Part 4

The funeral customs of Mexico are a source of constant interest to strangers in that land, as the burial of the dead is a ceremony of great display. The poor rent handsome coffins which they have not the means to buy, and transfer the body from its temporary casket to a cheap box before it is laid in the grave. Invitations are issued by messenger, and advertisements of funerals are published in the newspapers or posted at the street corners like those of a bull-fight or a play. Announcements are sent to friends in big, black-bordered envelopes, and are usually decorated with a picture of a tomb. The information is conveyed in faultless Spanish, that Señor Don Jesus San a Maria Hidalgo died yesterday at noon, and that his bereaved wife, who mourns under the name of “Donna Maria José Concepcion de los Angelos Narro Henriandos y Hidalgo,” together with his family, desire you to honor them by participating in the ceremonies of burial, and in supplicating the Mother of God and the Redeemer of the world to grant the soul of the dead husband a speedy release from the pains of Purgatory, and eternal bliss in Paradise.

The oddities of Mexican life and customs strike the tourist in a most forcible manner. The first thing he observes among the common people is that the men wear extremely large hats, and the women no hats at all. The ordinary sombrero costs fifteen dollars, while those bearing the handsome ornaments so universally popular run in price all the way from twenty-five to two hundred and fifty dollars. The Mexican invests all his surplus in his hat. Men whose wages are not more than twelve dollars a month often wear sombreros which represent a whole quarter’s income. A servant at the house of a friend was paid off one day for the three months his employer had been absent. He got forty-two dollars, of which he paid thirty-five dollars for a hat and gave seven dollars to his family.

The next thing that you notice is that every block on the same street has a different name, and when you start out on foot to make a visit you become bewildered at once, and have to call a carriage. Take the chief street, for example, which begins at the Grand Plaza, where the Palace stands, and runs to the statue of Charles IV. of Spain. Each of the seventeen blocks has a name of its own, and the names that are used are quite as striking as this perplexing custom. Here is a list of some of the principal blocks or streets translated into English: “Crown of Thorns Street,” “Fifth of May Street,” “Holy Ghost Street,” “Blood of Christ Street,” “Body of Christ Street,” “Mother of Sorrows Street,” “Street of the Sacred Heart,” “The Heart of Jesus Street,” “Street of the Love of God,” “Jesus Street,” and “John the Baptist Street.” Nearly every saint in the calendar has a street named after him or her, and nine-tenths of the city has the religion of the people thus illustrated.

Another thing that surprises you greatly is that nearly every man you meet makes you a present of a residence. He grasps your hand with ardent cordiality when he leaves you, and says, “My house is yours; it stands numero tres--Calle,” and so on, “and is at your service.” The next man tells you that your house is such and such a number, and he shall be angry if you do not occupy it. As neither of them has enjoyed the honor of your acquaintance for more than five minutes, and both are only casually introduced, this excessive generosity is quite embarrassing. An English lord told me he met fourteen men at the Jockey Club one evening, and was presented with thirteen houses. The other man lived in Cuba. But it is only the Mexican way of saying, “I’m pleased to meet you.” It often leads to comical adventures, however, for the gentleman who tenders such profuse hospitality seldom remembers you the next morning. People have accepted these ardent invitations and been met with a cold welcome. Another amusing and puzzling peculiarity is that everybody lives over a shop. Even the millionaires rent out the first floor of their residences for purposes of business, and live in the third story. The handsomest house in all Mexico has a railway ticket-office on one side of the entrance and a cigar shop on the other. Everybody smokes: women as well as men. They smoke in the street-cars, in the shops, at the opera, everywhere. I have often seen a man upon his knees in a chapel muttering his prayers with a lighted cigar in his hand.

The street-cars run in groups. Instead of starting a car every ten minutes from the terminus, three are started together every half hour. One car is never seen alone, nor two together, but always three in a row, less than half a block apart. It requires two conductors to run a car. One approaches a passenger and sells him a ticket; the second one then comes in and takes it up. In some respects it is an improvement on the bell-punch system. There are first-class cars and second-class cars. The former are of New York manufacture, and similar to those used in that city; the latter are of domestic construction, have but few windows, and look like the cabooses used on railroad freight trains. First-class fares are sometimes as high as twenty-five cents, but are more often a _medio_ (six and a quarter cents), being governed by the distance. Second-class fares are always one-half the amount of first-class fares. Street-car drivers carry horns, and blow them when they approach street crossings. The conductors usually carry revolvers. Nearly everybody, in truth, carries a revolver.

