"All the same," said Mrs. Fairlee, complacently turning on her slim white finger a superb Hungarian sapphire, "nothing would tempt me to wear a stone even suspected of uncanniness. Trials and crosses, of course, will befall one, but it seems to me foolhardy to wear jewels supposed to attract misfortune, and, for my part, I am still suspicious of opals; and were I King Edward, I shouldn't thank my loyal Australians for the gift of an ill-omened jewel, however costly and beautiful."

"Well," commented the Journalist, "every one for his fancy; mine, I confess, is to 'mouse round' among musty book-shelves. Looking over my portable store of odds and ends for something relevant to this evening's discussion, I came upon this extract from the 'Voyages of one "Thomas Page,"'--a black letter copy of whose long-forgotten book, printed in London, in 1677, is still extant. As a curious picture of the times, it is not without an especial value; and, with your approval, I will now read it:

"This account must be prefaced with the explanation that Thomas Page was an English Dominican, who, as a missionary-monk, with his brother Dominicans travelled to his destination in Manila, by the road across Mexico, landing, by the way, at Vera Cruz, and there depositing some ill.u.s.trious fellow-voyagers.

"'When we came to land,' says this quaintly circ.u.mstantial writer, 'all the inhabitants of the city had congregated in the Plaza to receive us.

The communities of monks were also there, each one preceded by a large crucifix,--the Dominicans, the San Franciscans, the Mercedarios,--in order to conduct the Virey (the Viceroy) of Mexico as far as the Cathedral.

"'The Jesuits and friars from the ships leaped upon the sh.o.r.e from the ships. Many of them (the monks) on stepping on sh.o.r.e, kissed it, considering that it was a holy cause that brought them there,--the conversion of the Indians, who had before adored and sacrificed to demons; others kneeled down and gave thanks to the Virgin Mary and other saints of their devotion, and then all the monks hastened to incorporate themselves with their respective orders in the place in which they severally stood. The procession, as soon as formed, directed itself to the Cathedral, where the consecrated wafer (called in the English original the bread G.o.d) was exposed upon the high altar, and to which all kneeled as they entered.... The services ended, the Virey was conducted to his lodgings by the first Alcalde, the magistrate of the town, and judges, who had descended from the capitol to meet him, besides the soldiers of the garrison and the ships. Those of the religious orders that had just arrived were conducted to their respective convents, crosses, as before, being carried at the head of each community.

"'Friar John presented us [his missionaries] to the Prior of the Convent of San Domingo, who received us kindly, and directed sweetmeats to be given us; and also there was given to each of us a cup of that Indian beverage which the Indians call chocolate. "This," the good friar tells us, "was but a prelude to a sumptuous dinner, composed of flesh and fish of every description, in which there was no lack of turkeys and capons.

This feast," he navely apologizes, "was not set out for the purpose of worldly ostentation, but to manifest to us the abundance of the country."

"'The Prior of Vera Cruz,' he informs us, 'was neither old nor severe, as the men selected to govern communities of youthful religious orders are accustomed to be. On the contrary, he was in the flower of his age, and had all the manner of a joyful and diverting youth. His fathership, as they told us, had acquired the Priory by means of a gift of a thousand ducats, which he had sent to the Father Provincial. After dinner he invited some of us to visit his cell, and then it was we came to know the levity of his life....

"'The cell of the Prior was richly tapestried, and adorned with feathers of birds of Michoacan; the walls were hung with various pictures of merit; rich rugs of silk covered the tables; porcelain of China filled the cupboards and sideboards; and there were vases and bowls containing preserved fruits and most delicate sweetmeats.

"'Our enthusiastic companions did not fail to be scandalized at such an exhibition, which they looked upon as a manifestation of worldly vanity, so foreign to the poverty of a begging friar....

