The journey and excursions in Mexico which have originated the narrative and remarks contained in this volume were made in the months of March, April, May, and June of 1856, for the most part on horseback. The author and his fellow-traveller enjoyed many advantageous opportunities of studying the country, the people, and the antiquities of Mexico, owing to the friendly assistance and hospitality which they received there. With this aid they were enabled to accomplish much more than usually falls

Journey 1. Cuba. Havana. Batabano. Isles of Pines. Nueva Gerona. Baños de Santa Fé. Back to Havana. Pages 1-14. Journey 2. Havana. Sisal. Vera Cruz. Pages 15-18. Journey 3. Vera Cruz. Cordova. Orizaba. Huamantla. Otumba. Guadalupe. Mexico. Pages 18-38. Journey 4. Mexico to Tacubaya and Chapultepec, and back. Pages 55-58. Journey 5. Mexico to Santa Anita and back. Pages 59-65. Journey 6. Mexico. Guadalupe. Pachuca. Real del Monte. Regla. Atotonilco el Grande. Soquital and back to Real del Monte.

In the spring of 1856, I met with Mr. Christy accidentally in an omnibus at Havana. He had been in Cuba for some months, leading an adventurous life, visiting sugar-plantations, copper-mines, and coffee-estates, descending into caves, and botanizing in tropical jungles, cruising for a fortnight in an open boat among the coral-reefs, hunting turtles and manatis, and visiting all sorts of people from whom information was to be had, from foreign consuls and Lazarist missionaries down to retired sla

On the 8th of March, we went on board the “Méjico” steamer, American-built, and retaining her American engineers, but in other respects converted into a Spanish vessel, and now lying in the harbour of Havana bound for Vera Cruz, touching at Sisal in Yucatan. At eight o’clock we weighed anchor, and were piloted through the narrow passage which leads out of the harbour past the castle of El Morro and the fort of Cabañas, the view of whose ramparts and batteries caused quite a flourish of trumpets

Some thirty years ago, Don Agustín Yturbide, the first and last Emperor of Mexico, found that he wanted a palace wherein to house his newly-fledged dignity; and began to build one accordingly, in the high street of Mexico, close to the great convent of San Francisco. It could not have been nearly finished when its founder was shot: and it became the Hotel d’Yturbide . We are now settled in it, in very comfortable quarters. There is a restaurant down below, where the son of the late Yturbide dine

We went one morning to the house of our friend Don Pepe, and were informed by the servant as we entered the courtyard that the niño, the child, was up stairs waiting for us. “The Child” seemed an odd term to apply to a young man of five and twenty. The young ladies, in the same way are called the nias, and keep the appellation until they marry. We went off with the niño to his uncle’s house at Tacubaya, on the rising ground above Mexico. In the garden there we found a vegetation such as one woul

The Rebozo worn by the Women of Mexico; and the Serape worn by the Men. While we were away at the Real del Monte, the news had reached Mexico that Puebla had capitulated, and that the rebel leader had fled. The victory was celebrated in the capital with the most triumphal entries, harangues, bull-fights, and illuminations done to order. If you had a house in one of the principal streets, the police would make you illuminate it, whether you liked or not. The newspapers loudly proclaimed the trium

Across the lake of Tezcuco is Tezcuco itself, a great city and the capital of a kingdom at the time of the Conquest, and famous for its palaces and its learned men. Now it is an insignificant Spanish town, built, indeed, to a great extent, of the stones of the old buildings. Mr. Bowring, who has evaporating-works at the edge of the lake, and lives in the “Casa Grande”—the Great House, just outside Tezcuco, has invited us to pay him a visit; so we get up early one April morning, and drive down to

SPANISH-MEXICAN SADDLE AND ITS APPURTENANCES. Much too soon, as we thought, the day came when we had arranged to leave Tezcuco and return to Mexico, to prepare for a journey into the tierra caliente. On the evening of our return to the capital there was a little earthquake, but neither of us noticed it; and thus we lost our one chance, and returned to England without having made acquaintance with that peculiar sensation. The purchase of horses and saddles and other equipments for our journey, ga