Horseback riding is the national amusement, and the streets are full of horsemen, particularly in the cooler hours of the morning and evening. The proper thing to wear is a wide sombrero, very tight trousers of leather or cassimere, with rows of silver buttons up and down the outer seam, a handsomely embroidered velvet jacket, a scarlet sash, a sword, and two revolvers, not to mention spurs of marvellous size and design, and a saddle of surpassing magnificence. A Mexican caballero often spends one thousand dollars for an equestrian outfit. His saddle costs from fifty dollars to five hundred dollars, his sword fifty dollars, his silver-mounted bridle twenty-five dollars, his silver spurs as much more, the solid silver buttons on his trousers one hundred dollars, his hat fifty dollars, and the rest of his rig in proportion. The Mexican small boy, if he has wealthy parents, is mounted after a similar fashion, even to the revolver and sword. An equestrian costume for a boy of ten years can be purchased for about fifty dollars, not including saddle and bridle.

The Mexican ladies do not ride any more than their sisters in the United States. Social etiquette prohibits this recreation, unless they have brothers to go with them. The señoras and señoritas take their exercise in closed carriages. You never see a phaeton or wagon in Mexico. When they go shopping they sit in their carriages and have the goods brought out to them. It is a common thing to see a row of carriages before a fashionable store with a clerk at the door of each one exhibiting silks or gloves or ribbons. In some of the stores are parlors in which a señora can sit if she likes and have the goods brought to her. None but foreigners and the common people stand at the counters and buy. Mexican merchants never classify their goods. They have no system in arranging them. Silks and cottons are indiscriminately mixed on the shelves. There is no place for anything, and nothing is ever in place. Hence shopping requires the exercise of a vast deal of patience. I went to buy a pair of gloves one day. The clerk pulled open a drawer in which were shoes, corsets, and ribbons. He found some gloves, but there being none in the box to fit, he hunted around on the shelves and in the drawers until he discovered another lot. Nor are goods ever delivered at the residences of purchasers. If your package is too bulky to carry in your hands or in your carriage it is sent to your house by a licensed carrier, similar to the district messenger boy of New York, to whom you pay a fee. Each carrier has a brass badge like a policeman’s, bearing a number, and if he does not deliver the goods promptly and in good order you report him at police headquarters, where he is heavily fined. On the other hand, if he cannot find your residence, or there is a mistake in the directions, he takes the goods to police headquarters, and you can find them there, and discover the reasons why they were not delivered.

On pleasant afternoons--and except in the rainy season all afternoons are pleasant here--everybody who owns a carriage, or is able to hire one, drives on the boulevard which Maximilian made from the city to the Castle of Chapultepec, a distance of two and a half miles. As most of the carriages are closed, the scene is not so interesting as it might be, but you can occasionally catch a glimpse of a beautiful face through the carriage windows. The horses are indifferent. Some of the handsomest equipages are drawn by mules.

There are more public hacks and carriages in Mexico than in any other city in the world in proportion to its population, and few cities have worse pavements. Most of the vehicles are coupés, but there are a few victorias. There are no hansoms. The public carriages are all under police regulation, and the rates are fixed by law, according to the condition of the vehicle and the horses. Each carriage has a small tin flag attached to the top. A green flag means that you have to pay a dollar and a half an hour, for the carriage is new, the horses are good, and the harness is handsomely trimmed. A blue flag means a dollar an hour, with a little less style; a white flag, seventy-five cents. The latter class are about the toughest-looking outfits that can be found anywhere.

Each of the other sort of carriages has a footman as well as a coachman, without additional price, although generous people give him a tip to the extent of a _real_ (twelve and a half cents). The footman is called a _mozo_, and acts as a sort of apprentice or private secretary to the _cochero_, or driver. When you hire a hack the _mozo_ rushes off to the nearest store, looks at the clock, and brings you back a card upon which the hour is written. When you finish your ride he hands you the card again, and you pay from the time you started. On feast-days charges are doubled, and as feast-days are frequent, when all the stores are closed, the hackmen make a good thing of it. They drive in a most reckless manner, and as the pavements are rough the passengers are bounced about.

The Spaniards drink cognac and sour wines. Whiskey is not a safe beverage for the climate. American mixed drinks are not popular, and the scarcity of ice makes juleps and that sort of thing expensive. The stranger in Mexico is always very thirsty; the rapid evaporation makes the mouth and throat dry, and water furnishes only temporary relief. The most refreshing drink is lime-juice in Apollinaris water.