"'The holy Prior talked to us only of his ancestry, of his good parts, of the influence with the Father Provincial; of the love which the princ.i.p.al ladies and the wives of the richest merchants manifested to him, of his beautiful voice, of his consummate skill in music. In fact, that we might not doubt him in this particular, he took the guitar and sung a sonnet which he had composed to a certain _Amaryllis_. This was a new scandal to our newly arrived _religious_, which afflicted some of them to see such libertinage in a prelate, who ought, on the contrary, to have set an example of penance and self-mortification, and should shine like a mirror in his conduct and words.... In the Prior's cell of the Convent of Vera Cruz' (concluded this character sketch) 'we listened to a melodious voice, accompanied with a harmonious instrument, we saw treasures and riches, we ate exquisite confectioneries, we breathed amber and musk, with which he had perfumed his syrups and conserves. O, that delicious Prior!' exclaims our English monk, the humor of the situation overcoming his horror of the scandalous behavior of the ecclesiastic."

"And now," said the Minister, producing some leaves of sermon-like script, "may I call your attention, my friends, to the striking a.n.a.logies found in the religious usages and belief of the Aztec,--correspondent with those of the Christian,--some of which I have considered in this little paper?

"One of the most extraordinary coincidences with Christian rites may, I think, be traced in their ceremony of naming their children,--the Aztec baptism. An account of this rite, preserved by Sahagan, is thus put into English:

"'When everything,' says the chronicler, 'necessary for the baptism had been made ready, all the relations of the child were a.s.sembled, and the midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism. After a solemn invocation, the head and lips of the infant were touched with water, and a name was given it; while the G.o.ddess Cioacoatl, who presided over childbirth, was implored that "the sin which was given to this child before the beginning of the world might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew."

This,' continues the narrator, 'is the exact formula used: "O my child!

take and receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash and purify. I pray that these heavenly drops may enter into your body and dwell there, that they may destroy and remove from you all the sin which was given to you at the beginning of the world.

"'She then washed the body of the child with water. This done, "He now liveth," said she, "and is born anew; now is he purified and cleansed afresh, and our Mother Chalchioitlyene (the G.o.ddess of water) again bringeth him into the world." Then taking the child in both hands, she lifted him towards heaven, and said, "O Lord, thou seest here thy creature, whom thou hast sent into the world, this place of sorrow, and suffering, and penitence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and inspiration; for thou art the Great G.o.d, and with thee is the great G.o.ddess." Torches of pine illuminated this performance, and the name was given by the same midwife, or priestess, who baptized him.'

"The difficulty of obtaining anything like a faithful report of these rites from the natives," said the Minister, "was complained of by the Spanish chroniclers, and no doubt led them to color the narrative of these (to them) heathen rites and observances with interpolations from their own religious belief. 'The Devil,' said one of these bewildered missionary monks, 'chose to imitate the rites of Christianity, and the traditions of the chosen people, that he might allure his wretched victims to their own destruction.' Leaving these monkish annalists to their own childish conclusions, and absurd interpretations of the Aztec religious a.n.a.logies, we pa.s.s on to the tradition of the Deluge, so widely spread among the nations of the Old World, the Hebrew account of which was thus travestied by these semi-barbarians. Two persons, they held, survived this historical flood,--a man named c.o.xc.o.x, and his wife.

Their heads are represented in ancient paintings, together with a boat floating on the waters.

"Another tradition (which is credited by Humboldt) affirms that the boat in which Typi (their Noah) weathered the flood was filled with various kinds of animals and birds, and that, after some time, a vulture was sent out by Typi, to reconnoitre,--as was done in the Hebrew flood,--but remained feeding on the dead bodies of the giants which had been left on the earth as the waters subsided. The little humming-bird, Huitozitsilin, was then sent forth, and returned with a twig in his mouth. The coincidence of this account with the Bible narrative is worthy of remark.

"On the way between Vera Cruz and the capital stands the tall and venerable pyramidal mound called the temple of Chulola. It rises to the height of nearly one hundred and eighty feet, and is cased with unburnt brick. The native tradition is that it was erected by a family of giants who had escaped the great inundation, and designed to raise the building to the clouds; but the G.o.ds, offended by their presumption, sent on the pyramid fires from heaven, and compelled the giants to abandon their attempt.

