Part 2

The “Esmeralda” 481

Inca Queen and Princess 485

Señora Cousino 491

A Belle of Chili dressed for Morning Mass 497

A Solid Silver Spur 505

Over the Andes 506

Mount Aconcagua 507

Uspallata Pass 509

Caught in the Snow 511

Road Cut in the Rocks 512

A Station in the Mountains 513

The Condor 515

Cape Froward (Patagonia), Strait of Magellan 517

Fuegians Visiting a Man-of-war 519

A Fuegian Feast 521

The Signs of Civilization 523

Port Famine 526

Starvation Beach 529

Use of Lasso and Bolas 531

In their Ostrich Robes 532

A Patagonian Belle 533

The Guanaco 539

Patagonian Indians 541

The Harbor, Buenos Ayres 542

The City of Buenos Ayres 545

Loading Cargo at Buenos Ayres 548

Going Ashore at Buenos Ayres 549

A Private Residence in Buenos Ayres 552

The Colon Theatre, Buenos Ayres 554

An Argentine Ranchman 564

The Cathedral of Buenos Ayres 567

The Gaucho 570

General Rosas 573

Palace of Don Manuel Rosas 575

Map of the Argentine Republic 580

Country Scene in the Argentine Republic 584

Juarez Celman, President of the Argentine Republic 587

The City of Montevideo, looking towards the Harbor 591

Harbor of Montevideo 593

Maximo Santos, of Uruguay 595

One of the Old Streets 597

Montevideo--the Ocean Side 603

Scene in Montevideo 608

Gaspar Francia, First President of Paraguay 624

Street in Asuncion 625

Lopez, the Tyrant 626

After the War 627

Asuncion, from the West 628

Asuncion--the Palace and Cathedral 629

Wreck of the Old Cathedral 631

Station on the Asuncion Railway 633

A Visit to the Spring 634

The Paraguayans at Home 635

Paraguay Flower-girl 636

Remains of the Palace of Lopez 637

Interior of the Lopez Palace 639

The Cathedral, Asuncion 640

Market-place at Asuncion 641

A Paraguay Horseman 642

Paraguay Belles 643

Costumes of the Interior 644

An Interior Town 645

Home, Sweet Home 646

The Mandioca 647

Ox-cart on the Pampas 649

Curing Yerba Mate 650

A Siesta 651

A Paraguay Hotel 653

Native Pappoose and Cradle 654

A Hacienda 655

People of “El Gran Chaco” 656

An Armadillo 657

A Ranch on El Gran Chaco 658

Bay of Rio de Janeiro 661

A Street in Rio 662

The City of Rio from the Bay 663

Aqueduct at Rio 665

The Avenue of Royal Palms--Rio 666

The Prettiest Things in Brazil 667

A Brazilian Hacienda 669

The Old City Palace 671

In the Suburbs 672

Cottages in the Interior 673

The Iguana 675

A Brazilian Laundry 676

A Country School 677

Brazilian Country-house 679

Up the River 681

Dom Pedro II. 682

On the Way to Petropolis 683

The Empress of Brazil 685

Dom Pedro’s Palace at Petropolis 687

The Colored Saint 691

Statue of Dom Pedro I. 693

Carrying Coffee to the Steamer 696

Market-place in Country Town 697

“Sereno-o-o-o-o-o! Sereno-o-o-o-o-o!” 699

Slave Quarters in the Country 702

The Political Issue in Brazil 703

Military Men 705

THE CAPITALS OF SPANISH AMERICA.

MEXICO.

THE CAPITAL OF MEXICO.

With the exception of Buenos Ayres and Santiago, Chili, the city of Mexico is the largest and the finest capital in Spanish America; but unfortunately the shadow of the sixteenth century still rests upon it. It wounds the pride of the Yankee tourist to discover that so little of our boasted influence has lapped over the border, and that the historic halls of the Montezumas are only spattered with the modern ideas we exemplify. The native traveller still prefers his donkey to the railroad train, and carries a burden upon his back instead of using a wagon. Water is still peddled about the capital of Mexico in jars, and the native farmer uses a plough whose pattern was old in the days of Moses. Nowhere do ancient and modern customs come into such intimate contrast as in the city of Mexico.