Pulque (pronounced _poolkee_) is the national drink, and is

the fermented milk of the cactus. Eighty thousand gallons are said to be sold in Mexico every day, and double that amount on Sundays and saints’ days. It is a sort of combination of starch and alcohol, looks like well-watered skim-milk, and tastes like yeast. It costs but a penny a glass, or three cents a quart, so that it is within the reach of the humblest citizen, and he drinks vast quantities of it. Five cents’ worth will make a peon (as all the natives are called) as happy as a lord, and ten cents’ worth will send him reeling into the arms of a policeman, who secures him an engagement to work for the Government for ten days without compensation. But it leaves no headache in the morning, and is said to be very healthful. In the moist climates one might drink large quantities without injury, but all the usual intoxicants are harmful in this altitude.

The police system of Mexico is admirable. At every street corner there is a patrolman night and day--not a patrolman either, for he never moves. He stands like a statue during the day, occasionally leaning against a lamp-post, and answers inquiries with the greatest urbanity. Whenever there is a row two or three policemen are instantly present, and if their clubs cannot suppress it they use revolvers. At night the policeman brings a lantern and a blanket. He sets the lantern in the middle of the street, and all carriages are compelled to keep to the right of the row of lanterns, which can be seen glimmering from one end of the street to the other. As long as people are passing he stands at the corner, but when things quiet down he leaves his lantern in the road, retires to a neighboring door-way, wraps his blanket around him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. As all the windows in the city of Mexico have heavy prison-like gratings before them, and all the doors are great oaken affairs that could not be knocked in without a catapult; as there are never any fires, and everybody goes to bed early, the policeman’s lot is usually a happy one. He is numerous because of revolutions, and because the Government always wants to know what is going on. There is a popular belief in Mexico that no stranger ever comes to town without having his past history and future plans recorded at police headquarters. One never reads of robberies or pocket-picking, or assault and battery cases, in the city of Mexico. Common thieves have no chance there. The only disturbances are political revolutions, and the Government alone is robbed.

All the ice that is used in Mexico comes from the top of Popocatepetl. It is brought down the mountain on the backs of the natives, and then sixty miles on the cars to the city, where it is sold at wholesale for ten cents a pound. At the bar-rooms iced drinks are very expensive, and ice is seldom seen anywhere else. The people all use a jug of porous earthenware made by the Indians in which water is kept cool by rapid evaporation. The stranger should always squeeze a little lime-juice into his glass before he drinks water, to get a pleasant flavor, and escape evil effects from alkaline properties.

From the top of the cathedral spire you can see the entire city, and the most striking feature of the view is the absence of chimneys. There is not a chimney in all Mexico; not a stove, nor a grate, nor a furnace. All the cooking is done with charcoal in Dutch ovens, and, while the gas is sometimes offensive, one soon becomes used to it. Coal costs sixteen dollars a ton, and wood sixteen dollars a cord. All the coal was formerly imported from England, but now comes from Cohahuila, and the wood is all brought from the mountains.

As formerly, bull-fighting is at present the most popular amusement in Mexico, and a matador is more distinguished in the eyes of the common people than a prima donna or a president. The Mexican Government has of late years become humanized to the extent of prohibiting these brutal spectacles within the city limits, and they now take place at what is called the “Plaza de Toros,” or Bull Park, on the plains five or six miles from the city. Here the people gather on every Sunday and saint-day to witness the butchery of three or four bulls and twice as many horses, under the official patronage of the Governor of the State, who always is present with his family and official staff, and from a decorated platform directs the entertainment, giving his orders through a trumpeter.

Back of the Castle of Chapultepec is the battle-field of Molino del Rey (The Mill of the King), where General Scott met stubborn resistance when he attempted to enter Mexico, but drove the Mexicans up the hill. The old earthworks erected by the latter still stand as they were at the time of the battle, and are usually visited by tourists. On the plain beyond the battle-field stands an amphitheatre enclosed within a massive wall of adobe--the mud bricks which are used for building material in all the rainless region of this continent. The amphitheatre is arranged in the usual form, except that the shady side is divided up into boxes to be occupied by the grandees, while the sunny side has plain board benches for the barefooted Castilians whose mild eyes and pathetic deference give no key to the cruelty of which their race has been guilty. The centre of the amphitheatre is enclosed by a board wall, perhaps eight feet in height, surmounted at a point two feet higher by a heavy cable strung through stalwart iron rods. The top of this fence appeared to be the favorite eyrie from which to survey the field, and upon it for the entire length sat a row of urchins, with here and there a bearded man, all poised upon the edge, with their legs hanging over into the bull-ring, and their arms clinging to the rope.

The Governor, a tall, swarthy man, with a wide sombrero, mustache and goatee, the very picture of the “haughty Don,” sat in a decorated box, with the flag of his country profusely draped around him. He had two aides-de-camp, his three children, and an orderly, who with a trumpet sounded a blast now and then to convey his excellency’s desires. We happened luckily to have the adjoining box, from which we could watch him closely and hear his comments upon the performances.

