
what civilization, whose civilization, none can tell. History does
not work for them as for the ruins of ancient Athens or Thebes—for
they are entirely without record and their story, whatever it may be,
interweaves in no way with the story of mankind as we know it. How rash
the Outline of History seems when we look at the broken outlines of
what is called Mitla! And the biblical traditions can hardly be felt to
have any reference to Mitla either, unless, as some archeologists have
believed, the country was originally settled by one of the lost tribes
of Israel.
The greater part of the North American continent is without ruins,
unless one thinks of the evidences of primitive man living there for
ages. The mounds on the high banks of the Mississippi and the cliff
dwellings of New Mexico tell not of a romantic past but of the uncouth
savagery of the Stone Age. But away south, in the latitude of what is
now British Honduras, are evidences of a way of living not unlike that
of Greeks and Romans, or of Egyptians. In fact the dumbfounding truth
is that the ruins are of a convincing resemblance to the ruins of the
East. Whoever lived there prized gold and gems as did humanity in the
Old World, and there is evidence enough that they lived for Empire as
did Persians and Babylonians. But they also built as humanity built
in ages past, in Egypt, in the East. The ruins of Mitla would not
be supremely remarkable in the vicinity of Athens or Tyre or on the
Nile. They would be almost in place. It is not merely because of the
pyramids. The principal site of pyramids in Mexico is two hundred and
more miles to the north, and though of course one is tempted to link
the Mexican pyramids with those of Egypt the likeness is less startling
than at first appears.
It is common in peoples to imitate in their architecture the natural
contours of their surroundings, and I think the Mexican pyramids with
their truncated tops are imitations in stone of the altarlike pyramidal
mountains, the little mesas so characteristic of the Anahuac plateau.
First, victims were offered for sacrifice on sacred mountains, and then
as a stage of progress on stone piles shaped like mountains.
But Mitla, and again Palenque in a similar latitude two hundred and
fifty miles east, are not imitations of anything in Nature, but rather
triumphs over ordinary life in vast untamed wildernesses. Their
buildings have tradition and style. Whoever lived at Mitla lived
sumptuously there.
I traveled to the little mining town of Tlacolula where the high road
hastens downward to Tehuantepec and the Pacific, and then took horses
from the Zapotecs. Here all the inhabitants are either Zapotec or
Mixtec Indians. And I spent a dusty day at Mitla. Riding up a strange
valley betwixt cavernous rock walls marked by splurges of ancient color
I thought of an immemorial road and slaves with pots on their heads and
princes in chariots drawn by men. I thought of wars, invasions, and the
massacre and destruction in what must have been the last days of that
Mitla Empire when some barbarous race which cared not for Art swept in
upon the people and destroyed them.
There is a Zapotec village now. There were Kings of Zapotec when Cortes
came and he made nothing of their kingship, though the greatest ruler
that the Mexican people now acknowledge was a Zapotec, the famous and
beloved President, Benito Juarez.
Behind the village, scorched and sunbleached, lie the heaps of what was
Empire, of what was ancient wreckage in the days when the Spaniards
came. Some of it lies in shapeless ruin—perhaps the homes of the poor.
Zapotec houses of adobe have added to the heaps. There were Zapotec
buildings which the Spaniards sacked; there were tombs of Zapotec Kings
or the mummies of Kings, stored with gold and gems in the ancient
vaults of stone. Mitla figured for long in the quest for El Dorado. And
still to-day it is believed by the Indians that vast sacred treasures
are here stored away. They guard the place with superstitious horror
still, and a grand work of excavation leading to the discovery of
subterranean temples and mausoleums might credibly lead to an uprising.
But I stood there undisturbed and looked at the great monoliths
and halls, the stamps of classic pillars, the great walls with
their conventional carvings and crosses. I went underground into an
atmosphere hot and close as the interior of a pyramid—into mysterious
chambers. I crept, candle in hand, into an abyss of darkness, as it
were into the hidden past of the dead. And with relief I returned to
the tropic blaze of light outside.
There stand long, low, white walls with fretted battlements, and there
are hieroglyphics which tell no story, and there in the dust lie the
footmarks of barefooted Indians. What does it all mean? Who has the
book of the words? There is no answer. I write my name in a register
which an Indian workman keeps—"Year 1923, Nationality British." I
came and I passed. I have a signature, but Mitla has none. That is not
even its name. But fitly might one read—
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
The story of gold commences in Genesis when of a certain country we
are told "The gold of that land is good." It does not say for what or
for whom it was good. It was just good. Gold is good: that was in the
beginning.
Primitive man held gold in his hand as children do bright pebbles and
he was pleased with it, as God the Creator Himself was reputed to be
pleased with the world when He had made it. Man in the earliest days
kept the gold which he picked up, made a possession of it, fought to
keep it, fought also to get other men's gold. Or he stole it and was
sued at law for its return.
He burnished his gold, he cut it, he melted it, he cast it as personal
adornment, he recast it as idols, he saw that fire had no power to
destroy it, he put its power above the power of the Sun, he worshiped it.
No animal prizes gold, not even the ape. Desire for it is a human passion.