"This story was still lingering among the natives of the place at the time of Humboldt's visit to it. The partial coincidence of this legend with the Hebrew account of the tower of Babel cannot be denied. This tradition has also its partial counterpart in the Hebrew Bible.

Cioacoatl, 'our lady and mother, the first G.o.ddess who bringeth forth,'

who is by the Aztecs believed to have bequeathed the sufferings of childbirth to women as the tribute of death, by whom sin came into the world, was usually represented with a serpent near her, and her name signified the 'Serpent-woman.'

"This fable, as will be seen, reminds us of the 'Eve' in the Hebrew account of the Fall of Man. The later priestly narrators, minded to improve upon this honest Aztec tradition, gave the Mexican Eve two sons, and named them Cain and Abel.

"In this Aztec rite, coming down to us through tradition, the Roman Catholics recognized a resemblance to their especial ceremony of Christian Communion. An image of the tutelary deity of the Aztecs was made of the flour of maize, mixed with blood; and after consecrating by the priests, was distributed among the people, who, as they ate it, showed signs of humiliation and sorrow, declaring it was the flesh of the deity.

"We are told by a Mexican traveller, Torquemeda, a Spanish monk, that, later on, when the Church had waxed mighty in the land, the simple Indian converts, with unconscious irony, called the Catholic wafer 'the bread-G.o.d.'"

Here the discussion was, for a moment, interrupted by the withdrawal of Miss Mattie Norcross and her invalid sister, who, wearied with long sitting, had dropped her tired head upon her sister's shoulder and gone quietly to sleep.

As the Grumbler rose to open the door for the two, all present might see the courteous air of protection and kindly sympathy which accompanied this simple bit of courtesy. Evidently, the Grumbler had met his fate at Alamo Ranch.

"And now," said the star boarder, coming finally into the talk, "since Mr. Morehouse has kindly condensed for us the history of the aboriginal Mexican from the far-off day of the nomadic Toltec to the splendid reign of the last Montezuma,--treacherously driven to the wall by the crafty Cortez, when the Spaniard nominally converted the heathen, overthrew his time-honored temples, rearing above their ruins Christian churches, and, intent to 'kill two birds with the same stone' filled his own pockets, and swelled the coffers of far-off Spain with Aztec riches,--I have thought it not irrelevant to take a look at the humble native Mexican as he is found by the traveller of to-day.

"First, let me say that it has been a.s.serted of Mexico that 'though geographically near, and having had commercial relations with the world for over three hundred years, there is probably less known of this country to-day than of almost any other claiming to be civilized.' 'To the Mexicans themselves,' declares an observing traveller, 'Mexico is not fully known; and there are hundreds of square miles in South Mexico that have never been explored; and whole tribes of Indians that have never been brought in contact with the white man.'

"Mexico may well be called the country of revolutions, having pa.s.sed through thirty-six within the limit of forty years. In that comparatively short period of time no less than seventy-three rulers, 'drest in a little brief authority,' have played their parts upon the Mexican stage until the curtain dropped (too often in blood) upon their acts, and they were seen no more.

"Humboldt, in the seventeenth century, p.r.o.nounced the fairy-like environs of the city of Mexico 'the most beautiful panorama the eye ever rested upon.' On the table-land of this country the traveller is, at some points, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. At such heights the air is so rarefied that the least physical effort well-nigh deprives the traveller of breath. 'Through this rarefied atmosphere all the climates and productions of the world,' it has been affirmed, 'are embraced within the scope of a single bird's-eye view.' In portions of the country the _vomito_ renders the climate especially unkindly to the alien.

"We are told that three quarters of the present Mexican population can neither read nor write, possess little or no property, and can form no intelligent ideas of political liberty, or of const.i.tutional government.

