Part 6

Diaz says that the reason for the tameness of the deer was that the Maçotecas (here he applies the word to the Indians themselves) worshipped them as gods. It appears that their Chief God had once appeared in the image of a stag, and told the Indians not to hunt his fellow-gods, or even frighten them. Little enough the Spaniards cared for any gods not strong enough to defend themselves, for the deity that they adored was the same God of Battles whom we adore to-day.

So they continued spearing the god-like beasts, regardless of the heat and that their horses were in poor condition owing to their long march. The horse of one Palacios Rubio, a relation of Cortes, fell dead, overcome with the great heat; the grease inside him melted, Villagutierre says. The black horse that was ridden by Cortes also was very ill, although he did not die—though it perhaps had been better that he should have died, for Villagutierre thinks “far less harm would have been done than happened afterwards, as will be seen by those who read the tale.” After the hunting all was over, the line of march led over stony hills, and through a pass that Villagutierre calls “el Paso del Alabastro,” and Diaz “La Sierra de los Pedernales” (flints). Here the horse that had been ill, staked itself in a forefoot, and this, as Villagutierre says, was the real reason that Cortes left him behind. He adds, “It does not matter either way, whether he was left because his grease was melted with the sun, or that his foot was staked.” This, of course, is true, and anyhow the horse was reserved for a greater destiny than ever fell to any of his race.

Cortes, in his fifth letter to the Emperor Charles V., says simply, “I was obliged to leave my black horse (_mi caballo morzillo_) with a splinter in his foot.” He takes no notice of the melting of the grease. “The Chief promised to take care of him, but I do not know that he will succeed or what he will do with him.”

He told the Chief that he would send to fetch the horse, for he was very fond of him, and prized him very much. The Chief, no doubt, received the strange and terrible animal with due respect, and Cortes went on upon his way. That is all that Cortes says about the matter, and the mist of history closed upon him and on his horse. Cortes died, worn-out and broken-hearted, at the white little town of Castilleja de la Cuesta, not far from Seville; but El Morzillo had a greater destiny in store. This happened in the year 1525, and nothing more was heard of either the Maçotecas or the horse, after that passage in the fifth letter of Cortes, till 1697. In that year the Franciscans set out upon the gospel trail to convert the Indians of Itza, attached to the expedition that Ursua led, for the interior of Yucatan had never been subdued. They reached Itza, having come down the River Tipu in canoes.

This river, Villagutierre informs us, is as large as any river in all Spain. Moreover, it is endowed with certain properties, its water being good and clear, so that in some respects it is superior to the water even of the Tagus. It is separated into one hundred and ninety channels (neither more nor less), and every one of these has its right Indian name, that every Indian knows. Upon its banks grows much sarsaparilla, and in its sand is gold.

Beyond all this it has a hidden virtue, which is that taken (fasting) it cures the dropsy, and makes both sick and sound people eat heartily. Besides this, after eating, when you have drunk its water you are inclined to eat again.

At midday it is cold, and warm at night, so warm that a steam rises from it, just as it does when a kettle boils on the fire. Other particularities it has, which though they are not so remarkable, yet are noteworthy.

Down this amazing river Ursua’s expedition navigated for twelve days in their canoes till they came to a lake called Peten-Itza, in which there was an island known as Tayasal. All unknown to themselves, they had arrived close to the place where long ago Cortes had left his horse. Of this they were in ignorance; the circumstance had been long forgotten, and Cortes himself had become almost a hero of a bygone age even in Mexico.

Fathers Orbieta and Fuensalida, monks of the Franciscan order, chosen both for their zeal and for their knowledge of the Maya language, were all agog to mark new sheep. The Indians amongst whom they found themselves were “ignorant even of the knowledge of the true faith.” Moreover, since the conquest they had had no dealings with Europeans, and were as primitive as they were at the time when Cortes had passed, more than a hundred years ago.