IXTCALCO CHURCH. A little before dark we came to the hacienda of Santa Rosita de Cocoyotla, another sugar-plantation which was to be our head-quarters for some days to come. We presented our letter of introduction from the owner of the estate, and the two administradors received us with open arms. We were conducted into the strangers’ sleeping-room, a long barrack-like apartment with stone walls and a stone floor that seemed refreshingly dark and cool; we could look out through its barred window

STATUE OF THE MEXICAN GODDESS OF WAR (OR OF DEATH), TEOYAOMIQUI. (After Nebel). Height of the original, about Nine Feet . It was like getting home again to reach Mexico, we had so many friends there, though our stay had been so short. We were fully occupied, for weeks of hard sight-seeing are hardly enough to investigate the objects of interest to be found in the city. We saw these things under the best auspices, for Mr. Christy had letters to the Minister of Public Instruction and other people

WALKING AND RIDING COSTUMES IN MEXICO. (After Nebel.) The wet season was fast coming on when we left Mexico for the last time. We had to pass through Vera Cruz, where the rain and the yellow fever generally set in together; so that to stay longer would have been too great a risk. Our first stage was to Tezcuco, across the lake in a canoe, just as we had been before. We noticed on our way to the canoes, a church, apparently from one to two centuries old, with the following doggerel inscription in

VIEW OF THE VOLCANO ORIZABA. We reached Puebla in the afternoon, and found it a fine Spanish city, with straight streets of handsome stone houses, and paved with flag-stones. We rather wondered at the pasadizos , a kind of arched stone-pavement across the streets at short intervals, very much impeding the progress of the carriages, which had to go up and down them upon inclined planes. In the evening we saw the use of them however, for a shower of rain came down which turned every street into a

INDIANS OF THE PLATEAU. (After Nebel.) The mountain-slopes which descend from the Sierra Madre eastward toward the sea are furrowed by barrancas —deep ravines with perpendicular sides, and with streams flowing at the bottom. But here all these barrancas run almost due east and west, so that our journey from Vera Cruz to Mexico was made, as far as I can recollect, without crossing one. Now, the case was quite different. We had to go from the Potrero to the city of Jalapa, about fifty miles on the

Supposing that Gama made no mistake in his calculations, the idea at once suggests itself, that the person who compiled or copied the Le Tellier Codex, some few years after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, inserted under the date of 1476 (long before the time of the Spaniards) an eclipse which could not have been recorded there had the document been a genuine Aztec Calendar; as, though visible in Europe, it was not visible in Mexico . The supposition of the compiler having merely inserted this da

Several lists of Aztec words compared with those of various Indo-European languages have been given by philologists. The present is larger than any I have met with; several words in it are taken from Buschmann’s work on the Mexican languages. It is desirable in a philological point of view that comparative lists of words of this kind should be made, even when, as in the present instance, they are not of sufficient extent to found any theory upon. As the Aztec alphabet does not contain nearly all

ANAHUAC. Aztec . “By the water-side.” The name at first applied to the Valley of Mexico, from the situation of the towns on the banks of the lakes; afterwards used to denote a great part of the present Republic of Mexico. ACOCOTE ( Aztec , acocotl, water-throat), aloe-sucker’s gourd; see p. 91. ADOBE, a mud-brick, baked in the sun. (Perhaps a Moorish-Spanish word. Ancient Egyptian , tobe, a mud-brick; Arabic , toob, pronounced with the article at-toob , whence adobe?) AGUAMIEL (honey-water), unf

These Specimens, two Masks and a Knife, ( see page 101 .) are interesting as presenting examples of higher art than has been supposed to have been attained to by the ancient Mexicans, or any other of the native American peoples. Their distinctive feature is an incrustation of Mosaic of Turquoise, cut and polished, and fitted with extreme nicety,—a work of great labour, time, and cost in any country, and especially so amongst a people to whom the use of iron was unknown,—and carried out with a pe

Whilst treating of legendary lore in connection with Ethnographry, we must not forget to refer the reader to the highly useful and philosophical remarks on this subject in Dasent’s Introduction to his Popular Tales from the Norse . [26] Here we see that not only are the popular tales of any nation indicative of its early condition and its later progress, but also that the legends, fables, and tales of the Indo-European nations, at least, bear internal evidence of their having grown out of a few