| OCR Text |
Show MEXICANHI5T0RY. Cortes Viewing Mexican Valley Like Painting of "Hannibal and the Promised Prom-ised Land" Found Marks of Advanced Civiliization Antedating Christian Era-Pueblo Era-Pueblo of "Uncut Stone" Tradition of St. Thomas Ancient Tribe Found the Sign of the Prophet Floating Gardens. (Foreign Cr. Internioiintaiu Catholic.) When, on the morning f November 3. 1.119, tli3 Spanish general. Cortes, came to the range of mountains moun-tains separating the table lands of Mexico from those of Pueblo, be was fifty miles from the city of Mexico. When coming to this city a few months ago I left the Mexican Central railroad atOtum-ba, atOtum-ba, where on duly 8. 1.120. Cortes fought his famous fa-mous battle on his retreat from Mexico City, after the disastrous nuche triste or "night of sorrow," and followed on burro the route of the Spaniard. To cross the range file daring adventurer, with his fighters followed the defile between two of the highest volcanic mountains on the North American continent. These retain today the same names which were given to them many centuries before the Spanish conquest. To bis right towered in imperial im-perial strength Popocatepctte, "the mount, that smokes." and on his left was Iztaccihuatte. "the white woman." so called by some one dead, perhaps. I for thousands of years, from the shining robe of snow falling from the bead and shoulders of this 1 woman of great age but wondrous beauty. I The "hill that smokes" is 2.000 feet higher than j Mount Blanc and into one of its two craters. l.oOu j feet deep, the fearless Spaniard Montaro in 1.121 ) descended in a basket, and collected sulphur when f the powder of the army was running low. Turning an angle of the pass the adventurous Spaniards j caught their first glimpse of the wonderful valley of Mexico. As they advanced the panorama tin- folded 'till they came- to Aniecameca. where they I halted to gaze upon the transcendent vision. Re- 1 fore them in the distance and high in air rose the I great sacrificial temple. Like some Indian empress, with her coronal of pearls, the pagan city with her . white towers and ominous pyramids reposed, as it ' I j were, on the bosom of the waters. They beheld afar off the "pearl 4 great price." the far-famed Venice - j of the Aztecs for which they fought and of which they- dreamed. j In the Borghese Gallery of Art. Rome, there is 1 a magnificent and highly treasured painting. It is labelled "Hanibal ami the Promised Land." The I great Carth'agenian general, according to Livy j (xxi., 3.1), reached the summit of the Alps with his j army by detours and over ground that wore down his men. When dispair was knawiug at their cour- f age and endurance, the X'ubian horsemen rode up .the incline and halted their horses on the crest, , I Hanibal was at their head, and calling some of his j officers around him the Carthagenian with out- : stretched arm pointed toward Italy. He then wnh a sweep of his hand drew a line around Lombardy on I both banks of the river It flowing at the foot of the I Alps. "Let us now proclaim to our brave soldiers," he said, "that having scaled these Alps we have f broken through the walls of Italy and those of Italy's capital. The march henceforth will be easy i and down hill." l 'spaniards Enter valley of Mexico. I Between the situation of Hannibal surveying j Italy for the first time, amhthat of Cortes pointing f out the valley of Mexico to his officers, there is a f striking analogy. Passing by the southern shores f of Lake Chalco the Spanish soldiers moved through woods and orchards glowing with autumnal fruits I of rich and tempting hues, and through cultivated ' I fields )f yellow maize, irrigated by canals opened from the neighboring lakes. Cortes, with his mailed ! warriors, now entered upon a remarkable causeway f built straight through the shallow lake. After f crossing the isthmus which separated the lakes Chafco and Tezcuco they entered the royal terri- I tory and demesne entrusted to the care of Men- ' tezuma's brother. This was Iztapalapan. and the : I suutrior architecture of the buildings excited th-j I admiration of Cortes and his officers. I , Much to their surprise the gardens, which took in large tracts of land, were set out in regufar ,' 1 squares, were stocked witf) fruit trees and planted I in flower-bearing shrubs of the Mexican and tropi- cal flora. Here also was a huge reservoir l.tiiH) yards in circumference, in which fish brought from j the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were swimming. In I arcthcr quarter was an aviary or great bird cage. j u which were confined many species of birds more - f remarkable for brilliancy of plumage than for son.