One of the Chiefs, a man known as Isquin, when he first saw a horse, “almost ran mad with joy and with astonishment. Especially the evolutions and the leaps it made into the air moved him to admiration, and going down upon all fours he leaped about and neighed.” Then, tired with this practical manifestation of his joy and his astonishment, he asked the Spanish name of the mysterious animal. When he learned that it was caballo, he forthwith renounced his name, and from that day this silly infidel was known as Caballito. Then when the soul-cleansing water had been poured upon his head, he took the name of Pedro, and to his dying day all the world called him “Don Pedro Caballito, for he was born a Chief.”

This curious and pathetic little circumstance, by means of which a brand was snatched red-hot from the eternal flames, lighted for those who have deserved hell-fire by never having heard of it, might, one would think, have shown the missionaries that the poor Indians were but children, easier to lead than drive.

It only fired their zeal, and yet all their solicitude to save the Indians’ souls was unavailing, and the hard-hearted savages, dead to the advantages that baptism has ever brought with it, clave to their images.

The good Franciscans made several more attempts to move the people’s hearts by preaching ceaselessly. All failed, and then they went to several islands in the lake, in one of which Father Orbieta hardly had begun to preach, when, as Lopez Cogulludo {114a} tells us, an Indian seized him by the throat and nearly strangled him, leaving him senseless on the ground.

At times, seated in church listening to what the Elizabethans called “a painful preacher,” even the elect have felt an impulse to seize him by the throat. Still, it is usually restrained; but these poor savages, undisciplined in body and in mind, were perhaps to be excused, for the full flavour of a sermon had never reached them in their Eden by the lake. Moreover, after he was thus rudely cast from the pulpit to the ground, Father Fuensalida, nothing daunted by his fate, stepped forward and took up his parable. He preached to them this time in their own language, in which he was expert, with fervid eloquence and great knowledge of the Scriptures, {114b} explaining to them the holy mystery of the incarnation of the eternal Word. {115} The subject was well chosen for a first attempt upon their hearts; but it, too, proved unfruitful, and the two friars were forced to re-embark.

As the canoe in which they sat moved from the island and launched out into the lake, the infidels who stood and watched them paddling were moved to fury, and, rushing to the edge, stoned them whole-heartedly till they were out of reach.

It is a wise precaution, and one that the “conquistadores” usually observed, to have the spiritual well supported by the secular arm when missionaries, instinct with zeal and not weighed down with too much common sense, preach for the first time to the infidel.

This first reverse was but an incident, and by degrees the friars, this time accompanied by soldiers, explored more of the islands in the lake. At last they came to one called Tayasal, which was so full of idols that they took twelve hours to burn and to destroy them all.

One island still remained to be explored, and in it was a temple with an idol much reverenced by the Indians. At last they entered it, and on a platform about the height of a tall man they saw the figure of a horse rudely carved out of stone.

The horse was seated on the ground resting upon his quarters, his hind legs bent and his front feet stretched out. The barbarous infidels {116a} adored the abominable and monstrous beast under the name of Tziunchan, God of the Thunder and the Lightning, and paid it reverence. Even the Spaniards, who, as a rule, were not much given to inquiring into the history of idols, but broke them instantly, _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, were interested and amazed. Little by little they learned the history of the hippomorphous god, which had been carefully preserved. It appeared that when Cortes had left his horse, so many years ago, the Indians, seeing he was ill, took him into a temple to take care of him. Thinking he was a reasoning animal, {116b} they placed before him fruit and chickens, with the result that the poor beast—who, of course, was reasonable enough in his own way—eventually died.

The Indians, terrified and fearful that Cortes would take revenge upon them for the death of the horse that he had left for them to care for and to minister to all his wants, before they buried him, carved a rude statue in his likeness and placed it in a temple in the lake.

The devil, who, as Villagutierre observes, is never slack to take advantage when he can, seeing the blindness and the superstition (which was great) of those abominable idolaters, induced them by degrees to make a God of the graven image they had made. Their veneration grew with time, just as bad weeds grow up in corn, as Holy Writ sets forth for our example, and that abominable statue became the chiefest of their gods, though they had many others equally horrible.

