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CHAPTER IV.

Puebla the Lowell of Mexico-Obstacles to Manufactures-City of Cholula-Incredibility of Cortes' Narrative-First sight of the Valley of Mexico-Description of the Valley-Neglect of resources in the supply of the Capital-Arrieros.

PUEBLA is a beautiful city, with lofty houses, built in the purest style of architecture, and broad and remarkably clean streets. Its police is greatly superior to that of Mexico. The cathedral of Puebla is a magnificent edifice, which has been said, though hardly with justice, to rival the cathedral in Mexico. Peubla is the Lowell of Mexico. The principal cotton manufactories are located there, and some of them in very successful operation, which can be said of very few others. The English and other foreign merchants had, in 1842, either by the force of argument or some more potential influence, induced the President to consent to the admission, on more favorable terms, of coarse cotton goods; but the united and violent opposition of the manufacturers of Peubla defeated the arrangement. said that very few of these establishments in Mexico were prosperous, or ever have been, although the price of an article of cotton goods is in Mexico thirty cents a yard, which sells in the United States for six cents. This results from many causes, which appear insuperable. The first of these is the high price of the raw material, which ranges from forty to fifty cents per pound, and in such articles as coarse cottons, the raw material constitutes the chief element of value. The importation of raw cotton is abso

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lutely prohibited, and the tariff policy in Mexico, as in all other countries, rests upon a combination of different interests which are benefited by it; and although neither the manufacturers nor the cotton growers constitute a numerous class in Mexico, yet their combined influence with the aid of the catch-words "National independence, home industry," &c., which have had so much power in a much more enlightened country than Mexico, are all-sufficient to sustain the prohibitory system-by which a Mexican pays for one shirt a sum that would buy him five in any other country. Another immense disadvantage of the Mexican manufacturer is, that all his machinery is imported and transported by land at enormous cost-and when any portion of it gets out of order, the difficulty and delay of repairing it, and the consequent loss, are incalculable. There are many other reasons which will always make the business of manufacturing unprofitable in Mexico. It is needless, however, to prove this by argument when the universal experience and the results of experiments made under the most favorable circumstances, all confirm that opinion. However tempting to such an investment may be the high prices of the manufactured articles, those high prices are equally tempting to smuggling in a country with ca thousand miles of frontier and sea-board. There is, perhaps, no other country where the receipts of the customhouse are so little to be relied on as to the amount of importations, and where smuggling is carried to so great an extent; even where goods are regularly imported, innumerable frauds are practised both by and upon the customhouse officers.

The great city of Cholula, of which both Cortes and Bernal Dias give such glorious descriptions, was situated about six miles from the present city of Puebla. The following

translation of the description which Cortes gives of the city of Cholula in one of his letters may not be uninteresting:

"The great city of Cholula is situated in a plain and has twenty thousand householders in the body of the city, besides as many more in the suburbs. There is not a palm's breadth of land which is not cultivated, notwithstanding which, there is in many places much suffering for bread. The people of this city dress better than the Tlascalans. The most respectable of the citizens wear something like a Moorish cloak over their other clothes, but somewhat different, as those worn here have pockets; yet in the shape, the cloth and the fringe, there is much resemblance to those worn in Africa."

He adds that he had himself counted the towers of more than four hundred idol temples. The account of Bernal Dias, although more brief, yet represents it as a populous and most extraordinary city, and he adds, that it was famous for the manufacture of the finest crockery-ware, as in Castile were the cities of Talavera and Palencia. The city of Puebla is at this day equally celebrated for the same manufacture.

It was here that the terrible slaughter was committed which has left the deepest stain upon the otherwise glorious and wonderful character of Cortes. The Cholulans had received him with every demonstration of friendship into their city, and had afterwards concerted a plan to destroy all the Spaniards; this plot was discovered through the address and sagacity of that miracle of a woman Dona Marina, the Indian interpreter of Cortes, whose great qualities throw into the shade our own Pocahontas. Much allowance is to be made for the circumstances with which the Spanish hero was surrounded, with only about five hundred men in the midst of a powerful, warlike and hostile

people.* Not a vestige, literally none,-not a brick or a stone standing upon another remains of this immense city, except the great pyramid which still stands in gloomy and solitary grandeur in the vast plain which surrounds it," and there it will stand for ever." This pyramid is built of unburnt bricks; its dimensions, as given by Humboldt, are, base 1440 feet, present height 177, area on the summit 45,210 square feet. The base is greatly out of proportion with its height, if compared with the Egyptian or other similar Mexican piles. All other pyramids of which we have any account are carried up to a point, and have not the same large area upon the summit; from which, I think that it may well be supposed that it was once of much greater elevation, or that to render it such was the original design of the builders. A Catholic chapel now crowns the summit of this immense mound, the sides of which are covered with grass and small trees. As seen for miles along the road, an artificial mountain standing in the solitude of a vast plain, it is a most imposing and beautiful object.

A short distance after leaving Puebla the road for several miles passes through the beautiful cultivated plain of which I have heretofore spoken. This vast plain, all of which is in cultivation, extends on each side of the road as far as the eye can reach. The farms, in the quality of the soil, houses, fixtures and cultivation, are greatly superior to any others which I saw in Mexico. To the right lies the territory of the great Republic of Tlascala, which first offered such fierce resistance and afterwards gave such important assistance to Cortes in the conquest of Mexico. It is difficult to reconcile the accounts given by Cortes and Bernal Dias,

* At the end of this volume will be found a translation of Bernal Dias' account of this affair.

CHAP. IV.] INCREDIBILITY OF CORTES' NARRATIVE.

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of the immense population of the city and country of Tlascala with the very small territory which they occupied. Cortes says, "The territory of Tlascala contains a population of five hundred thousand householders, not including the adjoining province of Guasincango." "This city," says he," is so large and contains so many wonderful things, that I must leave much untold; the little which I shall relate is almost incredible, because it is a much larger and a much stronger city than Granada, the houses as good and the population much greater than was that of Granada at the period of its conquest, and much better provided with the productions of the earth, such as bread, &c. There is a market where more than thirty thousand people daily assemble and buy and sell, &c., &c. There are houses where they wash and shave the head like barbers; they have baths also. Finally, they have in all respects good order and police, and are altogether a civilized people." In one of Cortes' battles with them they brought into the field one hundred and fifty thousand warriors. It is difficult to conceive how a territory not more than fifty miles long and thirty wide, and with the state of agriculture at that time, could have sustained such an enormous population; but the difficulty is in some degree removed when we reflect that they had no horses nor other domestic animals.

With all my admiration of Cortes, and it is very great, I must confess to some little incredulity when I read such accounts as the following. Speaking of his battles with the Tlascalans, he says:

"And thus they drew us on, while engaged in fighting, until we found ourselves [about five hundred Spaniards] in the midst of more than one hundred thousand warriors, who surrounded us on all sides. The battle lasted the whole day, until an hour before sunset, when they drew off. In this contest, with six pieces of ordnance, five or six hand guns, forty

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