After gold the greatest possession was in brides who were bought and
sold for a weight of gold somewhat less than their own weight of flesh.
And after men's wives their cattle were most precious and sold also
for gold. Primitive man worshiped the idea of the perfect bride in
a goddess of gold and he worshiped his herds in the golden calf and
golden bulls.
Judah's gods were largely gold and sex. Moses gave, however, their
vital revelation. His creative spirit distilled the idea of Jehovah,
invisible lawgiver and controller set above all visible creation. Still
the weakness of the Israelites has remained until this day—a passion
for sex and gold.
Gold in itself has nothing of evil in it. It is as innocent as iron or
tin. If we call gold fine and lead base it is because we ascribe to
them our human ideas about them. Gold at best was prized for its beauty
and its scarcity. It could fittingly adorn a bride, it could fittingly
be devoted to Jehovah, as in the building of the Temple; but once it
had been used to make a golden calf it had been defouled and could not
be worn again or devoted to the True God. Moses made the children of
Israel eat that disgraced gold—after the calf which they made of
their Egyptian spoils had been consumed by fire.
It is, however, possible that much of the gold of the Egyptians is
worn and used by men and women to-day. Gold does not easily perish and
yet is not easily recognizable. It exists from age to age, cast and
recast in ever new forms, gilding ever new superstitions, glories, and
ambitions. The gold of Darius was the gold of Alexander, and the gold
of Alexander was gold in the triumphs of the Romans. In turn it adorned
the rude limbs of Hans and Goths and Franks and Saracens. It glittered
in the Field of the Cloth of Gold. It was part of the treasure of the
Popes—but why labor the point? Gold has not been allowed to disappear.
Tombs are rifled for it. Ocean's bottom is dredged for it. Every man
who digs the soil is ready to identify it.
The gold of the New World proved a marvelous accession and drew men to
it more than did the Cross of our religion. The Wise Men fixed their
eyes on the East, seeking to lay aside their pride and bow to the
spiritual new birth. But the young men of our era set their eyes upon
the West, saying, "Gold—we will go there for gold." And the older men
looked there also, asking for Power, of which gold is the index.
Ah, it has been and is the great desideratum, gold, pockets full,
coffers full, bank full, heart full—to be finished with the practical
problem of life and to have at our disposal all that gold can command.
With their gold the rich gild temples as of old, forgetting the lesson
that our God "preferreth above all temples the upright heart and pure."
The cynics and the buffoons and the rabble make also their golden
calves which in turn some spiritual Moses will cast down.
But where is the poetry of the quest of El Dorado? Surely always in the
quest and never in the attainment. If ever in life you find what you
are seeking you have gone wrong. Finding, you lose. The whole of life
is balanced betwixt the aching heart and the golden dream.
When the quest is transmuted to music, which at its highest strives to
express the inexpressible, the ineffable, the unqualified x of life,
gold is represented in deep notes and remote superterrestrial harmonies
suggesting a golden age, a golden dream, all that we have missed, the
pathos of mortality, the forever lost, the infinitely precious past.
There were beautiful women, myriads of them, each distinct and lovely,
in far-off other times, centuries, ages ago, Queens of Sheba, Helens.
They sleep like the daughter of Pharaoh beside a lotus flower, gone to
dust, going to dust, to infinite fineness. Your eyes never saw them;
they lifted their faces in the morning, at sunrise in the valleys, or
on the mountains, far away, in other times. We look back to them from
the afternoon, from the evening, from a later time; we cannot see them.
They are hidden forever, like the heart of the world.
"Seek and ye shall find" means "Seek forever and ye shall find."
"Knock, and it shall be opened" means "Knock forever and it shall be
opened." How can we in our mortality find the gold? We cannot. The true
El Doradoist, hammer in hand, is knocking and tapping forever, seeking
veins of gold, seeking hollow chambers, seeking and opening tombs,
climbing westward after a vision which forsakes him every day of his life.
But whither have we led our thoughts, into what starlit unreality? This
volume, the like of which was no doubt burned at Alexandria thousands
of years ago, is a study of reality, is it not?—the study of the quest
of an everlasting substance by those who cannot last. It concerns
largely the five last centuries of the second millennium after Christ,
and certain peoples called Spanish, Indian, Anglo-Saxon. The Spanish
people obtained a great hold on the gold, but it has fallen from
their grasp. Americans now are foremost on the track of El Dorado, a
super-race who seek gold, it is true, but seek more the Power of which
gold is the index. They will take gold by machinery; power giving gold
and gold giving power. They have seen in the mirage a golden dream and
called it Pan-America.
There, most fittingly, closes this volume of the study of the Quest of
El Dorado. A thought, however, comes to me while looking at the Pyramid
of the Sun at Teotihuacan—When America has consolidated Pan-America
from Alaska to Panama she may build a great imperial memorial, a
pyramid greater than all other pyramids, a massive work of stone on
which Time can play but little havoc. And ultimately that pyramid alone
will survive her. In the long night of history it will stand, in the
starlit unreality of forgotten Time. Others, somewhere afar, will be
seeking still.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