As the first horses that they saw were ridden by the Spaniards in the chase of the tame deer, and many shots were fired, the Indians not unnaturally connected the explosions and the flames less with the rider than the horse. Thus in the course of years the evolution of the great god Tziunchan took place, and, as the missionaries said, these heathen steeped in ignorance adored the work of their own hands.

Father Orbieta, not stopping to reflect that all of us adore what we have made, but “filled with the spirit of the Lord and carried off with furious zeal for the honour of our God,” {118} seized a great stone and in an instant cast the idol down, then with a hammer he broke it into bits.

When Father Orbieta had finished his work and thus destroyed one of the most curious monuments of the New World, which ought to have been preserved as carefully as if it had been carved by Praxiteles, “with the ineffable and holy joy that filled him, his face shone with a light so spiritual that it was something to praise God for and to view with delight.” Most foolish actions usually inspire their perpetrators with delight, although their faces do not shine with spiritual joy when they have done them; so when one reads the folly of this muddle-headed friar, it sets one hoping that several of the stones went home upon his back as he sat paddling the canoe.

The Indians broke into lamentations, exclaiming, “Death to him, he has killed our God”; but were prevented from avenging his demise by the Spanish soldiers who prudently had accompanied the friar.

Thus was the mystery of the eternal Word made manifest amongst the Maçotecas, and a deity destroyed who for a hundred years and more had done no harm to any one on earth . . . a thing unusual amongst Gods.

XI MUDEJAR

BROWN, severe, and wall-girt, the stubborn city still held out.

Its proud traditions made it impossible for Zaragoza to capitulate without a siege. As in the days of Soult, when the heroic maid, the _artillera_, as her countrymen call her with pride, when Palafox held up the blood and orange banner in which float the lions and the castles of Castille, the city answered shot for shot.

Fire spurted from the Moorish walls, built by the Beni Hud, who reigned in Zaragoza, when still Sohail poured its protecting rays upon the land. The bluish wreaths of smoke curled on the Ebro, running along the water and enveloping the Coso as if in a mist.

A dropping rifle-fire crackled out from the ramparts, and above the castle the red flag of the Intransigent-Republic shivered and fluttered in the breeze.

The Torre-Nueva sprang from the middle of the town, just as a palm tree rises from the desert sands. It was built at the time when Moorish artisans, infidel dogs who yet preserved the secrets of the East amongst the Christians (may dogs defile their graves), had spent their science and their love upon it.

Octagonal, and looking as if blown into the air by the magician’s art, it leaned a little to one side, and, as the admiring inhabitants averred, drawing their right hands open over their left arms, laughed at its rival of Bologna and at every other tower on earth.

No finer specimen of the art known as Mudejar existed in all Spain. Galleries cut it here and there; and ajimeces, the little horseshoe windows divided by a marble pillar, loved of the Moors, which tradition says they took from the rude openings in their tents of camel’s hair, gave light to the inside. Stages of inclined planes led to the top, so gradual in their ascent that once a Queen of Spain had ridden up them to admire the view over the Sierras upon her palfrey, or her donkey, for all is one when treating of a queen, who of a certainty ennobles the animal she deigns to ride upon. Bold ajaracas, the patterns proper to the style of architecture, stood up in high relief upon its sides, and near the balustrade upon the top a band of bluish tiles relieved the brownness of the brickwork and sparkled in the sun. Sieges and time and storms, rain, wind, and snow had spared it; even the neglect of centuries had left it unimpaired—erect and elegant as a young Arab maiden carrying water from the well. Architects said that it inclined a little more each year, and talked about subsidences; but they were foreigners, unused to the things of Spain, and no one marked them; and the tower continued to be loved and prized and to fall into disrepair. On this occasion riflemen lined the galleries, pouring a hot fire upon the attacking forces of the Government.