The audience was very large, and composed of all classes, from the proud Castilian who came behind his four-in-hand, with a retinue of outriders, to the poor peon who had been saving his scanty earnings for a week, and walked five miles to witness the ghastly spectacle. There were perhaps ten thousand people, and one-fifth of them were women in silks and satins, in jewels and rare laces, who hid their eyes behind their fans when the spectacle was too repulsive, but encouraged the matadors with applause at the end of each act.

A band of music played lively airs, and played them well, to entertain the people until the Governor came, whose presence being recognized, the people gave a cordial cheer by way of welcome. Then the herald in the Governor’s box blew a signal which sounded like the “water call” of the United

States Cavalry, the doors of the pit were opened, and in marched a dozen or so of matadors, in the same sort of jackets and breeches which they wear in the pictures of Spanish life so familiar to all. Each wore a plumed hat, a scarlet sash, a poniard, and the gold lace upon the black velvet showed their lithe and supple forms to advantage. They looked as Don Juan looks in the opera, while the leader, Bernardo Cavino, “del decano de los toreros,” I was a veritable Figaro, in appearance at least. Each carried a scarlet cloak upon his arm, and in the other hand a pikestaff. Behind them came a troop of eight horsemen upon gayly caparisoned steeds, with the usual amount of silver and leather trappings in which the Mexicans delight. The procession tailed up with a team of four mules hitched abreast, dragging a whiffletree and a long rope. These, we are told, were for the purpose of dragging out the dead. The cavalcade made a circuit of the amphitheatre, like the grand entrée at a circus, and upon reaching the Governor’s box stopped, saluted him, and received a short address in Spanish, which probably was simply one of approval and congratulation at their fine appearance. There was a rack in front of the Governor’s box upon which hung several rows of darts, gayly decorated with paper rosettes and paper fringes of gold and other brilliant tints. Upon these racks the matadors hung their plumed hats, and stood a while to give the ladies and gentlemen of the audience an opportunity to see and admire.

The gay horsemen then rode out, and were followed by the mules, but the horsemen soon returned upon an entirely different style of animals--poor, broken-down, lean, lame, and mangy hacks, which looked as if they had been turned out of some street-car stable as bait for vultures. They were covered with a sort of leathern armor, and this concealed their fleshless ribs; but nothing could disguise the shambling and uncertain gait with which they painfully ambled across the arena under the savage spurring of their riders. They managed to get across, and that was all. The first set of horses were intended for show, and the second for slaughter. Public opinion appears to demand that something besides a bull be sacrificed, and the matadors not being amiable enough to afford this gratification, a pair of animated clothes-racks are turned in to be gored. The poor beasts are blindfolded, which is about the only humane feature of the show.

The Governor’s herald gave another blast, at which the entire audience, who were on the _qui vive_, arose and shouted. A door across the pit opened, and a large, clumsy, long-horned bull poked his head out into the arena. The crowd yelled, and matadors posed at different parts of the ring--ten of them--and the two horsemen pretended to get ready for the fray. The bull looked up, the only frightened being in the entire multitude. The posters described him as “a valiant and arrogant animal.” He was a fine piece of beef, but he didn’t want to fight. Somebody behind spurred him, and he ran into the ring. The doors were closed behind him, and there was no way of escape. He plunged one way, but was met by three matadors, who flapped their cloaks in his eyes; he turned in the other direction, but was met by three more; then he made a bolt between them, and darting towards the other side of the ring, gave a great leap, as if he would go over the eight-foot wall. Of course he failed, but he struck the planks with tremendous force, tumbling forty or fifty fellows who were perched on the top into a heap on the other side. It was the only amusing feature of the whole show. There was a grand crash, a loud howl, forty or fifty pairs of legs were in the air, and the audience shouted with laughter. The bull turned around frightened at the noise, ran to the other side of the ring, and sought in vain for a place to get out. Then one of the horsemen rode up in front of the animal and jammed a spear into his face. The bull plunged at his assailant, bellowing with pain, lifted the poor horse upon his horns, raised him from the ground, and threw him with great force against the side of the arena.

The rider, expecting the attack, was prepared for it, and leaped with great agility from the saddle just as the two animals came in contact. There was very little left of the horse. There was not much of him when he was dragged into the ring, but the long horns of the bull penetrated his bowels and tore them out. The bull jams the horse against the planks, two, three, four times, and then withdraws. The horse lies a bleeding, disembowelled mass, and the crowd cheers the dreadful spectacle.