The people are highly civilized in spots. Besides the most novel and recent product of modern science, one finds in use the crudest, rudest implement of antiquity. Types of four centuries can be seen in a single group in any of the plazas. Under the finest palaces, whose ceilings are frescoed by Italian artists, whose walls are covered with the rarest paintings, and shelter libraries selected with the choicest taste, one finds a common _bodega_, where the native drink is dealt out in gourds, and the _peon_ stops to eat his _tortilla_. Women and men are seen carrying upon their heads enormous burdens through streets lighted by electricity, and stop to ask through a telephone where their load shall be delivered.

The correspondence of the Government is dictated to stenographers and transcribed upon type-writers; and every form of modern improvement for the purpose of economizing time and saving labor is given the opportunity of a test, even if it is not permanently adopted. There is no Government that gives greater encouragement to inventive genius than the administration of President Diaz, and it has been one of the highest aims of his official career to modernize Mexico. The twelve years from 1876, when he came into power, until 1889, when his third term commenced, may be reckoned the progressive age of our neighborly republic; but the common people are still prejudiced against innovations, and resist them. In all the public places, and at the entrance of the post-office, are men squatting upon the pavement, with an inkhorn and a pad of paper, whose business is to conduct the correspondence of those whose literary attainments are unequal to the task. Such odd things are still to be seen at the capital of a nation that subsidizes steamship lines and railways, and supports schools where all the modern languages and sciences are taught, and has a compulsory education law upon its statute-books. In the old Inquisition Building, where the bodies of Jews and heretics have been racked and roasted, is a medical college, sustained by the Government for the free education of all students whose attainments reach the standard of matriculation; and bones are now sawn asunder in the name of science instead of religion.

The country within whose limits can be produced every plant that grows between the equator and the arctics, and whose mines have yielded one-half of the existing silver in the world, is habitually bankrupt, and wooden effigies of saints stolen from the churches are sold as fuel for locomotives purchased with the proceeds of public taxation. What Mexico needs most is peace, industry, and education. The Government now pays a bounty to steamships upon every immigrant they bring, and is importing coolie labor to develop the coffee and sugar lands. Since 1876 there has not been a political revolution of any importance, and the prospect of permanent peace is hopeful.

The political struggle in Mexico, since the independence of the Republic, has been, and will continue to be, between antiquated, bigoted, and despotic Romanism, allied with the ancient aristocracy, under whose encouragement Maximilian came, on the one hand, and the spirit of intellectual, industrial, commercial, and social progress on the other. The pendulum has swung backward and forward with irregularity for sixty years; every vibration has been registered in blood. All of the weight of Romish influence, intellectual, financial, and spiritual, has been employed to destroy the Republic and restore the Monarchy, while the Liberal party has strangled the Church and stripped it of every possession. Both factions have fought under a black flag, and the war has been as cruel and vindictive on one side as upon the other; but the result is apparent and permanent.

No priest dare wear a cassock in the streets of Mexico; the confessional is public, parish schools are prohibited, and although the clergy still exercise a powerful influence among the common people, whose superstitious ignorance has not yet been reached by the free schools and compulsory education law, in politics they are powerless. The old clerical party, the Spanish aristocracy, whose forefathers came over after the Conquest, and reluctantly surrendered to Indian domination when the Viceroys were driven out and the Republic established, have given up the struggle, and will probably never attempt to renew it. They were responsible for the tragic episode of Maximilian, and still regret the failure to restore the Monarchy. The Aztecs sit again upon the throne of Mexico, after an interval of three hundred and fifty years, and the men whose minds direct the affairs of the Republic have tawny skins and straight black hair.

Several of the aristocrats have left the country and reside in Paris, receiving enormous revenues from their Mexican estates, which they visit biennially, but will not live upon. Others are friends of Diaz, sympathize with the progressive element, and will turn out full-fledged Republicans when the issue is raised again. The finest houses in Mexico are unoccupied, and the palatial villas of Tacubaya, the aristocratic suburb, are in a state of decay. They are too large and too costly for rental, and the owners are too obstinate and indifferent to sell them. Perhaps these haughty dons still have a hope of coming back some time to rule again as they did years ago, but they will die as they have lived since Maximilian’s failure, impotent but unreconciled.