Encamped upon the heights above Torero, the Governmental army held the banks of the canal that gives an air of Holland to that part of the adust and calcined landscape of Aragon.

The General’s quarters overlooked the town, and from them he could see Santa Engracia, in whose crypt repose the bodies of the martyrs in an atmosphere of ice, standing alone upon its little plaza, fringed by a belt of stunted and ill-grown acacia trees. The great cathedral, with its domes, in which the shrine of the tutelary Virgin of the Pilar, the Pilarica of the country folk, glittering with jewels and with silver plate, is venerated as befits the abiding place on earth of the miraculous figure sent direct from heaven, towered into the sky.

Churches and towers and convents, old castellated houses with their overhanging eaves and coats-of-arms upon the doors, jewels of architecture, memorials of the past, formed as it were a jungle wrought in a warm brown stone. Beyond the city towered the mountains that hang over Huesca of the Bell. Through them the Aragon has cut its roaring passages towards Sobrarbe to the south. Northwards they circle Jaca, the virgin little city that beat off the Moors a thousand years ago, and still once every year commemorates her prowess outside the walls, where Moors and Christians fight again the unequal contest, into which St. James, mounted upon his milk-white charger, had plunged and thrown the weight of his right arm. The light was so intense and African that on the mountain sides each rock was visible, outlined as in a camera-lucida, and as the artillery played upon the tower the effects of every salvo showed up distinctly on the crumbling walls. All round the Government’s encampment stood groups of peasantry who had been impressed together with their animals to bring provisions. Wrapped in their brown and white checked blankets, dressed in tight knee-breeches, short jackets, and grey stockings, and shod with alpargatas—the canvas, hemp-soled sandals that are fastened round the ankles with blue cords—they stood and smoked, stolid as Moors, and as unfathomable as the deep mysterious corries of their hills.

When the artillery thundered and the breaches in the walls grew daily more apparent and more ominous, the country people merely smiled, for they were sure the Pilarica would preserve the city; and even if she did not, all Governments, republican or clerical, were the same to them.

All their ambition was to live quietly, each in his village, which to him was the hub round which the world revolved.

So one would say, as they stood watching the progress of the siege: “Chiquio, the sciences advance a bestiality, the Government in the Madrids can hear each cannon-shot. The sound goes on those wires that stretch upon the posts we tie our donkeys to when we come into town. . . .”

Little by little the forces of the Government advanced, crossing the Ebro at the bridge which spans it in the middle of the great double promenade called the Coso, and by degrees drew near the walls.

The stubborn guerrilleros in the town contested every point of vantage, fighting like wolves, throwing themselves with knives and scythes stuck upright on long poles upon the troops.

So fought their grandfathers against the French, and so Strabo describes their ancestors, adding, “The Spaniard is a taciturn, dark man, usually dressed in black; he fights with a short sword, and always tries to come to close grips with our legionaries.”

As happens in all civil wars, when brother finds himself opposed to brother, the strife was mortal, and he who fell received no mercy from the conqueror.

The riflemen upon the Torre Nueva poured in their fire, especially upon the Regiment of Pavia, whose Colonel, Don Luis Montoro, on several occasions gave orders to the artillerymen at any cost to spare the tower.

Officer after officer fell by his side, and soldiers in the ranks cursed audibly, covering the saints with filth, as runs the phrase in Spanish, and wondering why their Colonel did not dislodge the riflemen who made such havoc in their files. Discipline told at last, and all the Intransigents were forced inside the walls, leaving the moat with but a single plank to cross it by which to reach the town. Upon the plank the fire was concentrated from the walls, and the besiegers stood for a space appalled, sheltering themselves as best they could behind the trees and inequalities of the ground.

Montoro called for volunteers, and one by one three grizzled soldiers, who had grown grey in wars against the Moors, stepped forward and fell pierced with a dozen wounds.