"The degraded condition of the laboring cla.s.ses is imputed in a measure to the const.i.tutional inertia of a race who have no climatic conditions to contend with in their life-struggle; whose simple wants are easily satisfied, and who (it may be inferred) never know that 'divine discontent' which is the fulcrum on which the higher civilization turns.

The manner of living, among this cla.s.s, is thus described by Wells:

"'Their dwellings in the cities are generally wanting in all the requirements of health and comfort, and consist mostly of rooms on the ground-floor, without proper light or ventilation, often with but the single opening for entrance. In such houses there is rarely anything answering to the civilized idea of a bed, the occupants sleeping on a mat, skin, or blanket, on the dirt floor. There are no chairs or tables.

There is no fireplace or chimney, and few or no changes of raiment; no washing apparatus or soap, and in fact no furniture whatever, except a flat stone with a stone roller to grind their corn, and a variety of earthen vessels to hold their food and drink, and for cooking, which is generally done over a small fire within a circle of stones outside, and in front of the main entrance to the dwelling.

"'Their princ.i.p.al food is _tortillas_,--a sort of mush made of soaked and hand-ground Indian corn, rolled thin, and then slightly baked over a slow fire. Another staple of diet is boiled beans (_frijoles_). Meat is seldom used by laborers; but when it is attainable, every part of the animal is eaten. Should one be so fortunate as to have anything else to eat, the _tortilla_ serves as plates, after which service the plates are eaten. When their simple needs are thus satisfied,' says this observing traveller, 'the surplus earnings find their way into the pockets of the pulque or lottery-ticket sellers, or into the greedy hands of the almost omnipresent priest.'

"These lotteries are, we are told, operated by the Church, and form one of its never-failing sources of income, proving even more profitable than the sale of indulgences.

"The idolatrous instinct, inherited from far-off Aztec ancestors, decidedly inclines the native Mexican to a worship that has its pictures and images, and its bowings before the Virgin and countless hosts of saints, and the priest finds him an easy prey.

"'While we were in the country,' says Ballou, 'a bull-fight was given in one of the large cities on a Sunday, as a benefit towards paying for a new altar-rail to be placed in one of the Romish churches.'

"Religious fanaticism takes root in all cla.s.ses in Mexico, even among the very highest in the land. It is recorded of the Emperor Maximilian--a man of elegant manners, and of much culture and refinement--that he walked barefoot on a day of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadaloupe,--distant some two or three miles from the city of Mexico, over a dusty, disagreeable road.

"It is but fair to add, in conclusion," said Leon Starr, "that it is a.s.serted of the cultivated cla.s.ses of Mexico that they are not at all in sympathy with the extortions and other irregularities of their priesthood."

With these interesting statistics ended the last effort of the New Koshare to combine improvement and entertainment.

Hard upon this more solid delight-making followed the last afternoon tea, the lighter Thursday evening entertainment, and the final shooting-match. All these gatherings took on a tinge of sadness from the certainty that the little winter family, brought together by Fate at Alamo Ranch, were so soon to separate.

CHAPTER XV

Spring had now well come. In the shade it was already more than summer heat. Fortunately there is, in New Mexico, no such thing as sun-stroke; and one moves about with impunity, though the mercury stands at fervid heights.

It was on All Fools' day that the star boarder, accompanied by a little party of the Koshare,--made up to escort him as far on his homeward way as El Paso,--turned his back upon the loveliness of Mesilla Valley.

Through all this "winter of their discontent" Leon had lent himself heartily to the work of delight-making; and the saddest of them all had been cheered by his genial atmosphere. What wonder if to these it was but a dolorous leave-taking; and that amid the general hand-shaking some eyes were wet, and some partings said with big lumps that would rise in swelling throats! A good face was, however, put upon it all; and even Fang, Dennis, and the ch.o.r.e-boy, sent a blessing and a cheery good-bye in the wake of the favorite boarder.

As for the small Mexican herd-boy,--who, with his best clean face, had come up to the ranch to look his last upon the adored white man under whose tuition he had become "a mighty hunter before the Lord,"--he simply "lifted up his voice and wept."