The beautiful castle of Chapultepec, which was dismantled during the last revolution, but has been restored and fitted up as a beautiful suburban retreat for the Presidents of Mexico, was occupied by Maximilian and Carlotta in imitation of the Montezumas, whose palace stood upon the rocky eminence. Around the place is a grove of monstrous cypress-trees, whose age is numbered by the centuries, and whose girth measures from thirty to fifty feet. It is the finest assemblage of arborial monarchs on the continent, and sheltered imperial power hundreds of years before Columbus set his westward sails. Before the Hemisphere was known or thought of, here stood a gorgeous palace, and its foundations still endure. Here the rigid ceremonial etiquette of Aztec imperialism was enforced, and human sacrifice was made to invoke the favor of the Sun.

In Mexican society one meets many notable people; some are remarkable for talent, or their birth, etc., and others for the strange vicissitudes of their lives. For example, in an obscure little house lives a well-educated gentleman who is, by lineal descent from Montezuma II., the legal heir to the Aztec throne, and should be Emperor of Anahuac. This Señor Montezuma, however, indulges in no idle dream of the restoration of the ancient Empire, and quietly accepts the meagre pension paid him by the Government. In contradistinction to this scion of the house of Montezuma, the heirs of Cortez receive immense revenues from the estates of the “Marquis del Valle” (Cortez), live in grand style, and are haughty and influential. There is also a lineal descendant of the Indian emperor Chimalpopoca. This young man is a civil engineer, industrious, and quite independent.

The acknowledged heir to the throne of Mexico is young

Augustin Yturbide, according to the feelings of the few and feeble remnants of the Monarchical party; but it may be said to the young man’s credit that he entirely repudiates their homage, although he is the heir to two brief and ill-starred dynasties. He is the grandson of the Emperor Augustin Yturbide, and the adopted heir of Maximilian and Carlotta. The Yturbide they call “Emperor” was an officer in the Spanish army when Mexico was a colony, and during the revolution headed by the priest Hidalgo, in 1810, he fought on the side of the King. But, being dismissed from the army in 1816, he retired to seclusion, to remain until the movement of 1820, when he placed himself at the head of an irregular force, and captured a large sum of money that was being conveyed to the sea-coast. With these resources he promulgated what is known in history as “the plan of Iguala,” which proposed the organization of Mexico into an independent empire, and the election of a ruler by the people. The revolution was bloodless, and in May, 1822, Yturbide proclaimed himself Emperor, declared the crown hereditary, and established a court. He was formally crowned in the July following, but in December Santa Anna proclaimed the Republic, and after a brief and ignominious reign Yturbide left Mexico on May 11, 1822, just a year, lacking a week, from the date he assumed power. The Congress gave him a pension of $25,000 yearly, and required that he should live in Italy; but impelled by an insane desire to regain his crown, in May, 1824, he returned to Mexico, and was shot in the following July.

He left a son, Angel de Yturbide, who came to the United States with his mother, and was educated at the Jesuit College at Georgetown, District of Columbia, the Government having given them a liberal pension. There he fell in love

with Miss Alice Green, the daughter of a modest but prosperous merchant of the town, and married her. They had one child, the so-called Prince Augustin, who, when three years old, with the consent of his ambitious mother, was adopted by the childless Maximilian and Carlotta, in the vain hope that the act might in a measure increase their popularity among the Mexicans.