After a pause there was a movement in the ranks, and with a sword in his right hand, and in his left the colours of Castille, his brown stuff gown tucked up showing his hairy knees knotted and muscular, out stepped a friar, and strode towards the plank. Taking the sword between his teeth he crossed himself, and beckoning on the men, rushed forward in the thickest of the fire.

He crossed in safety, and then the regiment, with a hoarse shout of “Long live God,” dashed on behind him, some carrying planks and others crossing upon bales of straw, which they had thrown into the moat. Under the walls they formed and rushed into the town, only to find each house a fortress and each street blocked by a barricade. From every window dark faces peered, and a continual fusillade was poured upon them, whilst from the house-tops the women showered down tiles.

Smoke filled the narrow streets, and from dark archways groups of desperate men came rushing, armed with knives, only to fall in heaps before the troops who, with fixed bayonets, steadily pushed on.

A shift of wind cleared off the smoke and showed the crimson flag still floating from the citadel, ragged and torn by shots. Beyond the town appeared the mountains peeping out shyly through the smoke, as if they looked down on the follies of mankind with a contemptuous air.

Dead bodies strewed the streets, in attitudes half tragical, half ludicrous, some looking like mere bundles of old clothes, and some distorted with a stiff arm still pointing to the sky.

Right in the middle of a little square the friar lay shot through the forehead, his sword beside him, and with the flag clasped tightly to his breast.

His great brown eyes stared upwards, and as the soldiers passed him some of them crossed themselves, and an old sergeant spoke his epitaph: “This friar,” he said, “was not of those fit only for the Lord; he would have made a soldier, and a good one; may God have pardoned him.”

Driven into the middle plaza of the town, the Intransigents fought till the last, selling their lives for more than they were worth, and dying silently.

The citadel was taken with a rush, and the red flag hauled down.

Bugles rang out from the other angle of the plaza; the General and his staff rode slowly forward to meet the Regiment of Pavia as it debouched into the square.

Colonel Montoro halted, and then, saluting, advanced towards his chief. His General, turning to him, angrily exclaimed, “Tell me, why did you let those fellows in the tower do so much damage, when a few shots from the field guns would have soon finished them?”

Montoro hesitated, and recovering his sword once more saluted as his horse fretted on the curb, snorting and sidling from the dead bodies that were strewed upon the ground.

“My General,” he said, “not for all Spain and half the Indies would I have trained the cannon on the tower; it is Mudejar of the purest architecture.”

His General smiled at him a little grimly, and saying, “Well, after all, this is no time to ask accounts from any man,” touched his horse with the spur and, followed by his staff, he disappeared into the town.

XII A MINOR PROPHET

THE city sweltered in the August heat. No breath of air lifted the pall of haze that wrapped the streets, the houses, and the dark group of Græco-Roman buildings that stands up like a rock in the dull tide-way of the brick-built tenements that compose the town.

Bells pealed at intervals, summoning the fractioned faithful to their various centres of belief.

When they had ceased and all the congregations were assembled listening to the exhortations of their spiritual advisers, and were employed fumbling inside their purses, as they listened, for the destined “threepenny,” that obolus which gives respectability to alms, the silence was complete. Whitey-brown paper bags, dropped overnight, just stirred occasionally as the air swelled their bellies, making them seem alive, or as alive as is a jelly-fish left stranded by the tide.

Just as the faithful were assembled in their conventicles adoring the same Deity, all filled with rancour against one another because their methods of interpretation of the Creator’s will were different, so did the politicians and the cranks of every sort and sect turn out to push their methods of salvation for mankind. In groups they gathered round the various speakers who discoursed from chairs and carts and points of vantage on the streets.

Above the speakers’ heads, banners, held up between two poles, called on the audiences to vote for Liberal or for Tory, for Poor Law Reform, for Social Purity, and for Temperance. Orators, varying from well-dressed and glibly-educated hacks from party centres, to red-faced working-men, held forth perspiring, and occasionally bedewing those who listened to them with saliva, after an emphatic burst.