-. (.Continued on page 5.) ' , 1 i MEXICANJJISTORY. (Continued from Page 1.)' Cortes camped at Izt8palapan for thc night tending to enter Mexico the next day. While the Spanish adventurer and his daring followers are ietmg in preparation for the morrow, let us bricflv review a portion of the early history of the wonderful wonder-ful land. A PIECE OUT OF THE HISTORIC PAST. The ruins of ancient cities, temples and massive buildings, and the. interesting and curious records collected by the French archaeologist. M. Aubin. who translated the "Codex Chimalpopoca." would -cm to prove conclusively that many of the states, inejuded today in the republic of Mexico, were peopled peo-pled and partially civilized many centuries before the Christian era. The manners, customs and tri bal languages presented a striking resemblance to the maritime populations which, in the remote past, P plod the basin of the Mediterranean. In other days, how far back we know not, A.i-aliuac. A.i-aliuac. now known as Mexico, was peopled by race of pyramid builders, sun worshippers and companions compan-ions of demons. Tradition has not handed down to us Jhcir name or their origin. The annals of An-ahuac An-ahuac record that about 648 A. D. an invading army from some southern region conquered Anahuac and settled in the land. These were the Toltecs who laid the foundations of their wonderful city Tula fifty miles from the present City of Mexico. Thc fairly preserved ruins of the Casa Grande with its thirty rooms, and the building" known as the "pueblo' "pu-eblo' of uncut stone, coated with a cement of a redish tint, are practically all that remain of the. great Olmec city. It was at this Tula that Quct-zalcoatle. Quct-zalcoatle. "the fair God," first appeared in Aua-huae. Aua-huae. and taught the race a more improved method of cultivation, a higher style of architecture and the rudiments of the Christian religion. Thc early Spanish missionaries were of the opinion that. Quetzalcoatle was the Apostle St. Thomas who disappeared dis-appeared from Jerusalem aud was never again heard of. After many revolutions, the theocratic empire of Dachau or Palcnguo. coalesed with Mexico, reuniting re-uniting Yucatan and Anahaac and establishing their seat-of government in Chiapas. The ruins of their capital Nachan cover a wide area near Oeing. in the state of Chiapas. As 1 propose, before leaving this mysterious land r.f .in unknown past, to deal with thc worship of the serpen: and the universality of serpent cult in tally days, I may remark, in passing, that Quetzalcoatle Quet-zalcoatle meirs: serpent of Quctzali. thc home of the quetzal, a bird of wondrous beauty yet to be found in the forests of Honduras, and thatNaehan in the Tzendalc or the Y'ucatecan language has the tame meaning as Culhuacan in the Aztec or early Mexican tongue, that is the ''City of' the Serpents.'' After these explanatory notes I now hurry on to unfeid for the readers of The Intermountain Catholic Cath-olic the singular origin of thc city into which tin Spaniards are soon to make their triumphal entry. COMING OF THE MEXICANS. Over the main entrance. to the great cathedral of Mexico City there is fastened an escutcheon the national shield of the republic painted in triple colors of green, white and red.. This national em-,1'lem em-,1'lem carries a nopal cactus springing from an irregular ir-regular rock which rises out of a waste of waters. On thc nopal a bald-headed eagle is perched with outstretched wings drying iu the sun and in his beak s writhing snake. The symbol on the escutcheon escutch-eon records thc discovery of the site of the City of Mexico or Tenochtitlan as it was called in token of its miraculous origin. Tradition records that early in the twelfth century a wandering tribe from the remote regions of thc north fought their way to the borders of Anahuac, or the Valley of Mexico, then partially occupied by scattered bands of half-savage half-savage hunters and fishers. This wandering tribe, whose original name has disappeared from Mexican annals, after drifting from hill to hill and from hill to valley, halted one afternoon' on. the southwestern rim of one of the principal lakes of the great basin, a'hey were always searching for a sign foretold to their ancestors when they left their northern homes by a Shaman or aged patriarch of the tribe. Scarcely Scarce-ly had they thrown up their xacals or reed huts when the sign appeared an eagle perched on a cactus which grew out of the crevice of a rock washed by the waves, a royal bird of extraordinary fize and majesty, with a serpent hanging from his beak. The leaders met in cbuncil, the shaman ofx the tribe, an elderly man, stripped and dove into the waters to consult the god of the lake. Returning Return-ing he informed thc council that the god said they had seen the sign foretold by the patriarch, and here they were to settle and build their city. The following day they began hewjng down flie trees which grew around them; then they made piles and drove them into the marshy land or salt shallows, and on these piles they built their miserable miser-able xacals or huts of reeds and rushes. As they could raise no produce on the"salt marsh lands,, j they made "chiuampas"' or floating gardens, and from the vegetables raised in these artificial patches of land, from the fish caught in the lake and the wild fowl of the marshes they eked out a precarious precari-ous existence. We now for the first time read of them as Mexicas. The same annals which record their name tell us that before .they began to build their wretched huts on the receding shores of Lake Texcoco. they settledfor a time at Guadalupe, from which place they were driven by a tribe of Chichi-mecas Chichi-mecas (meat caters) to Chapultepee or "Hill of the Grasshopper." Here they made a successful stand against their enemies and, confident in their strength and numbers, began to move against their foes when they saw the "sign." They called their infant village Tcuochtillan "the place foretold" and when it grew aid became a city it was sometimes called Mexico or thc City of Mcxitle their war god. This was in 1318. In next week's correspondence Cortes with his Europeans will cuter Mexico and we will see the heathen city as thc Spaniards saw it. Mexico City. |