Meanwhile Maximilian’s fate was fast overtaking him. When he saw the catastrophe was at hand, he determined to save the young Yturbide, and with the assistance of the Archbishop of Mexico notified Madame Yturbide that her child would be placed on a certain steamer reaching Havana at such a date; and it was there the mother was united to him after a separation of two years. Maximilian and Carlotta had surrounded the young prince with all the elegancies of royalty, and he retained many of their royal gifts. His father was then dead, and his mother had sole charge of his education. He was educated at Washington, where Madame Yturbide lived in a fine house on the corner of Nineteenth and N streets. When her son came of age she sold her house and returned with him to Mexico. His intention was to enter the army at once, but by the advice of his Mexican friends he entered the national military college for a course of study before taking his commission. He is a handsome young man, very quiet and prepossessing. His abilities can scarcely be judged so far, but he has always conducted himself with great good-sense. Madame Yturbide is now with him in Mexico. One of the most promising signs of the permanency of the Republic is the presence in the party of progress of this young man, whose name represents all the ancient aristocracy desires to restore. He has inherited two worthless crests; but, whether from policy or principle, has added his youthful strength and the traditions that surround his name to the support of the Diaz administration.

The widow of General Santa Anna is a woman who played a prominent part in the political tragedies that have succeeded one another with such great rapidity upon the Mexican stage. Until her death in the autumn of 1886, she was an object of interest to all visitors to the capital, and always welcomed cordially strangers who called upon her, provided they would permit her to smoke her cigarettes, and talk about her beauty and the attentions she had received in the past.

Santa Anna is not so highly estimated in Mexico as in some other parts of the world where people are not so familiar with his eccentric and adventurous career. He was a man of remarkable natural abilities, force of character, energy, and personal courage, but devoid of principle, education, culture, and mindful only of his own interests. He served all political parties in turn. She was his second wife, and was only thirteen years old when he married her, in the fifth term of his presidency, and when he was trying to set himself up as an absolute monarch. For twenty years her life was spent in a camp, surrounded by the whirl of warfare. Her husband was five times President of Mexico, and four times Military Dictator in absolute power. He was banished, recalled, banished again, and finally died, denounced by all as a traitor. She had seen much “glory,” and had received unlimited adulation, but she hardly ever enjoyed one thoroughly peaceful month in her life.

It created a sensation in Mexico when the pretty peon girl, Dolores Testa, was suddenly raised from abject poverty to affluence. The Dictator ordered all to address his bride as “Your Highness,” ladies-in-waiting were appointed in order to teach the bewildered little Dolores how to play her rôle in the great world, and then the President organized for her a body-guard of twenty-five military men, who were uniformed in white and gold, and were styled “los Guardias de la Alteza” (her Highness’s Body-guard). When the President’s wife attended the theatre these guards rode in advance of and at the sides of the coach, each bearing a lighted torch. During the performance they remained in the _patio_ or _foyer_ of the theatre, and then escorted her Highness back to the palace in the same order. Such was the power of General Santa Anna in those days that even the clergy bent before him; and when

his young wife went to mass, the priests, attended by their acolytes, actually used to leave the cathedral to meet her on the pavement, and with cross and lighted tapers escort her from her carriage to her seat within the church, and at the conclusion of the mass accompanied her to her coach.

Her last days were quite in contrast with the glory of her youth. She owned a residence in the city and a lovely country-seat in Tacubaya, the aristocratic suburb; her wardrobes and chests were filled with rich robes of velvet, satin, and silk, costly laces, and magnificent jewels; but she was too listless to interest herself in anything. No stranger who by chance might see her ex-highness at home, with her pretty feet thrust into down-trodden old leather shoes, and her unkempt hair covered by a common cotton _rebosa_, could ever, by the greatest effort of imagination, possibly fancy her to be the same person who once dazzled Mexico by a display of pomp that exceeded even that of the Empress Carlotta. Mrs. Santa Anna was an estimable woman, but was almost forgotten by the generation that once bent before her. Her family plate, and the diamond snuffbox which was presented her husband when he was Dictator, and cost twenty-five thousand dollars, were, during the latter years of her life, and still are, in the National pawn-shops of Mexico, and his wooden leg, captured in battle during our war with Mexico, is in the Smithsonian Institute.

The family of the great Juarez, the Washington of Mexico, an Aztec peon, who overthrew the empire of Maximilian as Cortez had overthrown the ancient dynasty of his ancestors, live in good style in the city of Mexico, the daughters being well married, and the son the secretary of the Mexican legation at Berlin. They all talk English well, and are very highly educated. Every American who visits their city is handsomely entertained by them.